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Abstract Charge Coupled Devices (CCD) are being used for reactor neutrino experiments and have already demonstrated their potential in constraining new physics models. The prospect of a Skipper-CCD experiment looking for standard and beyond standard model (BSM) physics in a nuclear reactor has been evaluated for different benchmark scenarios. Here, we report the first installation of a 2-g Skipper-CCD inside the containment building of a 2 GW th nuclear power plant and analyze its performance throughout its first 18 months of operation. The sensor was successfully deployed at Atucha II, in Argentina, 12 meters away from the center of the reactor core. We discuss the challenges involved in the commissioning of the detector and present data acquired during reactor ON and reactor OFF periods, with the sensor functioning with a sub-electron readout noise of 0.17 e−. Based on an exposure of 56.8 g day reactor ON and two reactor OFF data sets with a total exposure of 118.1 g day we characterize the system and evaluate the sensitivity to CEvNS. We achieved a background rate of 33 kdru and a low threshold of 45 eV ee . The ongoing efforts to improve sensitivities to CEvNS and BSM interaction are also discussed.

Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were noticeable changes in the number of admissions to paediatric emergency departments (EDs) worldwide, as well as in the patient’s diagnoses. There is scarce evidence about the impact of the pandemic on paediatric EDs in Latin America and Mexico. This study aimed to analyse the changes in volume and discharge diagnoses of patients admitted to a third-level paediatric ED in northeastern Mexico before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.Methods A retrospective observational study was carried out to compare the number of admissions and discharge diagnoses between two 3-month periods: December 2020–February 2021 (prepandemic) and December 2019–February 2020 (pandemic). Other variables, such as age, sex and comorbidities, were analysed. χ2 and Mann-Whitney U tests were used depending on the examined variable.Results There was a 44.1% decrease in the total volume of patients admitted to the paediatric ED during the analysed pandemic period. The percentage of infectious diseases decreased from 45.7% to 19.3% (p

The effluent from aquaculture activities contains essential elements that can be used in agriculture. In this study, the effluent from tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) production was used to fertilize garlic with four nitrophosphoric treatments: 1) no fertilization, 2) 40–20, 3) 80–40, and 4) 160–80 (kg·ha−1 of N and P2O5, respectively). Treatment 3 resulted in the highest yield and better plant nitrogen levels. The effluent from tilapia aquaculture is a significant source of nitrogen and phosphorus. Hence, it is crucial to calculate the fertilization precisely based on the contributions of the soil and the effluent. However, the effluent did not provide significant levels of K, Mg, Fe, Cu, Mn, and Zn, which were adequately provided by the soil. The effluent did contain elevated levels of Ca and S due to the original water contents.

Advancements in electronics and sensor technologies are driving the deployment of ubiquitous sensor networks across various applications, including asset monitoring, security, and networking. At the same time, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of data collected by sensor nodes is crucial to prevent unauthorized access or modification. However, the limited resources f low-power sensor networks present significant challenges for securing innovative Internet-of-Medical Things (IoMT) applications in complex environments. These miniature sensing systems, essential for diverse healthcare applications, grapple with constrained computational power and energy budgets. To address this challenge, this study proposes a dynamic power management strategy within a resource-constrained FPGA-based cryptoprocessor core for secure IoMT networks. The sensor node design comprises two main modules: an 8-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) and a cryptographic engine. These modules collaboratively manage their power consumption during the operational stages of data acquisition, encryption, transmission, and sleep mode activation. The cryptographic engine employs a pseudorandom number generator to generate a keystream for data encryption, utilizing direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) encoding to ensure secure communication. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed dynamic power management strategy within the resource-constrained cryptoprocessor core. The sensor node achieves an average power consumption of 0.1 mW while utilizing 2414 logic cells and 5292 registers. A comparative analysis with other state-of-the-art lightweight sensor nodes highlights the advantages of our dynamic power management approach within the cryptoprocessor sensing system.

