Frequently during its lifetime a human organism is subjected to the acoustical and similar to them vibrating impacts. Under the certain conditions such influence may cause physiological changes in the organs functioning. Thus the study of the oscillatory mechanical impacts to the organism is very important task of the numerical physiology. It allows to investigate the endurance limits of the organism and to develop protective measures in order to extend them. The noise nuisances affects to the most parts of the organism disrupting their functions. The vibrating disturbances caused to the lung function as one of the most sensitive to the acoustical impacts is considered in this work. The model proposed to describe the air motion in trachea-bronchial tree is based on the one dimensional no-linear theory including mass and momentum conservation for the air flow in flexible tubes.
The goal of immunotherapy is to enhance the ability of the immune system to kill cancer cells. Immunotherapy is more effective and, in general, the prognosis is better, when more immune cells infiltrate the tumor. We explore the question of whether the spatial distribution rather than just the density of immune cells in the tumor is important in forecasting whether cancer recurs. After reviewing previous work on this issue, we introduce a novel application of maximum entropy to quantify the spatial distribution of discrete point-like objects. We apply our approach to B and T cells in images of tumor tissue taken from triple negative breast cancer (TBNC) patients. We find that there is a distinct difference in the spatial distribution of immune cells between good clinical outcome (no recurrence of cancer within at least 5 years of diagnosis) and poor clinical outcome (recurrence within 3 years of diagnosis). Our results highlight the importance of spatial distribution of immune cells within tumors with regard to clinical outcome, and raise new questions on their role in cancer recurrence.
The human heart is enclosed in the pericardial cavity. The pericardium consists of a layered thin sac and is separated from the myocardium by a thin film of fluid. It provides a fixture in space and frictionless sliding of the myocardium. The influence of the pericardium is essential for predictive mechanical simulations of the heart. However, there is no consensus on physiologically correct and computationally tractable pericardial boundary conditions. Here we propose to model the pericardial influence as a parallel spring and dashpot acting in normal direction to the epicardium. Using a four-chamber geometry, we compare a model with pericardial boundary conditions to a model with fixated apex. The influence of pericardial stiffness is demonstrated in a parametric study. Comparing simulation results to measurements from cine magnetic resonance imaging reveals that adding pericardial boundary conditions yields a better approximation with respect to atrioventricular plane displacement, atrial filling, and overall spatial approximation error. We demonstrate that this simple model of pericardial-myocardial interaction can correctly predict the pumping mechanisms of the heart as previously assessed in clinical studies. Utilizing a pericardial model can not only provide much more realistic cardiac mechanics simulations but also allows new insights into pericardial-myocardial interaction which cannot be assessed in clinical measurements yet.
Despite the spectacular achievements of molecular biology in the second half of the twentieth century and the crucial advances it permitted in cancer research, the fight against cancer has brought some disillusions. It is nowadays more and more apparent that getting a global picture of the very diverse and interlinked aspects of cancer development necessitates, in synergy with these achievements, other perspectives and investigating tools. In this undertaking, multidisciplinary approaches that include quantitative sciences in general and physics in particular play a crucial role. This `focus on collection contains 19 articles representative of the diversity and state-of-the-art of the contributions that physics can bring to the field of cancer research.
The hearts, kidneys, livers, spleens and brains of ${}^57$Fe enriched wild-type and heterozygous $beta$-thalassaemic mice at 1, 3, 6 and 9 months of age were studied by means of Mossbauer Spectroscopy at 80K. Ferritin-like iron depositions in the heart and the brain of the thalassaemic mice were found to be slightly increased while significant amounts of Ferritin-like iron were found in the kidneys, liver and spleen. The ferritin-like iron doublet, found in the organs, could be further separated into two sub-doublets representing the inner and surface structures of ferritin mineral core. Surface iron sites were found to be predominant in the hearts and brains of all mice and in the kidneys of the wild-type animals. Ferritin rich in inner iron sites was predominant in the kidneys of the thalassaemic mice, as well as in the livers and in the spleens. The inner-to-surface iron sites ratio was elevated in all thalassaemic samples indicating that besides ferritin amount, the disease can also affect ferritin mineral core structure.
Blood system functions are very diverse and important for most processes in human organism. One of its primary functions is matter transport among different parts of the organism including tissue supplying with oxygen, carbon dioxide excretion, drug propagation etc. Forecasting of these processes under normal conditions and in the presence of different pathologies like atherosclerosis, loss of blood, anatomical abnormalities, pathological changing in chemical transformations and others is significant issue for many physiologists. In this connection should be pointed out that global processes are of special interest as they include feedbacks and interdependences among different regions of the organism. Thus the main goal of this work is to develop the model allowing to describe effectively blood flow in the whole organism. As we interested in global processes the models of the four vascular trees (arterial and venous parts of systemic and pulmonary circulation) must be closed with heart and peripheral circulation models. As one of the model applications the processes of the blood loss is considered in the end of the paper.