Amifostine (wr-2721), A Cytoprotective Agent During High-dose Cyclophosphamide Treatment Of Non-hodgkin's Lymphomas: A Phase Ii Study.

Clinical trials indicate that amifostine may confer protection on various normal tissues without attenuating anti-tumor response. When administered prior to chemotherapy or radiotherapy, it may provide a broad spectrum of cytoprotection including against alkylating drugs. The mechanism of protection resides in the metabolism at normal tissue site by membrane-bound alkaline phosphatase. Toxicity of this drug is moderate with hypotension, nausea and vomiting, and hypocalcemia being observed. We report a phase II study using amifostine as a protective drug against high-dose cyclophosphamide (HDCY) (7 g/m2), used to mobilize peripheral blood progenitor cells (PBPC) and to reduce tumor burden. We enrolled 29 patients, 22 (75. 9%) affected by aggressive and 7 (24.1%) by indolent non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), who were submitted to 58 infusions of amifostine and compared them with a historical group (33 patients) affected by aggressive NHL and treated with VACOP-B followed by HDCY. The most important results in favor of amifostine were the reduction of intensity of cardiac, pulmonary and hepatic toxicity, and a significant reduction of frequency and severity of mucositis (P = 0. 04). None of the 29 patients died in the protected group, while in the historical group 2/33 patients died because of cardiac or pulmonary toxicity and 2 patients stopped therapy due to toxicity. Amifostine did not prevent the aplastic phase following HDCY. PBPC collection and hematological recovery were adequate in both groups. The number of CFU-GM (colony-forming units-granulocyte/macrophage) colonies and mononuclear cells in the apheresis products was significantly higher in the amifostine group (P = 0.02 and 0.01, respectively). Side effects were mild and easily controlled. We conclude that amifostine protection should be useful in HDCY to protect normal tissues, with acceptable side effects.33791-

Providing Self-Aware Systems with Reflexivity

We propose a new type of self-aware systems inspired by ideas from higher-order theories of consciousness. First, we discussed the crucial distinction between introspection and reflexion. Then, we focus on computational reflexion as a mechanism by which a computer program can inspect its own code at every stage of the computation. Finally, we provide a formal definition and a proof-of-concept implementation of computational reflexion, viewed as an enriched form of program interpretation and a way to dynamically "augment" a computational process.Comment: 12 pages plus bibliography, appendices with code description, code of the proof-of-concept implementation, and examples of executio

Communication and trust in the bounded confidence model

The communication process in a situation of emergency is discussed within the Scheff theory of shame and pride. The communication involves messages from media and from other persons. Three strategies are considered: selfish (to contact friends), collective (to join other people) and passive (to do nothing). We show that the pure selfish strategy cannot be evolutionarily stable. The main result is that the community structure is statistically meaningful only if the interpersonal communication is weak.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, RevTeX, for ICCCI-201

Under pressure: Response urgency modulates striatal and insula activity during decision-making under risk

When deciding whether to bet in situations that involve potential monetary loss or gain (mixed gambles), a subjective sense of pressure can influence the evaluation of the expected utility associated with each choice option. Here, we explored how gambling decisions, their psychophysiological and neural counterparts are modulated by an induced sense of urgency to respond. Urgency influenced decision times and evoked heart rate responses, interacting with the expected value of each gamble. Using functional MRI, we observed that this interaction was associated with changes in the activity of the striatum, a critical region for both reward and choice selection, and within the insula, a region implicated as the substrate of affective feelings arising from interoceptive signals which influence motivational behavior. Our findings bridge current psychophysiological and neurobiological models of value representation and action-programming, identifying the striatum and insular cortex as the key substrates of decision-making under risk and urgency

Project Last Mile and the development of the Girl Champ brand in eSwatini: Engaging the private sector to promote uptake of health services among adolescent girls and young women

In eSwatini and across sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) are at significantly higher risk of HIV infection and poorer sexual and reproductive health (SRH) than their male counterparts. AGYW demonstrate low demand for SRH services, further contributing to poor outcomes. Strategic marketing approaches, including those used by multinational corporations, have potential to support demand creation for SRH services among AGYW, but there is limited empirical evidence on the direct application of privatesector strategic marketing approaches in this context. Therefore, we examined how Project Last Mile worked with eSwatini’s Ministry of Heath to translate strategic marketing approaches from the Coca-Cola system to attract AGYW to SRH services. We present qualitative market research using the ZMET® methodology with 12 young Swazi women (ages 15–24), which informed development of a highly branded communication strategy consistent with other successful gain-framing approaches. Qualitative in-depth interviews with 19 stakeholders revealed receptivity to the market research findings, and highlighted local ownership over the strategic marketing process and brand. These results can inform similar efforts to translate strategic marketing to support demand generation in pursuit of public health goals to reduce HIV risk and improve SRH

The effect of induced sadness and moderate depression on attention networks

This study investigates how sadness and minor/moderate depression influences the three functions of attention: alerting, orienting, and executive control using the attention network test. The aim of the study is to investigate whether minor to moderate depression is more similar to sadness or clinical depression with regards to attentional processing. It was predicted that both induced sadness and minor to moderate depression will influence executive control by narrowing spatial attention and in turn this will lead to less interference from the flanker items (i.e., less effects of congruency) due to a focused attentional state. No differences were predicted for alerting or orienting functions. The results from the two experiments, the first inducing sadness (Experiment 1) and the second measuring subclinical depression (Experiment 2), show that, as expected, participants who are sad or minor to moderately depressed showed less flanker interference compared to participants who were neither sad nor depressed. This study provides strong evidence, that irrespective of its aetiology, sadness and minor/moderate depression have similar effects on spatial attention

Thalamocortical disconnection affects the somatic marker and social cognition: a case report

Thalamo-cortical connectivity was characterised in a patient with bilateral infarct of the thalami, without evidence of cognitive deficits in everyday life. Patient underwent social and emotional tests, Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), with and without concomitant heart rate variability (HRV) recording and at 3T-MRI to assess thalamo-cortical connectivity. Patient showed impairment at the IGT, in somatic marker, in emotions and theory of mind. MRI documented a bilateral damage of the centromedian-parafascicular complex. Patient's thalamic lesions disconnected brain areas involved in decision-making and autonomic regulation, affecting the somatic marker and resulting in the neuropsychological deficit exhibited by L.C