Since debuting in 2011, center fielder Mike Trout has been far and away the best player in the Majors, but the Angels have reached the postseason just once in his eight-year career.

Unspecific bone uptake (UBU) related to [¹⁸F]PSMA-1007 PET/CT imaging represents a clinical challenge. We aimed to assess whether a combination of clinical, biochemical, and imaging parameters could predict skeletal metastases in patients with [¹⁸F]PSMA-1007 bone focal uptake, aiding in result interpretation. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed [¹⁸F]PSMA-1007 PET/CT performed in hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (PCa) patients at 3 tertiary-level cancer centers. A fourth center was involved in performing an external validation. For each, a volume of interest was drawn using a threshold method to extract SUV_max, SUV_mean, PSMA tumor volume, and total lesion PSMA. The same volume of interest was applied to CT images to calculate the mean Hounsfield units (HU_mean) and maximum Hounsfield units. Clinical and laboratory data were collected from electronic medical records. A composite reference standard, including follow-up histopathology, biochemistry, and imaging data, was used to distinguish between PCa bone metastases and UBU. PET readers with less (n = 2) or more (n = 2) experience, masked to the reference standard, were asked to visually rate a subset of focal bone uptake (n = 178) as PCa metastases or not. Results: In total, 448 bone [¹⁸F]PSMA-1007 focal uptake specimens were identified in 267 PCa patients. Of the 448 uptake samples, 188 (41.9%) corresponded to PCa metastases. Ongoing androgen deprivation therapy at PET/CT (P < 0.001) with determination of SUV_max (P < 0.001) and HU_mean (P < 0.001) independently predicted bone metastases. A composite prediction score, the bone uptake metastatic probability (BUMP) score, achieving an area under the receiver-operating-characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.87, was validated through a 10-fold internal and external validation (n = 89 bone uptake, 51% metastatic; AUC, 0.92). The BUMP score’s AUC was significantly higher than that of HU_mean (AUC, 0.62) and remained high among lesions with HU_mean in the first tertile (AUC, 0.80). A decision-curve analysis showed a higher net benefit with the score. Compared with the visual assessment, the BUMP score provided added value in terms of specificity in less-experienced PET readers (88% vs. 54%, P < 0.001). Conclusion: The BUMP score accurately distinguished UBU from bone metastases in PCa patients with [¹⁸F]PSMA-1007 focal bone uptake at PET imaging, offering additional value compared with the simple assessment of the osteoblastic CT correlate. Its use could help clinicians interpret imaging results, particularly those with less experience, potentially reducing the risk of patient overstaging.

This is a Remote Eligible open rank research software engineer position. The OIT (Office of Information Technology) department, Home | Office of Information Technology (oit.gatech.edu) at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia invites applications for Partnership for Advanced Computing Environment (PACE) (pace.gatech.edu). This is a research faculty position, applications will be considered at all ranks. We seek a highly skilled and innovative Research Scientist to join our research software engineer team. The successful candidate will lead software lifecycle management with security and compliance efforts in PACE, in collaboration with other researchers, play a key role in supporting sensitive/regulated research projects while ensuring compliance with applicable regulations and security requirements. This position will also be responsible for the PACE software vulnerability management program. This role will closely work with the Research Facilitation and Cyberinfrastructure Teams to bring support to GT faculty on regulated research projects and evaluate underlying technologies. This role requires strong software engineering expertise, excellent communication skills, and the ability to bring innovative solutions to researchers’ projects and implement them to deliverable. Responsibilities • Define and implement standard operating procedures to incorporate software vulnerability management • Coordinate with other cyber security and research security personnel to satisfy software audit and compliance requirements • Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) management, identify and address software vulnerability for the PACE software stack • Take responsibility for the audit and compliance of restricted software/code (e.g. RSICC/NASA) • Provide domain expertise on CUI (Controlled Unclassified Information) and regulated software • Provide support on commercial/licensed software in the regulated environment • Work in partnership with other GT Colleges’ IT groups to support the deployment of HPC scientific applications and workflows for researchers on PACE systems • Closely work with other internal PACE units, including the Research Computing Facilitation (RCF) and Cyberinfrastructure (CI) teams, to address researchers’ needs • Coordinate review and software access processes with other research cyber security personnel • Implement best practices around research computing software vulnerability management • Research and evaluate any new technologies in software vulnerability and closely monitor NIST regulations • Author and publish scientific papers, reports, and presentations to communicate research results and findings to internal and external audiences

The USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. cleared another hurdle toward joining the Navy's fleet after it completed acceptance trials on Thursday.

