On Some Open Problems in Many-Electron Theory

Mel Levy and Elliott Lieb are two of the most prominent researchers who have dedicated their efforts to the investigation of fundamental questions in many-electron theory. Their results have not only revolutionized the theoretical approach of the field, but, directly or indirectly, allowed for a quantum jump in the computational treatment of realistic systems as well. For this reason, at the conclusion of our book where the subject is treated across different disciplines, we have asked Mel Levy and Elliott Lieb to provide us with some open problems, which they believe will be a worth challenge for the future also in the perspective of a synergy among the various disciplines.Comment: "Epilogue" chapter in "Many-Electron Approaches in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics: A Multidisciplinary View", Volker Bach and Luigi Delle Site Eds. pages 411-416; Book Series: Mathematical Physics Studies, Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2014. The original title has been modified in order to clarify the subject of the chapter out of the context of the boo

Deprivation is associated with anxiety and stress. A population-based longitudinal household survey among Chinese adults in Hong Kong

BACKGROUND: Mental illness is a major disease burden in the world and disproportionately affects the socially disadvantaged, but studies on the longitudinal association of poverty with anxiety and stress are rare, especially in Asia. Using data from Hong Kong, we aimed to (1) assess the cross-sectional association of poverty with anxiety and stress at baseline, and (2) to examine whether baseline poverty and change in poverty status over time are associated with a subsequent change in anxiety and stress. METHODS: Data were obtained from two waves of a territory-wide longitudinal survey in Hong Kong, with sample sizes of n=1970 and n=1224 for baseline and follow-up, respectively. Poverty was measured with a Deprivation Index and income-poverty. Anxiety and stress symptoms were assessed using Chinese Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 Items. We conducted cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses on the association of poverty with anxiety and stress. OUTCOMES: Deprivation, but not income-poverty, was significantly associated with both outcomes at baseline. Increased deprivation over time was associated with greater score and increased risk of anxiety and stress. Persistent deprivation over time was associated with greater anxiety and stress, and increased risk of incident anxiety. INTERPRETATION: Deprivation could have significant independent effects on anxiety and stress, even after adjusting for the effects of income-poverty. Greater attention should be paid to deprivation in policymaking to tackle the inequalities of mental health problems, especially since stress and anxiety are precursors to more severe forms of mental illness and other comorbidities

Different definition of sarcopenia and mortality in cancer: A meta-analysis

Objectives: Sarcopenia has been an emerging theme in clinical oncology. Various definitions of sarcopenia have been proposed, but their prognostic performance have yet to be evaluated and compared. The aim of this meta-analysis is to comprehensively evaluate the performance of different cutoff definitions of sarcopenia in cancer mortality prognostication. / Methods: This is a meta-analysis. Cohort studies on lean mass and mortality published before December 20, 2017 were obtained by systematic search on PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Embase. Inclusion criteria were cohort studies reporting binary lean mass categorized according to clearly defined cutoffs, and with all-cause mortality as study outcome. Studies were stratified according to the cutoff(s) used in defining low lean mass. The cutoff-specific hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of low lean mass on cancer mortality were pooled with a random-effects model and compared. / Results: Altogether 81 studies that studied binary lean mass were included. The pooled HRs on cancer mortality using the 3 most used definitions were: 1.74 (95% CI, 1.46–2.07) using the definition proposed by International Consensus of Cancer Cachexia, 1.45 (95% CI, 1.21–1.75) using that by Martin, and 1.58 (95% CI, 1.35–1.84) using that by Prado. The associations between sarcopenia and cancer mortality using other definitions were all statistically significant, despite different estimates were observed. / Conclusions: The association of low lean mass with increased mortality was consistent across different definitions; this provides further evidence on the poorer survival in cancer patients with sarcopenia. However, further studies evaluating the performance of each definition are warranted

Serum Alpha-fetoprotein Levels and Clinical Outcomes in the Phase III CELESTIAL Study of Cabozantinib versus Placebo in Patients with Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma

PURPOSE: The phase III CELESTIAL study demonstrated improved overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) with cabozantinib versus placebo in patients with previously treated, advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We analyzed outcomes by baseline alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and on-treatment AFP changes. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Serum AFP was measured every 8 weeks by blinded, centralized testing. Outcomes were analyzed by baseline AFP bifurcated at 400 ng/mL and by on-treatment AFP response (≥20% decrease from baseline at Week 8). The optimal cutoff for change in AFP at Week 8 was evaluated using maximally selected rank statistics. RESULTS: Median OS for cabozantinib versus placebo was 13.9 versus 10.3 months [HR, 0.81; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.62-1.04] for patients with baseline AFP <400 ng/mL, and 8.5 versus 5.2 months (HR, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.54-0.94) for patients with baseline AFP ≥400 ng/mL. Week 8 AFP response rate was 50% for cabozantinib versus 13% for placebo. In the cabozantinib arm, median OS for patients with and without AFP response was 16.1 versus 9.1 months (HR, 0.61; 95% CI, 0.45-0.84). AFP response was independently associated with longer OS. The optimal cutoff for association with OS in the cabozantinib arm was ≤0% change in AFP at Week 8 [AFP control; HR 0.50 (95% CI, 0.35-0.71)]. HRs for PFS were consistent with those for OS. CONCLUSIONS: Cabozantinib improved outcomes versus placebo across a range of baseline AFP levels. On-treatment AFP response and control rates were higher with cabozantinib than placebo, and were associated with longer OS and PFS with cabozantinib

