Nanopatterning Induced Si Doping in Amorphous Ga2O3 for Enhanced Electrical Properties and Ultra-Fast Photodetection.

Ga2O3 has emerged as a promising material for the wide-bandgap industry aiming at devices beyond the limits of conventional silicon. Amorphous Ga2O3 is widely being used for flexible electronics, but suffers from very high resistivity. Conventional methods of doping like ion implantation require high temperatures post-processing, thereby limiting their use. Herein, an unconventional method of doping Ga2O3 films with Si, thereby enhancing its electrical properties, is reported. Ion-beam sputtering (500 eV Ar+) is utilized to nanopattern SiO2-coated Si substrate leaving the topmost part rich in elemental Si. This helps in enhancing the carrier conduction by increasing n-type doping of the subsequently coated 5 nm amorphous Ga2O3 films, corroborated by room-temperature resistivity measurement and valence band spectra, respectively, while the nanopatterns formed help in better light management. Finally, as proof of concept, metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) photoconductor devices fabricated on doped, rippled films show superior properties with responsivity increasing from 6 to 433 mA W-1 while having fast detection speeds of 861 µs/710 µs (rise/fall time) as opposed to non-rippled devices (377 ms/392 ms). The results demonstrate a facile, cost-effective, and large-area method to dope amorphous Ga2O3 films in a bottom-up approach which may be employed for increasing the electrical conductivity of other amorphous oxide semiconductors as well.

Impact of Obesity on Outcomes Associated With Acute Alcoholic Pancreatitis.

The incidence and prevalence of obesity have been rising in the United States, negatively impacting the population's overall health. This study seeks to better understand the impact of obesity on patients presenting with acute alcoholic pancreatitis (AAP). Data collected using the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) from the fourth quarter of 2015 to 2019 with a principal diagnosis of AAP and secondary obesity were analyzed. Confounders were adjusted for multivariate regression analysis using a multitude of factors. A total of 229,510 patients were identified with a diagnosis of AAP, among which 14,150 were also identified as obese. A majority of the sample, both obese and non-obese patients with AAP, were middle-aged white females. The average comorbidity index (CCI) was lower in the non-obese cohort compared to the obese cohort. Compared to non-obese patients, patients with AAP who were obese had higher hospital charges and a longer LOS (p<0.05. Additionally, compared to non-obese patients, obese patients with AAP had higher odds of mortality and adverse events, such as acute renal failure and respiratory failure (p<0.05). Current research supports these complications, which have shown an association with increased visceral fat in or around the pancreas that can ultimately worsen acute pancreatitis outcomes and aggravate AAP by damaging the intestinal mucosal barrier. These findings should be considered when treating obese patients who develop AAP. Strategies to increase surveillance of such patients should be implemented to reduce complications and mortality in this population.

Deep Earth Chronicles: High-Pressure Investigation of Phenakite Mineral Be2 SiO4.

Beryllium silicate, recognized as the mineral phenakite (Be2 SiO4 ), is a prevalent constituent in Earth's upper mantle. This study employs density-functional theory (DFT) calculations to explore the structural, mechanical, dynamical, thermodynamic, and electronic characteristics of this compound under both ambient and high-pressure conditions. Under ideal conditions, the DFT calculations align closely with experimental findings, confirming the mechanical and dynamical stability of the crystalline structure. Phenakite is characterized as an indirect band gap insulator, possessing an estimated band gap of 7.83 eV. Remarkably, oxygen states make a substantial contribution to both the upper limit of the valence band and the lower limit of the conduction band. We delved into the thermodynamic properties of the compound, including coefficients of thermal expansion, free energy, entropy, heat capacity, and the Gruneisen parameter across different temperatures. Our findings suggest that Be2 SiO4 displays an isotropic behavior based on estimated anisotropic factors. Interestingly, our investigation revealed that, under pressure, the compression of phenakite is not significantly affected by bond angle bending.

Monocular Painless Vision Loss in the Emergency Department: Multipurpose Utility of Point-of-Care Ultrasound.

