Clinical characteristics and microbiota analysis of 44 patients with granulomatous mastitis

IntroductionGranulomatous mastitis (GM) is a chronic inflammatory breast disease. In recent years, the role of Corynebacterium in GM onset has received more and more attention. This study aims to detect the dominant bacterium in GM patients and analyze the association between clinical characteristics and infectious factors.MethodsIn this study, 88 samples from 44 GM patients, six acute lactation mastitis (ALM) patients, and 25 non-inflammatory breast disease (NIB) patients were divided into a GM pus group, a GM tissue group, an ALM pus group, and a NIB tissue group; then, 16S ribosomal DNA sequencing was used to explore their microbiota. The clinical data of all 44 GM patients were also retrospectively collected and analyzed to determine their relationship with infection.ResultsThe median age of the 44 GM patients was 33 years, and 88.6% of patients had primary-onset cases, while 11.4% were recurrences; additionally, 89.5% of patients were postpartum and 10.5% were nulliparous. The serum prolactin level was abnormal in nine patients (24.3%). Samples from 15 GM patients (34.1%) had a Corynebacterium abundance of >1% (1.08–80.08%), with eight (53.3%) displaying an abundance of >10%. Corynebacterium was the only genus with significant differences between the GM pus group and the other three groups (p < 0.05). Corynebacterium kroppenstedtii was the predominant Corynebacterium species. Among clinical characteristics, a statistical difference in breast abscess formation was observed according to Corynebacterium abundance in Corynebacterium-positive and- negative patients (p < 0.05).DiscussionThis study explored the relationship between Corynebacterium infection and GM, compared the clinical characteristics between Corynebacterium-positive and- negative patients, and provided support for the role of Corynebacterium species-in particular, C. kroppenstedtii-in the pathogenesis of GM. The detection of Corynebacterium can predict GM onset, especially in patients with high prolactin levels or a history of recent lactation

Loss of Vision Dominance at the Preresponse Level in Tinnitus Patients: Preliminary Behavioral Evidence

At present, the mechanisms underlying changes in visual processing in individuals with tinnitus remain unclear. Therefore, we investigated whether the vision dominance of individuals with tinnitus disappears at the preresponse level through behavioral study. A total of 38 individuals with tinnitus and 31 healthy controls completed a task in which they were asked to attend to either visual or auditory stimuli while ignoring simultaneous stimulus inputs from the other modality. We manipulated three levels of congruency between the simultaneous visual and auditory inputs: congruent (C), incongruent at the preresponse level (PRIC), and incongruent at the response level (RIC). Thus, we differentiated the cross-modal conflict explicitly into the preresponse (PRIC > C) and response (RIC > PRIC) levels. The results revealed no significant difference in the size of the preresponse level conflict between the auditory attention and visual attention conditions in tinnitus group. In brief, the preresponse level of individuals with tinnitus showed a loss in vision dominance. This may be due to the reduced interference of visual information in auditory processing

Eyes and Ears: Cross-Modal Interference of Tinnitus on Visual Processing

The visual processing capacity of tinnitus patients is worse than normal controls, indicating cross-modal interference. However, the mechanism underlying the tinnitus-modulated visual processing is largely unclear. In order to explore the influence of tinnitus on visual processing, this study used a signal recognition paradigm to observe whether the tinnitus group would display a significantly longer reaction time in processing the letter symbols (Experiment 1) and emotional faces (Experiment 2) than the control group. Signal detection and signal recognition, which reflect the perceptual and conceptual aspects of visual processing respectively, were manipulated individually in different conditions to identify the pattern of the cross-modal interference of tinnitus. The results showed that the tinnitus group required a significantly prolonged reaction time in detecting and recognizing the letter symbols and emotional faces than the control group; meanwhile, no between-group difference was detected in signal encoding. In addition, any gender- and distress-modulated effects of processing were not found, suggesting the universality of the present findings. Finally, follow-up studies would be needed to explore the neural mechanism behind the decline in speed of visual processing. The positive emotional bias in tinnitus patients also needs to be further verified and discussed.Highlights:- The bottom-up visual processing speed is decreased in tinnitus patients.- Tinnitus primarily interferes with the detection of the visual signals in individuals

