Fully bio-based epoxy resins from lignin and epoxidized soybean oil: Rigid-flexible, tunable properties and high lignin content.

The application of epoxidized soybean oil (ESO) in thermosetting polymers is impeded by its unsatisfactory thermomechanical properties. Here, in order to address the limitation, technical lignin was modified by tung oil anhydride and then used as the hardener to compensate for the inherent flexibility defects of ESO thermosets (TLs). As the lignin content increased, a notable improvement in the activation energy of TLs was observed, attributed to the restraining effect of lignin's rigid structure on segmental relaxation. Concurrently, the tensile strength of TLs increased from 2.8 MPa to 34.0 MPa, concomitant with a decrease in elongation at break from 32.9 % to 8.0 %. Comparative analysis with TL-0 (devoid of lignin) demonstrated substantial enhancements in glass transition temperature, shape fixation ratio, and shape recovery ratio for TL-50 (comprising 50 wt% of lignin), elevating from 16.9 °C, 89.1 %, and 89.5 % to 118.6 °C, 94.0 %, and 99.3 %, respectively. These results unequivocally highlight the favorable dynamic mechanical and shape memory properties conferred upon TLs by lignin addition. While the introduction of lignin adversely affected thermal stability, a notable improvement in char yield (800 °C) was observed. Collectively, these findings underscore the potential of technical lignin as a promising bio-based curing agent for ESO.

Applications-oriented algicidal efficacy research and in-depth mechanism of a novel strain Brevibacillus sp. on Microcystis aeruginosa.

The utilization of algicidal bacteria for the control of harmful algal blooms (HABs) is a promising technology for ecological remediation. In our most recent publication, a novel strain of Brevibacillus sp. was isolated and proved to have significant algicidal activity and stability against Microcystis aeruginosa. In order to verify the algicidal effect of the strain in the practical application scenario, the algicidal efficacy of Brevibacillus sp. under conditions close to water in the environment was investigated. Results indicated that the algicidal threshold of Brevibacillus sp. culture was 3‰ inoculation concentration, and the removal rate of M. aeruginosa reached 100%. The process of Chl-a degradation followed a first-order kinetic model, which could be used to predict the degradation effect of M. aeruginosa in practical applications. Additionally, the inoculation of Brevibacillus sp. culture introduced additional nutrients, some of which remained in the water. Furthermore, the algicidal substances demonstrated good sustainability, with a removal rate of up to 78.53% at 144 h after three repeated uses. At 12 h, the algicidal substances caused a 78.65% increase in malondialdehyde (MDA) content in M. aeruginosa compared to the control group, thereby triggering the antioxidant system of M. aeruginosa. Moreover, algal cell fragments were observed to aggregate. This study provides a promising direction for treating cyanobacterial blooms using algicidal bacteria in practical applications.

Post COVID-19 pulmonary complications in outpatient setting: Insights from a cross-sectional study in a rural academic hospital.

OBJECTIVE: Post COVID-19 disease pulmonary complications are generally expected among the hospitalized or elderly patients with multiple comorbidities given the gravity of the disease among such patients. However, non-hospitalized patients with less severe symptoms from COVID-19 disease have also been experiencing significant morbidity and difficulty functioning their activities of daily living. Therefore, we aim to characterize post COVID-19 pulmonary complications (symptomatology, clinical and radiological findings) in patients who did not require hospitalization but had significant outpatient visits secondary to COVID-19 sequelae. METHODS: This is a two part cross-sectional study based on a retrospective chart review. Patients with COVID-19 disease not requiring hospitalization but followed up at pulmonology clinic with respiratory symptoms were analyzed twice in an interval of 12 months. 23 patients in first cross-section group (followed up from December 2019 to June 2021) and 53 patients in second group (followed up from June 2021 to July 2022) were included in the analyses. Differences in mean and percentage of baseline characteristics and clinical outcomes between the two groups are analyzed using unpaired t-tests and Chi-squared tests respectively. Post COVID-19 disease symptoms are classified in to 3 different groups (mild, moderate and severe) based on duration of symptoms and presence or absence of hypoxia. RESULTS: Dyspnea on exertion (DOE) was the common compliant in majority of patients in both cross-section groups (43.5% vs 56.6%). Mean age in years were 33 and 50 in first and second cross-section groups respectively. Majority of the patients had mild and moderate symptoms in both groups (43.5% vs 9.4%, P = 0.0007; 43.5% vs 83%, P = 0.005). Mean duration of symptoms in first cross-section group was 3.8 whereas 10.5 months (P = 0.0001) in second cross-section group. CONCLUSION: Our study outlines the burden of post COVID-19 disease pulmonary complications in patient group where these complications are less expected. Strategies for the implementation of multidisciplinary post COVID-19 care clinic along with mass vaccination awareness campaigns in rural US should be prioritized to mitigate this existing burden.

