bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
“Red Mecca”—The Communist University for Laborers of the East (KUTV): Iranian Scholars and Students in Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s
Authors: Ravandi-Fadai Lana
Published: August 2015

The Communist University for Laborers of the East (KUTV), established in Moscow in 1921 and closed in 1938, presents a unique experiment in Soviet Orientalism. KUTV was the first communist educational institution set up specifically for students from the Orient to study their own countries in their native languages through a Marxist lens. Its purpose was not only to train teachers and revolutionaries for work in their native countries but to bring about a paradigm shift in the study of the East. Orientalism was to be freed from the imperialist prejudices of the past by redistributing the tools of Orientalist scholarship to Orientals themselves and by emphasizing contemporary social and economic history over an idealized and nationalistic antiquity. Iranians made up a strong presence at KUTV among both students and teachers, some of whom returned to Iran to spread learning and revolution, while others remained in the Soviet Union as scholars of Iran, influencing the development of Soviet Orientalism and often serving simultaneously in the Soviet political apparatus. With their students, they produced research and compiled massive collections of reference materials that formed the foundation for future Soviet scholarship and foreign policy. By the second half of the 1920s, KUTV developed into one of the most important centers of Soviet Orientalism, spawning a parallel Research Institute (NIA) that offered graduate programs and published its own periodical, Revolutionary East. With its aim of empowering the oppressed while simultaneously projecting Soviet influence, its attempt to rise above nationalist conceptions while at times succumbing to them, and the repression of its faculty in the Stalinist purges, KUTV exhibits many of the contradictions of the Soviet project itself. Among other sources, this paper uses Soviet case files on Iranian students and teachers at KUTV to shed light on their motivations and backgrounds.
Rupture or Continuity? The Organizational Set-up of Russian and Soviet Oriental Studies before and after 1917
Authors: Volkov Denis V.
Published: August 2015

The article presents a systematic appraisal of the essential Russian- and English-language scholarship on Russian Oriental studies and particularly on Russia's Iranology. However, the main target of this article is to trace the discursive continuities and epistemological shifts which have existed in late imperial, Soviet and, partially, post-Soviet Russia's Oriental studies since the end of the nineteenth century. Drawing on the sources of the main Russian political, military and academic archives, the article offers an assessment of the question of rupture or continuity, which is based on a synthesis of the above-mentioned scholarship from an entirely new angle. Dealing with the seemingly overwhelming watershed of 1917, an analysis is provided that transcends the unhelpful continuity/change dichotomy, putting forward a new interpretation, which is informed by the Foucauldian conceptualization of the productive nature of the power/knowledge nexus.
Healthy cities and instrumental leisure: the paradox of fitness gyms as urban phenomena
Authors: Sassatelli Roberta
Published: August 2015

As urbanisation has come to characterise contemporary societies, large cities have become quite ambivalent places for the human species: they are removing the human body from its perceived natural condition, while increasingly attempting to provide a cure for the ills of a sedentary life. Fitness gyms are presented as the ‘natural' solution to our ‘unnatural' lifestyle as urban dwellers and as a therapeutic fix to the ills of metropolitan living. This paper deploys a mix of qualitative methods (ethnographic observation, interviews and discourse analysis) to explore fitness culture as an urban phenomenon. Using data from Italy and the UK, it develops a micro-sociology of the spatiality of the gym that helps to approach this institution from within, deconstructing those claims which contribute to its cultural location as a key ingredient in contemporary urban lifestyles. The paper first looks at how fitness culture is negotiated through the marshalling of structured variety within the spatiality and temporality of gyms. It then explores the specificity of fitness as urban, instrumental leisure as compared with other forms of active recreation or sports available in urban contexts. It finally considers, on the one hand, the way in which fitness activities are continuously renovated, drawing on the fields of both sport and popular culture and, on the other, the kind of subjectivity and embodiment that fitness culture normatively sustains.
Explaining retrieval-induced forgetting: A change in mental context between the study and restudy practice phases is not sufficient to cause forgetting
Authors: Buchli Dorothy R. , Storm Benjamin C. , Bjork Robert A.
Published: August 2015

Retrieving information can impair the subsequent recall of related information. Such retrieval-induced forgetting is often attributed to inhibitory mechanisms, but Jonker, MacLeod, and Seli (2013) recently proposed an alternative account. In their view, the study and retrieval-practice phases constitute two disparate contexts, and impairment of unpractised members from practised categories is attributable to their being absent from the retrieval-practice context, which is where, according to Jonker et al., participants preferentially search at the time of final test. In evidence of this account, Jonker et al. showed that even restudy practice—which is assumed by the inhibitory account to be insufficient to cause forgetting (i.e., retrieval-specificity)—can cause forgetting when a mental context change is inserted between study and restudy. The present research sought to replicate this finding while also testing the possibility that a far mental context change would cause more forgetting than a near mental context change. In Experiment 1, participants described a vacation inside the United States (near) or outside the United States (far). In Experiments 2 and 3, participants described the layout of their own home (near) or their parents’ home (far). In contrast to the predictions of the context account, however, but consistent with the predictions of the inhibitory account, none of the restudy-plus-context-change conditions resulted in significant forgetting.
How does the provision of semantic information influence the lexicalization of new spoken words?
Authors: Hawkins Erin A. , Rastle Kathleen
Published: August 2015

