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Soft tissue deposits, also known as tumour deposits (TDs), have not been studied well in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) and are not included in any of the staging systems or treatment guidelines. The aim of this systematic review was to determine the prevalence and prognostic implications of TDs in patients with HNSCC. This systematic review of the literature was conducted following the PRISMA guidelines. The PubMed, Embase, and Scopus electronic databases were searched for relevant studies, from inception to August 2022. Although 14 studies qualified for inclusion, only eight were finally included in the review due to the considerable overlap of patients in several studies. Data from 7127 patients were analysed. The pooled prevalence of TDs was 21% (95% confidence interval (CI) 9–33%). The presence of TDs was adversely associated with overall survival and disease-free survival, with hazard ratios of 2.08 (95% CI 1.60–2.70) and 2.56 (95% CI 1.97–3.32), respectively. TDs are detected in a significant number of patients with HNSCC and adversely affect survival. Longitudinal prospective studies are needed to evaluate the prognostic implications of TDs in HNSCC for their potential role in cancer staging and adjuvant treatment planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2005.05.006 Byline: V. Arora (a), U. Jha (b), P. Bandhopadhyay (c), S. Kumar (a) Abstract: An attempt was made to investigate the relationship between raw coal characteristics and effluent quality in two coking coal washeries of Central Coalfields Limited, Kedla and Rajrappa in Jharkhand State, India. Coal samples -- raw coal feed, washed fine clean coal, washed coarse clean coal, middlings and rejects were collected. Similarly, raw water (intake to washery) and effluent samples generated in the washeries, namely, fine coal jig under water, coarse coal jig under water and slurry pond water were also collected over a period of 6 months. Parameters outlined in Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) Schedule VI Indian standards were determined, both in coal samples and water/washery effluent samples. Apart from the parameters listed in the standard, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulphate and chloride found to be present in coal were also determined in coal and water samples. The processing results essentially in production of huge quantities of suspended material, which is beyond the stipulated limit of 100mg/l as specified in the Standard. Lowering of pH was observed in both the washeries. The trace/heavy elements were found to be concentrated in the heavier fractions in rejects produced from the washery. The concentrations of major elements in coal -- Na, K, Ca, Mg, and minor elements in coal -- Mn; F, SO.sub.4 and Cl were found to be higher in process water than in raw water indicating that these elements are transferred from coal to the water in washeries. However, only in the case of Mn, the stipulated limit of the effluent standard was exceeded. Trace elements like As, Se, Hg, Cd, though found to be present in coal, were absent in the process water indicating that these elements are not released by coal during washing. Author Affiliation: (a) Central Mine Planning and Design Institute, Kanke Road, Ranchi, Jharkhand 834 008, India (b) Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand 835 215, India (c) Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, Jharkhand 826 001, India Article History: Received 20 July 2004; Revised 10 March 2005; Accepted 18 May 2005

Objectives: First, to determine if a cyclical trend is observed for search activity of suicide and three common suicide risk factors in the United Kingdom: depression, unemployment, and marital strain. Second, to test the validity of suicide search data as a potential marker of suicide risk by evaluating whether web searches for suicide associate with suicide rates among those of different ages and genders in the United Kingdom. Study design: Cross-sectional. Methods: Search engine data was obtained from Google Trends, a publicly available repository of information of trends and patterns of user searches on Google. The following phrases were entered into Google Trends to analyse relative search volume for suicide, depression, job loss, and divorce, respectively: 'suicide' ; 'depression + depressed + hopeless' ; 'unemployed + lost job'; 'divorce. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was employed to test bivariate associations between suicide search activity and official suicide rates from the Office of National Statistics (ONS). Results: Cyclical trends were observed in search activity for suicide and depression-related search activity, with peaks in autumn and winter months, and a trough in summer months. A positive, non-significant association was found between suicide-related search activity and suicide rates in the general working-age population (15-64 years) (ρ = 0.164; P = 0.652). This association is stronger in younger age groups, particularly for those 25-34 years of age (ρ = 0.848; P = 0.002). Conclusions: We give credence to a link between search activity for suicide and suicide rates in the United Kingdom from 2004 to 2013 for high risk sub-populations (i.e. male youth and young professionals). There remains a need for further research on how Google Trends can be used in other areas of disease surveillance and for work to provide greater geographical precision, as well as research on ways of mitigating the risk of internet use leading to suicide ideation in youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microtia, malformation, deformity, and partial or complete loss of the pinna may be due to various congenital or acquired factors. In adult patients, surgical reconstruction of the missing pinna is difficult and the results are often far from satisfactory. An implant-retained auricular prosthesis is a suitable alternative. A retrospective study of eight patients treated