A Methodological Refinement in the Study of "ESP," and Negative Findings

Science ◽  
1954 ◽  
Vol 120 (3108) ◽  
pp. 148-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Smith ◽  
H. J. Canon
1989 ◽  
Vol 82 (10) ◽  
pp. 1231-1234 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANK B. MILLER ◽  
HENRY M. CRYER ◽  
SYAM CHILIKURI ◽  
PETER CREECH ◽  
J. DAVID RICHARDSON
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua M. Levy ◽  
Jennifer K. Frediani ◽  
Erika A. Tyburski ◽  
Anna Wood ◽  
Janet Figueroa ◽  
...  

AbstractThe impact of repeated sample collection on COVID-19 test performance is unknown. The FDA and CDC currently recommend the primary collection of diagnostic samples to minimize the perceived risk of false-negative findings. We therefore evaluated the association between repeated sample collection and test performance among 325 symptomatic patients undergoing COVID-19 testing in Atlanta, GA. High concordance was found between consecutively collected mid-turbinate samples with both molecular (n = 74, 100% concordance) and antigen-based (n = 147, 97% concordance, kappa = 0.95, CI = 0.88–1.00) diagnostic assays. Repeated sample collection does not decrease COVID-19 test performance, demonstrating that multiple samples can be collected for assay validation and clinical diagnosis.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suhong Zhao ◽  
Peipei Chen ◽  
Guangrui Shao ◽  
Baijie Li ◽  
Huikun Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract Objective: To assess the diagnostic ability of abbreviated protocols of MRI (AP-MRI) compared with unenhanced MRI (UE-MRI) in mammographically occult cancers in patients with dense breast tissue.Materials and Methods: The retrospective analysis consisted of 102 patients without positive findings on mammography who received preoperative MRI full diagnostic protocols (FDP) between January 2015 and December 2018. Two breast radiologists read the UE, AP, and FDP. The interpretation times were recorded. The comparisons of the sensitivity, specificity and area under the curve of each MRI protocol, and the sensitivity of these protocols in each subgroup of different size tumors used the Chi-square test. The paired sample t-test was used for evaluating the difference of reading time of the three protocols.Results: Among 102 women, there were 68 cancers and two benign lesions in 64 patients and 38 patients had benign or negative findings. Both readers found the sensitivity and specificity of AP and UE-MRI were similar (p>0.05), whereas compared with FDP, UE had lower sensitivity (Reader 1/Reader 2: p=0.023, 0.004). For different lesion size groups, one of the readers found that AP and FDP had higher sensitivities than UE-MRI for detecting the lesions ≤10 mm in diameter (p=0.041, p=0.023). Compared with FDP, the average reading time of UE-MRI and AP was remarkably reduced (p < 0.001).Conclusion: AP-MRI had more advantages than UE-MRI to detect mammographically occult cancers, especially for breast tumors ≤10 mm in diameter.


2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quirino Cordeiro ◽  
Carolina Cappi ◽  
Aline Santos Sampaio ◽  
Selma Aliotti Palácios ◽  
Carlos Alberto de Bragança Pereira ◽  
...  

OBJECTIVE: Evidence from family and molecular genetic studies support the hypothesis of involvement of immunologic mechanisms in the pathophysiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The nuclear factor of kappa light polypeptide gene enhancer in B-cells inhibitor-like 1 (NFKBIL1) has been suggested as a modulator of the immunological system. Given the importance of NFKBIL1 in the immunological response, the present study investigated the -62A/T polymorphism (rs2071592), located in the promoter region of its gene (NFKBIL1), as a genetic risk factor for the development of obsessive-compulsive disorder. METHOD: The -62A/T NFKBIL1 polymorphism was investigated in a sample of 111 patients who met DSM-IV criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder and 272 healthy age- and gender-matched controls. RESULTS: There were no differences in genotypic distributions between patients and controls (χ2 = 0.98; 2 d.f.; p = 0.61). DISCUSSION: Despite these negative findings, more comprehensive polymorphism coverage within the NFKBIL1 is warranted in larger samples. Populations with different ethnic backgrounds should also be studied. CONCLUSION: The results of the present investigation do not provide evidence for the association between the -62A/T NFKBIL1 polymorphism and obsessive-compulsive disorder in this Brazilian sample.