The integration of a novel spoken word with existing lexical items can proceed within 24 hours of learning its phonological form. However, previous studies have reported that lexical integration of new spoken words can be delayed if semantic information is provided during learning. One possibility is that this delay in lexical integration reflects reduced phonological processing during learning as a consequence of the need to learn the semantic associations. In the current study, adult participants learnt novel words via a phoneme monitoring task, in which half of the words were associated with a picture referent, and half were phonological forms only. Critically, participants were instructed to learn the forms of the novel words, with no explicit goal to learn the word–picture mappings. Results revealed significant lexical competition effects emerging one week after consolidation, which were equivalent for the picture-present and form-only conditions. Tests of declarative memory and shadowing showed equivalent performance for picture-present and form-only words, despite participants showing good knowledge of the picture associations immediately after learning. These data support the contention that provided phonological information is recruited sufficiently well during learning, the provision of semantic information does not slow the time-course of lexical integration.
On deformations of ℚ-Fano 3-folds
Authors: Sano Taro
Published: August 2015

We study the deformation theory of a

Q

\mathbb {Q}

-Fano 3-fold with only terminal singularities. First, we show that the Kuranishi space of a

Q

\mathbb {Q}

-Fano 3-fold is smooth. Second, we show that every

Q

\mathbb {Q}

-Fano 3-fold with only “ordinary” terminal singularities is

Q

\mathbb {Q}

-smoothable; that is, it can be deformed to a

Q

\mathbb {Q}

-Fano 3-fold with only quotient singularities. Finally, we prove

Q

\mathbb {Q}

-smoothability of a

Q

\mathbb {Q}

-Fano 3-fold assuming the existence of a Du Val anticanonical element. As an application, we get the genus bound for primary

Q

\mathbb {Q}

-Fano 3-folds with Du Val anticanonical elements.
Hypertension Prevalence, Awareness, Treatment, and Control Following China’s Healthcare Reform
Authors: Hou Zhiyuan , Meng Qingyue , Zhang Yuting
Published: August 2015

BACKGROUND

In 2009, China started an impressive national healthcare system reform. One of the key components is to promote equity in access to essential healthcare services including chronic disease management. We assessed the changes in hypertension management and its equity before and after China’s healthcare reform in 2009.

METHODS

We used data from the 2008 and 2012 waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). The surveys were conducted in Zhejiang and Gansu provinces, containing 1,961 and 1,836 respondents aged 45 and older in 2008 and 2012 respectively. We measured the prevalence of hypertension, and proportions of respondents with hypertension aware of their conditions, receiving treatment and under effective control, separately for 2008 and 2012. We also reported these measures in provinces and rural/urban areas.

RESULTS

From 2008 to 2012, the age standardized prevalence of hypertension was steady at 46.2%, but hypertension management improved substantially. Among those with hypertension, the proportion of patients aware of their conditions increased from 57.8% to 69.9%, the proportion of patients receiving treatment increased from 38.1% to 56.1%, and the proportion of patients with hypertension under effective control increased from 21.7% to 36.4%. The highest improvement was found in rural areas of the underdeveloped province, which indicated that the inequity across regions declined over time.

CONCLUSIONS

Among Chinese population aged 45 and older in Zhejiang and Gansu provinces, hypertension management improved following healthcare reform. The rate of improvement was faster in rural and underdeveloped areas, possibly related to additional governmental subsidies to these areas.
Association of Endothelial and Mild Renal Dysfunction With the Severity of Left Ventricular Hypertrophy in Hypertensive Patients
Authors: Cao Cheng , Hu Jian-Xin , Dong Yi-Fei , Zhan Rui , Li Ping , Su Hai , Peng Qiang , Wu Tao , Huang Xiao , Sun Wen-Hua , Wu Qing-Hua , Cheng Xiao-Shu
Published: August 2015

BACKGROUND

The association between impaired renal function and increase left ventricular mass was shown to be related to increase in arterial stiffness, which indicates that vascular homeostasis and remodeling may impact the left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) in patients with renal dysfunction.

METHODS

We measured the peripheral arterial reactive hyperemia index (RHI) and estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) in 317 hypertensive patients comprising 115 normal RHI (RHI > 1.67) and normal eGFR (eGFR ≥ 90ml/min per 1.73 m 2 ), 136 low RHI (RHI ≤ 1.67), 27 low eGFR (60 ≤ eGFR < 90ml/min per 1.73 m 2 ) and 39 low RHI combined with low eGFR.