with implant-retained auricular prostheses was performed. For each missing pinna, three titanium implants were placed in the temporal bone. After 6 months of osseointegration, the implants were loaded. Four cases were rehabilitated with a magnet-retained prosthesis and the remaining four with a bar and clip retained prosthesis. There were six male and two female patients with an average age of 30.62 years. Seven patients had unilateral absence of the pinna and one had bilateral absence. The loss was due to trauma in four patients and to burn in one patient, and three had congenital absence. A total 27 implants were placed, 12 on the right side and 15 on the left. The average post-rehabilitation follow-up was 21 months. Peri-implant tissue reactions were observed at two sites. The implant-retained auricular prosthesis is an alternative treatment approach with good retention and patient satisfaction. Long-term follow-up is required to assess delayed complications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Most of the structural health monitoring (SHM) methods is either based on vibration-based and contact acoustic emission (AE) techniques. Both vibration-based and acoustic emission techniques require attaching transducers to structure. In many applications, such as those involving hot structural materials for thermal protection purposes or in rotating machines, non-contact measurements would be preferred because the operating environment is prohibitive leading to potential damage in contact sensors or their attachments. In this paper, a new non-contact, acoustic-based damage detection method is proposed and tested with an objective that the proposed method is able to detect the location and extend of damage accurately. The proposed acoustic-based damage detection method is a direct method. In this proposed method, changes in vibro-acoustics flexibility matrices of the damage and health structure are used to predict the location and extend of damage in the structure. A case study involving actual measured date for the case of a fixed–fixed plate structure is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results have shown that the proposed acoustic-based damage detection method can be used to detect the location and extend of the damage accurately. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: All structures exhibit some form of damping, but despite a large literature on the damping, it still remains one of the least well-understood aspects of general vibration analysis. The synthesis of damping in structural systems and machines is extremely important if a model is to be used in predicting vibration levels, transient responses, transmissibility, decay times or other characteristics in design and analysis that are dominated by energy dissipation. In this paper, new structural damping identification method using normal frequency response functions (NFRFs) which are obtained experimentally is proposed and tested with the objective that the damped finite element model is able to predict the measured FRFs accurately. The proposed structural damping identification is a direct method. In the proposed method, normal FRFs are estimated from the complex FRFs, which are obtained experimentally of the structure. The estimated normal FRFs are subsequently used for identification of general structural damping. The effectiveness of the proposed structural damping identification method is demonstrated by two numerical simulated examples and one real experimental data. Firstly, a study is performed using a lumped mass system. The lumped mass system study is followed by case involving numerical simulation of fixed–fixed beam. The effect of coordinate incompleteness and robustness of method under presence of noise is investigated. The performance of the proposed structural damping identification method is investigated for cases of light, medium, heavily and non-proportional damped structures. The numerical studies are followed by a case involving actual measured data for the case of a cantilever beam structure. The results have shown that the proposed damping identification method can be used to derive an accurate general structural damping model of the system. This is illustrated by matching the damped identified FRFs with the experimentally obtained FRFs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: An apparent clinical relationship between pain and depression has long been recognized. Depression and pain are often diagnosed in the same patients. The emerging concept for pain–depression pathogenesis is the dysfunction of biogenic amine-mediated pain–depression control and the possible involvement of nitrodative stress-induced neurogenic inflammation. The present study was designed to investigate the effect of curcumin on reserpine-induced pain–depression dyad in rats. Administration of reserpine (1mg/kg subcutaneous daily for three consecutive days) led to a significant decrease in nociceptive threshold as evident from reduced paw withdrawal threshold in Randall Sellitto and von-Frey hair test as well as significant increase in immobility time in forced swim test. This behavioural deficit was integrated with decrease in the biogenic amine (dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin) levels along with increased substance P concentration, nitrodative stress, inflammatory cytokines, NF-κβ and caspase-3 levels in different brain regions (cortex and hippocampus) of the reserpinised rats. Curcumin (100, 200, 300mg/kg; ip) dose dependently ameliorated the behavioural deficits associated with pain and depression by restoring behavioural, biochemical, neurochemical and molecular alterations against reserpine-induced pain–depression dyad in rats. