Trends in Head and Neck Cancer Mortality from 1999 to 2019 in Japan: An Observational Analysis.

Globally, the numbers of head and neck cancer (HNC) cases and related deaths have recently increased. In Japan, few studies have examined crude or age-adjusted HNC mortality rates. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the trends in crude and age-adjusted mortality rates for HNC per million individuals in Japan from 1999 to 2019.

Audiovisual n-Back Training Alters the Neural Processes of Working Memory and Audiovisual Integration: Evidence of Changes in ERPs.

(1) Background: This study investigates whether audiovisual n-back training leads to training effects on working memory and transfer effects on perceptual processing. (2) Methods: Before and after training, the participants were tested using the audiovisual n-back task (1-, 2-, or 3-back), to detect training effects, and the audiovisual discrimination task, to detect transfer effects. (3) Results: For the training effect, the behavioral results show that training leads to greater accuracy and faster response times.

Augmented reality-based affective training for improving care communication skill and empathy.

It is important for caregivers of people with dementia (PwD) to have good patient communication skills as it has been known to reduce the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) of PwD as well as caregiver burnout. However, acquiring such skills often requires one-on-one affective training, which can be costly. In this study, we propose affective training using augmented reality (AR) for supporting the acquisition of such skills.

ANCA-associated vasculitis with scleritis, corneal melt, and perforation rescued by rituximab: Case report and literature review.

Key Clinical Message: Patients with antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis, specifically with myeloperoxidase (MPO)-ANCA, would have a risk for developing corneal melt and perforation abruptly in a short period. It is desirable to have a team of collaboration of rheumatologists and other specialties.

Abstract: An 80-year old man who had been diagnosed 5.

Relationships between physical and immunological tumor microenvironment in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is physically palpated as a hard tumor with an unfavorable prognosis. Assessing physical features and their association with pathological features could help to elucidate the mechanism of physical abnormalities in cancer tissues. A total of 93 patients who underwent radical surgery for pancreatic and bile duct cancers at a single center hospital during a 28-month period were recruited for this study that aimed to estimate the stiffness of PDAC tissues compared to the other neoplasms and assess relationships between tumor stiffness and pathological features.

Behavioral and neural underpinnings of empathic characteristics in a Humanitude-care expert.

Background: Humanitude approaches have shown positive effects in elderly care. However, the behavioral and neural underpinnings of empathic characteristics in Humanitude-care experts remain unknown.

Methods: We investigated the empathic characteristics of a Humanitude-care expert (YG) and those of age-, sex-, and race-matched controls ( = 13).

Estimating the differences between inter-operator contrast enhancement in cerebral CT angiography.

Background: Computed tomography (CT) angiography (CTA) is a non-invasive imaging method used to detect arteries and examine various brain diseases. When CTA is performed for follow-up or postoperative evaluation, reproducibility of vessel delineation is required. A reproducible and stable contrast enhancement can be achieved by manipulating the factors affecting it.

Sleep quality as a mediator of the relationship between screen time and negative emotions among Chinese college freshmen.

College freshmen are special populations facing great challenges in adapting to the brand new environment, and their lifestyle and emotional states are worthy of attention. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, their screen time and prevalence of negative emotions were significantly increased, but few studies have focused on such situation of college freshmen and illustrated relevant mechanisms. Thus, based on a sample of Chinese college freshmen during the COVID-19 pandemic, the current study aimed to investigate the association between their screen time and negative emotions (depression, anxiety and stress), and further explore the mediating effects of sleep quality.

Auditory affective content facilitates time-to-contact estimation of visual affective targets.

Reacting to a moving object requires an ability to estimate when a moving object reaches its destination, also referred to as the time-to-contact (TTC) estimation. Although the TTC estimation of threatening visually moving objects is known to be underestimated, the effect of the affective content of auditory information on visual TTC estimation remains unclear. We manipulated the velocity and presentation time to investigate the TTC of a threat or non-threat target with the addition of auditory information.

Deep Active Learning for Automatic Mitotic Cell Detection on HEp-2 Specimen Medical Images.

Identifying Human Epithelial Type 2 (HEp-2) mitotic cells is a crucial procedure in anti-nuclear antibodies (ANAs) testing, which is the standard protocol for detecting connective tissue diseases (CTD). Due to the low throughput and labor-subjectivity of the ANAs' manual screening test, there is a need to develop a reliable HEp-2 computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system. The automatic detection of mitotic cells from the microscopic HEp-2 specimen images is an essential step to support the diagnosis process and enhance the throughput of this test.

Prevalence of depressive symptoms and associated factors during the COVID-19 pandemic: A national-based study.

Background: Previous studies have reported that the prevalence of depression and depressive symptoms was significantly higher than that before the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to explore the prevalence of depressive symptoms and evaluate the importance of influencing factors through Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN).

Methods: Data were sourced from the psychology and behavior investigation of Chinese residents (PBICR).

Parameter search of a CPG network using a genetic algorithm for a snake robot with tactile sensors moving on a soft floor.

When a snake robot explores a collapsed house as a rescue robot, it needs to move through various obstacles, some of which may be made of soft materials, such as mattresses. In this study, we call mattress-like environment as a soft floor, which deforms when some force is added to it. We focused on the central pattern generator (CPG) network as a control for the snake robot to propel itself on the soft floor and constructed a CPG network that feeds back contact information between the robot and the floor.

Rapid detection of calmodulin/target interaction via the proximity biotinylation method.

Calmodulin (CaM) is known to function as a central signal transducer in calcium-mediated intracellular pathways. In this study, a fusion molecule of a recently developed proximity biotinylation enzyme (AirID) with rat CaM (AirID-CaM) was expressed and purified to near homogeneity using an E. coli expression system to examine the physical interactions between CaM and its target proteins by converting the interaction to biotinylation of CaM targets under nondenatured conditions.

