Taut foliations and the actions of fundamental groups on leaf spaces and universal circles

Let $F$ be a leafwise hyperbolic taut foliation of a closed 3-manifold $M$ and let $L$ be the leaf space of the pullback of $F$ to the universal cover of $M$. We show that if $F$ has branching, then the natural action of $\pi_1(M)$ on $L$ is faithful. We also show that if $F$ has a finite branch locus $B$ whose stabilizer acts on $B$ nontrivially, then the stabilizer is an infinite cyclic group generated by an indivisible element of $\pi_1(M)$.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figure

Cervical Cancer Treatment using AI

In cervical cancer treatment, radiation therapy is selected based on the degree of tumor progression, and radiation oncologists are required to delineate tumor contours. To reduce the burden on radiation oncologists, an automatic segmentation of the tumor contours would prove useful. To the best of our knowledge, automatic tumor contour segmentation has rarely been applied to cervical cancer treatment. In this study, diffusion-weighted images (DWI) of 98 patients with cervical cancer were acquired. We trained an automatic tumor contour segmentation model using 2D U-Net and 3D U-Net to investigate the possibility of applying such a model to clinical practice. A total of 98 cases were employed for the training, and they were then predicted by swapping the training and test images. To predict tumor contours, six prediction images were obtained after six training sessions for one case. The six images were then summed and binarized to output a final image through automatic contour segmentation. For the evaluation, the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) and Hausdorff distance (HD) was applied to analyze the difference between tumor contour delineation by radiation oncologists and the output image. The DSC ranged from 0.13 to 0.93 (median 0.83, mean 0.77). The cases with DSC <0.65 included tumors with a maximum diameter < 40 mm and heterogeneous intracavitary concentration due to necrosis. The HD ranged from 2.7 to 9.6 mm (median 4.7 mm). Thus, the study confirmed that the tumor contours of cervical cancer can be automatically segmented with high accuracy

Effect of dental metal artifact conversion volume on dose distribution in head‐and‐neck volumetric‐modulated arc therapy

Purpose: During treatment planning for head‐and‐neck volumetric‐modulated arc therapy (VMAT), manual contouring of the metal artifact area of artificial teeth is done, and the area is replaced with water computed tomography (CT) values for dose calculation. This contouring of the metal artifact areas, which is performed manually, is subject to human variability. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and analyze the effect of inter‐observer variation on dose distribution. Methods: The subjects were 25 cases of cancer of the oropharynx for which VMAT was performed. Six radiation oncologists (ROs) performed metal artifact contouring for all of the cases. Gross tumor volume, clinical target volume, planning target volume (PTV), and oral cavity were evaluated. The contouring of the six ROs was divided into two groups, small and large groups. A reference RO was determined for each group and the dose distribution was compared with those of the other radiation oncologists by gamma analysis (GA). As an additional experiment, we changed the contouring of each dental metal artifact area, creating enlarged contours (L), reduced contours (S), and undrawn contours (N) based on the contouring by the six ROs and compared these structure sets. Results: The evaluation of inter‐observer variation showed no significant difference between the large and small groups, and the GA pass rate was 100%. Similar results were obtained comparing structure sets L and S, but in the comparison of structure sets L and N, there were cases with pass rates below 70%. Conclusions: The results show that the artificial variability of manual artificial tooth metal artifact contouring has little effect on the dose distribution of VMAT. However, it should be noted that the dose distribution may change depending on the contouring method in cases where the overlap between PTV and metal artifact areas is large

Sphingosine 1-Phosphate (S1P) in the Peritoneal Fluid Skews M2 Macrophage and Contributes to the Development of Endometriosis

Sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P), an inflammatory mediator, is abundantly contained in red blood cells and platelets. We hypothesized that the S1P concentration in the peritoneal cavity would increase especially during the menstrual phase due to the reflux of menstrual blood, and investigated the S1P concentration in the human peritoneal fluid (PF) from 14 non-endometriosis and 19 endometriosis patients. Although the relatively small number of samples requires caution in interpreting the results, S1P concentration in the PF during the menstrual phase was predominantly increased compared to the non-menstrual phase, regardless of the presence or absence of endometriosis. During the non-menstrual phase, patients with endometriosis showed a significant increase in S1P concentration compared to controls. In vitro experiments using human intra-peritoneal macrophages (MΦ) showed that S1P stimulation biased them toward an M2MΦ-dominant condition and increased the expression of IL-6 and COX-2. An in vivo study showed that administration of S1P increased the size of the endometriotic-like lesion in a mouse model of endometriosis

