An interdisciplinary perspective on current understanding of the pathophysiology of subjective tinnitus and best clinical practices for treatment

Subjective tinnitus is commonly experienced, especially by those with hearing loss. It is generally agreed that neural plasticity underlies the pathophysiology of subjective tinnitus. Studies from audiology/hearing research and cognitive neuroscience/neuropsychology are reviewed to illuminate current understanding of the pathophysiology of tinnitus. Research has revealed hyperactivity (increased spontaneous firing rate) in the dorsal cochlear nucleus, inferior colliculus, and other locations in the auditory system. Reduced inhibition related to sensory deprivation at the cochlear level is thought to underlie hyperactivity in auditory structures. Increased neural synchrony is also noted, and may be a correlate of hyperactivity. Reorganization of cortical tonotopic maps is seen in subjective tinnitus, as is reorganization of visual and somatosensory cortical maps with sensory deprivation in those modalities. Non-classical pathways branching from the inferior colliculus and thalamus to the amygdala may be involved in bothersome tinnitus. Providing evidence-based practice for the treatment of subjective tinnitus remains challenging. Current and emerging treatments are reviewed and recommendations for best practice based on research and clinical trial outcomes are discussed

The Interference Term in the Wigner Distribution Function and the Aharonov-Bohm Effect

A phase space representation of the Aharonov-Bohm effect is presented. It shows that the shift of interference fringes is associated to the interference term of the Wigner distribution function of the total wavefunction, whereas the interference pattern is defined by the common projections of the Wigner distribution functions of the interfering beamsComment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Vibrational coherent quantum computation

Published versio

Nonclassicality of a photon-subtracted Gaussian field

Published versio

Designing personalised cancer treatments

The concept of personalised medicine for cancer is not new. It arguably began with the attempts by Salmon and Hamburger to produce a viable cellular chemosensitivity assay in the 1970s, and continues to this day. While clonogenic assays soon fell out of favour due to their high failure rate, other cellular assays fared better and although they have not entered widespread clinical practice, they have proved to be very useful research tools. For instance, the ATP-based chemosensitivity assay was developed in the early 1990s and is highly standardised. It has proved useful for evaluating new drugs and combinations, and in recent years has been used to understand the molecular basis of drug resistance and sensitivity to anti-cancer drugs. Recent developments allow unparalleled genotyping and phenotyping of tumours, providing a plethora of targets for the development of new cancer treatments. However, validation of such targets and new agents to permit translation to the clinic remains difficult. There has been one major disappointment in that cell lines, though useful, do not often reflect the behaviour of their parent cancers with sufficient fidelity to be useful. Low passage cell lines — either in culture or xenografts are being used to overcome some of these issues, but have several problems of their own. Primary cell culture remains useful, but large tumours are likely to receive neo-adjuvant treatment before removal and that limits the tumour types that can be studied. The development of new treatments remains difficult and prediction of the clinical efficacy of new treatments from pre-clinical data is as hard as ever. One lesson has certainly been that one cannot buck the biology — and that understanding the genome alone is not sufficient to guarantee success. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the development of EGFR inhibitors. Despite overexpression of EGFR by many tumour types, only those with activating EGFR mutations and an inability to circumvent EGFR blockade have proved susceptible to treatment. The challenge is how to use advanced molecular understanding with limited cellular assay information to improve both drug development and the design of companion diagnostics to guide their use. This has the capacity to remove much of the guesswork from the process and should improve success rates

