Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
WWOM VII: Immunobiologics for Salivary Gland Disease in Sjögren’s Syndrome: A Systematic Review

Objective. — This systematic review evaluated the efficacy of immunobiologics for management of oral disease in Sjögren’s syndrome. Library were searched for evidence on the use of immunobiologics for management of glandular disease in Sjögren’s syndrome. Primary outcomes were xerostomia and salivary gland dysfunction, assessed via visual analogue scales, disease-specific scales for Sjögren’s syndrome, measurement of salivary flow, ultrasound data, and quality of life measures. Results. — Seventeen studies (11 randomized controlled trials and 6 observational studies) met inclusion criteria. Rituximab showed efficacy in improving salivary gland function but not xerostomia. Abatacept showed promise in improving both xerostomia and salivary flow. Belimumab exhibited long term improvement of salivary flow and subjective measures. The novel agent CFZ533 improved both disease activity and patient-reported indexes. Conclusions. — There is strong evidence pointing to the efficacy of rituximab in the management of oral disease in Sjögren’s syndrome. Future controlled trials may elucidate the efficacy of belimumab and abatacept. The new drug CFZ533 is a promising alternative for the management of Sjögren’s syndrome and its salivary gland involvement. In considering these agents, the promise of efficacy must be balanced against the harmful effects associated with biologic agents.
Low‐latitude Pi2 oscillations observed by polar Low Earth Orbiting satellite

Low‐latitude Pi2 pulsations in the topside ionosphere are investigated using vector magnetic field measurements from LEO satellite, CHAMP, and underneath ground station. Substorm‐associated Pi2s are initially identified using high‐resolution data from Indian station Shillong, during 2007–2009, and are further classified into three subgroups of Pi2 band (6–25 mHz), based on its frequency. During nighttime, coherent in‐phase oscillations are observed in the compressional component at satellite and horizontal component at underneath ground station for all the Pi2 events, irrespective of the Pi2 frequency. We observe that the identification of daytime Pi2s at CHAMP (compressional component) depends on the frequency of Pi2 oscillation; i.e., 40%, 45%, and 100% of Pi2 events observed in dayside ground station with frequency between 6–10 mHz, 10–15 mHz, and 15–25 mHz were identified at satellite, respectively. At CHAMP during daytime, the presence of a dominant power in the lower frequencies of Pi2 band, which is unique to satellite, is consistently observed and can modify the Pi2 oscillations. Pi2s having frequency >15 mHz are less affected by these background frequencies, and a clear signature of daytime Pi2s at CHAMP is possible to observe, provided that contribution from non‐Pi2 frequencies at satellite from the lower end of Pi2 band is eliminated. Daytime Pi2s identified in the topside ionosphere showed coherent but mostly opposite phase oscillations with underneath ground station, and satellite‐to‐ground amplitude ratio is, in general, found to be less than 1. Present results indicate that a combination of fast cavity‐mode oscillations and an instantaneous transmission of Pi2 electric field from high‐ to low‐latitude ionosphere is responsible for the observation of daytime Pi2s.
Galectin-3, a potential predictor and contributor of placenta accreta spectrum pathogenesis by inducing local vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 expression: A longitudinal study

Background: Galectin-3 (Gal-3) is a unique glycoprotein expressed in different tissues with several biological functions. Vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) is a cell adhesion molecule, expressed from vascular endothelium, and is implicated in the process of tissue angiogenesis. Both Gal-3 and VCAM-1 are expressed normally in placental tissue to achieve successful trophoblastic invasion. Placenta accreta spectrum (PAS) is a serious pregnancy-related complication, with a progressively rising incidence worldwide. Massive trophoblastic invasion is a major contributor to its pathogenesis, and its diagnosis prenatally depends solely on Doppler ultrasonography. Aim: This study aimed to investigate the possible predictive value of serum Gal-3 in the occurrence of PAS and to highlight the potential involvement of Gal-3, macrophage recruitment, and VCAM-1 in its pathogenesis. Methods: This longitudinal study included 62 pregnant women; divided into group N, comprising31 pregnant women with normal placenta, and group P, comprising 31 pregnant women with PAS. Results: placental Gal-3 increased from 2.597 ± 0.061 to 4.392 ± 0.181 ng/mg protein, placental VCAM-1 increased from 2.901 ± 0.096 to 41.911 ± 1.885 ng/mg protein, and placental macrophage count increased from 2.323 ± 0.106 to 11.174 ± 0.643 /10 HPF. Serum Gal-3 had a significant predictive value for PA with a cutoff value ≥ 8.012 ng/ml. Conclusion: The overexpression of placental Gal-3 and VCAM-1 can be regarded as important key players in the pathogenesis of PAS. Remarkably, the detection of high serum levels of Gal-3 as early as the second trimester can predict the occurrence of PAS .
Single-molecule experiments in biological physics: methods and applications

