The impact of late diagnosis on the survival of patients following their first AIDS-related hospitalization in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

The purpose of this study is to estimate the survival probability of patients following their first admission for the treatment of AIDS to an infectious disease reference hospital in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, during 2005. Study subjects were monitored during a 12-month period to identify factors associated with survival probability. Late diagnosis was recorded among many of the 250 study subjects: almost half (44.8%) were diagnosed less than 30 days prior to or during their hospitalization. A high mortality rate was also detected: 39.6% of the subjects died during the 12 months of monitoring. The cumulative survival probability of the cohort group was estimated at 68.0% after 3 months and at 61.2% after 12 months. However, certain patient subgroups analyzed had even lower cumulative survival probabilities after 12 months of monitoring: if diagnosed during hospitalization, it was estimated at only 48.0% and those with no record of antiretroviral treatment had a 48.5% cumulative survival probability. Patients with severe anemia had the lowest survival probability, similar among the two lymphocyte count groups (<1000 mm(3) and >= 1000 mm(3)), the former with a 45.5% survival probability and the latter with a 46.7% one. The proportional death risk was 2.5-fold higher for men residing in other area than the capital city of the State of Minas Gerais and greater metropolitan region when compared with women residing there. The findings of this study highlight the importance of early diagnosis for predicting patient survival and reinforce the necessity off acilitating HIV diagnosis.

Frequent ATRX, CIC, FUBP1 and IDH1 mutations refine the classification of malignant gliomas

Mutations in the critical chromatin modifier ATRX and mutations in CIC and FUBP1, which are potent regulators of cell growth, have been discovered in specific subtypes of gliomas, the most common type of primary malignant brain tumors. However, the frequency of these mutations in many subtypes of gliomas, and their association with clinical features of the patients, is poorly understood. Here we analyzed these loci in 363 brain tumors. ATRX is frequently mutated in grade II-III astrocytomas (71%), oligoastrocytomas (68%), and secondary glioblastomas (57%), and ATRX mutations are associated with IDH1 mutations and with an alternative lengthening of telomeres phenotype. CIC and FUBP1 mutations occurred frequently in oligodendrogliomas (46% and 24%, respectively) but rarely in astrocytomas or oligoastrocytomas (<10%). This analysis allowed us to define two highly recurrent genetic signatures in gliomas: IDH1/ATRX (I-A) and IDH1/CIC/FUBP1 (I-CF). Patients with I-CF gliomas had a significantly longer median overall survival (96 months) than patients with I-A gliomas (51 months) and patients with gliomas that did not harbor either signature (13 months). The genetic signatures distinguished clinically distinct groups of oligoastrocytoma patients, which usually present a diagnostic challenge, and were associated with differences in clinical outcome even among individual tumor types. In addition to providing new clues about the genetic alterations underlying gliomas, the results have immediate clinical implications, providing a tripartite genetic signature that can serve as a useful adjunct to conventional glioma classification that may aid in prognosis, treatment selection, and therapeutic trial design.

Evaluation of frozen-section analysis of surgical margins in the treatment of breast cancer

Objective: To evaluate surgical margins in cases of ductal carcinoma through a histopathological exam using frozen sections. Materials and Methods: Retrospective study encompassing 242 conservative surgeries, 179 of which included intraoperative frozensection histopathology and 63 intraoperative nonfreezing techniques (macroscopy/gross examination and cytology). The results of such analyses were compared with those of the histology processing following paraffin embedment and hematoxylin and eosin (H & E) staining. A margin was deemed free when the distance between the tumor and the surgical border was equal to or greater than two millimeters. The factors given consideration for possibly affecting the results were: age, surgical aspects (skin removal and widening of surgical margins), histopathological findings (size, affected lymph nodes, and angiolymphatic invasion), and extensive intraductal and immunohistochemical components (estrogen, progesterone, Ki-67, and HER-2 receptors). In the statistical analyses, the chi-square test was used and negative predictive values were calculated. Results: The negative predictive values were 87.1% and 79.3% for frozen and nonfrozen sections, respectively. There was no significant difference between the two groups (p = 0.14). The factors under consideration had no influence on the results of the intraoperative exam of the margins. Conclusion: The present study allowed to conclude that the intraoperative exam of the surgical margins by frozen section is not superior to a macroscopy and / or cytology exam.

