Explore the vast range of titles available.

In this disturbing and wide-ranging account, acclaimed journalist Juliette Volcler looks at the long history of efforts by military and police forces to deploy sound against enemies, criminals, and law-abiding citizens. During the 2004 battle over the Iraqi city of Fallujah, U.S. Marines bolted large speakers to the roofs of their Humvees, blasting AC/DC, Eminem, and Metallica songs through the city's narrow streets as part of a targeted psychological operation against militants that has now become standard practice in American military operations in Afghanistan. In the historic center of Brussels, nausea-inducing sound waves are unleashed to prevent teenagers from lingering after hours. High-decibel, \"nonlethal\" sonic weapons have become the tools of choice for crowd control at major political demonstrations from Gaza to Wall Street and as a form of torture at Guantanamo and elsewhere. In an insidious merger of music, technology, and political repression, loud sound has emerged in the last decade as an unlikely mechanism for intimidating individuals as well as controlling large groups. Extremely Loud documents and interrogates this little-known modern phenomenon, exposing it as a sinister threat to the \"peace and quiet\" that societies have traditionally craved.

Muscle disuse atrophy is a frequent consequence of therapeutic immobilization following sport injuries, bone fractures, and ligament tears, often resulting in marked reduction of muscle volume, mass, and strength. Despite the widespread use of neutral-position limb immobilization in clinical practice, its physiological effects remain insufficiently characterized. To address this gap, we employed thermographic, tomographic, and ultrasound imaging to assess how neutral-position immobilization (Imm) affects the tibialis anterior, a predominantly fast-twitch ankle dorsiflexor muscle that plays a key role in foot deceleration after heel strike, provides functional stability during gait preventing falls and contributes substantially to load absorption, in twenty-seven young male Wistar rats after 7 and 14 days of treatment. To complement these, force measurements and histology were analyzed. Our results showed a significant limb temperature increase of up to 10% after 14 days compared to controls accompanied by a volume reduction of 38% (p < 0.05) confirmed by tomography and a 2-fold (p < 0.05) increment of CNFs denoted by histology (H&E). At 14 days of Imm ultrasound imaging highlighted changes in subcutaneous tissue thickness, and increased connective tissue; a significant 2-fold reduction in specific force during muscle twitch and 28% (p < 0.05) in tetany. Fiber type conversion mainly to type IIA (intermediate) was evident on histology and supported by the prolonged fatigue time following two fatigue protocols (continuous stimulation and repeated short-tetany) for up to 50% (p < 0.05) after 14 d of Imm. Our results demonstrate that, although immobilization in a neutral position is the best practice in the clinic, it carries important detrimental changes in muscle structure and physiology. These findings underscore the importance of integrating clinical imaging techniques to monitor muscle status during immobilization and rehabilitation, enabling more effective and timely interventions.

Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) has demonstrated curative potential in several types of cancer, but only for a small number of patients. Thus, the identification of reliable and noninvasive biomarkers for predicting ICB responsiveness is an urgent unmet need. Here, we show that ICB increased tumor vessel perfusion in treatment-sensitive EO771 and MMTV-PyVT breast tumor as well as CT26 and MCA38 colon tumor models, but not in treatment-resistant MCaP0008 and 4T1 breast tumor models. In the sensitive tumor models, the ability of anti-cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated protein 4 or anti-programmed cell death 1 therapy to increase vessel perfusion strongly correlated with its antitumor efficacy. Moreover, globally enhanced tumor vessel perfusion could be detected by Doppler ultrasonography before changes in tumor size, which predicted final therapeutic efficacy with more than 90% sensitivity and specificity. Mechanistically, CD8+ T cell depletion, IFN-γ neutralization, or implantation of tumors in IFN-γ receptor knockout mice abrogated the vessel perfusion enhancement and antitumor effects of ICB. These results demonstrated that ICB increased vessel perfusion by promoting CD8+ T cell accumulation and IFN-γ production, indicating that increased vessel perfusion reflects the successful activation of antitumor T cell immunity by ICB. Our findings suggest that vessel perfusion can be used as a novel noninvasive indicator for predicting ICB responsiveness.

Interoception plays an important role in emotion processing. However, the neurobiological substrates of the relationship between visceral responses and emotional experiences remain unclear. In the present study, we measured interoceptive sensitivity using the heartbeat discrimination task and investigated the effects of individual differences in interoceptive sensitivity on changes in pulse rate and insula activity in response to subjective emotional intensity. We found a positive correlation between heart rate and valence level when listening to music only in the high interoceptive sensitivity group. The valence level was also positively correlated with music-elicited anterior insula activity. Furthermore, a region of interest analysis of insula subregions revealed significant activity in the left dorsal dysgranular insula for individuals with high interoceptive sensitivity relative to individuals with low interoceptive sensitivity while listening to the high-valence music pieces. Our results suggest that individuals with high interoceptive sensitivity use their physiological responses to assess their emotional level when listening to music. In addition, insula activity may reflect the use of interoceptive signals to estimate emotions.