2018 ◽  
Vol 132 (12) ◽  
pp. 1138-1142 ◽  
Author(s):  
C R Davies-Husband

AbstractBackgroundCervical metastasis from an unknown primary site invariably results in pan-mucosal irradiation if a primary tumour is not identified. Transoral robotic and laser-assisted mucosectomy are valid techniques to increase diagnostic rates, but these remain restricted to certain centres. This paper describes, in detail, a technique in which mucosectomy is performed via endoscopic electrocautery.MethodsPatients were prospectively recruited between May 2017 and June 2018. Inclusion criteria stipulated biopsy-proven metastatic cervical squamous cell carcinoma, with negative findings on magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography/computed tomography, in addition to examination under anaesthetic, tonsillectomy and ‘blind’ tongue base biopsies without tumour identification, prior to mucosectomy.ResultsOf nine patients, a mucosal primary was identified in four (44.4 per cent), for which ipsilateral intensity-modulated radiotherapy was advocated in three and completion tongue base resection in the fourth. Dysplasia was demonstrated in two further patients, which provided information relevant to radiotherapy fields and post-treatment surveillance. No surgical complications were identified.ConclusionTongue base mucosectomy using electrocautery and conventional tonsillectomy equipment is a safe, effective technique in the identification of cervical metastasis from an unknown primary site. It expands the potential breadth of use, quickens prolonged diagnostic pathways and obviates the necessity for pan-mucosal irradiation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-249
Author(s):  
Nicu MARCU ◽  
Georgeta-Mădălina MEGHIȘAN ◽  
Ionel Mugurel JITEA

Fruits and vegetables sectors are considered to be strategic in the European Union due to their contribution to a better human health. Among others positive effects, their intake increase reduce mortality and obesity, assuring in the same time harmonised development for young children. The present study thus focused to reveal the consistency of the measure implemented in the Common Agricultural Policy to support fruits and vegetables production in Romania in liaison with the policy objectives. The country is one of the main ten important European producers of horticultural products in terms of production volumes and acreage. Results showed that over the last seven years (2007-2014), the sectorial production drawbacks have not been ameliorated very much. Both sectors are dominated by small-size farms that can produce only seasonally and mainly for short-market chains. In the same time, the greenhouses area shrink to levels that made the country extremely dependent to imports especially for tomatoes. The analysis of the pillar one payments schemes revealed that the fruits and vegetables producers could have access to only one payment that was half from European averages. Moreover, almost half of the producers had low sizes that left them outside the eligible criteria. The measures designed for the second pillar also penalized producers through the selection criteria. These results showed that for Romania there was not a real consistency between the actual policy measures and the objectives assumed by policy makers. The future measures (2014-2020) seem to correct these negative findings being better tailored to the situation of the local fruits and vegetables producers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hang Cao ◽  
E. Zeynep Erson-Omay ◽  
Murat Günel ◽  
Jennifer Moliterno ◽  
Robert K. Fulbright

ObjectivesTo measure the metrics of glioma pre-operative MRI reports and build IDH prediction models.MethodsPre-operative MRI reports of 144 glioma patients in a single institution were collected retrospectively. Words were transformed to lowercase letters. White spaces, punctuations, and stop words were removed. Stemming was performed. A word cloud method applied to processed text matrix visualized language behavior. Spearman’s rank correlation assessed the correlation between the subjective descriptions of the enhancement pattern. The T1-contrast images associated with enhancement descriptions were selected. The keywords associated with IDH status were evaluated by χ2 value ranking. Random forest, k-nearest neighbors and Support Vector Machine algorithms were used to train models based on report features and age. All statistical analysis used two-tailed test with significance at p &lt;.05.ResultsLonger word counts occurred in reports of older patients, higher grade gliomas, and wild type IDH gliomas. We identified 30 glioma enhancement descriptions, eight of which were commonly used: peripheral, heterogeneous, irregular, nodular, thick, rim, large, and ring. Five of eight patterns were correlated. IDH mutant tumors were characterized by words related to normal, symmetric or negative findings. IDH wild type tumors were characterized words by related to pathological MR findings like enhancement, necrosis and FLAIR foci. An integrated KNN model based on report features and age demonstrated high-performance (AUC: 0.89, 95% CI: 0.88–0.90).ConclusionReport length depended on age, glioma grade, and IDH status. Description of glioma enhancement was varied. Report descriptions differed for IDH wild and mutant gliomas. Report features can be used to predict glioma IDH status.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dustin Bowers

Stress in Gujarati (Indo-Aryan, India and Pakistan) has been alternately claimed to be strictly positional or sensitive to vowel sonority. The latter analyses figure prominently in arguments for scalar markedness constraints (de Lacy 2002, 2006). This study presents acoustic measures and speaker intuitions to evaluate both the positional and sonority-driven stress hypotheses. The acoustic results support weakly cued positional stress, though speaker intuitions for primary stress placement were inconsistent. This replicates Shih’s (2018) negative findings, and indicates that Gujarati stress should not figure in discussions of sonority-driven stress or associated theoretical proposals.


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