Impact of inflammation-based prognostic score on survival after curative thoracoscopic esophagectomy for esophageal cancer

AbstractBackgroundDespite recent improvements in early detection, progress in surgical techniques, and development of chemoradiation therapies, prognosis of esophageal cancer remains poor. The aim of the present study was to assess whether Glasgow Prognostic Score (GPS), an inflammation-based prognostic score, has prognostic value independent of conventional clinicopathological criteria in patients undergoing curative resection for esophageal cancer, even in elderly patients.MethodsWe retrospectively reviewed the database of 141 consecutive patients with histologically verified esophageal squamous cell carcinoma who underwent potentially curative surgery in our institute, between January 2006 and December 2014. GPS and neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR) were calculated.ResultsOn multivariate analysis, TNM stage (p < 0.0001) and GPS (p = 0.041) were independently associated with worse prognosis in overall patients with esophageal cancer.Multivariate analysis evaluated the prognostic factors in two different patient groups: patients younger than 70 years (non-elderly) and those aged 70 years or more (elderly).Multivariate analysis demonstrated that TNM stage (p = 0.0003) was an only independent risk factor for a worse prognosis among non-elderly group. Meanwhile, multivariate analysis demonstrated that TNM stage (p = 0.001) and GPS (p = 0.043) were the independent risk factor for a worse prognosis among elderly group.ConclusionThe present study demonstrated that GPS is associated with prognosis and can be considered as an independent prognostic marker in patients who underwent esophagectomy. Moreover, the GPS has the advantage of being simple to measure, routinely available and well standardized. But the present study failed to confirm the NLR as a significant predictor of survival following resection for esophageal cancer

See What You Feel: A Crossmodal Tool for Measuring Haptic Size Illusions

The purpose of this research is to present the employment of a simple-to-use crossmodal method for measuring haptic size illusions. The method, that we call See what you feel, was tested by employing Uznadze’s classic haptic aftereffect in which two spheres physically identical (test spheres) appear different in size after that the hands holding them underwent an adaptation session with other two spheres (adapting spheres), one bigger and the other smaller than the two test spheres. To measure the entity of the illusion, a three-dimensional visual scale was created and participants were asked to find on it the spheres that corresponded in size to the spheres they were holding in their hands out of sight. The method, tested on 160 right-handed participants, is robust and easily understood by participants

Habitable Climates: The Influence of Eccentricity

In the outer regions of the habitable zone, the risk of transitioning into a globally frozen "snowball" state poses a threat to the habitability of planets with the capacity to host water-based life. We use a one-dimensional energy balance climate model (EBM) to examine how obliquity, spin rate, orbital eccentricity, and ocean coverage might influence the onset of such a snowball state. For an exoplanet, these parameters may be strikingly different from the values observed for Earth. Since, for constant semimajor axis, the annual mean stellar irradiation scales with (1-e^2)^(-1/2), one might expect the greatest habitable semimajor axis (for fixed atmospheric composition) to scale as (1-e^2)^(-1/4). We find that this standard ansatz provides a reasonable lower bound on the outer boundary of the habitable zone, but the influence of obliquity and ocean fraction can be profound in the context of planets on eccentric orbits. For planets with eccentricity 0.5, our EBM suggests that the greatest habitable semimajor axis can vary by more than 0.8 AU (78%!) depending on obliquity, with higher obliquity worlds generally more stable against snowball transitions. One might also expect that the long winter at an eccentric planet's apoastron would render it more susceptible to global freezing. Our models suggest that this is not a significant risk for Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars since such planets are buffered by the thermal inertia provided by oceans covering at least 10% of their surface. Since planets on eccentric orbits spend much of their year particularly far from the star, such worlds might turn out to be especially good targets for direct observations with missions such as TPF-Darwin. Nevertheless, the extreme temperature variations achieved on highly eccentric exo-Earths raise questions about the adaptability of life to marginally or transiently habitable conditions.Comment: References added, text and figures updated, accepted by Ap

Heavy Ion Physics at the LHC with the ATLAS Detector

The ATLAS detector at CERN will provide a high-resolution longitudinally-segmented calorimeter and precision tracking for the upcoming study of heavy ion collisions at the LHC (sqrt(s_NN)=5520 GeV). The calorimeter covers |eta|<5 with both electromagnetic and hadronic sections, while the inner detector spectrometer covers |eta|<2.5. ATLAS will study a full range of observables necessary to characterize the hot and dense matter formed at the LHC. Global measurements (particle multiplicities, collective flow) will provide access into its thermodynamic and hydrodynamic properties. Measuring complete jets out to 100's of GeV will allow detailed studies of energy loss and its effect on jets. Quarkonia will provide a handle on deconfinement mechanisms. ATLAS will also study the structure of the nucleon and nucleus using forward physics probes and ultraperipheral collisions, both enabled by segmented Zero Degree Calorimeters.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, submitted to the Proceedings of Quark Matter 2006, Shanghai, China, November 14-20, 200

A deeply branching thermophilic bacterium with an ancient acetyl-CoA pathway dominates a subsurface ecosystem

