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Fascial plane blocks (FPBs) are gaining popularity in clinical settings owing to their improved analgesia when combined with either traditional regional anesthesia or general anesthesia during the perioperative phase. The scope of study on FPBs has substantially increased over the past 20 years, yet the exact mechanism, issues linked to the approaches, and direction of future research on FPBs are still up for debate. Given that it can be performed at all levels of the spine and provides analgesia to most areas of the body, the erector spinae plane block, one of the FPBs, has been extensively studied for chronic rational pain, visceral pain, abdominal surgical analgesia, imaging, and anatomical mechanisms. This has led to the contention that the erector spinae plane block is the ultimate Plan A block. Yet even though the future of FPBs is promising, the unstable effect, the probability of local anesthetic poisoning, and the lack of consensus on the definition and assessment of the FPB's success are still the major concerns. In order to precisely administer FPBs to patients who require analgesia in this condition, an algorithm that uses artificial intelligence is required. This algorithm will assist healthcare professionals in practicing precision medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: With comparable overall survival and local recurrence rates with mastectomy, breast-conserving surgery (BCS) has become the cornerstone of therapy for breast cancer; however, the difference in the incidence of suicide between BCS and mastectomy among breast cancer survivors remains unclear. This study evaluated the mortality risk from suicide among breast cancer survivors and compared suicide risk between BCS and mastectomy using a population-based cohort. Materials and methods: Female patients newly diagnosed with first primary breast cancer, recorded in the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database, were included. Standardized mortality ratio (SMR) and cumulative mortality rate from suicide among those who underwent BCS and mastectomy were compared. Results: A total of 1 190 991 patients with newly diagnosed first primary breast cancer were included in the study, of whom 56.5% underwent BCS and 36.1% underwent mastectomy. During the follow-up period, 667 suicides were recorded. Patients who underwent mastectomy exhibited significantly higher suicide mortality than the general population [mortality rate, 8.16 per 100 000 person-years; SMR 1.18 (95% CI 1.05-1.33)], while there was no significant difference in suicide rate between patients who underwent BCS and the general population [SMR 0.92 (95% CI 0.83-1.02)]. Multivariate Cox analysis revealed that BCS, compared with mastectomy, was associated with a significantly decreased risk of suicide among females with breast cancer [hazard ratio 0.80 (95% CI 0.68-0.95); P = 0.009]. Conclusion: BCS was associated with a significantly lower incidence of suicide among females with breast cancer. BCS offers a compelling option for improving the quality of life and self-esteem of patients with cancer and provides a novel perspective on cancer management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Dysfunction of the thalamocortical connectivity network is thought to underlie the pathophysiology of the migraine. This current study aimed to explore the thalamocortical connectivity changes during 4 weeks of continuous transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) treatment on migraine patients.Methods: 70 migraine patients were recruited and randomized in an equal ratio to receive real taVNS or sham taVNS treatments for 4 weeks. Resting-state functional MRI was collected before and after treatment. The thalamus was parceled into functional regions of interest (ROIs) on the basis of six priori-defined cortical ROIs covering the entire cortex. Seed-based functional connectivity analysis between each thalamic subregion and the whole brain was further compared across groups after treatment.Results: Of the 59 patients that finished the study, those in the taVNS group had significantly reduced number of migraine days, pain intensity and migraine attack times after 4 weeks of treatment compared with the sham taVNS. Functional connectivity analysis revealed that taVNS can increase the connectivity between the motor-related thalamus subregion and anterior cingulate cortex/medial prefrontal cortex, and decrease the connectivity between occipital cortex-related thalamus subregion and postcentral gyrus/precuneus.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that taVNS can relieve the symptoms of headache as well as modulate the thalamocortical circuits in migraine patients. The results provide insights into the neural mechanism of taVNS and reveal potential therapeutic targets for migraine patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Biotechnologie, Agronomie, Societe et Environnement is the property of Les Presses Agronomiques de Gembloux and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Amphioxus is a good proxy for studying the evolution and development of mechanisms during the invertebrate to vertebrate transition. However, one of the major limitations of amphioxus as a model organism is the lack of well-developed technical approaches. Promoters of genes encoding heat shock proteins are useful tools for gene function studies. In the present study, we tested heat shock temperatures on 4-cell, 128-cell, late blastula, mid-gastrula and late gastrula amphioxus embryos and optimized the heat shock conditions. We then examined the expression profile of the endogenous Hsp70 gene in embryos heat-shocked under optimum conditions. RT-qPCR revealed that the expression of Hsp70 could be induced in embryos by heat shock after the 128-cell stage, and in situ hybridization showed that the induced Hsp70 expression was predominantly detected in epidermal ectoderm. Further, we constructed two reporter gene expression plasmids carrying the Hsp70 promoter to evaluate its efficiency in vivo. Microinjection experiments showed strong red fluorescence or LacZ staining signals in injected embryos after heat shock treatment. In contrast to endogenous Hsp70, reporter gene expression was found in all three germ layers at equivalent levels. Finally, using the Hsp70 promoter, we conducted a preliminary functional analysis of two amphioxus genes, Vg1 and Cer, which play essential roles in left-right patterning in vertebrates. After heat shock at late blastula, mid-gastrula or early neurula stages, ectopic expression of Vg1 was detected in each group of treated embryos. Phenotype observation at 3-gill-slit larvae stage showed that ectopic Vg1 expression led to two-left-side or left-right reversal phenotypes, and that of Cer caused a two-right-side phenotype. Our study establishes a thermo-inducible gene expression system which will be a useful tool for gene function investigation in amphioxus embryos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fungi of the Fusarium oxysporum are widely distributed around the world in all types of soils, and they are all anamorphic species. In order to investigate the relationships and differences among Fusarium spp., 25 Fusarium spp. were isolated from greenhouse melon soils in Liaoning Province, China. With these 25 strains, three positive control Fusarium strains were analyzed using universally primed PCR (UP-PCR). Seventy-three bands appeared after amplification using 6 primers, and 66 of these bands (90.4%) were polymorphic. All strains were clustered into eight groups, though 14 strains of F. oxysporum were clustered into a single group. We concluded that UP-PCR could reveal the genetic relationships and differences among Fusarium strains. Moreover, the UP-PCR results suggested that F. oxysporum is distinguishable from other Fusarium spp. Thus, UP-PCR is a useful method for Fusarium classification. The pathogenicity of 13 strains of F. oxysporum to muskmelon, cucumber and watermelon seedlings was studied by infecting the seedlings with a spore suspension after cutting the root. The results showed that the F. oxysporum strains were pathogenic to all three melon types, although the pathogenicity differed significantly among the 13 strains. In addition, all strains had the greatest pathogenicity toward watermelon. Since the factors affecting pathogenicity vary widely, they should be considered in future studies on Fusarium spp. The results of such studies may then yield an accurate description of the pathogenicity of Fusarium spp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Biotechnologie, Agronomie, Societe et Environnement is the property of Les Presses Agronomiques de Gembloux and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we investigate the noncoherent iterative demodulation of coded continuous phase modulation (CPM) in frequency hopped (FH) systems. In this field, one important problem is that the complexity of the optimal demodulator is prohibitive unless the number of symbols per hop duration is very small. To solve this problem, we propose a novel demodulator, which reduces the complexity by applying phase quantization and exploiting the phase rotational invariance property of CPM signals. As shown by computational complexity analysis and numerical results, the proposed demodulator approaches the performance of the optimal demodulator, and provides considerable performance improvement over the existing solutions with the same computational complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuous phase modulation (CPM) is a widely used modulation scheme in communication systems. However, difficulties arise with the design of CPM receivers, due to the nonlinear nature of CPM. One popular solution is to linearize CPM with pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) representation. In this paper, a reduced-complexity non-data-aided (NDA) timing recovery method for PAM-based M-ary CPM receivers is proposed. The proposed method is based on the PAM representation and maximum likelihood principle. The merits of the proposed method are twofold. On one hand, the proposed method is reduced-complexity in nature for PAM-based CPM receivers, i.e., it shares the match filter bank with PAM-based detectors. On the other hand, it is shown that the performance of the proposed method is better than the existing method with some modulation schemes. Therefore, the proposed method provides an important synchronization component for PAM-based M-ary CPM receivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When ammonia is added in methane to form carbon films using thermal chemical vapor deposition, effects of the ammonia/methane ratio on the deposition rate and microstructures of carbon films are investigated. Meanwhile, effects of the deposition temperature, working pressure, and residence time on the deposition rate are also considered. Experimental results indicate that as the ammonia/methane rate increases, the deposition rate of carbon films decreases, and also, the ordered degree, nano-crystallite size, and sp2 carbon atoms of carbon films increase. Nevertheless, if the deposition temperature, working pressure, and residence time increase, the deposition rate of carbon films increases. The relationship between the deposition rate and deposition process parameters is formulated. The deposition process is controlled by the process to create mono-carbon and bi-carbon species in carbon films. Moreover, one mono-nitrogen will suppress about three mono-carbons to form carbon films. Few nitrogen and hydrogen atoms are incorporated into carbon films. The activation energy (= 507 kJ/mole) of carbon