Journal Hosting Service | The University of Edinburgh
Not a member yet
5244 research outputs found
Sort by
Making Open Science the “New Normal” – The Road So Far
No full textHow do we make Open Research the "new normal" in a large and complex organisation? What can lead us to positive culture change
[18F]FDG Brain Imaging Assessment in Preclinical Acute and Chronic Stress Models Using Statistical Parametric Mapping
Get PDFPrevious studies have used [18F]FDG as a biomarker for depression, anxiety, or chronic stress in cancer patients1,2. However, they lack specific brain patterns and assessment in preclinical models, limiting their translational potential. Hence, we set out to establish preclinical [18F]FDG brain PET as a method to evaluate stress in vivo.
Lean C57BL/6J mice were exposed to acute and chronic cooling, restraint, and surgical stress. Obese mice were on a high-fat diet for eight weeks and exposed to cooling and restraint stress. [18F]FDG was injected into fasted animals under brief isoflurane anesthesia via the tail vein. Following a 60-minute distribution phase during acute stress or one day after stress exposure (chronic), animals underwent static μPET/CT scans (Siemens® Inveon). Brain images were spatially normalized, and intensity normalization was performed using proportional and histogram-based scaling3 with PMOD (V. 3.8). Normalized images were analyzed using a brain atlas (M. Mirrione) to extract regional SUV and statistical parametric mapping (SPM12) for voxel-wise comparison.
Overall, in lean mice, total brain [18F]FDG-uptake was significantly reduced across all stress models except for acute restraint, whereas total uptake was unaffected in obese mice. Subsequent brain atlas analysis of lean mice revealed changes in regional uptake for all stressors except for chronic cooling, while obese mice were affected by only acute and chronic restraint. Using SPM, we validated stress-specific hypo- and hypermetabolic areas in the brains of lean mice upon acute cooling, acute and chronic restraint, and surgery and in obese mice after chronic restraint (see Figure). We also identified overlapping areas in the brain stem and hypothalamus region following acute cooling and surgery, possibly due to post-surgical hypothermia.
Our findings show that static [18F]FDG-imaging is a valuable tool for noninvasively assessing brain activity in a multitude of stress models and a suitable translational tool for stress research in mice.
Please click on the \u27PDF\u27 for the full abstract
Chemoradiotherapy treatment increases cardiac and aortic [18F]FDG uptake ratios in lung cancer patients
Get PDF[18F]Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) is an indispensable non-invasive imaging tool to aid diagnosis, prognostication, and therapeutic monitoring in oncology, but it can also evaluate cardiovascular inflammation1,2. Previously, cardiac metabolic changes using [18F]FDG with chemoradiotherapy have been explored3 but changes in the rest of the cardiovascular system remain undetermined.
To investigate the cardiovascular metabolic changes pre- and post-chemoradiotherapy in stage 3b non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients.
A retrospective analysis of 26 patients (43-82 years) with stage 3b NSCLC from the American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN 6668) trial was performed3. All available pre- and post-treatment imaging were retrieved from the Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA)4 and regions of interest for the left ventricle and calcified large arteries were contoured on all PET-CT scans using PMOD version 4.0 software. The mean, maximum standard uptake value (SUVmean and SUVmax) and target-to-background ratio (TBR) were quantified on PMOD.
At approximately 14 weeks post-chemoradiotherapy, there was a higher SUVmean (mean difference 0.81, p=0.01) and SUVmax (mean difference 2.20, p=0.006) in the left ventricle compared with pretreatment scans. TBR for aorta was higher post-treatment (mean difference 0.06, p=0.005). However, SUVmean for carotid arteries and right brachiocephalic artery was reduced post-chemoradiotherapy (mean difference 0.15, p=0.008 and mean difference 0.28, p=0.03). A reduction in SUVmax was also seen for aortic arch (mean difference 0.58, p=0.03) and right brachiocephalic artery (mean difference 0.42, p=0.03 and mean difference 0.42, p=0.03).
Cardiovascular glucose metabolism is selectively increased in the left ventricle and aorta post-chemoradiotherapy. Changes in glucose metabolism of atherosclerotic plaques vary across different vessels throughout the body.
