A case of acute myeloid leukemia with promyelocytic features characterized by expression of a novel RARG-CPSF6 fusion

Key Points Novel RARG-CPSF6 fusion in an AML case with promyelocytic features and no evidence of PML-RARA or X-RARA fusion. Gene fusions involving RARG can initiate AML with promyelocytic morphological features.</jats:p

Learning Strategies and Innovations among Medical Students in the Philippines during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper highlights the experience of graduating medical students or clinical clerks in the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, clinical clerks are supposed to be having their actual face-to-face patient encounters in the hospital setting. It is during the clinical clerkship, the final year of a four-year medical degree program, that a medical student applies his or her theoretical knowledge in practice. However, due to the pandemic, changes needed to be done in order to ensure continuous learning despite having to have little to no contact with actual patients. Hence, in this paper, various learning strategies and innovations have been presented to give examples of how Filipino medical students or clinical clerks tried to cope and adapt with the changes in the mode of learning in the medical field

A Preliminary Study on the Chiral Vector Approach in Determining the Optimum Structure of Carbon Nanotubes and its Correlation to the Chemical Potential Energy Using Avogadro

In this study, the following quantitative properties of carbon nanotubes were explored: the chiral vectors, which are numbers that describe the carbon nanotubes’ structure, and properties such as chemical potential energy. The objective of this study is to simulate various carbon nanotube structures with chiral vectors that range from (0-3) and find a relation between these chiral vectors and the chemical potential energy. Using the software Avogadro, 12 carbon nanotubes with different chiral vectors (n, m) were simulated. These carbon nanotubes were of different lengths to keep the number of atoms in the molecules as close to 100 as possible. Avogadro was also used to calculate the theoretical chemical potential energy of these molecules. Using multiple correlation to analyze the simulations’ data, an R2 value of 0.632 was obtained, which indicates a small positive linear association between them

Shaping innovations in long-term care for stroke survivors with multimorbidity through stakeholder engagement

BACKGROUND:Stroke, like many long-term conditions, tends to be managed in isolation of its associated risk factors and multimorbidity. With increasing access to clinical and research data there is the potential to combine data from a variety of sources to inform interventions to improve healthcare. A 'Learning Health System' (LHS) is an innovative model of care which transforms integrated data into knowledge to improve healthcare. The objective of this study is to develop a process of engaging stakeholders in the use of clinical and research data to co-produce potential solutions, informed by a LHS, to improve long-term care for stroke survivors with multimorbidity. METHODS:We used a stakeholder engagement study design informed by co-production principles to engage stakeholders, including service users, carers, general practitioners and other health and social care professionals, service managers, commissioners of services, policy makers, third sector representatives and researchers. Over a 10 month period we used a range of methods including stakeholder group meetings, focus groups, nominal group techniques (priority setting and consensus building) and interviews. Qualitative data were recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically. RESULTS:37 participants took part in the study. The concept of how data might drive intervention development was difficult to convey and understand. The engagement process led to four priority areas for needs for data and information being identified by stakeholders: 1) improving continuity of care; 2) improving management of mental health consequences; 3) better access to health and social care; and 4) targeting multiple risk factors. These priorities informed preliminary design interventions. The final choice of intervention was agreed by consensus, informed by consideration of the gap in evidence and local service provision, and availability of robust data. This shaped a co-produced decision support tool to improve secondary prevention after stroke for further development. CONCLUSIONS:Stakeholder engagement to identify data-driven solutions is feasible but requires resources. While a number of potential interventions were identified, the final choice rested not just on stakeholder priorities but also on data availability. Further work is required to evaluate the impact and implementation of data-driven interventions for long-term stroke survivors

Coherent control of enrichment and conversion of molecular spin isomers

A theoretical model of nuclear spin conversion in molecules controlled by an external electromagnetic radiation resonant to rotational transition has been developed. It has been shown that one can produce an enrichment of spin isomers and influence their conversion rates in two ways, through coherences and through level population change induced by radiation. Influence of conversion is ranged from significant speed up to almost complete inhibition of the process by proper choice of frequency and intensity of the external field.Comment: REVTEX, 13 pages + 6 eps figure

Recent Advances on Density Separation Techniques for Microplastic Recovery from Sediments

Microplastics are small plastic fragments commonly less than 5 mm in size (Khatmullina et al., 2016), making up about 92% of the total plastic pollution. Since these plastics are transparent due to their small size, they cause invisible plastic pollution. Due to their adsorptive properties, they can potentially harm marine and human life if ingested. Microplastic extraction is used to isolate microplastics from their original matrix using various methods and instruments to ease the process. Electrostatic separation, magnetization, and pressurized fluid extraction are among the established microplastic extraction methods, but these separation techniques require more effort and use a more advanced setup than density separation. Salt-assisted density separation of microplastics has been demonstrated to provide modest to excellent recovery rates. This review survey reported different salt solutions used in microplastic extraction via density separation in the last five years. Among the inorganic salts used in density separation, sodium dihydrogen phosphate (NaH2PO4) holds promise in separating microplastics because of its high extraction efficiency while being cost-effective and non-hazardous

Expression and function of PML-RARA in the hematopoietic progenitor cells of Ctsg-PML-RARA mice

Because PML-RARA-induced acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is a morphologically differentiated leukemia, many groups have speculated about whether its leukemic cell of origin is a committed myeloid precursor (e.g. a promyelocyte) versus an hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell (HSPC). We originally targeted PML-RARA expression with CTSG regulatory elements, based on the early observation that this gene was maximally expressed in cells with promyelocyte morphology. Here, we show that both Ctsg, and PML-RARA targeted to the Ctsg locus (in Ctsg-PML-RARA mice), are expressed in the purified KLS cells of these mice (KLS = Kit(+)Lin(-)Sca(+), which are highly enriched for HSPCs), and this expression results in biological effects in multi-lineage competitive repopulation assays. Further, we demonstrate the transcriptional consequences of PML-RARA expression in Ctsg-PML-RARA mice in early myeloid development in other myeloid progenitor compartments [common myeloid progenitors (CMPs) and granulocyte/monocyte progenitors (GMPs)], which have a distinct gene expression signature compared to wild-type (WT) mice. Although PML-RARA is indeed expressed at high levels in the promyelocytes of Ctsg-PML-RARA mice and alters the transcriptional signature of these cells, it does not induce their self-renewal. In sum, these results demonstrate that in the Ctsg-PML-RARA mouse model of APL, PML-RARA is expressed in and affects the function of multipotent progenitor cells. Finally, since PML/Pml is normally expressed in the HSPCs of both humans and mice, and since some human APL samples contain TCR rearrangements and express T lineage genes, we suggest that the very early hematopoietic expression of PML-RARA in this mouse model may closely mimic the physiologic expression pattern of PML-RARA in human APL patients