Cutting Edge: Negative Regulation of Inflammasome Activation by TRAF1 Can Limit Gout.

Secretion of IL-1ß, a potent cytokine that plays a key role in gout pathogenesis, is regulated by inflammasomes. TRAF1 has been linked to heightened risk to inflammatory arthritis. In this article, we show that TRAF1 negatively regulates inflammasome activation to limit caspase-1 and IL-1ß secretion in human and mouse macrophages. TRAF1 reduces linear ubiquitination and subsequent oligomerization of the adapter protein, ASC. i.p. injection of monosodium urate crystals resulted in increased inflammatory cell infiltrates and IL-1ß production in Traf1 knockout mice compared with wild type littermates. In a model of monosodium urate crystal-induced gout, Traf1 knockout mice exhibited more swelling in the knee joints, increased infiltration of inflammatory cells, and higher expression of proinflammatory cytokines. In summary, this study identifies TRAF1 as a key regulator of IL-1ß production and a potential therapeutic target for inflammasome-driven diseases such as gout.

Physical activity phenotypes and mortality in older adults: a novel distributional data analysis of accelerometry in the NHANES.

Physical activity is deemed critical to successful ageing. Despite evidence and progress, there is still a need to determine more precisely the direction, magnitude, intensity, and volume of physical activity that should be performed on a daily basis to effectively promote the health of individuals. This study aimed to assess the clinical validity of new physical activity phenotypes derived from a novel distributional functional analysis of accelerometer data in older adults. A random sample of participants aged between 65 and 80 years with valid accelerometer data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2011-2014 was used. Five major clinical phenotypes were identified, which provided a greater sensitivity for predicting 5-year mortality and survival outcomes than age alone, and our results confirm the importance of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. The new clinical physical activity phenotypes are a promising tool for improving patient prognosis and for directing to more targeted intervention planning, according to the principles of precision medicine. The use of distributional representations shows clear advantages over more traditional metrics to explore the effects of the full spectrum of the physical activity continuum on human health.

Comparative genomics and evolutionary analysis of plant CNGCs.

Comparative genomics and computational biology offer powerful research tools for studying evolutionary mechanisms of organisms, and the identification and characterization of conserved/distant genes and gene families. The plant CNGC gene family encodes evolutionary conserved ion channel proteins involved in important signaling pathways and biological functions. The fundamental ideas and standard procedures for genome-wide identification and evolutionary analysis of plant cyclic nucleotide-gated ion channels employing various software, tools, and online servers have been discussed. In particular, this developed method focused on practical procedures involving the comparative analysis of paralogs and orthologs of CNGC genes in different plant species at different levels including phylogenetic analysis, nomenclature and classification, gene structure, molecular protein evolution, and duplication events as mechanisms of gene family expansion and synteny.

A Principal Neighborhood Aggregation-Based Graph Convolutional Network for Pneumonia Detection.

Pneumonia is one of the main causes of child mortality in the world and has been reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be the cause of one-third of child deaths in India. Designing an automated classification system to detect pneumonia has become a worthwhile research topic. Numerous deep learning models have attempted to detect pneumonia by applying convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to X-ray radiographs, as they are essentially images and have achieved great performances. However, they failed to capture higher-order feature information of all objects based on the X-ray images because the topology of the X-ray images' dimensions does not always come with some spatially regular locality properties, which makes defining a spatial kernel filter in X-ray images non-trivial. This paper proposes a principal neighborhood aggregation-based graph convolutional network (PNA-GCN) for pneumonia detection. In PNA-GCN, we propose a new graph-based feature construction utilizing the transfer learning technique to extract features and then construct the graph from images. Then, we propose a graph convolutional network with principal neighborhood aggregation. We integrate multiple aggregation functions in a single layer with degree-scalers to capture more effective information in a single layer to exploit the underlying properties of the graph structure. The experimental results show that PNA-GCN can perform best in the pneumonia detection task on a real-world dataset against the state-of-the-art baseline methods.

Detection of ASC Oligomerization by Western Blotting.

