Search Results (5,137)

The information released to investors in financial markets takes various forms. We understand range information as information about the upper and lower bounds that the payoff of a risky asset may reach in the future. This study develops rational expectation models to explore the market impacts of disclosing such information. Our model shows that its disclosure can decrease market price sensitivity to private signal and increase market liquidity. Furthermore, the market impact of its disclosure depends on the position and precision of the range disclosed. When the linear combination of private signal and noise trading volume is distant from the disclosed range, the reaction of price to a variation in private signal will almost vanish, whereas movement in the disclosed range can efficiently impact price. Under certain conditions, such as a higher proportion of informed traders or a larger size of noise trading in the market, disclosing range information is more likely to reduce asset price and raise capital cost. Full article

This article examines the persistence of structural racism and the process of ethno-stratification affecting immigrants from the Global South in Spain. Drawing on national survey data and recent research, it analyses the socio-economic incorporation of immigrants in the aftermath of the Great Recession and subsequent economic recovery, emphasising both their rootedness in Spanish society and their continued segregation. The findings indicate that immigrants remain disproportionately concentrated in low-wage and temporary employment, positioned beneath the native-born precariat and distant from average living standards. This persistent segmentation cannot be explained solely by immigrants’ qualifications or cultural adaptation, but rather by an interplay of structural, institutional, social, and ethnic factors. At the core lies the Spanish “Mediterranean” development model, characterised by a low-productivity economy dependent on cheap labour, a limited welfare state, and strong family-based social protection, which together generate continuous demand for flexible immigrant workers. Additional drivers include migration and labour policies, gendered labour segmentation, and ethnic discrimination, all reinforcing immigrants’ vulnerability. The article concludes that immigrant labour has become essential to Spain’s economic and demographic model, yet its enduring segregation underscores the need for renewed public policies that promote social cohesion and intercultural integration. Full article

Background/Objectives: Pleural mesothelioma (PM) frequently recurs despite multimodal therapy. Here, we aimed to retrospectively evaluate the safety and potential clinical benefit of radiofrequency ablation (RFA) for recurrent PM. Methods: Fourteen consecutive patients underwent CT-guided RFA between July 2019 and June 2025. The cohort comprised 13 men and 1 woman, with a median age of 69 (range, 54–77) years. All patients had previously received systemic therapy, and 12 had undergone surgery. Seven patients (50%) presented with multiple lesions, and 25 tumors (median diameter 1.8 cm; range, 0.5–7.0 cm) were treated in 23 sessions. Outcomes assessed were local tumor control, complications, and survival. Local progression and overall survival were estimated using Kaplan–Meier analysis. Adverse events were classified according to the Society of Interventional Radiology guidelines. Results: Technical success was achieved in all sessions. Two tumors showed local recurrence, corresponding to 1- and 2-year local progression rates of 10.6%. Seven patients showed distant metastases, most of whom subsequently received systemic therapy. Three patients died, two from disease progression and one from treatment-related gastrointestinal perforation during therapy for an unrelated cancer. The overall survival rates were 100%, 100%, and 60% at 1, 3, and 5 years, respectively. Major and minor complications occurred in one case each (4.3%): a refractory skin ulcer and retroperitoneal hematoma, respectively. Conclusions: RFA was technically feasible and generally well tolerated and helped achieve encouraging local control and survival in patients with recurrent PM, warranting further evaluation of RFA as a complementary approach in multimodal treatment strategies. Full article

