Three-dimensional cephalometric evaluation of maxillary growth following in utero repair of cleft lip and alveolar-like defects in the mid-gestational sheep model

Objective: To evaluate maxillary growth following in utero repair of surgically created cleft lip and alveolar (CLA)-like defects by means of three-dimensional (3D) computer tomographic (CT) cephalometric analysis in the mid-gestational sheep model. Methods: In 12 sheep fetuses a unilateral CLA-like defect was created in utero (untreated control group: 4 fetuses). Four different bone grafts were used for the alveolar defect closure. After euthanasia, CT scans of the skulls of the fetuses, 3D re-constructions, and a 3D-CT cephalometric analysis were performed. Results: The comparisons between the operated and nonoperated skull sides as well as of the maxillary asymmetry among the experimental groups revealed no statistically significant differences of the 12 variables used. Conclusions: None of the surgical approaches used for the in utero correction of CLA-like defects seem to affect significantly postsurgical maxillary growth; however, when bone graft healing takes place, a tendency for almost normal maxillary growth can be observed. Copyright (c) 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel

Adrenocortical, autonomic, and inflammatory causes of the metabolic syndrome: nested case-control study.

BACKGROUND: The causes of metabolic syndrome (MS), which may be a precursor of coronary disease, are uncertain. We hypothesize that disturbances in neuroendocrine and cardiac autonomic activity (CAA) contribute to development of MS. We examine reversibility and the power of psychosocial and behavioral factors to explain the neuroendocrine adaptations that accompany MS. METHODS AND RESULTS: This was a double-blind case-control study of working men aged 45 to 63 years drawn from the Whitehall II cohort. MS cases (n=30) were compared with healthy controls (n=153). Cortisol secretion, sensitivity, and 24-hour cortisol metabolite and catecholamine output were measured over 2 days. CAA was obtained from power spectral analysis of heart rate variability (HRV) recordings. Twenty-four-hour cortisol metabolite and normetanephrine (3-methoxynorepinephrine) outputs were higher among cases than controls (+ 0.49, +0.45 SD, respectively). HRV and total power were lower among cases (both -0.72 SD). Serum interleukin-6, plasma C-reactive protein, and viscosity were higher among cases (+0.89, +0.51, and +0.72 SD). Lower HRV was associated with higher normetanephrine output (r=-0.19; P=0.03). Among former cases (MS 5 years previously, n=23), cortisol output, heart rate, and interleukin-6 were at the level of controls. Psychosocial factors accounted for 37% of the link between MS and normetanephrine output, and 7% to 19% for CAA. Health-related behaviors accounted for 5% to 18% of neuroendocrine differences. CONCLUSIONS: Neuroendocrine stress axes are activated in MS. There is relative cardiac sympathetic predominance. The neuroendocrine changes may be reversible. This case-control study provides the first evidence that chronic stress may be a cause of MS. Confirmatory prospective studies are required

A predictive group-contribution framework for the thermodynamic modelling of CO absorption in cyclic amines, alkyl polyamines, alkanolamines and phase-change amines: New data and SAFT- Mie parameters

A significant effort is under way to identify improved solvents for carbon dioxide (CO ) capture by chemisorption. We develop a predictive framework that is applicable to aqueous solvent + CO mixtures containing cyclic amines, alkyl polyamines, and alkanolamines. A number of the mixtures studied exhibit liquid–liquid phase separation, a behaviour that has shown promise in reducing the energetic cost of CO capture. The proposed framework is based on the SAFT- Mie group-contribution (GC) approach, in which chemical reactions are described via physical association models that allow a simpler, implicit, treatment of the chemical speciation characteristic of these mixtures. We use previously optimized group interaction parameters between some amine groups and water (Perdomo et al., 2021), and develop new group interactions for the cNH, cN, NH2, NH, N, cCHNH, and cCHN groups with CO2; a set of second-order group parameters are also developed to account for proximity effects in some alkanolamines. A combination of literature data and new experimental measurements for the absorption of CO2 in aqueous cyclohexylamine systems obtained in our current work, are used to develop and test the proposed models. The SAFT- Mie GC approach is used to predict the thermodynamics of selected mixtures, including ternary phase diagrams and mixing properties relevant in the context of CO2 capture. The current work constitutes a substantial extension of the range of aqueous amine-based solvents that can be modelled and thus offers the most comprehensive thermodynamically consistent platform to date to screen novel candidate solvents for CO2 capture

