As we mark 150 years since the birth of Marie Curie, we reflect on the global advances made in radiation oncology and the current status of radiation therapy (RT) research. Large-scale international ...RT clinical trials have been fundamental in driving evidence-based change and have served to improve cancer management and to reduce side effects. Radiation therapy trials have also improved practice by increasing quality assurance and consistency in treatment protocols across multiple centres. This review summarises some of the key RT practice-changing clinical trials over the last two decades, in four common cancer sites for which RT is a crucial component of curative treatment: breast, lung, urological and lower gastro-intestinal cancer. We highlight the global inequality in access to RT, and the work of international organisations, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the European SocieTy for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO), and the United Kingdom National Cancer Research Institute Clinical and Translational Radiotherapy Research Working Group (CTRad), that aim to improve access to RT and facilitate radiation research. We discuss some emerging RT technologies including proton beam therapy and magnetic resonance linear accelerators and predict likely future directions in clinical RT research.
Selecting a subset of relevant properties from a large set of features that describe a dataset is a challenging machine learning task. In biology, for instance, the advances in the available ...technologies enable the generation of a very large number of biomarkers that describe the data. Choosing the more informative markers along with performing a high-accuracy classification over the data can be a daunting task, particularly if the data are high dimensional. An often adopted approach is to formulate the feature selection problem as a biobjective optimization problem, with the aim of maximizing the performance of the data analysis model (the quality of the data training fitting) while minimizing the number of features used.
We propose an optimization approach for the feature selection problem that considers a "chaotic" version of the antlion optimizer method, a nature-inspired algorithm that mimics the hunting mechanism of antlions in nature. The balance between exploration of the search space and exploitation of the best solutions is a challenge in multi-objective optimization. The exploration/exploitation rate is controlled by the parameter I that limits the random walk range of the ants/prey. This variable is increased iteratively in a quasi-linear manner to decrease the exploration rate as the optimization progresses. The quasi-linear decrease in the variable I may lead to immature convergence in some cases and trapping in local minima in other cases. The chaotic system proposed here attempts to improve the tradeoff between exploration and exploitation. The methodology is evaluated using different chaotic maps on a number of feature selection datasets. To ensure generality, we used ten biological datasets, but we also used other types of data from various sources. The results are compared with the particle swarm optimizer and with genetic algorithm variants for feature selection using a set of quality metrics.
There is a major debate in the theory of mind (ToM) field, concerning whether spontaneous and explicit ToM are based on the same or two distinct cognitive systems. While extensive research on the ...neural correlates of explicit ToM has demonstrated involvement of the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), few studies investigated spontaneous ToM, leaving some open questions. Here, we implemented a multi-study approach by pooling data from three fMRI studies to obtain a larger sample to increase power and sensitivity to better define the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying spontaneous ToM. Participants watched videos in which an agent acquires a true or false belief about the location of a ball. Thus, the belief of the agent and that of the participant could either match or differ. Importantly, participants were never asked to consider the belief of the agent and were only instructed to press a button when they detected the presence of the ball after an occluder fell at the end of each video. By analysing the blood-oxygen level dependent signal during the belief formation phase for false versus true beliefs, we found a cluster of activation in the right, and to a lesser extent, left posterior parietal cortex spanning the TPJ, but no mPFC activation. Region of interest (ROI) analysis on bilateral TPJ and mPFC confirmed these results and added evidence to the asymmetry in laterality of the TPJ in spontaneous ToM. Interestingly, the whole brain analysis, supported by an overlap with brain maps, revealed maximum activation in areas involved in visuospatial working memory and attention switching functions, such as the supramarginal gyrus, the middle temporal gyrus, and the inferior frontal gyrus. By contrast, evidence for the presence of brain-behaviour correlations was mixed and there was no evidence for functional connectivity between the TPJ and mPFC. Taken together, these findings help clarifying the brain system supporting spontaneous ToM.
•Mechanisms underlying spontaneous theory of mind (ToM) still unclear.•Few spontaneous fMRI ToM studies exist, all with small participant numbers.•Multi-study analysis confirmed involvement of TPJ, but absence of mPFC during ToM.•Right TPJ more strongly activated than left TPJ.•Neurosynth map comparison suggested variety of higher-order cognitive functions.
To understand the structure and function of large molecular machines, accurate knowledge of their stoichiometry is essential. In this study, we developed an integrated targeted proteomics and ...super‐resolution microscopy approach to determine the absolute stoichiometry of the human nuclear pore complex (NPC), possibly the largest eukaryotic protein complex. We show that the human NPC has a previously unanticipated stoichiometry that varies across cancer cell types, tissues and in disease. Using large‐scale proteomics, we provide evidence that more than one third of the known, well‐defined nuclear protein complexes display a similar cell type‐specific variation of their subunit stoichiometry. Our data point to compositional rearrangement as a widespread mechanism for adapting the functions of molecular machines toward cell type‐specific constraints and context‐dependent needs, and highlight the need of deeper investigation of such structural variants.
The stoichiometry of the human nuclear pore complex is revealed by targeted mass spectrometry and super‐resolution microscopy. The analysis reveals that the composition of the nuclear pore and other nuclear protein complexes is remodeled as a function of the cell type.
Synopsis
The stoichiometry of the human nuclear pore complex is revealed by targeted mass spectrometry and super‐resolution microscopy. The analysis reveals that the composition of the nuclear pore and other nuclear protein complexes is remodeled as a function of the cell type.
The human NPC has a previously unanticipated stoichiometry that varies across cell types.
Primarily functional Nups are dynamic, while the NPC scaffold is static.
Stoichiometries of many complexes are fine‐tuned toward cell type‐specific needs.
French-Polish physicist Marie Sklodowska-Curie is featured. She attended local schools and received some scientific training from her father, a physics and mathematics teacher. She began her studies ...at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1891, where she earned credentials in both physics and mathematical sciences. In 1894 she met Professor of Physics Pierre Curie; the two were married a year later and had two daughters, Irene and Eve.
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