Beginning in 2022, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, experienced an outbreak of rickettsioses that is still ongoing despite multidisciplinary control efforts. A total of 57 cases have been confirmed, particularly affecting children. We report a high mortality rate among hospitalized persons in Nuevo Leon. Continuing efforts are required to control the outbreak.

Se estimó la exactitud de la predicción (EP) de valores genómicos estimados (GEBV) para variables de peso vivo de ganado Charolais utilizando dos métodos de validación cruzada. Se ajustó un modelo BLUP y diferentes métodos de predicción genómica (PG) Genomic-based best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP), Bayes C (BC) y Single-step Bayesian regression (SSBR). La EP fue comparada mediante grupos de validación (GV) formados aleatoriamente y mediante GC. Los resultados mostraron que los tres métodos de PG proporcionaron exactitudes de predicción similares entre los GV pero no exactitudes de predicción superiores a BLUP. La exactitud de predicción de GBLUP y BLUP fue 0.35 y 0.37 para PN, y de 0.30 y 0.41 para PD, respectivamente. Los resultados muestran bajas exactitudes de PG bajo los escenarios evaluados; por lo que para su correcta implementación es necesario incrementar el número de animales y usar valorees genéticos desregresados como variables de respuesta.

Background: Thoracolumbar burst fractures (BFs) are traumatic lesions instigated by compression forces. Canal compression and compromise may lead to neurological deficits. Optimal surgical management is yet to be fully defined since various approaches such as anterior, posterior, or combined exist. This study aims to determine the operative performance of these three treatment modalities. Methods: In accordance with the PRISMA guidelines, a systematic review was performed, identifying studies comparing anterior, posterior, and/or combined surgical approaches in patients with thoracolumbar BFs. To analyze available evidence, a Bayesian network meta-analysis framework was utilized. Results: In this study, 16 studies were included. The shortest operative times and lowest operative blood losses were found for a posterior approach. The length of stay (LoS) was shorter with the posterior approach compared with the other two modalities. Return to work, postoperative kyphotic angle (PKA), and complications all favored the posterior approach. The visual analog scale score was similar between groups. Conclusions: This study suggests that the posterior approach has significant advantages in terms of operative time, blood loss, LoS, PKA, return to work, and complication rates when compared to the other approaches. Treatment should remain an individualized process, and before choosing an approach, factors such as patient characteristics, surgeon experience, and hospital settings should be considered.

Abstract Taxane‐based chemotherapy regimens are used as first‐line treatment for breast cancer. Neurotoxicity, mainly taxane‐induced peripheral neuropathy (TIPN), remains the most important dose‐limiting adverse event. Multiple genes may be associated with TIPN; however, the strength and direction of the association remain unclear. For this reason, we systematically reviewed observational studies of TIPN pharmacogenetic markers in breast cancer treatment. We conducted a systematic search of terms alluding to breast cancer, genetic markers, taxanes, and neurotoxicity in Ovid, ProQuest, PubMed, Scopus, Virtual Health, and Web of Science. We assessed the quality of evidence and bias profile. We extracted relevant variables and effect measures. Whenever possible, we performed random‐effects gene meta‐analyses and examined interstudy heterogeneity with meta‐regression models and subgroup analyses. This study follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses (PRISMA) and STrengthening the REporting of Genetic Association Studies (STREGA) reporting guidance. A total of 42 studies with 19,431 participants were included. These evaluated 262 single‐nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across 121 genes. We conducted meta‐analyses on 23 genes with 60 SNPs (19 studies and 6246 participants). Thirteen individual SNPs (ABCB1‐rs2032582, ABCB1‐rs3213619, BCL6/‐rs1903216, /CAND1‐rs17781082, CYP1B1‐rs1056836, CYP2C8‐rs10509681, CYP2C8‐rs11572080, EPHA5‐rs7349683, EPHA6‐rs301927, FZD3‐rs7001034, GSTP1‐rs1138272, TUBB2A‐rs9501929, and XKR4‐rs4737264) and the overall SNPs' effect in four genes (CYP3A4, EphA5, GSTP1, and SLCO1B1) were statistically significantly associated with TIPN through meta‐analysis. In conclusion, through systematic review and meta‐analysis, we found that polymorphisms, and particularly 13 SNPs, are associated with TIPN, suggesting that genetics does play a role in interindividual predisposition. Further studies could potentially use these findings to develop individual risk profiles and guide decision making.

