Germline PALB2 Variants and PARP Inhibitors in Endometrial Cancer

PARP inhibitors are orally administered antineoplastic agents that affect the homologous recombination (HR) repair pathway, and are approved by the FDA for the treatment of ovarian, breast, pancreatic, and prostate cancers. This report presents a case of recurrent endometrial carcinoma occurring in a woman with a germline pathogenic PALB2 whole-exon deletion. This uncommon finding in a patient with endometrial carcinoma provided the opportunity to use a management strategy of PARP inhibition with olaparib, resulting in a prolonged response to treatment; however, disease progression eventually occurred. Further studies are required to elucidate the mechanisms underlying resistance to PARP inhibition, and the potential future treatment options in this setting. Current recommendations for risk management of female carriers of PALB2 variants focus on breast and ovarian cancer risk. This case raises the additional question of a potential role for risk-reducing hysterectomy in female carriers of PALB2 variants.

Undergraduate student’s misconception about projectile motion after learning physics during the Covid-19 pandemic era

This research aimed to describe undergraduate students’ misconception about projectile motion after learning physics during the Covid-19 pandemic era. This research was qualitative research with a descriptive method. The subjects were 52 first-year undergraduate students who took physics courses. Data collecting methods used in this research were a test, questionnaires, and interviews. The test was taken from Physics by Giancoli with an additional question about certainty of response index (CRI). Data from the test were analyzed by categorizing it into lack of knowledge, knowledge of correct concepts, and misconception while open-ended questionnaires and interviews were used to help to clarify the condition. The test results indicated that 5.13% of students in lack knowledge, 28.85% the knowledge of correct concepts, and 66.02% in misconception. The questionnaire responses showed that students learned physics via online meeting with direct instruction model and ask-answer method, exercised with only applied problem (C3), and virtual practicum. The interviews showed that only a few of the students learned physics and responded to the lecturer during the online meeting. The results are that the majority of first-year undergraduate students are in misconception after learning physics during the Covid-19 pandemic era and need remedial learning about projectile motion.

Graph convolutional network for protein sequence sampling and prediction using structural data

The increasing integration between protein engineering and machine learning has led to many interesting results. A problem still to solve is to evaluate the likelihood that a sequence will fold into a target structure. This problem can be also viewed as sequence prediction from a known structure.In the current work, we propose improvements in the recent architecture of Geometric Vector Perceptrons in order to optimize the sampling of sequences from a known backbone structure. The proposed model differs from the original in that there is: (i) no updating in the vectorial embedding, only in the scalar one, (ii) only one layer of decoding. The first aspect improves the accuracy of the model and reduces the use of memory, the second allows for training of the model with several tasks without incurring data leakage.We treat the trained classifier as an Energy-Based Model and sample sequences by sampling amino acids in a non-autoreggresive manner in the empty positions of the sequence using energy-guided criteria and followed by Monte Carlo optimization.We improve the median identity of samples from 40.2% to 44.7%.An additional question worth investigating is whether sampled and original sequences fold into similar structures independent of their identity. We chose proteins in our test set whose sampled sequences show low identity (under 30%) but for which our model predicted favorable energies. We used trRosetta server and observed that the predicted structures for sampled sequences highly resemble the predicted structures for original sequences, with an average TM score of 0.848.

Corona-Komposita und ‚Corona‘-Konzepte in der Medienberichterstattung in Standardsprache und in Leichter Sprache

First linguistic studies have paid attention to the influence of the current corona pandemic on language use in the German media coverage. They have revealed, amongst other things, that compounds beginning with corona are very productive and frequent. Against this background, the questions arise how frequent these compounds de facto are, what their morphological and graphematic characteristics look like, which second constituents can be observed, which semantic relations between the constituents exist and what their referents are. However, not only people being able to read texts in standard language need information concerning the pandemic; individuals lacking this capacity also need to know which rules apply to public life and social interaction. Therefore, information on the corona pandemic is also available in German Easy Language. But translators are faced with several dilemmas regarding the translation of compounds into Easy Language. It is thus an open question whether compounds beginning with corona, recently observed in the media coverage in standard language, also occur in the media coverage in Easy Language and, if present, what their characteristics are in comparison to the relevant compounds in standard language. An additional question is how the referents of compounds beginning with corona in standard language are designated in Easy Language in those cases where no comparable compound beginning with corona is used for this purpose. The present study uses a corpus linguistic approach to address these questions.

