[Research progresses on acute skin failure in children].

Acute skin failure (ASF) is an inevitable damage to the skin and subcutaneous tissue caused by hemodynamic instability and/or low perfusion. At present, there are some understandings and reports about adult ASF at home and abroad, but there are few reports about children's ASF. This article reviewed the definition, pathophysiological changes, risk factors, clinical manifestations, and management of children's ASF, and put forward suggestions in order to provide ideas for clinical diagnosis and treatment of children's ASF, and promote the further study of children's ASF.

[Multicenter retrospect analysis of early clinical features and analysis of risk factors on prognosis of elderly patients with severe burns].

Objective: To investigate the early clinical characteristics of elderly patients with severe burns and the risk factors on prognosis. Methods: This study was a retrospective case series study. Clinical data of 124 elderly patients with severe burns who met the inclusion criteria and were admitted to the 12 hospitals from January 2015 to December 2020 were collected, including 4 patients from the Fourth People's Hospital of Dalian, 5 patients from Fujian Medical University Union Hospital, 22 patients from Guangzhou Red Cross Hospital of Jinan University, 5 patients from Heilongjiang Provincial Hospital, 27 patients from the First Affiliated Hospital of Naval Medical University, 9 patients from the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, 10 patients from Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, 9 patients from Tongren Hospital of Wuhan University & Wuhan Third Hospital, 12 patients from the 924th Hospital of PLA, 6 patients from Zhangjiagang First People's Hospital, 4 patients from Taizhou Hospital of Zhejiang Province, and 11 patients from Zhengzhou First People's Hospital. The patients' overall clinical characteristics, such as gender, age, body mass index, total burn area, full-thickness burn area, inhalation injury, causative factors, whether combined with underlying medical diseases, and admission time after injury were recorded. According to the survival outcome within 28 days after injury, the patients were divided into survival group (89 cases) and death group (35 cases). The following data of patients were compared between the two groups, including the basic data and injuries (the same as the overall clinical characteristics ahead); the coagulation indexes within the first 24 hours of injury such as prothrombin time (PT), activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT), thrombin time, D-dimer, fibrinogen degradation product (FDP), international normalized ratio (INR), and fibrinogen; the blood routine indexes within the first 24 hours of injury such as white blood cell count, platelet count, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, monocyte count, red blood cell count, hemoglobin, and hematocrit; the organ function indexes within the first 24 hours of injury such as direct bilirubin, total bilirubin, urea, serum creatinine, aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, total protein, albumin, globulin, blood glucose, triglyceride, total cholesterol, alkaline phosphatase, creatine kinase, electrolyte indexes (potassium, sodium, chlorine, calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus in blood), uric acid, myoglobin, and brain natriuretic peptide; the infection and blood gas indexes within the first 24 hours of injury such as procalcitonin, C-reactive protein, pH value, oxygenation index, base excess, and lactate; treatment such as whether conducted with mechanical ventilation, whether conducted with continuous renal replacement therapy, whether conducted with anticoagulation therapy, whether applied with vasoactive drugs, and fluid resuscitation. The analysis was conducted to screen the independent risk factors for the mortality within 28 days after injury in elderly patients with severe burns. Results: Among 124 patients, there were 82 males and 42 females, aged 60-97 years, with body mass index of 23.44 (21.09, 25.95) kg/m2, total burn area of 54.00% (42.00%, 75.00%) total body surface area (TBSA), and full-thickness burn area of 25.00% (10.00%, 40.00%) TBSA. The patients were mainly combined with moderate to severe inhalation injury and caused by flame burns. There were 43 cases with underlying medical diseases. The majority of patients were admitted to the hospital within 8 hours after injury. There were statistically significant differences between patients in the 2 groups in terms of age, total burn area, full-thickness burn area, and inhalation injury, and PT, APTT, D-dimer, FDP, INR, white blood cell count, platelet count, urea, serum creatinine, blood glucose, blood sodium, uric acid, myoglobin, and urine volume within the first 24 hours of injury (with Z values of 2.37, 5.49, 5.26, 5.97, 2.18, 1.95, 2.68, 2.68, 2.51, 2.82, 2.14, 3.40, 5.31, 3.41, 2.35, 3.81, 2.16, and -3.82, respectively, P<0.05); there were statistically significant differences between two groups of patients in whether conducted with mechanical ventilation and whether applied with vasoactive drugs (with χ2 values of 9.44 and 28.50, respectively, P<0.05). Age, total burn area, full-thickness burn area, serum creatinine within the first 24 hours of injury, and APTT within the first 24 hours of injury were the independent risk factors for the mortality within 28 days after injury in elderly patients with severe burns (with odds ratios of 1.17, 1.10, 1.10, 1.09, and 1.27, 95% confidence intervals of 1.03-1.40, 1.04-1.21, 1.05-1.19, 1.05-1.17, and 1.07-1.69, respectively, P<0.05). Conclusions: The elderly patients with severe burns had the injuries mainly from flame burns, often accompanied by moderate to severe inhalation injury and enhanced inflammatory response, elevated blood glucose levels, activated fibrinolysis, and impaired organ function in the early stage, which are associated with their prognosis. Age, total burn area, full-thickness burn area, and serum creatinine and APTT within the first 24 hours of injury are the independent risk factors for death within 28 days after injury in this population.

