Organ-on-a-Chip: Ubi sumus? Fundamentals and Design Aspects.

This review outlines the evolutionary journey from traditional two-dimensional (2D) cell culture to the revolutionary field of organ-on-a-chip technology. Organ-on-a-chip technology integrates microfluidic systems to mimic the complex physiological environments of human organs, surpassing the limitations of conventional 2D cultures. This evolution has opened new possibilities for understanding cell-cell interactions, cellular responses, drug screening, and disease modeling. However, the design and manufacture of microchips significantly influence their functionality, reliability, and applicability to different biomedical applications. Therefore, it is important to carefully consider design parameters, including the number of channels (single, double, or multi-channels), the channel shape, and the biological context. Simultaneously, the selection of appropriate materials compatible with the cells and fabrication methods optimize the chips' capabilities for specific applications, mitigating some disadvantages associated with these systems. Furthermore, the success of organ-on-a-chip platforms greatly depends on the careful selection and utilization of cell resources. Advances in stem cell technology and tissue engineering have contributed to the availability of diverse cell sources, facilitating the development of more accurate and reliable organ-on-a-chip models. In conclusion, a holistic perspective of in vitro cellular modeling is provided, highlighting the integration of microfluidic technology and meticulous chip design, which play a pivotal role in replicating organ-specific microenvironments. At the same time, the sensible use of cell resources ensures the fidelity and applicability of these innovative platforms in several biomedical applications.

Academic coaching and decision analysis: Ways of deciding whether to pursue an academic career.

We analyzed and compared the decision-making processes underlying two approaches that academics might use to decide whether to pursue a professorship or an alternative career: academic coaching (a paid service that supports academics with career-related issues) and decision analysis (a method for applying decision theory to real-world decision problems). To this end, we conducted in-depth expert interviews with seven out of 11 academic coaches known to work in Berlin to examine empirically the career decision-making process that they use. Moreover, we demonstrate theoretically how decision analysis can be applied to an academic's hypothetical career choice problem. A comparison of the two approaches showed that they both advise (i) structuring the decision problem by dividing it into smaller components, (ii) using the academic's objectives to generate career alternatives, and (iii) quantifying the uncertainty of decision outcomes using subjective probabilities. Moreover, the observed differences in the way the two approaches structure the decision problem suggest ways in which they could inform each other: (i) they could make use of each other's techniques to help academics define their objectives and generate career alternatives; (ii) academic coaching could, in addition, use decision trees (a hallmark of decision analysis) to represent the structure of the career decision problem, and use simple measurement scales to quantify how much the career options contribute to the academic's objectives.

Synthetic Cannabis Analogues and Suicidal Behavior: Case Report.

INTRODUCTION: Despite growing legal control, a wide range of synthetic cannabis analogues is currently used for recreational purposes, notwithstanding their well adverse outcomes, which appear to be more frequent and more serious than those associated with cannabis use. We present the case report of a patient with paranoid schizophrenia, who attempted suicide by serious bodily harm after a single use of "Shiva Ultra Strong," a compound of several synthetic cannabis analogues. CASE SUMMARY: A 32-year-old male patient with paranoid schizophrenia was brought to the emergency department presenting with a severe self-inflicted wound to the neck which lacerated the right jugular vein and ipsilateral airway, and narrowly missed the carotid bifurcation. On examination, the patient exhibited psychomotor agitation and anxiety. Laboratory tests, which included routine substance use screening, proved unremarkable. The patient was admitted to the ENT Department for surgical treatment, after which he was transferred to our Psychiatry Department, exhibiting consistent improvement with his usual antipsychotic regimen, to which he had good previous adherence. Later, after discharge, he admitted to having used a smartshop drug, so-called "Shiva Ultra Strong," shortly before the suicide attempt. CONCLUSION: Although current data on the suicide risk of synthetic cannabis analogues are limited, there is growing evidence of relevant psychiatric effects after their use. Patients with serious mental disorders could prove particularly vulnerable to these drugs, resulting in severe behavioral changes and self-harm.

Mapping the structure of semantic memory.

Aggregating snippets from the semantic memories of many individuals may not yield a good map of an individual's semantic memory. The authors analyze the structure of semantic networks that they sampled from individuals through a new snowball sampling paradigm during approximately 6 weeks of 1-hr daily sessions. The semantic networks of individuals have a small-world structure with short distances between words and high clustering. The distribution of links follows a power law truncated by an exponential cutoff, meaning that most words are poorly connected and a minority of words has a high, although bounded, number of connections. Existing aggregate networks mirror the individual link distributions, and so they are not scale-free, as has been previously assumed; still, there are properties of individual structure that the aggregate networks do not reflect. A simulation of the new sampling process suggests that it can uncover the true structure of an individual's semantic memory.

Ways of probing situated concepts.

Two ways of eliciting conceptual content have been to instruct participants to list the intrinsic properties that concept exemplars possess or to report any thoughts that come to mind about the concept. It has been argued that the open, unconstrained probe is better able to elicit the situational information that concepts contain. We evaluated this proposal in two experiments comparing the two probes with regard to the content that they yield for object concepts at the superordinate and basic levels. The results showed that the open probe was better able to elicit situated conceptual knowledge and point out differences in the representations of superordinate and basic concepts.