Supersymmetric Intersecting Branes on the Waves

We construct a general family of supersymmetric solutions in time- and space-dependent wave backgrounds in general supergravity theories describing single and intersecting p-branes embedded into time-dependent dilaton-gravity plane waves of an arbitrary (isotropic) profile, with the brane world-volume aligned parallel to the propagation direction of the wave. We discuss how many degrees of freedom we have in the solutions. We also propose that these solutions can be used to describe higher-dimensional time-dependent "black holes", and discuss their property briefly.Comment: 12 pages, LaTe

Collybistin and gephyrin are novel components of the eukaryotic translation initiation factor 3 complex

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Collybistin (CB), a neuron-specific guanine nucleotide exchange factor, has been implicated in targeting gephyrin-GABA_Areceptors clusters to inhibitory postsynaptic sites. However, little is known about additional CB partners and functions.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>Here, we identified the p40 subunit of the eukaryotic translation initiation factor 3 (eIF3H) as a novel binding partner of CB, documenting the interaction in yeast, non-neuronal cell lines, and the brain. In addition, we demonstrated that gephyrin also interacts with eIF3H in non-neuronal cells and forms a complex with eIF3 in the brain.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Together, our results suggest, for the first time, that CB and gephyrin associate with the translation initiation machinery, and lend further support to the previous evidence that gephyrin may act as a regulator of synaptic protein synthesis.</p

Downregulation of miR-92a Is Associated with Aggressive Breast Cancer Features and Increased Tumour Macrophage Infiltration

BACKGROUND: MicroRNAs are small non-coding RNAs involved in the regulation of gene expression on a posttranscriptional level. These regulatory RNAs have been implicated in numerous cellular processes and are further deregulated in different cancer types, including breast cancer. MiR-92a is part of the miR-17∼92 cluster, which was first reported to be linked to tumourigenesis. However, little is known about the expression of miR-92a in breast cancer and potential associations to tumour properties. The expression of miR-92a was therefore characterized in 144 invasive breast cancer samples using in situ hybridization and related to clinico-pathological data as well as to selected key properties of the tumour stroma, including the presence of macrophages (CD68) and cancer activated fibroblasts (alpha-SMA). METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: To measure miR-92a levels, an in situ hybridisation protocol was developed and validated using cell lines and miR-92a inhibitors. The expression in the tumour samples was objectively evaluated using digital image analysis program subtracting background activities. We found that the miR-92a expression varied between tumours and was inversely correlated to tumour grade (r = -0.276, p = 0.003) and recurrence-free survival (p = 0.008) and provided independent prognostic information in multivariate Cox analysis (HR: 0.375, CI: 0.145-0.972, p = 0.043). MiR-92a was moreover inversely correlated to the number of infiltrating macrophages in the tumour stroma (r = -0.357, p<0.001), and downregulation of miR-92a promoted cell migration (p<0.01). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This study demonstrates that downregulation of miR-92a in breast cancer is linked to key epithelial and stromal properties as well as clinical outcome