Leakage current simulations of Low Gain Avalanche Diode with improved Radiation Damage Modeling

We report precise TCAD simulations of IHEP-IME-v1 Low Gain Avalanche Diode (LGAD) calibrated by secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS). Our setup allows us to evaluate the leakage current, capacitance, and breakdown voltage of LGAD, which agree with measurements' results before irradiation. And we propose an improved LGAD Radiation Damage Model (LRDM) which combines local acceptor removal with global deep energy levels. The LRDM is applied to the IHEP-IME-v1 LGAD and able to predict the leakage current well at -30 $^{\circ}$C after an irradiation fluence of $\Phi_{eq}=2.5 \times 10^{15} ~n_{eq}/cm^{2}$. The charge collection efficiency (CCE) is under development

Beam test of a 180 nm CMOS Pixel Sensor for the CEPC vertex detector

The proposed Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) imposes new challenges for the vertex detector in terms of pixel size and material budget. A Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor (MAPS) prototype called TaichuPix, based on a column drain readout architecture, has been developed to address the need for high spatial resolution. In order to evaluate the performance of the TaichuPix-3 chips, a beam test was carried out at DESY II TB21 in December 2022. Meanwhile, the Data Acquisition (DAQ) for a muti-plane configuration was tested during the beam test. This work presents the characterization of the TaichuPix-3 chips with two different processes, including cluster size, spatial resolution, and detection efficiency. The analysis results indicate the spatial resolution better than 5 $\mu m$ and the detection efficiency exceeds 99.5 % for both TaichuPix-3 chips with the two different processes

A compendium of genetic regulatory effects across pig tissues

The Farm Animal Genotype-Tissue Expression (FarmGTEx) project has been established to develop a public resource of genetic regulatory variants in livestock, which is essential for linking genetic polymorphisms to variation in phenotypes, helping fundamental biological discovery and exploitation in animal breeding and human biomedicine. Here we show results from the pilot phase of PigGTEx by processing 5,457 RNA-sequencing and 1,602 whole-genome sequencing samples passing quality control from pigs. We build a pig genotype imputation panel and associate millions of genetic variants with five types of transcriptomic phenotypes in 34 tissues. We evaluate tissue specificity of regulatory effects and elucidate molecular mechanisms of their action using multi-omics data. Leveraging this resource, we decipher regulatory mechanisms underlying 207 pig complex phenotypes and demonstrate the similarity of pigs to humans in gene expression and the genetic regulation behind complex phenotypes, supporting the importance of pigs as a human biomedical model.</p

PigBiobank: a valuable resource for understanding genetic and biological mechanisms of diverse complex traits in pigs

© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact [email protected] fully unlock the potential of pigs as both agricultural species for animal-based protein food and biomedical models for human biology and disease, a comprehensive understanding of molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying various complex phenotypes in pigs and how the findings can be translated to other species, especially humans, are urgently needed. Here, within the Farm animal Genotype-Tissue Expression (FarmGTEx) project, we build the PigBiobank (http://pigbiobank.farmgtex.org) to systematically investigate the relationships among genomic variants, regulatory elements, genes, molecular networks, tissues and complex traits in pigs. This first version of the PigBiobank curates 71 885 pigs with both genotypes and phenotypes from over 100 pig breeds worldwide, covering 264 distinct complex traits. The PigBiobank has the following functions: (i) imputed sequence-based genotype-phenotype associations via a standardized and uniform pipeline, (ii) molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying trait-associations via integrating multi-omics data, (iii) cross-species gene mapping of complex traits via transcriptome-wide association studies, and (iv) high-quality results display and visualization. The PigBiobank will be updated timely with the development of the FarmGTEx-PigGTEx project, serving as an open-access and easy-to-use resource for genetically and biologically dissecting complex traits in pigs and translating the findings to other species.National Natural Science Foundation of China [32022078]; National Key R&D Program of China [2022YFF1000900]; Local Innovative and Research Teams Project of Guangdong Province [2019BT02N630]; China Agriculture Research System [CARS-35]. Funding for open access charge: National Natural Science Foundation of China [32022078].Peer reviewe

