The HITRAN 2008 Molecular Spectroscopic Database

This paper describes the status of the 2008 edition of the HITRAN molecular spectroscopic database. The new edition is the first official public release since the 2004 edition, although a number of crucial updates had been made available online since 2004. The HITRAN compilation consists of several components that serve as input for radiative-transfer calculation codes: individual line parameters for the microwave through visible spectra of molecules in the gas phase; absorption cross-sections for molecules having dense spectral features, i.e., spectra in which the individual lines are not resolved; individual line parameters and absorption cross sections for bands in the ultra-violet; refractive indices of aerosols, tables and files of general properties associated with the database; and database management software. The line-by-line portion of the database contains spectroscopic parameters for forty-two molecules including many of their isotopologues

Mutations in PROSC Disrupt Cellular Pyridoxal Phosphate Homeostasis and Cause Vitamin B6-Dependent Epilepsy

Pyridoxal 5'-phosphate (PLP), the active form of vitamin B6, functions as a cofactor in humans for more than 140 enzymes, many of which are involved in neurotransmitter synthesis and degradation. A deficiency of PLP can present, therefore, as seizures and other symptoms which are treatable with PLP and/or pyridoxine. Deficiency of PLP in the brain can be caused by inborn errors affecting B6 vitamer metabolism or by inactivation of PLP; by compounds accumulating as a result of inborn errors of other pathways or by ingested small molecules. Whole exome sequencing of 2 children from a consanguineous family with pyridoxine-dependent epilepsy revealed a homozygous nonsense mutation in proline synthetase co-transcribed homolog (bacterial) (PROSC), a PLPbinding protein of hitherto unknown function. Subsequent sequencing of 29 unrelated indivduals with pyridoxine-responsive epilepsy identified 4 additional children with biallelic PROSC mutations. Pretreatment cerebrospinal fluid samples showed low PLP concentrations and evidence of reduced activity of PLP-dependent enzymes. However, cultured fibroblasts showed excessive PLP accumulation. An E.coli mutant, lacking the PROSC homologue (ΔYggS) is pyridoxine-sensitive; complementation with human PROSC restored growth whilst hPROSC bearing p.Leu175Pro, p.Arg241Gln and p.Ser78Ter did not. PLP, a highly reactive aldehyde, poses a problem for cells - how to supply enough PLP for apoenzymes while maintaining free PLP concentrations low enough to avoid unwanted reactions with other important cellular nucleophiles. Whilst the mechanism involved is not fully understood our studies suggest that PROSC is involved in intracellular homeostatic regulation of PLP, supplying this cofactor to apoenzymes while minimizing any toxic side reactions

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Increasing frailty is associated with higher prevalence and reduced recognition of delirium in older hospitalised inpatients: results of a multi-centre study

Purpose: Delirium is a neuropsychiatric disorder delineated by an acute change in cognition, attention, and consciousness. It is common, particularly in older adults, but poorly recognised. Frailty is the accumulation of deficits conferring an increased risk of adverse outcomes. We set out to determine how severity of frailty, as measured using the CFS, affected delirium rates, and recognition in hospitalised older people in the United Kingdom. Methods: Adults over 65 years were included in an observational multi-centre audit across UK hospitals, two prospective rounds, and one retrospective note review. Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS), delirium status, and 30-day outcomes were recorded. Results: The overall prevalence of delirium was 16.3% (483). Patients with delirium were more frail than patients without delirium (median CFS 6 vs 4). The risk of delirium was greater with increasing frailty [OR 2.9 (1.8–4.6) in CFS 4 vs 1–3; OR 12.4 (6.2–24.5) in CFS 8 vs 1–3]. Higher CFS was associated with reduced recognition of delirium (OR of 0.7 (0.3–1.9) in CFS 4 compared to 0.2 (0.1–0.7) in CFS 8). These risks were both independent of age and dementia. Conclusion: We have demonstrated an incremental increase in risk of delirium with increasing frailty. This has important clinical implications, suggesting that frailty may provide a more nuanced measure of vulnerability to delirium and poor outcomes. However, the most frail patients are least likely to have their delirium diagnosed and there is a significant lack of research into the underlying pathophysiology of both of these common geriatric syndromes

Immune Response Visualized In Vivo by [18F]-FDG PET/CT after COVID-19 Vaccine

Worldwide deployment of COVID-19 vaccines is in progress. Recent immune activation following vaccination can sometimes be seen in fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography ([18F]-FDG PET/CT). As previously evidenced, FDG-avid axillary lymph node(s) are common in patients receiving vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, influenza virus, or human papillomavirus, and reflect a regional immune response. In addition, these findings may also be accompanied by an increased spleen glucose metabolism after the COVID-19 vaccine, which captures a systemic immune response. Hence, we provide here a clinical example demonstrating that immune response could be associated with increased glucose metabolism in lymphoid organs such as lymph nodes and the spleen, which are critical modulators of T cell immunity. We believe that it is of paramount importance that nuclear physicians should be able to recognize clinical and imaging features of such immune responses upon vaccination for COVID-19 and beyond

Influence of age on radiomic features in ¹⁸F-FDG PET in normal breast tissue and in breast cancer tumors

International audienc