<div><p>A nearly complete genome sequence of <em>Candidatus</em> ‘Acetothermum autotrophicum’, a presently uncultivated bacterium in candidate division OP1, was revealed by metagenomic analysis of a subsurface thermophilic microbial mat community. Phylogenetic analysis based on the concatenated sequences of proteins common among 367 prokaryotes suggests that <em>Ca.</em> ‘A. autotrophicum’ is one of the earliest diverging bacterial lineages. It possesses a folate-dependent Wood-Ljungdahl (acetyl-CoA) pathway of CO₂ fixation, is predicted to have an acetogenic lifestyle, and possesses the newly discovered archaeal-autotrophic type of bifunctional fructose 1,6-bisphosphate aldolase/phosphatase. A phylogenetic analysis of the core gene cluster of the acethyl-CoA pathway, shared by acetogens, methanogens, some sulfur- and iron-reducers and dechlorinators, supports the hypothesis that the core gene cluster of <em>Ca.</em> ‘A. autotrophicum’ is a particularly ancient bacterial pathway. The habitat, physiology and phylogenetic position of <em>Ca.</em> ‘A. autotrophicum’ support the view that the first bacterial and archaeal lineages were H₂-dependent acetogens and methanogenes living in hydrothermal environments.</p> </div

Requirement of RIZ1 for cancer prevention by methyl-balanced diet

The typical Western diet is not balanced in methyl nutrients that regulate the level of the methyl donor S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) and its derivative metabolite S-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH), which in turn may control the activity of certain methyltransferases. Feeding rodents with amino acid defined and methyl-imbalanced diet decreases hepatic SAM and causes liver cancers. RIZ1 (PRDM2 or KMT8) is a tumor suppressor and functions in transcriptional repression by methylating histone H3 lysine 9. Here we show that a methyl-balanced diet conferred additional survival benefits compared to a tumor-inducing methyl-imbalanced diet only in mice with wild type RIZ1 but not in mice deficient in RIZ1. While absence of RIZ1 was tumorigenic in mice fed the balanced diet, its presence did not prevent tumor formation in mice fed the imbalanced diet. Unlike most of its related enzymes, RIZ1 was upregulated by methyl-balanced diet. Methyl-balanced diet did not fully repress oncogenes such as c-Jun in the absence of RIZ1. The data identify RIZ1 as a critical target of methyl-balanced diet in cancer prevention. The molecular understanding of dietary carcinogenesis may help people make informed choices on diet, which may greatly reduce the incidence of cancer

Phonon dispersion and electron-phonon interaction in peanut-shaped fullerene polymers

We reveal that the periodic radius modulation peculiar to one-dimensional (1D) peanut-shaped fullerene (C$_{60}$) polymers exerts a strong influence on their low-frequency phonon states and their interactions with mobile electrons. The continuum approximation is employed to show the zone-folding of phonon dispersion curves, which leads to fast relaxation of a radial breathing mode in the 1D C$_{60}$ polymers. We also formulate the electron-phonon interaction along the deformation potential theory, demonstrating that only a few set of electron and phonon modes yields a significant magnitude of the interaction relevant to the low-temperature physics of the system. The latter finding gives an important implication for the possible Peierls instability of the C$_{60}$ polymers suggested in the earlier experiment.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Hard probes in heavy ion collisions at the LHC: heavy flavour physics

We present the results from the heavy quarks and quarkonia working group. This report gives benchmark heavy quark and quarkonium cross sections for $pp$ and $pA$ collisions at the LHC against which the $AA$ rates can be compared in the study of the quark-gluon plasma. We also provide an assessment of the theoretical uncertainties in these benchmarks. We then discuss some of the cold matter effects on quarkonia production, including nuclear absorption, scattering by produced hadrons, and energy loss in the medium. Hot matter effects that could reduce the observed quarkonium rates such as color screening and thermal activation are then discussed. Possible quarkonium enhancement through coalescence of uncorrelated heavy quarks and antiquarks is also described. Finally, we discuss the capabilities of the LHC detectors to measure heavy quarks and quarkonia as well as the Monte Carlo generators used in the data analysis.Comment: 126 pages Latex; 96 figures included. Subgroup report, to appear in the CERN Yellow Book of the workshop: Hard Probes in Heavy Ion Collisions at the LHC. See also http://a.home.cern.ch/f/frixione/www/hvq.html for a version with better quality for a few plot

Geographical distribution of Phagocata vivida in the Far East

Phagocata vivida (Ijima et Kaburaki, 1916) is common in cold-water habitats in mountainous and hilly regions in Japan; in Northern Japan it occurs in lowland areas. Comparative studies of the material from South Korea and Primorskiy in Northeast Siberia, Russia, show that Ph. vivida is distributed widely in these geographic areas. Phagocata miyadii Okugawa, 1939, reported from North Korea and Northeastern China is a synonym of Ph vivida. Geographical distribution of this species in the Japanese Islands now becomes very clear. Judging by its geographical and vertical distributions, the species probably is a preglacial faunal element that entered Japan by the northern route to Old Honshû Island along the coast of the Old Sea of Japan. © 1995, Kluwer Academic Publishers. All rights reserved