Computational optical imaging with a photonic lantern

[EN] The thin and flexible nature of optical fibres often makes them the ideal technology to view biological processes in-vivo, but current microendoscopic approaches are limited in spatial resolution. Here, we demonstrate a route to high resolution microendoscopy using a multicore fibre (MCF) with an adiabatic multimode-to-single-mode "photonic lantern" transition formed at the distal end by tapering. We show that distinct multimode patterns of light can be projected from the output of the lantern by individually exciting the single-mode MCF cores, and that these patterns are highly stable to fibre movement. This capability is then exploited to demonstrate a form of single-pixel imaging, where a single pixel detector is used to detect the fraction of light transmitted through the object for each multimode pattern. A custom computational imaging algorithm we call SARA-COIL is used to reconstruct the object using only the pre-measured multimode patterns themselves and the detector signals.This work was funded through the "Proteus" Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) (EP/K03197X/1), by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) through STFC-CLASP grants ST/K006509/1 and ST/K006460/1, STFC Consortium grants ST/N000625/1 and ST/N000544/1. S.L. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant no. 61705073. DBP acknowledges support from the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the European Research Council (PhotUntangle, 804626). The authors thank Philip Emanuel for the use of his confocal image of A549 cells and Eckhardt Optics for their image of the USAF 1951 target. The authors sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers of this paper for their detailed and considered feedback which helped us to improve the quality of this paper significantly.Choudhury, D.; Mcnicholl, DK.; Repetti, A.; Gris-Sánchez, I.; Li, S.; Phillips, DB.; Whyte, G.... (2020). Computational optical imaging with a photonic lantern. Nature Communications. 11(1):1-9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18818-6S19111Wood, H. A. C., Harrington, K., Birks, T. A., Knight, J. C. & Stone, J. M. High-resolution air-clad imaging fibers. Opt. Lett. 43, 5311–5314 (2018).Akram, A. R. et al. In situ identification of Gram-negative bacteria in human lungs using a topical fluorescent peptide targeting lipid A. Sci. Transl. Med. 10, eaal0033 (2018).Shin, J., Bosworth, B. T. & Foster, M. A. Compressive fluorescence imaging using a multi-core fiber and spatially dependent scattering. Opt. Lett. 42, 109–112 (2017).Papadopoulos, I. N., Farahi, S., Moser, C. & Psaltis, D. Focusing and scanning light through a multimode optical fiber using digital phase conjugation. Opt. Express 20, 10583–10590 (2012).Čižmár, T. & Dholakia, K. Exploiting multimode waveguides for pure fibre-based imaging. Nat. Commun. 3, 1027 (2012).Plöschner, M., Tyc, T. & Čižmár, T. Seeing through chaos in multimode fibres. Nat. Photon. 9, 529–535 (2015).Birks, T. A., Gris-Sánchez, I., Yerolatsitis, S., Leon-Saval, S. G. & Thomson, R. R. The photonic lantern. Adv. Opt. Photon. 7, 107–167 (2015).Birks, T. A., Mangan, B. J., Díez, A., Cruz, J. L. & Murphy, D. F. Photonic lantern’ spectral filters in multi-core fiber. Opt. Express 20, 13996–14008 (2012).Edgar, M. P., Gibson, G. M. & Padgett, M. J. Principles and prospects for single-pixel imaging. Nat. Photon. 13, 13–20 (2019).Mahalati, R. N., Yu, Gu. R. & Kahn, J. M. Resolution limits for imaging through multi-mode fiber. Opt. Express 21, 1656–1668 (2013).Amitonova, L. V. & de Boer, J. F. Compressive imaging through a multimode fiber. Opt. Lett. 43, 5427–5430 (2018).Mallat, S. A Wavelet Tour of Signal Processing 2nd edn (Academic Press, Burlington, MA, 2009).Lustig, M., Donoho, D. & Pauly, J. M. Sparse MRI: the application of compressed sensing for rapid MR imaging. Magn. Reson. Med. 58, 1182–1195 (2007).Davies, M., Puy, G., Vandergheynst, P. & Wiaux, Y. A compressed sensing framework for magnetic resonance fingerprinting. SIAM J. Imaging Sci. 7, 2623–2656 (2014).Wiaux, Y., Puy, G., Scaife, A. M. M. & Vandergheynst, P. Compressed sensing imaging techniques in radio interferometry. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 395, 1733–1742 (2009).Carrillo, R. E., McEwen, J. D. & Wiaux, Y. Sparsity averaging reweighted analysis (SARA): a novel algorithm for radio-interferometric imaging. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 426, 1223–1234 (2012).Katz, O., Bromberg, Y. & Silberberg, Y. Compressive ghost imaging. Appl. Phys. Lett. 95, 131110 (2009).Sun, B., Welsh, S. S., Edgar, M. P., Shapiro, J. H. & Padgett, M. J. Normalized ghost imaging. Opt. Express 20, 16892–16901 (2012).Kim, M., Park, C., Rodriguez, C., Park, Y. & Cho, Y.-H. Superresolution imaging with optical fluctuation using speckle patterns illumination. Sci. Rep. 5, 16525 (2015).Combettes, P. L. & Pesquet, J. -C. in Fixed-Point Algorithms for Inverse Problems in Science and Engineering (Springer, New York, 2011).Komodakis, N. & Pesquet, J.-C. Playing with duality: an overview of recent primal dual approaches for solving large-scale optimization problems. IEEE Signal Proc. Mag. 32, 31–54 (2015).Chandrasekharan, H. K. et al. Multiplexed single-mode wavelength-to-time mapping of multimode light. Nat. Commun. 8, 14080 (2017).Wadsworth, W. J. et al. Very high numerical aperture fibers. Photon. Technol. Lett. 16, 843–845 (2004).Pesquet, J.-C. & Repetti, A. A class of randomized primal-dual algorithms for distributed optimization. J. Nonlinear Convex Anal. 16, 2353–2490 (2015).Chambolle, A., Ehrhardt, M. J., Richtárik, P. & Schönlieb, C.-B. Stochastic primal-dual hybrid gradient algorithm with arbitrary sampling and imaging applications. SIAM J. Optim. 28, 2783–2808 (2018).Bolte, J., Sabach, S. & Teboulle, M. Proximal alternating linearized minimization for nonconvex and nonsmooth problems. Math. Program. 146, 459–494 (2014).Chouzenoux, E., Pesquet, J.-C. & Repetti, A. A block coordinate variable metric forward-backward algorithm. J. Glob. Optim. 66, 457–485 (2016).Flusberg, B. A. et al. Fiber-optic fluorescence imaging. Nat. Methods 2, 941–950 (2005).Tsvirkun, V. et al. Bending-induced inter-core group delays in multicore fibers. Opt. Express 25, 31863–31875 (2017).Candès, E. J., Wakin, M. B. & Boyd, S. Enhancing sparsity by reweighted l1 minimization. J. Fourier Anal. Appl. 14, 877–905 (2008).Condat, L. A primal–dual splitting method for convex optimization involving lipschitzian, proximable and linear composite terms. J. Optim. Theory Appl. 158, 460–479 (2013).Vu, B. C. A splitting algorithm for dual monotone inclusions involving cocoercive operators. Adv. Comp. Math. 38, 667–681 (2013)

