Coming to Terms with the Communist Past in Romania: An Analysis of the Political and Media Discourse Concerning the Tismăneanu Report

This paper looks at the public debates about the communist past, as triggered by the final report on the communist dictatorship in Romania (the Tismăneanu report) and its presidential endorsement in December 2006. The paper employs narrative and discourse analysis to examine the political reactions to the official condemnation of communism, as well as its reflection in several Romanian newspapers. The Tismăneanu report was meant to be a ‘redressive ritual’ that would provide closure to a traumatic past by retrospectively denouncing the meaning of communism, but instead it generated more public debates and political turmoil. This indicates that the contorted path taken by Romania to confront its communist past is not a finished process yet, but rather represents a dynamic field in which social actors are fighting over which events and actors in the past should be collectively remembered, and especially how they have to be represented in the collective memory of post-communist Romania

Coming to Terms with the Communist Past in Romania: An Analysis of the Political and Media Discourse Concerning the Tismăneanu Report

"This paper looks at the public debates about the communist past, as triggered by the final report on the communist dictatorship in Romania (the Tismăneanu report) and its presidential endorsement in December 2006. The paper employs narrative and discourse analysis to examine the political reactions to the official condemnation of communism, as well as its reflection in several Romanian newspapers. The Tismăneanu report was meant to be a ‘redressive ritual’ that would provide closure to a traumatic past by retrospectively denouncing the meaning of communism, but instead it generated more public debates and political turmoil. This indicates that the contorted path taken by Romania to confront its communist past is not a finished process yet, but rather represents a dynamic field in which social actors are fighting over which events and actors in the past should be collectively remembered, and especially how they have to be represented in the collective memory of post-communist Romania." (author's abstract

Personalized Pancreatic Tumor Growth Prediction via Group Learning

Tumor growth prediction, a highly challenging task, has long been viewed as a mathematical modeling problem, where the tumor growth pattern is personalized based on imaging and clinical data of a target patient. Though mathematical models yield promising results, their prediction accuracy may be limited by the absence of population trend data and personalized clinical characteristics. In this paper, we propose a statistical group learning approach to predict the tumor growth pattern that incorporates both the population trend and personalized data, in order to discover high-level features from multimodal imaging data. A deep convolutional neural network approach is developed to model the voxel-wise spatio-temporal tumor progression. The deep features are combined with the time intervals and the clinical factors to feed a process of feature selection. Our predictive model is pretrained on a group data set and personalized on the target patient data to estimate the future spatio-temporal progression of the patient's tumor. Multimodal imaging data at multiple time points are used in the learning, personalization and inference stages. Our method achieves a Dice coefficient of 86.8% +- 3.6% and RVD of 7.9% +- 5.4% on a pancreatic tumor data set, outperforming the DSC of 84.4% +- 4.0% and RVD 13.9% +- 9.8% obtained by a previous state-of-the-art model-based method

Biased efficacy estimates in phase-III dengue vaccine trials due to heterogeneous exposure and differential detectability of primary infections across trial arms.

Vaccine efficacy (VE) estimates are crucial for assessing the suitability of dengue vaccine candidates for public health implementation, but efficacy trials are subject to a known bias to estimate VE toward the null if heterogeneous exposure is not accounted for in the analysis of trial data. In light of many well-characterized sources of heterogeneity in dengue virus (DENV) transmission, our goal was to estimate the potential magnitude of this bias in VE estimates for a hypothetical dengue vaccine. To ensure that we realistically modeled heterogeneous exposure, we simulated city-wide DENV transmission and vaccine trial protocols using an agent-based model calibrated with entomological and epidemiological data from long-term field studies in Iquitos, Peru. By simulating a vaccine with a true VE of 0.8 in 1,000 replicate trials each designed to attain 90% power, we found that conventional methods underestimated VE by as much as 21% due to heterogeneous exposure. Accounting for the number of exposures in the vaccine and placebo arms eliminated this bias completely, and the more realistic option of including a frailty term to model exposure as a random effect reduced this bias partially. We also discovered a distinct bias in VE estimates away from the null due to lower detectability of primary DENV infections among seronegative individuals in the vaccinated group. This difference in detectability resulted from our assumption that primary infections in vaccinees who are seronegative at baseline resemble secondary infections, which experience a shorter window of detectable viremia due to a quicker immune response. This resulted in an artefactual finding that VE estimates for the seronegative group were approximately 1% greater than for the seropositive group. Simulation models of vaccine trials that account for these factors can be used to anticipate the extent of bias in field trials and to aid in their interpretation

Molecular composition and pharmacology of store-operated calcium entry in sensory neurons

