ALDH2 Genotype Has No Effect on Salivary Acetaldehyde without the Presence of Ethanol in the Systemic Circulation

Peer reviewe

ELSMOR – towards European Licensing of Small Modular Reactors: Methodology recommendations for light-water small modular reactors safety assessment

Decarbonization of energy production is key in today’s societies and nuclear energy holds an essential place in this prospect. Besides heavy-duty electricity production, other industrial and communal needs could be served by integrating novel nuclear energy production systems, among which are low-power nuclear devices, like small modular reactors (SMRs). The ELSMOR (towards European Licensing of Small Modular Reactors) European project addresses this topic as an answer to the Horizon 2020 Euratom NFRP-2018-3 call. The consortium includes 15 partners from eight European countries, involving research institutes, major European nuclear companies and technical support organizations. The 3.5-year project, launched in September 2019, investigates selected safety features of light-water (LW) SMRs with focus on licensing aspects. Providing a comprehensive compliance framework that regulators can adopt and operate, the licensing process of such SMRs could be optimized, helping their deployment. In this prospect, as a result of ELSMOR’s work, this article gives an overview of the specific issues that LW-SMRs may bring about in the different domains of nuclear safety, in terms of: Methodological standpoints: safety goals, safety requirements, safety principles (defence-in-depth implementation); Main safety functions of reactivity control, decay heat removal and confinement management; Severe accident management; Other safety issues particular to SMRs: use of shared systems; performing of multi-unit probabilistic safety assessment (PSA); refuelling, spent fuel management, transport and disposal management. In this article, adequate methodologies are developed to deal with these issues and to help assess the safety of LW-SMRs. This work gives a precious synthesis of the safety assessment issues of LW-SMRs and of the associated methodologies developed in the context of the ELSMOR European project. The removal of fossil fuels in energy production is very important in today’s societies and nuclear energy plays an essential role in this. Besides large-scale electricity production, other industrial and communal needs could be solved by using new nuclear energy production systems, among which are low-power nuclear devices, like small modular reactors (SMRs). The ELSMOR (towards European Licensing of Small Modular Reactors) European project looks at this topic as an answer to the Horizon 2020 Euratom NFRP-2018-3 initiative. This project includes 15 partners from eight European countries, involving research institutes, major European nuclear companies and technical support organizations. The 3.5-year project, started in September 2019, investigates selected safety features of light-water (LW) SMRs with a focus on the licensing aspects. Providing a comprehensive compliance framework that regulators can use and operate, the licensing process of such SMRs could be optimized, helping their deployment. With this prospect, this article gives an overview of the specific subjects that LW-SMRs may bring in the different areas of nuclear safety (in particular: safety goals, safety requirements, nuclear safety functions: reactivity control, decay heat removal and confinement management, etc..). In this article, methods are developed to deal with these new subjects and to help assess the safety of LW-SMRs. This work gives an overview of the safety assessment issues of LW-SMRs and of the associated methods developed in the context of the ELSMOR European project

The impact of surgical delay on resectability of colorectal cancer: An international prospective cohort study

AIM: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to explore the impact of surgical delays on cancer resectability. This study aimed to compare resectability for colorectal cancer patients undergoing delayed versus non-delayed surgery. METHODS: This was an international prospective cohort study of consecutive colorectal cancer patients with a decision for curative surgery (January-April 2020). Surgical delay was defined as an operation taking place more than 4 weeks after treatment decision, in a patient who did not receive neoadjuvant therapy. A subgroup analysis explored the effects of delay in elective patients only. The impact of longer delays was explored in a sensitivity analysis. The primary outcome was complete resection, defined as curative resection with an R0 margin. RESULTS: Overall, 5453 patients from 304 hospitals in 47 countries were included, of whom 6.6% (358/5453) did not receive their planned operation. Of the 4304 operated patients without neoadjuvant therapy, 40.5% (1744/4304) were delayed beyond 4 weeks. Delayed patients were more likely to be older, men, more comorbid, have higher body mass index and have rectal cancer and early stage disease. Delayed patients had higher unadjusted rates of complete resection (93.7% vs. 91.9%, P = 0.032) and lower rates of emergency surgery (4.5% vs. 22.5%, P < 0.001). After adjustment, delay was not associated with a lower rate of complete resection (OR 1.18, 95% CI 0.90-1.55, P = 0.224), which was consistent in elective patients only (OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.69-1.27, P = 0.672). Longer delays were not associated with poorer outcomes. CONCLUSION: One in 15 colorectal cancer patients did not receive their planned operation during the first wave of COVID-19. Surgical delay did not appear to compromise resectability, raising the hypothesis that any reduction in long-term survival attributable to delays is likely to be due to micro-metastatic disease

Gel electrophoresis of digested ALDH2 fragments.

<p>Lane 21 is a positive PCR control, lane 20 is a negative control. Lanes 2, 4-6, 13, 16 and 19 are <i>ALDH2*1/*2</i>. Lanes 1, 3, 7-12, 14-15 and 17 are <i>ALDH2*1/*1</i>. Lane 18 is unspecified.</p

Mean salivary acetaldehyde concentration before and after ethanol exposure according to genotype group.

<p><i>ALDH2*1</i> group: <i>ALDH2*1/*1</i> (n=11). <i>ALDH2*2</i> group: <i>ALDH2*1/*2</i> (n=5) and <i>ALDH2*2/*2</i> (n=1).</p

Evidence for similar structural brain anomalies in youth and adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a machine learning analysis

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) affects 5% of children world-wide. Of these, two-thirds continue to have impairing symptoms of ADHD into adulthood. Although a large literature implicates structural brain differences of the disorder, it is not clear if adults with ADHD have similar neuroanatomical differences as those seen in children with recent reports from the large ENIGMA-ADHD consortium finding structural differences for children but not for adults. This paper uses deep learning neural network classification models to determine if there are neuroanatomical changes in the brains of children with ADHD that are also observed for adult ADHD, and vice versa. We found that structural MRI data can significantly separate ADHD from control participants for both children and adults. Consistent with the prior reports from ENIGMA-ADHD, prediction performance and effect sizes were better for the child than the adult samples. The model trained on adult samples significantly predicted ADHD in the child sample, suggesting that our model learned anatomical features that are common to ADHD in childhood and adulthood. These results support the continuity of ADHD’s brain differences from childhood to adulthood. In addition, our work demonstrates a novel use of neural network classification models to test hypotheses about developmental continuity.publishedVersio