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Several variables have been proposed to predict the prognosis of patients with Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), but a clinically useful tool to stratify resource utilization has not been determined. Horn's index, a severity score based on underlying clinical illness, reliably predicts patients at high risk of CDI. The purpose of this study was to assess the use of Horn's index to stratify patients with CDI at high risk of poor clinical and economic outcomes. Hospitalized patients diagnosed with CDI were followed prospectively for three months. Horn's index scores were calculated for each patient on the day of the positive toxin test for C. difficile, and used to stratify differences in outcome variables (length of hospital stay, mortality and hospital costs). Eighty-five CDI patients (50% male, 64% Caucasian) were recruited. Discharge mortality was 0% for patients with Horn's index scores of 1 or 2, 5% for those with a score of 3, and 50% for those with a score of 4 (P<0.001). Three-month mortality was 0%, 5%, 17% and 60% for patients with Horn's index scores of 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively (P=0.0004). Median three-month hospital costs were $8585, $12,670, $29,077 and $68,708 for patients with Horn's index scores of 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively (P<0.001). Patients with Horn's index scores of 3 or 4 had a significantly longer hospital stay [mean 33.4 (standard deviation, SD 33.3) days] than patients with scores of 1 or 2 [mean 15.1 (SD 16.2) days, P=0.001]. This study found Horn's index to be a simple and useful method for identifying CDI patients at high risk of poor clinical and economic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, a quaternary policy system towards integrated logistics and inventory aspect of the supply chain has been proposed. A system of multi retailers and distributors, with each distributor following a unique policy, will be analysed. The first policy is continuous time replenishment policy where the retailers’ inventory is replenished in every time interval. In the next three policies, inventory of the retailers will be replenished by some definite policy factors. The vendor managed inventory (VMI) system is used for updating the inventory of the retailers. An order-up-to policy (q, Q) is used for updating the inventory of distributors. Total erstwhile demands to the retailer will be used to determine the amount of inventory acclivity. Furthermore, the distributors will be sending the delivery vehicles to few fellow retailers who are shortlisted according to the policy, followed by the retailers and associated distributors. On the basis of random demand that the retailers are facing from end customers and the total demand that has incurred in the supply chain, products are unloaded to the selected retailers from the delivery vehicle. The path of the delivery vehicle is retrieved by dynamic ant colony optimization. In addition, a framework has been developed to measure the end-customer satisfaction level and total supply chain cost incorporating the inventory holding cost, ordering cost and the transportation cost. The framework has been numerically moulded with different settings to compare the performance of the quadruplet policies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The setting up and on-line operation of a transmission grating spectrograph in the XUV soft X-ray region is described. The detector was a microchannel plate–image intensifier combination, and the output of the image intensifier was coupled to a CCD camera–frame grabber system through an imaging lens. The spectrograph could be operated in the 5–20Å range with 0.6Å spectral resolution and in the 5–50Å range with ∼1Å resolution, respectively. The high sensitivity of the detector enables single shot operation, which is useful for several laser plasma interaction studies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This prospective study examined bacterial colonization on writing pens touched by healthcare professionals and hospitalized patients with and without cleaning the pen with alcohol-based hand sanitizing agent after each patient visit. A significant reduction in potential healthcare-associated pathogens, especially Gram-positive cocci, was observed in the intervention group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Throughout various fields of science and technology, a push towards the use of nanoscale technology is well underway. One area where nanoscale work is already well underway is within the field of drug delivery. Nanoscale devices carrying chemotherapeutic drugs could extravasate from blood vessels and even diffuse through the tissue and enter tumor cells. Drug delivery through nanoparticles presents significant potential advantages over traditional delivery via bolus injection. Drug release kinetics at the tumor site is an important aspect of chemotherapy. In this paper, we have developed a mathematical model that describes the chemotherapy strategies in spherically symmetric tumor. A system of partial differential equations is used to describe the drug concentration in the tumor cell, the cell movement whose divergence defines the local specific mass growth rate and the expression for the radius of the tumor cell. The analytical and numerical techniques are used to illustrate the tumor’s response to various chemotherapeutic strategies (i.e. for 10nm and 100nm) and the analytic expressions are also developed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The increased frequency of high atmospheric temperatures (T a) predicted under current climate change scenarios may adversely impact net ecosystem productivity (NEP) of temperate and boreal conifers. The ability to simulate CO2 and energy exchange under contrasting T a and vapor pressure deficit (D) is therefore an important attribute in models used to predict climate change impacts on conifer NEP. We tested six ecosystem models differing in their approach to the simulation of T a and D effects on CO2 and energy exchange against eddy covariance fluxes recorded under changing T a and D over a temperate Douglas fir stand and a boreal jack pine stand. These stands changed from sinks to sources of CO2 whenever T a