Surgical Treatment of Benign Spinal Cord Tumors

Benign spinal cord tumors (SCTs) are uncommon neoplasms that can arise within or adjacent to the spinal cord. Depending on their anatomical location, benign SCTs can be categorized as intramedullary, intradural-extramedullary, and extradural. The three most common benign SCTs are meningioma, nerve sheath tumors, and ependymoma. Both meningioma and nerve sheath tumors develop in the intradural-extramedullary compartment, while ependymoma occurs in the intramedullary space. Spinal meningiomas derive from arachnoidal cells and most commonly occur within the thoracic segment of the spine. Nerve sheath tumors, including schwannomas and neurofibromas, are closely associated with spinal nerves. Half of the spinal cord ependymomas arise in the lumbosacral segment or the filum terminale. Surgical treatment of large or symptomatic benign SCTs concentrates on total or subtotal resection of the tumors, which should be cautiously individualized based on the tumor location and histopathology. A curable complete resection should be achieved if possible while preserving the nervous function of the spinal cord and minimizing potential complications. Thoracic spinal roots may be sacrificed to acquire a total resection, yet cervical and lumbar nerve roots should be preserved prudently. Due to the vulnerable and complex anatomic nature of the spinal cord, maximal resection of the tumors can be achieved with the aid of appropriate intraoperative neural monitoring and meanwhile preserve nervous function

Genome-wide identification and evolution of ATP-binding cassette transporters in the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila: A case of functional divergence in a multigene family

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In eukaryotes, ABC transporters that utilize the energy of ATP hydrolysis to expel cellular substrates into the environment are responsible for most of the efflux from cells. Many members of the superfamily of ABC transporters have been linked with resistance to multiple drugs or toxins. Owing to their medical and toxicological importance, members of the ABC superfamily have been studied in several model organisms and warrant examination in newly sequenced genomes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 165 ABC transporter genes, constituting a highly expanded superfamily relative to its size in other eukaryotes, were identified in the macronuclear genome of the ciliate <it>Tetrahymena thermophila</it>. Based on ortholog comparisons, phylogenetic topologies and intron characterizations, each highly expanded ABC transporter family of <it>T</it>. <it>thermophila </it>was classified into several distinct groups, and hypotheses about their evolutionary relationships are presented. A comprehensive microarray analysis revealed divergent expression patterns among the members of the ABC transporter superfamily during different states of physiology and development. Many of the relatively recently formed duplicate pairs within individual ABC transporter families exhibit significantly different expression patterns. Further analysis showed that multiple mechanisms have led to functional divergence that is responsible for the preservation of duplicated genes.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Gene duplications have resulted in an extensive expansion of the superfamily of ABC transporters in the <it>Tetrahymena </it>genome, making it the largest example of its kind reported in any organism to date. Multiple independent duplications and subsequent divergence contributed to the formation of different families of ABC transporter genes. Many of the members within a gene family exhibit different expression patterns. The combination of gene duplication followed by both sequence divergence and acquisition of new patterns of expression likely plays a role in the adaptation of <it>Tetrahymen </it>a to its environment.</p

Tracing the structural evolution of eukaryotic ATP binding cassette transporter superfamily

The ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporters superfamily is one of the largest classes of membrane proteins. The core of the ABC transporter protein is composed of transmembrane domains (TMDs) and nucleotide binding domains (NBD). Eukaryotes ABC transporters are classified into seven main families (ABCA to ABCG) based on sequence similarity and domain organizations. With different domain number and domain organizations, eukaryote ABC transporters show diverse structures: the single structure (NBD or TMD), the ABC2 structure (NBD-NBD), the half structure (TMD-NBD or NBD-TMD) and the full structure (TMD-NBD-TMD-NBD or NBD-TMD-NBD-TMD). However, studies on how various ABC transporter gene structures evolved is still absent. Therefore, in this study, we comprehensively investigated the structural evolution of eukaryotic ABC transporters. The seven eukaryote ABC transporter families (A to G) fell into three groups: A&G group, B,C&D group and E&F group. There were at least four times the number of NBD and TMD fusion events in the origin of the half structure transporter. Two fusion modes were found in the full and ABC2 structure origination. Based on these findings, we present a putative structural evolutionary path of eukaryote ABC transporters that will increase our understanding on their origin, divergence and function

Neoplasms of Central Nervous System: A Diagnostic Approach

Neoplasms of central nervous system accounts for approximately 1% of tumors of the human body, and they can be primary or secondary (metastatic), benign or malignant, and intra-axial or extra-axial. This chapter includes some most common brain and spinal cord tumors, like pituitary adenomas, meningiomas and gliomas, with their clinical, imaging, and histological characteristics for the diagnosis purpose, with additional treatment options and prognosis