En este documento se analiza, desde la teoría del control cultural, la capacidad de decisión de un grupo de caficultores para participar en procesos que buscan vincularlos al proyecto de conservación del Área Natural Protegida en la que habitan. Esta capacidad está sujeta a un contexto específico que ha favorecido, más que su aceptación, su integración del proyecto de conservación en la cultura del grupo, lo cual se evidencia en la construcción de una operación turística propia. La investigación fue realizada mediante un estudio de caso situado en la Reserva de la Biósfera “El Triunfo” (México) entre 2019 y 2020.

Abstract Nixtamalization, which means cooking maize in alkaline water, is the central technique for the culinary use of maize in Mexico and Central America. Without this procedure, relying on maize as the basic starch staple is inadequate because of nutriment deficiencies. Mexico has more than 50 principal racial types of maize, and these differ in grain qualities that can require the adjustment of the nixtamalization process. Properties such as hardness and grain composition influence nixtamalization because they are related to the absorption of water that occurs during cooking and steeping. Some maize preparations, like tortillas and tostadas, can also require the adjustment of nixtamalization to obtain a high-quality foodstuff. We studied how women in three regions of the state of Chiapas, which differ in the prevalent maize race available, prepare their nixtamal and whether they make changes according to the type of food they prepare. Interviews of 30 women follow the measure of relevant variables when the women prepared nixtamal. We found that nixtamalization is adjusted for different grain hardnesses and for environmental conditions. Variations were found in the cooking time of the nixtamal, in the amount of time the nixtamal was steeped, and in a special process of double boiling of the nixtamal performed by some women for tostadas. Women that specialize in production for the market have developed variations preferred by consumers. As practiced by women in Chiapas, nixtamalization is a flexible technique that is adjusted for maize type and for food preparations.

Large collaborative research networks provide opportunities to jointly analyze multicenter electronic health record (EHR) data, which can improve the sample size, diversity of the study population, and generalizability of the results. However, there are challenges to analyzing multicenter EHR data including privacy protection, large-scale computation resource requirements, heterogeneity across sites, and correlated observations. In this paper, we propose a federated algorithm for generalized linear mixed models (Fed-GLMM), which can flexibly model multicenter longitudinal or correlated data while accounting for site-level heterogeneity. Fed-GLMM can be applied to both federated and centralized research networks to enable privacy-preserving data integration and improve computational efficiency. By communicating a limited amount of summary statistics, Fed-GLMM can achieve nearly identical results as the gold-standard method where the GLMM is directly fitted to the pooled dataset. We demonstrate the performance of Fed-GLMM in numerical experiments and an application to longitudinal EHR data from multiple healthcare facilities.

We study the electronic states in topological nanowires of narrow-gap semiconductors, such as PbTe or SnTe, with rough surfaces, using a continuous two-band model. We calculate the subband structure and identify topological conducting states located at the surface of the nanowire. In addition, a novel approach to study a nanowire with rough surface demonstrates that the topological surface states are mostly confined in the widest areas of the nanowire. This effect leads to a flattening of the subbands, thus raising the effective mass of carriers. Finally, we analyze the thermoelectric properties of the topological nanowires. The reduction of the radius causes a noticeable enhancement of the thermoelectric efficiency due surface phonon scattering, as expected. However, we also observe that the appearance of topological surface states can play a detrimental role, reducing the thermoelectric efficiency. We conclude that, in addition to nanostructuring, the modulation of the radius of the nanowires, which partially suppress the conduction of the surface states, may be a potential strategy to improve the thermoelectric response of narrow-gap semiconductor nanowires.

