Randomised double-blind phase 3 clinical study testing impact of atorvastatin on prostate cancer progression after initiation of androgen deprivation therapy: study protocol.

Introduction: Blood cholesterol is likely a risk factor for prostate cancer prognosis and use of statins is associated with lowered risk of prostate cancer recurrence and progression. Furthermore, use of statins has been associated with prolonged time before development of castration resistance (CR) during androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) for prostate cancer. However, the efficacy of statins on delaying castration-resistance has not been tested in a randomised placebo-controlled setting.

Software-based planning of ultrasound and CT-guided percutaneous radiofrequency ablation in hepatic tumors.

Objectives: Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) can be associated with local recurrences in the treatment of liver tumors. Data obtained at our center for an earlier multinational multicenter trial regarding an in-house developed simulation software were re-evaluated in order to analyze whether the software was able to predict local recurrences.

Methods: Twenty-seven RFA ablations for either primary or secondary hepatic tumors were included.

Clinical evaluation of in silico planning and real-time simulation of hepatic radiofrequency ablation (ClinicIMPPACT Trial).

Objectives: To evaluate the accuracy and clinical integrability of a comprehensive simulation tool to plan and predict radiofrequency ablation (RFA) zones in liver tumors.

Methods: Forty-five patients with 51 malignant hepatic lesions of different origins were included in a prospective multicenter trial. Prior to CT-guided RFA, all patients underwent multiphase CT which included acquisitions for the assessment of liver perfusion.

RFA Guardian: Comprehensive Simulation of Radiofrequency Ablation Treatment of Liver Tumors.

The RFA Guardian is a comprehensive application for high-performance patient-specific simulation of radiofrequency ablation of liver tumors. We address a wide range of usage scenarios. These include pre-interventional planning, sampling of the parameter space for uncertainty estimation, treatment evaluation and, in the worst case, failure analysis.

Rods progressively escape saturation to drive visual responses in daylight conditions.

Rod and cone photoreceptors support vision across large light intensity ranges. Rods, active under dim illumination, are thought to saturate at higher (photopic) irradiances. The extent of rod saturation is not well defined; some studies report rod activity well into the photopic range.

Brain activity associated with selective attention, divided attention and distraction.

Top-down controlled selective or divided attention to sounds and visual objects, as well as bottom-up triggered attention to auditory and visual distractors, has been widely investigated. However, no study has systematically compared brain activations related to all these types of attention. To this end, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity in participants performing a tone pitch or a foveal grating orientation discrimination task, or both, distracted by novel sounds not sharing frequencies with the tones or by extrafoveal visual textures.

Complexation-Driven Mutarotation in Poly(L-proline) Block Copolypeptides.

Novel poly(L-lysine)-block-poly(L-proline) (PLL-b-PLP)-based materials with all PLP helical conformers, i.e., PLP II and the rare PLP I are here reported.

Melatonin Suppression by Light in Humans Is More Sensitive Than Previously Reported.

The retina drives various non-image-forming photoresponses, including circadian photoentrainment and pupil constriction. Previous investigators showed that in humans, photic suppression of the clock-controlled hormone melatonin is most sensitive to 460-nm blue light, with a threshold of ~12 log photons cm(-2) s(-1). This threshold is surprising because non-image-forming vision is mediated by intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, which receive rod-driven synaptic input and can respond to light levels as low as ~7 log photons cm(-2) s(-1).

Brain activations during bimodal dual tasks depend on the nature and combination of component tasks.

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate brain activations during nine different dual tasks in which the participants were required to simultaneously attend to concurrent streams of spoken syllables and written letters. They performed a phonological, spatial or "simple" (speaker-gender or font-shade) discrimination task within each modality. We expected to find activations associated specifically with dual tasking especially in the frontal and parietal cortices.

Additive effects of affective arousal and top-down attention on the event-related brain responses to human bodies.

The early visual event-related 'N170 response' is sensitive to human body configuration and it is enhanced to nude versus clothed bodies. We tested whether the N170 response as well as later EPN and P3/LPP responses to nude bodies reflect the effect of increased arousal elicited by these stimuli, or top-down allocation of object-based attention to the nude bodies. Participants saw pictures of clothed and nude bodies and faces.

Molecular engineering of fracture energy dissipating sacrificial bonds into cellulose nanocrystal nanocomposites.

Even though nanocomposites have provided a plethora of routes to increase stiffness and strength, achieving increased toughness with suppressed catastrophic crack growth has remained more challenging. Inspired by the concepts of mechanically excellent natural nanomaterials, one-component nanocomposites were fabricated involving reinforcing colloidal nanorod cores with polymeric grafts containing supramolecular binding units. The concept is based on mechanically strong native cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) grafted with glassy polymethacrylate polymers, with side chains that contain 2-ureido-4[1H]-pyrimidone (UPy) pendant groups.

β-adrenergic signaling inhibits Gq-dependent protein kinase D activation by preventing protein kinase D translocation.

Rationale: Both β-adrenergic receptor (β-AR) and Gq-coupled receptor (GqR) agonist-driven signaling play key roles in the events, leading up to and during cardiac dysfunction. How these stimuli interact at the level of protein kinase D (PKD), a nodal point in cardiac hypertrophic signaling, remains unclear.

Objective: To assess the spatiotemporal dynamics of PKD activation in response to β-AR signaling alone and on coactivation with GqR-agonists.