RESULTS

Multivariate logistic regression analysis identified lg RHI (odds ratio (OR): 0.001, 95% confidence interval (CI): 10 –6 to 0.426, P = 0.024) and lg eGFR (OR: 0.009, 95% CI: 10 –4 to 0.414, P = 0.016) as independent factors correlated with LVH respectively in hypertensive patients. Compared with normal RHI and eGFR patients, the extent of LVH in patients with either low RHI (OR: 1.224 95% CI: 0.451 to 3.327, P = 0.691) or low eGFR (OR: 0.593 95% CI: 0.070 to 5.037, P = 0.632) did not significantly increase, while it increased significantly in patients with low RHI combined with low eGFR (OR: 4.629 95% CI: 1.592 to 13.458, P = 0.005).

CONCLUSIONS

The concurrence of endothelial and mild renal dysfunction was significantly associated with the severity of LVH in hypertensive patients.
PBAP: a pipeline for file processing and quality control of pedigree data with dense genetic markers
Authors: Nato Alejandro Q. , Chapman Nicola H. , Sohi Harkirat K. , Nguyen Hiep D. , Brkanac Zoran , Wijsman Ellen M.
Published: August 2015

Motivation: Huge genetic datasets with dense marker panels are now common. With the availability of sequence data and recognition of importance of rare variants, smaller studies based on pedigrees are again also common. Pedigree-based samples often start with a dense marker panel, a subset of which may be used for linkage analysis to reduce computational burden and to limit linkage disequilibrium between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Programs attempting to select markers for linkage panels exist but lack flexibility.

Results: We developed a pedigree-based analysis pipeline (PBAP) suite of programs geared towards SNPs and sequence data. PBAP performs quality control, marker selection and file preparation. PBAP sets up files for MORGAN, which can handle analyses for small and large pedigrees, typically human, and results can be used with other programs and for downstream analyses. We evaluate and illustrate its features with two real datasets.

Availability and implementation: PBAP scripts may be downloaded from http://faculty.washington.edu/wijsman/software.shtml.

Contact:  wijsman@uw.edu

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
AlignBucket: a tool to speed up ‘all-against-all’ protein sequence alignments optimizing length constraints
Authors: Profiti Giuseppe , Fariselli Piero , Casadio Rita
Published: August 2015

Motivation: The next-generation sequencing era requires reliable, fast and efficient approaches for the accurate annotation of the ever-increasing number of biological sequences and their variations. Transfer of annotation upon similarity search is a standard approach. The procedure of all-against-all protein comparison is a preliminary step of different available methods that annotate sequences based on information already present in databases. Given the actual volume of sequences, methods are necessary to pre-process data to reduce the time of sequence comparison.

Results: We present an algorithm that optimizes the partition of a large volume of sequences (the whole database) into sets where sequence length values (in residues) are constrained depending on a bounded minimal and expected alignment coverage. The idea is to optimally group protein sequences according to their length, and then computing the all-against-all sequence alignments among sequences that fall in a selected length range. We describe a mathematically optimal solution and we show that our method leads to a 5-fold speed-up in real world cases.

Availability and implementation: The software is available for downloading at http://www.biocomp.unibo.it/∼giuseppe/partitioning.html.

Contact:  giuseppe.profiti2@unibo.it

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Identifying a set that contains the best dynamic treatment regimes
Authors: Ertefaie Ashkan , Wu Tianshuang , Lynch Kevin G. , Nahum-Shani Inbal
Published: August 2015

A dynamic treatment regime (DTR) is a treatment design that seeks to accommodate patient heterogeneity in response to treatment. DTRs can be operationalized by a sequence of decision rules that map patient information to treatment options at specific decision points. The sequential, multiple assignment, randomized trial (SMART) is a trial design that was developed specifically for the purpose of obtaining data that informs the construction of good (i.e. efficacious) decision rules. One of the scientific questions motivating a SMART concerns the comparison of multiple DTRs that are embedded in the design. Typical approaches for identifying the best DTRs involve all possible comparisons between DTRs that are embedded in a SMART, at the cost of greatly reduced power to the extent that the number of embedded DTRs (EDTRs) increase. Here, we propose a method that will enable investigators to use SMART study data more efficiently to identify the set that contains the most efficacious EDTRs. Our method ensures that the true best EDTRs are included in this set with at least a given probability. Simulation results are presented to evaluate the proposed method, and the Extending Treatment Effectiveness of Naltrexone SMART study data are analyzed to illustrate its application.
Bodily Dis-ease in Contemporary French Women's Writing: Two Case Studies
Authors: Cairns Lucille
Published: August 2015

