Massive Star Mergers: Induced Mixing and Nucleosynthesis

We study the nucleosynthesis and the induced mixing during the merging of massive stars inside a common envelope. The systems of interest are close binaries, initially consisting of a massive red supergiant and a main-sequence companion of a few solar masses. We apply parameterized results based on hydrodynamical simulations to model the stream-core interaction and the response of the star in a standard stellar-evolution code. Preliminary results are presented illustrating the possibility of unusual nucleosynthesis and post-merging dredge-up which can cause composition anomalies in the supergiant's envelope.Comment: 4 pages. To be published in Ap&S

Assessment of IPE Core Competencies During Advanced Pharmacy Practice Clinical Experiences

Purpose: To illustrate incorporation of select interprofessional education collaborative (IPEC) competencies into preceptor evaluations of students for advanced pharmacy practice experiences (APPEs). To describe the tool and evaluate the results obtained. Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) is a necessary component of pharmacy curricula. Pharmacy students at this health sciences university participate in a required two-year, longitudinal IPE program during their first two program years; some students participate in additional IPE programming throughout the final two program years. To evaluate the success of these experiences, student achievement of IPEC competencies during their APPEs in the curriculum’s final year was measured. Description of Intervention: During 2014-2015, the curriculum committee updated preceptor evaluations of students by including select IPEC competencies. These applied to core APPE environments: acute care (AC), ambulatory care (AMC), hospital and community pharmacy. The annual 2015 preceptor development program focused on IPE. The updated preceptor evaluations of students were instituted in the 2015-2016 academic year. Results: Student achievement of the competencies was evaluated. Among the three values/ethics IPEC competencies achievement was reached by ≥98.2% of students. Among roles/responsibilities competencies, 81.8% of students accomplished one of these in the AMC environment; ≥98% of students achieved the other roles/responsibility competencies in other APPE environments. Among communication competencies, ≤64% of students accomplished one of these in the AC and AMC environments. Greater than 93% of students achieved the team/teamwork competencies in the AC and AMC environments. Conclusion: Measuring achievement of IPEC competencies during APPEs has confirmed that, overall, pharmacy students appear prepared for interprofessional, collaborative practice. Interprofessional communication is an area for increased focus in IPE activities during years 1-3 of the curriculum. Relevance to Interprofessional Education: This process may be replicable by other health professions. Assessing student achievement of the IPEC competencies during the clinical components of curricula provides valuable information. Two to Three Learning Objectives Identify a process for incorporating IPE competency measurement into preceptor evaluations of students on clinical rotations. Describe the process for evaluating the obtained outcomes in contributing to continuous quality improvement of IPE programming

Prognostic Threshold for Circulating Tumor Cells in Patients With Pancreatic and Midgut Neuroendocrine Tumors

BACKGROUND: Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) are detectable in patients with NET and are accurate prognostic markers although the optimum threshold has not been defined. OBJECTIVE: To define optimal prognostic CTC threshold in pancreatic and midgut NET. PATIENTS AND METHODS: CellSearch was used to enumerate CTCs in 199 patients with metastatic pancreatic (PanNET) (90) or midgut NET (109). Patients were followed for progression free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) for a minimum of 3 years or until death. RESULTS: AUROC for progression at 12 months in PanNET and midgut NET identified the optimal CTC threshold as ≥1 and ≥2 respectively. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, these thresholds were predictive for 12 month progression with OR of 6.69 (p< 0.01) for PanNET and 5.88 (p<0.003) for midgut. The same thresholds were found to be optimal for predicting death at 36 months with an OR of 2.87 (p< 0.03) and 5.09 (p<0.005) for PanNET and midgut NET respectively. In multivariate Cox hazard regression analysis for PFS in PanNET, ≥ 1 CTC had HR 2.6 (p <0.01) whilst ≥ 2 CTCs had HR 2.25 (p < 0.01) in midgut NET. In multivariate analysis OS in PanNET, ≥ 1 CTC had HR 3.16 (p < 0.01) and in midgut NET, ≥ 2 CTCs had HR of 1.73 (p < 0.06). CONCLUSIONS: The optimal CTC threshold to predict PFS and OS in metastatic PanNET and midgut NET is 1 and 2, respectively. These thresholds can be used to stratify patients in clinical practice and clinical trials

t(10;11)(p12;q23) KMT2A/NEBL

Review on t(10;11)(p12;q23) KMT2A/NEBL, with data on clinics, and the genes involved

