Publications by authors named "Mock J"

Introduction: People living with schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses (SMI) face a disproportionate burden of tobacco-related prevalence and, consequently, tobacco-induced morbidity, in comparison to those without SMI. Social and environmental factors play an important role in the health of people with SMI yet less is known about the role of these factors in smoking cessation interventions for adults with SMI. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the social and environmental factors that contributed to the smoking cessation process among adults with SMI enrolled in a smoking cessation program.

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Background: Despite being treatable, the prevalence of anemia is relatively high, affecting up to 30% of the general population and 35% of patients undergoing surgery. Symptoms are often misinterpreted and patients frequently do not recognize anemia as a disease. As a result, it is often not discussed during medical consultations.

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Background: Perception-related errors comprise most diagnostic mistakes in radiology. To mitigate this problem, radiologists use personalized and high-dimensional visual search strategies, otherwise known as search patterns. Qualitative descriptions of these search patterns, which involve the physician verbalizing or annotating the order he or she analyzes the image, can be unreliable due to discrepancies in what is reported versus the actual visual patterns.

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Research on endogenous auditory spatial attention typically uses headphones or sounds in the frontal hemispace, which undersamples panoramic spatial hearing. Crossmodal attention studies also show that visual information impacts spatial hearing and attention. Given the overlap between vision and audition in frontal space, we tested the hypothesis that the distribution of endogenous auditory spatial attention would differ when attending to the front versus back hemispace.

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Glutathione (GSH) is a crucial redox scavenger, essential for maintaining cellular redox balance. This study explores the long-term effects of chronic GSH deficiency on lifespan, motor function, cognitive performance, redox status and inflammation. GCLM mice, with a 70-90% reduction in GSH levels, were compared to GCLM controls across their lifespan (5, 10 and 20 months).

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Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) derives from hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs). To date, no AML-exclusive, non-HSPC-expressed cell-surface target molecules for AML selective immunotherapy have been identified. Therefore, to still apply surface-directed immunotherapy in this disease setting, time-limited combined immune-targeting of AML cells and healthy HSPCs, followed by hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), might be a viable therapeutic approach.

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Article Synopsis
  • Fibroblast activation protein (FAP) is commonly found in the stroma of human tumors, making it a target for cancer detection using radiolabeled ligands, such as the newly discovered OncoFAP, which shows rapid tumor accumulation and low healthy tissue uptake.
  • A trimerized version called OncoFAP-23 has improved binding affinity and was tested in tumor-bearing mice, demonstrating a favorable biodistribution profile with significant tumor retention and minimal healthy tissue accumulation.
  • Combining OncoFAP-23 with the interleukin 2 treatment shows increased anti-tumor effects and a strong immune response, while also displaying a good safety profile with no observed toxicity.
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Purpose: Listening effort is a broad construct, and there is no consensus on how to subdivide listening effort into dimensions. This project focuses on the subjective experience of effortful listening and tests if cognitive workload, mental fatigue, and mood are interrelated dimensions.

Method: Two online studies tested young adults ( = 74 and = 195) and measured subjective workload, fatigue (subscales of fatigue and energy), and mood (subscales of positive and negative mood) before and after a challenging listening task.

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Regulatory T cells, characterized by their expression of the transcription factor Forkhead box P3, are indispensable in maintaining immune homeostasis. The respiratory system is constantly exposed to many environmental challenges, making it susceptible to various insults and infections. Regulatory T cells play essential roles in maintaining homeostasis in the lung and promoting repair after injury.

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Cytokine-based therapeutics have been shown to mediate objective responses in certain tumor entities but suffer from insufficient selectivity, causing limiting toxicity which prevents dose escalation to therapeutically active regimens. The antibody-based delivery of cytokines significantly increases the therapeutic index of the corresponding payload but still suffers from side effects associated with peak concentrations of the product in blood upon intravenous administration. Here we devise a general strategy (named "Intra-Cork") to mask systemic cytokine activity without impacting anti-cancer efficacy.

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CD4 forkhead box P3 (FOXP3) regulatory T cells (Tregs) are essential in maintaining immune tolerance and suppressing excessive immune responses. Tregs also contribute to tissue repair processes distinct from their roles in immune suppression. For these reasons, Tregs are candidates for targeted therapies for inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, and in diseases where tissue damage occurs.