Please click on the \u27PDF\u27 for the full abstract
A Critical Analysis on the Regulation and Sanctioning of Wrongful and Fraudulent Trading: Whether the System is Sufficient to Deter Directorial Misconduct in Trading
Get PDFThis article will consider whether the current systems for regulating, and sanctioning wrongful and fraudulent trading is adequate to deter directors from committing such offences. Directors may be found liable for these offences if they continue trading after knowing or when they ought to have known that the company is insolvent or impending insolvency. During this time, their conduct may be investigated by an independent practitioner. Directors have a fiduciary relationship with their companies and thus owe various fiduciary duties to the companies. Such duties are regulated by the Companies Act 2006 and aim to prevent director malpractice such as wrongful and fraudulent trading. Wrongful trading, introduced as an extension of fraudulent trading, is a civil offence under Section 214 of the Insolvency Act 1986. Fraudulent trading, however, is both a civil offence under Section 213 of the Insolvency Act 1986, and criminal offence under Section 993 of the Companies Act 2006. The main element here is intention to defraud. Though a finding of fraudulent trading is less common nowadays since the introduction of wrongful trading, issues surrounding the subject is nonetheless present. When a director has been found liable of wrongful or fraudulent trading, they may be ordered by the court to contribute to the company’s assets. This amount is dependent on the loss caused by the director resulting from their offence, however, if they cannot provide the funds; creditors may be left improperly compensated. Additionally, liable directors may face disqualification. In conclusion, this paper will consider whether the current schemes are effective for the prevention of directorial misconduct in relation to wrongful trading and fraudulent trading
The Waterston Manuscripts: The Accumulation of Traditional and Popular Melodies in an Edinburgh Mercantile Family from Enlightenment to Empire. A Preliminary Survey
Get PDFFolklore, Ethnology, Antiquarianism, Family History, Local History, Regional Studies, Edinburgh, Scottish music, Scottish song, Archives, National Library of Scotland, George Waterston, Geoffrey Waterston, William Waterston, Scottish trade, Scottish business history, mercantile, Glasgow, radical rising, radicalism, Waterloo, William Dauney, Robert Waterston, Scots airs, psalm tunes, hymn tunes, Walter Scot
Sally the Soft Toy Seal: Connection and Communication in a North-East ‘Oil Family’
Get PDFFolklore, Ethnology, Children’s history, Oil industry, North East Scotland, Aberdeenshire, Material Culture, Local Studies, Regional Studies, History of emotions, Families, Soft toys, seals, folklife, occupational studies, offshore life
Contributor\u27s Biographies
No full textEthnology, Folklore, Scottish culture, Scottish history, Scotland, Narratology, Material Culture, Archaeology, Fieldwork, Diaspora, local studies, regional studie
Speaking Out: How to Resist with Words
No full textResistance against oppression can be diversely defined. Johansson and Vinthagen (2019) have posited that it is composed of the acts of subordinated people that might undermine power. Henry (2019) describes these acts as contra the forces that homogenise and confine people, aiming at liberation. These definitions broadly describe the amorphous concept of resistance as ‘acts against’. However, what are these acts? Can something as little (or as big) as speaking out be a resistant act? I argue that anti-oppressive speech can enact resistance in accordance with J.L. Austin’s theory of speech acts. While J.L. Austin’s titular task is identifying ‘How to Do Things with Words’, I will describe how to resist with words
Going after the new without reinventing the wheel: On the necessity of learning and teaching different approaches to lithic analysis
Get PDFBrazilian archaeology developed following the same phases that the discipline as a whole went through: an initial emphasis on Historical Culturalism, followed by criticism that culminated in a range of possibilities, from the indiscriminate rejection of everything that had been done before, to a more balanced stance with the incorporation of new concepts. Specifically, we can say that there was a schism between the first professional archaeologists, interested in building historical-cultural knowledge, who sought to understand artefactual variability based on the shapes and possible functions of artifacts, and a younger generation guided by the Processualist approach, who started from the principle that the diversity of stone tools would reflect the relationship between man and environment and could be understood based on the different manufacturing techniques. Over time, criticism of the use of morphological approaches led to technology becoming a supposedly superior and more suitable method of analysis for the characterization of lithic artifacts. In Brazilian archaeological research, this reasoning has been consolidated over time and, consequently, limited not only the use of other perspectives, which could be complementary to the characterization of artifacts, but also the identification of distinct cultural groups. Considering that technological analysis understands that there are several steps involved in the manufacturing process of lithic tools and that the development of these activities occurs in an orderly manner, within a certain time and space, we present in this article some approaches that deal with the notion of Models of Sequence (Bleed 2001). The main objective is to show that even if they consider the development of activities as a process that occurs in an orderly manner, similar concepts are not necessarily substantially identical. To begin the discussion about the different approaches, we first deal with the French method called chaîne opératoire, certainly the most recognized in Brazil. Possibly, its establishment in Brazilian literature is due to successive years of teaching, learning and reproduction of key concepts, without major investment in improving and applying other methods. To this end, we discuss the North American-influenced analysis model called Reduction Sequence, exploring basic concepts capable of differentiating it from the French school. Next, we present the method called Minimum Analytical Nodule Analysis, an approach focused on the macroscopic observation of the raw material, operationalized in a very similar way to the refitting method. Subsequently, we explored the Japanese concept called Gihō, aimed at analysing laminar industries. In conclusion, we draw a parallel between these approaches, showing that some of them require a specific context to be applied or even that their inferences will only be possible in the long term and from dense collections
On foot, by boat: Distribution methods of raw materials suitable for lithics in Central Europe in c. 4900-3400 BCE
Get PDFThanks to long-term efforts to identify the stone raw materials of Neolithic lithics, a dataset of the proportional raw material composition at Neolithic settlements for the eastern part of Bohemia and the Morava River Basin in Central Europe has been created, which can be analysed in the period c. 4900-3400 BCE The focus of this study is on four issues: (1) the chronological evolution of the mode of distribution of the raw materials of lithics and its relation to settlement dynamics; (2) the relationship between the rate of imported raw materials and settlement density; (3) the importance of navigable rivers for the long-distance transport of raw materials; and (4) a comparison of the spatial distribution of stone raw materials and ‘archaeological cultures’. In terms of chronological variations in distributional structures, it is clear that population size was an important factor affecting extra-regional distribution, particularly when compared with settlement numbers and radiocarbon density. In contrast, settlement density was not a determinant of the occurrence of imported raw materials. Navigable rivers are an important factor in the transport of goods, which is represented in the archaeological record by stone raw materials. The most evident relationship between imported raw materials and navigable rivers is in c. 4800-4500 BCE. At the end of the period under study, the construction of fortified hillforts is a significant social phenomenon, which, despite the problematic find circumstances of lithics, suggests a change in the distribution pattern. The presence of archaeological cultures (ceramic style) cannot be an explanatory factor for the changes in the distribution of stone raw materials, as the changes in internal and extra-regional distribution are not related to its changes