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BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is perceived differently by patients and physicians, complicating its assessment. Current recommendations advocate combining clinical and patient-reported outcomes measures, but this approach can be challenging in patient care. This multicenter European study aims to bridge the gap between patients' perceptions and neurological impairments by aligning both perspectives to improve treatment decision-making. METHODS: Data were pooled from two prospective studies of subjects (n = 372) with established CIPN. Patient and physician views regarding CIPN were assessed using the National Cancer Institute Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (NCI-CTCAE), Total Neuropathy Scale-clinical version (TNSc) items, and the disease-specific quality of life - Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy questionnaire (QLQ-CIPN20) from the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC). To identify inherent neurotoxic severity patterns, we employed hierarchical cluster analysis optimized with k-means clustering and internally validated by discriminant functional analysis. RESULTS: Both NCI-CTCAE and TNSc demonstrated a significant difference in the distribution of severity grades in relation to QLQ-CIPN20 scores. However, a proportion of subjects with different neurotoxic severity grades exhibited overlapping QLQ-CIPN20 scores. We identified three distinct clusters classifying subjects as having severely impaired, intermediately impaired, and mildly impaired CIPN based on TNSc and QLQ-CIPN20 scores. No differences in demographics, cancer type distribution, or class of drug received were observed. CONCLUSIONS: Our results confirm the heterogeneity in CIPN perception between patients and physicians and identify three well-differentiated subgroups of patients delineated by degree of CIPN impairment based on scores derived from TNSc and QLQ-CIPN20. A more refined assessment of CIPN could potentially be achieved using the calculator tool derived from the cluster equations in this study. This tool, which facilitates individual patient classification, requires prospective validation.
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Magnetoelectricity enables a solid-state material to generate electricity under magnetic fields. Most magnetoelectric composites are developed through a strain-mediated route by coupling piezoelectric and magnetostrictive phases. However, the limited availability of high-performance magnetostrictive components has become a constraint for the development of novel magnetoelectric materials. Here, we demonstrate that nanostructured composites of magnetic and pyroelectric materials can generate electrical output, a phenomenon we refer to as the magnetopyroelectric (MPE) effect, which is analogous to the magnetoelectric effect in strain-mediated composite multiferroics. Our composite consists of magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) dispersed in a ferroelectric (and also pyroelectric) poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE)) matrix. Under a high-frequency low-magnitude alternating magnetic field, the IONPs generate heat through hysteresis loss, which stimulates the depolarization process of the pyroelectric polymer. This magnetopyroelectric approach creates a new opportunity to develop magnetoelectric materials for a wide range of applications.
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The ability to produce high-entropy alloys with an amorphous structure, so-called high-entropy metallic glasses (HEMGs), offers the possibility to produce new compositions with good mechanical properties and resistance to corrosion. In this study, corrosion behavior was studied in two HEMGs, FeCoNiCrB and FeCoNiCr(BSi). In both cases, the total amount of metalloid atoms was kept constant at 20 at.%. The electrochemical behavior of these alloys was studied by means of linear polarization resistance (LPR) measurements and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy in a 3 wt.% NaCl solution. The effect of corrosion was characterized by using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and the surface morphology was checked using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results show that samples with B but without Si exhibit better corrosion resistance due to its chemical homogeneity and lack of structural heterogeneity.
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Random subdivisions in a D-dimensional Euclidean space are commonly observed in many scientific fields, such as metallurgy, geology, biology, and even, in the case of large D, in subjects related to information codification. This paper presents an analytical approximation of the size probability distribution in space subdivisions generated by random point processes, which include the well-known cases of the Poisson-Voronoi and the Johnson-Mehl cellular structures. Based on the calculations of Ann. Math. Stat. 33, 958 (1962)] and an assumption for the distribution shape, the cell size distributions are obtained in a general way for a very wide range of random space subdivisions.