Efficacy of blood urea nitrogen-to-albumin ratio for predicting prognostic outcomes of inpatients with COVID-19: A meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: The associations between blood urea nitrogen (BUN)/albumin ratio and poor prognosis in patients with diagnosis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) remain to be clarified. METHODS: A search based on 4 electronic databases (i.e., EMBASE, Google scholar, MEDLINE, and Cochrane Library) was performed on June 23, 2022. The association of BUN/Albumin ratio with poor prognostic outcomes, defined as patients with mortality/severe illnesses, were analyzed. RESULTS: Results from analysis of 7 cohort studies (3600 individuals with COVID-19) published between 2020 and 2022 showed a higher BUN/Albumin ratio in the poor-prognosis group (Mean difference:  = 2.838, 95% confidence interval: 2.015-3.66, P < .001, I2 = 92.5%) than the good-prognosis group. Additional investigation into the connection between BUN/Albumin ratio as a binary variable (i.e., high or low) and the risk of poor outcome also supported an association between a higher BUN/Albumin ratio and a poor prognostic risk (odd ratio = 3.009, 95% confidence interval: 1.565-5.783, P = .001, I2 = 93.7%, 5 studies). Merged analysis of poor prognosis produced a sensitivity of 0.76, specificity of 0.72, and area under curve of 0.81. CONCLUSION: This meta-analysis demonstrated a positive correlation between BUN/albumin ratio and poor outcome in patients with COVID-19. Additional large-scale prospective studies are needed to verify our findings.

An integrated, cross-regulation pathway model involving activating/adaptive and feed-forward/feed-back loops for directed oscillatory cAMP signal-relay/response during the development of Dictyostelium.

Self-organized and excitable signaling activities play important roles in a wide range of cellular functions in eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. Cells require signaling networks to communicate amongst themselves, but also for response to environmental cues. Such signals involve complex spatial and temporal loops that may propagate as oscillations or waves. When Dictyostelium become starved for nutrients, cells within a localized space begin to secrete cAMP. Starved cells also become chemotactic to cAMP. cAMP signals propagate as outwardly moving waves that oscillate at ∼6 min intervals, which creates a focused territorial region for centralized cell aggregation. Proximal cells move inwardly toward the cAMP source and relay cAMP outwardly to recruit additional cells. To ensure directed inward movement and outward cAMP relay, cells go through adapted and de-adapted states for both cAMP synthesis/degradation and for directional cell movement. Although many immediate components that regulate cAMP signaling (including receptors, G proteins, an adenylyl cyclase, phosphodiesterases, and protein kinases) are known, others are only inferred. Here, using biochemical experiments coupled with gene inactivation studies, we model an integrated large, multi-component kinetic pathway involving activation, inactivation (adaptation), re-activation (re-sensitization), feed-forward, and feed-back controls to generate developmental cAMP oscillations.

Multipeak Coercive Electric-Field-Based Multilevel Cell Nonvolatile Memory With Antiferroelectric-Ferroelectric Field-Effect Transistors (FETs).

An ultralow program/erase voltage ( |VP/E| = 4 V) is demonstrated by using an antiferroelectric-ferroelectric field-effect transistor (AFE-FE-FET) through a multipeak coercive E -field ( EC ) concept for a four-level stable state with outstanding endurance (>105 cycles) and data retention (>104 s at 65 °C). The mixture of ferroelectric (FE) and AFE domains can provide stable multistate and data storage with zero bias for multilevel cell (MLC) applications. HfZrO2 (HZO) with AFE-FE assembles an orthorhombic/tetragonal (o/t) phase composition and is achieved by [Zr] modulation in an HZO system. MLC characteristics not only improve high-density nonvolatile memory (NVM) but are also beneficial to neuromorphic device applications.

A Smart Home Energy Management System Using Two-Stage Non-Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring over Fog-Cloud Analytics Based on Tridium's Niagara Framework for Residential Demand-Side Management.

Electricity is a vital resource for various human activities, supporting customers' lifestyles in today's modern technologically driven society. Effective demand-side management (DSM) can alleviate ever-increasing electricity demands that arise from customers in downstream sectors of a smart grid. Compared with the traditional means of energy management systems, non-intrusive appliance load monitoring (NIALM) monitors relevant electrical appliances in a non-intrusive manner. Fog (edge) computing addresses the need to capture, process and analyze data generated and gathered by Internet of Things (IoT) end devices, and is an advanced IoT paradigm for applications in which resources, such as computing capability, of a central data center acted as cloud computing are placed at the edge of the network. The literature leaves NIALM developed over fog-cloud computing and conducted as part of a home energy management system (HEMS). In this study, a Smart HEMS prototype based on Tridium's Niagara Framework® has been established over fog (edge)-cloud computing, where NIALM as an IoT application in energy management has also been investigated in the framework. The SHEMS prototype established over fog-cloud computing in this study utilizes an artificial neural network-based NIALM approach to non-intrusively monitor relevant electrical appliances without an intrusive deployment of plug-load power meters (smart plugs), where a two-stage NIALM approach is completed. The core entity of the SHEMS prototype is based on a compact, cognitive, embedded IoT controller that connects IoT end devices, such as sensors and meters, and serves as a gateway in a smart house/smart building for residential DSM. As demonstrated and reported in this study, the established SHEMS prototype using the investigated two-stage NIALM approach is feasible and usable.

