Publications by authors named "Joo B"

Distinct brain circuits control sex preferences in mice.

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Spinal cord meningiomas are typically benign, rare tumors that pose clinical challenges owing to their location and potential for spinal cord compression. This study aimed to assess the radiological features of spinal cord meningiomas and the key factors associated with their recurrence. We conducted a retrospective, single-institution study on 67 patients with pathologically confirmed spinal cord meningiomas who were surgically treated between January 2016 and December 2023.

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Manipulating the spontaneous emission rate of fluorophores is vital in creating bright incoherent illumination for optical sensing and imaging, as well as fast single-photon sources for quantum technology applications. This can be done via increasing the Purcell effect by using non-monolithic optical nanocavities; however, achieving the desired performance is challenging due to difficulties in fabrication, precise positioning, and frequency tuning of cavity-emitter coupling. Here, we demonstrate a simple approach to achieve a wavelength-dependent photoluminescence (PL) lifetime modification using monolithic organic molecular aggregates films.

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Background: The primary management strategy for gait impairment is the adoption of a walking aid. However, there are no established criteria upon which to base a decision regarding the need for a walking aid. It appears clinicians prescribe aids based on preference, clinical experience and intuition rather than standardised objective rationale.

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Aims: Refugees experience physical and mental health issues that need attention following settlement in a new community. However, access to and utilisation of healthcare services is challenging. We aimed to explore the experience of refugee access to a dedicated multi-disciplinary refugee health team.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Oral lichen planus (OLP) is a chronic inflammatory condition driven by cytotoxic T cell activity that leads to the death of skin cells called keratinocytes, though its exact causes remain unclear.
  • - The oral microbiome, containing a vast number of bacteria, produces extracellular vesicles (EVs) that may influence how OLP develops, but their specific effects are not fully understood.
  • - Research shows that OLP lesions have heightened inflammation and activated STAT3 signaling, with EVs from certain harmful bacteria triggering inflammatory responses similar to OLP symptoms, suggesting that these EVs could play a key role in OLP's development.
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Among various options of contraception, bilateral tubal ligation (BTL) remains the most frequently used method for women worldwide even at present. However, up to 30% of those who undergo BTL eventually change their minds and wish to conceive again for a variety of reasons, such as a change in marital status or simply wanting more children. In this case, we can either approach it surgically with tubal re-anastomosis (TA) or by fertilization (IVF)-embryo transfer.

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  • The study aimed to identify factors that differentiate between patients with limited brain metastases (1-4) and those with extensive metastases (5 or more) in breast cancer patients.
  • Analyzed data from 100 women with brain metastases revealed that the status of de novo vs. recurrent metastatic disease significantly affects the extent of brain metastasis.
  • The findings suggest that patients with newly diagnosed stage IV breast cancer are more likely to have extensive brain metastases, indicating a need for tailored monitoring and treatment strategies, especially through routine brain screenings.
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  • The study explores how fear responses can resurface in new situations and the challenges this poses for therapies that aim to reduce fear.
  • Researchers investigated the role of specific brain regions (posterior parietal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex) using advanced techniques to understand the circuits involved in fear relapse.
  • Findings revealed that the pathway from the PPC to the ACC is crucial for this fear resurgence, with changes in neuron activity and the influence of parvalbumin-expressing interneurons affecting this process.
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Tears have emerged as a promising alternative to blood for diagnosing diabetes. Despite increasing attempts to measure tear glucose using smart contact lenses, the controversy surrounding the correlation between tear glucose and blood glucose still limits the clinical usage of tears. Herein, we present an in-depth investigation of the correlation between tear glucose and blood glucose using a wireless and soft smart contact lens for continuous monitoring of tear glucose.

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  • The study investigates clinical factors linked to breast cancer (BRCA) dural metastases (DMs) and compares their outcomes to brain parenchymal metastases (BPMs).
  • It analyzes data from 119 patients, revealing that DMs are associated with extracranial metastases and specific breast cancer subtypes, but do not significantly impact overall survival compared to BPMs.
  • The findings highlight differences in characteristics and prognosis among DM subtypes, particularly noting the relationship between nodular and diffuse DM types with various cancer indicators.
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Purpose: While follow-up assessment of clipped aneurysms (CAs) using magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) can be challenging due to susceptibility artifacts, a novel MRA sequence pointwise encoding time reduction with radial acquisition (PETRA) subtraction-based MRA, has been developed to reduce these artifacts. The aim of the study was to validate the diagnostic performance of PETRA-MRA by comparing it with digital subtraction angiography (DSA) as a reference for follow-up of CAs using a 3T MR scanner.

Methods: Patients with clipping who underwent both PETRA-MRA and DSA between September 2019 and December 2021 were retrospectively included.

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Purpose: The leaves of var. acuta (PFA) are generally reported to have antioxidant, anti-allergic, anti-inflammatory, and antitumor effects and commonly used as a traditional medicine in East Asia. This study aimed to investigate the protective effect and antioxidant activity of PFA on busulfan-induced testicular dysfunction, histological damage, oxidative stress (OS), sperm quality, and hormone levels using a mouse model.