Multiparameter spectral CT-based radiomics in predicting the expression of programmed death ligand 1 in non-small-cell lung cancer.

AIM: To explore the value of radiomics for predicting the expression of programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) based on multiparameter spectral computed tomography (CT) images. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 220 patients with NSCLC were enrolled retrospectively and divided into the training (n=176) and testing (n=44) cohorts. The radiomics features were extracted from the conventional CT images, mono-energy 40 keV images, iodine density (ID) maps, Z-effective maps, and electron density maps. The logistic regression (LR) and support vector machine (SVM) algorithms were employed to build models based on radiomics signatures. The prediction abilities were qualified by the area under the curve (AUC) obtained from the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Internal validation was performed on the independent testing dataset. RESULTS: The combined model for PD-L1 ≥1%, which consisted of the radiomics score (rad-score; p<0.0001), white blood cell (WBC; p=0.027) counts, and air bronchogram (p=0.003), reached the highest performance with the AUCs of 0.873 and 0.917 in the training and testing dataset, respectively, which was better than the radiomics model with the AUCs of 0.842 and 0.886. The combined model for PD-L1 ≥50%, which consisted of rad-score (p<0.0001) and WBC counts (p=0.027), achieved the highest performance in the training and testing dataset with AUCs of 0.932 and 0.903, respectively, which was better than the radiomics model with AUCs of 0.920 and 0.892, respectively. CONCLUSION: The radiomics model based on the multiparameter images of spectral CT can predict the expression level of PD-L1 in NSCLC. The combined model can obtain higher prediction efficiency and serves as a promising method for immunotherapy selection.

Anatomical categorization of isolated non-focal dystonia: novel and existing patterns using a data-driven approach.

According to expert consensus, dystonia can be classified as focal, segmental, multifocal, and generalized, based on the affected body distribution. To provide an empirical and data-driven approach to categorizing these distributions, we used a data-driven clustering approach to compare frequency and co-occurrence rates of non-focal dystonia in pre-defined body regions using the Dystonia Coalition (DC) dataset. We analyzed 1,618 participants with isolated non-focal dystonia from the DC database. The analytic approach included construction of frequency tables, variable-wise analysis using hierarchical clustering and independent component analysis (ICA), and case-wise consensus hierarchical clustering to describe associations and clusters for dystonia affecting any combination of eighteen pre-defined body regions. Variable-wise hierarchical clustering demonstrated closest relationships between bilateral upper legs (distance = 0.40), upper and lower face (distance = 0.45), bilateral hands (distance = 0.53), and bilateral feet (distance = 0.53). ICA demonstrated clear grouping for the a) bilateral hands, b) neck, and c) upper and lower face. Case-wise consensus hierarchical clustering at k = 9 identified 3 major clusters. Major clusters consisted primarily of a) cervical dystonia with nearby regions, b) bilateral hand dystonia, and c) cranial dystonia. Our data-driven approach in a large dataset of isolated non-focal dystonia reinforces common segmental patterns in cranial and cervical regions. We observed unexpectedly strong associations between bilateral upper or lower limbs, which suggests that symmetric multifocal patterns may represent a previously underrecognized dystonia subtype.

