Transmembrane tyrosine‐kinase Ephrin receptors promote tumor progression and/or metastasis of several malignancies including leukemia, follicular lymphoma, glioma, malignant pleural mesothelioma, ...papillary thyroid carcinoma, sarcomas and ovarian, breast, bladder and non‐small cell lung cancers. They also drive intestinal stem cell proliferation and positioning, control intestinal tissue boundaries and are involved in liver, pancreatic and colorectal cancers, indicating involvement in additional digestive system malignancies. We investigated the role of Ephrin‐B4 receptor (EPHB4), and its ligand EFNB2, in gastric and gastroesophageal junction cancers in patient cohorts through computational, mathematical, molecular and immunohistochemical analyses. We show that EPHB4 is upregulated in preneoplastic gastroesophageal lesions and its expression further increased in gastroesophageal cancers in several independent cohorts. The closely related EPHB6 receptor, which also binds EFNB2, was downregulated in all tested cohorts, consistent with its tumor‐suppressive properties in other cancers. EFNB2 expression is induced in esophageal cells by acidity, suggesting that gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) may constitute an early triggering event in activating EFNB2–EPHB4 signaling. Association of EPHB4 to both Barrett's esophagus and to advanced tumor stages, and its overexpression at the tumor invasion front and vascular endothelial cells intimate the notion that EPHB4 may be associated with multiple steps of gastroesophageal tumorigenesis. Analysis of oncogenomic signatures uncovered the first EPHB4‐associated gene network (false discovery rate: 7 × 10−90) composed of a five‐transcription factor interconnected gene network that drives proliferation, angiogenesis and invasiveness. The EPHB4 oncogenomic network provides a molecular basis for its role in tumor progression and points to EPHB4 as a potential tumor aggressiveness biomarker and drug target in gastroesophageal cancers.
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Gastroesophageal cancers rank second in the world among leading causes of death from cancer, with fewer than 30 percent of patients surviving beyond 5 years of diagnosis. Although the aggressive nature of these diseases is largely to blame for those figures, a lack of effective targeted treatment options has also played a role. The present study could help reverse that trend by identifying the tyrosine kinase ephrin‐B4 receptor (EPHB4) and its associated transcriptional gene network as potential therapeutic targets in gastroesophageal cancer. The findings warrant clinical investigation of small‐molecule EPHB4 inhibitors for gastroesophageal cancer.
Ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) gene mutations may confer increased sensitivity to ionizing radiation and increased risk of late toxicity for cancer patients. We present the case of a 55-year-old ...female treated with adjuvant breast and regional nodal radiation following lumpectomy and axillary lymph node dissection for stage II invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast. She developed severe telangiectasia, fibrosis, induration, chest wall pain (with evidence of rib fractures on imaging), and painful limitation in her range of motion at the shoulder. She was subsequently found to have a likely pathogenic germline ATM gene mutation. At relapse, she elected to pursue systemic therapy alone for intracranial metastases.
ABSTRACT Objective: to describe the aspects that facilitate and hinder the work of nursing professionals regarding the humanized care in an intensive care unit in Angola. Method: descriptive, ...qualitative research, conducted in an Intensive Care Unit of a general hospital in Huambo, Angola, Africa, with 15 nursing professionals, in 2020, through semi-structured interviews. The Collective Subject Discourse to analyze the data was used; and to organize the data, the QualiquantiSoft software was used. Results: five central ideas emerged from the statements: two involving the facilitating factors; and three involving the difficulties in providing humanized care. The facilitating factors refer to the involvement of the multidisciplinary healthcare team and the interpersonal relationships of the nursing team. The hindering factors are linked to the lack of material resources, equipment, and supplies; the scarcity of human resources; and the poor specialized skills of the nursing team. Conclusion: when referring to the humanization of nursing care, its facilitating factors are linked to behavior and professional relationships, while the difficulties, for the most part, involve management aspects that are not under the professionals’ responsibility, thus requiring attention from the managers of the institution.
