Using infographics in disseminating healthy lifestyle information on social media is likely to increase uptake and sharing.

BACKGROUND: Infographics facilitate rapid information dissemination with enriched eye-catching content on social media, but it is unclear what factors affect the adoption of information presented in this way. OBJECTIVES: We tested whether the Information Acceptance Model applies to infographics on healthy lifestyle and fitness topics. METHODS: Two hundred and four university students were invited to participate in an online survey on their acceptance after reading some healthy lifestyle and fitness topics infographics shared on social media. The data collected were analysed using Partial Least Square path modelling. RESULTS: The results confirmed information usefulness as a predictor of information adoption; attitude towards information and information adoption were the predictors of behavioural intention. Information credibility and attitude towards information, but not information quality and needs, were significantly related to information usefulness. Social media usage and education level were factors affecting infographics impressions. DISCUSSION: Results support most hypotheses. It confirms information usefulness as a predictor of infographics adoption. Attitudes towards information and information adoption are predictors of behavioural intentions of following healthy lifestyle and fitness suggestions through social media infographics. CONCLUSION: Social media facilitates interpersonal communication, information exchange and knowledge sharing, and infographics may draw people into healthy lifestyle and fitness information items relevant to them.

Social media aids for business learning: A quantitative evaluation with the 5E instructional model.

Social media use is widely accepted in higher education, connecting students' learning with daily life. Considering the potential of social media to revolutionize the whole spectrum of teaching and learning, this study examines social media usage of business school students of different majors and their perception of social media as learning aids through a quantitative online survey guided by the 5E instructional model, with 423 valid responses from students majoring in accounting, finance, and economics. Results indicated that respondents perceived social media as influential in helping them access study-related information. It facilitated comprehensive learning, information access, information sharing, and student communication with instructors. Significant differences in perceptions of using social media as aids for business learning were found among students of different demographics, including gender, education level, and residence, but not quite for different majors. While various studies have examined the use of social media in education, scant studies focus on business school students under the lens of the 5E instructional model, especially Asians.

Effectiveness of overnight learning commons: A comparative study.

This study explores the overnight usage of Chi Wah Learning Commons and The University of Hong Kong Libraries on the same campus. By adopting quantitative research, it investigates students' preferences in these areas and levels of social capital in the library, further, it explores the similarities and differences of user behavior between the university's undergraduate and postgraduate students. Our findings showed that HKUL had not taken full advantage of its prime location and comprehensive collection in the main library, and the full potential of overnight services. The results of this study contribute to the library management in understanding the changing needs of users and propose the potential enhancements on social capital among students and the community.

Stopping healthcare misinformation: The effect of financial incentives and legislation.

Fake news and misinformation have become a major social issue. And yet, many researchers concern primarily about political misinformation, leaving healthcare misinformation less emphasized. Nevertheless, healthcare misinformation may create consequences such as delayed diagnosis or treatment of patients or even public health crisis. We conducted an online experiment to test the role of financial incentives and legislation on disseminating online healthcare misinformation. Our findings revealed that financial incentives have a positive but diminishing impact on the likelihood of sharing online healthcare information regardless of validity. However, financial incentives have a stronger impact on attracting readers to share healthcare misinformation that they perceived to be fake. Surprisingly, legislation may deter the sharing of healthcare information that users perceive to be true but cannot deter them from sharing the healthcare misinformation they perceive to be fake. We also provided some practical implications for formulating measures of battling against healthcare misinformation for policymakers.

Glycosylation in Cervical Cancer: New Insights and Clinical Implications.

Cervical cancer has become the most frequent female malignancy and presents as a general health challenge in many countries undergoing economic development. Various human papillomaviruses (HPV) types have appeared as one of the most critically identifiable causes of widespread cervical cancers. Conventional cervical cytological inspection has limitations of variable sensitivity according to cervical cytology. Glycobiology has been fundamental in related exploration in various gynecologic and reproductive fields and has contributed to our understanding of cervical cancer. It is associated with altered expression of N-linked glycan as well as abnormal expression of terminal glycan structures. The analytical approaches available to determine serum and tissue glycosylation, as well as potential underlying molecular mechanisms involved in the cellular glycosylation alterations, are monitored. Moreover, cellular glycosylation influences various aspects of cervical cancer biology, ranging from cell surface expressions, cell-cell adhesion, cancer signaling, cancer diagnosis, and management. In general, discoveries in glycan profiling make it technically reproducible and affordable to perform serum glycoproteomic analyses and build on previous work exploring an expanded variety of glycosylation markers in the majority of cervical cancer patients.

Exosome-mediated effects and applications in inflammatory bowel disease.

Gut mucosal barriers, including chemical and physical barriers, spatially separate the gut microbiota from the host immune system to prevent unwanted immune responses that could lead to intestinal inflammation. In inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), there is mucosal barrier dysfunction coupled with immune dysregulation and dysbiosis. The discovery of exosomes as regulators of vital functions in both physiological and pathological processes has generated much research interest. Interestingly, exosomes not only serve as natural nanocarriers for the delivery of functional RNAs, proteins, and synthetic drugs or molecules, but also show potential for clinical applications in tissue repair and regeneration as well as disease diagnosis and prognosis. Biological or chemical modification of exosomes can broaden, change and enhance their therapeutic capability. We review the modulatory effects of exosomal proteins, RNAs and lipids on IBD components such as immune cells, the gut microbiota and the intestinal mucosal barrier. Mechanisms involved in regulating these factors towards attenuating IBD have been explored in several studies employing exosomes derived from different sources. We discuss the potential utility of exosomes as diagnostic markers and drug delivery systems, as well as the application of modified exosomes in IBD.