Apoptosis-associated speck-like protein containing a caspase-recruitment domain (ASC) is an adaptor protein that is essential for the activation of several inflammasome complexes. Activation of inflammasomes leads to pathogenic clearance and inflammatory cell death called pyroptosis. Upon inflammasome activation, ASC oligomerization leads to the recruitment and activation of caspase-1, which in turn converts pro-inflammatory cytokines (e.g., pro-IL-1ß, pro-IL-18) to their mature active form. Given its central role in inflammasome activation, ASC oligomerization is used as an indicator of inflammasome activation. Here we describe how ASC oligomerization can be detected by Western blotting.

Fast Support Vector Classification for Large-Scale Problems.

The support vector machine (SVM) is a very important machine learning algorithm with state-of-the-art performance on many classification problems. However, on large datasets it is very slow and requires much memory. To solve this defficiency, we propose the fast support vector classifier (FSVC) that includes: 1) an efficient closed-form training free of any numerical iterative procedure; 2) a small collection of class prototypes that avoids to store in memory an excessive number of support vectors; and 3) a fast method that selects the spread of the radial basis function kernel directly from data, without classifier execution nor iterative hyper-parameter tuning. The memory requirements of FSVC are very low, spending in average only 6 ·10-7 sec. per pattern, input and class, and processing datasets up to 31 millions of patterns, 30,000 inputs and 131 classes in less than 1.5 hours (less than 3 hours with only 2GB of RAM). In average, the FSVC is 10 times faster, requires 12 times less memory and achieves 4.7 percent more performance than Liblinear, that fails on the 4 largest datasets by lack of memory, being 100 times faster and achieving only 6.7 percent less performance than Libsvm. The time spent by FSVC only depends on the dataset size and thus it can be accurately estimated for new datasets, while Libsvm or Liblinear are much slower on "difficult" datasets, even if they are small. The FSVC adjusts its requirements to the available memory, classifying large datasets in computers with limited memory. Code for the proposed algorithm in the Octave scientific programming language is provided.1.

BrCNGC gene family in field mustard: genome-wide identification, characterization, comparative synteny, evolution and expression profiling.

CNGCs are ligand-gated calcium signaling channels, which participate in important biological processes in eukaryotes. However, the CNGC gene family is not well-investigated in Brassica rapa L. (i.e., field mustard) that is economically important and evolutionary model crop. In this study, we systematically identified 29 member genes in BrCNGC gene family, and studied their physico-chemical properties. The BrCNGC family was classified into four major and two sub phylogenetic groups. These genes were randomly localized on nine chromosomes, and dispersed into three sub-genomes of B. rapa L. Both whole-genome triplication and gene duplication (i.e., segmental/tandem) events participated in the expansion of the BrCNGC family. Using in-silico bioinformatics approaches, we determined the gene structures, conserved motif compositions, protein interaction networks, and revealed that most BrCNGCs can be regulated by phosphorylation and microRNAs of diverse functionality. The differential expression patterns of BrCNGC genes in different plant tissues, and in response to different biotic, abiotic and hormonal stress types, suggest their strong role in plant growth, development and stress tolerance. Notably, BrCNGC-9, 27, 18 and 11 exhibited highest responses in terms of fold-changes against club-root pathogen Plasmodiophora brassicae, Pseudomonas syringae pv. maculicola, methyl-jasmonate, and trace elements. These results provide foundation for the selection of candidate BrCNGC genes for future breeding of field mustard.

Advancing African Medicines Agency through Global Health Diplomacy for an Equitable Pan-African Universal Health Coverage: A Scoping Review.

The African continent is home to 15% of the world's population and suffers from a disease burden of more than 25% globally. In this COVID-19 era, the high burden and mortality are further worsened due to inequities, inequalities such as inadequate health systems, scarce financial and human resources, as well as unavailability of inexpensive medicines of good quality, safety, and efficacy. The Universal Health Coverage ensures that people have access to high-quality essential health services, secure, reliable, and affordable essential medicines and vaccines, as well as financial security. This paper aimed at addressing the critical need for a continental African Medicines Agency (AMA) in addressing the inequities and the role of global health diplomacy in building consensus to support the ratification of the Treaty of AMA. A literature review was done in Scopus, Web of Science, MEDLINE/PubMed, and Google Scholar search engine to identify the critical literature in the context of study objectives. All the articles published after 2015 till 2021 in the context of AMA were included. African Health Strategy 2016-2030 highlighted the importance of an African regulatory mechanism for medicines and medical products. Through global health diplomacy (GHD), the African Union and its partners can negotiate and cooperate in providing infrastructural, administrative, and regulatory support for establishing the AMA. The paper emphasizes the South-South cooperation and highlights the contributions of India and China in the supply of medicines and vaccines to Africa. A strong AMA created through GHD can be a vital instrument in utilizing Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) flexibilities extension and an ideal partner for European and other regional regulatory authorities seeking to stem the tide of counterfeit, sub-standard, or fake products.