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  • The study investigates the systemic immune-inflammatory index (SII) and its ability to predict early neurologic deterioration (END) in patients with acute ischemic stroke.
  • Data were collected from 697 patients, categorized into four groups based on quartiles of SII, and monitored for END during the first week after the stroke.
  • Results indicate that a higher SII correlates with increased odds of END and stroke progression, especially in patients with large artery atherosclerosis, suggesting SII as a potential independent predictor for these outcomes.
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With the increasing number of young breast cancer (BC) patients worldwide, concerns about hair loss and skin change persist among BC survivors. This study aimed to evaluate the hair loss and skin changes in Asian BC patients and to compare them according to the treatment regimens. This study enrolled 322 patients scheduled to undergo BC surgery.

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Purpose/objectives: Previous deep learning (DL) algorithms for brain metastasis (BM) detection and segmentation have not been commonly used in clinics because they produce false-positive findings, require multiple sequences, and do not reflect physiological properties such as necrosis. The aim of this study was to develop a more clinically favorable DL algorithm (RLK-Unet) using a single sequence reflecting necrosis and apply it to automated treatment response assessment.

Methods And Materials: A total of 128 patients with 1339 BMs, who underwent BM magnetic resonance imaging using the contrast-enhanced 3D T1 weighted (T1WI) turbo spin-echo black blood sequence, were included in the development of the DL algorithm.

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Organic nanoparticles are used in nanomedicine, including for cancer treatment and some types of COVID-19 vaccines. Here, we demonstrate the scalable, rapid, reproducible, and cost-effective synthesis of three model organic nanoparticle formulations relevant to nanomedicine applications. We employed a custom-made, low-cost fluid mixer device constructed from a commercially available three-dimensional printer.

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Globally, there is a growing concern about air pollution due to rapid industrialization and urbanization. Therefore, in this study, an experimental study was conducted to evaluate the performance of reducing nitrogen oxides, a precursor to fine dust, in mortars coated with a titanium dioxide (TiO) photocatalyst, which has the effect of decomposing pollutants. In particular, in this study, zeolite and activated red clay were used as cement substitutes to improve the fine dust reduction performance of the TiO photocatalyst.

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Application Experiences on a GPU-Accelerated Arm-based HPC Testbed.

Proc Int Conf High Perform Comput Asia Pac Reg HPC Asia 2023 Workshops (2023)

February 2023

This paper assesses and reports the experience of ten teams working to port, validate, and benchmark several High Performance Computing applications on a novel GPU-accelerated Arm testbed system. The testbed consists of eight NVIDIA Arm HPC Developer Kit systems, each one equipped with a server-class Arm CPU from Ampere Computing and two data center GPUs from NVIDIA Corp. The systems are connected together using InfiniBand interconnect.

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Introduction: In this study, we compared the dentitional changes after Invisalign and conventional orthodontic treatment with 4 first premolar extractions.

Methods: This retrospective study included 57 patients whose orthodontic treatment involved the extraction of 4 first premolars because of bialveolar protrusion. A total of 27 patients were treated with Invisalign (mean age, 25.

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Purpose: To investigate whether steep Trendelenburg in a major urologic surgery is associated with postoperative delirium, and to examine other potential clinical and radiologic factors predictive of postoperative delirium.

Methods: 182 patients who received a major urologic surgery and underwent a 3.0-T brain MRI scan within 1 year prior to the date of surgery were retrospectively enrolled.

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Purpose: Distinguishing intradural extramedullary (IDEM) spinal ependymoma from myxopapillary ependymoma is challenging due to the location of IDEM spinal ependymoma. This study aimed to investigate the utility of clinical and MR imaging features for differentiating between IDEM spinal and myxopapillary ependymomas.

Materials And Methods: We compared tumor size, longitudinal/axial location, enhancement degree/pattern, tumor margin, signal intensity (SI) of the tumor on T2-weighted images and T1-weighted image (T1WI), increased cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) SI caudal to the tumor on T1WI, and CSF dissemination of pathologically confirmed 12 IDEM spinal and 10 myxopapillary ependymomas.

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Background And Purpose: We have commonly observed prominent cerebral veins on susceptibility-weighted angiography (SWAN) in acute meningoencephalitis. This study aimed to investigate the clinical significance of these findings.

Methods: Cerebral veins on SWAN of 98 patients with acute meningoencephalitis diagnosed from February 2016 through October 2020 were classified into three groups according to the degree of venous prominence (mild, 23; moderate, 53; and prominent, 22).

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To evaluate the effect of different cooking methods on the physicochemical quality and volatile organic compounds (VOC) of dairy beef round, twelve beef round pieces were divided into four groups: raw, boiling, microwave, and sous-vide. The sous-vide group had a higher pH than the boiling or microwave groups. The boiling group exhibited the highest shear force and CIE L*, followed by the microwave and sous-vide groups (p<0.

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