Developing and Validating a Korean Version of the Assessment of Children's Emotional Skills

In this study, a Korean Assessment of Children's Emotional Skills (ACES) was developed by modifying the original ACES which was initially introduced in the United States. Specifically, the original ACES was translated into Korean and revised to better fit the Korean cultural context. The content validity of the revised Korean ACES was established via expert reviews. To test its reliability, the revised Korean ACES was conducted on 286 six-year-old children. A confirmatory factor analysis indicated that our newly developed Korean ACES can be used as an appropriate tool to measure Korean children's emotional skills. The Korean ACES can stimulate further studies on these emotional skills and contribute to various international collaborative studies that seek to compare the emotional skills of children from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Mechanochemically functionalized and fibrillated microcrystalline cellulose as a filler in silicone foam: An integrated experimental and simulation investigation

Fibrillated celluloses have gained significant attention due to their exceptional mechanical properties and eco-friendly characteristics, which make them suitable for various applications. In this study, we designed a precise approach for producing highly fibrillated microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) via ball-milling treatment using four typical silane coupling agents. The empirical data demonstrate that the fibrillization of MCC and the properties of fibrillated MCC are largely affected by the size and geometry of the functional groups of the silanes. After ball-milling, most MCC displayed enhanced e-beam tolerance and thermal stability, whereas the silane loading amount, surface area, and morphology of fibrillated MCC appeared to be random, which was exemplified by the proportional and non-proportional relationship between the loading amount and surface area of methyl silane- and phenyl silane-treated MCC, respectively. Density functional theory calculations and molecular dynamics simulations were employed to obtain the intricate details. The simulation results were in agreement with the experimental results. Finally, fibrillated MCC was incorporated into silicone foams as an additive. The thermal stability of fibrillated MCC with added silicone was greatly improved, and the tensile strength of fibrillated MCC-containing silicone foam was 44.1 and 5.4 times higher than that of the neat and MCC-containing silicone foams, respectively.

Theory of transition from brittle to ductile fracture

In this paper, two improvements to the theory of transition from brittle to ductile fracture developed by Langer [J. S. Langer, Phys. Rev. E 103, 063004 (2021)2470-004510.1103/PhysRevE.103.063004] are proposed. First, considering the drastic temperature rise near the crack tip, the temperature dependence of the shear modulus is included to better quantify the thermally sensitive dislocation entanglement. Second, the parameters of the improved theory are identified by the large-scale least-squares method. The comparison between the fracture toughness predicted by the theory and the values obtained in Gumbsch's experiments for tungsten at different temperatures [P. Gumbsch et al., Science 282, 1293 (1998)10.1126/science.282.5392.1293] shows good agreement.

Synthesis of Superionic Conductive Li1+x+yAlxSiyTi2−xP3−yO12 Solid Electrolytes

Commercial lithium-ion batteries using liquid electrolytes are still a safety hazard due to their poor chemical stability and other severe problems, such as electrolyte leakage and low thermal stability. To mitigate these critical issues, solid electrolytes are introduced. However, solid electrolytes have low ionic conductivity and inferior power density. This study reports the optimization of the synthesis of sodium superionic conductor-type Li1.5Al0.3Si0.2Ti1.7P2.8O12 (LASTP) solid electrolyte. The as-prepared powder was calcined at 650 °C, 700 °C, 750 °C, and 800 °C to optimize the synthesis conditions and yield high-quality LASTP powders. Later, LASTP was sintered at 950 °C, 1000 °C, 1050 °C, and 1100 °C to study the dependence of the relative density and ionic conductivity on the sintering temperature. Morphological changes were analyzed using field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), and structural changes were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD). Further, the ionic conductivity was measured using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Sintering at 1050 °C resulted in a high relative density and the highest ionic conductivity (9.455 × 10−4 S cm−1). These findings corroborate with the activation energies that are calculated using the Arrhenius plot. Therefore, the as-synthesized superionic LASTP solid electrolytes can be used to design high-performance and safe all-solid-state batteries.

Capecitabine plus temozolomide in patients with grade 3 unresectable or metastatic gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms with Ki-67 index <55%: single-arm phase II study

BACKGROUND

Grade 3 neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs) of gastroenteropancreatic (GEP) origin with Ki-67 indices <55% do not respond well to platinum-based chemotherapy. The combination of capecitabine and temozolomide (CAPTEM) has shown favorable responses in grade 1-2 NENs, but has rarely been studied in patients with grade 3 NENs.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

This open-label, single-arm phase II trial included patients with unresectable or metastatic grade 3 NENs of GEP origin with Ki-67 indices <55% enrolled between June 2017 and July 2020. Patients received oral capecitabine 750 mg/m2 twice daily on days 1 to 14 and oral temozolomide 200 mg/m2 once daily on days 10 to 14 every 4 weeks. Histologic findings were centrally reviewed after the completion of enrollment. The primary endpoint was overall response rate, and the secondary endpoints were progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), and adverse events.

RESULTS

Of the 30 patients included in the full analysis set, 1 (3.3%) achieved complete response, 8 (26.7%) had partial responses, and 14 (46.7%) had stable disease, making the overall response rate 30.0%. At a median follow-up of 19.2 months, the median PFS was 5.9 months and the median OS was not reached. Patients with well-differentiated NENs showed significantly better median PFS (9.3 months versus 3.5 months, P = 0.005) and median OS (not reached versus 6.2 months, P = 0.004) than patients with poorly differentiated tumors. Expression of O6-methyl-guanine methyltransferase protein did not correlate with clinical outcomes. The most common grade 3-4 adverse events were thrombocytopenia (10%), anemia (6.7%), and nausea (6.7%).