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()-Benzylsuccinate is generated in anaerobic toluene degradation by the radical addition of toluene to fumarate and further degraded to benzoyl-CoA by a β-oxidation pathway. Using metabolic modules for benzoate transport and activation to benzoyl-CoA and the enzymes of benzylsuccinate β-oxidation, we established an artificial pathway for benzylsuccinate production in , which is based on its degradation pathway running in reverse. Benzoate is supplied to the medium but needs to be converted to benzoyl-CoA by an uptake transporter and a benzoate-CoA ligase or CoA-transferase.

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Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) have significantly improved outcomes in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We evaluated the effect of opioid use on outcomes in patients receiving ICI either alone or with chemotherapy. We conducted a retrospective review of 209 patients with advanced NSCLC who received an ICI at the University of Virginia between 1 February 2015 and 1 January 2020.

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We studied the antitumor efficacy of a combination of Lu-labeled radioligand therapeutics targeting the fibroblast activation protein (FAP) (OncoFAP and BiOncoFAP) with the antibody-cytokine fusion protein L19-interleukin 2 (L19-IL2) providing targeted delivery of interleukin 2 to tumors. The biodistribution of Lu-OncoFAP and Lu-BiOncoFAP at different molar amounts (3 vs. 250 nmol/kg) of injected ligand was studied via SPECT/CT in mice bearing subcutaneous HT-1080.

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Introduction: Hearing protection devices (HPDs) are standard personal protective equipment in military settings, but many service members may choose to not use HPDs because they impair spatial hearing and situation awareness. In an effort to reduce barriers to compliance by improving situation awareness while wearing HPDs, this study investigated whether brief training could counteract spatial hearing deficits when wearing HPDs. Participant's ability to correctly apply the HPDs across days was also examined.

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The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment is a dark matter detector centered on a dual-phase xenon time projection chamber operating at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota, USA. This Letter reports results from LUX-ZEPLIN's first search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with an exposure of 60 live days using a fiducial mass of 5.5 t.

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Article Synopsis
  • * In a study, patients with extensive-stage SCLC received entinostat along with standard treatments; three patients were treated, but significant adverse events were noted, leading to the trial's early closure.
  • * The combination of entinostat with standard treatments caused severe side effects, like neutropenia and thrombocytopenia, making it unsafe for further exploration in this context.
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The targeted delivery of bioactive proteins, such as cytokines, for cancer immunotherapy approaches mostly relies on antibodies or antibody fragments. However, fusion proteins may display low tissue penetration due to a large molecular size. Small molecule ligands with high affinity toward tumor-associated antigens provide a promising alternative for the selective delivery of cytokines to tumor lesions.

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Purpose: The variable and intermittent nature of stuttering makes it difficult to consistently elicit a sufficient number of stuttered trials for longitudinal experimental research. This study tests the efficacy of using non-word pairs that phonetically mimic English words with no associated meaning, to reliably elicit balanced numbers of stuttering and fluent trials over multiple sessions. The study also evaluated the effect of non-word length on stuttering frequency, the consistency of stuttering frequency across sessions, and potential carry-over effects of increased stuttering frequency in the experimental task to conversational and reading speech after the task.

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Antibody-based therapeutics represent an important class of biopharmaceuticals in cancer immunotherapy. CD3 bispecific T-cell engagers activate cytotoxic T-cells and have shown remarkable clinical outcomes against several hematological malignancies. The absence of a costimulatory signal through CD28 typically leads to insufficient T-cell activation and early exhaustion.

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Infrasound may be used to detect the approach of hazardous volcanic mudflows, known as lahars, tens of minutes before their flow fronts arrive. We have analyzed signals from more than 20 secondary lahars caused by precipitation events at Fuego Volcano during Guatemala's rainy season in May through October of 2022. We are able to quantify the capabilities of infrasound monitoring through comparison with seismic data, time lapse camera imagery, and high-resolution video of a well-recorded event on August 17.

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We have previously identified mitogen-activated protein kinase-activated protein kinase 2 (MK2) is required for caspase-3 nuclear translocation in the execution of apoptosis; however, little is known of the underlying mechanisms. Therefore, we sought to determine the role of kinase and nonkinase functions of MK2 in promoting nuclear translocation of caspase-3. We identified two non-small cell lung cancer cell lines for use in these experiments based on low MK2 expression.

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