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Background Early neurodevelopmental deviations, such as abnormal cortical folding patterns, are candidate biomarkers of major depressive disorder (MDD). We aimed to investigate the association of MDD with the local gyrification index (LGI) in each cortical region at the whole-brain level, and the association of the LGI with clinical characteristics of MDD. Methods We obtained T1-weighted images from 234 patients with MDD and 215 healthy controls (HCs). The LGI values from 66 cortical regions in the bilateral hemispheres were automatically calculated according to the Desikan–Killiany atlas. We compared the LGI values between the MDD and HC groups using analysis of covariance, including age, sex, and years of education as covariates. The association between the clinical characteristics and LGI values was investigated in the MDD group. Results Compared with HCs, patients with MDD showed significantly decreased LGI values in the cortical regions, including the bilateral ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices, medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortices, insula, right rostral anterior cingulate cortex, and several temporal and parietal regions, with the largest effect size in the left pars triangularis (Cohen's f2 = 0.361; p = 1.78 × 10−13). Regarding the association of clinical characteristics with LGIs within the MDD group, recurrence and longer illness duration were associated with increased gyrification in several occipital and temporal regions, which showed no significant difference in LGIs between the MDD and HC groups. Conclusions These findings suggest that the LGI may be a relatively stable neuroimaging marker associated with MDD predisposition.

Agnes Stephanie Harahap,1– 3 Imam Subekti,4 Sonar Soni Panigoro,5 Asmarinah,6 Lisnawati,1 Retno Asti Werdhani,7 Hasrayati Agustina,8 Dina Khoirunnisa,1 Mutiah Mutmainnah,1 Salinah,1 Alvita Dewi Siswoyo,9 Maria Francisca Ham1,2 1Department of Anatomical Pathology, Faculty of Medicine Universitas Indonesia/Dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, Jakarta, Indonesia; 2Human Cancer Research Center-Indonesian Medical Education and Research Institute, Faculty of Medicine Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia; 3Doctoral Program in Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia; 4Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine Universitas Indonesia/Dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, Jakarta, Indonesia; 5Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine Universitas Indonesia/Dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, Jakarta, Indonesia; 6Department of Medical Biology, Faculty of Medicine Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia; 7Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia; 8Department of Anatomical Pathology, Faculty of Medicine Universitas Padjadjaran/Hasan Sadikin General Hospital, Bandung, Indonesia; 9Department of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine Universitas Indonesia/Dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, Jakarta, IndonesiaCorrespondence: Agnes Stephanie Harahap, Department of Anatomical Pathology, Faculty of Medicine Universitas Indonesia, Jl. Salemba Raya No. 6, Jakarta, 14320, Indonesia, Tel +62818765563, Email agnes.stephanie01@ui.ac.idIntroduction: BRAFV600E and RAS mutations are the most common gene mutations in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) that may be correlated with its biological behavior. There are still limited data about BRAFV600E and RAS mutations in Indonesia. This study aims to determine the prevalence of BRAFV600E and RAS mutations, and their association with clinicopathologic characteristics.Methods: Patients who had total thyroidectomy from 2019 to 2021 and those who met our study criteria underwent PCR and DNA sequencing analysis for BRAFV600E, BRAFK601E, exon 2 and 3 of NRAS, HRAS, and KRAS. Analyses were performed to determine the associations of BRAFV600E and RAS mutations with clinicopathologic characteristics.Results: Of 172 PTC patients, BRAFV600E mutation was observed in 37.8% of the patients and RAS mutations were found in 21.5%. One patient harbored BRAFK601E mutation. There was a significant association of BRAFV600E with a high-stage (p = 0.033, OR: 3.279; 95% CI: 1.048– 10.259), tall-cell variants (p ≤ 0.001, OR: 41.143; 95% CI: 11.979– 141.308), non-encapsulated (p = 0.001, OR: 4.176; 95% CI: 2.008– 8.685), lymphovascular invasion (p = 0.043, OR: 1.912; 95% CI: 1.018– 3.592), extrathyroidal extension (p = < 0.001, OR: 3.983; 95% CI: 1.970– 8.054), and lymph node metastasis (p = 0.009, OR: 2.301; 95% CI: 1.224– 4.326). Follicular variant (p = 0.001, OR: 7.011; 95% CI: 2.690– 18.268), encapsulated (p = 0.017, OR: 2.433; 95% CI: 1.161– 5.100), and absent of extrathyroidal extension (p = 0.033, OR: 2.890; 95% CI: 1.052– 7.940) were associated with RAS mutations.Conclusion: A significant association between BRAFV600E mutation and high clinical stage, tall-cell variants, non-encapsulated morphology, lymphovascular invasion, extrathyroidal extension, and lymph node metastasis in PTC was observed. RAS mutations were associated with the follicular variant, encapsulated tumor, and no extrathyroidal extension. HRAS-mutated PTC frequently exhibited tumor multifocality.Keywords: papillary thyroid carcinoma, BRAFV600E, BRAFK601E, RAS, clinicopathological characteristics