CONCLUSIONS

CAPTEM was effective and well tolerated in patients with grade 3 GEP-NENs with Ki-67 indices <55%, with superior efficacy outcomes compared with the historical controls receiving platinum-based chemotherapy.

Quantification of Blood Flow Velocity in the Human Conjunctival Microvessels Using Deep Learning-Based Stabilization Algorithm

The quantification of blood flow velocity in the human conjunctiva is clinically essential for assessing microvascular hemodynamics. Since the conjunctival microvessel is imaged in several seconds, eye motion during image acquisition causes motion artifacts limiting the accuracy of image segmentation performance and measurement of the blood flow velocity. In this paper, we introduce a novel customized optical imaging system for human conjunctiva with deep learning-based segmentation and motion correction. The image segmentation process is performed by the Attention-UNet structure to achieve high-performance segmentation results in conjunctiva images with motion blur. Motion correction processes with two steps—registration and template matching—are used to correct for large displacements and fine movements. The image displacement values decrease to 4–7 μm during registration (first step) and less than 1 μm during template matching (second step). With the corrected images, the blood flow velocity is calculated for selected vessels considering temporal signal variances and vessel lengths. These methods for resolving motion artifacts contribute insights into studies quantifying the hemodynamics of the conjunctiva, as well as other tissues.

Adaptive Compressive Tomography with No a priori Information

Quantum state tomography is both a crucial component in the field of quantum information and computation and a formidable task that requires an incogitable number of measurement configurations as the system dimension grows. We propose and experimentally carry out an intuitive adaptive compressive tomography scheme, inspired by the traditional compressed-sensing protocol in signal recovery, that tremendously reduces the number of configurations needed to uniquely reconstruct any given quantum state without any additional a priori assumption whatsoever (such as rank information, purity, etc.) about the state, apart from its dimension.

Anti-pruritic effect of topical capsaicin against histamine-induced pruritus on canine skin

Several human studies have reported that capsaicin has anti-pruritic effects. Moreover, sever- al concentrations of topical capsaicin have been used to alleviate itch. The aim of this study was to investigate the anti-pruritic effect of capsaicin against histamine-induced pruritus compared with that of topical steroid or vehicle in 15 healthy beagles. Fifteen dogs were divided into three groups (n = 5 each), and treated topically with one of the following on the left side of the neck: capsaicin, positive control (steroid), or negative control (vehicle). Each treatment was performed twice daily for 8 days. All dogs were injected with histamine intradermally before treatment and on the 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th days of the treatment to evoke itch. Pruritus, wheal, and erythema intensity were assessed at each evaluation; cutaneous temperature was also recorded. On the final day, skin biopsy was conducted for histopathological evaluation for all dogs. The severity of pruritus was lesser in the capsaicin-treated group compared with the negative control group on day 8 (p⟨0.05). In the capsaicin and steroid groups, wheal size, erythema index, and cutaneous temperature also decreased compared with pretreatment. Histopathological evaluation showed that the capsaicin-treated group had a higher number of inflammatory cells in the dermis com- pared to the vehicle control group; however, the steroid-treated group showed less severe inflam- matory reactions than the vehicle control group. These results suggest that capsaicin cannot reduce inflammation but may play a helpful role in reducing pruritus in dogs.

Broadband Surface Plasmon Lasing in One-dimensional Metallic Gratings on Semiconductor

We report surface plasmon (SP) lasing in metal/semiconductor nanostructures, where one-dimensional periodic silver slit gratings are placed on top of an InGaAsP layer. The SP nature of the lasing is confirmed from the emission wavelength governed by the grating period, polarization analysis, spatial coherence, and comparison with the linear transmission. The excellent performance of the device as an SP source is demonstrated by its tunable emission in the 400-nm-wide telecom wavelength band at room temperature. We show that the stimulated emission enhanced by the Purcell effect enables successful SP lasing at high energies above the gap energy of the gain. We also discuss the dependence of the lasing efficiency on temperature, grating dimension, and type of metal.

Experimental Infection of Goats with a Newly Isolated Strain of Akabane Virus that Causes Encephalomyelitis

In 2010, there was a large-scale outbreak of bovine encephalomyelitis in Korea, and 15 new strains of Akabane virus (AKAV) were isolated. To identify the pathogenicity of one of these strains, we infected adult goats with AKAV-7 via different routes. Twenty-five female goats were used in this study and were divided into five groups: intracerebral (IC) and intrasubarachnoid (IS) viral inoculation (n = 8 each), intravenous (IV) inoculation (n = 4), and vaccinated before IV inoculation (n = 4), in addition to a negative control animal. All animals inoculated with AKAV-7 had AKAV-neutralizing antibodies at 6-8 days post infection (dpi). During the experimental period, infected animals showed no clinical signs. In the IC group, 5/8 goats had non-suppurative encephalomyelitis affecting the cerebrum. Virus S RNA segments were detected in nearly all areas of the brain. In the IS group, 3/8 goats had encephalomyelitis affecting the cerebrum, cerebellum and spinal cord. At 7 and 21 dpi, virus S RNA segments were found mostly in the spinal cord, especially around the area of injection (L5-L6). Antibody titres in the serum of the vaccinated group had an early onset and slightly increased titre compared with the IV group. Histopathologically, there were no obvious lesions in the central nervous tissues in the vaccinated group, while one of four goats in the IV group showed encephalomyelitis in the parietal lobe of the cerebrum. The newly isolated AKAV-7 can cause encephalomyelitis in goats after experimental injection. The attenuated AKAV vaccine currently used in Korea may provide partial protective immunity against AKAV-7 infection, but the real effect of the vaccine requires further investigation in goats.