and D rose above 25°C and 2.5kPa. The extent to which the models were able to simulate these changes depended on their ability to simulate (1) lower stomatal conductance (g l) and hence earlier midday declines in CO2 influxes under higher D, and (2) rising autotrophic (R a) and heterotrophic (R h) respiration under rising T a. Most of the models in this study accurately simulated the net gain of C by conifers under low T a and D, but underestimated the net loss of C by conifers under high T a and D. This underestimation was attributed to an inadequate sensitivity of g l to D and of R a and R h to temperature in some of the models. Differences in CO2 fluxes modelled at hourly time scales were associated with large differences in annual gross and net primary productivities modelled at annual time scales, indicating the importance of accurately modelling these fluxes. The ability to distinguish among alternative algorithms for their accuracy in calculating CO2 and energy fluxes was often limited by uncertainty in the measurement of these fluxes using eddy covariance, especially when low wind speeds and stable boundary layers reduced atmospheric turbulence. Further progress in model testing will require that this uncertainty be more clearly established and reduced. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Aim: To evaluate the response of locoregional therapy (LRT) on combined hepatocellular-cholangiocarcinoma (cHCC-CC) and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (IHC) and compare their outcomes with propensity matched hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients.Materials and Methods: From January 2011 to July 2020, 13 patients with cHCC-CC (11 men, two women, median age 56 years) and 15 IHC patients (10 men, five women, median age 60 years) were compared with 101 HCC patients (79 men, 22 women, median age 60 years) after LRT. All tumours were proven histologically. Among the 13 cHCC-CC patients, 11 received transarterial chemoembolisation (TACE), one received microwave ablation (MWA) and one received TACE with radiofrequency ablation (RFA). Of 15 IHC patients, eight received TACE, five received RFA, and one received MWA, and one received TACE with RFA. Propensity score matching (PSM) was done with conditional logistic regression adjusted for age, type of LRT, tumour specific features and Child-Pugh score.Results: After LRT, on univariate analysis an objective response was seen in 30% of cHCC-CC and 53% of IHC patients. PSM analysis demonstrated shorter progression-free survival (PFS; cHCC-CC versus HCC: 1.5 versus 7.5 months; IHC versus HCC: 6 versus 14 months, p<0.05), overall survival (OS; cHCC-CC versus HCC: 12 versus 28 months; IHC versus HCC: 18 versus 34 months, p<0.005), and poor objective response (cHCC-CC versus HCC: 25% versus 91%; IHC versus HCC: 58% versus 88%, p<0.05) in cHCC-CC and IHC patients versus HCC patients. Hypovascular tumour, macrovascular invasion, and infiltrative appearance were independent prognostic factors for OS in IHC patients.Conclusion: cHCC-CC and IHC are aggressive tumours with a poor objective response, greater distant progression of the disease and shorter PFS and OS post LRT as compared to HCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our group recently showcased a liquid biopsy assay (uCAPP-Seq) based on the detection of single nucleotide variants (SNVs) in urine cell-free DNA (cfDNA) from patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC). We found that assay positivity corresponded with the presence of residual cancer and a higher risk of disease recurrence despite curative-intent therapy (Chauhan et al., PLOS Medicine, 2021). Here, we explored multimodal urine-based genomics by integrating ultra-low-pass whole genome sequencing (ULP-WGS) and uCAPP-Seq for improving the sensitivity of residual disease detection and survival prediction among MIBC patients. Urine samples from 74 MIBC patients were collected preoperatively on the day of radical cystectomy to assess urine tumor DNA (utDNA). We performed ULP-WGS of urine cfDNA from all 74 patients as well as 15 healthy adults. Tumor fraction (TF) based on genome-wide copy number alterations in urine cfDNA was estimated using ichorCNA. Variant allele frequency (VAF) based on SNVs was estimated by uCAPP-Seq. Pathologic complete response (pCR) was determined by surgical pathology. Multivariate logistic regression and random forest models were utilized to predict disease status based on VAF and TF levels, along with clinical variables (smoking, age, sex, race, and histology). Kaplan-Meier (KM) analysis was used to assess overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS). Mean utDNA VAF and TF levels were both significantly higher in patients without pCR compared to those who achieved pCR (11.9% vs. 4.0% VAF, p=0.044; 12.7% vs. 5.2% TF, p = 0.019) (Table 1). Our multimodal logistic regression model identified utDNA VAF (p < 0.001) and smoking status (p = 0.034) as significant predictors of disease status. Random forest modeling demonstrated that utDNA VAF and TF were both significant predictors. It achieved a sensitivity of 83% and a specificity of 79% for detecting residual disease. Strikingly, among the 15 patients with negative findings by both ULP-WGS and uCAPP-Seq, none experienced cancer progression (median follow-up time = 7.2 months). In contrast, the 59 patients with positive utDNA by ULP-WGS or uCAPP-Seq had significantly worse PFS (median = 6.0 months; HR = 3.54, p = 0.027). Moreover, utDNA positivity trended towards predicting significantly worse OS (HR = 3.43, p = 0.15). Integration of ULP-WGS with uCAPP-Seq enabled robust detection of residual urine tumor DNA with high sensitivity and predicted progression-free survival in muscle-invasive bladder cancer patients. In the future, this type of multimodal urine-based genomic analysis may lead to more precise risk stratification and nonoperative clinical decision-making for muscle-invasive bladder cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]