Unified Spin Model for Magnetic Excitations in Iron Chalcogenides

Recent inelastic neutron scattering (INS) measurements on FeSe and Fe(Te$_{1-x}$Se$_x$), have sparked intense debate over the nature of the ground state in these materials. Here we propose an effective bilinear-biquadratic spin model which is shown to consistently describe the evolution of low-energy spin excitations in FeSe, both under applied pressure and upon Se/Te substitution. The phase diagram, studied using a combination of variational mean-field, flavor-wave calculations, and density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG), exhibits a sequence of transitions between the columnar antiferromagnet common to the iron pnictides, the non-magnetic ferroquadrupolar phase attributed to FeSe, and the double-stripe antiferromagnetic order known to exist in Fe$_{1+y}$Te. The calculated spin structure factor in these phases mimics closely that observed with INS in the Fe(Te$_{1-x}$Se$_x$), series. In addition to the experimentally established phases, the possibility of incommensurate magnetic order is also predicted.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures in the main text; plus 5 pages of supplementary material

The Batik-plays-Mozart Corpus: Linking Performance to Score to Musicological Annotations

We present the Batik-plays-Mozart Corpus, a piano performance dataset combining professional Mozart piano sonata performances with expert-labelled scores at a note-precise level. The performances originate from a recording by Viennese pianist Roland Batik on a computer-monitored B\"osendorfer grand piano, and are available both as MIDI files and audio recordings. They have been precisely aligned, note by note, with a current standard edition of the corresponding scores (the New Mozart Edition) in such a way that they can further be connected to the musicological annotations (harmony, cadences, phrases) on these scores that were recently published by Hentschel et al. (2021). The result is a high-quality, high-precision corpus mapping scores and musical structure annotations to precise note-level professional performance information. As the first of its kind, it can serve as a valuable resource for studying various facets of expressive performance and their relationship with structural aspects. In the paper, we outline the curation process of the alignment and conduct two exploratory experiments to demonstrate its usefulness in analyzing expressive performance.Comment: To be published in the Proceedings of the 24th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR 2023), Milan, Ital

Digital Tools for Managing Different Steps of the Systematic Review Process

Performing systematic reviews (SR) and meta-analyses is an arduous and time-consuming process that involves not only comprehensive literature searching but also record de-duplication, title/abstract and full-text screening, data extraction, quality assessment, statistical analysis, data visualization, report writing, and the creation of a bibliography. In the past several years, several digital tools and software have become available to facilitate different steps of the systematic review process. However, due to the growing number of tools, it can be difficult for systematic reviewers to make fully informed decisions about which tool(s) to use. Here, we (1) compile a comprehensive list of currently available digital tools for managing steps of the systematic review process, (2) map the functionality of each tool onto various steps of the process with further consideration of their price, training materials, and technical support

Semi-Synthetic Glycoconjugate Vaccine Lead Against Acinetobacter baumannii 17978

Acinetobacter baumannii is a opportunistic bacterial pathogen responsible for serious nosocomial infections that is becoming increasingly resistant against antibiotics. Capsular polysaccharides (CPS) that cover A. baumannii are a major virulence factor that play an important role in pathogenesis, are used to assign serotypes and provide the basis for vaccine development. Synthetic oligosaccharides resembling the CPS of A. baumannii 17978 were printed onto microarray slides and used to screen sera from patients infected with A. baumannii as well as a monoclonal mouse antibody (mAb C8). A synthetic oligosaccharide emerged from glycan array screening as lead for the development of a vaccine against A. baumannii 17978. Tetrasaccharide 20 is a key epitope for recognition by an antibody and is a vaccine lead

Radiosynthesis, in vitro and preliminary in vivo evaluation of the novel glutamine derived PET tracers [18F]fluorophenylglutamine and [18F]fluorobiphenylglutamine

INTRODUCTION: Glucose has been deemed the driving force of tumor growth for decades. However, research has shown that several tumors metabolically shift towards glutaminolysis. The development of radiolabeled glutamine derivatives could be a useful molecular imaging tool for visualizing these tumors. We elaborated on the glutamine-derived PET tracers by developing two novel probes, namely [(18)F]fluorophenylglutamine and [(18)F]fluorobiphenylglutamine MATERIALS AND METHODS: Both tracers were labelled with fluorine-18 using our recently reported ruthenium-based direct aromatic fluorination method. Their affinity was evaluated with a [(3)H]glutamine inhibition experiment in a human PC-3 and a rat F98 cell line. The imaging potential of [(18)F]fluorophenylglutamine and [(18)F]fluorobiphenylglutamine was tested using a mouse PC-3 and a rat F98 tumor model. RESULTS: The radiosynthesis of both tracers was successful with overall non-decay corrected yields of 18.46 ± 4.18 % (n=10) ([(18)F]fluorophenylglutamine) and 8.05 ± 3.25 % (n=5) ([(18)F]fluorobiphenylglutamine). In vitro inhibition experiments showed a moderate and low affinity of fluorophenylglutamine and fluorobiphenylglutamine, respectively, towards the human ASCT-2 transporter. Both compounds had a low affinity towards the rat ASCT-2 transporter. These results were endorsed by the in vivo experiments with low uptake of both tracers in the F98 rat xenograft, low uptake of [(18)F]FBPG in the mice PC-3 xenograft and a moderate uptake of [(18)F]FPG in the PC-3 tumors. CONCLUSION: We investigated the imaging potential of two novel PET radiotracers [(18)F]FPG and [(18)F]FBPG. [(18)F]FPG is the first example of a glutamine radiotracer derivatized with a phenyl group which enables the exploration of further derivatization of the phenyl group to increase the affinity and imaging qualities. We hypothesize that increasing the affinity of [(18)F]FPG by optimizing the substituents of the arene ring can result in a high-quality glutamine-based PET radiotracer. ADVANCES IN KNOWLEDGE AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PATIENT CARE: We hereby report novel glutamine-based PET-tracers. These tracers are tagged on the arene group with fluorine-18, hereby preventing in vivo defluorination, which can occur with alkyl labelled tracers (e.g. (2S,4R)4-[(18)F]fluoroglutamine). [(18)F]FPG shows clear tumor uptake in vivo, has no in vivo defluorination and has a straightforward production. We believe this tracer is a good starting point for the development of a high-quality tracer which is useful for the clinical visualization of the glutamine transport

Use of the Research Readiness Self-Assessment (RRSA) to Evaluate Medical Students’ Competencies in Finding and Evaluating Online Health Information (Poster Presented at MHSLA Annual Conference)

To maintain awareness of current medical evidence and clinical practice guidelines in order to provide the best possible patient care, physicians must be able to locate, critically evaluate, synthesize, and make clinical decisions based on health information from multiple digital sources. Concerningly, however, medical students and junior doctors have been found to exhibit poor information literacy skills, including an inability to conduct efficient literature searches, find randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews, or evaluate study quality. Here, we describe our medical library’s experience in administering the Health version of the Research Readiness Self-Assessment (RRSA) tool to two cohorts of first-year medical students to evaluate their perceived and actual competencies in finding and critically evaluating online health information. We also describe our creation of online training modules that aim to improve medical students’ health information literacy skills, including one on using Bloom’s taxonomy to ask great research questions and another on deciding when to use various types of information sources (e.g., textbooks, journals, point-of-care clinical decision tools) to answer different types of health-related questions. Our preliminary findings suggest that first-year medical students are better at evaluating health information than they are at finding health information, although both skills show room for improvement. These findings will help guide our development of additional educational interventions to improve medical students’ research readiness