Field cancerization is a fundamental paradigm in tumorigenesis, emphasizing that carcinogenesis begins long before the appearance of clinically detectable lesions and often precedes recognizable premalignant changes. A direct manifestation of this process is the molecular dysregulation observed in the peritumoral mucosa—histologically normal-appearing tissue that nonetheless exhibits genetic and epigenetic alterations similar to those of the adjacent tumor. This review summarizes current evidence on the molecular alterations shared between tumor tissue and peritumoral mucosa in HNSCC and evaluates their potential as biomarkers for defining molecular margins and improving surgical precision. A literature search was conducted in PubMed using combinations of the keywords “peritumor,” “laryngeal”, “HNSCC,” and “field cancerization.” Studies were included if they directly compared tumor tissue with peritumoral mucosa and, preferably, a third set of distant normal control samples. Only nine studies met the inclusion criteria, highlighting the scarcity of focused research in this area. Reported biomarkers exhibiting comparable dysregulation in both tumor and peritumor tissues include MDM2, E2F2, CDKN2A/p16, ETS-1, MGMT, and multiple microRNAs (e.g., miR-21, miR-96-5p, miR-145-5p). These molecular signatures demonstrate the presence of a biologically altered field extending beyond histologically defined tumor margins. Peritumoral mucosal dysregulation, as a consequence of field cancerization, underscores the need to redefine surgical margins at the molecular level. The identification and validation of biomarkers reflecting this continuum could enable the establishment of molecular margins—improving risk assessment, reducing local recurrence, and advancing personalized oncologic surgery in HNSCC. Standardizing definitions and sampling protocols for “normal adjacent tissue” remains essential for future translational research. Full article

Magnolia crassipes is a valuable species in Magnolia sect. Michelia known for its unique purple flowers, but interspecific reproductive barriers limit its use in breeding. Using M. crassipes as the maternal parent, we performed 13 pollination combinations (one selfed control and crosses with 12 taxa spanning five sections). We assessed reproductive processes from pollen–stigma interaction to seed and seedling performance, and verified hybrids using SSR markers. Reproductive barriers are strongly associated with phylogenetic distance, shifting from pollen-adhesion failure in crosses with donors from distant-section, to abnormal pollen-tube guidance in cross with M. denudata, and to fruit initiation in crosses with pollen donors from sect. Michelia. Among these Michelia-donor crosses, prezygotic barrier strength varied among combinations, as reflected by differences in stigma germination and ovule entry rates, which strongly influenced the potential for fruit set success. Postzygotic barriers further reduced reproductive success via seed abortion (peaking at 83.8%). However, all germinated hybrids exhibited normal early growth. Notably, backcrossing with the F1 hybrid M. ‘Danxia’ significantly improved reproductive compatibility (seed abortion rate 6.3% and germination rate 100%). This study clarifies the key barriers in M. crassipes hybridization and provides a basis and practical strategies for its genetic utilization. Full article

Peach consumers demand good quality fruit, but premature harvests result in fruit that does not ripen properly and does not reach the required organoleptic quality, so consumers stop buying this product that does not meet their expectations. In our region, peaches are exported long distances, and it is required that when they reach the destination market their quality is adequate. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the storage capacity of commercial and delayed harvest in three peach cultivars. ‘Rich Lady’, ‘Summer Lady’, and ‘Merryl O’Henry’ were harvested at commercial maturity (H1) and, a few days later (H2), packed in passive modified atmosphere (PMA), and stored under refrigeration for up to 40 days to simulate marketing to distant markets. During storage and after three days of shelf-life, the physico-chemical characteristics, damage, and sensory quality of the fruit were analyzed. In general, after cold storage, peaches improve their sensory characteristics after three days at room temperature. PMA with refrigeration was suitable for exporting ‘Rich Lady’ peaches overseas for H1. The late harvest, H2, is recommended for ‘Summer Lady’, as it improves sensory quality without losing storability. ‘Summer Lady’ was the best-rated cultivar by the tasters, and ‘Merryl O’Henry’ the worst, due to its lack of ripening and high incidence of chilling injury. Full article

Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the most common type of kidney cancer, accounting for approximately 75–80% of all renal carcinomas, and is often diagnosed incidentally on abdominal imaging, such as abdominal ultrasound or CT scan. Among other types of renal cancer, ccRCC is recognized to be highly aggressive due to its metastatic potential, which leads to a poor prognosis and an increased mortality rate. The most common sites of ccRCC metastasis are the lung, lymph nodes, bone, liver, and adrenal glands. Clear cell RCC is the most frequent primary tumor associated with secondary pancreatic involvement, while overall, pancreatic metastases represent only 2–5% of all malignant pancreatic lesions. These metastases often occur many years after nephrectomy and may present as solitary or oligometastatic disease, frequently displaying a paradoxically favorable prognosis compared with other metastatic sites. The present narrative review we conducted emerged from presentations of ccRCC with pancreatic distant metastases, potentially labeled as primary pancreatic tumors on imaging studies, mimicking pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors due to the hypervascular nature of ccRCC. Four patients were investigated in our clinic for suspicious pancreatic lesions identified on CT imaging, involving both the head and body of the pancreas. The definitive diagnosis was established by performing endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) or fine-needle biopsy (FNB) and histopathological analysis of the collected tissue samples. Endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle biopsy (EUS-FNB) has emerged as a pivotal tool for obtaining tissue diagnosis, particularly when cross-sectional imaging is inconclusive. Through a synthesis of clinical data and literature, this article underscores the essential diagnostic role of EUS-guided tissue acquisition and its impact on therapeutic decision-making. Full article

The SCANVIR^® project is a regional initiative aimed at accelerating the elimination of hepatitis C virus (HCV) by reaching high-risk populations outside traditional healthcare settings. Launched in 2017 in Limoges and later expanded to Poitiers and Bordeaux, the project organized dedicated screening and treatment days in 43 facilities taking care of intravenous drug users, migrants, and prisoners in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. These events involved multidisciplinary teams and advanced diagnostic tools, including rapid tests for HCV, HBV, and HIV; FibroScan^® for liver assessment; and GeneXpert^® for on-site HCV RNA detection. Patients also received counseling on risk prevention, addiction, psychosocial support, and treatment when needed. Between 2017 and 2024, SCANVIR^® screened 1664 patients, with 98.9% accepting FibroScan^®. Anti-HCV antibodies were detected in 23.4% of participants, among whom 41.5% (N = 162) had a replicative profile. Of these, 83% initiated treatment and 80% were cured or were still undergoing therapy. FibroScan^® assessments showed advanced fibrosis in 17% of patients, severe fibrosis in 7.2%, and severe steatosis in 18%. By promoting a “Test, Treat, Prevent” strategy, SCANVIR^® proved cost-effective in diagnosing and treating individuals distant from care structures, highlighting the value of integrating education and prevention into liver disease screening. SCANVIR^® is an officially registered European trademark. Full article

Background/Objectives: Near-infrared photoimmunotherapy (NIR-PIT) represents a treatment approach for patients with locally advanced or recurrent head and neck cancers who are unsuitable for surgery post-standard therapy. Since its introduction in Japan in January 2021, NIR-PIT has been available exclusively under the national health insurance system, resulting in limited real-world clinical practice data. This study evaluated the association between NIR-PIT and overall survival (OS) in clinical practice. Methods: This single-center retrospective study included 45 patients with head and neck cancer who were not amenable to surgical resection owing to advanced local disease or regional recurrence without distant metastasis and who underwent NIR-PIT or systemic pharmacotherapy between January 2021 and April 2025. The primary endpoint was OS. Results: Twenty-two and 23 patients received NIR-PIT and pharmacotherapy, respectively. In the NIR-PIT group, irradiation was delivered to primary tumors in 20 patients, cervical lymph node lesions in one, and both primary and lymph node lesions in one. The median OS was 35 and 8 months, with median follow-up of 40 and 49 months in the NIR-PIT and pharmacotherapy groups, respectively. Among the NIR-PIT-eligible patients, 22 and 10 were treated with NIR-PIT and pharmacotherapy, respectively. The median OS was 35 and 8 months, with median follow-up of 40 and 24 months in the NIR-PIT and pharmacotherapy groups, respectively. Conclusions: NIR-PIT was independently associated with improved OS in patients with unresectable recurrent or metastatic head and neck cancer without distant metastasis. Prospective multicenter studies are warranted to validate these findings. Full article