Intelligent sensing systems based on the edge-computing paradigm are essential for the implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) and Agriculture 4.0 applications. The development of edge-computing wireless sensing systems is required to improve the sensor’s accuracy in soil and data interpretation. Therefore, measuring and processing data at the edge, rather than sending it back to a data center or the cloud, is still an important issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The challenge under this paradigm is to achieve a sustainable operation of the wireless sensing system powered with alternative renewable energy sources, such as plant microbial fuel cells (PMFCs). Consequently, the motivation of this study is to develop a sustainable forage-grass-power fuel cell solution to power an IoT Long-Range (LoRa) network for soil monitoring. The stenotaphrum secundatum grass plant is used as a microbial fuel cell proof of concept, implemented in a 0.015 m3-chamber with carbon plates as electrodes. The BQ25570 integrated circuit is employed to harvest the energy in a 4 F supercapacitor, which achieves a maximum generation capacity of 1.8 mW. The low-cost pH SEN0169 and the SHT10 temperature and humidity sensors are deployed to analyze the soil parameters. Following the edge-computing paradigm, the inverse problem methodology fused with a system identification solution is conducted, correcting the sensor errors due to non-linear hysteresis responses. An energy power management strategy is also programmed in the MSP430FR5994 microcontroller unit, achieving average power consumption of 1.51 mW, ∼19% less than the energy generated by the forage-grass-power fuel cell. Experimental results also demonstrate the energy sustainability capacity achieving a total of 18 consecutive transmissions with the LoRa network without the system’s shutting down.

Abstract Background The aim of this study was to evaluate the predictive performance of the INCREMENT-CPE (ICS), Pitt bacteremia score (PBS) and qPitt for mortality among patients treated with ceftazidime–avibactam for carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) infections. Methods Retrospective, multicenter, cohort study of patients with CRE infections treated with ceftazidime–avibactam between 2015 and 2019. The primary outcome was 30-day all-cause mortality. Predictive performance was determined by assessing discrimination, calibration and precision. Results In total, 109 patients were included. Thirty-day mortality occurred in 18 (16.5%) patients. There were no significant differences in discrimination of the three scores [area under the curve (AUC) ICS 0.7039, 95% CI 0.5848–0.8230, PBS 0.6893, 95% CI 0.5709–0.8076, and qPitt 0.6847, 95% CI 0.5671–0.8023; P > 0.05 all pairwise comparisons]. All scores showed adequate calibration and precision. When dichotomized at the optimal cut-points of 11, 3, and 2 for the ICS, PBS, and qPitt, respectively, all scores had NPV > 90% at the expense of low PPV. Patients in the high-risk groups had a relative risk for mortality of 3.184 (95% CI 1.35–8.930), 3.068 (95% CI 1.094–8.606), and 2.850 (95% CI 1.016–7.994) for the dichotomized ICS, PBS, and qPitt, scores respectively. Treatment-related variables (early active antibiotic therapy, combination antibiotics and renal ceftazidime–avibactam dose adjustment) were not associated with mortality after controlling for the risk scores. Conclusions In patients treated with ceftazidime–avibactam for CRE infections, mortality risk scores demonstrated variable performance. Modifications to scoring systems to more accurately predict outcomes in the era of novel antibiotics are warranted.

Introduction Discontinuity in child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and adult mental health services (AMHS) constitutes an important challenge in mental health care. In the last decade, efforts have been made to better define the transitioning population and build consensual models for CAMHS-AMHS’ transition. Objectives We aim to present our protocol and transition consultation results on the scope of published literature. Methods Description of protocol and casuistic of 18 months’ transition consultation at Centro Hospitalar Barreiro-Montijo. The literature found on PubMed was published from 2008 to 2020 and was reviewed using the keywords: transition, CAMHS, AMHS, adolescent, mental health service, young people. Articles with full text available written in English and French were selected. The included clinical studies focused on populations with neurodevelopmental disorders, psychotic disorders, non-suicidal self-harm and suicidal attempts. Results Forty-four articles were included, published from 2008 to 2020. 4 articles were excluded on basis of language and diagnosis criteria (eating disorders). Twelve were reviews, 24 were clinical studies and 4 were opinion articles. There are cultural and referral issues that explain the loss of patients in this transition gap. Individuals with history of severe mental illness were more frequently referred than those with neurodevelopmental disorders. Optimal transition is defined as adequate transition planning with a flexible age cut-off and continuity of care following transition. Conclusions For the vast majority of service users, transition from CAMHS to AMHS is poorly planned, executed and experienced. Improving transition models is essential to the patients autonomy’ promotion and a stronger adult mental health.

