Endoscopic submucosal dissection for the treatment of a large inflammatory fibroid polyp in the gastric antrum prolapsing into the duodenum: A case report.

RATIONALE: Inflammatory fibroid polyp (IFP), also known as Vanek tumor, is a rare, benign gastrointestinal lesion characterized by its inflammatory and fibroid histological features. IFP is often discovered incidentally during endoscopic examinations. It is exceedingly rare for an IFP to prolapse into the duodenum and results in incomplete obstruction of the pylorus. PATIENT CONCERNS: A 64-year-old male patient was admitted to the hospital with recurrent episodes of melena over a 6-month period, along with complaints of dizziness and fatigue in the past 10 days. DIAGNOSES: Gastroscopy showed a giant polypoid mass on the posterior wall of the gastric antrum, prolapsing into the duodenum. Abdominal computer tomography (CT) confirmed the tumor protruding into the duodenum. Pathologic examination of the resected specimen confirmed the IFP diagnosis. INTERVENTIONS: The giant tumor was completely and successfully excised using endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD). After the surgery, the patient underwent acid suppression and fluid replenishment therapy. OUTCOMES: The patient responded well to ESD and was discharged in stable condition. As of the submission of the case report, there has been no recurrence of the tumor after a 5-month follow-up, and the patient is still under follow-up. LESSONS: While IFPs have traditionally been managed surgically, ESD demonstrates promising treatment outcomes, avoiding the need for surgical distal gastrectomy, and emerges as a safe and effective treatment option.

Iron regulatory protein from the hard tick Haemaphysalis longicornis: characterization, function and assessment as a protective antigen.

BACKGROUND: Ticks are blood-feeding ectoparasites with different host specificities and are capable of pathogen transmission. Iron regulatory proteins (IRPs) play crucial roles in iron homeostasis in vertebrates. However, their functions in ticks remain poorly understood. The aim of the present study was to investigate the characteristics, functions, molecular mechanisms, and the vaccine efficacy of IRP in the hard tick Haemaphysalis longicornis. RESULTS: The full-length complementary DNA of IRP from Haemaphysalis longicornis (HlIRP) was 2973 bp, including a 2772 bp open reading frame. It is expressed throughout three developmental stages (larvae, nymphs, and adult females) and in various tissues (salivary glands, ovaries, midgut, and Malpighian tubules). Recombinant Haemaphysalis longicornis IRP (rHlIRP) was obtained via a prokaryotic expression system and exhibited aconitase, iron chelation, radical-scavenging, and hemolytic activities in vitro. RNA interference-mediated IRP knockdown reduced tick engorgement weight, ovary weight, egg mass weight, egg hatching rate, and ovary vitellin content, as well as prolonging the egg incubation period. Proteomics revealed that IRP may affect tick reproduction and development through proteasome pathway-associated, ribosomal, reproduction-related, and iron metabolism-related proteins. A trial on rabbits against adult Haemaphysalis longicornis infestation demonstrated that rHlIRP vaccine could significantly decrease engorged weight (by 10%), egg mass weight (by 16%) and eggs hatching rate (by 22%) of ticks. The overall immunization efficacy using rHlIRP against adult females was 41%. CONCLUSION: IRP could limit reproduction and development in Haemaphysalis longicornis, and HlIRP was confirmed as a candidate vaccine antigen to impair tick iron metabolism and protect the host against tick infestation. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry.

Visual Distraction's "Silver Lining": Distractor Suppression Boosts Attention to Competing Stimuli.

Efficient search of the environment requires that people attend to the desired elements in a scene and ignore the undesired ones. Recent research has shown that this endeavor can benefit from the ability to proactively suppress distractors with known features, but little is known about the mechanisms that produce the suppression. We show here in five experiments (N = 120 college students) that, surprisingly, identification of a sought-for target is enhanced when it is grouped with a suppressed distractor compared with when it is in a different perceptual group. The results show that the suppressive mechanism not only downweights undesired elements but also enhances responses to task-relevant elements in competition for attention with the distractor, fine tuning the suppression. The findings extend the understanding of how people efficiently process their visual world.

A Joint De-Rain and De-Mist Network Based on the Atmospheric Scattering Model.

Rain can have a detrimental effect on optical components, leading to the appearance of streaks and halos in images captured during rainy conditions. These visual distortions caused by rain and mist contribute significant noise information that can compromise image quality. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for simultaneously removing both streaks and halos from the image to produce clear results. First, based on the principle of atmospheric scattering, a rain and mist model is proposed to initially remove the streaks and halos from the image by reconstructing the image. The Deep Memory Block (DMB) selectively extracts the rain layer transfer spectrum and the mist layer transfer spectrum from the rainy image to separate these layers. Then, the Multi-scale Convolution Block (MCB) receives the reconstructed images and extracts both structural and detailed features to enhance the overall accuracy and robustness of the model. Ultimately, extensive results demonstrate that our proposed model JDDN (Joint De-rain and De-mist Network) outperforms current state-of-the-art deep learning methods on synthetic datasets as well as real-world datasets, with an average improvement of 0.29 dB on the heavy-rainy-image dataset.

