Korean migrants' experiences and attitudes towards mental illness and mental health services in New Zealand

The process of migration is known to cause significant psychological distress. Korean migrants living in New Zealand are the focus of this study as the term “Asian” has been identified as over-simplyfying the diversity that exists across Asian groups. Furthermore, research in other Western countries on Korean migrants show that they underutilise mental health services when compared to other Asian groups. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten members from the local Korean community which explored their experiences and attitudes towards mental illness and mental health services in New Zealand. Through thematic analysis common themes and patterned responses were identified. Some identified themes were: Cultural barriers, language barriers and lack of information on mental health and mental health services. The most influential factor was found to be Korean cultural values being in conflict with the general understanding of mental illness and mental health services in New Zealand. The implications of this research will be to assist Korean migrants to access mental health services in times of need

Topological phase transition and surface states in a non-Abelian charged nodal line photonic crystal

Topological charges of nodal lines in a multigap system are represented by non-Abelian numbers, and the Euler class, a topological invariant, can be used to explain their topological phase transitions, such as pair-annihilation of nodal lines. Up until now, no discussion of phase transitions of nodal lines in photonic crystals using the Euler class has been reported, despite the fact that the Euler class and topological phase transition have recently been addressed in metallic or acoustic crystals. Here, we show how the deformation of a photonic crystal causes topological phase transitions in the nodal lines, and the Euler class can be used to theoretically predict the nodal lines’ stability based on the non-Abelian topological charge theory. Specifically, by manipulating the separation between the two single diamond structures and the extent of structural distortion, we numerically demonstrate the topological transition of nodal lines, e.g., from nodal lines to nodal rings. We then demonstrate that the range of surface states is strongly influenced by the topological phase transition of nodal lines. Moreover, the Zak phase was used to explain the surface states’ existence

Mechanism and treatment for learning and memory deficits in mouse models of Noonan syndrome.

In Noonan syndrome (NS) 30-50% of subjects show cognitive deficits of unknown etiology and with no known treatment. Here, we report that knock-in mice expressing either of two NS-associated mutations in Ptpn11, which encodes the nonreceptor protein tyrosine phosphatase Shp2, show hippocampal-dependent impairments in spatial learning and deficits in hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP). In addition, viral overexpression of an NS-associated allele PTPN11(D61G) in adult mouse hippocampus results in increased baseline excitatory synaptic function and deficits in LTP and spatial learning, which can be reversed by a mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase (MEK) inhibitor. Furthermore, brief treatment with lovastatin reduces activation of the GTPase Ras-extracellular signal-related kinase (Erk) pathway in the brain and normalizes deficits in LTP and learning in adult Ptpn11(D61G/+) mice. Our results demonstrate that increased basal Erk activity and corresponding baseline increases in excitatory synaptic function are responsible for the LTP impairments and, consequently, the learning deficits in mouse models of NS. These data also suggest that lovastatin or MEK inhibitors may be useful for treating the cognitive deficits in NS

No association between the IL28B SNP and response to peginterferon plus ribavirin combination treatment in Korean chronic hepatitis C patients

Background/AimsThere are few available data regarding the association between the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the gene encoding interleukin 28B (IL28B) and a sustained virologic response (SVR) to peginterferon (PEG-IFN) plus ribavirin (RBV) therapy in Korean chronic hepatitis C patients.MethodsThis was a retrospective cohort study of 156 patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection who received combination treatment of PEG-IFN plus RBV. Blood samples from these patients were analyzed to identify the IL28B SNPs at rs12979860, rs12980275, rs8099917, and rs8103142. Association analyses were performed to evaluate the relationships between each IL28B SNP and SVRs.ResultsSeventy six patients with HCV genotype 1 and 80 with genotype non-1 were enrolled. The frequencies of rs12979860 CC and CT genotypes were 90.4% and 9.6%, respectively; those of rs12980275 AA and AG genotypes were 87.2% and 12.8%, respectively; those of rs8099917 TT and TG genotypes were 92.3% and 7.7%, respectively; and those of rs8103142 TT and CT genotypes were 90.4% and 9.6%, respectively. Among the patients with HCV genotype 1, the SVR rates were 69.7% and 80.0% for rs12979860 CC and CT, respectively (P=0.71). Among the HCV genotype non-1 patients, SVR rates were 88.0% and 100% for rs12979860 CC and CT (P=1.00), respectively.ConclusionsGenotypes of the IL28B SNP that are known to be favorable were present in most of the Korean patients with chronic hepatitis C in this study. Moreover, the IL28B SNP did not influence the SVR rate in either the HCV genotype 1 or non-1 patients. Therefore, IL28B SNP analysis might be not useful for the initial assessment, prediction of treatment outcomes, or treatment decision-making of Korean chronic hepatitis C patients

Treatment of a Large Tibial Non-Union Bone Defect in a Cat Using Xenograft with Canine-Derived Cancellous Bone, Demineralized Bone Matrix, and Autograft