Many low-threshold experiments observe sharply rising event rates of yet unknown origins below a few hundred eV, and larger than expected from known backgrounds. Due to the significant impact of this excess on the dark matter or neutrino sensitivity of these experiments, a collective effort has been started to share the knowledge about the individual observations. For this, the EXCESS Workshop was initiated. In its first iteration in June 2021, ten rare event search collaborations contributed to this initiative via talks and discussions. The contributing collaborations were CONNIE, CRESST, DAMIC, EDELWEISS, MINER, NEWS-G, NUCLEUS, RICOCHET, SENSEI and SuperCDMS. They presented data about their observed energy spectra and known backgrounds together with details about the respective measurements. In this paper, we summarize the presented information and give a comprehensive overview of the similarities and differences between the distinct measurements. The provided data is furthermore publicly available on the workshop’s data repository together with a plotting tool for visualization.

The significant volume of sharing of digital media has recently increased due to the pandemic, raising the number of unauthorized uses of these media, such as emerging unauthorized copies, forgery, the lack of copyright, and electronic fraud, among others. In particular, several applications integrate services or products such as music distribution, content management, audiobooks, streaming, and so on, which require users to demonstrate and guarantee their audio ownership. The use of acoustic fingerprint technology has emerged as a solution that is widely used to secure audio applications. This technique extracts and analyzes certain information that identifies the inherent properties of a partial or complete audio file. In this paper, we introduce two audio fingerprinting hardware architectures with a feature extraction system based on spectrogram saliency maps (SSM) and a brute-force search. The first of these conducts a search in 33 saliency maps of 32 × 32 pixels in size. After analyzing the first algorithm, a second architecture is proposed, in which the saliency map is reduced to 27 × 25 pixels, requiring 75.67% fewer hardware resources, lowering the power consumption by 64.58%, and improving the efficiency by 3.19 times via a throughput reduction of 22.29%.

En el presente trabajo se hace una aproximación, a modo de rescate, a la historia de la Carrera de Matemática en la Universidad de Oriente desde su fundación hasta los momentos actuales. En el mismo se recogen los principales antecedentes históricos de este hecho, los cuales son tratados a través de los diferentes períodos históricos que ha vivido la nación. En este acercamiento se enfatiza en los sucesos y personalidades más relevantes de cada etapa, y la contribución que tuvieron en el inicio de los estudios superiores de Matemática en Santiago de Cuba. Finalmente se abordan estos estudios hasta llegar a su establecimiento como una entidad académica independiente en la segunda universidad del país, cuestión que se divide en tres momentos: fundación, desarrollo y resultados más contemporáneos. Para la escritura de este ensayo se tuvo la especial motivación del ya muy cercano aniversario 50 de la primera graduación de la Carrera de Matemática en nuestra casa de altos estudios, y el aporte de esta al patrimonio histórico de la septuagenaria Alma Mater oriental.

Earth observation with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offers an extraordinary opportunity to bridge the gap between field observations and traditional air and space-borne remote sensing. In this regard, ground landing stations (GLS) systems play a central role to increase the time and area coverage of UAV missions. Bluetooth low energy (BLE) technology and the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) techniques have been proposed for target location during UAV landing. However, these RSSI-based techniques present a lack of precision due to the propagation medium characteristics, which leads to UAV position vagueness. In this sense, the development of a novel low-cost GLS system for UAV tracking and landing is proposed. The GLS system has been embodied for the purpose of testing the UAV landing navigation capability. The maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) algorithm is addressed on an embedded microcontroller for the position estimation based on the RSSI acquired from an array of BLE devices. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and accuracy of the ground landing station system, achieving average errors of less than 0.04 m with the UAV-MLE target position estimation approach. This 0.04 m distance represents an order of magnitude increase in location precision over other currently available solutions. In many cases, this increased precision can enable more innovative docking mechanisms, less likelihood of mishaps in docking, and also quicker docking. It may also facilitate docking procedures where the docking station is itself moving, which may be the case if the docking unit is a mobile ground rover.