This article examines two twenty-first-century autobiographical accounts of the intense — and ultimately life-threatening — mental and bodily dis-ease endured by two young French women from adolescence into early adulthood. Annick Loupias's
La Tortue sur le dos
(2001) and Émilie Durand's
Ma folie ordinaire
(2006) are phenomenologically rich and visceral testimonies to their authors' experiences of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, other forms of self-harm (inter alia, self-cutting and self-burning), and even suicide attempts. I argue that, in common with the texts of many other French female writers who have approached these subjects in the last two decades, their value is not so much literary as more broadly cultural, allowing important sociopolitical and medical insights about these markedly gendered illnesses which have seen an inexorable rise in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, but which are still often misunderstood, even by educated readers, and even by the healthcare professionals who attempt to treat sufferers. The article sets these texts in a material, extra-diegetic context, ascertains the aetiologies of the pathologies they inscribe, draws out some of the key insights they afford about those pathologies, and identifies some of the formal means by which these insights are conveyed.
Funerary Rites and Practices, Greco-Roman
Authors: Backes Burkhard
Published: August 2015

A description of the typical Egyptian treatment of the body from death to interment during Ptolemaic and Roman times will not differ in its main elements from a similar account of earlier periods: The dead were mourned at home and then transported to the embalming place, normally situated on the west bank of the Nile River, where the mummification of the body and accompanying rituals were executed. From there they were taken to be buried in their tombs. The tomb could still be an individual, new building, but even for persons of higher status, collective burials in large tomb complexes of earlier periods had become the standard solution. In the Roman period, the stelae marking the burial place of a person were successively abandoned, the mummy-labels maybe taking over this function. Therefore one can often read, and maybe correctly so, that during the periods treated here the focus of funerary cult shifted from the tomb closer to the body, i.e., to the mummy in its envelope and/or coffin(s). Equipping the deceased for an eternal existence in the necropolis was an integral part of Egyptian funerary practice. This is why several paragraphs here are devoted to categories of funerary objects. The high level of diachronic and synchronic variation testifies to their important position in cultural discourse. After the burial, the tombs were regularly visited by relatives and/or professional priests, especially the so-called choachytes (Egyptian wˀḥ-mw “water-pourers”), to renew the deceased’s existence in the afterlife by offerings and liturgical recitations. The direct link between the tomb and its equipment, on the one hand, and this funerary cult, on the other, makes tomb building and decoration an integral component of Egyptian funerary practice. This overview is mainly concerned with Egyptian practice, but this includes a mutual influence with Greek elements as visible in tomb architecture and decoration. As a rule, one can say that a clear separation between Greek and Egyptian burials, the former mainly being attested in and around Alexandria, gave way to more hybrid forms from the later Ptolemaic period onward, the portrait mummies from the Fayum region being only the most prominent example. The Coptic period is considered here mainly insofar as some Coptic practices testify to the continuity of older, “pagan” traditions, especially mummification and formal mourning, of which forms have survived until this day. With very few exceptions the publications listed here are of recent date and guide the reader to previous research.
Image Repair Theory
Authors: Benoit William L.
Published: August 2015

Crisis communication has emerged as an important area for theory and research in communication. Image repair, along with communication about disasters and terrorism, is a component of crisis communication. “Image” refers to reputation or face. Image is composed of perceptions about us held by others (relevant audiences). Our image is influenced by things we say and do, by what others say about us, and how others behave toward us. Of course, an image is based on beliefs and values (attitudes) as well as current statements and deeds. Image is important to people because threats to image often create embarrassment, which is unpleasant. Image is also quite important to both people and organizations (including corporations, universities, and governments) because reputation affects how others treat them. When we believe (have perceptions) that others accuse or suspect us of wrong-doing, a threat to our image arises. Note that these beliefs (about what others think about us) are a second layer of perceptions. Image repair can come into play when we hold the perception that others have negative perceptions of us. A source’s credibility (image) is an important factor in persuasion: we are more likely to be persuaded by those with high credibility and less likely to be persuaded by those with low credibility. This means that at times when it is particularly important to be persuasive—such as when we are dealing with threats to image—the accusations or suspicions that prompt image repair can reduce the effectiveness of our defensive messages.
Innocence and Childhood
Authors: Bühler-Niederberger Doris
Published: August 2015