Background Sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) is the first class of anti-diabetes treatment that reduces mortality and risk for hospitalization due to heart failure. In clinical studies it has been shown that SGLT2i’s promote a general shift to fasting state metabolism characterized by reduced body weight and blood glucose, increase in glucagon/insulin ratio and modest increase in blood ketone levels. Therefore, we investigated the connection between metabolic changes and cardiovascular function in the ob/ob −/− mice; a rodent model of early diabetes with specific focus on coronary microvascular function. Due to leptin deficiency these mice develop metabolic syndrome/diabetes and hepatic steatosis. They also develop cardiac contractile and microvascular dysfunction and are thus a promising model for translational studies of cardiometabolic diseases. We investigated whether this mouse model responded in a human-like manner to empagliflozin treatment in terms of metabolic parameters and tested the hypothesis that it could exert direct effects on coronary microvascular function and contractile performance. Methods Lean, ob/ob −/− untreated and ob/ob −/− treated with SGLT2i were followed for 10 weeks. Coronary flow velocity reserve (CFVR) and fractional area change (FAC) were monitored with non-invasive Doppler ultrasound imaging. Food intake, urinary glucose excursion and glucose control via HbA1c measurements were followed throughout the study. Liver steatosis was assessed by histology and metabolic parameters determined at the end of the study. Results Sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors treatment of ob/ob −/− animals resulted in a switch to a more catabolic state as observed in clinical studies: blood cholesterol and HbA1c were decreased whereas glucagon/insulin ratio and ketone levels were increased. SGLT2i treatment reduced liver triglyceride, steatosis and alanine aminotransferase, an indicator for liver dysfunction. l -Arginine/ADMA ratio, a marker for endothelial function was increased. SGLT2i treatment improved both cardiac contractile function and coronary microvascular function as indicated by improvement of FAC and CFVR, respectively. Conclusions Sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors treatment of ob/ob −/− mice mimics major clinical findings regarding metabolism and cardiovascular improvements and is thus a useful translational model. We demonstrate that SGLT2 inhibition improves coronary microvascular function and contractile performance, two measures with strong predictive values in humans for CV outcome, alongside with the known metabolic changes in a preclinical model for prediabetes and heart failure.

Key Points An object can be defined as a 'thing' that is presented to the senses. Thus, an odour object can be defined as a smell that is presented to the olfactory sense. Although the visual and olfactory systems have evolved under different ecological pressures, many of the basic principles underlying visual object perception hold for olfactory object perception. Studies in which olfactory behavioural states and brain activity are monitored simultaneously in the same animal offer a direct way to relate odour object percepts to their underlying cortical signatures. These approaches, in combination with high-resolution functional MRI and multivariate statistical analysis, have advanced our understanding of odour object perception. The human piriform cortex is situated at the junction of the frontal and temporal lobes and is the main recipient of afferent sensory input from the olfactory bulb. Its unique anatomy, physiology and connectivity suggest that this brain region is well-suited for encoding odour objects. Recent data indicate that the piriform cortex is involved in key elements of odour object perception, including feature synthesis, figure–ground segregation, perceptual categorization and discrimination, and attentional selection. The chemical identity of an odour stimulus is encoded in the anterior piriform cortex, whereas the integrated perceptual representation of an odour object is encoded in posterior piriform cortex. Categorical percepts of odour objects take the form of spatially dispersed patterns across the piriform cortex in the apparent absence of localized clusters of activity. These distributed ensemble representations may be crucial for the olfactory brain to execute content-addressable memory and pattern completion, in which object-specific patterns can be fully reconstituted from degraded or noisy odour inputs, helping to achieve perceptual constancy. The principal neocortical projection area of the piriform cortex is the orbitofrontal cortex, which itself sends return projections to the piriform cortex. A plausible hypothesis of olfactory orbitofrontal function is that it provides a top-down signal that helps to resolve odour object representations in the piriform cortex, particularly under conditions of high stimulus uncertainty. The brain encodes representations of smells through the synthesis of different olfactory inputs into a unified whole. Jay Gottfried discusses the central mechanisms of perception of these 'odour objects' and describes the role of the piriform cortex in this process. The stimulus complexity of naturally occurring odours presents unique challenges for central nervous systems that are aiming to internalize the external olfactory landscape. One mechanism by which the brain encodes perceptual representations of behaviourally relevant smells is through the synthesis of different olfactory inputs into a unified perceptual experience — an odour object. Recent evidence indicates that the identification, categorization and discrimination of olfactory stimuli rely on the formation and modulation of odour objects in the piriform cortex. Convergent findings from human and rodent models suggest that distributed piriform ensemble patterns of olfactory qualities and categories are crucial for maintaining the perceptual constancy of ecologically inconstant stimuli.

