Wilson Disease and the COVID-19 pandemic: exploring patients' mental health and vaccination attitudes in a longitudinal study.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the mental health of individuals with chronic conditions such as Wilson's Disease (WD). This study investigates stress, anxiety, depression, quality of life, cognitive function, vaccination rates, infection rates, and perceptions related to the pandemic and vaccines among WD patients.

Methods: The study analyzed COVID-19 perceptions and vaccine attitudes of 62 adult WD patients enrolled in the international multisite WD Registry.

Taste and smell function in Wilson's disease.

Objective: Wilson's disease (WD) is a metabolic disorder associated with abnormal copper metabolism that results in hepatic, psychiatric, and neurologic symptoms. No investigation of taste function has been made in patients with WD, although olfactory dysfunction has been evaluated.

Methods: Quantitative taste and smell test scores of 29 WD patients were compared to those of 790 healthy controls.

Major Depressive Disorder in an International Multisite Wilson Disease Registry.

Background And Aims: Psychiatric symptoms are frequently reported in Wilson disease (WD); however, systematic assessments with validated measures are lacking.

Objective: We aim to report the prevalence and clinical correlates for major depressive disorder (MDD) as resulting from a multisite international WD registry.

Methods: All patients enrolled in the WD registry received structured psychiatric evaluations (Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 scale, Perceived Stress Scale), laboratory tests, hepatology, and neurological assessments.

Neural network-based cooling design for high-performance processors.

Ultra-high chip power densities that are expected to surpass 1-2kW/cm in future high-performance systems cannot be easily handled by conventional cooling methods. Various emerging cooling methods, such as liquid cooling via microchannels, thermoelectric coolers (TECs), two-phase vapor chambers, and hybrid cooling options have been designed to efficiently remove heat from high-performance processors. However, selecting the optimal cooling solution for a given chip and determining the optimal cooling parameters for that solution to achieve high efficiency are open problems.

HPC Data Center Participation in Demand Response: an Adaptive Policy with QoS Assurance.

Demand response programs help stabilize the electricity grid by providing monetary stimulus to consumers if they regulate their power consumption following market requirements. Regulation service, a market that requires participants to regulate power by following a signal updated every few seconds, is particularly beneficial to HPC data centers since data centers are capable of increasing/decreasing power consumption owing to the flexibility in running workloads and the availability of power control mechanisms. While prior works have explored how data centers can provide regulation service reserves, Quality-of-Service (QoS) provisioning for the jobs running at the data centers has not been considered.

The Effect of Mental Health, Neurological Disease, and Liver Disease on Quality of Life in Patients With Wilson Disease.

Background: Wilson disease (WD) is a chronic disorder of copper metabolism which may affect patient's quality of life (QOL).

Objective: Our aim was to assess the relationship between mental QOL (M-QOL) and physical QOL (P-QOL) and severity of the liver, neurological disease and mental health in patients with WD.

Methods: At enrollment into our multisite international WD registry, adults (n = 62) were administered examinations assessing QOL (Short-Form 12-Item Health Survey), cognition, and mood.

Direct Measurement of ATP7B Peptides Is Highly Effective in the Diagnosis of Wilson Disease.

Background & Aims: Both existing clinical criteria and genetic testing have significant limitations for the diagnosis of Wilson disease (WD), often creating ambiguities in patient identification and leading to delayed diagnosis and ineffective management. ATP7B protein concentration, indicated by direct measurement of surrogate peptides from patient dried blood spot samples, could provide primary evidence of WD. ATP7B concentrations were measured in patient samples from diverse backgrounds, diagnostic potential is determined, and results are compared with biochemical and genetic results from individual patients.

Transcriptional down-regulation of in a subset of HIV+ controllers and their family members.

HIV +Elite and Viremic controllers (EC/VCs) are able to control virus infection, perhaps because of host genetic determinants. We identified 16% (21 of 131) EC/VCs with CD4 +T cells with resistance specific to R5-tropic HIV, reversed after introduction of . R5 resistance was not observed in macrophages and depended upon the method of T cell activation.

Differential interaction between human and murine Crm1 and lentiviral Rev proteins.

Mice have multiple obstacles to HIV replication, including a block of unspliced and partially spliced viral mRNA nuclear export. In human, Rev binds to the Rev-response element and human (h) Crm1, facilitating nuclear export of RRE-containing viral RNAs. Murine (m) Crm1 is less functional than hCrm1 in this regard.

An Investigation of Unified Memory Access Performance in CUDA.

Managing memory between the CPU and GPU is a major challenge in GPU computing. A programming model, Unified Memory Access (UMA), has been recently introduced by Nvidia to simplify the complexities of memory management while claiming good overall performance. In this paper, we investigate this programming model and evaluate its performance and programming model simplifications based on our experimental results.

Isolation and characterization of mouse-human microcell hybrid cell clones permissive for infectious HIV particle release.

Mouse cells are non-permissive to human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV) in that there is a pronounced post-integration block to viral replication. We have recently demonstrated that mouse-human somatic cell hybrids that contain human chromosome 2 increase both HIV Capsid (CA) production and infectious virus release. Here we report on the isolation of three mouse-human microcell hybrids (MCHs) that behave similarly, starting from a pool of 500 MCH clones.

Human chromosome 2 carries a gene required for production of infectious human immunodeficiency virus type 1.

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV) replicates only in certain primate cells. In murine cells expressing cyclin T1, a posttranscriptional block exists such that small amounts of capsid and little infectious virus are released. This block is relieved in part by fusion with human cells.

Expression of glucose transporter 1 confers susceptibility to human T-cell leukemia virus envelope-mediated fusion.

Human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) was the first human retrovirus identified and causes both adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma and tropical spastic paraparesis/HTLV-1-associated myelopathy, among other disorders. In vitro, HTLV-1 has an extremely broad host cell tropism in that it is capable of infecting most mammalian cell types, although at the same time viral titers remain relatively low. Despite years of study, only recently has a bona fide candidate cellular receptor, glucose transporter 1 (glut-1), been identified.

Development of a mouse model for HIV/AIDS.

A small animal model would be very valuable for HIV/AIDS vaccine testing, investigating HIV pathophysiology, and exploring anti-HIV therapeutics. Unfortunately, HIV does not replicate in mouse cells. Provision of mouse cells with human CD4, CCR5 and cyclin T1 (cycT1) has uncovered a block to HIV assembly or release.