The notion of innocence refers to children’s simplicity, their lack of knowledge, and their purity not yet spoiled by mundane affairs. Such innocence is taken as the promise of a renewal of the world by the children. Innocence has been attributed to children and childhood by adults at all times, but content and social function of such glorifying assessments show considerable variation over time and context, and the valuation is never unanimous among contemporaries. Innocence used to be a religious notion in earlier times. With the Enlightenment and success of Rousseau’s Émile, nature becomes a new point of reference. From the 19th century onward, the idea of children’s innocence is strongly interrelated with children’s sexuality. Innocence is then emphasized to defend the assumption of an absence of sexuality in children and the demand for such absence. Innocence is not a scientific term; therefore, the numerous studies concerning processes, seminal ideas, and functions of the value assessment of children and childhood do not constitute a unified research area. Researchers deal with questions of children’s innocence often rather implicitly. They do so while analyzing the social construction and reconstruction of childhood at different times and in different historical and contemporary contexts. They do so as well in the interpretation of classic pedagogy, as innocence is a conceptual element in the writings of several pedagogues. Last but not least, we find references to notions of innocence in studies on discourses and political programs concerning children’s sexuality and in the scientific reconstruction of moral enterprises called “moral panics”: public outcries concerning improper childhoods. Put together, these studies, which are scattered over multiple research fields, support the following conclusions: (1) various value assessments of children and childhood may be found at all times, and the notion of innocence is never uncontested; (2) historical notions of innocence are complex and may as well recognize children’s agency; (3) the attribution of innocence to children is often functionalized by interest groups to support their claims and to devaluate rival or marginal groups; it may therefore be a value assessment of minor profit for the children, but of high profit for interest groups; (4) while the attribution of innocence has had a clear reference to religion and nature implicating far-reaching assumptions concerning humankind, it is almost completely narrowed down to debates on children’s sexuality and sexual endangerment in the early 21st century.
Outer rotation curve of the Galaxy with VERA. III. Astrometry of IRAS 07427−2400 and test of the density-wave theory
Authors: Sakai Nobuyuki , Nakanishi Hiroyuki , Matsuo Mitsuhiro , Koide Nagito , Tezuka Daisuke , Kurayama Tomoharu , Shibata Katsunori M. , Ueno Yuji , Honma Mareki
Published: August 2015

We report the trigonometric parallax of IRAS 07427−2400 with VERA to be 0.185 ± 0.027 mas, corresponding to a distance of 5.41$^{+0.92}_{-0.69}\:$kpc. The result is consistent with the previous result of 5.32$^{+0.49}_{-0.42}\:$kpc obtained by Choi et al. (2014, ApJ, 790, 99) within error. To remove the effect of internal maser motions (e.g., random motions), we observed six maser features associated with IRAS 07427−2400 and determined systematic proper motions of the source by averaging proper motions of the six maser features. The obtained proper motions are (μαcos δ, μδ) = (−1.79 ± 0.32, 2.60 ± 0.17) mas yr−1 in equatorial coordinates, while Choi et al. (2014) showed (μαcos δ, μδ) = (−2.43 ± 0.02, 2.49 ± 0.09) mas yr−1 with one maser feature. Our astrometry results place the source in the Perseus arm, the nearest main arm in the Milky Way. Using our result with previous astrometry results obtained from observations of the Perseus arm, we conducted direct (quantitative) comparisons between 27 astrometry results and an analytic gas dynamics model based on the density-wave theory, obtaining two results. First is the pitch angle of the Perseus arm determined by VLBI astrometry, 11 $_{.}^{\circ}$1 ± 1 $_{.}^{\circ}$4, differing from what is determined by the spiral potential model (probably traced by stars), ∼ 20°. The second is an offset between a dense gas region and the bottom of the spiral potential model. The dense gas region traced by VLBI astrometry is located downstream of the spiral potential model, which was previously confirmed in the nearby grand-design spiral galaxy M 51 in Egusa, Koda, and Scoville (2011, ApJ, 726, 85).
Study of infrared excess from circumstellar disks in binaries with Spitzer/IRAC
Authors: Itoh Yusuke , Fukagawa Misato , Shibai Hiroshi , Sumi Takahiro , Yamamoto Kodai
Published: August 2015

The presence of excess emission in the 3.6–8.0 μm region was investigated in a sample of 27 binary star systems located in two nearby star-forming regions, Taurus and Ophiuchus, by using Spitzer/Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) archival data. Angular (Projected) separations of the binaries are greater than 2″ (∼ 280 au), which enables us to perform spatially resolved photometry of individual primary and secondary sources. The measured occurrence of infrared excess suggests that binarity plays a role in the evolution of circumstellar disks, even at such wide binary separations. Most of the binaries have excess emission from both the circumprimary and circumsecondary disks, or show photospheric levels for both components at all four wavelengths of IRAC. On the other hand, four binary systems ($17^{+11}_{-8}$%, designated by “mixed” systems) exhibit the excess emission from a single binary component. This ratio is significantly smaller than that predicted by the random pairing of single stars, suggesting that circumprimary and circumsecondary disks are synchronously dispersed. In addition, the excess frequencies (EFs) of primary and secondary sources with a projected distance of ap ≃ 280–450 au are $100^{+0}_{-17}$% and $91^{+8}_{-18}$%, respectively, and significantly higher than that of single stars (70% ± 5%). We made a simple model describing the EF distribution as a function of the disk outer radius, Rout. Comparisons with observations using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test show that the observational data are consistent with the model when the EF ≃ 100% region is found at Rout ∼ 30–100 au. This disk radius is smaller than that typically estimated for single stars. The high EF of circumstellar disks with these radii may indicate a prolonged lifetime of dust in binary systems, possibly because the smaller disks counteract mass loss by photoevaporation.
Chemoradiation for High-grade Neuroendocrine Carcinoma of the Rectum and Anal Canal
Authors: Voong K. Ranh , Rashid Asif , Crane Christopher H. , Minsky Bruce D. , Krishnan Sunil , Yao James C. , Wolff Robert A. , Skibber John M. , Feig Barry W. , Chang George J. , Das Prajnan
Published: August 2015

Objectives:

We evaluated outcomes in patients with high-grade neuroendocrine (HGNE) carcinoma of the anorectum treated with pelvic chemoradiation.