Classical kinetic energy, quantum fluctuation terms and kinetic-energy functionals

We employ a recently formulated dequantization procedure to obtain an exact expression for the kinetic energy which is applicable to all kinetic-energy functionals. We express the kinetic energy of an N-electron system as the sum of an N-electron classical kinetic energy and an N-electron purely quantum kinetic energy arising from the quantum fluctuations that turn the classical momentum into the quantum momentum. This leads to an interesting analogy with Nelson's stochastic approach to quantum mechanics, which we use to conceptually clarify the physical nature of part of the kinetic-energy functional in terms of statistical fluctuations and in direct correspondence with Fisher Information Theory. We show that the N-electron purely quantum kinetic energy can be written as the sum of the (one-electron) Weizsacker term and an (N-1)-electron kinetic correlation term. We further show that the Weizsacker term results from local fluctuations while the kinetic correlation term results from the nonlocal fluctuations. For one-electron orbitals (where kinetic correlation is neglected) we obtain an exact (albeit impractical) expression for the noninteracting kinetic energy as the sum of the classical kinetic energy and the Weizsacker term. The classical kinetic energy is seen to be explicitly dependent on the electron phase and this has implications for the development of accurate orbital-free kinetic-energy functionals. Also, there is a direct connection between the classical kinetic energy and the angular momentum and, across a row of the periodic table, the classical kinetic energy component of the noninteracting kinetic energy generally increases as Z increases.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure. To appear in Theor Chem Ac

Prediction of preterm birth with and without preeclampsia using mid-pregnancy immune and growth-related molecular factors and maternal characteristics.

OBJECTIVE:To evaluate if mid-pregnancy immune and growth-related molecular factors predict preterm birth (PTB) with and without (±) preeclampsia. STUDY DESIGN:Included were 400 women with singleton deliveries in California in 2009-2010 (200 PTB and 200 term) divided into training and testing samples at a 2:1 ratio. Sixty-three markers were tested in 15-20 serum samples using multiplex technology. Linear discriminate analysis was used to create a discriminate function. Model performance was assessed using area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). RESULTS:Twenty-five serum biomarkers along with maternal age &lt;34 years and poverty status identified &gt;80% of women with PTB ± preeclampsia with best performance in women with preterm preeclampsia (AUC = 0.889, 95% confidence interval (0.822-0.959) training; 0.883 (0.804-0.963) testing). CONCLUSION:Together with maternal age and poverty status, mid-pregnancy immune and growth factors reliably identified most women who went on to have a PTB ± preeclampsia

Developmental changes in the role of different metalinguistic awareness skills in Chinese reading acquisition from preschool to third grade

Copyright @ 2014 Wei et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.The present study investigated the relationship between Chinese reading skills and metalinguistic awareness skills such as phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness for 101 Preschool, 94 Grade-1, 98 Grade-2, and 98 Grade-3 children from two primary schools in Mainland China. The aim of the study was to examine how each of these metalinguistic awareness skills would exert their influence on the success of reading in Chinese with age. The results showed that all three metalinguistic awareness skills significantly predicted reading success. It further revealed that orthographic awareness played a dominant role in the early stages of reading acquisition, and its influence decreased with age, while the opposite was true for the contribution of morphological awareness. The results were in stark contrast with studies in English, where phonological awareness is typically shown as the single most potent metalinguistic awareness factor in literacy acquisition. In order to account for the current data, a three-stage model of reading acquisition in Chinese is discussed.National Natural Science Foundation of China and Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

MicroRNAs in pulmonary arterial remodeling

Pulmonary arterial remodeling is a presently irreversible pathologic hallmark of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). This complex disease involves pathogenic dysregulation of all cell types within the small pulmonary arteries contributing to vascular remodeling leading to intimal lesions, resulting in elevated pulmonary vascular resistance and right heart dysfunction. Mutations within the bone morphogenetic protein receptor 2 gene, leading to dysregulated proliferation of pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells, have been identified as being responsible for heritable PAH. Indeed, the disease is characterized by excessive cellular proliferation and resistance to apoptosis of smooth muscle and endothelial cells. Significant gene dysregulation at the transcriptional and signaling level has been identified. MicroRNAs are small non-coding RNA molecules that negatively regulate gene expression and have the ability to target numerous genes, therefore potentially controlling a host of gene regulatory and signaling pathways. The major role of miRNAs in pulmonary arterial remodeling is still relatively unknown although research data is emerging apace. Modulation of miRNAs represents a possible therapeutic target for altering the remodeling phenotype in the pulmonary vasculature. This review will focus on the role of miRNAs in regulating smooth muscle and endothelial cell phenotypes and their influence on pulmonary remodeling in the setting of PAH

Applying refinement to the use of mice and rats in rheumatoid arthritis research

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a painful, chronic disorder and there is currently an unmet need for effective therapies that will benefit a wide range of patients. The research and development process for therapies and treatments currently involves in vivo studies, which have the potential to cause discomfort, pain or distress. This Working Group report focuses on identifying causes of suffering within commonly used mouse and rat ‘models’ of RA, describing practical refinements to help reduce suffering and improve welfare without compromising the scientific objectives. The report also discusses other, relevant topics including identifying and minimising sources of variation within in vivo RA studies, the potential to provide pain relief including analgesia, welfare assessment, humane endpoints, reporting standards and the potential to replace animals in RA research