The Zombie Apocalypse

The concept of the living dead has been a subject of human fascination for thousands of years, dating back to 8th century Africa. The idea was originally associated with voodoo folklore, but since its origination, has been modernized and popularized with TV shows, movies, and other popular culture facets. With this popular fascination, however, comes concern

Near-wall nanovelocimetry based on Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence with continuous tracking

The goal of this work is to make progress in the domain of near-wall velocimetry. The technique we use is based on the tracking of nanoparticles in an evanescent field, close to a wall, a technique called TIRF (Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence)-based velocimetry. At variance with the methods developed in the literature, we permanently keep track of the light emitted by each particle during the time the measurements of their positions ('altitudes') and speeds are performed. By performing the Langevin simulation, we quantified effect of biases such as Brownian motion, heterogeneities induced by the walls, statistical biases, photo bleaching, polydispersivity and limited depth of field. Using this method, we obtained slip length on hydrophilic surfaces of 1$\pm$5 nm for sucrose solution, and 9$\pm$10 nm for water; On hydrophobic surface, 32$\pm$5 nm for sucrose solution, and 55$\pm$9 nm for water. The errors (based on 95% confidence intervals) are significantly smaller than the state-of-the-art, but more importantly, the method demonstrates for the first time a capacity to measure slippage with a satisfactory accuracy, while providing a local information on the flow structure with a nanometric resolution. Our study confirms the discrepancy already pointed out in the literature between numerical and experimental slip length estimates. With the progress conveyed by the present work, TIRF based technique with continuous tracking can be considered as a quantitative method for investigating flow properties close to walls, providing both global and local information on the flow.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figure

New online Tools and Digital Environments for Translation into Emoji

Emojitalianobot e EmojiWorldBot sono due applicazioni online per la traduzione in e da emoji su Telegram, la popolare piattaforma di messaggistica istantanea. Emojitalianobot è il primo bot aperto e gratuito di traduzione che contiene i dizionari Emoji-Italiano ed Emoji-Inglese basati sulle descrizioni Unicode. Il bot è stato ideato per coadiuvare la traduzione di Pinocchio in emoji su Twitter da parte dei follower del blog Scritture brevi e contiene pertanto anche il glossario con tutti gli usi degli emoji nella traduzione del celebre romanzo per ragazzi. EmojiWorldBot, epigono di Emojitalianobot, è un dizionario multilingue che usa gli emoji come lingua pivot tra dozzine di lingue differenti. Attualmente le funzioni emoji-parola e parola-emoji sono disponibili per 72 lingue importate dalle tabelle Unicode e forniscono agli utenti delle semplici funzioni di ricerca per trovare le corrispondenze in emoji delle parole e viceversa per ciascuna di queste lingue. Questo contributo presenta i progetti, il background e le principali caratteristiche di queste applicazioni.Emojitalianobot and EmojiWorldBot are two new online tools and digital environments for translation into emoji on Telegram, the popular instant messaging platform. Emojitalianobot is the first open and free Emoji-Italian and Emoji-English translation bot based on Unicode descriptions. The bot was designed to support the translation of Pinocchio into emoji carried out by the followers of the "Scritture brevi" blog on Twitter and contains a glossary with all the uses of emojis in the translation of the famous Italian novel. EmojiWorldBot, an off-spring project of Emojitalianobot, is a multilingual dictionary that uses Emoji as a pivot language from dozens of different languages. Currently, the emoji-word and word-emoji functions are available for 72 languages imported from the Unicode tables and provide users with an easy search capability to map words in each of these languages to emojis, and vice versa. This paper presents the projects, the background and the main characteristics of these applications

Functional Segregation of Human Brain Networks Across the Lifespan: An Exploratory Analysis of Static and Dynamic Resting-State Functional Connectivity

Prior research has shown that during development, there is increased segregation between, and increased integration within, prototypical resting-state functional brain networks. Functional networks are typically defined by static functional connectivity over extended periods of rest. However, little is known about how time-varying properties of functional networks change with age. Likewise, a comparison of standard approaches to functional connectivity may provide a nuanced view of how network integration and segregation are reflected across the lifespan. Therefore, this exploratory study evaluated common approaches to static and dynamic functional network connectivity in a publicly available dataset of subjects ranging from 8 to 75 years of age. Analyses evaluated relationships between age and static resting-state functional connectivity, variability (standard deviation) of connectivity, and mean dwell time of functional network states defined by recurring patterns of whole-brain connectivity. Results showed that older age was associated with decreased static connectivity between nodes of different canonical networks, particularly between the visual system and nodes in other networks. Age was not significantly related to variability of connectivity. Mean dwell time of a network state reflecting high connectivity between visual regions decreased with age, but older age was also associated with increased mean dwell time of a network state reflecting high connectivity within and between canonical sensorimotor and visual networks. Results support a model of increased network segregation over the lifespan and also highlight potential pathways of top-down regulation among networks.</p

