Diagnosis of malignant pleural effusion (MPE) is made by cytological examination of pleural fluid or histological examination of pleural tissue from biopsy. Unfortunately, detection of malignancy ...using cytology has an overall sensitivity of 50%, and is dependent upon tumor load, volume of fluid assessed, and cytopathologist experience. The diagnostic yield of pleural fluid cytology is also compromised by low abundance of tumor cells or when morphology is obscured by inflammation or reactive mesothelial cells. A reliable molecular marker that may complement fluid cytology for the diagnosis of malignant pleural effusion is needed. The purpose of this study was to establish a molecular diagnostic approach based on pleural effusion cell-free DNA methylation analysis for the differential diagnosis of malignant pleural effusion and benign pleural effusion. This was a blind, prospective case-control biomarker study. We recruited 104 patients with pleural effusion for the study. We collected pleural fluid from patients with: MPE (n = 48), indeterminate pleural effusion in subjects with known malignancy or IPE (n = 28), and benign PE (n = 28), and performed the Sentinel-MPE liquid biopsy assay. The methylation level of Sentinel-MPE was markedly higher in the MPE samples compared to BPE control samples (p < 0.0001) and the same tendency was observed relative to IPE (p = 0.004). We also noted that the methylation signal was significantly higher in IPE relative to BPE (p < 0.001). We also assessed the diagnostic efficiency of the Sentinel-MPE test by performing receiver operating characteristic analysis (ROC). For the ROC analysis we combined the malignant and indeterminate pleural effusion groups (n = 76) and compared against the benign group (n = 28). The detection sensitivity and specificity of the Sentinel-MPE test was high (AUC = 0.912). The Sentinel-MPE appears to have better performance characteristics than cytology analysis. However, combining Sentinel-MPE with cytology analysis could be an even more effective approach for the diagnosis of MPE. The Sentinel-MPE test can discriminate between BPE and MPE. The Sentinel-MPE liquid biopsy test can detect aberrant DNA in several different tumor types. The Sentinel-MPE test can be a complementary tool to cytology in the diagnosis of MPE.
We present a demonstration of delensing the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode polarization anisotropy. This process of reducing the gravitational-lensing-generated B-mode component ...will become increasingly important for improving searches for the B modes produced by primordial gravitational waves. In this work, we delens B-mode maps constructed from multi-frequency SPTpol observations of a 90 deg2 patch of sky by subtracting a B-mode template constructed from two inputs: SPTpol E-mode maps and a lensing potential map estimated from the Herschel 500 m map of the cosmic infrared background. We find that our delensing procedure reduces the measured B-mode power spectrum by % in the multipole range this is shown to be consistent with expectations from simulations and to be robust against systematics. The null hypothesis of no delensing is rejected at . Furthermore, we build and use a suite of realistic simulations to study the general properties of the delensing process and find that the delensing efficiency achieved in this work is limited primarily by the noise in the lensing potential map. We demonstrate the importance of including realistic experimental non-idealities in the delensing forecasts used to inform instrument and survey-strategy planning of upcoming lower-noise experiments, such as CMB-S4.
ABSTRACT We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) gravitational lensing potential using data from the first two seasons of observations with SPTpol, the ...polarization-sensitive receiver currently installed on the South Pole Telescope. The observations used in this work cover 100 deg2 of sky with arcminute resolution at 150 GHz. Using a quadratic estimator, we make maps of the CMB lensing potential from combinations of CMB temperature and polarization maps. We combine these lensing potential maps to form a minimum-variance (MV) map. The lensing potential is measured with a signal-to-noise ratio of greater than one for angular multipoles between . This is the highest signal-to-noise mass map made from the CMB to date and will be powerful in cross-correlation with other tracers of large-scale structure. We calculate the power spectrum of the lensing potential for each estimator, and we report the value of the MV power spectrum between as our primary result. We constrain the ratio of the spectrum to a fiducial ΛCDM model to be AMV = 0.92 0.14 (Stat.) 0.08 (Sys.). Restricting ourselves to polarized data only, we find APOL = 0.92 0.24 (Stat.) 0.11 (Sys.). This measurement rejects the hypothesis of no lensing at using polarization data alone, and at using both temperature and polarization data.
ABSTRACT We present cosmological parameter constraints obtained from galaxy clusters identified by their Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect signature in the 2500 square-degree South Pole Telescope Sunyaev ...Zel'dovich (SPT-SZ) survey. We consider the 377 cluster candidates identified at with a detection significance greater than five, corresponding to the 95% purity threshold for the survey. We compute constraints on cosmological models using the measured cluster abundance as a function of mass and redshift. We include additional constraints from multi-wavelength observations, including Chandra X-ray data for 82 clusters and a weak lensing-based prior on the normalization of the mass-observable scaling relations. Assuming a spatially flat ΛCDM cosmology, we combine the cluster data with a prior on H0 and find and , with the parameter combination . These results are in good agreement with constraints from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from SPT, WMAP, and Planck, as well as with constraints from other cluster data sets. We also consider several extensions to ΛCDM, including models in which the equation of state of dark energy w, the species-summed neutrino mass, and/or the effective number of relativistic species ( ) are free parameters. When combined with constraints from the Planck CMB, H0, baryon acoustic oscillation, and SNe, adding the SPT cluster data improves the w constraint by 14%, to .
