Tamara Greasby

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Multivariate Spatial Analysis of Climate Change Projections

Journal of Agricultural Biological and Environmental Statistics Jan

The goal of this work is to characterize the annual temperature for regional climate models. Of interest for impacts studies, these profiles and the potential change in these profiles are a new way to describe climate change and the inherent uncertainty. To that end, we propose a Bayesian hierarchical spatial model to simultaneously model the temperature profile for the four seasons of the year, current and future. These profiles are then analyzed focusing on understanding how they change over time, how they vary spatially, and how they vary between five different regional climate models. The results show that for temperature, the regional models have different profile shapes depending on a number of factors including spatial location, driv

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Assessing Uncertainty in Climate Model Ensembles via Annual Temperature Profiles

Working paper Jan

Using the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program ensemble of regional climate models, this work defines an annual temperature profile to characterize and examine changes in temperature projections for two sets of model runs: current and future. These profiles, and the corresponding differences, are a new way to describe climate change and its uncertainty. This paper proposes a Bayesian hierarchical spatial model to simultaneously model the profile for 30 years in each time period. The hierarchical structure is designed to account for many sources of uncertainty, including heteroscedastic seasonal variability and inter-annual variability. Several applications of these temperature profiles are highlighted showing the flexib

J

Increased Rotational Mobility of the Testis After Vasectomy A Sonographic Study

Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine Dec

Objective. The purpose of this study was to evaluate for increased mobility of the testis in postvasectomy patients by observing changes in the position of the testis-epididymis complex (TEC). Methods. This was a retrospective study of 29 postvasectomy patients compared with 29 control patients without a history of vasectomy who were referred for scrotal sonography for various clinical indications over a 1 year-period. The position of the TEC was compared between the two groups. Results. The post-vasectomy group had medial or posteromedial rotation in 13 of 58 testes (22%) compared with 3 of 58 (5%) in the control group. Conclusions. Our study found a statistically higher incidence of medial rotation of the testis in the vasectomy group com

J

Temporal Changes in Characteristics of Injection-Site Sarcomas in Cats: 392 cases (1990–2006)

Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association Feb

Objective—To evaluate changes in characteristics of feline injection-site sarcomas (ISSs) from 1990 through 2006. Design—Retrospective case series. Animals—392 cats with a histologic diagnosis of soft tissue sarcoma, osteosarcoma, or chondrosarcoma at potential injection sites. Procedures—Classification and anatomic location of tumors and signalment of affected cats were compared between ISSs diagnosed before and after publication of the Vaccine Associated Feline Sarcoma Task Force vaccination recommendations in 1996. Results—From before to after publication of the vaccination recommendations, proportions of ISSs significantly decreased in the interscapular (53.4% to 39.5%) and right and left thoracic (10.2% to 3.6% and 9.1% to 1.3%, re

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Semiautomated Segmentation for Volumetric Analysis of Intratumoral Ethiodol Uptake and Subsequent Tumor Necrosis After C

American Journal of Roentgenology Nov

OBJECTIVE. Linear measurements, such as those described by the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors criteria, may be limited for assessment of response after transarterial chemoembolization (TACE). The purpose of this pilot study was to show intra and interobserver reproducibility of volumetric measurements of Ethiodol (ethiodized oil) seen within tumor 24 hours after TACE and of necrotic and viable tumor 1 month after treatment. Volumetric measurements are compared with linear measurements and survival outcomes. MATERIALS AND METHODS. Between 2006 and 2009, 37 consecutive TACE procedures were performed in 27 patients with hepatic malignancies. CT images obtained 24 hours and 1 month after TACE were retrospectively analyzed. Three

J

Rigid Interferon-α Subtype Responses of Human Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells

Journal of Interferon Cytokine Research Dec

The large family of human type I interferon (IFN) includes 13 distinct subtypes of IFN-α, all utilizing a single type I IFN receptor. Many viruses have created evasion strategies to disable this cytokine family, highlighting their importance in antiviral defense. It is unclear what advantage the presence of so many different IFN-α subtypes provides, but functional differences observed among individual IFN-α subtypes suggested that they might play distinct regulatory roles during an immune response. To determine whether IFN-α subtype responses differ depending on a particular type of insult and thus whether IFN-α subtype responses are flexible to adapt to distinct pathogen challenges, we developed a novel nested multiplex reverse transcripta

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Comparison of Two-Dimensional and Three-Dimensional Iterative Watershed Segmentation Methods in Hepatic Tumor Volumetric

Medical Physics Dec

In this work the authors compare the accuracy of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) implementations of a computer-aided image segmentation method to that of physician observers (using manual outlining) for volume measurements of liver tumors visualized with diagnostic contrast-enhanced and PET/CT-based non-contrast-enhanced (PET-CT) CT scans. The method assessed is a hybridization of the watershed method using observer-set markers with a gradient vector flow approach. This method is known as the iterative watershed segmentation (IWS) method. Initial assessments are performed using software phantoms that model a range of tumor shapes, noise levels, and noise qualities. IWS is then applied to CT image sets of patients with identi

J

Effects of a Problem-Solving Intervention (COPE) on Quality of Life for Patients with Advanced Cancer on Clinical Trials

Journal of Palliative Medicine Apr

Context: Patients on investigational clinical trials and their caregivers experience poor quality of life (QOL), which declines as the disease progresses. Objective: To examine the effect of a standardized cognitive–behavioral problem-solving educational intervention on the QOL of patients enrolled on investigational clinical trials and their caregivers. Design: Prospective, multi-institution, randomized trial. QOL was measured repeatedly over 6 months. Participants: Patients were simultaneously enrolled onto phase 1, 2, or 3 Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved cancer clinical trials. Intervention: Intervention arm dyads participated in three conjoint educational sessions during the first month, learning the COPE problem solving model

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Correlations Between Plasma Levels of a Fibronectin Isoform Subpopulation and C-reactive Protein in Patients with System

Biomarkers Jun

Surrogate markers to detect vasculitic processes prior to organ compromise are lacking. To determine if specific populations among the fibronectin (FN) family of alternatively spliced proteins correlate with parameters of vasculitis in at-risk patients, we retrospectively evaluated the association of plasma levels of total FN (TFN) and FN bearing the alternatively spliced EIIIA segment (A+FN) with clinical vasculitis status and with levels of two putative vasculitis markers (C-reactive protein (CRP) and von Willebrand factor) in a previously studied cohort of 27 patients with systemic inflammatory disease. We found that the percentage of TFN composed by A+FN (%A+) and A+FN, but not TFN, correlated with plasma levels of CRP, the prototypic i

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Salzmann Nodular Degeneration

Cornea Mar

Purpose: To describe the characteristic, clinical, and epidemiological features of Salzmann nodular degeneration. Methods: Retrospective review of cases. All patients with diagnosis of Salzmann nodular degeneration examined on the Cornea and External Disease Service in the Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Science at the University of California, Davis, were included in this review. Demographic features, clinical characteristics, treatment regimens, surgical procedures, and outcomes were recorded. Descriptive statistics, correlation statistics in bilateral cases, and simple regression models were constructed to assess the effect of potential indicators of severity.

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