RESUMO Objetivo: descrever as facilidades e dificuldades dos profissionais de enfermagem no cuidado humanizado em terapia intensiva em Angola. Método: pesquisa descritiva, qualitativa, realizada em Unidade de Terapia Intensiva de um hospital geral de Huambo, Angola, África, com 15 profissionais de enfermagem, no ano de 2020, por meio de entrevista semiestruturada. Utilizou-se o Discurso do Sujeito Coletivo para análise dos dados; e para a organização, o software QualiquantiSoft. Resultados: emergiram dos depoimentos cinco ideias centrais: duas envolvendo as facilidades; e três, as dificuldades em oferecer um cuidado humanizado. As facilidades referem-se ao envolvimento da equipe multiprofissional no cuidado e às relações interpessoais da equipe de enfermagem. As dificuldades estão atreladas à falta de recursos materiais, equipamentos e insumos; recursos humanos escassos e pouco preparo especializado da equipe de enfermagem. Conclusão: na humanização dos cuidados de enfermagem, as facilidades estão relacionadas ao comportamento e relações profissionais, enquanto as dificuldades, na sua maioria, envolvem aspectos de gestão que não estão sob a governabilidade dos profissionais, requerendo atenção dos gestores da instituição.
RESUMEN Objetivo: describir las facilidades y dificultades de los profesionales de enfermería en la atención humanizada en cuidados intensivos en Angola. Métodos: investigación descriptiva, cualitativa, realizada en la Unidad de Cuidados Intensivos de un hospital general de Huambo, Angola, África, con 15 profesionales de enfermería en 2020, mediante entrevistas semiestructuradas. Se utilizó el Discurso Sujeto Colectivo para el análisis de los datos y el software QualiquantiSoft para su organización. Resultados: de los enunciados se desprenden cinco ideas centrales: dos se refieren a las facilidades y tres a las dificultades para ofrecer cuidados humanizados. Las facilidades se refieren a la implicación del equipo multiprofesional en los cuidados y a las relaciones interpersonales del equipo de enfermería. Las dificultades están relacionadas con la falta de recursos materiales, equipos y suministros; los escasos recursos humanos; y la falta de formación especializada del equipo de enfermería. Conclusión: en la humanización de los cuidados de enfermería, las facilidades están relacionadas con el comportamiento y las relaciones profesionales, mientras que las dificultades involucran, en su mayoría, aspectos de gestión que no están bajo el control de los profesionales, requiriendo la atención de los gestores de la institución.
Chip-Multiprocessors are going to support massive parallelism by many additional physical and logical cores. Improving performance can no longer be obtained by increasing clock-frequency because the ...technical limits are almost reached. Instead, parallel execution must be used to gain performance. Resources like main memory, the cache hierarchy, bandwidth of the memory bus or links between cores and sockets are not going to be improved as fast. Hence, parallelism can only result into performance gains if the memory usage is optimized and the communication between threads is minimized. Besides concurrent programming has become a domain for experts. Implementing multi-threading is error prone and labor-intensive. A full reimplementation of the whole AliRoot source-code is unaffordable. This paper describes the effort to evaluate the adaption of AliRoot to the needs of multi-threading and to provide the capability of parallel processing by using a semi-automatic source-to-source transformation to address the problems as described before and to provide a straight-forward way of parallelization with almost no interference between threads. This makes the approach simple and reduces the required manual changes in the code. In a first step, unconditional thread-safety will be introduced to bring the original sequential and thread unaware source-code into the position of utilizing multi-threading. Afterwards further investigations have to be performed to point out candidates of classes that are useful to share amongst threads. Then in a second step, the transformation has to change the code to share these classes and finally to verify if there are anymore invalid interferences between threads.
AbstractBackgroundPrevious outcome studies in open tibial fractures have commonly assessed young patients and there is a paucity of data regarding outcomes in the elderly. The aim of this study is to ...assess functional outcomes for patients over 75 years with Gustilo-Anderson Grade III open tibial fractures, including mobility and residential status. MethodsOutcomes for all patients over 75 years admitted with grade III open tibial fractures to a UK level 1 trauma centre during a 5-year period (January 2010–May 2015) were analysed. Long-term follow up of surviving patients (median 44 months post injury) was undertaken in February 2016. ResultsTwenty-nine patients (24 female, 5 male - median 85 years) were included. Prior to injury 48% (n = 14) patients were independently mobile and 45% (n = 13) were living at home without care. Two-thirds of injuries were low energy; all patients sustained a grade III open tibial fracture. The 12-month mortality rate was 28% (n = 8) and mortality at long-term follow-up 48% (n = 14). From pre-injury to long-term 8% (n = 1) patients did not change mobility status, 75% (n = 9) reduced by one grade (e.g. independent to walking aid) and 16% (n = 2) by two grades. Fifty eight percent (n = 7) of patients retained residential status, 17% (n = 2) reduced by one grade and 25% (n = 3) by two grades. ConclusionGrade III open tibial fractures are a significant injury in the elderly associated with poor outcomes with respect to return to mobility and pre-injury residential status. Our results suggest that a greater emphasis on intensive rehabilitation should be considered in this patient group.
