Conventional CT and PET/CT imaging in the evaluation and management of subsolid pulmonary nodules: an overview of the literature and author recommendations

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The Effects of Motivational Reward on the Pathological Attentional Blink following Right Hemisphere Stroke

Recent work has shown that attentional deficits following stroke can be modulated by motivational stimulation, particularly anticipated monetary reward. Here we examined the effects of anticipated reward on the pathological attentional blink (AB), an index of temporal selective attention, which is prolonged in patients with right hemisphere damage and a history of left neglect. We specifically compared the effects of reward versus feedback-without-reward on the AB in 17 patients. We found that the patients all manifested impaired performance compared to healthy controls and that reward modulated the pathological blink in the patient group, but only in the second experimental session. When the performance of patients whose neglect had recovered was compared with that of patients who had ongoing or persistent neglect, reward appeared to only influence the AB in the former. These results have implications for our understanding of motivation-attention interactions following right hemisphere stroke, and how they may impact upon recovery from spatial neglect

PET/CT in treatment response assessment in lung cancer. When should it be recommended?

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common type of lung cancer. Different treatment options are now possible both for surgical candidates and for those NSCLC patients deemed not suitable for surgery. Despite the treatments available, only a limited number of less advanced stages are potentially curable, with many patients suffering local recurrence or distant metastases. FDG-PET/CT is commonly used in many centers for post-treatment evaluation, follow-up, or surveillance; Nonetheless, there is no clear consensus regarding the indications in these cases. Based upon the results of a literature review and local expertise from a large lung cancer unit, we built clinical evidence-based recommendations for the use of FDG-PET/CT in response assessment. We found that in general this is not recommended earlier than 3 months from treatment; however, as described in detail the correct timing will also depend upon the type of treatment used. We also present a structured approach to assessing treatment changes when reporting FDG-PET/CT, using visual or quantitative approaches

Advances in Animal Models and Cutting-Edge Research in Alternatives: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on 3Rs Research and Progress, Vishakhapatnam, 2022.

Animal experimentation has been integral to drug discovery and development and safety assessment for many years, since it provides insights into the mechanisms of drug efficacy and toxicity (e.g. pharmacology, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics). However, due to species differences in physiology, metabolism and sensitivity to drugs, the animal models can often fail to replicate the effects of drugs and chemicals in human patients, workers and consumers. Researchers across the globe are increasingly applying the Three Rs principles by employing innovative methods in research and testing. The Three Rs concept focuses on: the replacement of animal models (e.g. with in vitro and in silico models or human studies), on the reduction of the number of animals required to achieve research objectives, and on the refinement of existing experimental practices (e.g. eliminating distress and enhancing animal wellbeing). For the last two years, Oncoseek Bio-Acasta Health, a 3-D cell culture-based cutting-edge translational biotechnology company, has organised an annual International Conference on 3Rs Research and Progress. This series of global conferences aims to bring together researchers with diverse expertise and interests, and provides a platform where they can share and discuss their research to promote practices according to the Three Rs principles. In November 2022, the 3rd international conference, Advances in Animal Models and Cutting-Edge Research in Al- ternatives, took place at the GITAM University in Vishakhapatnam (AP, India) in a hybrid format (i.e. online and in- person). These conference proceedings provide details of the presentations, which were categorised under five different topic sessions. It also describes a special interactive session on in silico strategies for preclinical research in oncology, which was held at the end of the first day

Coronal Heating as Determined by the Solar Flare Frequency Distribution Obtained by Aggregating Case Studies