deposition is related to the activation energies of methane and ammonia dissociation. If the working pressure is smaller than a threshold value (= 30 kPa) or the residence time is shorter than a threshold value (= 1.5 s), no film is formed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of using near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) to determine MBM content in compound fertilizers and composts. One hundred forty adulterated compound fertilizer samples were prepared in the laboratory by mixing 4 types of compound fertilizers with 3 types of MBM randomly at different levels of 0.1%-10.0% (w/w). One hundred twenty adulterated compost samples were obtained by mixing 41 compost samples with 28 MBM at different levels of 3.0%-24.0% (w/w). NIRS calibration models were developed using the partial least squares (PLS) regression method. Results showed that the coefficients of determination for calibration (R2) and validation (r2) were 0.996 and 0.622, 0.988 and 0.722 for adulterated compound fertilizers and composts respectively. The ratios of prediction to deviation (RPD) were 8.84 and 1.87 for them respectively. These results indicated that NIRS could be used to quantify the adulteration of banned MBM in compound fertilizers with high prediction accuracy, and be insufficient to determine the content of MBM in composts due to low prediction accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of using near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) to determine MBM content in compound fertilizers and composts. One hundred forty adulterated compound fertilizer samples were prepared in the laboratory by mixing 4 types of compound fertilizers with 3 types of MBM randomly at different levels of 0.1%-10.0% (w/w). One hundred twenty adulterated compost samples were obtained by mixing 41 compost samples with 28 MBM at different levels of 3.0%-24.0% (w/w). NIRS calibration models were developed using the partial least squares (PLS) regression method. Results showed that the coefficients of determination for calibration (R²) and validation (r²) were 0.996 and 0.622, 0.988 and 0.722 for adulterated compound fertilizers and composts respectively. The ratios of prediction to deviation (RPD) were 8.84 and 1.87 for them respectively. These results indicated that NIRS could be used to quantify the adulteration of banned MBM in compound fertilizers with high prediction accuracy, and be insufficient to determine the content of MBM in composts due to low prediction accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient procedure for the preparation of α-acetoxy ketone derivatives by palladium-catalyzed oxidation reactions employing molecular oxygen as the sole oxidant has been reported. A variety of benzyl ketones were used to investigate the scope of the reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many bacterial plant pathogens employ a type III secretion system to inject effector proteins within plant cells to suppress plant immunity. Whether and how effector proteins also co-opt plant metabolism to support extensive bacterial replication remains an open question. Here, we show that Ralstonia solanacearum , the causal agent of bacterial wilt disease, secretes the effector protein RipI, which interacts with plant glutamate decarboxylases (GADs) to alter plant metabolism and support bacterial growth. GADs are activated by calmodulin and catalyze the biosynthesis of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), an important signaling molecule in plants and animals. RipI promotes the interaction of GADs with calmodulin, enhancing the production of GABA. R. solanacearum is able to replicate efficiently using GABA as a nutrient, and both RipI and plant GABA contribute to a successful infection. This work reveals a pathogenic strategy to hijack plant metabolism for the biosynthesis of nutrients that support microbial growth during plant colonization. • The effector protein RipI contributes to virulence of the phytopathogen R. solanacearum • RipI interacts with plant calmodulin and GADs • RipI promotes calmodulin binding to GADs, enhancing GAD activity and GABA production • R. solanacearum uses GABA as a nutrient, and plant GABA contributes to infection Xian et al. show that the effector protein RipI, from the bacterial plant pathogen Ralstonia solanacearum , manipulates plant metabolism. RipI promotes the biochemical activation of glutamate decarboxylases in plant cells, enhancing the production of GABA to support bacterial nutrition during plant infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Castleman disease is a rare lymphoproliferative disorder characterized by the formation of painless hyperplastic lymph nodes. It can affect any lymph nodes of the body but rarely affects the salivary gland. We describe a patient with unicentric Castleman disease presenting as a parotid tumor and discuss the diagnosis and treatment of Castleman disease. A 39-year-old man had a painless lump on the right side of his face for 1 year. A computed tomography scan showed a well-defined, homogeneous mass in the right parotid gland. The patient underwent a right-sided superficial parotidectomy with preservation of the facial nerve. Histopathologic analysis of the excisional biopsy specimen confirmed the diagnosis of Castleman disease. No further treatment was administered, and the patient recovered well; no recurrence was present at the 1-year follow-up. Castleman disease is a lymphoproliferative disease that rarely affects the parotid gland. Histopathologic examination is regarded as the gold standard for diagnosis of Castleman disease. The current treatment for patients with unicentric Castleman disease is surgical resection. For patients with multicentric Castleman disease, more complex therapies are required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]