Epidemiology of Search and Rescue in Baxter State Park: Dangers of Descent and Fatigue.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine the epidemiology of injury in Baxter State Park, Maine, and to better tailor search and rescue (SAR) resources, personnel, and training to acute needs in the park. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective review of all SAR incident reports in Baxter State Park from July 1992 through June 2014. For each event, demographics, location, time, activity before the incident, incident details, and evacuation means were recorded and analyzed. RESULTS: In all, 754 incidents of SAR or medical need were identified. Mean age was 38.9 years; mean age for subjects with fatigue as the primary complaint was 48.7 years. A majority (60.5%) of victims were male. Nineteen fatalities occurred during the study. Traumatic injuries precipitated 51% of SAR incidents, and an additional 30% were initiated for late or lost parties. Slips or falls while hiking were the most common causes of injury (67%), with the lower extremity being the most common injury site (31%). When applicable, 84.4% of acute need occurred while descending, as opposed to ascending, a mountain. Fatigue was the most commonly reported medical emergency, causative in 66% of medical SAR events. CONCLUSIONS: Fatigue is a major factor in SAR events, both as a discreet cause and as a contributor to other injuries. Search and rescue need is more likely to occur during mountain descent, and lower extremity injuries are the most common etiology. Efforts should be focused on training rescuers in lower extremity and fatigue treatment, and more rescuers should be available when many are descending.

Registered report: RAF inhibitors prime wild-type RAF to activate the MAPK pathway and enhance growth.

The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology seeks to address growing concerns about reproducibility in scientific research by conducting replications of selected experiments from a number of high-profile papers in the field of cancer biology. The papers, which were published between 2010 and 2012, were selected on the basis of citations and Altmetric scores (Errington et al., 2014). This Registered Report describes the proposed replication plan of key experiments from 'RAF inhibitors prime wild-type RAF to activate the MAPK pathway and enhance growth' by Hatzivassiliou and colleagues, published in Nature in 2010 (Hatzivassiliou et al., 2010). Hatzivassiliou and colleagues examined the paradoxical response of RAF-WT tumors to treatment with RAF inhibitors. The key experiments being replicated include Figure 1A, in which the original authors demonstrated that treatment of a subset of BRAF(WT) tumor cell lines with RAF small molecule inhibitors resulted in an increase in cell viability, Figure 2B, which reported that RAF inhibitor activation of the MAPK pathway was dependent on CRAF but not BRAF, and Figure 4A, where the dimerization of BRAF and CRAF was modulated by the RAF inhibitor PLX4720, but not GDC-0879. The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology is a collaboration between the Center for Open Science and Science Exchange, and the results of the replications will be published by eLife.