BACKGROUND: Eye-related symptoms are a common presentation in the emergency department (ED). The cases range from simple viral conjunctivitis to trauma-related eye injuries. One pathological condition that could lead to vision loss is retinal artery occlusion (RAO). Evaluating a patient with an eye symptom requires thorough eye examination and advanced imaging in certain instances. Consultation with an ophthalmologist is also necessary for cases that require treatment recommendations and further testing. In the ED, point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is a commonly used diagnostic tool that can be used for ocular examination. CASE REPORT: We reported a case of a 60-year-old man who presented with painless partial right-eye vision loss. POCUS showed decreased flow in the right central retinal artery with an area of the pale retina seen on the image from the retinal camera, suggesting a possible branch RAO. Further examination with POCUS showed plaque formation at the carotid bifurcation, a potential cause of the patient's symptoms. WHY SHOULD AN EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN BE AWARE OF THIS?: Emergency physicians and other providers should be encouraged to use POCUS to diagnose eye symptoms accurately and promptly. Abnormal findings will prompt immediate specialty consult and early appropriate management. Our case and other reported cases highlight POCUS's reliability and rapid diagnostic ability.

IPSC-Derived Astrocytes to Model Neuroinflammatory and Metabolic Responses in X-linked Adrenoleukodystrophy.

X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (X-ALD) is an inherited metabolic disorder caused by pathogenic variants in the ABCD1 gene, leading to accumulation of saturated very long chain fatty acids (VLCFA) in body fluids and tissues including brain and spinal cord. In the absence of a clear genotype-phenotype correlation the molecular mechanisms of the fatal cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy (cALD) and the milder adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN) phenotypes remain unknown. Given our previous evidence of role of astrocytes in the neuroinflammatory response in X-ALD we investigated the metabolic and molecular profiles of astrocytes derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). The iPSCs were in turn generated from skin fibroblasts of healthy controls and patients with AMN or cALD. AMN and cALD astrocytes exhibited lack of ABCD1 and accumulation of VLCFA, a biochemical hallmark of X-ALD disease. Accumulation of VLCFA was significantly higher in cALD astrocytes. Mitochondrial function analysis by Seahorse extracellular flux identified increased oxygen consumption and extracellular acidification rates in cALD astrocytes, yet the ATP levels were decreased. Molecular signaling identified increased phosphorylation of STAT3 in cALD astrocytes, and higher proinflammatory cytokine and Toll like receptor (TLR) expression. CRISPR-Cas9 knock-in of functional ABCD1 gene expression differentially affected the expression of key molecular and metabolic targets in AMN and cALD astrocytes. AMN and cALD iPSC-derived astrocytes and their isogenic controls demonstrate differential aspects of X-ALD metabolic and inflammatory response to ABCD1 mutation and can be further utilized for exploring the contribution of iPSC-derived astrocytes to differential X-ALD disease pathology.

A Review on Diabetic Retinopathy.

Diabetic retinopathy is a well-recognised microvascular complication of diabetes and is among the leading cause of blindness all over the world. Over the last decade, there have been advances in the diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema. At the same time, newer therapies for the management of diabetic retinopathy have evolved. As a result of these advances, a decline in severe vision loss due to diabetes has been witnessed in some developing countries. However, there is a steady increase in the number of people affected with diabetes, and is expected to rise further in the coming years. Therefore, it is prudent to identify diabetic retinopathy, and timely intervention is needed to decrease the burden of severe vision loss. An effort has been made to review all the existing knowledge regarding diabetic retinopathy in this article and summarize the present treatment options for diabetic retinopathy.

Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Imeglimin: A New Ray of Hope for the Treatment of Type-2 Diabetes Mellitus.

Diabetes is a rapidly growing health challenge and epidemic in many developing countries, including India. India, being the diabetes capital of the world, has the dubious dual distinction of being the leading nations for both undernutrition and overnutrition. Diabetes prevalence has increased in both rural and urban areas, affected the younger population and increased the risk of complications and economic burden. These alarming statistics ring an alarm bell to achieve glycemic targets in the affected population in order to decrease diabetes-related morbidity and mortality. In the recent years, diabetes pathophysiology has been extended from an ominous triad through octet and dirty dozen etc. There is a new scope to target multiple pathways at the molecular level to achieve a better glycemic target and further prevent micro- and macrovascular complications. Mitochondrial dysfunction has a pivotal role in both ß-cell failure and insulin resistance. Hence, targeting this molecular pathway may help with both insulin secretion and peripheral tissue sensitization to insulin. Imeglimin is the latest addition to our anti-diabetic armamentarium. As imeglimin targets, this root cause of defective energy metabolism and insulin resistance makes it a new add-on therapy in different diabetic regimes to achieve the proper glycemic targets. Its good tolerability and efficacy profiles in recent studies shows a new ray of hope in the journey to curtail diabetes-related morbidity.