The current study comprising molecular identification of the mutagenic effects of gamma rays and sodium azide on Catharanthus roseus using scot markers took place at the Department of Biology, University of Kufa, Iraq. The seeds of two cultivars, i.e., ‘victory carmine’ and a local variety (pink variety) of Catharanthus roseus L (carmine var.) received irradiation with two doses of gamma rays (50 Gray and 75 Gray). Afterward, these got soaked in sodium azide with four concentrations (0.2%, 0.4%, 0.6%, and 0.8%) to induce the genetic variation in the cultivar. The non-treated seeds served as control treatments for comparison with treated ones. Accomplishing irradiation was at an average of 18 Gy/h using Cobalt-60. The effects of gamma rays and sodium azide treatments’ evaluation were through 10 start codon targeted (SCoT) DNA markers. The higher number of distinctive fingerprints was three produced by primers SCoT-26, while primer SCoT-60 provided a distinct fingerprint for only one treatment. However, primer SCoT-40 failed to recognize any treatment with a distinctive fingerprint. The highest molecular size (2488 bp) came from primer SCoT-54, whereas the lower molecular size (143 bp) resulted in primer SCoT-12. Primer SCoT-33 provided the highest value for chief and unique bands, reaching 33 and 18, respectively. The highest number of amplified bands was 77 bands in primer SCoT-54. Primer SCoT-60 produced the highest value for monomorphic bands, primer SCoT-12 gave the highest value for polymorphic bands, polymorphism, and discriminatory (15, 68.18, and 20.83, respectively), and primer SCoT-9 produced the highest value for efficiency.

Background: This study aimed to analyze the catabolic phases of patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) by performing the Nitrogen Balance Test (NB Test).Methods: This single-centered, retrospective study included data from 292 patients who underwent NB tests from 2019 to 2022 and categorized them as TBI and Non-TBI groups. The basic clinical factors (gender, age, and initial GCS), critical care factors (APACHE, SOFA, and ICU stay days), and outcomes (GOS). The trend of the NB test was investigated in all groups and analyzed the statistical correlation of the NB test was with severity, critical care factors, and outcomes. Results: A total of 52 patients were found to have TBI. The 26 out of 52 TBI patients underwent the second NB test 1 week after the first NB test. The deficiency of protein calculated was 24.375 g. There was a significant statistical difference of NB test patterns between the non-TBI and TBI patients.Conclusion: Physicians should be aware of the catabolic phases of acute TBI events indicating notable protein loss in the patients. Therefore, we should consider the additional supply of protein when managing TBI patients.

Background. Evidence-based guidelines can assist critical care nurses in promoting best practices, including those related to endotracheal tube cuff pressure management. However, these guidelines require tailored strategies to enhance their implementation, uptake, and sustained use in practice. Objectives. To evaluate Malawian critical care nurses’ views on the implementation of an endotracheal tube cuff pressure management guideline to enhance sustained guideline use. Methods. An explorative-descriptive survey design was employed, using a questionnaire with closed- and open-ended questions that was distributed after implementation of an educational intervention based on an endotracheal tube cuff pressure management guideline. The questionnaire had a Cronbach’s alpha score of 0.85. Results. A total of 47 nurses working in four public and two private hospital intensive care units in Malawi participated. Quantitative findings showed that the majority of the participants (92%) indicated that the strategies used for the group that received the full intervention including both active (monitoring visits) and passive (a half-day educational session using a PowerPoint presentation, and a printed guideline and algorithm) strategies (intervention 1 group) were useful, clear and applicable and enhanced implementation of the guideline. These results were statistically significant (mean (standard deviation) 1.86 (0.84); t=6.07; p