Designing personalised cancer treatments

The concept of personalised medicine for cancer is not new. It arguably began with the attempts by Salmon and Hamburger to produce a viable cellular chemosensitivity assay in the 1970s, and continues to this day. While clonogenic assays soon fell out of favour due to their high failure rate, other cellular assays fared better and although they have not entered widespread clinical practice, they have proved to be very useful research tools. For instance, the ATP-based chemosensitivity assay was developed in the early 1990s and is highly standardised. It has proved useful for evaluating new drugs and combinations, and in recent years has been used to understand the molecular basis of drug resistance and sensitivity to anti-cancer drugs. Recent developments allow unparalleled genotyping and phenotyping of tumours, providing a plethora of targets for the development of new cancer treatments. However, validation of such targets and new agents to permit translation to the clinic remains difficult. There has been one major disappointment in that cell lines, though useful, do not often reflect the behaviour of their parent cancers with sufficient fidelity to be useful. Low passage cell lines — either in culture or xenografts are being used to overcome some of these issues, but have several problems of their own. Primary cell culture remains useful, but large tumours are likely to receive neo-adjuvant treatment before removal and that limits the tumour types that can be studied. The development of new treatments remains difficult and prediction of the clinical efficacy of new treatments from pre-clinical data is as hard as ever. One lesson has certainly been that one cannot buck the biology — and that understanding the genome alone is not sufficient to guarantee success. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the development of EGFR inhibitors. Despite overexpression of EGFR by many tumour types, only those with activating EGFR mutations and an inability to circumvent EGFR blockade have proved susceptible to treatment. The challenge is how to use advanced molecular understanding with limited cellular assay information to improve both drug development and the design of companion diagnostics to guide their use. This has the capacity to remove much of the guesswork from the process and should improve success rates

Improved monitoring of oriental fruit moth (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) with terpinyl acetate plus acetic acid membrane lures

Male and female moth catches of Grapholita molesta (Busck) in traps were evaluated in stone and pome fruit orchards untreated or treated with sex pheromones for mating disruption in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, USA, and Italy from 2015 to 2017. Trials evaluated various blends loaded into either membrane cup lures or septa. Membrane lures were loaded with terpinyl acetate (TA), acetic acid (AA) and (Z)‐3‐hexenyl acetate alone or in combinations. Two septa lures were loaded with either the three‐component sex pheromone blend for G. molesta alone or in combination with codlemone (2‐PH), the sex pheromone of Cydia pomonella (L). A third septum lure included the combination sex pheromone blend plus pear ester, (E,Z)‐2,4‐ethyl decadienoate (2‐PH/PE), and a fourth septum was loaded with only β‐ocimene. Results were consistent across geographical areas showing that the addition of β‐ocimene or (Z)‐3‐hexenyl acetate did not increase moth catches. The addition of pear ester to the sex pheromone lure marginally increased moth catches. The use of TA and AA together significantly increased moth catches compared with the use of only one of the two components. Traps with the TA/AA lure outperformed the Ajar trap baited with a liquid TA plus sugar bait. The emission rate of AA was not a significant factor affecting the performance of the TA/AA lure. The addition of TA/AA significantly increased moth catches when combined with the 2‐PH lure. The TA/AA lure also allowed traps to catch both sexes. Catch of C. pomonella with the 2‐PH lure was comparable to the use of codlemone; however, moth catch was significantly reduced with the 2‐PH/PE lure. Optimization of these complex lures can likely further improve managers’ ability to monitor G. molesta and help to develop multispecies tortricid lures for use in individual traps.EEA Alto ValleFil: Mujica, María Valentina. Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria (INIA). Protección Vegetal; UruguayFil: Basoalto, Esteban. Universidad Austral de Chile (UACh). Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Instituto de Producción y Sanidad Vegetal; ChileFil: Preti, Michele. Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (UNIBZ).· Faculty of Science and Technology; ItaliaFil: Cichón, Liliana Isabel. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Alto Valle; ArgentinaFil: Fuentes-Contreras, Eduardo. Universidad de Talca. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias; ChileFil: Barros-Parada, Wilson. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV). Escuela de Agronomía; ChileFil: Krawczyk, Greg. Pennsylvania State University. Penn State Department of Entomology; Estados UnidosFil: Nunes, Marcelo Z. Pennsylvania State University. Penn State Department of Entomology. Fruit Research and Extension Center; Estados UnidosFil: Walgenbach, Jim F. North Carolina State University. Mountain Horticultural Crops Research & Extension Center; Estados UnidosFil: Hansen, Randy. Hansen Associates; Estados UnidosKnight, Alan L. United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Agricultural Research Service; Estados Unido

Uncertainty rescued: Bohr's complementarity for composite systems

Generalized uncertainty relations may depend not only on the commutator relation of two observables considered, but also on mutual correlations, in particular, on entanglement. The equivalence between the uncertainty relation and Bohr's complementarity thus holds in a much broader sense than anticipated.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Lett.