Visual adaptation changes the susceptibility to the fission illusion.

Sound-induced flash illusion (SiFI) is the illusion that participants perceive incorrectly that the number of visual flashes is equal to the number of auditory beeps when presented within 100 ms. Although previous studies found that repetition suppression can reduce an individual's perceptual sensitivity to the SiFI, there is not yet a consensus as to how visual adaptation affects the SiFI. In the present study, we added prolonged adapting visual stimuli prior to the presentation of audiovisual stimuli to investigate whether the bottom-up factor of adaptation affects the SiFI.

Effects of banner ad type, web content type and theme consistency on banner blindness: an eye movement study.

During the epidemic, online advertising became more important, and several studies have suggested that internet users tend to avoid viewing online ads, such as banner ads. Previous studies have shown that product items that use animation lead to increased visual attention to all items on a webpage at the expense of attention to nonanimated items on the same webpage. However, few studies have compared the impact of the picture and text forms taken by static banners on the effectiveness of banner ads.

Dosimetric comparison of pencil beam scanning proton therapy with or without multi-leaf collimator versus volumetric-modulated arc therapy for treatment of malignant glioma.

This study aimed to examine the dosimetric effect of intensity-modulated proton therapy (IMPT) with a multi-leaf collimator (MLC) in treating malignant glioma. We compared the dose distribution of IMPT with or without MLC (IMPT or IMPT, respectively) using pencil beam scanning and volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) in simultaneous integrated boost (SIB) plans for 16 patients with malignant gliomas. High- and low-risk target volumes were assessed using D, V, V, homogeneity index (HI), and conformity index (CI).

[Examination of Reacquisition Mode in Readout-segmented EPI during the Body Motion].

Readout-segmented echo planar imaging has a reacquisition mode in case of body motion. The phantom was moved and imaged to characterize the reacquisition mode. The counts, angle, and terms of continuous body motion and the terms and counts of intermittent body motion were changed.

Revisiting Cryptocyanine Dye, NK-4, as an Old and New Drug: Review and Future Perspectives.

NK-4 plays a key role in the treatment of various diseases, such as in hay fever to expect anti-allergic effects, in bacterial infections and gum abscesses to expect anti-inflammatory effects, in scratches, cuts, and mouth sores from bites inside the mouth for enhanced wound healing, in herpes simplex virus (HSV)-1 infections for antiviral effects, and in peripheral nerve disease that causes tingling pain and numbness in hands and feet, while NK-4 is used also to expect antioxidative and neuroprotective effects. We review all therapeutic directions for the cyanine dye NK-4, as well as the pharmacological mechanism of NK-4 in animal models of related diseases. Currently, NK-4, which is sold as an over-the-counter drug in drugstores, is approved for treating allergic diseases, loss of appetite, sleepiness, anemia, peripheral neuropathy, acute suppurative diseases, wounds, heat injuries, frostbite, and tinea pedis in Japan.

Fucosyltransferase 8 (FUT8) and core fucose expression in oxidative stress response.

GlycoMaple is a new tool to predict glycan structures based on the expression levels of 950 genes encoding glycan biosynthesis-related enzymes and proteins using RNA-seq data. The antioxidant response, protecting cells from oxidative stress, has been focused on because its activation may relieve pathological conditions, such as neurodegenerative diseases. Genes involved in the antioxidant response are defined within the GO:0006979 category, including 441 human genes.

Therapeutic Strategies to Overcome Fibrotic Barriers to Nanomedicine in the Pancreatic Tumor Microenvironment.

Pancreatic cancer is notorious for its dismal prognosis. The enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect theory posits that nanomedicines (therapeutics in the size range of approximately 10-200 nm) selectively accumulate in tumors. Nanomedicine has thus been suggested to be the "magic bullet"-both effective and safe-to treat pancreatic cancer.

Audiovisual illusion training improves multisensory temporal integration.

When we perceive external physical stimuli from the environment, the brain must remain somewhat flexible to unaligned stimuli within a specific range, as multisensory signals are subject to different transmission and processing delays. Recent studies have shown that the width of the 'temporal binding window (TBW)' can be reduced by perceptual learning. However, to date, the vast majority of studies examining the mechanisms of perceptual learning have focused on experience-dependent effects, failing to reach a consensus on its relationship with the underlying perception influenced by audiovisual illusion.

Thickness Measurement at High Lift-Off for Underwater Corroded Iron-Steel Structures Using a Magnetic Sensor Probe.

Infrastructure facilities that were built approximately half a century ago have rapidly aged. Steel sheet piles, the inspection object in this study, are severely corroded, resulting in cave-in damages at wharfs. To solve such a problem, non-destructive inspection techniques are required.

Long-term Tai Chi training reduces the fusion illusion in older adults.

Sound-induced flash illusion (SiFI) is an auditory-dominated audiovisual integration phenomenon that can be used as a reliable indicator of audiovisual integration. Although previous studies have found that Tai Chi exercise has a promoting effect on cognitive processing, such as executive functions, the effect of Tai Chi exercise on early perceptual processing has yet to be investigated. This study used the classic SiFI paradigm to investigate the effects of long-term Tai Chi exercise on multisensory integration in older adults.

Cancer Stem Cells Contribute to Drug Resistance in Multiple Different Ways.

Many tumors are resistant to conventional cancer therapies because a tumor is composed of heterogeneous cell population. Especially, subpopulation of cancer stem cells, which have self-renewal and differentiation properties and responsible for the tumor initiation, is generally considered resistant to chemo-, radio-, and immune therapy. Understanding the mechanism of drug resistance in cancer stem cells should lead to establish more effective therapeutic strategies.