Non recurrent laryngeal nerve with right aberrant subclavian artery in recurrent case of papillary carcinoma of thyroid: an interesting clinical entity.

Background/objectives: A nonrecurrent laryngeal nerve is a rare anatomical variant and a routine preoperative imaging studies are not indicated. NRLN is related with absence of the brachiocephalic trunk and aberrant (mainly retroesophageal) course of theright subclavian artery which is evident on contrast enhanced CT scan of the chest.Case report: The patient presented with a swelling in the neck for 4 months which is slowly increasing in size. Patient gives history of a surgery done in the neck with an old midlinesuprasternal scar which was done 40 years earlier.laryngoscopic mirror examinartion was normal with moving vocal cords. Rest of the oral and oropharyngeal examination along with completeblood picture and biochemical investigations were normal. The patient was not a known diabetic or hypertensive.Conclusion: Accurate knowledge of frequent variations of the nerve along with the non recurrent variant reduces the risk of intraoperative injury. A nonrecurrent laryngealnerve(NRLN) is a rare anatomical variant and a routine preoperative imaging studies are not indicated. NRLN is related with absence of the brachiocephalic trunk and aberrant(mainly retroesophageal) course of the right subclavian artery which is evident on contrast enhanced CT scan of the chest.

Lessons Learned About Designing and Conducting Studies From HRI Experts

The field of human-robot interaction (HRI) research is multidisciplinary and requires researchers to understand diverse fields including computer science, engineering, informatics, philosophy, psychology, and more disciplines. However, it is hard to be an expert in everything. To help HRI researchers develop methodological skills, especially in areas that are relatively new to them, we conducted a virtual workshop, Workshop Your Study Design (WYSD), at the 2021 International Conference on HRI. In this workshop, we grouped participants with mentors, who are experts in areas like real-world studies, empirical lab studies, questionnaire design, interview, participatory design, and statistics. During and after the workshop, participants discussed their proposed study methods, obtained feedback, and improved their work accordingly. In this paper, we present 1) Workshop attendees’ feedback about the workshop and 2) Lessons that the participants learned during their discussions with mentors. Participants’ responses about the workshop were positive, and future scholars who wish to run such a workshop can consider implementing their suggestions. The main contribution of this paper is the lessons learned section, where the workshop participants contributed to forming this section based on what participants discovered during the workshop. We organize lessons learned into themes of 1) Improving study design for HRI, 2) How to work with participants - especially children -, 3) Making the most of the study and robot’s limitations, and 4) How to collaborate well across fields as they were the areas of the papers submitted to the workshop. These themes include practical tips and guidelines to assist researchers to learn about fields of HRI research with which they have limited experience. We include specific examples, and researchers can adapt the tips and guidelines to their own areas to avoid some common mistakes and pitfalls in their research

Lessons Learned About Designing and Conducting Studies From HRI Experts.

The field of human-robot interaction (HRI) research is multidisciplinary and requires researchers to understand diverse fields including computer science, engineering, informatics, philosophy, psychology, and more disciplines. However, it is hard to be an expert in everything. To help HRI researchers develop methodological skills, especially in areas that are relatively new to them, we conducted a virtual workshop, Workshop Your Study Design (WYSD), at the 2021 International Conference on HRI. In this workshop, we grouped participants with mentors, who are experts in areas like real-world studies, empirical lab studies, questionnaire design, interview, participatory design, and statistics. During and after the workshop, participants discussed their proposed study methods, obtained feedback, and improved their work accordingly. In this paper, we present 1) Workshop attendees' feedback about the workshop and 2) Lessons that the participants learned during their discussions with mentors. Participants' responses about the workshop were positive, and future scholars who wish to run such a workshop can consider implementing their suggestions. The main contribution of this paper is the lessons learned section, where the workshop participants contributed to forming this section based on what participants discovered during the workshop. We organize lessons learned into themes of 1) Improving study design for HRI, 2) How to work with participants - especially children -, 3) Making the most of the study and robot's limitations, and 4) How to collaborate well across fields as they were the areas of the papers submitted to the workshop. These themes include practical tips and guidelines to assist researchers to learn about fields of HRI research with which they have limited experience. We include specific examples, and researchers can adapt the tips and guidelines to their own areas to avoid some common mistakes and pitfalls in their research

Bootstrap confidence for molecular evolutionary estimates from tumor bulk sequencing data

Bulk sequencing is commonly used to characterize the genetic diversity of cancer cell populations in tumors and the evolutionary relationships of cancer clones. However, bulk sequencing produces aggregate information on nucleotide variants and their sample frequencies, necessitating computational methods to predict distinct clone sequences and their frequencies within a sample. Interestingly, no methods are available to measure the statistical confidence in the variants assigned to inferred clones. We introduce a bootstrap resampling approach that combines clone prediction and statistical confidence calculation for every variant assignment. Analysis of computer-simulated datasets showed the bootstrap approach to work well in assessing the reliability of predicted clones as well downstream inferences using the predicted clones (e.g., mapping metastatic migration paths). We found that only a fraction of inferences have good bootstrap support, which means that many inferences are tentative for real data. Using the bootstrap approach, we analyzed empirical datasets from metastatic cancers and placed bootstrap confidence on the estimated number of mutations involved in cell migration events. We found that the numbers of driver mutations involved in metastatic cell migration events sourced from primary tumors are similar to those where metastatic tumors are the source of new metastases. So, mutations with driver potential seem to keep arising during metastasis. The bootstrap approach developed in this study is implemented in software available at https://github.com/SayakaMiura/CloneFinderPlus

Severe fish mortality associated with 'red tide' observed in the sea off Cochin

Severe fish mortality associated with the "red tide" phenomenon caused by Noctiluca blooms was observed in the sea off Cochin, Kerala, India at depths less than 40 m. The dead fish, almost entirely comprised of the threadfin bream (Nemipterus japonicus). The death of this demersal fish was caused by a severe depletion of oxygen