Materials and Methods:

Between January 1, 2000 and February 17, 2013, 10 patients were confirmed to have HGNE carcinoma of the rectum or anal canal and treated with pelvic chemoradiation (radiation dose ≥45 Gy). Overall survival (OS), locoregional control (LRC), progression-free survival (PFS), and patterns of failure were evaluated.

Results:

Eight had pure HGNE carcinoma and 2 had HGNE carcinoma with minor component of adenocarcinoma. Median age was 62 years. Median follow-up was 15 months (range, 3 to 128 mo). Tumor stages included TxN0M0 (1), II (1), III (4), and IV (4) including 2 with only inguinal involvement. Median tumor size was 5.5 cm (range, 3 to 7 cm). Patients received postoperative chemoradiation (1), preoperative chemoradiation (2), and chemoradiation without surgery (7). Median dose was 50.4 Gy (range, 45 to 60 Gy). All patients received chemotherapy before or after chemoradiation. Seven had pelvic LRC; 2 had possible and 1 had confirmed local progression. Both patients who had preoperative chemoradiation only had microscopic focus of residual carcinoma at surgery. Seven had disease progression; of which all developed distant progression, with distant progression occurring as the first event in 6 (liver, lung, bone, and abdominal nodes). Actuarial 2-year PFS and OS were 30% and 46%, respectively. One patient received prophylactic cranial irradiation; only one of the other 9 patient developed brain metastasis.

Conclusions:

Pelvic chemoradiation provided LRC for the majority of the patients’ lifetime. Most patients had distant failure, but patterns of distant failure do not support routine prophylactic cranial irradiation.
Survival Outcomes Improved in Contemporary Cohort of Patients With Pelvic or Abdominal Recurrence After Treatment for Stage I/II Endometrial Carcinoma
Authors: Xu Melody J. , Chu Christina , Rubin Stephen , Lin Lilie L.
Published: August 2015

Objectives:

Pelvic and abdominal recurrences in stage I/II endometrial carcinoma are associated with poor outcomes, yet prognostic factors for survival after recurrence are not well described. Herein, we identify patients with pelvic or abdominal recurrence after surgery for stage I/II endometrial carcinoma and describe symptoms at presentation, prognostic factors, and salvage treatment toxicity.

Materials and Methods:

This is a retrospective cohort of 20 consecutively treated patients with recurrence after treatment for stage I/II endometrial carcinoma followed by our Institution’s Radiation Oncology Department from 1998 to 2015.

Results:

The median time to pelvic or abdominal recurrence was 18.1 months (range, 4.2 to 59.6 mo), with 50% of recurrences at extranodal locations. Two-year progression-free survival (PFS) was 44% and 2-year overall survival (OS) was 82%. Salvage treatments varied widely, including chemotherapy and radiotherapy (RT) (7), surgery and RT (3), and surgery, chemotherapy, and RT (3). On univariate analysis of PFS, symptoms at recurrence (P=0.04) and extranodal recurrences (P<0.01) were found to be statistically significant negative prognosticators for PFS. On univariate analysis of OS, increasing age at recurrence and presence of symptoms were found to have a trend toward statistically significant association with negative OS outcomes (P=0.08 and P=0.10, respectively).

Conclusions:

Our study demonstrates that long-term survival for pelvic or abdominal recurrences is possible with curative salvage therapy. The presence of symptoms is a negative prognostic factor in treatment outcome, and imaging may be effective for diagnosis in symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. Larger studies need to be performed to confirm these findings.
Desmosine and Isodesmosine as a Novel Biomarker for Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension: A Pilot Study
Authors: Minkin Ruth , Sandhu Gagangeet , Grosu Horiana , Tartell Lori , Ma Shuren , Lin Yong Y. , Eden Edward , Turino Gerard M.
Published: August 2015