Erratum: Global Polarization of Ξ and Ω Hyperons in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200 GeV [Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 162301 (2021)].

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.162301.

Evidence for Nonlinear Gluon Effects in QCD and Their Mass Number Dependence at STAR.

The STAR Collaboration reports measurements of back-to-back azimuthal correlations of di-π^{0}s produced at forward pseudorapidities (2.6<η<4.0) in p+p, p+Al, and p+Au collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV. We observe a clear suppression of the correlated yields of back-to-back π^{0} pairs in p+Al and p+Au collisions compared to the p+p data. The observed suppression of back-to-back pairs as a function of transverse momentum suggests nonlinear gluon dynamics arising at high parton densities. The larger suppression found in p+Au relative to p+Al collisions exhibits a dependence of the saturation scale Q_{s}^{2} on the mass number A. A linear scaling of the suppression with A^{1/3} is observed with a slope of -0.09±0.01.

[Analysis of relationship between distribution of pathogenic microorganisms in olfactory cleft and olfactory disorders among patients with upper respiratory inflammation during the prevention and control of COVID-19].

Objective: To explore the relationship between pathogens in the olfactory cleft area and olfactory disorders in patients with upper respiratory inflammation (URI) during the prevention and control of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Methods: A total of 234 URI patients including acute upper respiratory infection, chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS), allergic rhinitis (AR) were continuously selected from September 2020 to March 2021 in Beijing Anzhen Hospital and 98 healthy adults were enrolled as controls. The secretions from the olfactory cleft of all subjects were collected with nasal swabs under nasal endoscopy. Multiple real-time fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction detection method was used to detect nucleic acids of 33 types of respiratory pathogenic microorganism. Sniffin' Sticks olfactory test was performed on all patients with URI. URI patients with olfactory dysfunction were followed up for 9 (8, 10) months (M (Q1, Q3)). SPSS 20.0 software was used for statistical analysis. Results: Among the 98 controls, 9 (9.18%) were positive for pathogenic microorganisms, including 1 (1.02%) rhinovirus, 1 (1.02%) parainfluenza virus type 3, 3 (3.06%) enterovirus, 1 (1.02%) staphylococcus aureus and 3 (3.06%) Moraxella catarrhalis. Among the 234 URI patients, 111 (47.44%) had olfactory disorders and 123 (52.56%) had normal sense of smell. In the olfactory disorder group (111 cases), 38 cases (34.23%) were positive for pathogenic microorganisms, and 4 cases (3.60%) were mixed infection, including 11 cases of rhinovirus (9.91%), 5 cases of coronavirus 229E (4.50%), 2 cases of coronavirus OC43/NL63 (1.80%), 3 cases of parainfluenza virus type 1 (2.70%), 2 cases of enterovirus (1.80%), 1 case of influenza B virus type BV (0.90%), 11 cases of Staphylococcus aureus (9.91%), 7 cases of Moraxella catarrhalis (6.31%), and 1 case of Klebsiella pneumoniae (0.90%). In the normal smell group (123 cases), 18 cases (14.63%) were positive for pathogenic microorganisms, and 1 case (0.81%) was mixed infection, including 3 cases of rhinovirus (2.44%), 4 cases of coronavirus 229E (3.25%), 1 case of Influenza virus type 3 (0.81%), 3 cases of enterovirus (2.44%), 3 cases of Staphylococcus aureus (2.44%), 4 cases of Moraxella catarrhalis (3.25%), and 1 case of Klebsiella pneumoniae (0.81%). Univariate analysis between the two groups found that there were significant differences in the detection rate of pathogenic microorganisms, rhinovirus and Staphylococcus aureus between the groups (all P<0.05). The detection rate of parainfluenza virus type 1, Staphylococcus aureus, and rhinovirus were different between the patients with olfactory disorder and normal olfactory function in the three subgroups of acute upper respiratory tract infection, CRS and AR, respectively (χ2 value was 3.88, 4.53 and 4.73, respectively, all P<0.05). During the follow-up period, among the 111 patients with olfactory disorder, 71 (63.96%) patients' olfactory function returned to normal, 32 (28.83%) patients' olfactory function improved but not completely returned to normal, 8 (7.21%) patients' olfactory function did not improve. Conclusions: During the prevention and control of COVID-19, rhinovirus or Staphylococcus aureus infection or colonization of URI patients is closely related to olfactory disorders. Parainfluenza virus type 1 infection can cause relatively persistent olfactory disorders in patients with acute upper respiratory tract infection. Staphylococcus aureus and rhinovirus colonization are related to the occurrence of olfactory dysfunction in CRS and AR patients respectively.