U.S. Space Force has made public the prototypes of its new uniforms, which immediately drew comparisons to those worn in Star Trek and other science fiction franchises.

Vitamin D supplements might lower blood pressure in seniors who are obese, reducing their heart health risk, a new study says.

Thanks to increased funding from the European Union and stepped-up collaboration between the Commission-supported EuroHPC initiative and EU member states Europe has become one of the global leaders in HPC […]

The post Anders Jensen Discusses EuroHPC Ahead of SC24 appeared first on HPCwire.

Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego was poised Monday night to defeat election denier and President-elect Donald Trump ally Kari Lake in a closely watched Senate race in Arizona.

A New York Supreme Court justice will decide Tuesday if President-elect Donald Trump's sentencing will move forward later this month.

A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced former Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira to 15 years in prison for stealing classified information and sharing it online.

SpaceX on Saturday successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a payload of 22 Starlink Internet communications satellite from Cape Canaveral in Florida, marking a state record 73rd orbital rocket launch this year.

Your brain could stay sharp for years just by doing these simple activities.

In a universe not unlike ours, a tech-environmentalist group claims to have created an AI that is the direct “voice of the earth,” a computer connected via electrodes to the mycelium network under an ancient forest named S.A.N (Sentient Advocate of Nature). The film imagines what nature thinks of human impact on the planet, as a renowned reporter conducts a world-first interview with S.A.N.

Amy Coney Barrett succeeds the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in time to hear arguments in two cases being watched in the education community.

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At least four Kentucky school districts were forced to close last Thursday as hundreds of teachers called in sick to continue protesting what they believe to be anti-public education proposals in the state legislature.

After a couple years of clashes with teachers in the state, West Virginia Senate President Mitch Carmichael was ousted in Tuesday's Republican primary election by a teacher.

The justices declined to take up a major challenge to exclusive-bargaining arrangements for teachers' unions and other public employee labor organizations.

Curtis Jones, a U.S. Army veteran, has led Georgia's Bibb County school system since 2015.

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Kenzie Lalonde will become the first woman play-by-play announcer for an NHL team's TV broadcasts in Canada. Reactions and endorsements have poured in.

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Washington sent a 2025 fifth-round pick and a 2027 third-round pick to Pittsburgh on Tuesday for Eller.

The legislature sent a proposal last week to Gov. Jim Justice's desk to shutter the state's advisory education and the arts department, leaving the Gayle Manchin and her staff in the lurch.

The West Virginia Senate trimmed the proposed pay raise for teachers from 5 percent to 4 percent, prompting union officials to declare that the strike will continue indefinitely.

After a couple years of clashes with teachers in the state, West Virginia Senate President Mitch Carmichael was ousted in Tuesday's Republican primary election by a teacher.

Jordan A. Taylor
Feb 19, 2014; 34:3023-3032
BehavioralSystemsCognitive

Umut Güçlü
Jul 8, 2015; 35:10005-10014
BehavioralSystemsCognitive

Neural responses are naturally variable from one moment to the next, even when the stimulus is held constant. What factors might underlie this variability in neural population activity? We hypothesized that spontaneous fluctuations in cortical stimulus representations are created by changes in arousal state. We tested the hypothesis using a combination of fMRI, probabilistic decoding methods, and pupillometry. Human participants (20 female, 12 male) were presented with gratings of random orientation. Shortly after viewing the grating, participants reported its orientation and gave their level of confidence in this judgment. Using a probabilistic fMRI decoding technique, we quantified the precision of the stimulus representation in the visual cortex on a trial-by-trial basis. Pupil size was recorded and analyzed to index the observer's arousal state. We found that the precision of the cortical stimulus representation, reported confidence, and variability in the behavioral orientation judgments varied from trial to trial. Interestingly, these trial-by-trial changes in cortical and behavioral precision and confidence were linked to pupil size and its temporal rate of change. Specifically, when the cortical stimulus representation was more precise, the pupil dilated more strongly prior to stimulus onset and remained larger during stimulus presentation. Similarly, stronger pupil dilation during stimulus presentation was associated with higher levels of subjective confidence, a secondary measure of sensory precision, as well as improved behavioral performance. Taken together, our findings support the hypothesis that spontaneous fluctuations in arousal state modulate the fidelity of the stimulus representation in the human visual cortex, with clear consequences for behavior.