I review single-molecule experiments (SMEs) in biological physics. Recent technological developments have provided the tools to design and build scientific instruments of high enough sensitivity and precision to manipulate and visualize individual molecules and measure microscopic forces. Using SMEs it is possible to manipulate molecules one at a time and measure distributions describing molecular properties, characterize the kinetics of biomolecular reactions and detect molecular intermediates. SMEs provide additional information about thermodynamics and kinetics of biomolecular processes. This complements information obtained in traditional bulk assays. In SMEs it is also possible to measure small energies and detect large Brownian deviations in biomolecular reactions, thereby offering new methods and systems to scrutinize the basic foundations of statistical mechanics. This review is written at a very introductory level, emphasizing the importance of SMEs to scientists interested in knowing the common playground of ideas and the interdisciplinary topics accessible by these techniques. The review discusses SMEs from an experimental perspective, first exposing the most common experimental methodologies and later presenting various molecular systems where such techniques have been applied. I briefly discuss experimental techniques such as atomic-force microscopy (AFM), laser optical tweezers (LOTs), magnetic tweezers (MTs), biomembrane force probes (BFPs) and single-molecule fluorescence (SMF). I then present several applications of SME to the study of nucleic acids (DNA, RNA and DNA condensation) and proteins (protein–protein interactions, protein folding and molecular motors). Finally, I discuss applications of SMEs to the study of the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of small systems and the experimental verification of fluctuation theorems. I conclude with a discussion of open questions and future perspectives.
Surgical Management of Bronchiectasis: Analysis of 277 Patients

Laennec first reported in 1819 on pathological changes in the lungs in the form of irreversible dilation of the bronchi due to pulmonary infections, and used the word “bronchiectasis” [1]. Nowadays, the incidence and severity of bronchiectasis has been significantly reduced by the widespread use of antibiotics and vaccination, although it remains a health problem in developing countries because of the higher rate of infections such as tuberculosis, pertussis and rubeola [2]. Bronchiectasis is often managed medically, but surgery is the treatment of choice in cases with severe and uncontrolled symptoms and localized disease, and offers good outcomes with minimal mortality and morbidity rates [3]. The purpose of this study was to assess the surgical treatment outcomes of 277 patients with bronchiectasis.
Physically based modelling of sediment generation and transport under a large rainfall simulator

A series of large rainfall simulator experiments was conducted in 2002 and 2003 on a small plot located in an experimental catchment in the North Island of New Zealand. These experiments measured both runoff and sediment transport under carefully controlled conditions. A physically based hydrological modelling system (SHETRAN) was then applied to reproduce the observed hydrographs and sedigraphs. SHETRAN uses physically based equations to represent flow and sediment transport, and two erodibility coefficients to model detachment of soil particles by raindrop erosion and overland flow erosion. The rate of raindrop erosion also depended on the amount of bare ground under the simulator; this was estimated before each experiment. These erodibility coefficients were calibrated systematically for summer and winter experiments separately, and lower values were obtained for the summer experiments. Earlier studies using small rainfall simulators in the vicinity of the plot also found the soil to be less erodible in summer and autumn. Limited validation of model parameters was carried out using results from a series of autumn experiments. The modelled suspended sediment load was also sensitive to parameters controlling the generation of runoff from the rainfall simulator plot; therefore, we found that accurate runoff predictions were important for the sediment predictions, especially from the experiments where the pasture cover was good and overland flow erosion was the dominant mechanism. The rainfall simulator experiments showed that the mass of suspended sediment increased post‐grazing, and according to the model this was due to raindrop detachment. The results indicated that grazing cattle or sheep on steeply sloping hill‐country paddocks should be carefully managed, especially in winter, to limit the transport of suspended sediment into watercourses. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Gut Microbiota and Bariatric Surgery

The gut microbiota comprise all the living organisms in our intestine. Microbiota has key roles in metabolic homeostasis, digestion and nutrient metabolism protection against pathogens or modulation of the immune system. Advances in techniques such as metagenomics or metabolomics have expanded our knowledge of the intestinal ecosystem. Beyond genetic, behavioral, or environmental factors, alterations of gut microbiota parameters such as composition, diversity, or metabolites including shortchain fatty acids, have shown to be associated with cardiovascular comorbidities. In this chapter, we described the role of the gut microbiota in obesity and type 2 diabetes pathophysiology, and the changes it undergoes during bariatric surgery, as well as explored the possibilities of modifying the microbiome to obtain potential clinical benefits.
Teleconnection of OLR and SST anomalies over Atlantic Ocean with Indian summer monsoon

