Ring Contraction of Tropylium Ions into Benzenoid Derivatives.

We report a method to convert substituted tropylium ions into benzenoid derivatives.

BRCA1/2 Mutations in Vietnamese Patients with Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer Syndrome.

(1) Background: Individuals with BRCA1/2 gene mutations are at increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The prevalence of BRCA1/2 mutations varies by race and ethnicity, and the prevalence and the risks associated with most BRCA1/2 mutations has not been unknown in the Vietnamese population. We herein screen the entire BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes for breast and ovarian cancer patients with a family history of breast cancer and ovarian cancer, thereby, suggesting a risk score associated with carrier status and history for aiding personalized treatment; (2) Methods: Between December 2017 and December 2019, Vietnamese patients who had a pathological diagnosis of breast and epithelial ovarian cancer were followed up, prospectively, after treatment from two large institutions in Vietnam. Blood samples from 33 Vietnamese patients with hereditary breast and ovarian cancers (HBOC) syndrome were collected and analyzed using Next Generation Sequencing; (3) Results: Eleven types of mutations in both BRCA1 (in nine patients) and BRCA2 (in three patients) were detected, two of which (BRCA1:p.Tyr1666Ter and BRCA2:p.Ser1341Ter) have not been previously documented in the literature. Seven out of 19 patient's relatives had BRCA1/2 gene mutations. All selected patients were counselled about the likelihood of cancer rising and prophylactic screening and procedures. The study established a risk score associated with the cohorts based on carrier status and family history; (4) Conclusions: Our findings suggested the implications for the planning of a screening programme for BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes testing in breast and ovarian cancer patients and genetic screening in their relatives. BRCA1/2 mutation carriers without cancer should have early and regular cancer screening, and prophylactic measures. This study could be beneficial for a diverse group in a large population-specific cohort, related to HBOC Syndrome.

Tropylium-Promoted Hydroboration Reactions: Mechanistic Insights Via Experimental and Computational Studies.

Hydroboration reaction of alkynes is one of the most synthetically powerful tools to access organoboron compounds, versatile precursors for cross-coupling chemistry. This type of reaction has traditionally been mediated by transition-metal or main group catalysts. Herein, we report a novel method using tropylium salts, typically known as organic oxidants and Lewis acids, to promote the hydroboration reaction of alkynes. A broad range of vinylboranes can be easily accessed via this metal-free protocol. Similar hydroboration reactions of alkenes and epoxides can also be efficiently catalyzed by the same tropylium catalysts. Experimental studies and DFT calculations suggested that the reaction follows an uncommon mechanistic pathway, which is triggered by the hydride abstraction of pinacolborane with tropylium ion. This is followed by a series of in situ counterion-activated substituent exchanges to generate boron intermediates that promote the hydroboration reaction.

Aerobic, metal-free synthesis of 6H-chromeno[4,3-b]quinolin-6-ones.

A Friedländer-based method for transition-metal free, aerobic synthesis of chromene-fused quinolinones is reported. The coupling of 4-hydrocoumarins and 2-aminobenzyl alcohols proceeds in the presence of acetic acid solvent and oxygen oxidant, affording 6H-chromeno[4,3-b]quinolin-6-ones in good to excellent yields. The reactions are tolerant of functionalities such as alkyl, methoxy, bromo, chloro, and N-heterocycle. Isosteric cyclic 1,3-diketones and 2-amino acetophenones also give fused quinolinones under reaction conditions. The method herein offers a rapid and benign synthesis of hitherto challenging N-heterocycles. To our best knowledge, such a convenient pathway to obtain chromene-fused quinolinones have not been known in the literature.

The effects of a home-based intervention for young children with intellectual disabilities in Vietnam.

BACKGROUND: This study was conducted to examine the impact of a 1-year intervention for children with intellectual disabilities (ID) in Vietnam. METHOD: Subjects were 30 preschool-aged children with ID (ages 3 to 6 years). Sixteen were assigned to an intervention group and 14 to a control group. Based on the Portage Curriculum (CESA 5 2003), the intervention trained parents to work with their children through modelling and coaching by teachers during weekly home visits. RESULTS: Comparison of pre-, mid- and post-intervention assessments of the children based on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (Sparrow et al. 1984a) indicated that the intervention was promising: children in the intervention group improved significantly in most domains of adaptive behaviours, and also performed significantly better than the control group in the areas of personal care and motor skills. CONCLUSIONS: The results from the Vietnam programme are discussed in terms of its implications and strategies for developing programmes for children with disabilities in developing countries.

Simple combined model for nonlinear excitations in DNA.

We propose a simple model for DNA denaturation bases on the pendulum model of Englander [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 77, 7222 (1980)] and the microscopic model of Peyrard and Bishop [Phys. Rev. Lett. 62, 2755 (1989)], so-called "combined model." The main parameters of our model are the coupling constant k along each strand, the mean stretching y* of the hydrogen bonds, the ratio of the damping constant and driven force gamma/F. We show that both the length L of unpaired bases and the velocity v of kinks depend on not only the coupling constant k but also the temperature T. Our results are in good agreement with previous works.

Parenting stress of mothers and fathers of young children with cognitive delays in Vietnam.

