Treatment Outcomes of Olfactory Neuroblastoma: A Multicenter Study by the Korean Sinonasal Tumor and Skull Base Surgery Study Group

Objectives. Due to the rarity of olfactory neuroblastoma (ONB), there is ongoing debate about optimal treatment strategies, especially for early-stage or locally advanced cases. Therefore, our study aimed to explore experiences from multiple centers to identify factors that influence the oncological outcomes of ONB. Methods. We retrospectively analyzed 195 ONB patients treated at nine tertiary hospitals in South Korea between December 1992 and December 2019. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was used to evaluate oncological outcomes, and a Cox proportional hazards regression model was employed to analyze prognostic factors for survival outcomes. Furthermore, we conducted 1:1 nearest-neighbor matching to investigate differences in clinical outcomes according to the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Results. In our cohort, the 5-year overall survival (OS) rate was 78.6%, and the 5-year disease-free survival (DFS) rate was 62.4%. The Cox proportional hazards model revealed that the modified Kadish (mKadish) stage and Dulguerov T status were significantly associated with DFS, while the mKadish stage and Hyams grade were identified as prognostic factors for OS. The subgroup analyses indicated a trend toward improved 5-year DFS with dural resection in mKadish A and B cases, even though the result was statistically insignificant. Induction chemotherapy did not provide a survival benefit in this study after matching for the mKadish stage and nodal status. Conclusion. Clinical staging and pathologic grading are important prognostic factors in ONB. Dural resection in mKadish A and B did not show a significant survival benefit. Similarly, induction chemotherapy also did not show a survival benefit, even after stage matching

Development of Data Cleaning and Integration Algorithm for Asset Management of Power System

Asset management technology is rapidly growing in the electric power industry because utilities are paying attention to which of their aged assets should be replaced first. The global trend of asset management follows risk management that comprehensively considers the probability and consequences of failures. In the asset management system, the risk assessment algorithm operates by interfacing digital datasets from various legacy systems. In this study, among the various electric power assets, we consider transmission cable systems as a representative linear asset consisting of different segments. First, the configurations and characteristics of linear asset datasets are analyzed. Second, six types of data cleaning functions are proposed for extracting dirty data from the entire dataset. Third, three types of data integration functions are developed to simulate the risk assessment algorithm. This technique supports the integration of distributed asset data in various legacy systems into one dataset. Finally, an automatic data cleaning and integration system is developed and the algorithm could repeat the cleaning and integration process until data quality is satisfied. To evaluate the performance of the proposed system, an automatic cleaning process is demonstrated using actual legacy datasets

Development of Data Cleaning and Integration Algorithm for Asset Management of Power System

Asset management technology is rapidly growing in the electric power industry because utilities are paying attention to which of their aged assets should be replaced first. The global trend of asset management follows risk management that comprehensively considers the probability and consequences of failures. In the asset management system, the risk assessment algorithm operates by interfacing digital datasets from various legacy systems. In this study, among the various electric power assets, we consider transmission cable systems as a representative linear asset consisting of different segments. First, the configurations and characteristics of linear asset datasets are analyzed. Second, six types of data cleaning functions are proposed for extracting dirty data from the entire dataset. Third, three types of data integration functions are developed to simulate the risk assessment algorithm. This technique supports the integration of distributed asset data in various legacy systems into one dataset. Finally, an automatic data cleaning and integration system is developed and the algorithm could repeat the cleaning and integration process until data quality is satisfied. To evaluate the performance of the proposed system, an automatic cleaning process is demonstrated using actual legacy datasets

Long-term Non-Anesthetic Preclinical Study Available Extra-Cranial Brain Activator (ECBA) System for the Future Minimally-Invasive Human Neuro-Modulation