Delayed diagnosis is common in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Right-sided heart catheterization, the gold standard for diagnosis, is invasive and cannot be applied for routine screening. Some biomarkers have been looked into; however, due to the lack of a clear pathological mechanism linking the marker to PAH, the search for an ideal one is still ongoing. Elastin is a significant structural constituent of blood vessels. Its synthesis involves cross-linking of monomers by 2 amino acids, desmosine and isodesmosine (D&I). Being extremely stable, elastin undergoes little metabolic turnover in healthy individuals resulting in very low levels of D&I amino acids in the human plasma, urine, or sputum. We hypothesized that in PAH patients, the elastin turnover is high; which in turn should result in elevated levels of D&I in plasma and urine. Using mass spectrometry, plasma and urine levels of D&I were measured in 20 consecutive patients with PAH confirmed by cardiac catheterization. The levels were compared with 13 healthy controls. The mean level of total plasma D&I in patients with PAH was 0.47 ng/mL and in controls was 0.19 ng/mL (P = 0.001). The mean levels of total D&I in the urine of PAH patients was 20.55 mg/g creatinine and in controls was 12.78 mg/g creatinine (P = 0.005). The mean level of free D&I in the urine of PAH patients was 10.34 mg/g creatinine and in controls was 2.52 mg/g creatinine (P < 0.001). This is the first study highlighting that the serum and urine D&I has a potential to be a novel screening biomarker for patients with PAH. It paves the way for larger studies to analyze its role in assessing for disease severity and response to treatment.
Influence of Intrapartum Antibiotic Prophylaxis for Group B Streptococcus on Gut Microbiota in the First Month of Life
Authors: Corvaglia Luigi , Tonti Giacomo , Martini Silvia , Aceti Arianna , Mazzola Giuseppe , Aloisio Irene , Di Gioia Diana , Faldella Giacomo
Published: August 2015

Objectives:

The effect of intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis (IAP) for group B Streptococcus (GBS) on bacterial colonization of the infant's gut has not been investigated extensively. We aimed to evaluate the effect of IAP on gut microbiota in healthy term infants, also exploring the influence of type of feeding.

Methods:

Healthy term infants, whose mothers had been screened for GBS in late gestation, were divided into 2 groups: infants born to GBS‐positive mothers who had received IAP versus controls. Neonatal fecal samples were collected at 7 and 30 days of life; DNA was extracted, and quantification of selected microbial groups (Lactobacillus spp, Bifidobacterium spp, and Bacteroides fragilis group) was performed by real‐time PCR.

Results:

A total of 84 infant–mother pairs were recruited. Bifidobacteria count was significantly lower in the IAP group at 7 days of life (median [interquartile range] 6.01 Log colony‐forming unit per gram [5.51–6.98] vs 7.80 [6.61–8.26], P = 0.000). No differences in Bifidobacteria count at 30 days or in Lactobacilli and B fragilis counts at any time point were documented. Furthermore, at 7 days of life, infants who had not received IAP and were exclusively human milk–fed had higher counts of Bifidobacteria. Regardless of IAP treatment, infants fed exclusively human milk had higher Lactobacillus spp counts both at 7 and 30 days of life.

Conclusions:

IAP alters gut microflora by reducing the count of Bifidobacteria, which is further affected in infants receiving formula feeding. Whether these alterations could have long‐term consequences on health and disease requires further investigation.
Impact and Culture Change After the Implementation of a Preprocedural Checklist in an Interventional Radiology Department
Authors: Wong Sydney Sek Ning , Cleverly Sue , Tan Kong Teng , Roche-Nagle Graham
Published: August 2015

Objective

It has been accepted that the implementation of the a preprocedural surgical checklist can reduce perioperative morbidity and mortality in the operating suite. From this success, there has been focus on applying this intervention to other clinical areas. The objective of this study was to evaluate the acceptance and culture change after the implementation of a preprocedural checklist in the interventional radiology suite.

Methods

A preimplementation audit was performed to identify the need for a checklist in the department. A checklist was then developed, based on the surgical model. At 1 and 12 months after implementation, a survey was distributed to the staff at 3 separate teaching centers.

Results

Results showed that opinion of the checklist was generally positive, with staff agreement that it served as an important communication tool was in the patient's best interest, and presented a good opportunity for the team to identify important issues.

Conclusions

The checklist was regarded as having little effect on delay between cases. In our setting, the checklist has become a useful and consistent safety measure to ensure that relevant patient data are brought to the forefront before intervention. As a secondary benefit, it also serves as an important communication tool and improves collaboration among team members.
Understanding the brain by controlling neural activity
Authors: Krug Kristine , Salzman C. Daniel , Waddell Scott
Published: August 2015

Causal methods to interrogate brain function have been employed since the advent of modern neuroscience in the nineteenth century. Initially, randomly placed electrodes and stimulation of parts of the living brain were used to localize specific functions to these areas. Recent technical developments have rejuvenated this approach by providing more precise tools to dissect the neural circuits underlying behaviour, perception and cognition. Carefully controlled behavioural experiments have been combined with electrical devices, targeted genetically encoded tools and neurochemical approaches to manipulate information processing in the brain. The ability to control brain activity in these ways not only deepens our understanding of brain function but also provides new avenues for clinical intervention, particularly in conditions where brain processing has gone awry.
Biological and bionic hands: natural neural coding and artificial perception
Authors: Bensmaia Sliman J.
Published: August 2015