Abstract Background Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD) is a major public health threat that results in increased length of stay, hospital readmissions, deaths, and economic burden. CDAD treatment is often guided by severity of disease. Although various tools exist to determine CDAD severity, real-world data evaluating the use of such tools in treatment algorithms are sparse. Methods A local CDAD treatment pathway was developed independently to guide fidaxomicin prescribing at wellStar Health System (WellStar) and at Lee Health (LH) and Sarasota Memorial Hospital (SMH). Each algorithm was designed locally by the stewardship pharmacist and was utilized to identify patients at high risk for C. difficile recurrence. Patient and clinical data was retrospectively gathered to evaluate the utility and outcomes of the treatment pathway. Results There were 262 patients that received fidaxomicin at these three hospitals during the study time period. Only 30% at WellStar and 20% at LH or SMH met the study criteria and adhered to the pathway requirements. After completion of fidaxomicin, 30-day recurrence rates at WellStar was 0 and at LH and SMH 7%. Clinical cure rates were 83% in WellStar and 93% in LH and SMH. Conclusions The results from these two pathways show positive outcomes for the use of fidaxomicin in patients at high risk for CDAD recurrence. This data supports the potential utility of fidaxomicin against CDAD.

Abstract Background At well-established academic university settings, retaining faculty remains a pressing challenge due to competing market forces, decreasing institutional support, and changing personal expectations. There is a paucity of information about the difficulties faced by new medical schools to maintain their academic workforce. The objective of this study was to determine the challenges facing the faculty at a newly developed medical school. Methods Twelve founding faculty were surveyed anonymously by a 32-item questionnaire. Their responses were independently analyzed by three researchers. Results The views of the faculty were categorized into in four inter-related themes: personal, support, institutional, and environmental. The constant sources of satisfaction among faculty were higher academic rank (75%), harmonious inter-collegial relationships (74%), healthy pecuniary rewards (58%), better professional growth (58%) along with greater autonomy, administrative independence, minimum groupism and excellent team work. Poor opportunities for promotion (68%), reduced support for scholarly activities (67%) and unsatisfactory support from the administration (55%) were detrimental to retaining faculty. Conclusion By addressing specific issues facing its staff, every new medical school will not only manage to retain its academic faculty but also be able to attract well qualified academic staff from established medical institutions worldwide.

The growing market of wearables is expanding into different areas of application such as devices designed to improve and monitor sport activities. This in turn is pushing research on low-cost, very low-power wearable systems with increased analysis capabilities. This paper proposes integrated energy-aware techniques and a convolutional neural network (CNN) for a cardiac arrhythmia detection system that can be worn during sport training sessions. The dynamic power management strategy (DPMS) is programmed into an ultra-low-power microcontroller, and in combination with a photovoltaic (PV) energy harvesting (EH) circuit, achieves a battery-life extension towards a self-powered operation. The CNN-based analysis filters, scales the image, and using a bicubic technique, interpolates the measurements to subsequently classify the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal into normal and abnormal patterns. Experimental results show that the EH-DPMS achieves an extension in the battery charge for a total of 14.34% more energy available, which represents 12 consecutive workouts of 45 min without the need to manually recharge it. Furthermore, an arrhythmia detection precision of 98.6% is achieved among the experimental sessions using 55,222 images for training the system with the MIT-BIH, QT, and long-term ST databases, and 1320 implemented on a wearable system. Therefore, the proposed wearable system can be used to monitor an athlete’s condition, reducing the risk of abnormal heart conditions during sports activities.

