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We performed association studies with 5,151 SNPs that were judged as likely candidate genetic variations conferring susceptibility to anorexia nervosa AN based on location under reported linkage peaks, previous results in the literature 182 candidate genes, brain expression, biological plausibility, and estrogen responsivity. We employed a case–control design that tested each SNP individually as well as haplotypes derived from these SNPs in 1,085 case individuals with AN diagnoses and 677 control individuals. We also performed separate association analyses using three increasingly restrictive case definitions for AN: all individuals with any subtype of AN All AN: n  1,085; individuals with AN with no binge eating behavior AN with No Binge Eating: n  687; and individuals with the restricting subtype of AN Restricting AN: n  421. After accounting for multiple comparisons, there were no statistically significant associations for any individual SNP or haplotype block with any definition of illness. These results underscore the importance of large samples to yield appropriate power to detect genotypic differences in individuals with AN and also motivate complementary approaches involving GenomeWide Association GWA studies, Copy Number Variation CNV analyses, sequencingbased rare variant discovery assays, and pathwaybased analysis in order to make up for deficiencies in traditional candidate gene approaches to AN. © 2010 WileyLiss, Inc.

Well‐functioning financial systems promote economic growth by channeling funds from those who save to those who invest in the productive capacity of economies. What are the main features of a well functioning system? Are well developed capital markets essential to the process? Or are commercial banks and other “private” sources of capital capable of bringing about the same levels of growth and prosperity?

Fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) are polypeptide mitogens for a wide variety of cell types and are involved in other processes such as angiogenesis and cell differentiation. FGFs mediate their biological responses by activating high-affinity tyrosine kinase receptors. Currently, there are four human fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) genes. To investigate the mechanisms by which αFGF and βFGF may mediate mitogenic signal transduction in human skin-derived fibroblasts, we analyzed these cells for the presence of high-affinity FGFRs. We show that normal human dermal fibroblasts express a single high-affinity FGFR gene, FGFR-1. Cloning and sequencing of two distinct FGFR-1 cDNAs suggested that normal human dermal fibroblasts express a membrane-bound and a putatively secreted form of FGFR-1. We show that normal human dermal fibroblasts produce two FGFR-1 proteins, one of which exists in conditioned media. The mRNA for the putatively secreted form of FGFR-1 appears to be down-regulated by serum treatment of the cells.

Employment policies which prohibit, or regulate, the hiring of fertile females are controversial in today's world. These policies have come under fire as our society has attempted to address the employment inequities which female workers have been forced to endure and overcome. This paper will explore the biological demands of the pregnant worker, the potential development problems of the embryo/fetus within the working mother, and the legal dilemma of civil tort vs. worker's compensation for damages. Also discussed, within the framework of current knowledge regarding mutagenic/teratogenic effects of workplace hazards, are the inconsistent policies between male-dominated and female-dominated industries.

A causal input–output system operating for all time from the indefinite past to the indefinite future may be described by a function space for inputs, a function space for outputs, and a causal operator mapping the input space into the output space. The state of such a system at any instant is defined here as an operator from the space of possible future inputs to that of future outputs. This operator is called the natural state. The output space is taken to be a time-shift-invariant normed linear function space, and the input space is either also such a space or a time-shift-invariant subset thereof. There is flexibility allowed in the choice of these spaces. Both the input–output operator and the operator giving the natural state are themselves taken to be elements of normed linear spaces with one of a particular family of norms calledN-power norms. The general development applies to nonlinear and time-varying systems. Continuity and boundedness of the natural state (as an operator) and properties of the natural state and its trajectory as related to the input–output description of the system are investigated. Two examples are presented.

The inherent stability or instability in reconstructing an object field, in the presence of observation noise, for a class of ill-posed problems is investigated for situations in which constraints are imposed on the object fields. The class of ill-posed problems includes inversion of truncated Fourier transforms. Two kinds of constraint are considered. It is shown that if the object field is restricted to a subset of L_2 space over Rn that is bounded, closed, convex, and has nonempty interior, then a (nonlinear) least-squares estimate always exists but is unstable. It is also shown that if one is primarily concerned with the situation in which the object field belongs to a compact parallelepiped in L_2, aligned in a natural way, there is a satisfactory, stable linear estimate that is optimal according to a min–max criterion. This also leads to a nonlinear modification for the case in which the object field is actually restricted to the parallelepiped. A summary of some relevant mathematical background is included.