Feature-blind attentional suppression of salient distractors.

A recent paper has reported, for the first time, that people are capable of suppressing salient singleton distractors of unknown color if the search task requires them to search for the most prevalent of several shapes in the display. We identify here several potential limitations of the earlier findings. In particular, in the reported experiments, the likelihood of a salient distractor was higher than what is typically studied, the distractor object was similar in shape to the relevant objects, only two colors were studied, the distractor was consistently a fixed shape, and the distractor was always a unique shape different from the search targets. Each of these limitations leaves open some questions about the generality of the findings. We address each of the concerns here, and show, in five experiments, that the ability to suppress distractors of unknown color is a robust finding that is not compromised by the potential limitations identified. When searching for the most prevalent of several shapes in a display, people can indeed suppress capture by otherwise-salient color singleton distractors even when their color is not known in advance (i.e., in a feature-blind manner), facilitating efficient search. The experiments confirm the ability to suppress visual elements based on second-order (e.g., a unique color) or global salience information, and not merely based on first-order (e.g., a specific color) information.

Ignoring the unknown: Attentional suppression of unpredictable visual distraction.

Recent findings have shown that people are capable of proactively inhibiting salient visual distractors in a scene when they know the color of the distractor, enhancing efficient search. Investigations of this suppression effect have concluded that it is not possible to suppress a distractor of an unknown color, implying a mechanism that operates only on a first-order, feature-specific level. However, with a modification to the search task, we show here for the first time that people can indeed suppress salient uniquely colored distractors even when not knowing their color in advance. The task requires participants to search for the most prevalent of several shapes in the display. In two experiments the presence of an unpredictable-color singleton facilitated search. An experiment with briefly presented probes confirmed proactive prevention of capture by the distractor. The results reveal a second-order or global-salience-based suppressive mechanism that facilitates visual processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Spatial task relevance modulates value-driven attentional capture.

Attention tends to be attracted to visual features previously associated with reward. To date, nearly all existing studies examined value-associated stimuli at or near potential target locations, making such locations meaningful to inspect. The present experiments examined whether the attentional priority of a value-associated stimulus depends on its location-wise task relevance. In three experiments we used an RSVP task to compare the attentional demands of a value-associated peripheral distractor to that of a distractor associated with the top-down search goal. At a peripheral location that could never contain the target, a value-associated color did not capture attention. In contrast, at the same location, a distractor in a goal-matching color did capture attention. The results show that value-associated stimuli lose their attentional priority at task-irrelevant locations, in contrast to other types of stimuli that capture attention.

Sequential biases on subjective judgments: Evidence from face attractiveness and ringtone agreeableness judgment.

When people make decisions about sequentially presented items in psychophysical experiments, their decisions are always biased by their preceding decisions and the preceding items, either by assimilation (shift towards the decision or item) or contrast (shift away from the decision or item). Such sequential biases also occur in naturalistic and real-world judgments such as facial attractiveness judgments. In this article, we aimed to cast light on the causes of these sequential biases. We first found significant assimilative and contrastive effects in a visual face attractiveness judgment task and an auditory ringtone agreeableness judgment task, indicating that sequential effects are not limited to the visual modality. We then found that the provision of trial-by-trial feedback of the preceding stimulus value eliminated the contrastive effect, but only weakened the assimilative effect. When participants orally reported their judgments rather than indicated them via a keyboard button press, we found a significant diminished assimilative effect, suggesting that motor response repetition strengthened the assimilation bias. Finally, we found that when visual and auditory stimuli were alternated, there was no longer a contrastive effect from the immediately previous trial, but there was an assimilative effect both from the previous trial (cross-modal) and the 2-back trial (same stimulus modality). These findings suggested that the contrastive effect results from perceptual processing, while the assimilative effect results from anchoring of the previous judgment and is strengthened by response repetition and numerical priming.

Identification and clinical course of 166 pediatric cardiac tumors.