The objective of this study was to determine post-mortem measurements for predicting carcass traits in growing rabbits. A total of 50 clinically healthy New Zealand White × Californian male rabbits with a body weight (BW) of 1351 ± 347 g between 60 to 80 days of age were used. Body weight was recorded 12 h before slaughtering. Data recorded at slaughtering included carcass weights (HCW). After cooling at 4 °C for 24 h, carcasses were weighed (CCW) and then were carefully split longitudinally with a band saw to obtain left and right halves. In the right half carcass, the following measurements were recorded using a tape measure: dorsal length (DL), thoracic depth (TD), thigh length (TL), carcass length (CL), lumbar circumference (LC). The compactness index (CCI) was calculated as the CCW divided by the CL. Thereafter, the right half carcass was weighed and manually deboned to record weights of muscle (TCM), and bone (TCB). The CCI explained of 93% of variation for TCM (R2 = 0.93 and a CV = 9.30%). In addition, the DL was the best predictor (p < 0.001) for TCB (R2 = 0.60 and a CV = 18.9%). Our results indicated that the use of carcass measurements could accurately and precisely (R2 = ≥ 0.60 and ≤0.95) be used as alternatives to predict the carcass tissues composition in growing rabbits.

The objective of this study was to compare standard treatment versus the combination of intrapancreatic autologous stem cell (ASC) infusion and hyperbaric oxygen treatment (HBOT) before and after ASC in the metabolic control of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). This study was a prospective, randomized controlled trial. The combined intervention consisted of 10 sessions of HBOT before the intrapancreatic infusion of ASC and 10 sessions afterwards. ASCs were infused into the main arterial supply of the pancreas to maximize the presence of the stem cells where the therapeutic effect is most desired. A total of 23 patients were included (control group = 10, intervention group = 13). Age, gender, diabetes duration, number of medications taken, body weight and height, and insulin requirements were recorded at baseline and every three months. Also, body mass index, fasting plasma glucose, C-peptide, and HbA1c, C-peptide/glucose ratio (CPGR) were measured every three months for one year. HbA1c was significantly lower in the intervention group compared with control throughout follow-up. Overall, 77% of patients in the intervention group and 30% of patients in the control group demonstrated a decrease of HbA1c at 180 days (compared with baseline) of at least 1 unit. Glucose levels were significantly lower in the intervention group at all timepoints during follow-up. C-peptide levels were significantly higher in the intervention group during follow-up and at one year: 1.9 ± 1.0 ng/mL versus 0.7 ± 0.4 ng/mL in intervention versus control groups, respectively, p = 0.0021. CPGR was higher in the intervention group at all controls during follow-up. The requirement for insulin was significantly lower in the intervention group at 90, 180, 270, and 365 days. Combined therapy of intrapancreatic ASC infusion and HBOT showed increased metabolic control and reduced insulin requirements in patients with T2DM compared with standard treatment.

ABSTRACT: Objective: To report 2 interesting cases of pituitary metastasis (PM) with differing presentations, and briefly review the literature regarding the incidence, presentation, and natural history of PMs. Methods: Case report and literature review. Results: Patient 1 had known widely metastatic papillary thyroid cancer and presented with signs and symptoms of anterior pituitary dysfunction. He was found to have an undetectable AM cortisol. Further lab evaluation showed complete anterior panhypopituitarism. Pituitary magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed an infiltrative pituitary lesion, which was presumed to be a meta-static lesion from his thyroid cancer. Patient 2 presented with an acute increase in urinary frequency and polydipsia. Water deprivation testing confirmed central diabetes insipidus (DI). Brain MRI showed an infiltrative pituitary lesion, which was the first sign of recurrent metastatic colon cancer. Subsequently, he developed the rapid onset of complete anterior panhypopituitarism. Review of the literature shows that when PMs produce symptoms, the most common presentation has traditionally been central DI. However, this is shifting as the incidence of anterior dysfunction and cranial nerve abnormalities is rising in more recent reviews. Conclusion: Central DI has traditionally been the most common presenting symptom of PM, however symptoms reflective of anterior pituitary dysfunction and cranial nerve abnormalities are being reported with increasing frequency. PM should remain in the differential in any form of pituitary dysfunction.