Measurements of Proton High-Order Cumulants in sqrt[s_{NN}]=3 GeV Au+Au Collisions and Implications for the QCD Critical Point.

We report cumulants of the proton multiplicity distribution from dedicated fixed-target Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=3.0 GeV, measured by the STAR experiment in the kinematic acceptance of rapidity (y) and transverse momentum (p_{T}) within -0.5

Measurements of _{Λ}

We report precision measurements of hypernuclei _{Λ}^{3}H and _{Λ}^{4}H lifetimes obtained from Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=3.0 GeV and 7.2 GeV collected by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, and the first measurement of _{Λ}^{3}H and _{Λ}^{4}H midrapidity yields in Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=3.0 GeV. _{Λ}^{3}H and _{Λ}^{4}H, being the two simplest bound states composed of hyperons and nucleons, are cornerstones in the field of hypernuclear physics. Their lifetimes are measured to be 221±15(stat)±19(syst) ps for _{Λ}^{3}H and 218±6(stat)±13(syst) ps for _{Λ}^{4}H. The p_{T}-integrated yields of _{Λ}^{3}H and _{Λ}^{4}H are presented in different centrality and rapidity intervals. It is observed that the shape of the rapidity distribution of _{Λ}^{4}H is different for 0%-10% and 10%-50% centrality collisions. Thermal model calculations, using the canonical ensemble for strangeness, describes the _{Λ}^{3}H yield well, while underestimating the _{Λ}^{4}H yield. Transport models, combining baryonic mean-field and coalescence (jam) or utilizing dynamical cluster formation via baryonic interactions (phqmd) for light nuclei and hypernuclei production, approximately describe the measured _{Λ}^{3}H and _{Λ}^{4}H yields. Our measurements provide means to precisely assess our understanding of the fundamental baryonic interactions with strange quarks, which can impact our understanding of more complicated systems involving hyperons, such as the interior of neutron stars or exotic hypernuclei.

Probing the Gluonic Structure of the Deuteron with J/ψ Photoproduction in d+Au Ultraperipheral Collisions.