The first decade and a half of the twenty-first century brought about two major innovations in neuroprosthetics: the development of anthropomorphic robotic limbs that replicate much of the function of a native human arm and the refinement of algorithms that decode intended movements from brain activity. However, skilled manipulation of objects requires somatosensory feedback, for which vision is a poor substitute. For upper-limb neuroprostheses to be clinically viable, they must therefore provide for the restoration of touch and proprioception. In this review, I discuss efforts to elicit meaningful tactile sensations through stimulation of neurons in somatosensory cortex. I focus on biomimetic approaches to sensory restoration, which leverage our current understanding about how information about grasped objects is encoded in the brain of intact individuals. I argue that not only can sensory neuroscience inform the development of sensory neuroprostheses, but also that the converse is true: stimulating the brain offers an exceptional opportunity to causally interrogate neural circuits and test hypotheses about natural neural coding.
Agency and intervention
Authors: Roskies Adina L.
Published: August 2015

Novel ways to intervene on brain function raise questions about agency and responsibility. Here, I discuss whether direct brain interventions, and in particular, deep brain stimulation, pose a threat to agency in individual cases, or to our general conceptualization of what it is to be a responsible agent. While I do not currently see evidence that these interventions constitute a global challenge to our concept of agency, they do have the potential to diminish agency in individuals. I consider whether the lack of evidence for a global challenge ratifies our folk conceptions, or is a necessary consequence of them. In closing, I propose that our theoretical understanding of agency and our therapeutic approaches could be improved with a more nuanced, multidimensional view of agency.
Paenibacillus medicaginis sp. nov. a chitinolytic endophyte isolated from a root nodule of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.)
Authors: Lai Wei-An , Hameed Asif , Lin Shih-Yao , Hung Mei-Hua , Hsu Yi-Han , Liu You-Cheng , Shahina Mariyan , Shen Fo-Ting , Young Chiu-Chung
Published: August 2015

A Gram-stain-variable, short-rod-shaped, endospore-forming, strictly aerobic, non-motile, chitinolytic and endophytic bacterium, designated strain CC-Alfalfa-19T, exhibiting unusual bipolar appendages was isolated from a root nodule of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) in Taiwan and subjected to a polyphasic taxonomic study. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, strain CC-Alfalfa-19T was found to be most closely related to Paenibacillus puldeungensis CAU 9324T (95.2 %), whereas other species of the genus Paenibacillus shared ≤ 95.0 % sequence similarity. The phylogenetic analysis revealed a distinct phyletic lineage established by strain CC-Alfalfa-19T with respect to other species of the genus Paenibacillus. Fatty acids comprised predominantly anteiso-C15 : 0, C16 : 0, anteiso-C17 : 0 and iso-C16 : 0. Menaquinone 7 (MK-7) was identified as the sole respiratory quinone and the genomic DNA G+C content was 42.7 mol%. Polar lipids included diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylmonomethylethanolamine, phosphatidylethanolamine, an unidentified glycolipid and an unidentified lipid. The diagnostic diamino acid found in the cell-wall peptidoglycan was meso-diaminopimelic acid. Based on the polyphasic taxonomic evidence that was in line with the genus Paenibacillus and additional distinguishing characteristics, strain CC-Alfalfa-19T is considered to represent a novel species, for which the name Paenibacillus medicaginis sp. nov. (type strain CC-Alfalfa-19T = BCRC 80441T = JCM 18446T) is proposed.
Formation and maintenance of robust long-term information storage in the presence of synaptic turnover
Authors: Fauth Michael , Wörgötter Florentin , Tetzlaff Christian
Published: August 2015

A long-standing problem is how memories can be stored for very long times despite the volatility of the underlying neural substrate, most notably the high turnover of dendritic spines and synapses. To address this problem, here we are using a generic and simple probabilistic model for the creation and removal of synapses. We show that information can be stored for several months when utilizing the intrinsic dynamics of multi-synapse connections. In such systems, single synapses can still show high turnover, which enables fast learning of new information, but this will not perturb prior stored information (slow forgetting), which is represented by the compound state of the connections. The model matches the time course of recent experimental spine data during learning and memory in mice supporting the assumption of multi-synapse connections as the basis for long-term storage.

Author Summary

It is widely believed that information is stored in the connectivity, i.e. the synapses of neural networks. Yet, the morphological correlates of excitatory synapses, the dendritic spines, have been found to undergo a remarkable turnover on daily basis. This poses the question, how information can be retained on such a variable substrate.

In this study, using connections with multiple synapses, we show that connections which follow the experimentally measured bimodal distribution in the number of synapses can store information orders of magnitude longer than the lifetime of a single synapse. This is a consequence of the underlying bistable collective dynamic of multiple synapses: Single synapses can appear and disappear without disturbing the memory as a whole.

Furthermore, increasing or decreasing neural activity changes the distribution of the number of synapses of multi-synaptic connections such that only one of the peaks remains. This leads to a desirable property: information about these altered activities can be stored much faster than it is forgotten. Remarkably, the resulting model dynamics match recent experimental data investigating the long-term effect of learning on the dynamics of dendritic spines.