Bioceramic Material Stimulation Affects Perceptual Consciousness: A Study Combining Descriptive Observation and Functional MRI Connectivity Analysis

There is still no clear explanation of the process of perceptual consciousness that connects our body with brain. Innovation on the technology of bioceramic has now advanced towards clinical applications, including rehabilitation of brain infarction, therapies of insomnia and migraine. To demonstrate how ‘resonant energy transfer through the bioceramic material with tempo sound and visible light spectrum’ (bioceramic material stimulation, BMS) non-invasively affects perceptual consciousness, we investigated the responses of participants to BMS on perceptual consciousness by questionnaire of subjective descriptions and analyzed resting state fMRI during BMS. There were 61.3% participants who were categorized as positive group with various types of perceptual consciousness. By setting a threshold value at ‘p<0.001’, enhanced connections of ‘parahippocampal gyrus to cerebellar lobule V’ and ‘angular gyrus to precuneus’ were found. However, decreased connection of ‘caudate nucleus to cerebellar lobule VIIb’ was found. We conclude that the most affected brain functions by BMS including somatosensory, audio-visual perception and social cognition. The analysis of functional connectivity during BMS may help us gain more knowledge of consciousness and related division of neuroscience in humans.

Reconstruction of Differential Operators with Frozen Argument

We study spectral properties of a wide class of differential operators with frozen arguments by putting them into a general framework of rank-one perturbation theory. In particular, we give a complete characterization of possible eigenvalues for these operators and solve the inverse spectral problem of reconstructing the perturbation from the resulting spectrum. This approach provides a unified treatment of several recent studies and gives a clear explanation and interpretation of the obtained results.

Nascent Adhesion Clustering: Integrin-Integrin and Integrin-Substrate Interactions

Nascent adhesions (NAs) are a general precursor to the formation of focal adhesions (FAs) that provide a fundamental mechanism for cell adhesion that is, in turn, involved in cell proliferation, migration, and mechanotransduction. Nascent adhesions form when cells come into contact with substrates at all rigidities and generally involve the clustering of ligated integrins that may recruit un-ligated integrins. Nascent adhesions tend to take on characteristic sizes in the range of O(100nm–150nm) in diameter and tend to contain integrin numbers of O(20–60). The flexible, adaptable model we present provides and clear explanation of how these conserved cluster features come about. Our model is based on the interaction among ligated and un-ligated integrins that arise due to deformations that are induced in the cell membrane-cell glycocalyx and substrate system due to integrin activation and ligation. This model produces a clearly based interaction potential, and from it an explicit interaction force among integrins, that our stochastic diffusion-interaction simulations then show will produce nascent clusters with experimentally observed characteristics. Our simulations reveal effects of various key parameters related to integrin activation and ligation as well as some unexpected and previously unappreciated effects of parameters including integrin mobility and substrate rigidity. Moreover, the model’s structure is such that refinements are readily incorporated and specific suggestions are made as to what is required for further progress in understanding nascent clustering and the development of mature focal adhesions in a truly predictive manner.

Abandoning Gender “Identity”

International instruments fail to specify the meaning of gender identity. Yet gender identity has been invoked as a prohibited ground of discrimination, particularly in cases concerning trans persons. Trans existences fall outside the expectation of a correspondence between sex and gender. “Trans” is an umbrella term referring to people who do not identify with the sex attributed to them at birth. This broad definition encompasses pre-operative and post-operative transsexuals, as well as persons who have not undergone any medical intervention and do not conform to the social norms of expression and self-identification imposing the binary. Regional conventions do not define the concept of gender identity either. Documents issued by the United Nations (UN) and regional human rights bodies frequently rely on the category, without any clear explanation of the notion, or of what makes gender identity different from gender as such. Relying on Lacanian psychoanalysis, this essay argues that gender is an identity per se and challenges international law's treatment of gender and gender identity as distinct categories. Underlying this essay is the view that questioning the shape that the law gives to “gender identity” is the preliminary step to evaluating what protections human rights law can or cannot offer to individuals.

LoG and Structural Based Arbitrary Oriented Multilingual Text Detection in Images/Video

Text in an image or a video affords more precise meaning and text is a prominent source with a clear explanation of the content than any other high-level or low-level features. The text detection process is a still challenging research work in the field of computer vision. However, complex background and orientation of the text leads to extremely stimulating text detection tasks. Multilingual text consists of different geometrical shapes than a single language. In this article, a simple and yet effective approach is presented to detect the text from an arbitrary oriented multilingual image and video. The proposed method employs the Laplacian of Gaussian to identify the potential text information. The double line structure analysis is applied to extract the true text candidates. The proposed method is evaluated on five datasets: Hua's, arbitrarily oriented, multi-script robust reading competition (MRRC), MSRA and video datasets with performance measures precision, recall and f-measure. The proposed method is also tested on real-time video, and the result is promising and encouraging.

