Irreversible electroporation as an intraoperative adjunctive treatment for locally advanced pancreatic cancer after neoadjuvant therapy: An initial clinical experience.

Backgrounds/aims: Irreversible electroporation (IRE) may have a potential application as either a "back-up therapy" or for margin accentuation during trial dissection of locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LAPC). The aim of this report was to describe our experience with IRE in terms of its potential applications mentioned above.

Methods: A clinical policy to use IRE in LAPC patients undergoing exploratory surgery after neoadjuvant therapy (NAT) was initiated in 2017.

3D polycatenated architected materials.

Architected materials derive their properties from the geometric arrangement of their internal structural elements. Their designs rely on continuous networks of members to control the global mechanical behavior of the bulk. In this study, we introduce a class of materials that consist of discrete concatenated rings or cage particles interlocked in three-dimensional networks, forming polycatenated architected materials (PAMs).

The abiologically and biologically driving effects on organic matter in marginal seas revealed by deep learning-assisted model analysis.

The biogeochemical processes of organic matter exhibit notable variability and unpredictability in marginal seas. In this study, the abiologically and biologically driving effects on particulate organic matter (POM) and dissolved organic matter (DOM) were investigated in the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea of China, by introducing the cutting-edge network inference tool of deep learning. The concentration of particulate organic carbon (POC) was determined to characterize the status of POM, and the fractions and fluorescent properties of DOM were identified through 3D excitation-emission-matrix spectra (3D-EEM) combined parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC).

The wrapped Rama distribution.

A new one-parameter distribution is proposed for circular data based on wrapping. Most distributions constructed via wrapping do not yield elementary expressions for their mathematical properties. Yet the new distribution yields elementary expressions for all of its mathematical properties.

Association Between Sleep Duration and Cardiovascular Disease Among Asian Americans.

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevalence varies widely among Asian American adults. The American Heart Association added healthy sleep to its metrics to define ideal cardiovascular health. Little is known about the association between sleep and CVD prevalence among Asian subgroups.

Broth microdilution protocol for determining antimicrobial susceptibility of Legionella pneumophila to clinically relevant antimicrobials.

Currently there is no detailed, internationally agreed protocol defined to evaluate antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) for Legionella pneumophila (required to establish epidemiological cut-off value or "ECOFF" boundaries); therefore, antimicrobial resistance in these isolates cannot be defined. AST methods utilising media containing activated charcoal as an ingredient, to enable Legionella growth, are unreliable as noted in an internationally authored opinion paper and a new gold standard is required. Here we define a detailed protocol for broth microdilution (BMD) using defined cell culture collection-deposited control reference strains (Philadelphia-1 and Knoxville-1) as well as two accessible reference strains with moderately (lpeAB-carrying) and markedly (23S rRNA mutation-carrying) elevated azithromycin minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC).

Exact Expressions for Kullback-Leibler Divergence for Univariate Distributions.

The Kullback-Leibler divergence (KL divergence) is a statistical measure that quantifies the difference between two probability distributions. Specifically, it assesses the amount of information that is lost when one distribution is used to approximate another. This concept is crucial in various fields, including information theory, statistics, and machine learning, as it helps in understanding how well a model represents the underlying data.

Psychological impacts of the Gaza war on Palestinian young adults: a cross-sectional study of depression, anxiety, stress, and PTSD symptoms.

Background: The Gaza Strip has been embroiled in a violent military assault since October 2023, with an immense toll on the civilian population. Armed conflicts threaten the mental health of affected communities and survivors, and psychiatric morbidity increases with forced displacement and with severe and recurrent trauma. This study investigates the prevalence and predisposing factors of depression, anxiety, stress, and PTSD symptoms in a group of young adult students from the Gaza Strip during the war.

Health professions students' acceptance and readiness for learning analytics: lessons for educators.

Background: Learning analytics (LA) is a tool for gathering, analysing, and interpreting data related to student's learning behaviour, engagement, and performance. As the student data collected by the institutions are used to construct LA, it is essential to understand the acceptance and readiness of the students regarding the implementation of LA.

Methods: A sequential mixed method research design was used in this study.

Pressure and cold pain threshold reference values in a pain-free older adult population.