The aim of this study was to investigate the pathological classifications, clinical features, and natural history of pediatric cardiac tumors to provide a basis for the selection of an appropriate therapeutic method. The medical records of in- or outpatients with cardiac tumors at four hospitals were classified to analyze various types of tumor growth locations, clinical manifestations, surgical indications, and long-term follow-up results. There were 166 patients, including 158 with primary cardiac tumors, six with metastatic cardiac tumors, and two with unclassified cardiac tumors. Among the 158 cases of primary cardiac tumor, 150 were benign and eight were malignant. The rhabdomyoma, fibroma, and myxoma are the most common types of benign cardiac tumors. The major clinical manifestations of cardiac tumors include outflow tract obstruction, arrhythmia, dyspnea, pericardial effusion, heart failure, and seizures. Among the 59 patients who underwent surgery, 49 had primary benign cardiac tumors, eight had primary malignant tumors, and two had malignant metastatic tumors. Post-surgery, nine of the patients had residual tumor tissues that did not significantly affect their hemodynamics. Following surgery, there were two cases of recurrence and nine deaths, including four of benign and five of malignant tumors with mortality rates of 8.2 and 50.0 %, respectively. Of the remaining 107 cases of patients who did not undergo surgery, five (4.7 %) died. CONCLUSION: The primary benign cardiac tumors are the predominant pediatric cardiac tumors, of which rhabdomyoma, fibroma, and myxoma are the most common types. If severe symptoms are nonexistent and the hemodynamics is unaffected, most of the patients can survive in the long term despite the tumors. What is known: • Pediatric cardiac tumors are rare and are predominantly primary and benign. • The symptoms of heart failure, arrhythmia, and outflow obstruction are the most severe complications of cardiac tumors. What is new: • The rhabdomyoma, fibroma, and myxoma are the most common types of primary benign cardiac tumors. • If severe symptoms are not present and the hemodynamics are unaffected, most of the patients can survive in the long term despite the tumors.

Purification and characterization of a novel antifungal protein with antiproliferation and anti-HIV-1 reverse transcriptase activities from Peganum harmala seeds.

A novel antifungal protein, designated as PHP, was isolated from the seeds of Peganum harmala, by cationic exchange chromatography on Resource S column and gel filtration on Sephadex 75 10/300 GL column. PHP was found to form a homodimer of about 16 kDa. Isoelectric focusing polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis showed that the isoelectric point of PHP was ∼8.4. The N-terminal 20-amino acid sequence of PHP, ITCPQVTQSLAPCVPYLISG, resembles the non-specific lipid transfer proteins in certain plants. PHP exhibited lipid-binding activity. Furthermore, PHP exerted antifungal activity against Alternaria alternate, Penicillium degitatum, Rhizopus stuolonifer, and Magnaporthe grisea, and its antifungal activity was stable in the temperature range 4-60°C, and in the pH range 4-10. It inhibited the mycelial growth in A. alternate, P. degitatum, R. stuolonifer, and M. grisea with 50% inhibitory concentration (IC(50)) of 1.5, 37.5, 8.44, and 12.19 µM, respectively. PHP was also able to inhibit the proliferation of esophagus carcinoma (Eca-109), cervical carcinoma (HeLa), gastric carcinoma (MGC-7), and melanoma (B16) cells with IC(50) of 0.7, 2.74, 3.13, and 1.47 µM, respectively. Moreover, PHP significantly inhibited HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) with an IC(50) of 1.26 µM. It did not have hemagglutinating and antibacterial activities. In conclusion, a novel antifungal protein with antiproliferation and anti-HIV-1 RT activities was obtained from P. harmala seeds.

Isolation and characterization of a novel lectin with antifungal and antiproliferative activities from Sophora alopecuroides seeds.

Sophora alopecuroides lectin (SAL), a novel lectin from the seeds of Sophora alopecuroides, was purified by ion-exchange chromatography on diethylaminoethyl (DEAE)- and carboxymethyl (CM)-Sepharose columns, followed by gel filtration on a Sephadex 75 10/300 GL column. SAL was found to be a monomer of 39916.3 Da, as determined by tricine-sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The N-terminal 10-amino acid sequence of SAL, KPWALSFSFG, resembles those of other legume lectins. SAL exhibits hemagglutinating activity against rabbit erythrocytes at 11.9 µg/ml. Its hemagglutinating activity is stable in the pH range 7-11 and in the temperature range 30-90°C, and is stimulated by Mn(2+). The hemagglutinating activity of SAL is most potently inhibited by 50-mM d-galactose. SAL suppresses mycelial growth in Penicillium digitatum and Alternaria alternata; the IC(50) of the antifungal activity toward P. digitatum and A. alternata were found to be 3.125 and 3.338 µM, respectively. SAL suppresses the proliferation of human cervical cancer cells (HeLa) at an IC(50) of 6.25 µM (P< 0.05). But it has no inhibiting effect on bacteria. This is the first report of a lectin from seeds of S. alopecuroides.