Comparative Analysis of Machine Learning Models for Image Detection of Colonic Polyps vs. Resected Polyps.

(1) Background: Colon polyps are common protrusions in the colon's lumen, with potential risks of developing colorectal cancer. Early detection and intervention of these polyps are vital for reducing colorectal cancer incidence and mortality rates. This research aims to evaluate and compare the performance of three machine learning image classification models' performance in detecting and classifying colon polyps. (2) Methods: The performance of three machine learning image classification models, Google Teachable Machine (GTM), Roboflow3 (RF3), and You Only Look Once version 8 (YOLOv8n), in the detection and classification of colon polyps was evaluated using the testing split for each model. The external validity of the test was analyzed using 90 images that were not used to test, train, or validate the model. The study used a dataset of colonoscopy images of normal colon, polyps, and resected polyps. The study assessed the models' ability to correctly classify the images into their respective classes using precision, recall, and F1 score generated from confusion matrix analysis and performance graphs. (3) Results: All three models successfully distinguished between normal colon, polyps, and resected polyps in colonoscopy images. GTM achieved the highest accuracies: 0.99, with consistent precision, recall, and F1 scores of 1.00 for the 'normal' class, 0.97-1.00 for 'polyps', and 0.97-1.00 for 'resected polyps'. While GTM exclusively classified images into these three categories, both YOLOv8n and RF3 were able to detect and specify the location of normal colonic tissue, polyps, and resected polyps, with YOLOv8n and RF3 achieving overall accuracies of 0.84 and 0.87, respectively. (4) Conclusions: Machine learning, particularly models like GTM, shows promising results in ensuring comprehensive detection of polyps during colonoscopies.

An early glycolysis burst in microglia regulates mitochondrial dysfunction in oligodendrocytes under neuroinflammation.

Metabolism and energy processes governing oligodendrocyte function during neuroinflammatory disease are of great interest. However, how varied cellular environments affect oligodendrocyte activity during neuroinflammation is unknown. We demonstrate that activated microglial energy metabolism controls oligodendrocyte mitochondrial respiration and activity. Lipopolysaccharide/interferon gamma promote glycolysis and decrease mitochondrial respiration and myelin protein synthesis in rat brain glial cells. Enriched microglia showed an early burst in glycolysis. In microglia-conditioned medium, oligodendrocytes did not respire and expressed less myelin. SCENITH revealed metabolic derangement in microglia and O4-positive oligodendrocytes in endotoxemia and experimental autoimmune encephalitogenic models. The early burst of glycolysis in microglia was mediated by PDPK1 and protein kinase B/AKT signaling. We found that microglia-produced NO and itaconate, a tricarboxylic acid bifurcated metabolite, reduced mitochondrial respiration in oligodendrocytes. During inflammation, we discovered a signaling pathway in microglia that could be used as a therapeutic target to restore mitochondrial function in oligodendrocytes and induce remyelination.

System-based integrated metabolomics and microRNA analysis identifies potential molecular alterations in human X-linked cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy brain.