Background: More sex-specific pain sensitivity normative values from population-based cohorts in pain-free older adults are required. The aims of this study were (1) to provide sex- and age-specific normative values of pressure and cold pain thresholds in older pain-free adults and (2) to examine the association of potential correlates of pain sensitivity with pain threshold values.

Methods: This study investigated sex-specific pressure (lumbar spine, tibialis anterior, neck and dorsal wrist) and cold (dorsal wrist) pain threshold estimates for older pain-free adults aged 41-70 years.

Harmonization of Vaccine Ligand Binding Assays Validation.

The urgency and importance of organizing a global effort to harmonize clinical assay validation specific to the vaccine industry was identified during the drafting of the 2020 White Paper in Bioanalysis due to the lack of clarity and regulatory guidance/guidelines in vaccine immunoassay validation. Indeed, the Workshop on Recent Issues in Bioanalysis (WRIB) issues the White Paper in Bioanalysis yearly, which is one of the high-profile articles of the Journal focused on detailed discussions and recommendations on vaccine assay validation. Since 2017, participation in the WRIB working groups by vaccine assay validation experts and regulators has rapidly increased due to its unique format where industry leaders and regulators can meet and exchange ideas on topics of interest to both groups.

Microglia drive diurnal variation in susceptibility to inflammatory blood-brain barrier breakdown.

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is critical for maintaining brain homeostasis but is susceptible to inflammatory dysfunction. While transporter-dependent efflux of some lipophilic substrates across the BBB shows circadian variation due to rhythmic transporter expression, basal transporter-independent permeability and leakage is nonrhythmic. Whether daily timing influences BBB permeability in response to inflammation is unknown.

The Importance Characteristics for Veterinary Workplace Clinical Training (WCT) in a Distributive Curriculum, from the Perspectives of Students, Academics, and Clinical Supervisors.

Veterinary students, academics, and clinical supervisors are likely to have different perspectives on what it takes to be prepared for workplace clinical training (WCT). Differing expectations could confuse students if they receive conflicting messages about the skills and attributes to which they should aspire. Furthermore, they may struggle to engage with the affordances that workplaces provide for learning if unprepared.

Palliative care integration into outpatient heart failure management: pilot study.

Objectives: People with heart failure have palliative care needs yet services remain underused. The heart failure clinic is a potential setting for initial palliative care delivery though evidence for such services is lacking. We explored the outcomes of an embedded model of palliative medicine within a heart failure clinic.

Generalized bivariate Kummer-beta distribution with marginals defined on the unit interval.

In this paper, a generalized bivariate Kummer-beta distribution is proposed. The name derives from the fact that its particular cases include univariate Kummer-beta distributions. This distribution generalizes a number of existing bivariate beta distributions, including Nadarajah's bivariate distributions, Libby and Novick's bivariate beta distribution and a central bivariate Kummer-beta distribution.

Empirical investigation of multi-source cross-validation in clinical ECG classification.

Traditionally, machine learning-based clinical prediction models have been trained and evaluated on patient data from a single source, such as a hospital. Cross-validation methods can be used to estimate the accuracy of such models on new patients originating from the same source, by repeated random splitting of the data. However, such estimates tend to be highly overoptimistic when compared to accuracy obtained from deploying models to sources not represented in the dataset, such as a new hospital.

Neonatal mortality among disaggregated Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander populations.

Objective: We compared neonatal (<28 days) mortality rates (NMRs) across disaggregated Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AANHPI) groups using recent, national data.

Study Design: We used 2015-2019 cohort-linked birth-infant death records from the National Vital Statistics System. Our sample included 61,703 neonatal deaths among 18,709,743 births across all racial and ethnic groups.

Transvaginal natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery hysterectomy in patients with body mass index >50: An Asian experience.

We present two cases of patients with body mass index (BMI) >50 undergoing transvaginal natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (vNOTES) hysterectomy for gynecological indications. Case 1 involves a 52-year-old woman with post-menopausal bleeding and suspicion of ovarian torsion, while case 2 describes a patient with newly diagnosed endometrial adenocarcinoma. Both cases highlight the feasibility and challenges of vNOTES in this patient population.