'Beheading', Rule Manipulation and Fraud: The Approval of Election Results in Brazil, 1894-1930

Studies of electoral fraud tend to focus their analyses only on the pre-electoral or electoral phases. By examining the Brazilian First Republic (1889-1930), this article shifts the focus to a later phase, discussing a particular type of electoral fraud that has been little explored by the literature, namely, that perpetrated by the legislatures themselves during the process of giving final approval to election results. The Brazilian case is interesting because of a practice known as degola ('beheading') whereby electoral results were altered when Congress decided on which deputies to certify as duly elected. This has come to be seen as a widespread and standard practice in this period. However, this article shows that this final phase of rubber-stamping or overturning election results was important not because of the number of degolas, which was actually much lower than the literature would have us believe, but chiefly because of their strategic use during moments of political uncertainty. It argues that the congressional certification of electoral results was deployed as a key tool in ensuring the political stability of the Republican regime in the absence of an electoral court.

Three-feature model to reproduce the topology of citation networks and the effects from authors' visibility on their h-index

Various factors are believed to govern the selection of references in citation networks, but a precise, quantitative determination of their importance has remained elusive. In this paper, we show that three factors can account for the referencing pattern of citation networks for two topics, namely "graphenes" and "complex networks", thus allowing one to reproduce the topological features of the networks built with papers being the nodes and the edges established by citations. The most relevant factor was content similarity, while the other two - in-degree (i.e. citation counts) and age of publication - had varying importance depending on the topic studied. This dependence indicates that additional factors could play a role. Indeed, by intuition one should expect the reputation (or visibility) of authors and/or institutions to affect the referencing pattern, and this is only indirectly considered via the in-degree that should correlate with such reputation. Because information on reputation is not readily available, we simulated its effect on artificial citation networks considering two communities with distinct fitness (visibility) parameters. One community was assumed to have twice the fitness value of the other, which amounts to a double probability for a paper being cited. While the h-index for authors in the community with larger fitness evolved with time with slightly higher values than for the control network (no fitness considered), a drastic effect was noted for the community with smaller fitness. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Science publication workshops as a strategy to improve the visibility of scholarly production: the experience of the University of Sao Paulo (USP) - Brazil

The objective of this work is to present the experience of workshops that have been developed at the University of Sao Paulo by the Integrated Library System in partnership with Research Commission. The poster presents the main results of workshops that were made in 2011, in two knowledge areas: life science and engineering, about science publication processes, and directed to graduates, pos-doctorates, researchers, professors and library staff. The realization of workshops made possible identifies gaps in different aspects of scholarly communication such as research planning, search information strategy, information organization, submission process, identification of journals with high impact, and so on, areas where professors and librarians can help. Besides, workshops reveal that the majority of participants believe in its importance. Despite the ubiquity of digital technology that transversely impacts all academic activities, it is imperative to promote efforts to find a convergence between information and media literacy in higher education and university research activities. This is particularly important when we talk about how science is produced, communicated and preserved for future use. In this scenario, libraries and librarians assume a new, more active and committed role.

Accessibility and visibility of academic and scientific production of the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil

ACADEMIC CONTENTS: Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, eAULAS, Open Educational Resources. SCIENTIFIC CONTENTS: Digital Library of USP Intellectual Production, Scientific Journals Portal. OTHER CONTENTS: Rare books, Maps, Images.

The role of wake stiffness on the wake-induced vibration of the downstream cylinder of a tandem pair

When a pair of tandem cylinders is immersed in a flow the downstream cylinder can be excited into wake-induced vibrations (WIV) due to the interaction with vortices coming from the upstream cylinder. Assi, Bearman & Meneghini ( J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 661, 2010, pp. 365–401) concluded that the WIV excitation mechanism has its origin in the unsteady vortex–structure interaction encountered by the cylinder as it oscillates across the wake. In the present paper we investigate how the cylinder responds to that excitation, characterising the amplitude and frequency of response and its dependency on other parameters of the system. We introduce the concept of wake stiffness , a fluid dynamic effect that can be associated, to a first approximation, with a linear spring with stiffness proportional to Re and to the steady lift force occurring for staggered cylinders. By a series of experiments with a cylinder mounted on a base without springs we verify that such wake stiffness is not only strong enough to sustain oscillatory motion, but can also dominate over the structural stiffness of the system. We conclude that while unsteady vortex–structure interactions provide the energy input to sustain the vibrations, it is the wake stiffness phenomenon that defines the character of the WIV response