Genetics and material culture support repeated expansions into Paleolithic Eurasia from a population hub out of Africa

The population dynamics that followed the out of Africa expansion (OoA) and ultimately led to the formation of Oceanian, West and East Eurasian macro populations have long been debated. Furthermore, with the OoA being dated between 70 kya and 65 kya and the earliest splits between West and East Eurasian populations being inferred not earlier than 43 kya from modern DNA data, an additional question concerns the whereabouts of the early migrants out of Africa before those differentiations. Shedding light on these population dynamics may, in turn, provide clues to better understand cultural evolution in Eurasia between 50 kya and 35 kya, where the development of new technologies may be correlated to parallel independent evolution paths, to the arrival of new populations, or to long-term processes of cultural and biological exchanges. Here we jointly re-analyze Eurasian Paleolithic DNA available to date in light of material culture, and provide a comprehensive population model with minimal admixture events. Our integrated approach i) maintains Zlaty Kůň genetically as the most basal out of Africa human lineage sequenced to date, also in comparison to Oceanians and putatively links it with non-Mousterian material cultures documented in Europe 48-43 kya; ii) infers the presence of an OoA population Hub from which a major wave broadly associated with Initial Upper Paleolithic lithic industries emanated to populate West and East Eurasia before or around 45 kya, and of which Ust′Ishim, Bacho Kiro and Tianyuan were unadmixed descendants; iii) proposes a parsimonious placement of Oase1 as an individual related to Bacho Kiro who experienced additional Neanderthal introgression; and iv) explains the East/West Eurasian population split as a longer permanence of the latter in the OoA Hub, followed by a second population expansion (before 37 kya), broadly associated with Upper Paleolithic industries, that largely replaced pre-existing humans in Europe, and admixed with the previous wave to form Yana and Mal′ta in Siberia and, to a greater extent, GoyetQ116-1 in Belgium.

Beatles Heritage Tourism in Liverpool

This chapter explores the tension between the Beatles’ story and Liverpool, with imagery and imagination conjuring up compelling beliefs that command narratives of authority. Such heritage strategies have smacked a little of desperation, perhaps masking the changed relationship between surviving Beatles fragments in Liverpool and popular-music heritage tourism across the globe. The rhetoric of the Beatles, Liverpool, and “the ’60s, man” today represents an outdated, white, gendered, anglophone rock meta-narrative in what is now a multifaceted global popular-music (tourism) marketplace. Liverpool’s position as the authentic site for Beatles and Merseybeat tourism and a World Heritage Site has never been more precarious. How can the city continue to attract Beatles tourists as the ’60sslip away into the annals of popular-music historiography? An additional question is how the Beatles’ legacy might be explained to visitors with little knowledge of them as a global popular-music phenomenon.

The impact of the surgical mask on the relationship between patient and family nurse in primary care

Objective: In primary care, during treatments, nurses may need to wear surgical masks, namely for control of infection contamination, or to minimize unpleasant odors. The goal of this study is to inspect the effect of nurses wearing the mask on patient perception of the nurse-patient relation. Methods: A pre-post-test, control-experimental group design was employed with 60 patients treated in family health units. Patients responded to the Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire III (PSQ-III) regarding nurses’ communication, interpersonal manner, technical quality, as well regarding general satisfaction with the encounter. An additional question asked both patients and nurses how long they felt that the visit lasted. Results: Results show that nurses wearing the surgical mask had significantly negative effects in all dimensions of PSQ-III and increased the perceived visit duration among both nurses and patients. Conclusion: When a previous relationship exists, nurses wearing the surgical mask in primary care in Portugal negatively affects patient satisfaction with both the patient-nurse relation and the nurses’ technical quality. Practice implications: Is important the nurse understand this impact to discuss with the colleagues the best strategy to minimize the negative impact to the patient- family nurse relation and manager this situation in the best way to the patient.