Transition Constraints for Temporal Attributes

Representing temporal data in conceptual data models and ontologies is required by various application domains. For it to be useful for modellers to represent the information precisely and reason over it, it is essential to have a language that is expressive enough to capture the required operational semantics of the time-varying information. Temporal modelling languages have little support for temporal attributes, if at all, yet attributes are a standard element in the widely used conceptual modelling languages such as EER and UML. This hiatus prevents one to utilise a complete temporal conceptual data model and keep track of evolving values of data and its interaction with temporal classes. A rich axiomatisation of fully temporised attributes is possible with a minor extension to the already very expressive description logic language DLRUS. We formalise the notion of transition of attributes, and their interaction with transition of classes. The transition specified for attributes are extension, evolution, and arbitrary quantitative extension

Endometrial Cancer, Risk Factors, and Prevention Strategies: A Qualitative Study of Women’s Knowledge and Perceptions

https://openworks.mdanderson.org/soar24/1009/thumbnail.jp

Sensory Electrical Stimulation Improves Foot Placement during Targeted Stepping Post-Stroke

Proper foot placement is vital for maintaining balance during walking, requiring the integration of multiple sensory signals with motor commands. Disruption of brain structures post-stroke likely alters the processing of sensory information by motor centers, interfering with precision control of foot placement and walking function for stroke survivors. In this study, we examined whether somatosensory stimulation, which improves functional movements of the paretic hand, could be used to improve foot placement of the paretic limb. Foot placement was evaluated before, during, and after application of somatosensory electrical stimulation to the paretic foot during a targeted stepping task. Starting from standing, twelve chronic stroke participants initiated movement with the non-paretic limb and stepped to one of five target locations projected onto the floor with distances normalized to the paretic stride length. Targeting error and lower extremity kinematics were used to assess changes in foot placement and limb control due to somatosensory stimulation. Significant reductions in placement error in the medial–lateral direction (p = 0.008) were observed during the stimulation and post-stimulation blocks. Seven participants, presenting with a hip circumduction walking pattern, had reductions (p = 0.008) in the magnitude and duration of hip abduction during swing with somatosensory stimulation. Reductions in circumduction correlated with both functional and clinical measures, with larger improvements observed in participants with greater impairment. The results of this study suggest that somatosensory stimulation of the paretic foot applied during movement can improve the precision control of foot placement

Experimental investigation of classical and quantum correlations under decoherence

It is well known that many operations in quantum information processing depend largely on a special kind of quantum correlation, that is, entanglement. However, there are also quantum tasks that display the quantum advantage without entanglement. Distinguishing classical and quantum correlations in quantum systems is therefore of both fundamental and practical importance. In consideration of the unavoidable interaction between correlated systems and the environment, understanding the dynamics of correlations would stimulate great interest. In this study, we investigate the dynamics of different kinds of bipartite correlations in an all-optical experimental setup. The sudden change in behaviour in the decay rates of correlations and their immunity against certain decoherences are shown. Moreover, quantum correlation is observed to be larger than classical correlation, which disproves the early conjecture that classical correlation is always greater than quantum correlation. Our observations may be important for quantum information processing.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Nature Communication

Optimality of mutation and selection in germinal centers

The population dynamics theory of B cells in a typical germinal center could play an important role in revealing how affinity maturation is achieved. However, the existing models encountered some conflicts with experiments. To resolve these conflicts, we present a coarse-grained model to calculate the B cell population development in affinity maturation, which allows a comprehensive analysis of its parameter space to look for optimal values of mutation rate, selection strength, and initial antibody-antigen binding level that maximize the affinity improvement. With these optimized parameters, the model is compatible with the experimental observations such as the ~100-fold affinity improvements, the number of mutations, the hypermutation rate, and the "all or none" phenomenon. Moreover, we study the reasons behind the optimal parameters. The optimal mutation rate, in agreement with the hypermutation rate in vivo, results from a tradeoff between accumulating enough beneficial mutations and avoiding too many deleterious or lethal mutations. The optimal selection strength evolves as a balance between the need for affinity improvement and the requirement to pass the population bottleneck. These findings point to the conclusion that germinal centers have been optimized by evolution to generate strong affinity antibodies effectively and rapidly. In addition, we study the enhancement of affinity improvement due to B cell migration between germinal centers. These results could enhance our understandings to the functions of germinal centers.Comment: 5 figures in main text, and 4 figures in Supplementary Informatio