我国外来入侵生物防控科技进展

随着全球经济一体化的发展,外来入侵生物的危害日益加重。我国针对当前各类重大外来生物的入侵,按照基础研究、共性关键技术与重大产品研发、典型应用示范3个层面,部署了一系列项目,并取得了一定成果:揭示了入侵生物的入侵特性和入侵机理,以及入侵植物与脆弱生态系统的相互作用机制;研发了重大新发农业入侵物种风险评估及防控技术,建立了生物威胁数据库和生物入侵突发事件可视化智能决策支持平台,以及重大入侵动植物的治理模式和技术体系;建立了主要入侵生物标本资源库。今后应以跨境动植物有害生物为主要目标,开展入侵扩散与成灾机制、早期预防预警、快速检测监测、识别追踪溯源、点面拦截狙击、区域防灾减灾等技术研究。     

低能离子束在生物技术中的应用研究

自从发现离子注入生物效应后,低能离子与生物体系相互作用研究在我国率先兴起,并很快投入应用。简要介绍低能离子注入生物效应的机理研究和应用研究的进展状况,并展望未来 。     

Medical reversal: why we must raise the bar before adopting new technologies

Medical reversal occurs when a new clinical trial - superior to predecessors by virtue of better controls, design, size, or endpoints - contradicts current clinical practice. In recent years, we have witnessed several instances of medical reversal. Famous examples include the class 1C anti-arrhythmics post-myocardial infarction (contradicted by the CAST trial) or routine stenting for stable coronary disease (contradicted by the COURAGE trial). In this paper, we explore the phenomenon of medical reversal. The causes and consequences are discussed. Conflicts of interest among researchers and an unyielding faith in basic science are explored as root causes of reversal. Reversal harms patients who undergo the contradicted therapy during the years it was in favor and those patients who undergo the therapy in the lag time before a change in medical practice. Most importantly, it creates a loss of faith in the medical system by physicians and patients. The solution to reversal is upfront, randomized clinical trials for new clinical practices and a systematic method to evaluate practices already in existence.     

Accumulation of point mutations in mitochondrial DNA of aging mice

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) exists in a highly genotoxic environment created by exposure to reactive oxygen species, somewhat deficient DNA repair, and the relatively low fidelity of polymerase gamma. Given the severity of the environment, it was anticipated that mutation accumulation in the mtDNA of aging animals should exceed that of nuclear genes by several orders of magnitude. We have analyzed fragments amplified from the D-loop region of mtDNA from 2 to 22-month-old mice. The amplified 432 bp fragments were cloned into plasmid vectors, and plasmid DNAs from individual clones were purified and sequenced. None of 110 fragments from young mice contained a mutation, while 9 of 87 clones originating from old animals contained base substitutions (chi square = 11.9, P<0.001). The estimated mutation frequency in mtDNA from old mice was 11.6+/-2.7 or 25.4+/-7.8 per 10(5) nucleotides (depending on assumptions of clonality), which exceeds existing estimates for mutation frequencies for nuclear genes by approximately 1000-fold. Our data suggest that at 22 months of age, which roughly corresponds to 3/4 of the mouse natural life span, most mtDNA molecules carry multiple point mutations.     

颅底脊索瘤的影像学诊断及治疗研究(附26例报告)(英文)

目的:探讨颅底脊索瘤的CT、MRI表现及治疗措施。方法:回顾性分析经病理证实的26例脊索瘤患者的临床资料。肿瘤位于鞍区及鼻咽部者9例,位于中颅窝者5例,位于后颅窝者8例,混合型4例。手术入路:额颞入路-翼点开颅9例,鼻内镜下经蝶入路5例,颞下、颞枕及扩大中颅窝入路8例,4例未手术行放射治疗。结果:肿瘤全切8例,大部及次全切14例,围手术期未见死亡病例。25例患者获得随访;3例于术后1年内复发,其中2例死亡,余者颅神经损伤及肢体症状均有改善。结论:脊索瘤无典型临床表现,现多可通过术前影像学检查得以诊断,少数位于特殊位置者需与垂体瘤,颅咽管瘤,三叉神经鞘瘤等鉴别;肿瘤全切较为困难,根据需要选择相应的手术入路可明显提高手术效果;放疗可作为术后辅助治疗。     

Functional Interrogation of Adult Hypothalamic Neurogenesis with Focal Radiological Inhibition