Prognostic value of elevated lipoprotein (a) in patients with acute coronary syndromes: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BackgroundElevated lipoprotein (a) level was recognized as an independent risk factor for significant adverse cardiovascular events in acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients. Despite this recognition, the consensus in the literature regarding the prognostic significance of elevated lipoprotein (a) in ACS was also limited. Consequently, we conducted a thorough systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the prognostic relevance of elevated lipoprotein (a) level in individuals diagnosed with ACS.Methods and resultsA thorough literature review was conducted by systematically searching PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane databases until September 2023. This review specifically examined cohort studies exploring the prognostic implications of elevated lipoprotein (a) level in relation to major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), including death, stroke, non-fatal myocardial infarction (MI), and coronary revascularization, in patients with ACS. The meta-analysis utilized aggregated multivariable hazard ratios (HR) and their respective 95% confidence intervals (CI) to evaluate prognostic implications between high and low lipoprotein (a) levels [the cut-off of high lipoprotein (a) level varies from 12.5 to 60 mg/dl]. Among 18,168 patients in the identified studies, elevated lipoprotein (a) was independently associated with increased MACE risk (HR 1.26; 95% CI: 1.17–1.35, P &lt; 0.00001) and all-cause mortality (HR 1.36; 95% CI: 1.05–1.76, P = 0.02) in ACS patients. In summary, elevated lipoprotein (a) levels independently forecast MACE and all-cause mortality in ACS patients. Assessing lipoprotein (a) levels appears promising for risk stratification in ACS, offering valuable insights for tailoring secondary prevention strategies.Systematic Review RegistrationPROSPERO (CRD42023476543)

High-temperature modification of steel slag using composite modifier containing silicon calcium slag, fly ash, and reservoir sediment

Steel slag (SS) is a kind of industrial solid waste, and its accumulation brings certain harm to the ecological environment. In order to promote the building material utilization of SS, high-temperature modification (HTM) of SS is performed using a composite modifier (CMSFR) containing silicon calcium slag (SCS), fly ash (FA), and reservoir sediment (RS). Then, the authors investigated the effect of CMSFR on the cementitious properties and volume soundness of SS mixture after HTM (SMHTM). After that, the mineral composition and microstructure of SMHTM were investigated through X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electronic microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS), and particle size analysis. It was found that the free CaO (f-CaO) content obviously decreased, and the cementitious properties improved in SMHTM. When the CMSFR content was 20% (SCS: FA: RS = 9:7:4), and the modification temperature (MT) was 1,250°C, the mass fraction of f-CaO in SMHTM dropped from 4.81% to 1.90%, down by 60.5%; the 28-day activity index of SMHTM increased to 85.4%, 14.3% higher than that of raw SS, which meets the technical requirement of Steel slag powder used for cement and concrete (GB/T 20491-2017): the activity index of grade I SS powder must be greater than or equal to 80%. As the mass fraction of CMSFR grew from 10% to 30%, new mineral phases formed in SMHTM, including diopside (CMS2), ceylonite (MgFe2O4), gehlenite (C2AS), tricalcium aluminate (C3A), and magnetite (Fe3O4). The HTM with CMSFR promotes the decomposition of RO phase (a continuous solid solution composed of divalent metal oxides like FeO, MgO, MnO, and CaO) in raw SS, turning the FeO in that phase into Fe3O4. The above results indicate that the SMHTM mixed with CMSFR can be applied harmless in cement and concrete, making low-energy fine grinding of SS a possibility

Cardiac Arrhythmia classification based on 3D recurrence plot analysis and deep learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) aided cardiac arrhythmia (CA) classification has been an emerging research topic. Existing AI-based classification methods commonly analyze electrocardiogram (ECG) signals in lower dimensions, using one-dimensional (1D) temporal signals or two-dimensional (2D) images, which, however, may have limited capability in characterizing lead-wise spatiotemporal correlations, which are critical to the classification accuracy. In addition, existing methods mostly assume that the ECG data are linear temporal signals. This assumption may not accurately represent the nonlinear, nonstationary nature of the cardiac electrophysiological process. In this work, we have developed a three-dimensional (3D) recurrence plot (RP)-based deep learning algorithm to explore the nonlinear recurrent features of ECG and Vectorcardiography (VCG) signals, aiming to improve the arrhythmia classification performance. The 3D ECG/VCG images are generated from standard 12 lead ECG and 3 lead VCG signals for neural network training, validation, and testing. The superiority and effectiveness of the proposed method are validated by various experiments. Based on the PTB-XL dataset, the proposed method achieved an average F1 score of 0.9254 for the 3D ECG-based case and 0.9350 for the 3D VCG-based case. In contrast, recently published 1D and 2D ECG-based CA classification methods yielded lower average F1 scores of 0.843 and 0.9015, respectively. Thus, the improved performance and visual interpretability make the proposed 3D RP-based method appealing for practical CA classification

Current-driven magnetization switching in a van der Waals ferromagnet Fe3GeTe2

The recent discovery of ferromagnetism in two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) materials holds promises for novel spintronic devices with exceptional performances. However, in order to utilize 2D vdW magnets for building spintronic nanodevices such as magnetic memories, key challenges remain in terms of effectively switching the magnetization from one state to the other electrically. Here, we devise a bilayer structure of Fe3GeTe2/Pt, in which the magnetization of few-layered Fe3GeTe2 can be effectively switched by the spin-orbit torques (SOTs) originated from the current flowing in the Pt layer. The effective magnetic fields corresponding to the SOTs are further quantitatively characterized using harmonic measurements. Our demonstration of the SOT-driven magnetization switching in a 2D vdW magnet could pave the way for implementing low-dimensional materials in the next-generation spintronic applications

The OpenMolcas Web: A Community-Driven Approach to Advancing Computational Chemistry

The developments of the open-source OpenMolcas chemistry software environment since spring 2020 are described, with a focus on novel functionalities accessible in the stable branch of the package or via interfaces with other packages. These developments span a wide range of topics in computational chemistry and are presented in thematic sections: electronic structure theory, electronic spectroscopy simulations, analytic gradients and molecular structure optimizations, ab initio molecular dynamics, and other new features. This report offers an overview of the chemical phenomena and processes OpenMolcas can address, while showing that OpenMolcas is an attractive platform for state-of-the-art atomistic computer simulations