Discusses risk factors for gang membership & presents gang prevention tips for parents: (1) Discourage retaliation against bullying experiences. (2) Know & approve the child's friends. (3) Teach ...conflict avoidance & resolution skills. (4) Avoid contact with drug users. (5) Adopt a zero-tolerance policy regarding gangs. (6) Place academic success above all other concerns. (7) Avoid contact with gang members. (8) Search the child's possessions for gang-related paraphernalia. (9) Do not underestimate the severity of the local gang problem. (10) Instruct the child not to respond to any gang signs or greetings. J. Ferrari
Two theoretical approaches tend to dominate the literature on the manner in which exoffenders reintegrate into society: (1) The structural model posits that closing of the legitimate opportunity ...structure leads to secondary deviation; & it traces initial criminality to a discrepancy between means & ends for achieving success goals. (2) The subcultural model views the primary factors explaining the exoffender's failure to adjust to society as influences exerted by the criminal subculture. These have traditionally been treated as competing theoretical models. An attempt is made to evaluate these two approaches & combine them in an applied framework called differential integration. Survey data on 874 exoffenders provided with job placements in Chicago, Ill, during 1976 show that structural variables tended to differentiate the employment outcomes of exoffenders much more than subcultural variables, & provide partial support for the differential integration concept. 1 Table, 1 Figure. Modified HA.
Abstract
We show the improvement to cosmological constraints from galaxy cluster surveys with the addition of cosmic microwave background (CMB)-cluster lensing data. We explore the cosmological ...implications of adding mass information from the 3.1
σ
detection of gravitational lensing of the CMB by galaxy clusters to the Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (SZ) selected galaxy cluster sample from the 2500 deg
2
SPT-SZ survey and targeted optical and X-ray follow-up data. In the ΛCDM model, the combination of the cluster sample with the Planck power spectrum measurements prefers
σ
8
Ω
m
/
0.3
0.5
=
0.831
±
0.020
. Adding the cluster data reduces the uncertainty on this quantity by a factor of 1.4, which is unchanged whether the 3.1
σ
CMB-cluster lensing measurement is included or not. We then forecast the impact of CMB-cluster lensing measurements with future cluster catalogs. Adding CMB-cluster lensing measurements to the SZ cluster catalog of the ongoing SPT-3G survey is expected to improve the expected constraint on the dark energy equation of state
w
by a factor of 1.3 to
σ
(
w
) = 0.19. We find the largest improvements from CMB-cluster lensing measurements to be for
σ
8
, where adding CMB-cluster lensing data to the cluster number counts reduces the expected uncertainty on
σ
8
by respective factors of 2.4 and 3.6 for SPT-3G and CMB-S4.
We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background lensing potential using 500 deg2 of 150 GHz data from the SPTpol receiver on the South Pole Telescope. The lensing potential is ...reconstructed with signal-to-noise per mode greater than unity at lensing multipoles L 250, using a quadratic estimator on a combination of cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization maps. We report measurements of the lensing potential power spectrum in the multipole range of 100 < L < 2000 from sets of temperature-only (T), polarization-only (POL), and minimum-variance (MV) estimators. We measure the lensing amplitude by taking the ratio of the measured spectrum to the expected spectrum from the best-fit Λ cold dark matter model to the Planck 2015 TT + low P + lensing data set. For the minimum-variance estimator, we find A MV = 0.944 0.058 ( Stat . ) 0.025 ( Sys . ) ; restricting to only polarization data, we find A POL = 0.906 0.090 ( Stat . ) 0.040 ( Sys . ) . Considering statistical uncertainties alone, this is the most precise polarization-only lensing amplitude constraint to date (10.1 ) and is more precise than our temperature-only constraint. We perform null tests and consistency checks and find no evidence for significant contamination.
We present measurements of the power spectra of cosmic infrared background (CIB) and cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations in six frequency bands. Maps at the lower three frequency bands, ...95, 150, and 220 GHz (3330, 2000, and 1360 m) are from the South Pole Telescope, while the upper three frequency bands, 600, 857, and 1200 GHz (500, 350, 250 m) are observed with Herschel/SPIRE. From these data, we produce 21 angular power spectra (6 auto- and 15 cross-frequency) spanning the multipole range 600 ≤ ≤ 11,000. Our measurements are the first to cross-correlate measurements near the peak of the CIB spectrum with maps at 95 GHz, complementing and extending the measurements from Planck Collaboration et al. at 143-857 GHz. The observed fluctuations originate largely from clustered, infrared-emitting, dusty star-forming galaxies, the CMB, and to a lesser extent radio galaxies, active galactic nuclei, and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect.
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