A 17-month-old domestic short-hair cat was referred due to a non-union in the left tibia. The initial repair, conducted 3 months prior at another animal hospital, involved an intramedullary (IM) pin and wire to address a comminuted fracture. Unfortunately, the wire knot caused a skin tract, resulting in osteomyelitis. Although the wire knot was removed at that hospital, the draining tract persisted, continuously discharging exudate. Upon evaluation, the first surgery was reassessed and revised, involving the removal of the IM pin and the application of external skeletal fixation alongside an antibiotic susceptibility test. After 118 days post-revision surgery, while some cortical continuity was observed, a significant bone defect persisted, posing a substantial risk of refracture should the implant be removed. A second revision surgery was performed, utilizing a bone plate combined with cancellous bone autograft, recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein-2, and xenograft featuring a canine-derived cancellous chip mixed with demineralized bone matrix. Remarkably, the bone completed its healing within 105 days following the subsequent surgery. Radiography demonstrated successful management of the large bone defect up to the 2-year postoperative check-up. During telephone follow-ups for 3.5 years after surgery, no complications were identified, and the subject maintained a favorable gait

Relationship between End-of-Life Care Stress, Death Anxiety, and Self-Efficacy of Clinical Nurses in South Korea

In South Korea, the number of cancer patients continues to rise, indicating that nurses have greater access to end-of-life care in clinical settings. This study examined the relationship between the end-of-life care stress, death anxiety, and self-efficacy of clinical nurses in South Korea. A cross-sectional descriptive design was used. Participants were 124 nurses working in university hospitals. Data included the general characteristics of study participants, end-of-life care stress, death anxiety, and self-efficacy. Data were collected from February to March 2021. This study shows that the degrees of end-of-life care stress and death anxiety of clinical nurses in South Korea were higher than the median values. Married nurses had higher self-efficacy than unmarried, and there was a difference between bedside and administrative nurses’ self-efficacy. Nurses with no experience of end-of-life care nursing education had higher death anxiety than nurses with experience. The higher the end-of-life care stress of nurses, the higher the death anxiety. The study suggests that therapeutic and detailed educational programs to reduce end-of-life care stress and death anxiety of clinical nurses are needed, and experimental research to verify this. The results can contribute to countries as an additional and enriching reference

A quantitative analysis method for comitant exotropia using video-oculography with alternate cover

Abstract Background The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a quantitative analysis method for comitant exotropia using video-oculography (VOG) with alternate cover. Methods Thirty-four subjects with comitant exotropia were included. Two independent ophthalmologists measured the angle of ocular deviation using the alternate prism cover test (APCT). The video files and data of changes in ocular deviation during the alternate cover test were obtained using VOG. To verify the accuracy of VOG, the value obtained using VOG and the angle of a rotating model eye were compared, and a new linear equation was subsequently derived using these data. The calculated values obtained using VOG were compared with those obtained using the APCT. Results Rotation of the model eye and the values obtained using VOG demonstrated excellent positive correlation (R = 1.000; p < 0.001). A simple linear regression model was obtained: rotation of the model eye = 0.978 × value obtained using VOG for a model eye – 0.549. The 95% limit of agreement for inter-observer variability was ±4.63 prism diopters (PD) for APCT and that for test-retest variability was ±3.56 PD for the VOG test. The results of APCT and calculated VOG test demonstrated a strong positive correlation. Bland-Altman plots revealed no overall tendency for the calculated values obtained from VOG to differ from those obtained using APCT. Conclusions VOG with alternate cover is a non-invasive and accurate tool for quantitatively measuring and recording ocular deviation. In particular, it is independent of the proficiency of the examiner and, can therefore, be useful in the absence of skilled personnel. Trial registration ClinicalTrial.gov, NCT03119311, Date of registration: 04/17/2017, Date of enrolment of the first participant to the trial: 04/25/2017

An Iterative Method for Unsupervised Robust Anomaly Detection under Data Contamination

Most deep anomaly detection models are based on learning normality from datasets due to the difficulty of defining abnormality by its diverse and inconsistent nature. Therefore, it has been a common practice to learn normality under the assumption that anomalous data are absent in a training dataset, which we call normality assumption. However, in practice, the normality assumption is often violated due to the nature of real data distributions that includes anomalous tails, i.e., a contaminated dataset. Thereby, the gap between the assumption and actual training data affects detrimentally in learning of an anomaly detection model. In this work, we propose a learning framework to reduce this gap and achieve better normality representation. Our key idea is to identify sample-wise normality and utilize it as an importance weight, which is updated iteratively during the training. Our framework is designed to be model-agnostic and hyperparameter insensitive so that it applies to a wide range of existing methods without careful parameter tuning. We apply our framework to three different representative approaches of deep anomaly detection that are classified into one-class classification-, probabilistic model-, and reconstruction-based approaches. In addition, we address the importance of a termination condition for iterative methods and propose a termination criterion inspired by the anomaly detection objective. We validate that our framework improves the robustness of the anomaly detection models under different levels of contamination ratios on five anomaly detection benchmark datasets and two image datasets. On various contaminated datasets, our framework improves the performance of three representative anomaly detection methods, measured by area under the ROC curve. IEEE11Nsciescopu