X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy is a severe demyelinating neurodegenerative disease mainly affecting males. The severe cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy (cALD) phenotype has a poor prognosis and underlying mechanism of onset and progression of neuropathology remains poorly understood. In this study we aim to integrate metabolomic and microRNA (miRNA) datasets to identify variances associated with cALD. Postmortem brain tissue samples from five healthy controls (CTL) and five cALD patients were utilized in this study. White matter from ALD patients was obtained from normal-appearing areas, away from lesions (NLA) and from the periphery of lesions- plaque shadow (PLS). Metabolomics was performed by gas chromatography coupled with time-of-flight mass spectrometry and miRNA expression analysis was performed by next generation sequencing (RNAseq). Principal component analysis revealed that among the three sample groups (CTL, NLA and PLS) there were 19 miRNA, including several novel miRNA, of which 17 were increased with disease severity and 2 were decreased. Untargeted metabolomics revealed 13 metabolites with disease severity-related patterns with 7 increased and 6 decreased with disease severity. Ingenuity pathway analysis of differentially altered metabolites and miRNA comparing CTL with NLA and NLA with PLS, identified several hubs of metabolite and signaling molecules and their upstream regulation by miRNA. The transomic approach to map the crosstalk between miRNA and metabolomics suggests involvement of specific molecular and metabolic pathways in cALD and offers opportunity to understand the complex underlying mechanism of disease severity in cALD.

Band-Gap Energy and Electronic d-d Transitions of NiWO4 Studied under High-Pressure Conditions.

We report an extensive study of the optical and structural properties of NiWO4 combining experiments and density functional theory calculations. We have obtained accurate information on the pressure effect on the crystal structure determining the equation of state and compressibility tensor. We have also determined the pressure dependence of the band gap finding that it decreases under compression because of the contribution of Ni 3d states to the top of the valence band. We report on the sub-band-gap optical spectrum of NiWO4 showing that the five bands observed at 0.95, 1.48, 1.70, 2.40, and 2.70 eV correspond to crystal-field transitions within the 3d8 (t2g6eg2) configuration of Ni2+. Their assignment, which remained controversial until now, has been resolved mainly by their pressure shifts. In addition to the transition energies, their pressure derivatives are different in each band, allowing a clear band assignment. To conclude, we report resistivity and Hall-effect measurements showing that NiWO4 is a p-type semiconductor with a resistivity that decreases as pressure increases.

Goat Meat: Production and Quality Attributes.

Goat meat could be a sustainable source of red meat. Its farming requires minimal input, is suitable for free-range farming, and produces a healthier red meat option as it is lean. Although goat meat has advantages for meat production, it still needs to be established as a valuable part of the meat trade market. But, currently, goat meat production is less specialized; there is less intense breed selection for premium meat production, and often the animals are farmed with a multifunctional purpose, such as for their meat, fiber, and milk. The less structured goat meat industry contributes to the inconsistent quality of goat meat. This paper attempts to describe the characteristics of popular goat breeds and indigenous goats as a source of meat and the potential of various goat breeds for meat production. Additionally, this paper presents goat meat's quality and physicochemical and sensory attributes that are relevant to understanding the unique attributes of goat meat. Much work is needed for the goat meat processing industry to develop its potential.

High Protein Yangyu jiaotuan (): In Vitro Oral-Gastro-Small Intestinal Starch Digestion and Some Physico-Chemical, Textural, Microstructural, and Rheological Properties.

Biomimetic foods are expected to have potential health benefits for the management and prevention of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In the current research, two commercially available and affordable plant proteins (soy protein isolate-SPI and pea protein isolate-PPI) at two levels (5%, 10%) were added to the Yangyu jiaotuan with the objective of developing a product with reduced glycaemic properties and high protein content while maintaining its original taste and texture. The results showed that several important textural properties such as hardness and chewiness did not change significantly during the refrigerated storage. The storage modulus G' increased with refrigerated storage time for different samples, but there were significant differences among the five samples (with and without protein addition) with respect to frequency dependence during rheological measurements. The in vitro starch digestion experiments showed that the starch hydrolysis of Yangyu jiaotuan decreased considerably (by up to 42.08%) with the increase in PPI content and during refrigerated storage due to starch retrogradation. Protein has protected the microstructure and there was less damage when compared to samples without protein. The bimodal peaks of the particle size distribution curves showed that the newly developed Yangyu jiaotuan contains two different sizes of particles; the smaller particles (~30 µm) corresponded to PPI and starch granules, while the larger particles corresponded to the fragments of the gel network of the starch matrix. Based on the above results, Yangyu jiaotuan mixed with pea protein is a convenient potato staple food product, which complies with the biomimetic potato food very well.

Emergency department burr hole simulation using 3D-printed model.