The functional characterization of adult-born neurons remains a significant challenge. Approaches to inhibit adult neurogenesis via invasive viral delivery or transgenic animals have potential confounds that make interpretation of results from these studies difficult. New radiological tools are emerging, however, that allow one to noninvasively investigate the function of select groups of adult-born neurons through accurate and precise anatomical targeting in small animals. Focal ionizing radiation inhibits the birth and differentiation of new neurons, and allows targeting of specific neural progenitor regions. In order to illuminate the potential functional role that adult hypothalamic neurogenesis plays in the regulation of physiological processes, we developed a noninvasive focal irradiation technique to selectively inhibit the birth of adult-born neurons in the hypothalamic median eminence. We describe a method for Computer tomography-guided focal irradiation (CFIR) delivery to enable precise and accurate anatomical targeting in small animals. CFIR uses three-dimensional volumetric image guidance for localization and targeting of the radiation dose, minimizes radiation exposure to nontargeted brain regions, and allows for conformal dose distribution with sharp beam boundaries. This protocol allows one to ask questions regarding the function of adult-born neurons, but also opens areas to questions in areas of radiobiology, tumor biology, and immunology. These radiological tools will facilitate the translation of discoveries at the bench to the bedside.     

Risk Ranking by the British Public: A Survey of Worry About a Broad Spectrum of Risk Issues

Much attention has focused on people's concerns about technological and environmental risks, but it is important to acknowledge that these are not the only risks that individuals have to face. In this article we present the results of a national survey ranking levels of worry across a broader spectrum of risk issues, including ‘lifestyle’, social welfare, financial and personal safety risks. A total of 1742 interviews were conducted, at home, among a nationally representative quota sample of adults age 15+ in Great Britain. Field work took place between January 24 to 27, 1997. Respondents' spontaneous mentions of worry centered on issues to do with health, education, and money. When prompted, respondents expressed most concern about a number of social issues, while certain ‘lifestyle’ factors identified as significant risks to health were accorded only low levels of worry. The survey demonstrates that risk issues that engage some expert attention do not always have the same immediacy for the general public. Thus, while technological and environmental risks certainly deserve attention, they should not overshadow consideration of other risks that have equal if not greater implications for people's lives.     

Biosomatic effects of the electromagnetic fields on view of the physiotherapy personnel health

The effects of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in physiotherapy have been discussed mainly with regard to the patient's safety, while the operator's safety is neglected. This paper presents the medical assessment and specific tendencies in the health status of personnel in physical therapy wards – where the EMFs are everyday background factor. This paper summarizes the somatic part of results from the study among physiotherapy personnel from facilities with different equipment and work load by using survey card designed by us for health status screening in somatic and neurobehavioral aspects. The main specific somatic findings and complaints in investigated group include parodontosis – 42%; cardiovascular disorders – 41.6%; allergic conditions with skin or systemic manifestation – 40.8%; photosensibilization – 34.1%; skin diseases – 31.5%; musculoskeletal disorders – 30.0% and neoplasm disorders – 7.5%. Keeping in mind that better part of the personnel in the physical therapy units is female, a special attention was paid to the pathology of the reproductive system; menstrual disturbances are observed in 20.0%. These findings are collected in complex for the first time in physiotherapy personnel, and when data were available from other professional groups, we found a good correlation.     

Natural language processing of radiology reports for the detection of thromboembolic diseases and clinically relevant incidental findings

Background

Natural Language Processing (NLP) has been shown effective to analyze the content of radiology reports and identify diagnosis or patient characteristics. We evaluate the combination of NLP and machine learning to detect thromboembolic disease diagnosis and incidental clinically relevant findings from angiography and venography reports written in French. We model thromboembolic diagnosis and incidental findings as a set of concepts, modalities and relations between concepts that can be used as features by a supervised machine learning algorithm. A corpus of 573 radiology reports was de-identified and manually annotated with the support of NLP tools by a physician for relevant concepts, modalities and relations. A machine learning classifier was trained on the dataset interpreted by a physician for diagnosis of deep-vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and clinically relevant incidental findings. Decision models accounted for the imbalanced nature of the data and exploited the structure of the reports.

Results

The best model achieved an F measure of 0.98 for pulmonary embolism identification, 1.00 for deep vein thrombosis, and 0.80 for incidental clinically relevant findings. The use of concepts, modalities and relations improved performances in all cases.

Conclusions

This study demonstrates the benefits of developing an automated method to identify medical concepts, modality and relations from radiology reports in French. An end-to-end automatic system for annotation and classification which could be applied to other radiology reports databases would be valuable for epidemiological surveillance, performance monitoring, and accreditation in French hospitals.