Bronchial Thermoplasty in Patients with Severe Persistent Asthma: A Literature Review.

The literature review aimed to see the safety and efficacy of bronchial thermoplasty in patients with severe asthma. We searched the online database, PUBMED, using bronchial thermoplasty and asthma as the key words and including trials from 2007 to 2021. Our review found that bronchial thermoplasty reduces asthma-related hospitalizations, emergency room visits and asthma exacerbations with sustained benefits for 5-10 years. This came at the expense of increased asthma-related adverse events, most commonly during the 7 days immediately after the procedure. Adverse events from 6 weeks after procedure to up to 5 years were similar between the bronchial thermoplasty group and the medication-only group. Bronchial thermoplasty is a safe and efficacious treatment modality for patients with severe asthma.

Solitary Fibrous Tumors of the Pleura.

Solitary fibrous tumors of the pleura (SFTP) are rare neoplasms. We present a case of a 53-year-old female presenting to the pulmonary clinic after an incidental finding of a right-sided chest wall tumor on a chest X-ray. A CT scan of the chest showed a pleural-based right upper lung mass; a biopsy of the mass was consistent with a solitary fibrous tumor.

Impact of Tibial Tubercle Osteotomy on Final Outcome in Revision Total Knee Arthroplasty: Our Experience and Technique in Pakistan.

BACKGROUD: Due to extensive fibrosis during revision surgery, adequate exposure is essential and it can be achieved with several extensile approach options, such as tibial tubercle osteotomy. Information regarding surgical exposure during revision arthroplasty is limited in developing countries, such as Pakistan, due to the lack of adequate data collection and follow-up. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of tibial tubercle osteotomy on final outcome of revision total knee arthroplasty (TKA). METHODS: A total of 231 revision TKAs were performed between January 2008 and December 2017. Twenty-nine patients underwent tibial tubercle osteotomy for adequate exposure during revision surgery. Of these, 27 patients with complete follow-up were included in our study. Factors examined include age at the time of revision surgery, gender, comorbidities, arthroplasty site (right or left), body mass index (BMI), and primary indications for the tibial tubercle osteotomy during revision TKA. Functional outcome was measured by using Knee Society score (KSS) at 3 months and the final follow-up. All statistical analysis was done using SPSS version 20.0 with a p-value < 0.05 considered significant. RESULTS: Out of 27 patients, 6 patients (22.2%) were men and 21 patients (77.7%) were women. Right knee revision arthroplasty was performed in 15 patients (55.5%), left knee revision arthroplasty was performed in 12 patients (44.4%), and bilateral revision surgery was performed in only 1 patient (3.7%). The mean BMI was 29.2 kg/m2. We used a constrained condylar knee in 20 patients (74%), a rotating hinge knee in 5 patients (18.5%), and mobile bearing tray plus metaphyseal sleeves in 2 patients (7.4%). The KSS was 52.21 ± 4.05 preoperatively, and 79.42 ± 2.2 and 80.12 ± 1.33 at 3 months and 12 months, respectively. Radiological union was achieved in all patients at 3 months. Of 27 patients, only 1 patient (3.7%) had proximal migration of the osteotomy site at 6 months: the patient was asymptomatic and union was also achieved and, therefore, no surgical intervention was performed. CONCLUSIONS: Tibial tubercle osteotomy during revision TKA can be a safe and reliable technique with superior outcomes and minimal complication rates.

A Rare Case of Hypoparathyroidism and Myxedema Coma in a Patient With Diamond-Blackfan Anemia.

Diamond-Blackfan anemia (DBA) is a rare genetic condition that presents due to bone marrow failure caused by a dysfunction in ribosomal biogenesis and function. The patients would often require chronic transfusions as treatment, which puts them at high risk for the development of secondary hemochromatosis. This secondary hemochromatosis results in endocrinopathies due to iron deposition into the endocrine glands. We present an interesting case report of a female patient with multiple endocrinopathies due to secondary hemochromatosis resulting from chronic transfusion therapy. Her endocrinopathies included hypothyroidism complicated by myxedema coma and, interestingly, hypoparathyroidism, which has seldom been reported in DBA patients. Early diagnosis and precise treatment of life-threatening conditions like myxedema coma in DBA patients can avoid morbidity and mortality.