Menstrual cycle characteristics may reflect underlying endocrine patterns that influence the risk of breast cancer. Most previous studies of menstrual function and breast cancer risk have used retrospective reports of menstrual bleeding, which may be unreliable. To examine this association, the authors conducted a mail survey among 997 women who had recorded menstrual events prospectively over as many as 50 years, beginning in 1934. Compared with women with a median menstrual cycle length of 26-29 days, women who had cycles of extreme length at ages 25-29 years had a nearly twofold increased incidence of breast cancer (for a median cycle length of less than 26 days, adjusted relative risk (RR) = 1.9, 95% CI 0.9-4.1; for > or = 34 days, RR = 1.9, 95% CI 0.9-3.9). Statistical adjustment was made for age, family history of breast cancer, parity, age at menopause, age at first pregnancy, and Quetelet index (weight (kg)/height (m)2). Adjusting for age and other potential confounders and restricting the analysis to women who did not use hormones, women who experienced either a lesser (< 150) or a greater (> 350) cumulative number of cycles had an increased incidence of breast cancer (adjusted RR = 1.9, 95% CI 0.3-10.6, and RR = 1.8, 95% CI 0.5-6.0, respectively) compared with women who experienced 150-350 cycles. The findings are discussed in the context of current hormonal theories of breast cancer etiology.

Cylindrical Wiener processes in real separable Banach spaces are defined, and an approximation theorem involving scalar Wiener processes is given for such processes. A weak stochastic integral for Banach spaces involving a cylindrical Wiener process as integrator and an operator-valued stochastic process as integrand is defined. Basic properties of this integral are stated and proved.

The notion of system trajectory of a time-varying input-output, dynamical system is reviewed. By introducing a probability measure on a class of such systems a stochastic system, the randomized system, is defined. The randomized system has a trajectory induced by the trajectories of the original systems. A theorem is proved giving fairly general conditions under which the randomized system trajectory is generated by a strongly continuous semigroup of bounded linear operators in a Banach space. An example is presented for a system represented by a quadratic integral operator.

A rather large class of problems involving the determination of an object function from observation is linear-inversion problems for which unique solutions exist but that have the property that any signal-processing algorithm designed to approximate the exact solution too precisely is unstable. This is because the problems are ill posed. The precision attainable in a class of such problems is treated here abstractly in terms of a concept called a linear-precision gauge, which essentially involves an ordered family of linear estimators. Fundamental properties of linear-precision gauges are demonstrated and discussed. A major portion of the paper is given over to applying the linear-precision gauge concept and results to Fourier imaging problems that can occur, for example, in radar and tomography.

Granulocytopenic patients with an intravascular catheter are at increased risk for infection with Staphylococcus epidermidis. During the intervals when the catheters are not being used for infusions, it is customary to maintain patency of the catheter lumen with a solution containing heparin. We show that heparin does not inhibit the growth of S. epidermidis isolated from the catheter of an infected patient. A 20-mg/ml solution of disodium EDTA, a chelating agent which effectively anticoagulates blood at this concentration, was shown to be bactericidal for an initial inoculum of 10(3) CFU of staphylococci per ml in 24 h. Vancomycin, an antibiotic which is often employed to treat Staphylococcus infections, was also bactericidal for initial inocula of 10(3) CFU/ml at doses of 6.7 micrograms/ml, a drug concentration in the therapeutic range. When 10(3) staphylococci per ml were cultured in the presence of catheter segments and disodium EDTA or vancomycin, subcultures of the catheters showed minimal or no growth, respectively. In contrast, when cultured with heparin alone, subcultures showed abundant growth. In view of its low cost, effectiveness as an anticoagulant, and bactericidal activity, EDTA should be studied as a replacement for heparin solutions for the maintenance of intravenous catheters in granulocytopenic patients.

In conclusion, a functional orthosis may be used to effectively treat most, but not all, abnormalities of the lower extremity that cause abnormal function of the foot. Abnormalities that are resistant to treatment with functional orthoses are compensated talipes equinus, excessive verticality of the oblique axis of the midtarsal joint, forefoot adductus that exceeds 15 degrees of adductus, Charcot’s disease, congenital shortage of the iliopsoas muscle, and certain neurologic diseases that exhibit transient muscle spasm or paralysis, resulting in abnormal forces acting upon the foot that vary with time. Unfortunately, laboratories that claim to fabricate functional orthoses may turn out products that vary from nondescript arch supports to orthoses that only partially control function of the foot. The author hopes the practitioner who reads this article will be better able to evaluate whether his or her laboratory is providing his or her patient with a functional orthosis when one is ordered.