Comparative Analysis of Transaction Prices and the Values of Forest Properties in Poland

Research Highlights: In the paper, we explore systematic discrepancy between sale prices and values of forest properties in Poland. We argue that the systematic valuation bias found is partially caused by the simplified parametric appraisal methodology currently used in Poland. Background and Objectives: Most of the forests in Poland are state-owned, but in recent decades, the market for private forest properties has been dynamically growing. In the paper, we investigate the relations between the actual transaction prices, and the estimated value of forest properties in selected regions in Poland. We hypothesize that sale prices systematically deviate from valuations. An additional question arises regarding the determinants of forest property prices. We hypothesize that due to asymmetric information positive amenities are not fully capitalized in property prices in Poland. Materials and Methods: In the paper, we adopt two regression models used to investigate the valuation accuracy and bias. We test the hypothesis that valuations are unbiased estimates of transaction prices. Results: The results indicate that market prices for forest properties systematically differ from estimated values. Conclusions: Systematic deviation of forest property sales prices from market values may contribute to the imperfect information available to the market participants, especially when information is asymmetrically distributed between buyers and sellers. This may confirm the hypothesis that sellers are not fully aware of the advantages of the property being sold, and provide further explanations for large systematic differences between sales prices and valuations based on parametric valuation methods used in Poland.

Best Fits and Dark Horses: Can Design Teams Tell the Difference?

Design teams are often asked to produce solutions of a certain type in response to design challenges. Depending on the circumstances, they may be tasked with generating a solution that clearly follows the given specifications and constraints of a problem (i.e., a Best Fit solution), or they may be encouraged to provide a higher risk solution that challenges those constraints, but offers other potential rewards (i.e., a Dark Horse solution). In the current research, we investigate: what happens when design teams are asked to generate solutions of both types at the same time? How does this request for dual and conflicting modes of thinking impact a team’s design solutions? In addition, as concept generation proceeds, are design teams able to discern which solution fits best in each category? Rarely, in design research, do we prompt design teams for “normal” designs or ask them to think about both types of solutions (boundary preserving and boundary challenging) at the same time. This leaves us with the additional question: can design teams tell the difference between Best Fit solutions and Dark Horse solutions? In this paper, we present the results of an exploratory study with 17 design teams from five different organizations. Each team was asked to generate both a Best Fit solution and a Dark Horse solution in response to the same design prompt. We analyzed these solutions using rubrics based on familiar design metrics (feasibility, usefulness, and novelty) to investigate their characteristics. Our assumption was that teams’ Dark Horse solutions would be more novel, less feasible, but equally useful when compared with their Best Fit solutions. Our analysis revealed statistically significant results showing that teams generally produced Best Fit solutions that were more useful (met client needs) than Dark Horse solutions, and Dark Horse solutions that were more novel than Best Fit solutions. When looking at each team individually, however, we found that Dark Horse concepts were not always more novel than Best Fit concepts for every team, despite the general trend in that direction. Some teams created equally novel Best Fit and Dark Horse solutions, and a few teams generated Best Fit solutions that were more novel than their Dark Horse solutions. In terms of feasibility, Best Fit and Dark Horse solutions did not show significant differences. These findings have implications for both design educators and design practitioners as they frame design prompts and tasks for their teams of interest.

Survey on Vietnamese teachers’ perspectives and perceived support during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented damage to the educational system worldwide. Besides the measurable economic impacts in the short-term and long-term, there is intangible destruction within educational institutions. In particular, teachers – the most critical intellectual resources of any schools – have to face various types of financial, physical, and mental struggles due to COVID-19. To capture the current context of more than one million Vietnamese teachers during COVID-19, we distributed an e-survey to more than 2,500 randomly selected teachers from two major teacher communities on Facebook from 6th to 11th April 2020. From over 373 responses, we excluded the observations which violated our cross-check questions and retained 294 observations for further analysis. This dataset includes: (i) Demographics of participants; (ii) Teachers' perspectives regarding the operation of teaching activities during the pandemic; (iii) Teachers' received support from their schools, government bodies, other stakeholders such as teacher unions, and parents' associations; and (iv) teachers' evaluation of school readiness toward digital transformation. Further, the dataset was supplemented with an additional question on the teachers' primary source of professional development activities during the pandemic.