Robotic Renal Autotransplantation: A Feasibility Study in a Porcine Model

We investigated the feasibility of robotic renal autotransplantation (RAT) in a porcine model to reduce invasiveness of RAT. Five pigs underwent robotic RAT using the da Vinci® robotic system. A robotic left nephrectomy was performed in all cases. Robotic RAT was performed on the left side in all but one case. Four ports were used. In 3 cases, the kidney was taken out through the GelPort® and irrigated on ice with Ringer’s solution. In 2 cases, a complete intracorporeal robotic RAT was performed. An end-to-side anastomosis was performed between the renal vein and the external iliac vein and between the renal artery and the external iliac artery. Ureteroneocystostomy was also performed in 2 cases. All cases were performed robotically without open conversion. The median (IQR) console time was 3.1 (0.7) h, and the operative time was 3.8 (1.1) h. The estimated blood loss was 30 (0) ml. The warm ischemia time was 4.0 (0.2) min, and the cold ischemia time was 97 (17) min. Intracorporeal transarterial hypothermic renal perfusion was feasible in the 2 complete intracorporeal robotic RAT cases by using a perfusion catheter through a laparoscopic port. Robotic RAT has the potential to be a new minimally invasive substitute for conventional open surgery

Phosphorylated Smad2 in Advanced Stage Gastric Carcinoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Transforming growth factor β (TGFβ) receptor signaling is closely associated with the invasion ability of gastric cancer cells. Although Smad signal is a critical integrator of TGFβ receptor signaling transduction systems, not much is known about the role of Smad2 expression in gastric carcinoma. The aim of the current study is to clarify the role of phosphorylated Smad2 (p-Smad2) in gastric adenocarcinomas at advanced stages.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Immunohistochemical staining with anti-p-Smad2 was performed on paraffin-embedded specimens from 135 patients with advanced gastric adenocarcinomas. We also evaluated the relationship between the expression levels of p-Smad2 and clinicopathologic characteristics of patients with gastric adenocarcinomas.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The p-Smad2 expression level was high in 63 (47%) of 135 gastric carcinomas. The p-Smad2 expression level was significantly higher in diffuse type carcinoma (p = 0.007), tumours with peritoneal metastasis (p = 0.017), and tumours with lymph node metastasis (p = 0.047). The prognosis for p-Smad2-high patients was significantly (p = 0.035, log-rank) poorer than that of p-Smad2-low patients, while a multivariate analysis revealed that p-Smad2 expression was not an independence prognostic factor.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The expression of p-Smad2 is associated with malignant phenotype and poor prognosis in patients with advanced gastric carcinoma.</p

Kinetic resolution of vic-amino alcohols catalyzed by a chiral Cu(II) complex

Kinetic resolution of N-benzoylated vic-amino alcohols was achieved by benzoylation in the presence of copper triflate and (R,R)-Ph-BOX as catalysts. The observed enantioselectivity was moderate to high. The method was applied to a kinetic resolution of racemic prolinol and piperidinemethanol derivatives as well as an asymmetric desymmetrization of 2-amino-1,3-diol derivatives

BioHackathon series in 2011 and 2012: penetration of ontology and linked data in life science domains

The application of semantic technologies to the integration of biological data and the interoperability of bioinformatics analysis and visualization tools has been the common theme of a series of annual BioHackathons hosted in Japan for the past five years. Here we provide a review of the activities and outcomes from the BioHackathons held in 2011 in Kyoto and 2012 in Toyama. In order to efficiently implement semantic technologies in the life sciences, participants formed various sub-groups and worked on the following topics: Resource Description Framework (RDF) models for specific domains, text mining of the literature, ontology development, essential metadata for biological databases, platforms to enable efficient Semantic Web technology development and interoperability, and the development of applications for Semantic Web data. In this review, we briefly introduce the themes covered by these sub-groups. The observations made, conclusions drawn, and software development projects that emerged from these activities are discussed

Diminished Medial Prefrontal Activity behind Autistic Social Judgments of Incongruent Information

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) tend to make inadequate social judgments, particularly when the nonverbal and verbal emotional expressions of other people are incongruent. Although previous behavioral studies have suggested that ASD individuals have difficulty in using nonverbal cues when presented with incongruent verbal-nonverbal information, the neural mechanisms underlying this symptom of ASD remain unclear. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we compared brain activity in 15 non-medicated adult males with high-functioning ASD to that of 17 age-, parental-background-, socioeconomic-, and intelligence-quotient-matched typically-developed (TD) male participants. Brain activity was measured while each participant made friend or foe judgments of realistic movies in which professional actors spoke with conflicting nonverbal facial expressions and voice prosody. We found that the ASD group made significantly less judgments primarily based on the nonverbal information than the TD group, and they exhibited significantly less brain activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex/ventral medial prefrontal cortex (ACC/vmPFC), and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) than the TD group. Among these five regions, the ACC/vmPFC and dmPFC were most involved in nonverbal-information-biased judgments in the TD group. Furthermore, the degree of decrease of the brain activity in these two brain regions predicted the severity of autistic communication deficits. The findings indicate that diminished activity in the ACC/vmPFC and dmPFC underlies the impaired abilities of individuals with ASD to use nonverbal content when making judgments regarding other people based on incongruent social information