The GTPase RAB20 is a HIF target with mitochondrial localization mediating apoptosis in hypoxia

AbstractHypoxia is a common pathogenic stress, which requires adaptive activation of the Hypoxia-inducible transcription factor (HIF). In concert transcriptional HIF targets enhance oxygen availability and simultaneously reduce oxygen demand, enabling survival in a hypoxic microenvironment. Here, we describe the characterization of a new HIF-1 target gene, Rab20, which is a member of the Rab family of small GTP-binding proteins, regulating intracellular trafficking and vesicle formation. Rab20 is directly regulated by HIF-1, resulting in rapid upregulation of Rab20 mRNA as well as protein under hypoxia. Furthermore, exogenous as well as endogenous Rab20 protein colocalizes with mitochondria. Knockdown studies reveal that Rab20 is involved in hypoxia induced apoptosis. Since mitochondria play a key role in the control of cell death, we suggest that regulating mitochondrial homeostasis in hypoxia is a key function of Rab20. Furthermore, our study implicates that cellular transport pathways play a role in oxygen homeostasis. Hypoxia-induced Rab20 may influence tissue homeostasis and repair during and after hypoxic stress

Pharmacotherapy for Alcohol Dependence: Anticraving Medications for Relapse Prevention

Alcohol dependence is a chronic disorder that results from a variety of genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors. Relapse prevention for alcohol dependence has traditionally involved psychosocial and psychotherapeutic interventions. Pharmacotherapy, however, in conjunction with behavioral therapy, is generating interest as another modality to prevent relapse and enhance abstinence. Naltrexone and acamprosate are at the forefront of the currently available pharmacological options. Naltrexone is an opioid receptor antagonist and is thought to reduce the rewarding effect of alcohol. Acamprosate normalizes the dysregulation of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)-mediated glutamatergic excitation that occurs in alcohol withdrawal and early abstinence. These different mechanisms of action and different target neurotransmitter systems may endow the two drugs with efficacy for different aspects of alcohol use behavior. Since not all patients seem to benefit from naltrexone and acamprosate, there are ongoing efforts to improve the treatment outcomes by examining the advantages of combined pharmacotherapy and exploring the variables that might predict the response of the medications. In addition, novel medications are being investigated to assess their efficacy in preventing relapse and increasing abstinence

Differential Pathogenesis of Lung Adenocarcinoma Subtypes Involving Sequence Mutations, Copy Number, Chromosomal Instability, and Methylation

Lung adenocarcinoma (LAD) has extreme genetic variation among patients, which is currently not well understood, limiting progress in therapy development and research. LAD intrinsic molecular subtypes are a validated stratification of naturally-occurring gene expression patterns and encompass different functional pathways and patient outcomes. Patients may have incurred different mutations and alterations that led to the different subtypes. We hypothesized that the LAD molecular subtypes co-occur with distinct mutations and alterations in patient tumors.The LAD molecular subtypes (Bronchioid, Magnoid, and Squamoid) were tested for association with gene mutations and DNA copy number alterations using statistical methods and published cohorts (n = 504). A novel validation (n = 116) cohort was assayed and interrogated to confirm subtype-alteration associations. Gene mutation rates (EGFR, KRAS, STK11, TP53), chromosomal instability, regional copy number, and genomewide DNA methylation were significantly different among tumors of the molecular subtypes. Secondary analyses compared subtypes by integrated alterations and patient outcomes. Tumors having integrated alterations in the same gene associated with the subtypes, e.g. mutation, deletion and underexpression of STK11 with Magnoid, and mutation, amplification, and overexpression of EGFR with Bronchioid. The subtypes also associated with tumors having concurrent mutant genes, such as KRAS-STK11 with Magnoid. Patient overall survival, cisplatin plus vinorelbine therapy response and predicted gefitinib sensitivity were significantly different among the subtypes.The lung adenocarcinoma intrinsic molecular subtypes co-occur with grossly distinct genomic alterations and with patient therapy response. These results advance the understanding of lung adenocarcinoma etiology and nominate patient subgroups for future evaluation of treatment response

Linking Symptom Inventories using Semantic Textual Similarity

An extensive library of symptom inventories has been developed over time to measure clinical symptoms, but this variety has led to several long standing issues. Most notably, results drawn from different settings and studies are not comparable, which limits reproducibility. Here, we present an artificial intelligence (AI) approach using semantic textual similarity (STS) to link symptoms and scores across previously incongruous symptom inventories. We tested the ability of four pre-trained STS models to screen thousands of symptom description pairs for related content - a challenging task typically requiring expert panels. Models were tasked to predict symptom severity across four different inventories for 6,607 participants drawn from 16 international data sources. The STS approach achieved 74.8% accuracy across five tasks, outperforming other models tested. This work suggests that incorporating contextual, semantic information can assist expert decision-making processes, yielding gains for both general and disease-specific clinical assessment