BACKGROUND: This research examined the effects of child and family variables on stress experienced by mothers and fathers of young children with cognitive delays in Vietnam. METHODS: The mothers (n = 106) and fathers (n = 93) whose children (age range = 3-6 years) were identified as having cognitive delays participated in the interview survey. The survey consisted of a set of the standardized questionnaires that were translated into Vietnamese and assessed for the content validity in the Vietnamese context. RESULTS: Mothers experienced more stress than fathers. Path analyses were conducted for mothers and fathers separately. Mothers with female children, those with children of lower intellectual functioning, and those whose husbands had health conditions experienced more stress than the other mothers. Fathers with lower economic status and a smaller social support network were more stressed than the other fathers. Both mothers and fathers were more stressed when they experienced stronger stigma, although the effects were not significant when other variables were considered together in path analyses. CONCLUSIONS: The findings revealed traditional gender roles. Mothers were more affected by the child's characteristics and the spouse's functioning; they anticipated future problems related to the child's functioning more than fathers did. Fathers were more affected by concerns about the family's connection to the wider world such as economic issues and the social support network. Longitudinal studies of how social support and stigma affect families would be valuable.

Medical language processing applied to extract clinical information from Dutch medical documents.

In this paper, we want to show how an existing morpho-syntactic analyser for Dutch (Dutch Medical Language Processor--DMLP) has been extended in order to produce output that is compatible with the language independent modules of the LSP-MLP system (Linguistic String Project--Medical Language Processor) of the New York University. The former can focus on idiosyncrasies for Dutch and take advantage of the language independent developments of the latter. This general strategy will be illustrated by a practical application, namely the extraction of clinical information from Dutch patient discharge summaries. Such an application can be of use for education, research and quality control purposes in a hospital environment.

Medical language processing with SGML display.

The paper demonstrates several ways that medical language processing can be combined with emerging display technologies to facilitate the extraction of data from free-text patient documents. The techniques allow rapid review via highlighting of the results of processing. Coupling of text markup with further procedures is envisioned.

Medical language processing: applications to patient data representation and automatic encoding.

A linguistic approach is presented to develop a representation of patient data. Semantic categories developed for computer processing of narrative clinical reports are shown to be similar to the Medical Concepts used manually to extract data from narrative in Exercises of the Computer-based Patient Record Institute. Clinical statement types composed of these categories are used in the Linguistic String Project (LSP) medical language processing (MLP) system to convert narrative information into relational database tables of patient information. A procedure for mapping the output of the LSP MLP system into SNOMED International codes was developed. Preliminary results and further requirements are discussed.

Natural language processing and the representation of clinical data.

OBJECTIVE: Develop a representation of clinical observations and actions and a method of processing free-text patient documents to facilitate applications such as quality assurance. DESIGN: The Linguistic String Project (LSP) system of New York University utilizes syntactic analysis, augmented by a sublanguage grammar and an information structure that are specific to the clinical narrative, to map free-text documents into a database for querying. MEASUREMENTS: Information precision (I-P) and information recall (I-R) were measured for queries for the presence of 13 asthma-health-care quality assurance criteria in a database generated from 59 discharge letters. RESULTS: I-P, using counts of major errors only, was 95.7% for the 28-letter training set and 98.6% for the 31-letter test set. I-R, using counts of major omissions only, was 93.9% for the training set and 92.5% for the test set.

Automatic encoding into SNOMED III: a preliminary investigation.

The Linguistic String Project (LSP) medical language processing (MLP) system converts narrative clinical reports into database tables of patient data. A procedure for mapping the output of the LSP MLP system into SNOMED III codes was developed. Preliminary results and further requirements are discussed.

Natural language processing of asthma discharge summaries for the monitoring of patient care.

A technique for monitoring healthcare via the processing of routinely collected narrative documentation is presented. A checklist of important details of asthma management in use in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary (GRI) was translated into SQL queries and applied to a database of 59 GRI discharge summaries analyzed by the New York University Linguistic String Project medical language processor. Tables of retrieved information obtained for each query were compared with the text of the original documents by physician reviewers. Categories (unit = document) were: (1) information present, retrieved correctly; (2) information not present; (3) information present, retrieved with minor or major error; (4) information present, retrieved with minor or major omissions. Category 2 (physician "documentation score") could be used to prioritize manual review and guide feedback to physicians to improve documentation. The semantic structuring and relative completeness of retrieved data suggest their potential use as input to further quality assurance procedures.

The application of natural-language processing to healthcare quality assessment.

This paper describes the automatic extraction of information from hospital discharge letters. The computer analysis and extraction process, designed to eliminate much of the manual effort required to review patient documents, are presented.

TEXTINFO: a tool for automatic determination of patient clinical profiles using text analysis.

The clinical data contained in narrative patient documents is made available via grammatical and semantic processing. Retrievals from the resulting relational database tables are matched against a set of clinical descriptors to obtain clinical profiles of the patients in terms of the descriptors present in the documents. Discharge summaries of 57 Dept. of Digestive Surgery patients were processed in this manner. Factor analysis and discriminant analysis procedures were then applied, showing the profiles to be useful for diagnosis definitions (by establishing relations between diagnoses and clinical findings), for diagnosis assessment (by viewing the match between a definition and observed events recorded in a patient text), and potentially for outcome evaluation based on the classification abilities of clinical signs.