The present study discusses the teleconnection between outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) and sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies over North Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall (ISMR). It has been found that OLR and SST anomalies over North Atlantic Ocean during the month of May, which are the manifestations of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), show statistically significant correlations with ISMR. The index of area averaged OLR anomaly over North Atlantic Ocean has a correlation of −0.82 with ISMR for the period 1979–2000. These relationships are found to be stronger and stable during the recent years. Possible physical mechanisms of this teleconnection have also been discussed.
Proactive Service Migration for Long-Running Byzantine Fault Tolerant Systems

In this paper, we describe a novel proactive recovery scheme based on service migration for long-running Byzantine fault tolerant systems. Proactive recovery is an essential method for ensuring long term reliability of fault tolerant systems that are under continuous threats from malicious adversaries. The primary benefit of our proactive recovery scheme is a reduced vulnerability window. This is achieved by removing the time-consuming reboot step from the critical path of proactive recovery. Our migration-based proactive recovery is coordinated among the replicas, therefore, it can automatically adjust to different system loads and avoid the problem of excessive concurrent proactive recoveries that may occur in previous work with fixed watchdog timeouts. Moreover, the fast proactive recovery also significantly improves the system availability in the presence of faults.
Suitability of CICE Sea Ice Model for Seasonal Prediction and Positive Impact of CryoSat-2 Ice Thickness Initialization

The Los Alamos sea ice model (CICE) is being tested in standalone mode to identify biases that limit its suitability for seasonal prediction, where CICE is driven by atmospheric forcings from the NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) and a built-in mixed layer ocean model in CICE. The initial conditions for the sea ice and mixed layer ocean are also from CFSR in the control experiments. The simulated sea ice extent agrees well with observations during the warm season at all 5 lead times up to 12 months, in both the Arctic and Antarctic. This suggests that CICE is able to provide useful sea ice edge information for seasonal prediction. However, the model’s Arctic sea ice thickness forecast has a positive bias that originates from the initial conditions. This bias often persists for more than a season, which limits the model’s seasonal forecast skill. To address this limitation, additional CS2_IC experiments were conducted, where the Arctic ice thickness was initialized using CryoSat-2 satellite observations while keeping all other initial fields the same as in the control experiments. This reduced the 10 positive bias in the ice thickness in the initial conditions, leading to improvements in both the simulated ice edge and thickness at the seasonal time scale. This study highlights that the suitability of CICE for seasonal prediction depends on various factors, including initial conditions such as sea ice thickness, oceanic and atmospheric conditions in addition to sea ice coverage. By reducing the bias in the initial ice thickness, CICE has the potential to improve its seasonal forecast skill and provide more accurate predictions of sea ice extent and thickness.
A European pharmacotherapeutic agent Roflumilast exploring integrated preclinical and clinical evidences for SARS CoV-2 mediated inflammation to organ damage

COVID-19 has spread globally, affecting almost 160 million individuals. Elderly and pre-existing patients (such as diabetes, heart disease and asthma), seems more susceptible to serious illness with COVID-19. Roflumilast was licensed for usage in the European Union in July 2010 as a phosphodiesterase-4 (PDE4) inhibitor. Roflumilast has been shown to decrease bleomycin-induced lung fibrosis, lung hydroxyproline, right heart thickning in animal prophylactic. The current study reviewed existing data that the PDE-4 inhibitor protects not just renal tissues but also other major organ systems after COVID-19 infection by decreasing immune cell infiltration. These immune-balancing effects of roflumilast were related with a decrease in oxidative and inflammatory burden, caspase-3 suppression, and increased PKA/cAMP levels in renal and other organ tissue.
Late Mesozoic tectonic transition of the eastern North China Craton: evidence from basin-fill records

Abstract To better understand Mesozoic tectonic transition processes in Eastern China, this paper offers a comparison of Mesozoic basin-fill records around the eastern North China Craton. These Mesozoic basins have similar evolutionary features: inception since the Early Jurassic; basin-fills recording a tectonic evolution from compression and lithospheric thickening before Late Jurassic and/or Early Cretaceous time to intracontinental stretching and lithospheric thinning from Early Cretaceous time; tectonic transition during the late Jurassic with a time lag in shallow crust relative to deep lithosphere. However, basin-fill records reflect two distinct basin systems occurring in the southern and northern margins of the eastern North China Craton. First, varied volcanic rocks including mafic, intermediate–mafic and intermediate–felsic assemblages occur in the Yanshan–Liaoxi basins on the northern margin of the eastern North China Craton from the Early Jurassic to Cretaceous; in contrast, limited calc-alkaline volcanic rocks filled the Hefei basin system on the southern margin of the eastern North China Craton during the Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous. Second, late Mesozoic lithospheric thinning began at about 163 Ma and 149 Ma in the northern and southern margins, respectively, culminating in basin-scale extensional events at about 145 Ma and 132 Ma, respectively. Third, coarse clastic sediments developed in the northern and southern basins during the tectonic transition phase reflect fluvial and alluvial systems, respectively, indicating greater topographic relief in the southern area than in the northern area. Fourth, Mesozoic depocentre migration was complicated in the Yanshan–Liaoxi basin but should a south to north trend in the Hefei basin system. Mesozoic basin-fill depositional and volcanic records in the southern margin of the eastern North China Craton were dominantly controlled by early Mesozoic deep subduction of the Yangtze block and subsequent post-orogenic extension of the Dabie Mountains. On the other hand, basin-fill evolution along the northern margin of the North China Craton was principally controlled by intensive crust–mantle and/or asthenosphere–lithosphere interactions, with regional transition from contractile to extensional strain during Mesozoic time. This study suggests that the late Mesozoic tectonic transition was first induced by crust–mantle interactions in the northern North China Craton and then it extended southwards. Late Mesozoic lithospheric thinning and subsequent tectonic transition are a linked systematic geodynamic process that has no direct relation to the Triassic plate convergence events around the North China Craton.
Tropospheric ozone and nitrogen dioxide measurements in urban and rural regions as seen by IASI and GOME‐2