Understanding gluon density distributions and how they are modified in nuclei are among the most important goals in nuclear physics. In recent years, diffractive vector meson production measured in ultraperipheral collisions (UPCs) at heavy-ion colliders has provided a new tool for probing the gluon density. In this Letter, we report the first measurement of J/ψ photoproduction off the deuteron in UPCs at the center-of-mass energy sqrt[s_{NN}]=200 GeV in d+Au collisions. The differential cross section as a function of momentum transfer -t is measured. In addition, data with a neutron tagged in the deuteron-going zero-degree calorimeter is investigated for the first time, which is found to be consistent with the expectation of incoherent diffractive scattering at low momentum transfer. Theoretical predictions based on the color glass condensate saturation model and the leading twist approximation nuclear shadowing model are compared with the data quantitatively. A better agreement with the saturation model has been observed. With the current measurement, the results are found to be directly sensitive to the gluon density distribution of the deuteron and the deuteron breakup process, which provides insights into the nuclear gluonic structure.

Search for the Chiral Magnetic Effect via Charge-Dependent Azimuthal Correlations Relative to Spectator and Participant Planes in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200 GeV.

The chiral magnetic effect (CME) refers to charge separation along a strong magnetic field due to imbalanced chirality of quarks in local parity and charge-parity violating domains in quantum chromodynamics. The experimental measurement of the charge separation is made difficult by the presence of a major background from elliptic azimuthal anisotropy. This background and the CME signal have different sensitivities to the spectator and participant planes, and could thus be determined by measurements with respect to these planes. We report such measurements in Au+Au collisions at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider. It is found that the charge separation, with the flow background removed, is consistent with zero in peripheral (large impact parameter) collisions. Some indication of finite CME signals is seen in midcentral (intermediate impact parameter) collisions. Significant residual background effects may, however, still be present.

Collision-System and Beam-Energy Dependence of Anisotropic Flow Fluctuations.

Elliptic flow measurements from two-, four-, and six-particle correlations are used to investigate flow fluctuations in collisions of U+U at sqrt[s_{NN}]=193 GeV, Cu+Au at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200 GeV and Au+Au spanning the range sqrt[s_{NN}]=11.5-200 GeV. The measurements show a strong dependence of the flow fluctuations on collision centrality, a modest dependence on system size, and very little if any, dependence on particle species and beam energy. The results, when compared to similar LHC measurements, viscous hydrodynamic calculations, and trento model eccentricities, indicate that initial-state-driven fluctuations predominate the flow fluctuations generated in the collisions studied.

Observation of D_{s}

We report on the first measurement of charm-strange meson D_{s}^{±} production at midrapidity in Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200 GeV from the STAR experiment. The yield ratio between strange (D_{s}^{±}) and nonstrange (D^{0}) open-charm mesons is presented and compared to model calculations. A significant enhancement, relative to a pythia simulation of p+p collisions, is observed in the D_{s}^{±}/D^{0} yield ratio in Au+Au collisions over a large range of collision centralities. Model calculations incorporating abundant strange-quark production in the quark-gluon plasma and coalescence hadronization qualitatively reproduce the data. The transverse-momentum integrated yield ratio of D_{s}^{±}/D^{0} at midrapidity is consistent with a prediction from a statistical hadronization model with the parameters constrained by the yields of light and strange hadrons measured at the same collision energy. These results suggest that the coalescence of charm quarks with strange quarks in the quark-gluon plasma plays an important role in D_{s}^{±}-meson production in heavy-ion collisions.

A cross-sectional study of walking, balance and upper limb assessment scales in people with cervical dystonia.

Cervical dystonia (CD) is a neurological movement disorder causing the neck to move involuntarily away from the neutral position. CD is a network disorder, involving multiple brain areas and, therefore, may impair movement in parts of the body other than the neck. This study used clinical assessments to investigate walking, balance and upper limb function (UL) in people with CD; the reliability of scoring these assessments and examined for relationship between CD severity, usual exercise and clinical assessments. We conducted a prospective observational cohort study of participants with isolated, focal, idiopathic CD. Participants were assessed by experienced physiotherapists and completed three questionnaires and eight clinical assessments of fear of falling, balance confidence, walking, balance, UL function and usual exercise. Results were compared to published data from healthy adults and other neurological populations. Twenty-two people with mild to moderate CD participated. Fear of falling, gross UL function and usual exercise were worse in people with CD compared with healthy adults, while walking, balance and distal UL function were similar to healthy populations. All assessments were reliably performed by physiotherapists, and we found no correlations between the severity of dystonia or usual exercise and performance on the physical assessments. Routine performance of clinical assessment of walking and balance are likely not required in people with mild to moderate CD; however, fear of falling and gross upper limb function should be assessed to determine any problems which may be amenable to therapy.