Periodic Accumulation of Regulatory T Cells in the Uterus: Preparation for the Implantation of a Semi-Allogeneic Fetus?

BACKGROUND: Naturally occurring Foxp3(+)regulatory T cells play an important role in the inhibition of an immunological attack of the fetus. As implantation of the fetus poses an immediate antigenic challenge, the immune system has to prepare itself for this event prior to implantation. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, we show using quantitative RT-PCR and flow cytometry that regulatory T cells accumulate in the uterus not only during pregnancy, but also every time the female becomes fertile. Their periodic accumulation is accompanied by matching fluctuations in uterine expression of several chemokines, which have been shown to play a role in the recruitment and retention of regulatory T cells. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The data lead us to propose that every time a female approaches estrus, regulatory T cells start to accumulate in the uterus in preparation for a possible implantation event. Once pregnancy is established, those regulatory T cells that have seen alloantigen need to be retained at their site of action. Whilst several chemokines appear to be involved in the recruitment and/or retention of regulatory T cells during estrus, in pregnancy this role appears to be taken over by CCL4

Solitary neurofibroma of the gingiva with prominent differentiation of Meissner bodies : a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Oral neurofibromas are peripheral nerve sheath tumors, similar to schwannomas. Histological variations in oral neurofibromas are relatively uncommon.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>Here, we present a case of unique variation in the observed characteristics of a neurofibroma, with no relation to neurofibromatosis type-1 or von Recklinghausen disease of the skin. The neurofibroma was observed in the right mandibular gingiva of a 32-year-old Japanese woman. Histologically, it differed from conventional neurofibromas in that the tumor was composed of a mixture of fine fibrillary collagen in sheets and/or cords of neoplastic Schwann cells containing numerous clusters of Meissner bodies. Histologically, these bodies were in contact with neoplastic Schwann cells. The Meissner bodies were immunopositive for S-100 protein, neuron-specific enolase, and vimentin, but were negative for calretinin. CD34-positive spindle cells were observed around the Meissner bodies. No recurrence or signs of other tumors have been observed in the patient for 5 years after tumor resection.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>To the best of our knowledge, no formal descriptions of sporadic, solitary neurofibromas containing numerous Meissner bodies occurring in the oral cavity are available in literature. We believe that an uncommon proliferation of Meissner bodies, as seen in the present case, may result from aberrant differentiation of neoplastic Schwann cells.</p