Cancer is a worldwide pandemic. The burden it imposes grows steadily on a global scale causing emotional, physical, and financial strains on individuals, families, and health care systems. Despite ...being the second leading cause of death worldwide, many cancers do not have screening programs and many people with a high risk of developing cancer fail to follow the advised medical screening regime due to the nature of the available screening tests and other challenges with compliance. Moreover, many liquid biopsy strategies being developed for early detection of cancer lack the sensitivity required to detect early-stage cancers. Early detection is key for improved quality of life, survival, and to reduce the financial burden of cancer treatments which are greater at later stage detection. This review examines the current liquid biopsy market, focusing in particular on the strengths and drawbacks of techniques in achieving early cancer detection. We explore the clinical utility of liquid biopsy technologies for the earlier detection of solid cancers, with a focus on how a combination of various spectroscopic and -omic methodologies may pave the way for more efficient cancer diagnostics.
Background/ObjectivesFunctional neurological disorder (FND) is a common, disabling, and usually chronic neurological condition. After a long period of neglect, research interest in the area has grown ...rapidly in recent years. People with FND (pwFND) often express interest in enrolling in any research studies on the condition, and recruitment is frequently a rate limiting factor in studies.The traditional method of recruiting for studies: advertising and relying on prospective participants to make contact, is imperfect. It puts an onus on patients to monitor multiple sources for notification of new studies, meaning that people who might have enrolled in a study may not find out about it, or enrol later than they otherwise might have. Research recruitment databases have been shown to reduce this problem in other conditions.MethodsWe established a research recruitment database, FND Research Connect (www.fnd-research.org) where pwFND can prospectively register to be contacted about studies for which they meet inclusion criteria, and to have the information they provide for screening purposes used in an anonymised form for epidemiological research.ResultsOn a ‘soft’ initial release to Australia only, 284 pwFND enrolled for the database in the first month. One study is already being prepared for publication using data from the database. Worldwide release is planned for early March 2024.Conclusion/DiscussionFND Research Connect appears to provide a meaningful increase in the ease with which pwFND can find studies, and FND researchers can recruit for studies.
We introduce a new capability of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to provide event-level data from the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) on demand in response to transients detected by other instruments. ...We show that the availability of these data can effectively increase the rate of detections and arcminute localizations of gamma-ray bursts (GRB) like GRB 170817 by >400%. We describe an autonomous spacecraft-commanding pipeline purpose built to enable this science; to our knowledge, this is the first fully autonomous extremely low-latency commanding of a space telescope for scientific purposes. This pipeline has been successfully run in its complete form since 2020 January, and has resulted in the recovery of BAT event data for >800 externally triggered events to date (gravitational waves, GWs; neutrinos; GRBs triggered by other facilities; fast radio bursts; and very high-energy detections), now running with a success rate of ∼90%. We exemplify the utility of this new capability by using the resultant data to (1) set the most sensitive upper limits on prompt 1 s duration short GRB-like emission within 15 s around the unmodeled GW burst candidate S200114f, and (2) provide an arcminute localization for short GRB 200325A and other bursts. We also show that using data from GUANO to localize GRBs discovered by other instruments, we can increase the net rate of arcminute-localized GRBs by 10%-20% per year. Along with the scientific yield of more sensitive searches for subthreshold GRBs, the new capabilities designed for this project will serve as the foundation for further automation and rapid target of opportunity capabilities for the Swift mission, and have implications for the design of future rapid-response space telescopes.
In January 1995, fighting broke out between Ecuadorian and Peruvian military forces in a remote section of the Amazon. It took more than three years and the interplay of multiple actors and factors ...to achieve a definitive peace agreement, thus ending what had been the region's oldest unresolved border dispute. This conflict and its resolution provide insights about other unresolved and/or disputed land and sea boundaries which involve almost every country in the Western Hemisphere.
Drawing on extensive field research at the time of the dispute and during its aftermath, including interviews with high-ranking diplomats and military officials,Power, Institutions, and Leadership in War and Peaceis the first book-length study to relate this complex border dispute and its resolution to broader theories of conflict. The findings emphasize an emerging leadership approach in which individuals are not mere captives of power and institutions. In addition, the authors illuminate an overlap in national and international arenas in shaping effective articulation, perception, and selection of policy.