Measurement of e

The Breit-Wheeler process which produces matter and antimatter from photon collisions is experimentally investigated through the observation of 6085 exclusive electron-positron pairs in ultraperipheral Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200 GeV. The measurements reveal a large fourth-order angular modulation of cos4Δϕ=(16.8±2.5)% and smooth invariant mass distribution absent of vector mesons (ϕ, ω, and ρ) at the experimental limit of ≤0.2% of the observed yields. The differential cross section as a function of e^{+}e^{-} pair transverse momentum P_{⊥} peaks at low value with sqrt[⟨P_{⊥}^{2}⟩]=38.1±0.9 MeV and displays a significant centrality dependence. These features are consistent with QED calculations for the collision of linearly polarized photons quantized from the extremely strong electromagnetic fields generated by the highly charged Au nuclei at ultrarelativistic speed. The experimental results have implications for vacuum birefringence and for mapping the magnetic field which is important for emergent QCD phenomena.

Global Polarization of Ξ and Ω Hyperons in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200 GeV.

Global polarization of Ξ and Ω hyperons has been measured for the first time in Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200 GeV. The measurements of the Ξ^{-} and Ξ[over ¯]^{+} hyperon polarization have been performed by two independent methods, via analysis of the angular distribution of the daughter particles in the parity violating weak decay Ξ→Λ+π, as well as by measuring the polarization of the daughter Λ hyperon, polarized via polarization transfer from its parent. The polarization, obtained by combining the results from the two methods and averaged over Ξ^{-} and Ξ[over ¯]^{+}, is measured to be ⟨P_{Ξ}⟩=0.47±0.10(stat)±0.23(syst)% for the collision centrality 20%-80%. The ⟨P_{Ξ}⟩ is found to be slightly larger than the inclusive Λ polarization and in reasonable agreement with a multiphase transport model. The ⟨P_{Ξ}⟩ is found to follow the centrality dependence of the vorticity predicted in the model, increasing toward more peripheral collisions. The global polarization of Ω, ⟨P_{Ω}⟩=1.11±0.87(stat)±1.97(syst)% was obtained by measuring the polarization of daughter Λ in the decay Ω→Λ+K, assuming the polarization transfer factor C_{ΩΛ}=1.

CLCU-Net: Cross-level connected U-shaped network with selective feature aggregation attention module for brain tumor segmentation.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Brain tumors are among the most deadly cancers worldwide. Due to the development of deep convolutional neural networks, many brain tumor segmentation methods help clinicians diagnose and operate. However, most of these methods insufficiently use multi-scale features, reducing their ability to extract brain tumors' features and details. To assist clinicians in the accurate automatic segmentation of brain tumors, we built a new deep learning network to make full use of multi-scale features for improving the performance of brain tumor segmentation. METHODS: We propose a novel cross-level connected U-shaped network (CLCU-Net) to connect different scales' features for fully utilizing multi-scale features. Besides, we propose a generic attention module (Segmented Attention Module, SAM) on the connections of different scale features for selectively aggregating features, which provides a more efficient connection of different scale features. Moreover, we employ deep supervision and spatial pyramid pooling (SSP) to improve the method's performance further. RESULTS: We evaluated our method on the BRATS 2018 dataset by five indexes and achieved excellent performance with a Dice Score of 88.5%, a Precision of 91.98%, a Recall of 85.62%, a Params of 36.34M and Inference Time of 8.89ms for the whole tumor, which outperformed six state-of-the-art methods. Moreover, the performed analysis of different attention modules' heatmaps proved that the attention module proposed in this study was more suitable for segmentation tasks than the other existing popular attention modules. CONCLUSION: Both the qualitative and quantitative experimental results indicate that our cross-level connected U-shaped network with selective feature aggregation attention module can achieve accurate brain tumor segmentation and is considered quite instrumental in clinical practice implementation.