Large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have associated intronic variants in PDE4B, encoding cAMP-specific phosphodiesterase-4B (PDE4B), with increased risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as schizophrenia and substance use disorders that are often comorbid with it. However, the pathophysiological mechanisms of genetic risk involving PDE4B are poorly understood. To examine the effects of PDE4B variation on phenotypes with translational relevance to psychiatric disorders, we focused on PDE4B missense variant M220T, which is present in the human genome as rare coding variant rs775201287. When expressed in HEK-293 cells, PDE4B1-M220T exhibited an attenuated response to a forskolin-elicited increase in the intracellular cAMP concentration. In behavioral tests, homozygous Pde4b^M220T male mice with a C57BL/6JJcl background exhibited increased reactivity to novel environments, startle hyperreactivity, prepulse inhibition deficits, altered cued fear conditioning, and enhanced spatial memory, accompanied by an increase in cAMP signaling pathway-regulated expression of BDNF in the hippocampus. In response to a traumatic event (10 tone–shock pairings), neuronal activity was decreased in the cortex but enhanced in the amygdala and hippocampus of Pde4b^M220T mice. At 24 h post-trauma, Pde4b^M220T mice exhibited increased startle hyperreactivity and decreased plasma corticosterone levels, similar to phenotypes exhibited by PTSD patients. Trauma-exposed Pde4b^M220T mice also exhibited a slower decay in freezing at 15 and 30 d post-trauma, demonstrating enhanced persistence of traumatic memories, similar to that exhibited by PTSD patients. These findings provide substantive mouse model evidence linking PDE4B variation to PTSD-relevant phenotypes and thus highlight how genetic variation of PDE4B may contribute to PTSD risk.

The capabilities of the human ear are remarkable. We can normally detect acoustic stimuli down to a threshold sound-pressure level of 0 dB (decibels) at the entrance to the external ear, which elicits eardrum vibrations in the picometer range. From this threshold up to the onset of pain, 120 dB, our ears can encompass sounds that differ in power by a trillionfold. The comprehension of speech and enjoyment of music result from our ability to distinguish between tones that differ in frequency by only 0.2%. All these capabilities vanish upon damage to the ear's receptors, the mechanoreceptive sensory hair cells. Each cochlea, the auditory organ of the inner ear, contains some 16,000 such cells that are frequency-tuned between ~20 Hz (cycles per second) and 20,000 Hz. Remarkably enough, hair cells do not simply capture sound energy: they can also exhibit an active process whereby sound signals are amplified, tuned, and scaled. This article describes the active process in detail and offers evidence that its striking features emerge from the operation of hair cells on the brink of an oscillatory instability—one example of the critical phenomena that are widespread in physics.

Different people listening to the same story may converge upon a largely shared interpretation while still developing idiosyncratic experiences atop that shared foundation. What linguistic properties support this individualized experience of natural language? Here, we investigate how the "concrete–abstract" axis—the extent to which a word is grounded in sensory experience—relates to within- and across-subject variability in the neural representations of language. Leveraging a dataset of human participants of both sexes who each listened to four auditory stories while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging, we demonstrate that neural representations of "concreteness" are both reliable across stories and relatively unique to individuals, while neural representations of "abstractness" are variable both within individuals and across the population. Using natural language processing tools, we show that concrete words exhibit similar neural representations despite spanning larger distances within a high-dimensional semantic space, which potentially reflects an underlying representational signature of sensory experience—namely, imageability—shared by concrete words but absent from abstract words. Our findings situate the concrete–abstract axis as a core dimension that supports both shared and individualized representations of natural language.

Santiago, Chile- The declaration of the XXI Specialized Meeting on Family Farming of MERCOSUR (REAF, in Spanish) held last week in Argentina, acknowledged the advances promoted by FAO’s Director General, [...]

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The food security situation in Gaza is catastrophic. Famine is imminent in the Northern Governorates and there is a risk of famine across the rest of the Gaza Strip, according [...]