Allotetraploid fish produced by distant hybridization are valuable germplasm for the mass production of sterile triploids. The allotetraploid crucian–carp hybrid (4nAT, 4n = 200) is derived from the intergeneric cross between a female red crucian carp (Carassius auratus red var., 2n = 100) and a male common carp (Cyprinus carpio L., 2n = 100). However, after 33 successive generations, this lineage faces a critical bottleneck in maintaining male fertility. The present study aimed to develop new biomarkers for testicular development and characterize the associated functional gene expression profile in 4nAT. Following whole-genome resequencing and selection signature analysis of 15 male 4nAT individuals from each of the high-development group (HDG) and low-development group (LDG), ZSWIM7 (Zinc Finger SWIM-Type Containing 7), a gene implicated in reproductive development, was selected as a candidate for further fertility association studies. Seven SNPs were screened in the coding region of ZSWIM7 of 70 4nAT males; among these, SNP3 (c.23T/C) exhibited a significant correlation between genotypes and testicular development: individuals with the CT genotype showed a higher gonadosomatic index (1.17 ± 0.68 vs. 0.65 ± 0.50) and greater counts of mature spermatozoa (2537.67 ± 283.95 vs. 341.56 ± 121.66) compared to those with the TT genotype. Further quantitative PCR and immunofluorescence assays demonstrated that ZSWIM7 was highly expressed in the testis and specifically localized to the nuclei of early meiotic primary spermatocytes. Collectively, these results establish ZSWIM7 as a promising biomarker for 4nAT testicular development, offering a potential molecular tool for maintaining male fertility in allotetraploid fish breeding. Full article

Adipose tissue plays a crucial role in breast cancer (BC) progression by actively modulating the tumor microenvironment. We investigated how tumor proximity modifies adipose tissue by analyzing selected adipose-related and prognosis-associated markers in explants from BC patients and healthy donors. Explants were categorized by proximity to the tumor as adjacent (less than 2 cm), distant (over 2 cm), alongside normal explants (controls). FABP4 and vimentin expression was increased in proximity to the tumor, while caveolin-1, CD44, MMP9, and adiponectin showed minimal or no changes. Conditioned media (CM) from adjacent and normal explants were then assessed for their effects on tumorigenic traits in hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer (HR+ BC) and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) cell lines. Adjacent-CM enhanced migration, induced cytoskeletal remodeling, reduced adhesion, and promoted an elongated, motile phenotype in T47D cells. Poor-prognosis markers (caveolin-1, vimentin, CD44) were upregulated in at least one HR+ BC model, whereas Nanog and KLF4 showed modest variation. In TNBC cells, both normal- and adjacent-CM partially shifted MDA-MB-231 morphology toward a more epithelial-like state, decreasing caveolin-1 levels, while adjacent-CM increased MMP9 expression. Overall, these results reveal that adipose tissue-derived soluble factors exert significant and subtype-dependent effects on BC tumorigenicity. Full article

Fine-grained visual classification requires recognizing subtle inter-class differences under substantial intra-class variation. Ancient mural recognition poses additional challenges: severe degradation and complex backgrounds introduce noise that obscures discriminative features, limited annotated data restricts model training, and dynasty-specific artistic styles manifest as periodic brushwork patterns and compositional structures that are difficult to capture. Existing spatial-domain methods fail to model the frequency characteristics of textures and the cross-region semantic relationships inherent in mural imagery. To address these limitations, we propose a Vision Transformer (ViT) framework which integrates frequency-domain enhancement, explicit token-relation modeling, adaptive multi-focus inference, and discriminative metric supervision. A Frequency Channel Attention (FreqCA) module applies 2D FFT-based channel gating to emphasize discriminative periodic patterns and textures. A Cross-Token Relation Attention (CTRA) module employs joint global and local gates to strengthen semantically related token interactions across distant regions. An Adaptive Omni-Focus (AOF) block partitions tokens into importance groups for multi-head classification, while Complementary Tokens Integration (CTI) fuses class tokens from multiple transformer layers. Finally, Adaptive Margin Contrastive Center Loss (AMCCL) improves intra-class compactness and inter-class separability with margins adapted to class-center similarities. Experiments on CUB-200-2011, Stanford Dogs, and a Dunhuang mural dataset show accuracies of 91.15%, 94.57%, and 94.27%, outperforming the ACC-ViT baseline by 1.35%, 1.63%, and 2.20%, respectively. Full article

