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Background: There is a need to improve prognostic accuracy for patients with cutaneous melanoma. A 31-gene expression profile (31-GEP) test uses the molecular biology of primary tumors to identify individual patient metastatic risk.Objective: Develop a nomogram incorporating 31-GEP with relevant clinical factors to improve prognostic accuracy.Methods: In an IRB-approved study, 1124 patients from 9 Mohs micrographic surgery centers were prospectively enrolled, treated with Mohs micrographic surgery, and underwent 31-GEP testing. Data from 684 of those patients with at least 1-year follow-up or a metastatic event were included in nomogram development to predict metastatic risk.Results: Logistic regression modeling of 31-GEP results and T stage provided the simplest nomogram with the lowest Bayesian information criteria score. Validation in an archival cohort (n = 901) demonstrated a significant linear correlation between observed and nomogram-predicted risk of metastasis. The resulting nomogram more accurately predicts the risk for cutaneous melanoma metastasis than T stage or 31-GEP alone.Limitations: The patient population is representative of Mohs micrographic surgery centers. Sentinel lymph node biopsy was not performed for most patients and could not be used in the nomogram.Conclusions: Integration of 31-GEP and T stage can gain clinically useful prognostic information from data obtained noninvasively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 29-year-old male paratrooper presented to multiple emergency departments (EDs) and his primary provider multiple times over sequential days. Each time, the patient received the same diagnosis of acute on chronic back pain. The patient was treated conservatively and routine MRI of the lumbar spine was performed 5 days after the last visit. It revealed a lesion occupying nearly all the visualised portion of the spinal canal. The patient was immediately called back for further imaging. The patient was then diagnosed with a foreign body perforating the rectosigmoid colon, an epidural abscess and pelvic osteomyelitis. The patient was immediately taken to the ED where he was found to be septic. The foreign body was surgically removed and determined to be a swallowed toothpick. Urgent surgical decompression of epidural space was also performed. The patient then underwent a prolonged but near complete recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE) is an atypical zinc-metalloendopeptidase that hydrolyzes insulin and other intermediate-sized peptide hormones, many of which are implicated in skin health and wound healing. Pharmacological inhibitors of IDE administered internally have been shown to slow the breakdown of insulin and thereby potentiate insulin action. Given the importance of insulin and other IDE substrates for a variety of dermatological processes, pharmacological inhibitors of IDE suitable for topical applications would be expected to hold significant therapeutic and cosmetic potential. Existing IDE inhibitors, however, are prohibitively expensive, difficult to synthesize and of undetermined toxicity. Here we used phage display to discover novel peptidic inhibitors of IDE, which were subsequently characterized in vitro and in cell culture assays. Among several peptide sequences tested, a cyclic dodecapeptide dubbed P12-3A was found to potently inhibit the degradation of insulin (Ki = 2.5 ± 0.31 μM) and other substrates by IDE, while also being resistant to degradation, stable in biological milieu, and highly selective for IDE. In cell culture, P12-3A was shown to potentiate several insulin-induced processes, including the transcription, translation and secretion of alpha-1 type I collagen in primary murine skin fibroblasts, and the migration of keratinocytes in a scratch wound migration assay. By virtue of its potency, stability, specificity for IDE, low cost of synthesis, and demonstrated ability to potentiate insulin-induced processes involved in wound healing and skin health, P12-3A holds significant therapeutic and cosmetic potential for topical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stringent chemical methods to profile RNA expression within discrete cellular populations remains a key challenge in biology. To address this issue, we developed a chemical-genetic strategy for metabolic labeling of RNA. Cell-specific labeling of RNA can be profiled and imaged using bioorthogonal chemistry. We anticipate that this platform will provide the community with a much-needed chemical toolset for cell-type specific profiling of cell-specific transcriptomes derived from complex biological systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AJDISK is a 1-D large signal klystron simulator developed at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. A brief discussion of AJDISK's simulation algorithm is given and fully developed to show how AJDISK was extended to enable sheet beam klystron simulations. The primary requirement for extending disk simulators to sheet beam simulators is a space charge equation. Therefore, the electric field due to an infinitely thin plate of charge (infinitely thin in the direction of propagation) in a rectangular drift tube is derived. The derivation is extended to a 2-D space charge equation in which the plate is split into a series of rods with varying positions in $y$ . The derived equations are compared with the numerical simulations and measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kosmahl and Branch's derivation for the electric field in a round beam gap is closely followed to derive the electric field for a sheet beam klystron gap. The wider of the two transverse dimensions of the gap is taken to be infinite in extent and the field is derived based on an approximation of the gap field at the drift tube edge. The electric field equations are generalized using a Fourier series representation of the gap field at the drift tube edge. The analytical results are compared with the numerical computations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes 'WAMbot,'' an autonomous unmanned ground vehicle and the Team MAGICian solution to the 2010 Multi Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge (MAGIC). The system architecture, hardware, sensing, planning, navigation, mapping systems, and user interface were specifically designed to address the demands of the large-scale distributed reconnaissance and surveillance task presented in the challenge. The resulting system was selected as a finalist and ultimately placed 4th in MAGIC 2010. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]