Correlation of CDX2 Protein Expression with Clinicopathologic Features and Survival Rate in Iraqi Patients with Colorectal Cancer

Predicting the prognosis of colorectal cancer (CRC) is challenging since these tumors exhibit a wide range of biological behaviors. It has been hypothesized that caudal-related homeobox gene 2 (CDX2), which is vital for intestinal growth and maintenance, has a tumor-suppressing effect and promising role in CRC prognosis but studies are still controversial. This study used the immunohistochemical (IHC) staining method to determine the expression of the CDX2 protein in mucinous and non-mucinous CRC adenocarcinoma, as well as in normal colorectal tissues as a control, and correlate this expression with clinicopathological features such as grade, tumor distant metastasis, tumor site, histological type, lymph node metastasis, tumor invasion, sex, age, and rate of 4 years Overall survival (OS) after diagnosis. A total of sixty three tissue samples were obtained from CRC patients (58.90±14.94) years and embedded in wax and thirty-seven normal non-tumoural colorectal tissue samples with (56.43±12.28) years as a control group. CDX2 protein expression decreased significantly (p<0.05) in CRC patients than control, advanced age, mucinous pattern of CRC, moderate and poorly differentiated grades, lymph node metastasis, advanced tumor invasion (T3, T4), and organs metastasis. Moreover, the (OS) for patients with low CDX2 expression was (17.943±1.7) months compared to (33.431±2.7) months for those with high CDX2 expression (p = 0.0001). This study concluded that protein expression of CDX2 is regarded as a prognostic and diagnostic marker for CRC patients

Correlated decay of triplet excitations in the Shastry-Sutherland compound SrCu2_2(BO3_3)2_2

The temperature dependence of the gapped triplet excitations (triplons) in the 2D Shastry-Sutherland quantum magnet SrCu$_2$(BO$_3$)$_2$ is studied by means of inelastic neutron scattering. The excitation amplitude rapidly decreases as a function of temperature while the integrated spectral weight can be explained by an isolated dimer model up to 10~K. Analyzing this anomalous spectral line-shape in terms of damped harmonic oscillators shows that the observed damping is due to a two-component process: one component remains sharp and resolution limited while the second broadens. We explain the underlying mechanism through a simple yet quantitatively accurate model of correlated decay of triplons: an excited triplon is long-lived if no thermally populated triplons are near-by but decays quickly if there are. The phenomenon is a direct consequence of frustration induced triplon localization in the Shastry--Sutherland lattice.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Rapid Quantification of White Matter Disconnection in the Human Brain

With an estimated five million new stroke survivors every year and a rapidly aging population suffering from hyperintensities and diseases of presumed vascular origin that affect white matter and contribute to cognitive decline, it is critical that we understand the impact of white matter damage on brain structure and behavior. Current techniques for assessing the impact of lesions consider only location, type, and extent, while ignoring how the affected region was connected to the rest of the brain. Regional brain function is a product of both local structure and its connectivity. Therefore, obtaining a map of white matter disconnection is a crucial step that could help us predict the behavioral deficits that patients exhibit. In the present work, we introduce a new practical method for computing lesion-based white matter disconnection maps that require only moderate computational resources. We achieve this by creating diffusion tractography models of the brains of healthy adults and assessing the connectivity between small regions. We then interrupt these connectivity models by projecting patients' lesions into them to compute predicted white matter disconnection. A quantified disconnection map can be computed for an individual patient in approximately 35 seconds using a single core CPU-based computation. In comparison, a similar quantification performed with other tools provided by MRtrix3 takes 5.47 minutes.Comment: 2020 42nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC

On Fields with Finite Information Density

The existence of a natural ultraviolet cutoff at the Planck scale is widely expected. In a previous Letter, it has been proposed to model this cutoff as an information density bound by utilizing suitably generalized methods from the mathematical theory of communication. Here, we prove the mathematical conjectures that were made in this Letter.Comment: 31 pages, to appear in Phys.Rev.