Surgical retrieval of PICC-related right atrial thrombus in a child with acute lymphoblastic leukemia: a case report.

Background: Peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs) are widely used in cancer patients for administering chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics, and nutrients. PICC-related thrombi are not uncommon and may result in pulmonary embolism and the formation of thrombi in the right atrium. The latter are associated with an increased risk of subsequent morbidity or mortality because of their potential for embolization in the pulmonary vasculature.

Be Strong Enough to Say No: Self-Affirmation Increases Rejection to Unfair Offers.

We propose that self-affirmation may endow people more psychological resources to buffer against the negative influence of rejecting unfair offers in the classic ultimatum game (UG) and further lead to a stronger tendency to reject those offers. We tested this possibility by conducting an event-related potential (ERP) study about the UG, with the ERP component P3 as an indirect indicator of psychological resources. Participants were randomly assigned to the affirmation or control condition and then completed the UG through electrophysiological recording.

Narcissism predicts impulsive buying: phenotypic and genetic evidence.

Impulsive buying makes billions of dollars for retail businesses every year, particularly in an era of thriving e-commerce. Narcissism, characterized by impulsivity and materialism, may serve as a potential antecedent to impulsive buying. To test this hypothesis, two studies examined the relationship between narcissism and impulsive buying.

The neural response to maternal stimuli: an ERP study.

Mothers are important to all humans. Research has established that maternal information affects individuals' cognition, emotion, and behavior. We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine attentional and evaluative processing of maternal stimuli while participants completed a Go/No-go Association Task that paired mother or others words with good or bad evaluative words.

Neural manifestations of implicit self-esteem: an ERP study.

Behavioral research has established that humans implicitly tend to hold a positive view toward themselves. In this study, we employed the event-related potential (ERP) technique to explore neural manifestations of positive implicit self-esteem using the Go/Nogo association task (GNAT). Participants generated a response (Go) or withheld a response (Nogo) to self or others words and good or bad attributes.

A behavioral genetic study of intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions of narcissism.

Narcissism, characterized by grandiose self-image and entitled feelings to others, has been increasingly prevalent in the past decades. This study examined genetic and environmental bases of two dimensions of narcissism: intrapersonal grandiosity and interpersonal entitlement. A total of 304 pairs of twins from Beijing, China completed the Narcissistic Grandiosity Scale and the Psychological Entitlement Scale.

Implicit self-esteem decreases in adolescence: a cross-sectional study.

Implicit self-esteem has remained an active research topic in both the areas of implicit social cognition and self-esteem in recent decades. The purpose of this study is to explore the development of implicit self-esteem in adolescents. A total of 599 adolescents from junior and senior high schools in East China participated in the study.

Representation of contextually related multiple objects in the human ventral visual pathway.

Real-world scenes usually contain a set of cluttered and yet contextually related objects. Here we used fMRI to investigate where and how contextually related multiple objects were represented in the human ventral visual pathway. Specifically, we measured the responses in face-selective and body-selective regions along the ventral pathway when faces and bodies were presented either simultaneously or in isolation.

The etiology of mathematical self-evaluation and mathematics achievement: understanding the relationship using a cross-lagged twin study from age 9 to 12.

The genetic and environmental origins of individual differences in mathematical self-evaluation over time and its association with later mathematics achievement were investigated in a UK sample of 2138 twin pairs at ages 9 and 12. Self-evaluation indexed how good children think they are at mathematical activities and how much they like those activities. Mathematics achievement was assessed by teachers based on UK National Curriculum standards.

Resting-state neural activity across face-selective cortical regions is behaviorally relevant.

Interest has increased recently in correlations across brain regions in the resting-state fMRI blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response, but little is known about the functional significance of these correlations. Here we directly test the behavioral relevance of the resting-state correlation between two face-selective regions in human brain, the occipital face area (OFA) and the fusiform face area (FFA). We found that the magnitude of the resting-state correlation, henceforth called functional connectivity (FC), between OFA and FFA correlates with an individual's performance on a number of face-processing tasks, not non-face tasks.

A novel approach to genetic and environmental analysis of cross-lagged associations over time: the cross-lagged relationship between self-perceived abilities and school achievement is mediated by genes as well as the environment.

Using longitudinal cross-lagged analysis to infer causal directions of reciprocal effects is one of the most important tools in the developmental armamentarium. The strength of these analyses can be enhanced by analyzing the genetic and environmental aetiology underlying cross-lagged relationships, for which we present a novel approach here. Our approach is based on standard Cholesky decomposition.

The cleavage of the hemagglutinin protein of H5N2 avian influenza virus in yeast.

Influenza viruses belonging to the Orthomyxoviridae family are enveloped viruses with segmented negative sense RNA genome surrounded by a helical symmetry shell. Influenza viruses, especially the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAI) such as H5 or H7 subtype are important pathogens for the poultry industry. Due to genetic reassortments between avian and human influenza viruses, global pandemics may emerge and the naive human immunity could not be ready for them.

Blocking tumorigenic activities of colorectal cancer cells by a splicing RON receptor variant defective in the tyrosine kinase domain.

Altered expression of the RON receptor tyrosine kinase, accompanied by generation of splicing variants, contributes to the pathogenesis of epithelial cancers such as invasive growth of colorectal caners. In this study, we have studied a novel RON variant (designated as RONdelta170) that regulates tumorigenic activities of colorectal cancer cells by blocking RON-mediated tumorigenic signals. RONdelta170 is a splicing variant with a deletion of exon 19 that encodes 46 amino acids in the catalytic kinase domain.

Dual expression of the HA protein of H5N2 avian influenza virus in a baculovirus system.

Baculovirus/insect cell system is used widely for recombinant protein production. The hemagglutinin (HA) gene of H5N2 avian influenza virus (AIV) 1209 strain and the enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) gene were cloned into pFastBac DUAL vector that has two promoters and cloning sites, allowing simultaneous expression of these two genes. The HA protein of AIV was fused with a hexahistidine (His6) tag for purification.