BACKGROUND: Traumatic epidural hematoma (EDH) with the potential to displace the brain tissue and increase intracranial pressure (ICP), is a life-threatening condition that requires emergent intervention. In rare circumstances, Emergency Physician (EP) may have to do skull trephination to reduce the ICP as a temporary measure. SPECIFIC AIMS: To evaluate emergency medicine (EM) residents' comfort in performing emergency department (ED) burr holes and to assess their difficulties and evaluate comfort level before and after simulated EDH cases. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A 3D-printed skull, electrical and manual drills were used for the simulation. Subjective comfort level pre and post-procedure, as well as objective procedural skills and time to complete the drill, were recorded. RESULTS: Twenty EM residents participated in the simulation study. The median time to perforate through the skull was 4 s for the electric drill and 10 s for the manual drill. A comfort level of 5 and above was reported by 12 participants for the manual drill and by 17 participants for the electric drill. Six participants had mild and 2 participants had moderate observed difficulty in handling the manual and electric drill. Most participants performed both procedures successfully with one attempt only. Three participants have an overall comfort level above 5 before the simulation and 13 participants had overall comfort level above 5 post-simulation. CONCLUSION: The 3D-printed model assisted the ED burr hole simulation and the residents could perform the procedure with minimum difficulties.

Functional Food Based on Potato.

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) has gradually become a stable food worldwide since it can be a practical nutritional supplement and antioxidant as well as an energy provider for human beings. Financially and nutritionally, the cultivation and utility of potatoes is worthy of attention from the world. Exploring the functionality and maximizing the utilization of its component parts as well as developing new products based on the potato is still an ongoing issue. To maximize the benefits of potato and induce new high-value products while avoiding unfavorable properties of the crop has been a growing trend in food and medical areas. This review intends to summarize the factors that influence changes in the key functional components of potatoes and to discuss the focus of referenced literature which may require further research efforts. Next, it summarizes the application of the latest commercial products and potential value of components existing in potato. In particular, there are several main tasks for future potato research: preparing starchy foods for special groups of people and developing fiber-rich products to supply dietary fiber intake, manufacturing bio-friendly and specific design films/coatings in the packaging industry, extracting bioactive proteins and potato protease inhibitors with high biological activity, and continuing to build and examine the health benefits of new commercial products based on potato protein. Notably, preservation methods play a key role in the phytochemical content left in foods, and potato performs superiorly to many common vegetables when meeting the demands of daily mineral intake and alleviating mineral deficiencies.

High-Precision Trace Hydrogen Sensing by Multipass Raman Scattering.

Despite its growing importance in the energy generation and storage industry, the detection of hydrogen in trace concentrations remains challenging, as established optical absorption methods are ineffective in probing homonuclear diatomics. Besides indirect detection approaches using, e.g., chemically sensitized microdevices, Raman scattering has shown promise as an alternative direct method of unambiguous hydrogen chemical fingerprinting. We investigated the suitability of feedback-assisted multipass spontaneous Raman scattering for this task and examined the precision with which hydrogen can be sensed at concentrations below 2 parts per million. A limit of detection of 60, 30, and 20 parts per billion was obtained at a pressure of 0.2 MPa in a 10-min-long, 120-min-long, and 720-min-long measurement, respectively, with the lowest concentration probed being 75 parts per billion. Various methods of signal extraction were compared, including asymmetric multi-peak fitting, which allowed the resolution of concentration steps of 50 parts per billion, determining the ambient air hydrogen concentration with an uncertainty level of 20 parts per billion.

Review on kidney diseases: types, treatment and potential of stem cell therapy.

Renal disorders are an emerging global public health issue with a higher growth rate despite progress in supportive therapies. In order to find more promising treatments to stimulate renal repair, stem cell-based technology has been proposed as a potentially therapeutic option. The self-renewal and proliferative nature of stem cells raised the hope to fight against various diseases. Similarly, it opens a new path for the treatment and repair of damaged renal cells. This review focuses on the types of renal diseases; acute and chronic kidney disease-their statistical data, and the conventional drugs used for treatment. It includes the possible stem cell therapy mechanisms involved and outcomes recorded so far, the limitations of using these regenerative medicines, and the progressive improvement in stem cell therapy by adopting approaches like PiggyBac, Sleeping Beauty, and the Sendai virus. Specifically, about the paracrine activities of amniotic fluid stem cells, renal stem cells, embryonic stem cells, mesenchymal stem cell, induced pluripotent stem cells as well as other stem cells.