Tropospheric ozone (O3) columns in urban and rural regions as seen by the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) are analyzed along with the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME‐2) tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) columns. Results over nine cities of the Northern Hemisphere for the period 2008–2011 show a typical seasonal behavior of tropospheric O3, with a first maximum reached in late spring because of stratospheric intrusion mainly and a continuous rise till the summer because of the anthropogenic‐based ozone production. Over the East Asian cities, a decrease in the O3 tropospheric column is detected during the monsoon period. Seasonal cycling of tropospheric NO2 shows consistent higher values during winter because of the higher anthropogenic sources and longer lifetime. In rural regions, a complex relation between the O3 and NO2 columns is found, with good correlation in summer and winter. O3 concentrations in rural sites are found to be comparable to those closest to the anthropogenic emission sources, with peak values in spring and summer. Furthermore, the effect of the reduction of pollutant emissions in the Beijing region during the Olympic Games of 2008 compared to the same summer period in the following 3 years is studied. GOME‐2 NO2 measurements show a reduction up to 54% above Beijing during this period compared to the following 3 years. IASI O3 measurements show an increase of 12% during July 2008 followed by a decrease of 5–6% during the months of August and September.
Predialysis hypotension is not a predictor for mortality in long-term hemodialysis patients: insight from a single-center observational study

Introduction: Methods: Eight hundred and sixty-six patients on maintenance HD were recruited. Clinical parameters were recorded and subjected to the analysis of predictors of predialysis hypotension and mortality. Results: Multivariate logistic regression analyses indicated that DM (odds ratio [OR]: 0.439, P = 0.002), hypertension history (OR: 0.634, P = 0.022), Kt/V Daugirdas (OR: 2.545, P = 0.001), anuria (OR: 2.313, P = 0.002), serum phosphate (OR: 0.833, P = 0.010), and serum triglyceride (OR: 1.002, P = 0.012) were associated with predialysis hypotension. Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that age ( P , 0.001), male sex ( P = 0.029), anuria ( P = 0.004), and DM ( P = 0.011) were associated with higher probability of 24- and 36-month mortality. Predialysis hypotension was not associated with higher probability of 12-, 24-, and 36-month mortality. Conclusion: Predialysis hypotension is not a predictor of 12-, 24-, and 36-month survival in patients without DM and with higher dialysis adequacy.
An enhanced exercise and cognitive programme does not appear to reduce incident delirium in hospitalised patients: a randomised controlled trial

Objective To determine if a programme of progressive resistance exercise, mobilisation and orientation, in addition to usual care, was superior to usual care alone in the prevention of incident delirium in older hospitalised patients. Design A randomised controlled trial. Setting The study was performed at a secondary referral hospital in Melbourne, Australia between May 2005 and December 2007. Participants 648 consecutive medical inpatients aged 65 years or older who had been in hospital for less than 48 h and who did not have delirium. Intervention Participants were randomly allocated to a twice-daily programme of progressive resistance exercise tailored to individual ability, mobilisation and orientation in addition to usual care or to usual care alone. Measurements Delirium was measured using the Confusion Assessment Method at baseline and every 48 h until discharge. Secondary outcome measures were severity and duration of delirium, discharge destination and length of stay. Results Delirium occurred in 4.9% (95% CI 2.3% to 7.3%) of the intervention group (15/305) and in 5.9% (20/339; 95% CI 3.8% to 9.2%) of the group receiving usual care. No difference was observed between groups (χ2; p=0.5). The intervention had no effect on delirium duration, severity, discharge destination or length of stay. Conclusion A programme of progressive resistance exercise and orientation was not effective in reducing incident delirium in hospitalised elderly patients.