Rutgers University

About: Rutgers University is a education organization based out in New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 68736 authors who have published 159418 publications receiving 6713860 citations. The organization is also known as: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey & Rutgers.

IMRT commissioning: Multiple institution planning and dosimetry comparisons, a report from AAPM Task Group 119

Abstract: AAPM Task Group 119 has produced quantitative confidence limits as baseline expectation values for IMRT commissioning. A set of test cases was developed to assess the overall accuracy of planning and delivery of IMRT treatments. Each test uses contours of targets and avoidance structures drawn within rectangular phantoms. These tests were planned, delivered, measured, and analyzed by nine facilities using a variety of IMRT planning and delivery systems. Each facility had passed the Radiological Physics Center credentialing tests for IMRT. The agreement between the planned and measured doses was determined using ion chamber dosimetry in high and low dose regions, film dosimetry on coronal planes in the phantom with all fields delivered, and planar dosimetry for each field measured perpendicular to the central axis. The planar dose distributions were assessed using gamma criteria of 3%/3 mm. The mean values and standard deviations were used to develop confidence limits for the test results using the concept confidence limit = /mean/ + 1.96sigma. Other facilities can use the test protocol and results as a basis for comparison to this group. Locally derived confidence limits that substantially exceed these baseline values may indicate the need for improved IMRT commissioning.

How Critical are Critical Reviews? The Box Office Effects of Film Critics, Star Power, and Budgets:

Abstract: The authors investigate how critics affect the box office performance of films and how the effects may be moderated by stars and budgets. The authors examine the process through which critics affect box office revenue, that is, whether they influence the decision of the film going public (their role as influencers), merely predict the decision (their role as predictors), or do both. They find that both positive and negative reviews are correlated with weekly box office revenue over an eight-week period, suggesting that critics play a dual role: They can influence and predict box office revenue. However, the authors find the impact of negative reviews (but not positive reviews) to diminish over time, a pattern that is more consistent with critics’ role as influencers. The authors then compare the positive impact of good reviews with the negative impact of bad reviews to find that film reviews evidence a negativity bias; that is, negative reviews hurt performance more than positive reviews help performance, but only during the first week of a film’s run. Finally, the authors examine two key moderators of critical reviews, stars and budgets, and find that popular stars and big budgets enhance box office revenue for films that receive more negative critical reviews than positive critical reviews but do little for films that receive more positive reviews than negative reviews. Taken together, the findings not only replicate and extend prior research on critical reviews and box office performance but also offer insight into how film studios can strategically manage the review process to enhance box office revenue.

The Marine Microbial Eukaryote Transcriptome Sequencing Project (MMETSP): Illuminating the Functional Diversity of Eukaryotic Life in the Oceans through Transcriptome Sequencing

Abstract: Current sampling of genomic sequence data from eukaryotes is relatively poor, biased, and inadequate to address important questions about their biology, evolution, and ecology; this Community Page describes a resource of 700 transcriptomes from marine microbial eukaryotes to help understand their role in the world's oceans.

The Hippocampo-Neocortical Dialogue

Abstract: In gross anatomical terms, the hippocampal archicortex can be conceived as an "appendage' of the large neocortex. In contrast to neocortical areas, the main output targets of the hippocampus are the same as its main inputs (i.e., the entorhinal cortex). Highly processed information about the external world (the content) reaches the hippocampus via the entorhinal cortex, whereas information about the "internal world' (the context) is conveyed by the subcortical inputs. Removal of the context makes the content illegible, as demonstrated by the observation that the behavioral impairment following surgical removal of hippocampopetal subcortical inputs is as devastating as removing the hippocampus itself. From its strategic anatomical position and input-output connections, it may be suggested that the main function of the hippocampal formation is to modify its inputs by feeding back a processed "reafferent copy' to the neocortex. I hypothesize that neocortico-hippocampal transfer of information and the modification process in neocortical circuitries by the hippocampal output take place in a temporally discontinuous manner and might be delayed by minutes, hours, or days. Acquisition of information may happen very fast during the activated state of the hippocampus associated with theta/gamma oscillations. Intrahippocampal consolidation and the hippocampal-neocortical transfer of the stored representations, on the other hand, is protracted and carried by discrete quanta of cooperative neuronal bursts during slow wave sleep.