Dissociable impacts of physical and psychological factors on side effects after COVID-19 vaccination in Japan: A within-subject repeated measures design.

Background: Although vaccination has significantly contributed to controlling the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infections, a high risk of side effects has resulted in vaccination hesitancy. Nevertheless, as COVID-19 has become common but still has a severe impact on vulnerable people, we might need to follow a long-term vaccination routine. Therefore, elucidating the characteristics of individuals who may exhibit either vulnerability or resilience to the side effects associated with COVID-19 vaccinations is of the utmost importance for the vaccination plan against COVID-19.

Multi-horizon prediction of tropical cyclone intensity and its interpretability with temporal fusion transformer.

Predicting tropical cyclone (TC) intensity is challenging, involving numerous variables and uncertainty, especially for TC with rapid intensification (RI). One of the frequently used operational methods for such a case relies on statistical-dynamical models subjected to several limitations stemming from linear regression approximation to a complex TC system. This study proposes a new approach using a Temporal Fusion Transformer (TFT) to overcome the limitations attributed to the conventional models.

Prediction recurrence in stage I epidermal growth factor receptor-mutated non-small cell lung cancer using multi-modal data.

Introduction: Integrated recurrence prediction models that combine clinical, imaging, and genetic data are lacking for epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutated stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We developed a recurrence prediction model for Stage I EGFR-mutated NSCLC by integrating clinical, radiological, and whole-exome sequencing (WES) data.

Methods: A total of 306 patients with Stage I EGFR-mutated NSCLC were stratified into training (n = 206) and validation (n = 100) cohorts using stratified random sampling.

Impact of Surgical Margin Control in Index Tumors on Prognosis After Radical Prostatectomy: A Focus on Zonal Origin.

We investigated the clinical significance of positive surgical margins (PSMs) in index tumors following radical prostatectomy (RP), with particular attention to the tumor's zonal origin. Among 1148 patients with localized prostate cancer who underwent RPs, 973 were included after excluding those who received perioperative therapy or had incomplete data. Index tumors were categorized by zonal origin: transition zone, peripheral zone, or central zone (CZ).

An iPSC-based in vitro model recapitulates human thymic epithelial development and multi-lineage specification.

Thymic epithelial cells (TEC) are crucial in supporting T cell development, but their high heterogeneity and difficulty of isolation pose obstacles to their study in humans. Particularly, how diverse TEC lineages arise from a common progenitor remains poorly understood. To address this, here we establish a human iPSC-based model of thymus organogenesis capable of deriving these lineages in vitro.

GPepT: A Foundation Language Model for Peptidomimetics Incorporating Noncanonical Amino Acids.

Language models have been increasingly popular in therapeutic peptide generation, but molecular diversity remains limited due to reliance on the 20 canonical amino acids. We propose a language model that generates peptidomimetics incorporating noncanonical elements like noncanonical amino acids and terminal modifications. To accomplish this, we created a vocabulary of over 17,000 noncanonical elements by extracting them from chemical formulas stored in the ChEMBL database.

Germline transmission of cryopreserved mouse spermatogonial stem cells maintained on the International Space Station.

Despite growing interest in space exploration, the effects of spaceflight on stem cells remain largely unknown. Damages to germline cells are especially crucial, as spaceflight poses risks to gametogenesis, with abnormalities observed in multiple species. While embryonic stem (ES) cells show genomic instability after space exposure and have not yet produced offspring, this study demonstrates successful offspring production from cryopreserved mouse spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) stored on the International Space Station for 6 months.

Associations of family history of hypertension, genetic, and lifestyle risks with incident hypertension.

Family history of hypertension may reflect genetic and lifestyle factors. Genetic risk can be assessed using polygenic risk score (PRS); however, whether PRS can stratify hypertension risk when combined with family history and lifestyle information is unclear. This prospective cohort study included 9,001 hypertension-free individuals aged ≥20 years from the Tohoku Medical Megabank Community-Based Cohort Study.

Transcription factor-mediated germ cell induction in rats reveals ETV4 cooperates with germline specifiers.

