Are you suffering from a large arterial occlusion? Please raise your arm!

Background and purpose: Triage tools to identify candidates for thrombectomy are of utmost importance in acute stroke. No prognostic tool has yet gained any widespread use. We compared the predictive value of various models based on National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) subitems, ranging from simple to more complex models, for predicting large artery occlusion (LAO) in anterior circulation stroke. Methods: Patients registered in the SITS international Stroke Register with available NIHSS and radiological arterial occlusion data were analysed. We compared 2042 patients harbouring an LAO with 2881 patients having no/distal occlusions. Using binary logistic regression, we developed models ranging from simple 1 NIHSS-subitem to full NIHSS-subitems models. Sensitivities and specificities of the models for predicting LAO were examined. Results: The model with highest predictive value included all NIHSS subitems for predicting LAO (area under the curve (AUC) 0.77), yielding a sensitivity and specificity of 69% and 76%, respectively. The second most predictive model (AUC 0.76) included 4-NIHSS-subitems (level of consciousness commands, gaze, facial and arm motor function) yielding a sensitivity and specificity of 67% and 75%, respectively. The simplest model included only deficits in arm motor-function (AUC 0.72) for predicting LAO, yielding a sensitivity and specificity of 67% and 72%, respectively. Conclusions: Although increasingly more complex models yield a higher discriminative performance for predicting LAO, differences between models are not large. Assessing grade of arm dysfunction along with an established stroke-diagnosis model may serve as a surrogate measure of arterial occlusion-status, thereby assisting in triage decisions

Bioprinting Cell- and Spheroid-Laden Protein-Engineered Hydrogels as Tissue-on-Chip Platforms

Human tissues, both in health and disease, are exquisitely organized into complex three-dimensional architectures that inform tissue function. In biomedical research, specifically in drug discovery and personalized medicine, novel human-based three-dimensional (3D) models are needed to provide information with higher predictive value compared to state-of-the-art two-dimensional (2D) preclinical models. However, current in vitro models remain inadequate to recapitulate the complex and heterogenous architectures that underlie biology. Therefore, it would be beneficial to develop novel models that could capture both the 3D heterogeneity of tissue (e.g., through 3D bioprinting) and integrate vascularization that is necessary for tissue viability (e.g., through culture in tissue-on-chips). In this proof-of-concept study, we use elastin-like protein (ELP) engineered hydrogels as bioinks for constructing such tissue models, which can be directly dispensed onto endothelialized on-chip platforms. We show that this bioprinting process is compatible with both single cell suspensions of neural progenitor cells (NPCs) and spheroid aggregates of breast cancer cells. After bioprinting, both cell types remain viable in incubation for up to 14 days. These results demonstrate a first step toward combining ELP engineered hydrogels with 3D bioprinting technologies and on-chip platforms comprising vascular-like channels for establishing functional tissue models

Non-media-centric media studies: A Cross-generational conversation

On the face of it, the notion of non-media-centric media studies appears to be a contradiction in terms. Surely those who are working in media studies will put media at the centre of their investigations and explanations of social life? In the following conversation, three advocates of a non-media-centric approach discuss their ways into the field of media studies at different points in its development, and together they explore their overlapping empirical research interests as well as their theoretical, methodological and pedagogical concerns. Topics that feature in this exchange include the linked mobilities of information, people and commodities, the articulation of material and virtual geographies, and the meaningfulness of everyday, embodied practices. Out of the dialogue emerges a renewed call for media studies that acknowledge the particularities of media, but which are about more than simply studying media and which seek to recover the field’s early spirit of interdisciplinary adventure

Leisure activism and engaged ethnography: heterogeneous voices and the urban palimpsest

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Studying the conflictualities between leisure activism, understood as participation in events of dissent as a nonwork-based activity, and those tasked with ‘maintaining order’, requires techniques that can work with diverse voices and contesting world views. However, many of the methods familiar to us in the social sciences risk reinforcing relationships of power that can undermine such inquiry. Drawing on the conceptual work of scholars from the global south and the global north, we examine approaches to protests as event, the construction of urban space and the performativity of violence, in two democracies: Brazil and the UK. From that we were led to conclude such research requires a less canonical approach. It is through the adoption of a more engaged ethnography, one that establishes horizontal relations between researchers and participants that are drawn from backgrounds reflecting such conflictualities, combined with an understanding of the process of research as more like that of an event, that the diversity of the heterogeneous voices associated with dissent, within an urban palimpsest, can be heard