Semantic models for assessing the influence of a combination of factors on the development of diseases

The analysis of approaches and solutions to the problem of risk assessment and prognosis of conditions and development of diseases is presented. It is shown that the implementation of software services on various platforms complicates the possibility of their comprehensive use and the choice between the available solutions. This has risen the urgency of creating a unified semantic model of diseases that integrates various methods and approaches to solving this problem and accumulates knowledge about risks and prognosis in a unified information space. A new semantic model is proposed to take into account influence of a combination of factors on development of various events that threaten health and life. The feature of the model is its independence from a specific disease or a group of diseases, which allows it to be used in various branches of medicine. This model has been tested on the IACPaaS platform. A software solver has been implemented that allows generating a clear explanation based on the knowledge base and analysis of the patient's electronic medical record. The application of the new model for the formation of knowledge is shown on the example of risk assessment and prognosis of cardiovascular events.

The Peculiar Behavior of Burst Oscillations in the Accreting Millisecond X-ray Pulsar XTE J1814–338

Accreting millisecond X-ray pulsars (AMXPs) show burst oscillations during thermonuclear explosions of the accreted plasma which are markedly different from those observed in non-pulsating low mass X-ray binaries. The AMXP XTE J1814–338 is known for having burst oscillations that are phase locked (constant phase difference) and coincident with the accretion powered pulsations during all its thermonuclear bursts but the last one. In this work we use a coherent timing analysis to investigate this phenomenon in more detail and with higher time resolution than was done in the past. We confirm that the burst oscillation phases are, on average, phase locked to the accretion powered pulsations. However, they also display moderate (≲ 0.1 cycles) drifts during each individual burst, showing a repeating pattern that is consistently observed according to the thermonuclear burst phase (rise, peak, tail). Despite the existence of these drifting patterns, the burst oscillation phases somehow are able to average out at almost the exact position of the accretion powered pulsations. We provide a kinematic description of the phenomenon and review the existing models in the literature. The phenomenon remains without a clear explanation, but we can place important constraints on the thermonuclear burst mechanism. In particular, the observations imply that the ignition point of the thermonuclear burst occurs close to the foot of the accretion column. We speculate that the burning fluid expands in a backward tilted accretion column trapped by the magnetic field, while at the same time the burning flame covers the surface.

‘Clear explanation’ in mental capacity assessment

SUMMARY We comment on Martin Curtice's article on expert and professional reports for the Court of Protection, which highlights the importance of ‘clear explanation’ in mental capacity assessment. We put the Court in a broader context of the Mental Capacity Act and summarise recent research and education that aims to help give clinicians working in England and Wales capacity assessment guidance that is clinically grounded, multi-perspectival and legally defensible.

Choriocarcinoma (stage IV) despite two normal dilation and curettages: A case report

Choriocarcinoma is a highly metastatic subtype of gestational trophoblastic neoplasia (GTN) following pregnancy. It can arise from any type of pregnancy (50% occur after term pregnancies, 25% after molar pregnancies, and 25% after early pregnancy loss and ectopic pregnancies) (Soper, 2006). This case report describes an interesting diagnostic conundrum with normal histology findings on two separate endometrial dilation and curettages (D&C) and a unilateral oophorectomy in the context of high clinical suspicion for molar pregnancy that progressed to stage IV choriocarcinoma with brain and lung metastasis. The patient presented to our hospital nearly aphasic but would only say “molar pregnancy”. Due to her brain metastasis and worsening intraparenchymal hematoma, she underwent craniotomy confirming the diagnosis. After stabilization, she was transferred to a quaternary care center to complete chemotherapy with etoposide, methotrexate, actinomycin, cyclophosphamide, and vincristine and had a good response. At this time, there is no clear explanation for normal histology on two separate D&Cs and a unilateral oophorectomy in the context of a classic case of choriocarcinoma with progression from a molar pregnancy. It reminds us as providers that medicine remains an imperfect science and requires astute clinical judgement to properly treat patients when diagnostic data such as pathology findings and lab values appear to be incongruent with the larger clinical picture.

Malignant primary pericardial mesothelioma presenting as effusive constrictive pericarditis: a case report study

Background Primary pericardial mesothelioma (PPM) is a rare malignancy with a high prevalence of mortality. The diagnosis is usually challenging using a variety of imaging modalities and invasive procedures and is generally performed at the later stages of the disease or in autopsy. This case study points to an unconventional presentation of PPM and the challenges in diagnosing this rare mortal malignancy. Case presentation This study presents a 44-year-old woman with no remarkable medical history with an initial diagnosis of effusive constrictive pericarditis at first hospitalization. Imaging evaluations, including transthoracic echocardiography and chest computed tomography scan, demonstrated visible thickened pericardium, pericardial effusion, and mass-like lesions in pericardium and mediastinum. The definite diagnosis of primary pericardial mesothelioma was established after pericardiectomy and histopathology examinations. Chemotherapy with pemetrexed and carboplatin was administrated to the patient, and she has been through four cycles of chemotherapy with no complications to date. Conclusion Constrictive pericarditis is an uncommon presentation of PPM. Due to the high mortality rate and late presentation, difficulties and uncertainties in diagnosis, being aware of this rare malignant entity in different cardiac manifestations, particularly when there is no clear explanation or response to treatment in such conditions, is highly important.