The specification of primordial germ cells (PGCs) marks a crucial branchpoint in early embryonic development. Studying the molecular mechanisms governing this process is crucial for understanding reproduction and evolution. Here, we identify transcription factors essential for PGC specification in rats using an in vitro system to induce PGC-like cells (PGCLCs) from pluripotent cells.

Test-retest reliability of EEG microstate metrics for evaluating noise reductions in simultaneous EEG-fMRI.

Simultaneous electroencephalography-functional magnetic resonance imaging (EEG-fMRI) has potential for elucidating brain activities but suffers from severe noise/artifacts in EEG. While several countermeasures have been developed, it remains difficult to evaluate noise reductions in the absence of ground truth in EEG. We introduce a new evaluation method which takes advantage of high test-retest reliability of EEG microstate metrics.

MiR-200a regulates PD-L1 and predicts response to immune checkpoint inhibitors in advanced non-small cell lung cancer.

Background: The microRNA (miR)-200 family is implicated in regulating the immune checkpoint protein programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), a key factor in lung cancer progression and response to immunotherapy. This study investigates the relationship between miR-200 expression and PD-L1 in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), aiming to clarify its potential as a prognostic biomarker and a therapeutic target in immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) treatment for NSCLC.

Methods: RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data from public databases were analyzed for correlation between miR-200 family expression and PD-L1 levels in lung cancer.

TP53 gene and pathway alterations in gastric-type adenocarcinoma of the cervix.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection contributes to the development of almost all cervical malignancies, aside from gastric-type adenocarcinoma of the cervix (GAS), a rare aggressive subtype without HPV infection. To address the carcinogenic mechanism of this disease, we performed a comparative multi-omics analysis of GAS and usual-type endocervical adenocarcinoma (UEA) in three independent cohorts of patients with GAS and UEA. The first cohort comprised eight GAS and 22 UEA patients treated at the National Cancer Center Hospital between 2002 and 2020, who were examined by targeted and whole transcriptome sequencing.

Development of Highly Active Catalysts for Low-Temperature CO Hydrogenation to Methanol Using a Machine Learning Approach.

The conversion of CO into methanol through hydrogenation represents a promising approach for the utilization of CO and sustainable chemical production. However, current industrial methods rely on copper-based catalysts, which exhibit low CO conversion and limited methanol yields and require high temperatures and pressures. In this study, we utilized a machine-learning (ML) approach to develop low-temperature CO hydrogenation catalysts.

Global trends in mortality related to pulmonary embolism: an epidemiological analysis of data from the World Health Organization mortality database from 2001 to 2023.

Background: Pulmonary embolism (PE) remains a major contributor to the global disease burden. However, disparities in international trends of PE-related mortality have not been comprehensively examined across geographic, economic, and healthcare system parameters. We employed multifaceted stratification to analyse long-term trends in PE-related mortality.

Molecule Graph Networks with Many-Body Equivariant Interactions.

Message passing neural networks have demonstrated significant efficacy in predicting molecular interactions. Introducing equivariant vectorial representations augments expressivity by capturing geometric data symmetries, thereby improving model accuracy. However, two-body bond vectors in opposition may cancel each other out during message passing, leading to the loss of directional information on their shared node.

Optimization of microwave power in ESR dosimetry of tooth enamel in Japanese macaques.

Purpose: To apply electron spin resonance (ESR) dosimetry to wild Japanese macaques captured in the ex-evacuation area during the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident, the improvement of the detection limit is crucial. In this study, we optimized the microwave power in ESR measurements to suppress the noise of native radicals and enhanced the signals of radiation-induced carbonate radicals.

Materials And Methods: Tooth enamels of a Japanese macaque captured in a control area were prepared and irradiated with gamma rays from Co source.

Computational mechanisms of neuroimaging biomarkers uncovered by multicenter resting-state fMRI connectivity variation profile.

Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) is increasingly used to develop biomarkers for psychiatric disorders. Despite progress, development of the reliable and practical FC biomarker remains an unmet goal, particularly one that is clinically predictive at the individual level with generalizability, robustness, and accuracy. In this study, we propose a new approach to profile each connectivity from diverse perspective, encompassing not only disorder-related differences but also disorder-unrelated variations attributed to individual difference, within-subject across-runs, imaging protocol, and scanner factors.

Prediction of the hypothalamus-pituitary organoid formation using machine learning.

Multi-cellular organoids are self-assembly aggregates that mimic biological functions and developmental processes of many tissue types in vitro. They are widely employed for disease modeling and functional studies. Hypothalamus-pituitary organoids can be generated through differentiation induction from pluripotent stem cells.

Comparison between a Luminex-based multiplex kit with a sequence-specific oligonucleotide probe and next-generation sequencing for the detection of POLE oncogenic mutations in endometrial cancer.

In endometrial cancer, detection of oncogenic mutations in the polymerase epsilon (POLE) gene is crucial for accurate staging according to the 2023 International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics classification and for minimizing overtreatment. However, POLE sequencing is expensive, time-consuming, and often inaccessible in settings without specialized equipment. We developed a novel multiplex kit for the detection of POLE mutations using a Luminex (xMAP) assay in a single reaction.

A partial deletion of the Tardbp 3´UTR affects TDP-43 regulation and leads to motor dysfunction in mice.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease that causes the selective loss of motor neurons. A histopathological hallmark of ALS is the cytoplasmic aggregation of TDP-43, a ubiquitously expressed RNA-binding protein involved in transcription and splicing regulation. To prevent abnormal accumulation, TDP-43 controls its expression levels through an autoregulatory feedback loop.

Alterations of the default mode network, salience network, and frontoparietal network in non-problematic Internet use and their association with mood regulation: from an internet literacy perspective.

Introduction: Although a number of neuroimaging studies on problematic internet use (PIU) have been conducted, few studies on non-problematic internet use (non-PIU) are available; therefore, the influences of non-PIU on brain function are unclear. Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) could be an appropriate tool to investigate subclinical samples, such as non-PIU, to capture the potentially subtle changes compared to clinical samples. In the context of rsFC, the default mode network (DMN), the central executive network (CEN), and the salience network (SN) are representative of the brain networks.

Automated identification of the origin of energy loss in nonoriented electrical steel by feature extended Ginzburg-Landau free energy framework.

This study presents the automated identification of the complex magnetization reversal process in nonoriented electrical steel (NOES) using the feature extended Ginzburg-Landau (eX-GL) free energy framework. eX-GL provides a robust connection between microscopic magnetic domains and macroscopic magnetic hysteresis using a data science perspective. This method employs physically meaningful features to analyze the energy landscape, providing insights into the mechanisms behind function.

Image-Based Machine Learning Using Inkjet-Printed Chemicals: Mixing Ratio Prediction and Metal Ion Detection.

Inkjet printing of π-conjugated organic compounds enabled rapid, low-cost generation of training images for the image-based machine learning (ML) prediction of mixing ratios. ML models with mean absolute errors below 4% were achieved within hours, even for dyes with subtle color differences. Changing the printing surface from filter paper to a polypropylene film extended the method to colorless compounds, including isomeric and macrocyclic systems.

Characterizing primary and secondary senescence in vivo.

There is robust evidence that senescence can be propagated in vitro through mechanisms including the senescence-associated secretory phenotype, resulting in the non-cell-autonomous induction of secondary senescence. However, the induction, regulation and physiological role of secondary senescence in vivo remain largely unclear. Here we generated senescence-inducible mouse models expressing either the constitutively active form of MEK1 or MKK6 and mCherry, to map primary and secondary senescent cells.

Adversarial guided diffusion models for adversarial purification.

Diffusion model (DM) based adversarial purification (AP) has proven to be a powerful defense method that can remove adversarial perturbations and generate a purified example without threats. In principle, the pre-trained DMs can only ensure that purified examples conform to the same distribution of the training data, but it may inadvertently compromise the semantic information of input examples, leading to misclassification of purified examples. Recent advancements introduce guided diffusion techniques to preserve semantic information while removing the perturbations.