This Commentary clarifies the meaning of the funnel diagram, which has been widely cited in papers on protein folding. To aid in the analysis of the funnel diagram, this Commentary reviews historical approaches to understanding the mechanism of protein folding. The primary role of free energy in protein folding is discussed, and it is pointed out that the decrease [corrected] in the configurati...

Pectus excavatum, or funnel chest, is an anterior chest wall deformity, characterized by a depressed sternum. Frequently used techniques for pectus excavatum repair are extensive thoracic surgical corrections at a young age. At an adult age, custom-made silicone implants can be used as a less extensive surgical option. Thus far, there are only a limited number of reports in the English-language...

A 16 year old girl with cystic fibrosis (CF), with very severe pulmonary disease and osteoporosis, presented to the outpatient clinic with sudden onset of back pain. A radiograph of the spine revealed multiple vertebral fractures leading to new thoracic kyphosis. She was briefly admitted to hospital for pain control and discharged without respiratory distress. Ten days later she presented again...

Spiral-wave breakup in strongly chaotic media with nonphase-coherent chaotic attractors is investigated. Spiral-wave dynamics is studied for the Rössler reaction diffusion equation as the local attractor changes from a phase-coherent to a funnel form. Stable spiral waves with an Archimedean structure are observed to persist even when the local chaotic attractor has a funnel form. The destructio...

'Funnel plots' are recommended as a graphical aid for institutional comparisons, in which an estimate of an underlying quantity is plotted against an interpretable measure of its precision. 'Control limits' form a funnel around the target outcome, in a close analogy to standard Shewhart control charts. Examples are given for comparing proportions and changes in rates, assessing association betw...

OBJECTIVES To present the contour-enhanced funnel plot as an aid to differentiating asymmetry due to publication bias from that due to other factors. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING An enhancement to the usual funnel plot is proposed that allows the statistical significance of study estimates to be considered. Contour lines indicating conventional milestones in levels of statistical significance (e....