Nonmonotonic Energy Dependence of Net-Proton Number Fluctuations.

Nonmonotonic variation with collision energy (sqrt[s_{NN}]) of the moments of the net-baryon number distribution in heavy-ion collisions, related to the correlation length and the susceptibilities of the system, is suggested as a signature for the quantum chromodynamics critical point. We report the first evidence of a nonmonotonic variation in the kurtosis times variance of the net-proton number (proxy for net-baryon number) distribution as a function of sqrt[s_{NN}] with 3.1 σ significance for head-on (central) gold-on-gold (Au+Au) collisions measured solenoidal tracker at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Data in noncentral Au+Au collisions and models of heavy-ion collisions without a critical point show a monotonic variation as a function of sqrt[s_{NN}].

MRI findings for diagnosis of postoperative foreign body granulomas versus recurrent tumours in patients of brain tumour surgery.

AIM: To evaluate the postoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings of intracranial foreign body granulomas (FBGs) and true recurrent tumours (RTs) and thus lead to a basis for management decision-making. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twenty-two patients with previous brain tumour surgery were diagnosed clinically with RT and underwent surgery. Re-operative pathology revealed FBG in eight patients and RT in 14 patients. MRI findings before the initial operation were compared to those before the re-operation. RESULTS: Features of FBGs versus RTs on MRI were as follows: (1) mean lesion size: 1.3 ± 0.7 (0.5-2.6) versus 3.2 ± 1.7 (1.1-6.3) cm (p=0.001, odds ratio [OR] = 4.18); (2) hypointensity on T2-weighted imaging (WI): 6/8 (75%) versus 0/14 (0%; p<0.001, OR=75.4); (3) non-restricted diffusion on diffusion-WI (DWI): 6/8 (75%) versus 2/14 (14.3%; p=0.008, OR=18); and (4) "ring and bubble" appearance on contrast-enhanced T1WI: 7/8 (87.5%) versus 2/14 (14.3%; p=0.001, OR=42). In comparison with their original tumours, the FBGs in the FBG group showed significantly lower T2 signal intensity, lower signal on DWI, and more cases of non-restricted diffusion on DWI (p=0.04, 0.04, 0.04, respectively). CONCLUSION: On brain MRI, FBGs can be differentiated from RTs by their relatively smaller size, hypointensity on T2WI, lack of restricted diffusion on DWI, and "ring and bubble" appearance on contrast-enhanced T1WI. Comparing the MRI findings of the focal lesion in the tumour bed with those of the original tumour is suggested to enhance diagnostic confidence.

Measurement of the Sixth-Order Cumulant of Net-Proton Multiplicity Distributions in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=27, 54.4, and 200 GeV at RHIC.

According to first-principle lattice QCD calculations, the transition from quark-gluon plasma to hadronic matter is a smooth crossover in the region µ_{B}≤T_{c}. In this range the ratio, C_{6}/C_{2}, of net-baryon distributions are predicted to be negative. In this Letter, we report the first measurement of the midrapidity net-proton C_{6}/C_{2} from 27, 54.4, and 200 GeV Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The dependence on collision centrality and kinematic acceptance in (p_{T}, y) are analyzed. While for 27 and 54.4 GeV collisions the C_{6}/C_{2} values are close to zero within uncertainties, it is observed that for 200 GeV collisions, the C_{6}/C_{2} ratio becomes progressively negative from peripheral to central collisions. Transport model calculations without critical dynamics predict mostly positive values except for the most central collisions within uncertainties. These observations seem to favor a smooth crossover in the high-energy nuclear collisions at top RHIC energy.