Innate immunity drives pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease affecting ∼1% of the general population. This disease is characterized by persistent articular inflammation and joint damage driven by the proliferating synovial tissue fibroblasts as well as neutrophil, monocyte and lymphocyte trafficking into the synovium. The factors leading to RA pathogenesis remain poorly elucidated although genetic and environmental factors have been proposed to be the main contributors to RA. The majority of the early studies focused on the role of lymphocytes and adaptive immune responses in RA. However, in the past two decades, emerging studies showed that the innate immune system plays a critical role in the onset and progression of RA pathogenesis. Various innate immune cells including monocytes, macrophages and dendritic cells are involved in inflammatory responses seen in RA patients as well as in driving the activation of the adaptive immune system, which plays a major role in the later stages of the disease. Here we focus the discussion on the role of different innate immune cells and components in initiation and progression of RA. New therapeutic approaches targeting different inflammatory pathways and innate immune cells will be highlighted here. Recent emergence and the significant roles of innate lymphoid cells and inflammasomes will be also discussed.

Impact of Tibial Tubercle Osteotomy on Final Outcome in Revision Total Knee Arthroplasty:Our Experience and Technique in Pakistan

Background@#Due to extensive fibrosis during revision surgery, adequate exposure is essential and it can be achieved with several extensile approach options, such as tibial tubercle osteotomy. Information regarding surgical exposure during revision arthroplasty is limited in developing countries, such as Pakistan, due to the lack of adequate data collection and follow-up. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of tibial tubercle osteotomy on final outcome of revision total knee arthroplasty (TKA). @*Methods@#A total of 231 revision TKAs were performed between January 2008 and December 2017. Twenty-nine patients underwent tibial tubercle osteotomy for adequate exposure during revision surgery. Of these, 27 patients with complete follow-up were included in our study. Factors examined include age at the time of revision surgery, gender, comorbidities, arthroplasty site (right or left), body mass index (BMI), and primary indications for the tibial tubercle osteotomy during revision TKA. Functional outcome was measured by using Knee Society score (KSS) at 3 months and the final follow-up. All statistical analysis was done using SPSS version 20.0 with a p-value < 0.05 considered significant. @*Results@#Out of 27 patients, 6 patients (22.2%) were men and 21 patients (77.7%) were women. Right knee revision arthroplasty was performed in 15 patients (55.5%), left knee revision arthroplasty was performed in 12 patients (44.4%), and bilateral revision surgery was performed in only 1 patient (3.7%). The mean BMI was 29.2 kg/m 2 . We used a constrained condylar knee in 20 patients (74%), a rotating hinge knee in 5 patients (18.5%), and mobile bearing tray plus metaphyseal sleeves in 2 patients (7.4%).The KSS was 52.21 ± 4.05 preoperatively, and 79.42 ± 2.2 and 80.12 ± 1.33 at 3 months and 12 months, respectively. Radiological union was achieved in all patients at 3 months. Of 27 patients, only 1 patient (3.7%) had proximal migration of the osteotomy site at 6 months: the patient was asymptomatic and union was also achieved and, therefore, no surgical intervention was performed. @*Conclusions@#Tibial tubercle osteotomy during revision TKA can be a safe and reliable technique with superior outcomes and minimal complication rates.

Diffusion and spillover effects of an evidence-based mental health intervention among peers and caregivers of high risk youth in Sierra Leone: study protocol.

BACKGROUND: Evidence-based mental health interventions have helped address health services gaps, but their reach and societal benefit can be limited in low resource settings. The current study extends an ongoing scale-up study of a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based intervention, the Youth Readiness Intervention (YRI), among high risk youth in post-conflict Sierra Leone to investigate mechanisms of diffusion and spillover effects of the YRI among peers and caregivers of youth who receive the intervention. METHODS: We will recruit and enroll YRI index participants and control index participants (ages 18-30). Index participants will complete a standardized ego-network survey to nominate three peers in their social networks and identify their primary cohabitating caregiver. Identified peers and caregivers who consent to participate will complete a quantitative assessment battery on mental health outcomes, emotion regulation, and daily functioning at baseline and 8-month follow-up. Study outcomes also incorporate common indicators for implementation science, including measures of project context, evaluation, and scaleup. Social network analysis will investigate diffusion of YRI components across peer networks. Linear growth modeling will examine mental health spillover effects among caregivers. Incremental health costs and benefits among YRI participants' caregivers and peers will be assessed through cost-effectiveness and return on investment analysis. DISCUSSION: Assessing implementation research outcomes, including penetration of YRI effects across social networks and cost-effectiveness of the YRI as distinct outcomes, will provide key information about the success of YRI implementation. Lessons learned could inform decisions to increase scale up efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa and other low resource settings.