Multidifferential study of identified charged hadron distributions in ZZ-tagged jets in proton-proton collisions at s=\sqrt{s}=13 TeV

Jet fragmentation functions are measured for the first time in proton-proton collisions for charged pions, kaons, and protons within jets recoiling against a $Z$ boson. The charged-hadron distributions are studied longitudinally and transversely to the jet direction for jets with transverse momentum 20 $< p_{\textrm{T}} < 100$ GeV and in the pseudorapidity range $2.5 < \eta < 4$. The data sample was collected with the LHCb experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.64 fb$^{-1}$. Triple differential distributions as a function of the hadron longitudinal momentum fraction, hadron transverse momentum, and jet transverse momentum are also measured for the first time. This helps constrain transverse-momentum-dependent fragmentation functions. Differences in the shapes and magnitudes of the measured distributions for the different hadron species provide insights into the hadronization process for jets predominantly initiated by light quarks.Comment: All figures and tables, along with machine-readable versions and any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-013.html (LHCb public pages

Study of the B−→Λc+Λˉc−K−B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-} decay

The decay $B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-}$ is studied in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ collected by the LHCb experiment. In the $\Lambda_{c}^+ K^{-}$ system, the $\Xi_{c}(2930)^{0}$ state observed at the BaBar and Belle experiments is resolved into two narrower states, $\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}$ and $\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}$, whose masses and widths are measured to be $$m(\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}) = 2924.5 \pm 0.4 \pm 1.1 \,\mathrm{MeV}, \\ m(\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}) = 2938.5 \pm 0.9 \pm 2.3 \,\mathrm{MeV}, \\ \Gamma(\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}) = \phantom{000}4.8 \pm 0.9 \pm 1.5 \,\mathrm{MeV},\\ \Gamma(\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}) = \phantom{00}11.0 \pm 1.9 \pm 7.5 \,\mathrm{MeV},$$ where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second systematic. The results are consistent with a previous LHCb measurement using a prompt $\Lambda_{c}^{+} K^{-}$ sample. Evidence of a new $\Xi_{c}(2880)^{0}$ state is found with a local significance of $3.8\,\sigma$, whose mass and width are measured to be $2881.8 \pm 3.1 \pm 8.5\,\mathrm{MeV}$ and $12.4 \pm 5.3 \pm 5.8 \,\mathrm{MeV}$, respectively. In addition, evidence of a new decay mode $\Xi_{c}(2790)^{0} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} K^{-}$ is found with a significance of $3.7\,\sigma$. The relative branching fraction of $B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-}$ with respect to the $B^{-} \to D^{+} D^{-} K^{-}$ decay is measured to be $2.36 \pm 0.11 \pm 0.22 \pm 0.25$, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic and the third originates from the branching fractions of charm hadron decays.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-028.html (LHCb public pages

Measurement of the ratios of branching fractions R(D∗)\mathcal{R}(D^{*}) and R(D0)\mathcal{R}(D^{0})

The ratios of branching fractions $\mathcal{R}(D^{*})\equiv\mathcal{B}(\bar{B}\to D^{*}\tau^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\tau})/\mathcal{B}(\bar{B}\to D^{*}\mu^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\mu})$ and $\mathcal{R}(D^{0})\equiv\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to D^{0}\tau^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\tau})/\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to D^{0}\mu^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\mu})$ are measured, assuming isospin symmetry, using a sample of proton-proton collision data corresponding to 3.0 fb${ }^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity recorded by the LHCb experiment during 2011 and 2012. The tau lepton is identified in the decay mode $\tau^{-}\to\mu^{-}\nu_{\tau}\bar{\nu}_{\mu}$. The measured values are $\mathcal{R}(D^{*})=0.281\pm0.018\pm0.024$ and $\mathcal{R}(D^{0})=0.441\pm0.060\pm0.066$, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. The correlation between these measurements is $\rho=-0.43$. Results are consistent with the current average of these quantities and are at a combined 1.9 standard deviations from the predictions based on lepton flavor universality in the Standard Model.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-039.html (LHCb public pages