In the "new" democratic Latin America that emerged in the late 1970s through the early 1990s, historical memory remains influential in shaping the context of disputes, in spite of presumed U.S. post-Cold War influence. This study offers important, broader perspectives on a hemisphere still rife with boundary disputes as a rising number of people and products (including arms) pass through these borderlands.
spp. in the vaginal microbiome are associated with bacterial vaginosis, in which a lactobacillus-dominated community is replaced with mixed bacteria, including
species. Co-occurrence of multiple
...species in the vaginal environment is common, but different species are dominant in different women. Competition for nutrients, including glycogen, could play an important role in determining the microbial community structure. Digestion of glycogen into products that can be taken up and further processed by bacteria requires the combined activities of several enzymes collectively known as amylases, which belong to glycoside hydrolase family 13 (GH13) within the CAZy classification system. GH13 is a large and diverse family of proteins, making prediction of their activities challenging. SACCHARIS annotation of the GH13 family in
resulted in identification of protein domains belonging to eight subfamilies. Phylogenetic analysis of predicted amylase sequences from 26 genomes demonstrated that a putative α-glucosidase-encoding sequence, CG400_06090, was conserved in all
spp. The predicted α-glucosidase enzyme was expressed, purified, and functionally characterized. The enzyme was active on a variety of maltooligosaccharides with maximum activity at pH 7.
,
, and
values for the substrate 4-nitrophenyl α-d-glucopyranoside were 8.3 μM, 0.96 min
, and 0.11 μM
min
, respectively. Glucose was released from maltose, maltotriose, maltotetraose, and maltopentaose, but no products were detected when the enzyme was incubated with glycogen. Our findings show that
spp. produce an α-glucosidase enzyme that may contribute to the multistep process of glycogen metabolism by releasing glucose from maltooligosaccharides.
Increased abundance of
spp. is a diagnostic characteristic of bacterial vaginosis, an imbalance in the human vaginal microbiome associated with troubling symptoms, and negative reproductive health outcomes, including increased transmission of sexually transmitted infections and preterm birth. Competition for nutrients is likely an important factor in causing dramatic shifts in the vaginal microbial community but little is known about the contribution of bacterial enzymes to the metabolism of glycogen, a major carbon source available to vaginal bacteria. The significance of our research is characterizing the activity of an enzyme conserved in
species that likely contributes to the ability of these bacteria to utilize glycogen.
This paper conceptualizes 'neo-socialist governmentality' as a set of rationalities of governance that aim to shape, nurture, constrain and guide the autonomy of Chinese subjects in the ...post-revolutionary era. Contrasting neo-liberal and neo-socialist governmentalities, we outline the mechanisms of translation and coordination that open, appropriate and restrain spaces for the pluralistic problematization of concerns for the self, culture and society. Focusing on the discourses and institutions of 'constructing spiritual civilization' and drawing on research conducted among a range of voluntary groups, we highlight the productive tensions inherent to the neo-socialist aim of fusing the centrifugal forces of socialist, market and Chinese civilizational subjectivities and authorities. Our case points to the value of theorizing distinct forms of governmentality associated with different historical trajectories and socio-political systems.
'Situational interest' is a short-term form of motivation which occurs when a specific situation stimulates the focused attention of students (e.g., a spectacular science demonstration could arouse ...transient interest amongst nearly all the students in a class, even those who are not normally interested in science). However, there have been very few studies of situational interest and its potential to motivate students in science classrooms. This project investigated situational interest and its sources. Small groups of grade 9 students participated in a science lesson which focused on inquiry skills, and data were obtained on their interest levels and sources of interest. The results indicated that interest arousal was substantial but did fluctuate throughout the lesson, according to the types of activities in which students were involved. The main source of interest was novelty, although choice, physical activity, and social involvement were also implicated. Author abstract
ABSTRACT To date, the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) onboard Swift has detected ∼1000 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), of which ∼360 GRBs have redshift measurements, ranging from z = 0.03 to z = 9.38. We ...present the analyses of the BAT-detected GRBs for the past ∼11 years up through GRB 151027B. We report summaries of both the temporal and spectral analyses of the GRB characteristics using event data (i.e., data for each photon within approximately 250 s before and 950 s after the BAT trigger time), and discuss the instrumental sensitivity and selection effects of GRB detections. We also explore the GRB properties with redshift when possible. The result summaries and data products are available at http://swift.gsfc.nasa.gov/results/batgrbcat/index.html. In addition, we perform searches for GRB emissions before or after the event data using the BAT survey data. We estimate the false detection rate to be only one false detection in this sample. There are 15 ultra-long GRBs (∼2% of the BAT GRBs) in this search with confirmed emission beyond ∼1000 s of event data, and only two GRBs (GRB 100316D and GRB 101024A) with detections in the survey data prior to the starting of event data.
PDF