We report the growth of erbium monoantimonide (ErSb) thin films on indium antimonide (100) substrates by low-pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. The growth rate of ErSb thin films shows ...strong dependency on the growth temperature and the Sb/Er precursor molar flow rate ratio. Scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy, and x-ray diffractometry (XRD) were employed to study the ErSb thin films grown under the growth conditions that gave the maximum growth rate in the range we investigated. We also report the growth of two types of nanocomposites in which ErSb nanocolumns or nanoslabs with lengths ~500 nm and diameters 20 nm to 30 nm are embedded in Zn-doped InGaSb (ErSb/InGaSb:Zn) and ErSb nanoparticles with diameters of ~30 nm are embedded in Zn-doped InSbAs (ErSb/InSbAs:Zn). These nanocomposites were intended to increase phonon scattering in a mid-to-long phonon wavelength range to reduce lattice thermal conductivity. We used time-domain thermoreflectance to measure total thermal conductivity for the two types of nanocomposites, obtaining 4.0 ± 0.6 W/mK and 6.7 ± 0.8 W/mK for the ErSb/InAsSb:Zn and ErSb/InGaSb:Zn nanocomposites, respectively, which suggests that the thermal conductivity was close to or slightly smaller than the alloy limit of the two ternary alloy hosts. The two nanocomposites were further studied by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to reveal their microscopic features and by XRD to assess their crystalline structures.
We present a novel ion beam analysis technique combining Rutherford forward scattering and elastic recoil detection (RFSERD) and demonstrate its ability to increase efficiency in determining ...stoichiometry in ultrathin (5–50nm) films as compared to Rutherford backscattering. In the conventional forward geometries, scattering from the substrate overwhelms the signal from light atoms but in RFSERD, scattered ions from the substrate are ranged out while forward scattered ions and recoiled atoms from the thin film are simultaneously detected in a single detector. The technique is applied to tantalum oxide memristors but can be extended to a wide range of materials systems.
The use of microalgae in biological wastewater treatment has been widely studied. However, there is a dearth of information about estimating the microalgae and bacteria concentrations. In order to ...maintain a stable algal-bacterial system, it is necessary to quantify both the algal and bacterial biomasses. Typically, microalgae and bacteria from flocs in activated sludge contribute to better biomass settleability. However, flocs cause problems when it comes to estimating the individual biomass concentrations of microalgae and bacteria in a symbiotic algae-bacteria aggregate. This study aimed to find the best disintegration treatment with low influence on the viability of the microalgal cell determined by its photosynthetic activity. In the present work, biological (enzyme solution), chemical (formaldehyde), mechanical (glass bead-beating), and physical (sonication) treatments were performed on microalgae–bacteria flocs (ALBA flocs) to disintegrate the community as a pre-treatment step in order to develop a method for estimating the algal and bacterial concentration and to quantify the degree of disintegration. The effectiveness of the methods to disintegrate ALBA flocs in descending order are the following: sonication, bead-beating, formaldehyde and enzyme application. Sonication treatment (40 W, 6 min) showed the best disintegration performance of the microalgal-bacterial flocs, up to 90 % with 17 % loss of the algal photosynthetic activity. Bead-beating (3 mm diameter, 80 s) achieved 80 % of disintegration with only 6 % loss of its photosynthetic activity. These results demonstrate the possibility of mild disintegration of compact ALBA flocs without having any adverse impact on the microalgae cell. After these treatments, it becomes possible to estimate the individual biomass concentrations of algae and bacteria manually such as with a cell-counting chamber.
The steady‐state solution of filamentary memristive switching is derived directly from the heat equation, modelling vertical and radial heat flow, as demonstrated by P. R. Mickel, and co‐workers on ...page 4486. This solution is shown to provide a continuous and accurate description of the evolution of the filament radius, composition, heat flow, and temperature during switching and is demonstrated to apply to a large range of switching materials and experimental time‐scales.
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