Long-term Follow-up of Adolescents Treated for Rumination Syndrome in an Inpatient Setting.

ObjectivesAlthough several studies have demonstrated the short-term benefit of the behavioral treatment of rumination syndrome, few have investigated the long-term outcomes. Studies reporting long-term benefit have involved combined pediatric and adult samples or have examined outcomes of patients involved in various types of treatment. The purpose of the present study was to examine several aspects of long-term outcome in adolescent patients who took part in the same intensive, interdisciplinary, inpatient behavioral treatment approach.MethodsSelf-report measures were completed by 47 adolescent patients (mean age = 15.9) around 1 year or more from discharge from our inpatient program. Measures indexed changes in rumination, medical outcomes (eg, use of supplemental nutrition), somatic symptoms, and quality of life.ResultsMost patients reported continued improvement in their rumination over time, with 20% reporting cessation of rumination for at least 6 months. The majority of patients no longer required supplemental nutrition and reported improvements in somatic symptoms and quality of life. Patients who reported greater improvement in rumination also reported more significant improvements in their somatic symptoms and quality of life.ConclusionsIntensive behavioral treatment of rumination syndrome leads to long-term improvement in rumination as well as other related factors, including somatic symptoms and quality of life

Summer pruning in table grape

This paper reviews cultural practices to improve fruit quality in table grape during vegetative and reproductive seasons. Summer pruning in table grape (Vitis vinifera L.) has more effects than winter pruning, above all with regard to plant productivity and final number of bunches for harvesting. Thinning is one of the most cultural technique and it consists in the elimination of vegetative or reproductive organs in excess. Other summer canopy management techniques include leaf removal, fruit shoots positioning, shoot trimming and girdling

Multi-objective optimisation of constellation deployment using low-thrust propulsion

This work presents an analysis of the deployment of future constellations using a com-bination of low-thrust propulsion and natural dynamics. Different strategies to realise the transfer from the launcher injection orbit to the constellation operational orbit are investigated. The deployment of the constellation is formulated as a multi-objective optimisation problem that aims at minimising the maximum transfer ΔV, the launch cost and maximise at the same time the pay-off given by the service provided by the constellation. The paperwill consider the case of a typical constellation with 27 satellites in Medium Earth Orbit and the use of only two launchers, one of which can carry a single satellite. It will be demonstrated that some strategies and deployment sequences are dominant and provide the best trade-off between peak transfer ΔV and monetary pay-off

Meta-Analysis of cortical inhibitory interneurons markers landscape and their performances in scRNA-seq studies.

The mammalian cortex contains a great variety of neuronal cells. In particular, GABAergic interneurons, which play a major role in neuronal circuit function, exhibit an extraordinary diversity of cell types. In this regard, single-cell RNA-seq analysis is crucial to study cellular heterogeneity. To identify and analyze rare cell types, it is necessary to reliably label cells through known markers. In this way, all the related studies are dependent on the quality of the employed marker genes. Therefore, in this work, we investigate how a set of chosen inhibitory interneurons markers perform. The gene set consists of both immunohistochemistry-derived genes and single-cell RNA-seq taxonomy ones. We employed various human and mouse datasets of the brain cortex, consequently processed with the Monocle3 pipeline. We defined metrics based on the relations between unsupervised cluster results and the marker expression. Specifically, we calculated the specificity, the fraction of cells expressing, and some metrics derived from decision tree analysis like entropy gain and impurity reduction. The results highlighted the strong reliability of some markers but also the low quality of others. More interestingly, though, a correlation emerges between the general performances of the genes set and the experimental quality of the datasets. Therefore, the proposed method allows evaluating the quality of a dataset in relation to its reliability regarding the inhibitory interneurons cellular heterogeneity study

Mobile Phones and Outdoor Advertising: Measurable Advertising

Television and newspapers sit at the top of many agency marketing plans, while outdoor advertising stays at the bottom. The reason for this is that it’s difficult to account for who views a billboard, so there is no way of consistently determining the effectiveness of outdoor advertising. As a result, agencies do not consider the medium and allocate their money elsewhere. To change this situation, one needs to create new credible audience measurements for the outdoor marketing industry. Here we propose a new way of performing audience measurements that combines mobile phone location estimations with information freely available on the Internet. We show that it is possible to estimate the number of people who drive or walk by a given area in Greater Boston from location estimations of a large fraction of mobile phone users in the region. We also infer the preferences for social events of the users by combing their location estimations with Internet listings of social events. This makes it possible to profile areas based on their residents’ interests and dynamically change displayed advertising based on those assessments.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Horizon project

GRAIGH: Gene Regulation accessibility integrating GeneHancer database

Single-cell assays for transposase-accessible chromatin sequencing data represent a potent tool for exploring the epigenetic heterogeneity within cell populations. Despite their power, understanding the chromatin accessibility landscape poses challenges. This study introduces Gene Regulation Accessibility Integrating GeneHancer (GRAIGH), a novel approach to interpreting genome accessibility by integrating information from the GeneHancer database, detailing genome-wide enhancer-to-gene associations. Initially, we outline the methods for integrating GeneHancer with scATAC-seq data. This involves creating a new matrix where GeneHancer element IDs replace traditional accessibility peaks as features. Subsequently, the paper assesses the method’s ability to analyze data and detect cellular heterogeneity. Notably, our findings demonstrate the selective accessibility of GeneHancer elements for distinct cell types, with connected genes serving as precise marker genes. Furthermore, we explore the specificity of GeneHancer element accessibility, highlighting their high selectivity against gene activity. This investigation underscores the potential of Gene Regulation Accessibility Integrating GeneHancer in unraveling the complexities of chromatin accessibility, offering insights into the nuanced relationship between accessibility and cellular heterogeneity

