Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Characterization of Breast Cell Phenotypes: Effect of Nanoparticle Geometry.

The use of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to delineate between the breast epithelial cell lines MCF10A, SK-BR-3, and MDA-MB-231 is explored utilizing varied morphologies of gold nanoparticles. The nanoparticles studied had spherical, star-like, and quasi-fractal (nanocaltrop) morphologies and possessed varying degrees of surface inhomogeneity and complexity. The efficacy of Raman enhancement of these nanoparticles was a function of their size, their surface morphology, and the associated density of "hot spots," as well as their cellular uptake.

miR‑455 targets FABP4 to protect human endometrial stromal cells from cytotoxicity induced by hydrogen peroxide.

Oxidative stress and dysregulation of antioxidant systems are associated with various complications in pregnancy. Endometriosis is a common gynecologic disease that affects women of reproductive age. Recent studies have indicated that oxidative stress may be involved in the pathophysiology of endometriosis.

Multiple gastric adenocarcinoma of fundic gland type: A case report.

Background: In recent years, there have been reports of a new histological type of gastric cancer, termed gastric adenocarcinoma of the fundic gland (GA-FG). This disease entity presents differentiation towards the fundic gland, especially chief cell-predominant differentiation (GA-FG-CCP). GA-FG-CCP easily invades into the submucosa but rarely shows metastasis.

Corrigendum: The Biological Basis of Mathematical Beauty.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.

Scombroid Fish Poisoning Leading to Vasospastic Angina: A Rare Etiology of Chest Pain.

Chest pain is commonly reported in emergency departments, and a thorough clinical history is important in distinguishing the etiology. This case highlights Kounis syndrome, a histamine-mediated coronary vasospasm leading to myocardial injury, due to scombroid fish poisoning. ().

Element interactivity as a factor influencing the effectiveness of worked example-problem solving and problem solving-worked example sequences.

Background: The worked example effect in cognitive load theory suggests that providing worked examples first followed by solving similar problems would facilitate students' learning. Using problem solving-worked example sequence is another way of implementing example-based instruction. Although research has demonstrated the superiority of worked example-problem solving sequence on learning materials that presumably are high in element interactivity for novices, none of the previous studies have compared the two sequences with levels of element interactivity experimentally manipulated in a strictly controlled manner.

Cognitive prostheses for goal achievement.

Procrastination takes a considerable toll on people's lives, the economy and society at large. Procrastination is often a consequence of people's propensity to prioritize their immediate experiences over the long-term consequences of their actions. This suggests that aligning immediate rewards with long-term values could be a promising way to help people make more future-minded decisions and overcome procrastination.

The Roles of Statistics in Human Neuroscience.

Statistics plays three important roles in brain studies. They are (1) the study of differences between brains in distinctive populations; (2) the study of the variability in the structure and functioning of the brain; and (3) the study of data reduction on large-scale brain data. I discuss these concepts using examples from past and ongoing research in brain connectivity, brain information flow, information extraction from large-scale neuroimaging data, and neural predictive modeling.

The Bayesian-Laplacian brain.

We outline what we believe could be an improvement in future discussions of the brain acting as a Bayesian-Laplacian system. We do so by distinguishing between two broad classes of priors on which the brain's inferential systems operate: in one category are biological priors (β priors) and in the other artefactual ones (α priors). We argue that β priors, of which colour categories and faces are good examples, are inherited or acquired very rapidly after birth, are highly or relatively resistant to change through experience, and are common to all humans.

Isoliquiritigenin attenuates lipopolysaccharide-induced cognitive impairment through antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity.

Background: Oxidative stress and neuroinflammation are central pathogenic mechanisms common to many neurological diseases. Isoliquiritigenin (ISL) is a flavonoid in licorice with multiple pharmacological properties, including anti-inflammatory activity, and has demonstrated protective efficacy against acute neural injury. However, potential actions against cognitive impairments have not been examined extensively.

Adiabatic Quantum-Flux-Parametron: Towards Building Extremely Energy-Efficient Circuits and Systems.

Adiabatic Quantum-Flux-Parametron (AQFP) logic is an adiabatic superconductor logic family that has been proposed as a future technology towards building extremely energy-efficient computing systems. In AQFP logic, dynamic energy dissipation can be drastically reduced due to the adiabatic switching operations using AC excitation currents, which serve as both clock signals and power supplies. As a result, AQFP could overcome the power/energy dissipation limitation in conventional superconductor logic families such as rapid-single-flux-quantum (RSFQ).

A Divide-and-Conquer Strategy for Quantification of Light Absorption, Scattering, and Emission Properties of Fluorescent Nanomaterials in Solutions.

Optical properties of fluorescent materials including their UV-vis absorption, scattering, and on-resonance fluorescence activities are strongly wavelength-dependent. Reported herein is a divide-and-conquer strategy for experimental quantification of fundamental optical constants of fluorescent nanomaterials including their UV-vis absorption, scattering, and on-resonance-fluorescence (ORF) cross-section spectra and ORF fluorescence and light scattering depolarization spectra. The fluorophore UV-vis extinction spectrum is first divided into a blue and a red wavelength region.

A high blood eosinophil count may be a risk factor for incident asthma in population at risk.

Background: Eosinophilia is considered to be associated with allergic disease and may predict asthma exacerbation. Eosinophils contribute to the pathophysiology and pathogenesis of asthma. However, studies on high blood eosinophil counts (BECs) and incident asthma remain scarce.

Neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory effects of isoliquiritigenin in kainic acid-induced epileptic rats via the TLR4/MYD88 signaling pathway.

Epileptogenesis is a complex pathological process that occurs after an initial brain injury and involves a series of molecular events. Isoliquiritigenin (ISL), a flavonoid in licorice, is reported to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects in various experimental models, but its specific roles and molecular mechanisms in the epileptogenic process following kainic acid (KA) treatment remain unclear. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of ISL pretreatment in KA-induced epileptic rats and the underlying mechanisms.

Neuroprotective effects of isoliquiritigenin against cognitive impairment via suppression of synaptic dysfunction, neuronal injury, and neuroinflammation in rats with kainic acid-induced seizures.

Epileptogenesis is a dynamic process initiated by insults to brain and commonly accompanied by cognitive impairment. Isoliquiritigenin (ISL), a flavonoid in licorice, has a broad spectrum of biological effects including anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activities. However, the protective effects of ISL against cognitive impairment in epileptic processes and the underlying molecular mechanism are not well understood.

Yb- and Mn-Doped Lead-Free Double Perovskite CsAgBiX (X = Cl, Br) Nanocrystals.

Lead-free double perovskite nanocrystals (NCs) have emerged as a new category of materials that hold the potential for overcoming the instability and toxicity issues of lead-based counterparts. Doping chemistry represents a unique avenue toward tuning and optimizing the intrinsic optical and electronic properties of semiconductor materials. In this study, we report the first example of doping Yb ions into lead-free double perovskite CsAgBiX (X = Cl, Br) NCs via a hot injection method.

Reversible Photo-Switching of Dual-Color Fluorescent Mn-Doped CdS-ZnS Quantum Dots Modulated by Diarylethene Molecules.

Dynamic materials have been given an increased amount of attention in recent years with an expectation that they may exhibit properties on demand. Especially, the combination of fluorescent quantum dots (QDs) and light-responsive organic switches can generate novel photo-switchable materials for diverse applications. In this work, a highly reversible dynamic hybrid system is established by mixing dual-color emitting Mn-doped CdS-ZnS quantum dots (QDs) with photo-switchable diarylethene molecules.

Association between abdominal obesity and asthma: a meta-analysis.

Background: Studies evaluating the association between abdominal obesity and asthma yielded conflict results. Whether abdominal obesity is positively associated with asthma remains unclear.

Objective: To quantitatively determine the association between abdominal obesity and asthma.

Controlling Nanoparticle Orientations in the Self-Assembly of Patchy Quantum Dot-Gold Heterostructural Nanocrystals.

Self-assembly of nanocrystals is a promising route for creating macroscale materials that derive function from the properties of their nanoscale building blocks. While much progress has been made assembling nanocrystals into different superlattices, controlling the relative orientations of nanocrystals in those lattices remains a challenge. Here, we combine experiments with computer simulations to study the self-assembly of patchy heterostructural nanocrystals (HNCs), consisting of near-spherical quantum dots decorated with regular arrangements of small gold satellites, into close-packed superlattices with pronounced orientational alignment of HNCs.

Imaging of changes in copper trafficking and redistribution in a mouse model of Niemann-Pick C disease using positron emission tomography.

Niemann-Pick C disease (NPC) is an autosomal recessive lysosomal storage disorder resulting from mutations in the NPC1 (95% of cases) or NPC2 genes. Disturbance of copper homeostasis has been reported in NPC1 disease. In this study we have used whole-body positron emission tomography (PET) and brain electronic autoradiography with copper-64 (Cu), in the form of the copper(II) bis(thiosemicarbazonato) complex Cu-GTSM, to image short-term changes in copper trafficking after intravenous injection in a transgenic mouse model of NPC1 disease.

Resting-state brain information flow predicts cognitive flexibility in humans.

The human brain is a dynamic system, where communication between spatially distinct areas facilitates complex cognitive functions and behaviors. How information transfers between brain regions and how it gives rise to human cognition, however, are unclear. In this article, using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 783 healthy adults in the Human Connectome Project (HCP) dataset, we map the brain's directed information flow architecture through a Granger-Geweke causality prism.

Benefits of the Paris Agreement to ocean life, economies, and people.

The Paris Agreement aims to mitigate the potential impacts of climate change on ecological and social systems. Using an ensemble of climate-marine ecosystem and economic models, we explore the effects of implementing the Agreement on fish, fishers, and seafood consumers worldwide. We find that implementing the Agreement could protect millions of metric tons in annual worldwide catch of top revenue-generating fish species, as well as billions of dollars annually of fishers' revenues, seafood workers' income, and household seafood expenditure.

SeqSleepNet: End-to-End Hierarchical Recurrent Neural Network for Sequence-to-Sequence Automatic Sleep Staging.

Automatic sleep staging has been often treated as a simple classification problem that aims at determining the label of individual target polysomnography epochs one at a time. In this paper, we tackle the task as a sequence-to-sequence classification problem that receives a sequence of multiple epochs as input and classifies all of their labels at once. For this purpose, we propose a hierarchical recurrent neural network named SeqSleepNet (source code is available at http://github.

The CD98 Heavy Chain Is a Marker and Regulator of Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma Radiosensitivity.

Purpose: The heavy chain of the CD98 protein (CD98hc) is encoded by the gene. Together with the light subunit LAT1, CD98hc constitutes a heterodimeric transmembrane amino acid transporter. High mRNA expression levels are associated with poor prognosis in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) treated with radiochemotherapy.