The solidification and phase transformation behaviors of IN625 with low C and Fe were investigated through directional solidification and quenching experiments. The primary and secondary dendrite arm spacing decreased exponentially as the solidification rate increased, demonstrating good agreement with theoretical equations. The MC carbide formed at a constant temperature gradient regardless of the solidification rate. It is reasonable to assume that the Laves phase solidified in the final stage of solidification, as it was found at the bottom of the mushy zone. The morphologies and sizes of the MC carbide and the Laves phase were closely related to the solidification rate. Increasing the solidification rate at a constant thermal gradient resulted in the development of the MC carbide from blocky to Chinese script, and eventually spotty shapes, along with decreasing size. As a result of this research, it is believed that the weldability of the alloy could be improved at the expense of mechanical properties, especially with low C and Fe contents and a relatively high solidification rate, which are able to generate the finely distributed MC and Laves phase.

Hardware performance monitoring units (PMUs) are a standard feature in modern microprocessors, providing a rich set of microarchitectural event samplers. Recently, numerous profile-guided optimization (PGO) frameworks have exploited them to feature much lower profiling overhead compared to conventional instrumentation-based frameworks. However, existing PGO frameworks mainly focus on optimizing the layout of binaries; they overlook rich information provided by the PMU about data access behaviors over the memory hierarchy. Thus, we propose MaPHeA, a lightweight M emory hierarchy- a ware P rofile-guided He ap A llocation framework applicable to both HPC and embedded systems. MaPHeA guides and applies the optimized allocation of dynamically allocated heap objects with very low profiling overhead and without additional user intervention to improve application performance. To demonstrate the effectiveness of MaPHeA, we apply it to optimizing heap object allocation in an emerging DRAM-NVM heterogeneous memory system (HMS), selective huge-page utilization, and controlling the cacheability of the objects with the low temporal locality. In an HMS, by identifying and placing frequently accessed heap objects to the fast DRAM region, MaPHeA improves the performance of memory-intensive graph-processing and Redis workloads by 56.0% on average over the default configuration that uses DRAM as a hardware-managed cache of slow NVM. By identifying large heap objects that cause frequent TLB misses and allocating them to huge pages, MaPHeA increases the performance of the read and update operations of Redis by 10.6% over the transparent huge-page implementation of Linux. Also, by distinguishing the objects that cause cache pollution due to their low temporal locality and applying write-combining to them, MaPHeA improves the performance of STREAM and RADIX workloads by 20.0% on average over the system without cacheability control.

Background: Angelica dahurica Radix and Osterici radix, are perennial herbs belonging to the family Umbelliferae, which were attacked by red spiders, thus fenpropathrin was registered. Fenpropathrin is important in improving productivity and quality of medicinal herbs due to timely pest control. However, residue may likely remain after harvest, and therefore, the residue analysis is important to ensure pesticides safety management. Objective: This study aimed to establish analysis method for fenpropathrin residues in A. dahurica Radix and O. radix using GLC-ECD and GC-MS/MS. Methods: Samples were moisturized with distilled-water and extracted with acetonitrile. The interferences were removed using SPE cartridges and analyzed by GLC-ECD and GC-MS/MS. Results: Based on pre-experiment results, the analysis method was optimized using double-cleanup method (SPE-GCB/NH2 & SPE silica cartridges). Fenpropathrin peak confirmed by GC-MS at the same retention time and with its mass numbers. Nevertheless, the cleanup processes are laborious and require a rather long time. Thus, additional effortless analysis method was developed using the d-SPE method that can apply to highly selective and sensitive GC-MS/MS. The LOD of GC-ECD and GC-MS/MS was 0.1 and 0.01 ng, respectively. While the LOQ was 0.04 mg/kg for both. Linearity (r2) was > 0.998 (GLC-ECD) and 0.999 (GC-MS/MS). The recoveries at three spiking levels ranged 83.6-103.1% and 89.6-98.0% for A. dahurica Radix and O. radix, respectively. Conclusion: Accuracy of the improved method met the standard of the Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. Therefore, the developed methods expected to be used for analyzing pesticide residues in herbal medicines in Korea and other countries.