Anal squamous cell carcinoma (ASCC) is a rare malignancy of the lower gastrointestinal tract, with distant metastases typically involving the liver and lungs. Metastasis to the kidneys is uncommon, and only one prior case has been reported in the literature. Herein, we report a rare presentation of a patient with biopsy-confirmed metastatic ASCC presenting as bilateral renal lesions. We then provide a review of the literature for rare metastatic presentations of ASCC, highlighting all the cases described in the literature. Clinicians should maintain a high index of suspicion for unusual metastatic sites, perform targeted imaging and biopsy when indicated, and consider systemic therapies to optimize outcomes in rare metastatic presentations. Full article

The search for new therapeutic principles is essential for treating relapsed/refractory (r/r) acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Novel principles include genome-agnostic differentiation induction, controlling AML-triggering inflammation, potentiating the immune response and ‘normalizing’ AML metabolism. This review summarizes data from a phase I study (10 patients, pts) and three case reports reporting 7 pts on the treatment of r/r AML by reprogramming AML hallmarks using APA, low-dose azacitidine, pioglitazone (PPARα/γ agonist) and all-trans retinoic acid. APA reprograms the r/r AML phenotype in patients with clinically and molecularly/genetically unfavorable risk profiles (17 pts, 16 refractory, one relapsed) in a genome-agnostic manner, restoring the plasticity of AML hallmarks, thereby improving immune surveillance, attenuating inflammation-triggered promotion of AML and distant microbial inflammation (healing of fungal pneumonia during induction of complete remission (CR) with APA), while normalizing leukemia metabolism (restoring phagocytosis and ROS production in leukemic neutrophils). APA induces CR in 10 pts (59%), with only modest hematotoxicity following CR induction. This allows treatment to be carried out in an outpatient setting, including for elderly and comorbid patients. Triple transcriptional modulation, facilitated by epigenetic modelling with azacitidine, targets reprogramming of non-oncogene addiction networks in AML, re-establishing functionally active, closely interrelated myeloid hallmarks and AML cell death genome-agnostically. Full article

Background/Objectives: The diffuse sclerosing variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma (DSV-PTC) is a rare and aggressive subtype characterized by diffuse gland involvement and early cervical lymph node metastasis. Preoperative differentiation from classic papillary thyroid carcinoma and autoimmune thyroid disease remains challenging on B-mode ultrasound. This study aimed to describe the multiparametric ultrasound features of DSV-PTC in a single-center case series and highlight practical imaging insights. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed seven consecutive patients with histologically confirmed DSV-PTC evaluated at a single center between 2013 and 2025. All patients underwent standardized B-mode ultrasound, color Doppler, and two-dimensional shear-wave elastography prior to surgery. Clinical, autoimmune, cytological, surgical, pathological, and follow-up data were analyzed descriptively. Results: The cohort included five females and two males (mean age 28 years). Autoimmune thyroid disease was present in three patients. High-risk ultrasound features were identified in all cases, with microcalcifications in six patients and a diffuse “snowstorm” appearance in five. Elastography demonstrated increased stiffness in six out of seven lesions (Emean 28–173 kPa; Emax 31–300 kPa). Cervical lymph node metastases were confirmed in all patients. In two cases, elastography aided identification of focal malignant involvement within diffusely altered thyroid parenchyma. All patients underwent total thyroidectomy with central neck dissection; lateral neck dissection and radioiodine therapy were performed selectively. No distant metastases were detected. Conclusions: In this case series, DSV-PTC showed a characteristic multiparametric ultrasound pattern combining high-risk B-mode features with frequently increased tissue stiffness. Elastography provided complementary information, particularly in the presence of autoimmune thyroid disease, by helping localize focal malignant involvement within diffusely altered parenchyma. Full article