Critical Importance of van der Waals Stabilization in Strongly Chemically Bonded Surfaces: Cu(110):O.

We provide strong evidence that different reconstructed phases of the oxidized Cu(110) surface are stabilized by the van der Waals (vdW) interactions. These covalently bonded reconstructed surfaces feature templates that are an integral part of the surfaces and are bonded on the bare metal surface by a combination of chemical and physical bonding. The vdW stabilization in this class of systems affects predominantly the intertemplate Cu-O interactions in structures sparsely populated by these templates.

One- and two-particle dynamics in microfluidic T-junctions.

Advances in precise focusing of colloidal particles in microfluidic systems open up the possibility of using microfluidic junctions for particle separation and filtering applications. We present a comprehensive numerical study of the dynamics of solid and porous microparticles in T-shaped junctions. Good agreement with experimental data is obtained on the location of particle-separating streamlines for single solid particles with realistic parameters corresponding to the experiments.

Workplace health promotion and stakeholder positions: a Finnish case study.

Modern workplace health promotion (WHP) requires collaboration, partnerships, and alliances with both internal and external stakeholders. However, the identification of the key stakeholders as well as the systematic mapping of their views has barely been covered in the existing research literature. This article describes the stakeholders and stakeholder positions in WHP in Finland.

Atomic layer deposition of aluminum oxide films for carbon nanotube network transistor passivation.

Ultra-thin (2-5 nm thick) aluminum oxide layers were grown on non-functionalized individual single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) and their bundles by atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique in order to investigate the mechanism of the coating process. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was used to examine the uniformity and conformality of the coatings grown at different temperatures (80 degrees C or 220 degrees C) and with different precursors for oxidation (water and ozone). We found that bundles of SWCNTs were coated continuously, but at the same time, bare individual nanotubes remained uncoated.

Why the assessment of causality in brain-behavior relations requires brain stimulation.

A central aim in cognitive neuroscience is to explain how neural activity gives rise to perception and behavior; the causal link of paramount interest is thus from brain to behavior. Functional neuroimaging studies, however, tend to provide information in the opposite direction by informing us how manipulation of behavior may affect neural activity. Although this may provide valuable insights into neuronal properties, one cannot use such evidence to make inferences about the behavioral significance of the observed activations; if A causes B, it does not necessarily follow that B causes A.

Causal evidence for subliminal percept-to-memory interference in early visual cortex.

There has been recent interest in the neural correlates of visual short-term memory (VSTM) interference by irrelevant perceptual input. These studies, however, presented distracters that were subjected to conscious scrutiny by participants thus strongly involving attentional control mechanisms. In order to minimize the role of attentional control and to investigate interference occurring at the level of sensory representations, we developed a paradigm in which a subliminal visual distracter is presented during the delay period of a visual short-term memory task requiring the maintenance of stimulus orientation.

A combined arc-melting and tilt-casting furnace for the manufacture of high-purity bulk metallic glass materials.

An arc-melting furnace which includes a tilt-casting facility was designed and built, for the purpose of producing bulk metallic glass specimens. Tilt-casting was chosen because reportedly, in combination with high-purity processing, it produces the best fatigue endurance in Zr-based bulk metallic glasses. Incorporating the alloying and casting facilities in a single piece of equipment reduces the amount of laboratory space and capital investment needed.

Directional perception of distributed sound sources.

The perception of spatially distributed sound sources was investigated by conducting two listening experiments in anechoic conditions with 13 loudspeakers evenly distributed in the frontal horizontal plane emitting incoherent noise signals. In the first experiment, widely distributed sound sources with gaps in their distribution emitted pink noise. The results indicated that the exact loudspeaker distribution could not be perceived accurately and that the width of the distribution was perceived to be narrower than it was in reality.

Extended phase diagram of the three-dimensional phase field crystal model.

We determine the phase diagram of the phase field crystal model in three dimensions by using numerical free energy minimization methods. Previously published results, based on single mode approximations, have indicated that in addition to the uniform (liquid) phase, there would be regions of stability of body-centered cubic, hexagonal and stripe phases. We find that in addition to these, there are also regions of stability of face-centered cubic and hexagonal close packed structures in this model.

Speech perception in the child brain: cortical timing and its relevance to literacy acquisition.

Speech processing skills go through intensive development during mid-childhood, providing basis also for literacy acquisition. The sequence of auditory cortical processing of speech has been characterized in adults, but very little is known about the neural representation of speech sound perception in the developing brain. We used whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) to record neural responses to speech and nonspeech sounds in first-graders (7-8-year-old) and compared the activation sequence to that in adults.

Embodied visual perception of distorted finger postures.

Bodily abnormalities in other persons often evoke an uneasy feeling, even disgust. Here, we studied the brain basis of such perceptual salience by presenting static pictures of distorted hand postures to healthy subjects during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Cortical activation sensitive to distorted (vs.

Effective model hierarchies for dynamic and static classical density functional theories.

The origin and methodology of deriving effective model hierarchies are presented with applications to solidification of crystalline solids. In particular, it is discussed how the form of the equations of motion and the effective parameters on larger scales can be obtained from the more microscopic models. It will be shown that tying together the dynamic structure of the projection operator formalism with static classical density functional theories can lead to incomplete (mass) transport properties even though the linearized hydrodynamics on large scales is correctly reproduced.