A two-pore channel protein required for regulating mTORC1 activity on starvation.

BACKGROUND: Two-pore channels (TPCs) release Ca2+ from acidic intracellular stores and are implicated in a number of diseases, but their role in development is unclear. The social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum proliferates as single cells that aggregate to form a multicellular organism on starvation. Starvation is sensed by the mTORC1 complex which, like TPC proteins, is found on acidic vesicles. Here, we address the role of TPCs in development and under starvation. RESULTS: We report that disruption of the gene encoding the single Dictyostelium TPC protein, TPC2, leads to a delay in early development and prolonged growth in culture with delayed expression of early developmental genes, although a rapid starvation-induced increase in autophagy is still apparent. Ca2+ signals induced by extracellular cAMP are delayed in developing tpc2- cells, and aggregation shows increased sensitivity to weak bases, consistent with reduced acidity of the vesicles. In mammalian cells, the mTORC1 protein kinase has been proposed to suppress TPC channel opening. Here, we show a reciprocal effect as tpc2- cells show an increased level of phosphorylation of an mTORC1 substrate, 4E-BP1. mTORC1 inhibition reverses the prolonged growth and increases the efficiency of aggregation of tpc2- cells. CONCLUSION: TPC2 is required for efficient growth development transition in Dictyostelium and acts through modulation of mTORC1 activity revealing a novel mode of regulation.

Black phosphorus loaded with zinc ions for enhanced photothermal therapy of prostate cancer / 药学学报

Prostate cancer is the most common malignant tumor of male reproductive system, which seriously threatens men's health. It has been shown that the existence of zinc ions can inhibit the growth of prostate cancer cells. In addition, photothermal treatment of cancer is attracting more and more attention due to its high accuracy and efficiency. In this study, zinc ions loaded black phosphorus nanosheets (BP-Zn) were prepared, and the photothermal therapy efficiency of the system on human prostate cancer cells (PC-3) was evaluated. The inhibition effect of zinc ions on PC-3 cells was studied. It was demonstrated that the toxicity of zinc ions on PC-3 cells was concentration- and time-dependent. Moreover, it can be seen from in vitro photothermal therapy that the treatment effect of black phosphorus assisted by zinc ions is superior to that of black phosphorus alone. This study further studied the in vivo therapeutic effect of BP-Zn. The results once again confirmed that the combinational photothermal treatment of zinc ions and BP had excellent anti-tumor effect. The animal procedures were approved by the Animal Ethics Committee of Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School.

DPF is a cell-density sensing factor, with cell-autonomous and non-autonomous functions during Dictyostelium growth and development.

BACKGROUND: Cellular functions can be regulated by cell-cell interactions that are influenced by extra-cellular, density-dependent signaling factors. Dictyostelium grow as individual cells in nutrient-rich sources, but, as nutrients become depleted, they initiate a multi-cell developmental program that is dependent upon a cell-density threshold. We hypothesized that novel secreted proteins may serve as density-sensing factors to promote multi-cell developmental fate decisions at a specific cell-density threshold, and use Dictyostelium in the identification of such a factor. RESULTS: We show that multi-cell developmental aggregation in Dictyostelium is lost upon minimal (2-fold) reduction in local cell density. Remarkably, developmental aggregation response at non-permissive cell densities is rescued by addition of conditioned media from high-density, developmentally competent cells. Using rescued aggregation of low-density cells as an assay, we purified a single, 150-kDa extra-cellular protein with density aggregation activity. MS/MS peptide sequence analysis identified the gene sequence, and cells that overexpress the full-length protein accumulate higher levels of a development promoting factor (DPF) activity than parental cells, allowing cells to aggregate at lower cell densities; cells deficient for this DPF gene lack density-dependent developmental aggregation activity and require higher cell density for cell aggregation compared to WT. Density aggregation activity co-purifies with tagged versions of DPF and tag-affinity-purified DPF possesses density aggregation activity. In mixed development with WT, cells that overexpress DPF preferentially localize at centers for multi-cell aggregation and define cell-fate choice during cytodifferentiation. Finally, we show that DPF is synthesized as a larger precursor, single-pass transmembrane protein, with the p150 fragment released by proteolytic cleavage and ectodomain shedding. The TM/cytoplasmic domain of DPF possesses cell-autonomous activity for cell-substratum adhesion and for cellular growth. CONCLUSIONS: We have purified a novel secreted protein, DPF, that acts as a density-sensing factor for development and functions to define local collective thresholds for Dictyostelium development and to facilitate cell-cell communication and multi-cell formation. Regions of high DPF expression are enriched at centers for cell-cell signal-response, multi-cell formation, and cell-fate determination. Additionally, DPF has separate cell-autonomous functions for regulation of cellular adhesion and growth.