Invasive fungal diseases are an important cause of mortality in immunocompromised patients and in patients with chronic illnesses. Multiple studies in Bangladesh have documented the frequency of fungal infections in our country and results varied. However, better understanding of the invasive fungal infection includes learning about the epidemiology, clinical features, and diagnostic method which is integral part of improving outcomes. In this review, we discuss the common invasive fungal infection that are prevalent in our country along with the clinical pictures, diagnosis, and treatment. It is hoped that this article will highlight the burden of fungal infections on public health and promote effective diagnosis and therapy. J Bangladesh Coll Phys Surg 2023; 41: 164-169

Objective A growing body of evidence reports on the effect of different types of childhood abuse on the structural and functional architecture of the brain. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the differences in cortical thickness according to specific types of childhood abuse between patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and healthy controls (HCs).Methods A total of 61 patients with MDD and 98 HCs were included in this study. All participants underwent T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging, and the occurrence of childhood abuse was assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. We investigated the association between whole-brain cortical thickness and exposure to any type of childhood abuse and specific type of childhood abuse in the total sample using the FreeSurfer software.Results No significant difference was reported in the cortical thickness between the MDD and HC groups nor between the “any abuse” and “no abuse” groups. Compared to no exposure to childhood sexual abuse (CSA), exposure to CSA was significantly associated with cortical thinning in the left rostral middle frontal gyrus (p=0.00020), left (p=0.00240), right fusiform gyri (p=0.00599), and right supramarginal gyrus (p=0.00679).Conclusion Exposure to CSA may lead to cortical thinning of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is deeply involved in emotion regulation, to a greater extent than other types of childhood abuse.

Background: Hemp seed (Cannabis sativa L.) is an annual herbaceous plant of the Cannabis genus that contains a large amount of protein, iron, and fatty acids, including linoleic, α-linolenic, and γ-linolenic acid. These compounds are involved in a number of biological activities, including immunity enhancement, hyperlipidemia, and inflammation reduction. Here, we investigated the antioxidant effects of hemp seed on human cognitive function. Methods: The test was administered to 34 healthy volunteers aged ≥ 20 years. Participants were selected according to age and sex and were administered 10 g of hemp seed three times daily (30 g/day) for 45 days. The outcome measurements were recorded using a survey, computerized neurocognitive tests, and artificial intelligence. Results: Survey analysis determined that both the Beck Anxiety Inventory and Beck Depression Inventory measurements decreased significantly after hemp seed consumption when compared to measurements taken before consumption (p < 0.05). Additionally, significant results were observed in the Stroop and Tower of London tasks (p < 0.05). The prediction performance for the antidepressant effect was 0.83 for the area under the curve in the random forest algorithm, which was superior to that of other machine learning methods. Conclusion: These results suggest that hemp seeds have a beneficial effect on cognitive impairment.

Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI) and Korea Astronomy and Space Institute (KASI) have been participating in the European Incoherent Scatter (EISCAT) Scientific Association as an affiliate institution in order to observe the polar ionosphere since 2015. During the period of December 16–21, 2016 and January 3–9, 2018, the observations for the polar ionospheric parameters such as the electron density profiles, ion drift, and electron/ion temperature are carried out in the polar cap/cusp region by the EISCAT Svalbard radar (ESR). The purpose of the observations is to investigate the characteristic of the winter ionosphere in the dayside polar cap/cusp region. In this paper, we briefly report the results of the ESR observations for winter daytime ionosphere and also the simultaneous observations for the ionosphere-thermosphere system together with the balloon-borne instrument High-Altitude Interferometer WIND Experiment (HIWIND) performed by the High Altitude Observatory (HAO), National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). We further introduce our research activities using long-term EISCAT observations for the occurrence of ion upflow and the climatology of the polar ionospheric density profiles in comparison with the mid-latitude ionosphere. Finally, our future research plans will briefly be introduced.