In a forever busy pharmaceutical market, the need for analgesic and anti-inflammatory drugs is still in high demand. Various conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes or viral infections are frequently associated with persistent and unalleviated pain, therefore uncovering novel pharmacological targets is deemed necessary. Store-operated calcium entry (SOCE), a complex mechanism orchestrated by calcium release activated calcium (CRAC) channels, has been recently associated with neuropathic and inflammatory pain. Moreover, several attempts to describe the presence of CRAC channel molecular components in pain-sensing DRG and dorsal horn neurons have been made. Yet, the exact identity of CRAC channel complex components, the function of junctional proteins in CRAC channel assembly and the exact role of SOCE within primary afferent neurons remains poorly understood. Here I hypothesized that SOCE functions as a facilitator of Ca2+ signalling in inflammatory pain conditions and that junctional proteins offer a supportive role of the CRAC channels assembly in DRG neurons. To test this, I characterized the localization pattern of CRAC components within DRG neurons by immunohistrochemistry. STIM (1 and 2) and Orai (1 and 3) isoforms were all expressed within primary afferent neurons of different sensory modalities. STIM1 and Orai1 were expressed to a higher degree as compared to their family members and co-localized into puncta upon SOCE activation as demonstrated by proximity ligation assay (PLA). Interestingly, STIM2 revealed a higher preference in large-diameter (presumed mechanosensory) neurons, as compared to STIM1. To confirm the presence of SOCE, the effect of CRAC inhibitors YM58483 and Synta66 in DRG neurons was also investigated. Both compounds significantly reduced SOCE in DRG neurons; the efficacy of inhibition was dramatically increased by pre-incubation suggesting that these CRAC inhibitors may not act as direct ion channel pore blockers but rather interfere with the CRAC complex functional assembly. v CRAC channel complex assembly relies on the close proximity of the cellular plasma membrane and endoplasmic reticulum, yet, nothing is known thus far about how these membrane junctions are maintained in DRG. This thesis brings evidence of the expression of Junctophilin (JPH) proteins within primary sensory neurons. Amongst the family members, JPH4 was expressed the highest, followed by JPH1 and JPH3, while no expression of JPH2 was observed. Moreover, experiments using immunocytochemistry revealed that JPH4 is co-expressed with Orai1 and STIM1 in pain-sensing neurons, while PLA demonstrated that both Orai1 and STIM1 co-localize with JPH4 at endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-plasma membrane (PM) junctions upon bradykinin (BK) -induced SOCE. To test whether JPH4 is a SOCE facilitator, several experiments were performed. Thus, it was demonstrated that STIM1 directly interacts with JPH4 upon ER Ca2+ store depletion using immunoprecipitation. Furthermore, knocking-down JPH4 disrupted the Orai1-STIM1 clustering and coupling at the ER-PM junctions as observed by PLA. Interestingly, silencing JPH4 in DRG neurons inhibited SOCE without altering the basal Ca2+ pool levels and impaired the subsequent ER Ca2+ store refill, as demonstrated by calcium imaging experiments. These observations taken together strengthen the role of JPH4 in facilitating SOCE in DRG neurons. CRAC channels have been previously considered attractive targets for treatment of inflammatory conditions and more pharmaceutical companies showed an increased interest in developing CRAC modulators in the past decade. The high expression of JPH4 in peripheral sensory neurons, its importance in promoting the CRAC channel assembly and its role on the oscillatory ER Ca2+ refill provide evidence for considering JPH proteins as putative targets for treating inflammatory pain

A Comparative Study of Biomechanical Simulators in Deformable Registration of Brain Tumor Images

Simulating the brain tissue deformation caused by tumor growth has been found to aid the deformable registration of brain tumor images. In this paper, we evaluate the impact that different biomechanical simulators have on the accuracy of deformable registration. We use two alternative frameworks for biomechanical simulations of mass effect in 3-D magnetic resonance (MR) brain images. The first one is based on a finite-element model of nonlinear elasticity and unstructured meshes using the commercial software package ABAQUS. The second one employs incremental linear elasticity and regular grids in a fictitious domain method. In practice, biomechanical simulations via the second approach may be at least ten times faster. Landmarks error and visual examination of the coregistered images indicate that the two alternative frameworks for biomechanical simulations lead to comparable results of deformable registration. Thus, the computationally less expensive biomechanical simulator offers a practical alternative for registration purposes

Evaluation of the effectiveness of some acaricides in the control of the two-spotted spider mite (Tetranychus urticae Koch) on squash crops under high plastic tunnels

The two-spotted spider mite (Tetranychus urticae Koch) is an important pest present in squash crops under high plastic tunnels and in the field, that can reduce yield quantitatively and depreciating it qualitatively. The attack is frequent in dry and hot years, reaching a maximum development in the months of July-August. On the leaves, following the attack, depigmentations appear followed by their drying. The experiment done in 2023, aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of two products based on Neem oil (Oleorgan) and hexythiazox (Nissorun 10 WP) for controlling the pest on squash crops. The 'Perfect' cultivar and the 'Lorea' hybrid were used as biological material. The yield on variants and replicates was recorded, being between 12.30 and 22.58 t/ha. Based on the obtained results, the efficacy (%) was calculated and was between 64.4 and 96.0%

THYMOMA WITH LATERAL AND PARACARDIAC EVOLVEMENT

THYMOMAS WITH LATERAL AND PARACARDIAC EVOLVEMENT (Abstract): Thymoma is the most common tumor of the anterior mediastinum originating from epithelial thymic cells. The tumors are often asymptomatic or with non specific symptoms. We present herein three cases admitted in our surgical for mediastinal tumor. The imagery exams revealed thymomas with lateral and paracardiac evolvement. Intraoperatively, we found tumors in closed contact with the pericardium, developed posterior to the phrenic nerve. In all cases, we performed complete excision of the tumors using a posterolateral thoracotomy. Frozen section was inconclusive in all cases; the final pathological exam diagnosed stage I thymoma. The postoperative course was uneventful for all three patients. The long term follow-up (14 years) revealed no recurrence