High-resolution sample size enrichment of single-cell multi-modal low-throughput Patch-seq datasets

Single-cell multimodal technologies are becoming the hot topic of single-cell heterogeneity and function studies, promising to unravel the hidden relationship and functionalities of different aspects of the cells. Among the plethora of single-cell technologies, interesting is the patch-seq technology, which simultaneously performs Patch clamp measures and scRNA-seq on the same cells. However, given the experimental limitations of throughput of Patch clamp, the scRNA-seq analysis is challenging because it requires more samples to investigate cellular heterogeneity. Usually, the solution is associating the cells with the cell types in an existing scRNA-seq dataset. However, doing so loses part of the single cell resolution of the multimodal technique. Therefore, this work proposes a procedure leveraging the Seurat Integration process to find from a reference dataset t he most similar cells to the ones from the patch-seq. The similarity is how much gene expression profiles are identical, and to evaluate that, this work defines various etrics based on R and Index. In this way, one obtains a selection of suitable Reference cells to enrich the number of cells on which to perform multimodal investigation

Treatment of osteolytic solitary painful osseous metastases with radiofrequency ablation or cryoablation: a retrospective study by propensity analysis

The present study aimed to measure the improvement in pain relief and quality of life in patients with osteolytic solitary painful bone metastasis treated by cryoablation (CA) or radiofrequency ablation (RFA). Fifty patients with solitary osteolytic painful bone metastases were retrospectively studied and selected by propensity analysis. Twenty-five patients underwent CA and the remaining twenty-five underwent RFA. Pain relief, in terms of complete response (CR), the number of patients requiring analgesia and the changes in self-rated quality of life (QoL) were measured following the two treatments. Thirty-two percent of patients treated by CA experienced a CR at 12 weeks versus 20% of patients treated by RFA. The rate of CR increased significantly with respect to baseline only in the group treated by CA. In both groups there was a significant change in the partial response with respect to baseline (36% in the CA group vs. 44% in the RFA group). The recurrence rate in the CA and RFA groups was 12% and 8%, respectively. The reduction in narcotic medication requirements with respect to baseline was only significant in the group treated by CA. A significant improvement in self-rated QoL was observed in both groups. The present study seems to suggest that CA only significantly improves the rate of CR and decreases the requirement of narcotic medications. Both CA and RFA led to an improvement in the self-rated QoL of patients after the treatments. However, the results of the present study should be considered as preliminary and to serve as a framework around which future trials may be designed

The decline in muscle strength and muscle quality in relation to metabolic derangements in adult women with obesity

Background & aims: The metabolic and functional characteristics related to sarcopenic obesity have not been thoroughly explored in the earlier stages of the aging process. The aim of the present study was to examine the phenotype of sarcopenic obesity, in terms of lean body mass, muscle strength and quality, in adult women with and without the Metabolic Syndrome (MetS), and its relationship with the features of myosteatosis. Methods: Study participants were enrolled at the Sapienza University, Rome, Italy. Body composition was assessed by DXA. The Handgrip strength test (HGST) was performed. HGST was normalized to arm lean mass to indicate muscle quality; intermuscular adipose tissue (IMAT) and intramyocellular lipid content (IMCL) were measured by magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy, as indicators of myosteatosis. Different indices of sarcopenia were calculated, based on appendicular lean mass (ALM, kg) divided by height squared, or weight. The NCEP-ATPIII criteria were used to diagnose the MetS. HOMA-IR was calculated. The physical activity level (PAL) was assessed through the IPAQ questionnaire. Results: 54 women (age: 48 ± 14 years, BMI: 37.9 ± 5.4 kg/m 2 ) were included. 54% had the MetS (metabolically unhealthy, MUO). HGST/arm lean mass was lower in MUO women than women without the MetS (6.3 ± 1.8 vs. 7.8 ± 1.6, p = 0.03). No differences emerged in terms of absolute ALM (kg) or other indices of sarcopenia (ALM/h 2 or ALM/weight) between metabolically healthy (MHO) vs. MUO women (p > 0.05). Muscle quality was negatively associated with HOMA-IR (p = 0.02), after adjustment for age, body fat, hs-CRP levels, and PAL. IMAT, but not IMCL, was significantly higher in obese women with the MetS compared to women without the MetS (p > 0.05). No association emerged between HGST/arm lean mass and IMAT or IMCL when HOMA-IR was included in the models. Conclusion: Insulin resistance, and not sarcopenia or myosteatosis per se, was associated with muscle weakness, resulting in the phenotype of “dynapenic obesity” in middle-aged women with the metabolic syndrome

Application of a smart dynamic scale for measuring live-fish biomass in aquaculture

— The need of measuring the fish biomass, either for in-land facilities or offshore cages, drove recently to develop a cheap dynamic scale (by MEGA Materials srl), based on a board of the Arduino family, suitable to measure live-fish weights. Via a Bluetooth transmitter and a specific app the communication with smartphones is allowed. The estimation of live-fish biomass is extremely relevant to precisely quantify the daily dose of feed to be supplied and to avoid a reduction of fish growth. We present the comparison between ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ weight measures of seabream juveniles reared in tanks