No abstract

The prevalence of sarcopenia and sarcopenic obesity differs by gender and definition criteria. The height-adjusted definition may tend to underestimate the prevalence of sarcopenia and sarcopenic obesity, especially in women.

physical activity is associated with a reduced risk of sarcopenia and sarcopenic obesity in older Korean adults. There were gender differences in the relationship, with stronger associations observed in men than in women.

For many years, developmental and physiological differences have been known to exist between anatomic segments of the colorectum. Because of different outcomes, prognoses, and clinical responses to chemotherapy, the distinction between right colon cancer (RCC) and left colon cancer (LCC) has gained attention. Furthermore, variations in the molecular features and gut microbiota between right and LCCs have recently been a hot research topic. CpG island methylator phenotype-high, microsatellite instability-high colorectal cancers are more likely to occur on the right side whereas tumors with chromosomal instability have been detected in approximately 75% of LCC patients and 30% of RCC patients. The mutation rates of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes also differ between RCC and LCC patients. Biofilm is more abundant in RCC patients than LLC patients, as are Prevotella, Selenomonas, and Peptostreptococcus. Conversely, Fusobacterium, Escherichia/Shigella, and Leptotrichia are more abundant in LCC patients compared to RCC patients. Distinctive characteristics are apparent in terms of molecular features and gut microbiota between right and LCC. However, how or to what extent these differences influence diverging oncologic outcomes remains unclear. Further clinical and translational studies are needed to elucidate the causative relationship between primary tumor location and prognosis.

No abstract

The incidence of colorectal cancer has been increasing in the developed world including South Korea and China. Colonoscopy allows for greater diagnostic specificity and sensitivity compared with other types of examinations, such as the stool occult blood test, barium enema, and computed tomography colonography. Therefore, in recent years, the demand for colonoscopies has grown rapidly. New beginners including primary care physicians may help meet the increasing demand by performing colonoscopies. However, it is a challenge to learn the procedure due to the long learning-curve and the high rate of complications, such as perforation and bleeding, as compared to gastroscopy. Thus, considerable training and experience are required for optimal performance of colonoscopies. In order to perform a complete colonoscopic examination, there were a few important things to learn and remember, such as the position of examinee (e.g., left and right decubitus, supine, and prone) and examiner (two-man method vs one-man standing method vs one-man sitting method), basic skills (e.g., tip deflection , push forward and pull back, torque, air suction and insufflation), advanced skills (e.g., jiggling and shaking, right and left turn shortening, hooking, and slide-by technique), assisting skills (e.g., position change of examinee, abdominal compression, breathing-holding, and liquid-infusion technique), and intubation techniques along the lower gastrointestinal tract. In this article, we attempt to describe the methods of insertion and advancement of the colonoscope to the new beginners including primary care physician. We believe that this article may be helpful to the new beginners who wish to learn the procedure.

We present a No-Insulation (NI) Multi-Width (MW) winding technique for an HTS (high temperature superconductor) magnet consisting of double-pancake (DP) coils. The NI enables an HTS magnet self-protecting and the MW minimizes the detrimental anisotropy in current-carrying capacity of HTS tape by assigning tapes of multiple widths to DP coils within a stack, widest tape to the top and bottom sections and the narrowest in the midplane section. 1,2 In the event of a quench, we confirmed that the magnet current in an NI winding automatically bypassed the quench spot through turn-to-turn contacts from its original spiral path and that the magnet remained stable even though its operating current was pushed to twice the magnet critical current.1 Due to this self-protecting feature, an NI magnet requires a minimum amount of stabilizer, just enough for ease of splicing and handling.3-8 The absence of both turn-to-turn insulation and the extra stabilizer needed in its insulated (INS) counterpart makes the NI magnet highly compact and enhances its overall current density. 9-18Commercial 2G conductor comes as tape with width/ thickness ratio in a range of 5-40. 19,20 Unlike a conventional assembly of DP coils, in which the DP coils are wound with the same-width 2G tape, [21][22][23] in our MW technique, we place DP coils of the narrowest tape width in the magnet midplane section, placing DP coils of gradually wider tapes away from the midplane, with the widest-tape DP coils at the top and bottom sections, where the normal field that limits 2G tape performance is at its peak. This MW technique significantly enhances the overall current density of such a DP coil assembly at a given operating current.On one hand, the NI technique enables an HTS magnet to be self-protecting and thus to operate at a high current density (>150 kA/cm 2 ), 2 both features are not possible with the conventional HTS magnet. On the other hand, the MW technique is the most suitable and effective approach to "conductor-grade" 24 DP coils wound with highly anisotropic 2G HTS tape. A combination of NI and MW techniques (NI-MW) thus not only satisfies key operation requirements in protection and stability but also enables HTS magnets to be highly compact, which will lead to significant reduction in magnet price, one of the decisive factors in the marketplace.To demonstrate the NI-MW concept, we have designed and constructed a test NI-MW magnet as seen in Fig. 1(a). It consists of a stack of seven DP coils wound with "bare (no copper stabilizer)" 2G conductor, manufactured by AMSC without any turn-to-turn insulation (NI technique). The original conductor was 46-mm wide and then was mechanically slit to have a target width. The conductor width is 2.5 mm for the center DP coil (DP4 in Fig. 1) and increases up to 4.0 mm for the top and bottom DP coils (DP1 and DP7). As a result, this MW magnet generates 22% greater field than its single-width (SW) counterpart with the same overall dimensions (inner diameter, outer diameter, and height) as those of the SW mag...

Lyme disease is the most common zoonotic bacterial disease in North America. It is estimated that >300,000 cases per annum are reported in USA alone. A total of 10%–20% of patients who have been treated with antibiotic therapy report the recrudescence of symptoms, such as muscle and joint pain, psychosocial and cognitive difficulties, and generalized fatigue. This condition is referred to as posttreatment Lyme disease syndrome. While there is no evidence for the presence of viable infectious organisms in individuals with posttreatment Lyme disease syndrome, some researchers found surviving Borrelia burgdorferi population in rodents and primates even after antibiotic treatment. Although such observations need more ratification, there is unmet need for developing the therapeutic agents that focus on removing the persisting bacterial form of B. burgdorferi in rodent and nonhuman primates. For this purpose, high-throughput screening was done using BacTiter-Glo assay for four compound libraries to identify candidates that stop the growth of B. burgdorferi in vitro. The four chemical libraries containing 4,366 compounds (80% Food and Drug Administration [FDA] approved) that were screened are Library of Pharmacologically Active Compounds (LOPAC1280), the National Institutes of Health Clinical Collection, the Microsource Spectrum, and the Biomol FDA. We subsequently identified 150 unique compounds, which inhibited >90% of B. burgdorferi growth at a concentration of <25 µM. These 150 unique compounds comprise many safe antibiotics, chemical compounds, and also small molecules from plant sources. Of the 150 unique compounds, 101 compounds are FDA approved. We selected the top 20 FDA-approved molecules based on safety and potency and studied their minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericidal concentration. The promising safe FDA-approved candidates that show low minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericidal concentration values can be chosen as lead molecules for further advanced studies.