Flare frequency distributions represent a key approach to addressing one of the largest problems in solar and stellar physics: determining the mechanism that counter-intuitively heats coronae to temperatures that are orders of magnitude hotter than the corresponding photospheres. It is widely accepted that the magnetic field is responsible for the heating, but there are two competing mechanisms that could explain it: nanoflares or Alfv\'en waves. To date, neither can be directly observed. Nanoflares are, by definition, extremely small, but their aggregate energy release could represent a substantial heating mechanism, presuming they are sufficiently abundant. One way to test this presumption is via the flare frequency distribution, which describes how often flares of various energies occur. If the slope of the power law fitting the flare frequency distribution is above a critical threshold, $\alpha=2$ as established in prior literature, then there should be a sufficient abundance of nanoflares to explain coronal heating. We performed $>$600 case studies of solar flares, made possible by an unprecedented number of data analysts via three semesters of an undergraduate physics laboratory course. This allowed us to include two crucial, but nontrivial, analysis methods: pre-flare baseline subtraction and computation of the flare energy, which requires determining flare start and stop times. We aggregated the results of these analyses into a statistical study to determine that $\alpha = 1.63 \pm 0.03$. This is below the critical threshold, suggesting that Alfv\'en waves are an important driver of coronal heating.Comment: 1,002 authors, 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, published by The Astrophysical Journal on 2023-05-09, volume 948, page 7

Evaluation of a quality improvement intervention to reduce anastomotic leak following right colectomy (EAGLE): pragmatic, batched stepped-wedge, cluster-randomized trial in 64 countries

Background Anastomotic leak affects 8 per cent of patients after right colectomy with a 10-fold increased risk of postoperative death. The EAGLE study aimed to develop and test whether an international, standardized quality improvement intervention could reduce anastomotic leaks. Methods The internationally intended protocol, iteratively co-developed by a multistage Delphi process, comprised an online educational module introducing risk stratification, an intraoperative checklist, and harmonized surgical techniques. Clusters (hospital teams) were randomized to one of three arms with varied sequences of intervention/data collection by a derived stepped-wedge batch design (at least 18 hospital teams per batch). Patients were blinded to the study allocation. Low- and middle-income country enrolment was encouraged. The primary outcome (assessed by intention to treat) was anastomotic leak rate, and subgroup analyses by module completion (at least 80 per cent of surgeons, high engagement; less than 50 per cent, low engagement) were preplanned. Results A total 355 hospital teams registered, with 332 from 64 countries (39.2 per cent low and middle income) included in the final analysis. The online modules were completed by half of the surgeons (2143 of 4411). The primary analysis included 3039 of the 3268 patients recruited (206 patients had no anastomosis and 23 were lost to follow-up), with anastomotic leaks arising before and after the intervention in 10.1 and 9.6 per cent respectively (adjusted OR 0.87, 95 per cent c.i. 0.59 to 1.30; P = 0.498). The proportion of surgeons completing the educational modules was an influence: the leak rate decreased from 12.2 per cent (61 of 500) before intervention to 5.1 per cent (24 of 473) after intervention in high-engagement centres (adjusted OR 0.36, 0.20 to 0.64; P < 0.001), but this was not observed in low-engagement hospitals (8.3 per cent (59 of 714) and 13.8 per cent (61 of 443) respectively; adjusted OR 2.09, 1.31 to 3.31). Conclusion Completion of globally available digital training by engaged teams can alter anastomotic leak rates. Registration number: NCT04270721 (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov)

Observation of four top quark production in proton-proton collisions at s\sqrt{s} = 13 TeV

International audienceThe observation of the production of four top quarks in proton-proton collisions is reported, based on a data sample collected by the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV in 2016-2018 at the CERN LHC and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{-1}$. Events with two same-sign, three, or four charged leptons (electrons and muons) and additional jets are analyzed. Compared to previous results in these channels, updated identification techniques for charged leptons and jets originating from the hadronization of b quarks, as well as a revised multivariate analysis strategy to distinguish the signal process from the main backgrounds, lead to an improved expected signal significance of 4.9 standard deviations above the background-only hypothesis. Four top quark production is observed with a significance of 5.6 standard deviations, and its cross section is measured to be 17.7$^{+3.7}_{-3.5}$ (stat) $^{+2.3}_{-1.9}$ (syst) fb, in agreement with the available standard model predictions