Long-term preclinical study available extracranial brain activator (ECBA) system, ECBAv2, is proposed for the non-anesthetic canine models. The titanium-packaged module shows enhanced durability, even after a year of implantation in the scalp. In addition, the wearable helmet type base station provides a stable experimental environment without anesthesia. In this work, HFS stimulation is induced to six canine models for 30 minutes every day over 4 weeks (10Hz, 40Hz and no stimulation for each pair of subjects). Pre- and post-HFS stimulation PET-CT image shows remarkable increases of glucose metabolism in the temporal and parietal lobes. Moreover, both the 40-Hz and 10-Hz groups shows noticeable increase and the former group has more increments than the latter. Our results establish that HFS stimulation definitely worked as facilitating brain activity which may affect memory and sensory skills, respectively.11Nsciescopu

Properties of indium zinc oxide films on various polymer substrates deposited by low-frequency 60 Hz magnetron sputtering method

We introduce indium zinc oxide (IZO) thin films grown at room temperature by using a low-frequency (LF) 60Hz magnetron sputtering system. The flexible substrates are PES, PET and PC. The optical, electrical and structural properties of IZO films on flexible substrates were investigated. The alloy target was In2O3:ZnO (90:10wt%) with a diameter of 3 inch and thickness of 5 mm. The vacuum chamber was evacuated down to pressure 5 x 10(-6) torr prior to deposition. The flow rates of argon gas (99.999%) were kept at a constant value of 30 scem by a mass flow controller(MFC). The discharges were performed by power of 300 V, 310 V, 320 V. They have low sheet resistance of about 30 Omega/sq., high transmittance of over 85% in the range of 400-700nm. Also they showed good band gap of about 3.43eV on polyethersulfone (PES) substrates, 3.50 eV on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and 3.30 eV on polycarbonate (PC). The experimental results imply that the films with good qualities in surface morphology, transmittance and electrical conduction can be grown by a low-frequency magnetron sputtering method an PES is the most recommendable substrateclose0

Structural Brain Changes after Traditional and Robot-Assisted Multi-Domain Cognitive Training in Community-Dwelling Healthy Elderly

<div><p>The purpose of this study was to investigate if multi-domain cognitive training, especially robot-assisted training, alters cortical thickness in the brains of elderly participants. A controlled trial was conducted with 85 volunteers without cognitive impairment who were 60 years old or older. Participants were first randomized into two groups. One group consisted of 48 participants who would receive cognitive training and 37 who would not receive training. The cognitive training group was randomly divided into two groups, 24 who received traditional cognitive training and 24 who received robot-assisted cognitive training. The training for both groups consisted of daily 90-min-session, five days a week for a total of 12 weeks. The primary outcome was the changes in cortical thickness. When compared to the control group, both groups who underwent cognitive training demonstrated attenuation of age related cortical thinning in the frontotemporal association cortices. When the robot and the traditional interventions were directly compared, the robot group showed less cortical thinning in the anterior cingulate cortices. Our results suggest that cognitive training can mitigate age-associated structural brain changes in the elderly.</p><p>Trial Registration</p><p>ClnicalTrials.gov <a href="https://clinicaltrial.gov/ct2/show/NCT01596205?term=NCT01596205&rank=1" target="_blank">NCT01596205</a></p></div

Flow of participants in this study.

<p>The similarity index was defined as follows:similarity index = 2 * nnz(A and B)/(nnz(A) + nnz(B)) where A and B are the baseline and post-intervention connectivity from binary matrices, respectively and nnz refers to the number of non-zero elements in a matrix. If the two binary matrices were the same, the similarity index was assigned a value of 1. We excluded subjects with a similarity index lower than 0.5 in our statistical analyses to reduce the artifactual effects related to the different times of scanning.</p

Correlation of changes in cognitive functions and changes in cortical thickness.

<p>(A) In the traditional group, changes in the raw scores of visual memory are positively correlated with those of cortical thickness in the right inferior temporalgyrus and right subgenual cingulate region (uncorrected <i>P</i> < 0.001). (B) For the robot group, changes in the raw scores of executive function are positively correlated with those of left temoporo-parietal junction as well as left inferior temporal gyrus (uncorrected P <0.001).</p