Assessment of hypogonadism and its determinants among adult men with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The impact of utilizing both symptoms as well as biochemically confirmed androgen deficiency in diagnosis of hypogonadism among type 2 diabetic men is relatively less studied. Furthermore, various determinants of hypogonadism in these men especially the role of insulin resistance and hypogonadism were studied. METHODS: This is a cross sectional study of 353 T2DM men aged 20-70 years of age. Hypogonadism was defined by taking both symptoms as well as calculated testosterone levels. Symptoms were defined using androgen deficiency in ageing male (ADAM) criteria. Various metabolic and clinical parameters were assessed and evaluated with regards to presence or absence of hypogonadism. RESULTS: Among 353 patients, 60 had both symptoms as well as biochemical evidence of hypogonadism. Assessment of calculated free testosterone but not total testosterone identified all such patients. Body mass index, HbA1c, fasting triglyceride level and HOMA IR inversely correlated with calculated free testosterone. We found that insulin resistance (HOMA IR) was independently associated with hypogonadism (odds ratio=1.108). CONCLUSION: Assessment of both symptoms of hypogonadism and calculated free testosterone represents a better way for correct identification of hypogonadal diabetic men. Insulin resistance has a strong association with hypogonadism independent of obesity and complication status of diabetes.

Physico-chemical and Textural Properties of 3D Printed Plant-based and Hybrid Soft Meat Analogs.

This study investigated the physico-chemical and textural properties of 3D-printed pea protein-only and pea protein-chicken-based hybrid meat analogs. Both pea protein isolate (PPI)-only and hybrid cooked meat analogs had a similar moisture content of approximately 70%, which was similar to that of chicken mince. However, the protein content increased significantly with the amount of chicken in the hybrid paste undergoing 3D printing and cooking. Significant differences were observed in the hardness values of the non-printed cooked pastes and the 3D printed cooked counterparts, suggesting that the 3D printing process reduces the hardness of the samples and is a suitable method to produce a soft meal, and has significant potential in elderly health care. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed that adding chicken to the plant protein matrix led to better fiber formation. PPI itself was not able to form any fibers merely by 3D printing and cooking in boiling water. Protein-protein interactions were also studied through the protein solubility test, which indicated that hydrogen bonding was the major bonding that contributed to the structure formation in cooked printed meat analogs. In addition, disulfide bonding was correlated with improved fibrous structures, as observed through SEM.

A novel ground truth dataset enables robust 3D nuclear instance segmentation in early mouse embryos.

For investigations into fate specification and cell rearrangements in live images of preimplantation embryos, automated and accurate 3D instance segmentation of nuclei is invaluable; however, the performance of segmentation methods is limited by the images' low signal-to-noise ratio and high voxel anisotropy and the nuclei's dense packing and variable shapes. Supervised machine learning approaches have the potential to radically improve segmentation accuracy but are hampered by a lack of fully annotated 3D data. In this work, we first establish a novel mouse line expressing near-infrared nuclear reporter H2B-miRFP720. H2B-miRFP720 is the longest wavelength nuclear reporter in mice and can be imaged simultaneously with other reporters with minimal overlap. We then generate a dataset, which we call BlastoSPIM, of 3D microscopy images of H2B-miRFP720-expressing embryos with ground truth for nuclear instance segmentation. Using BlastoSPIM, we benchmark the performance of five convolutional neural networks and identify Stardist-3D as the most accurate instance segmentation method across preimplantation development. Stardist-3D, trained on BlastoSPIM, performs robustly up to the end of preimplantation development (> 100 nuclei) and enables studies of fate patterning in the late blastocyst. We, then, demonstrate BlastoSPIM's usefulness as pre-train data for related problems. BlastoSPIM and its corresponding Stardist-3D models are available at: blastospim.flatironinstitute.org.