HucMSC-exosomes carrying miR-326 inhibit neddylation to relieve inflammatory bowel disease in mice.

BACKGROUND: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a group of chronic intestinal inflammation that is a risk factor for many gastrointestinal cancers. Exosomes are gradually gaining attention as an emerging treatment method for IBD due to their important biological characteristics. NF-κB is an important pro-inflammatory transcription factor kept inactive by IκB protein in the cytoplasm by masking the nuclear localization signal of NF-κB. The deterioration of IκB is mainly ubiquitination, and this depends on neddylation. METHODS: In this study, we established a dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced IBD model in BABL/C mice to evaluate the effect of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cell-derived exosomes (hucMSC-exosomes, hucMSC-Ex) on the repair of IBD. At the same time, human colorectal mucosa cells (FHC) were stimulated by LPS (lipopolysaccharide) in vitro to activate the inflammatory environment to study the mechanism of hucMSC-Ex regulating neddylation. The microRNA (miRNA) obtained by sequencing and transfection with hucMSC-Ex was used to verify the role of miR-326/neddylation/IκB/NF-κB signaling pathway in IBD repair. RESULTS: HucMSC-Ex inhibited the process of neddylation in relieving DSS-induced IBD in mice. The binding of NEDD8 (neural precursor cell-expressed, developmentally downregulated gene 8) to cullin 1 and the activation of NF-κB signaling pathway were suppressed along with reduced expression levels of neddylation-related enzyme molecules. The same phenomenon was observed in FHC cells. The miRNA comparison results showed that miR-326 was highly expressed in hucMSC-Ex and played an important role in inhibiting the neddylation process. The therapeutic effect of hucMSC-Ex with high expression of miR-326 on IBD mice was significantly stronger than that of ordinary hucMSC-Ex. CONCLUSIONS: HucMSC-Ex relieves DSS-induced IBD in a mouse model by inhibiting neddylation through miR-326.

Multiple transmission optimization of medical images in recourse-constraint mobile telemedicine systems.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: In the state-of-the-art image transmission methods, multiple large medical images are usually transmitted one by one which is very inefficient. The objective of our study is to devise an effective and efficient multiple transmission optimization scheme for medical images called Mto via analyzing the visual content of the multiple images based on the characteristics of a recourse-constraint mobile telemedicine system (MTS) and the medical images; METHODS: To better facilitate the efficient Mto processing, two enabling techniques, i.e., 1) NIB grouping scheme, and 2) adaptive RIB replicas selection are developed. Given a set of transmission images (Ω), the correlation of these transmission images is first explored, the pixel resolutions of the corresponding MIBs keep high, the NIBs are grouped into k clusters based on the visual similarity in which the k RIBs are obtained. An optimal pixel resolution for the RIBs is derived based on the current network bandwidth and their corresponding areas, etc. Then, the candidate MIBs and the k RIBs are transmitted to the receiver node based on their transmission priorities. Finally, the IBs are reconstructed and displayed at the receiver node level for different users. RESULTS: The experimental results show that our approach is about 45% more efficient than the state-of-the-art methods, significantly minimizing the response time by decreasing the network communication cost while improving the transmission throughput; CONCLUSIONS: Our proposed Mto method can be seamlessly applied in a recourse-constraint MTS environment in which the high transmission efficiency and the acceptable image quality can be guaranteed.

Alerts in mobile healthcare applications: requirements and pilot study.

Recent advances in mobile technologies have greatly extended traditional communication technologies to mobile devices. At the same time, healthcare environments are by nature "mobile" where doctors and nurses do not have fixed workspaces. Irregular and exceptional events are generated in daily hospital routines, such as operations rescheduling, laboratory/examination results, and adverse drug events. These events may create requests that should be delivered to the appropriate person at the appropriate time. Those requests that are classified as urgent are referred to as alerts. Efficient routing and monitoring of alerts are keys to quality and cost-effective healthcare services. Presently, these are generally handled in an ad hoc manner. In this paper, we propose the use of a healthcare alert management system to handle these alert messages systematically. We develop a model for specifying alerts that are associated with medical tasks and a set of parameters for their routing. We design an alert monitor that matches medical staff and their mobile devices to receive alerts, based on the requirements of these alerts. We also propose a mechanism to handle and reroute, if necessary, an alert message when it has not been acknowledged within a specific deadline.

Microbial analysis of soil and groundwater from a gasworks site and comparison with a sequenced biological reactive barrier remediation process.

AIMS: To investigate the distribution of a polymicrobial community of biodegradative bacteria in (i) soil and groundwater at a former manufactured gas plant (FMGP) site and (ii) in a novel SEquential REactive BARrier (SEREBAR) bioremediation process designed to bioremediate the contaminated groundwater. METHODS AND RESULTS: Culture-dependent and culture-independent analyses using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for the detection of 16S ribosomal RNA gene and naphthalene dioxygenase (NDO) genes of free-living (planktonic groundwater) and attached (soil biofilm) samples from across the site and from the SEREBAR process was applied. Naphthalene arising from groundwater was effectively degraded early in the process and the microbiological analysis indicated a dominant role for Pseudomonas and Comamonas in its degradation. The microbial communities appeared highly complex and diverse across both the sites and in the SEREBAR process. An increased population of naphthalene degraders was associated with naphthalene removal. CONCLUSION: The distribution of micro-organisms in general and naphthalene degraders across the site was highly heterogeneous. Comparisons made between areas contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and those not contaminated, revealed differences in the microbial community profile. The likelihood of noncultured bacteria being dominant in mediating naphthalene removal was evident. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: This work further emphasizes the importance of both traditional and molecular-based tools in determining the microbial ecology of contaminated sites and highlights the role of noncultured bacteria in the process.