Small caliber vascular prostheses are not clinically available because synthetic vascular prostheses lack endothelial cells which modulate platelet activation, leukocyte adhesion, thrombosis, and the regulation of vasomotor tone by the production of vasoactive substances. We developed a novel method to create scaffold-free tubular tissue from multicellular spheroids (MCS) using a \"Bio-3D printer\"-based system. This system enables the creation of pre-designed three-dimensional structures using a computer controlled robotics system. With this system, we created a tubular structure and studied its biological features. Using a \"Bio-3D printer,\" we made scaffold-free tubular tissues (inner diameter of 1.5 mm) from a total of 500 MCSs (2.5× 104 cells per one MCS) composed of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (40%), human aortic smooth muscle cells (10%), and normal human dermal fibroblasts (50%). The tubular tissues were cultured in a perfusion system and implanted into the abdominal aortas of F344 nude rats. We assessed the flow by ultrasonography and performed histological examinations on the second (n = 5) and fifth (n = 5) day after implantation. All grafts were patent and remodeling of the tubular tissues (enlargement of the lumen area and thinning of the wall) was observed. A layer of endothelial cells was confirmed five days after implantation. The scaffold-free tubular tissues made of MCS using a Bio-3D printer underwent remodeling and endothelialization. Further studies are warranted to elucidate the underlying mechanism of endothelialization and its function, as well as the long-term results.

Background Newborns are exposed to varying degrees of stressful interventions due to procedures such as heel lancing used in routine metabolic screenings. It is an examination of the effects of white noise and kangaroo care on some physiological parameters and stress markers (cortisol and glucose-regulated protein 78-GRP78) in heel lancing in newborns. Methods Randomized controlled study was conducted at a gynecology service of a hospital between January and September 2023. 90 babies were divided into three groups: 30 babies in the Kangaroo Care Group (KCG), 30 babies in the White Music Group (WMG), and 30 babies in the Control Group (CG). All babies were randomly divided into groups. Stress parameters were measured by saliva collection method and physiological parameters by saturation device. Results A statistically significant difference was determined between the total crying time, pulse and saturation values ​​according to the groups ( p  < 0.001; p  = 0.001 ). A statistically significant difference was determined between the mean values ​​of cortisol and GRP78 measurements according to group and time interaction ( p  < 0.001 ). KCG was more effective in reducing total crying time and stabilizing pulse, saturation, salivary cortisol, GRP-78 values compared to WNG and CG. Conclusion It was concluded that white noise and kangaroo care help reduce newborns’ stress in the case of heel lancing. Practical implications The practice of kangaroo care and the use of white noise methods may assist healthcare professionals as supportive methods in stress management during invasive procedures. Trial Registration NCT06278441, registered on 19/02/2024.

Background As a novel regional analgesic technique, ultrasound-guided pericapsular nerve group (PENG) block has some potential advantages, and we designed a randomized clinical trial (RCT) to investigate whether the ultrasound-guided PENG block combined with general anesthesia can better reduce stress response, maintain intraoperative hemodynamic stability, and reduce postoperative analgesia in elderly hip arthroplasty compared with ultrasound-guided suprainguinal fascia iliaca block (SIFIB) combined with general anesthesia. Methods Seventy-four subjects were enrolled over an 8-month period (20 April 2023 to 31 December 2023). All patients were divided into the test group (group P) and the control group (group S) using the envelope as the randomization method. The test group was treated with preoperative ultrasound-guided PENG block analgesia combined with general anesthesia and the control group was treated with preoperative ultrasound-guided SIFIB analgesia combined with general anesthesia. The primary outcome selected was the patient Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) score at 12 h postoperatively. Results After generalized estimating equations (GEE) analysis, there was a statistically significant difference in the main effect of postoperative VAS score in group P compared with group S ( P  = 0.009), the time effect of VAS score in each group was significantly different ( P  < 0.001), and there was no statistically significant difference in the group-time interaction effect ( P  = 0.069). There was no statistically significant difference in the main effect of intraoperative mean arterial pressure (MAP) change ( P  = 0.911), there were statistically significant differences in the time effect of MAP in each group ( P  < 0.001), and there were statistically significant differences in the interaction effect ( P  < 0.001). Conclusions In summary, we can conclude that in elderly patients undergoing hip fracture surgery, postoperative analgesia is more pronounced, intraoperative hemodynamic parameters are more stable, and intraoperative stress is less induced in patients receiving SIFIB than in patients receiving PENG block.