Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Properties of Oligomeric Interaction of the Cytomegalovirus Core Nuclear Egress Complex (NEC) and Its Sensitivity to an NEC Inhibitory Small Molecule

Herpesviral nuclear egress is a regulated process shared by all family members, ensuring the efficient cytoplasmic release of viral capsids. In the case of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), the core of the nuclear egress complex (NEC) consists of the pUL50-pUL53 heterodimer that builds hexameric lattices for capsid binding and multicomponent interaction, including NEC-associated host factors. A characteristic feature of NEC interaction is the N-terminal hook structure of pUL53 that binds to an alpha-helical groove of pUL50, thus termed as hook-into-groove interaction. This central regulatory element is essential for viral replication and shows structural–functional conservation, which has been postulated as a next-generation target of antiviral strategies. However, a solid validation of this concept has been missing. In the present study, we focused on the properties of oligomeric HCMV core NEC interaction and the antiviral activity of specifically targeted prototype inhibitors. Our data suggest the following: (i) transiently expressed, variably tagged versions of HCMV NEC proteins exert hook-into-groove complexes, putatively in oligomeric assemblies that are distinguishable from heterodimers, as shown by in vitro assembly and coimmunoprecipitation approaches; (ii) this postulated oligomeric binding pattern was further supported by the use of a pUL50::pUL53 fusion construct also showing a pronounced multi-interaction potency; (iii) using confocal imaging cellular NEC-associated proteins were found partly colocalized with the tagged core NECs; (iv) a small inhibitory molecule, recently identified by an in vitro binding inhibition assay, was likewise active in blocking pUL50–pUL53 oligomeric assembly and in exerting antiviral activity in HCMV-infected fibroblasts. In summary, the findings refine the previous concept of HCMV core NEC formation and nominate this drug-accessible complex as a validated antiviral drug target.
Are Orienteers Protected Enough against Tick Bites? Estimating Human Exposure to Tick Bites through a Participative Science Survey during an Orienteering Competition

Mass-participation events in temperate forests are now well-established features of outdoor activities and represent high-risk activities regarding human exposition to tick bites. In this study we used a citizen science approach to quantify the space–time frequency of tick bites and undetected tick bites among orienteers that participated in a 6-day orienteering competition that took place in July 2018 in the forests of Eastern France, and we looked at the use and efficacy of different preventive behaviors. Our study confirms that orienteers are a high-risk population for tick bites, with 62.4% of orienteers bitten at least once during the competition, and 2.4 to 12.1 orienteers per 100 orienteers were bitten by ticks when walking 1 km. In addition, 16.7% of orienteers bitten by ticks had engorged ticks, meaning that they did not detect and remove their ticks immediately after the run. Further, only 8.5% of orienteers systematically used a repellent, and the use of repellent only partially reduced the probability of being bitten by ticks. These results represent the first attempt to quantify the risk of not immediately detecting a tick bite and provide rare quantitative data on the frequency of tick bites for orienteers according to walking distance and time spent in the forest. The results also provide information on the use of repellent, which will be very helpful for modeling risk assessment. The study also shows that prevention should be increased for orienteers in France.
The Long-Term Effect of Preterm Birth on Renal Function: A Meta-Analysis

The preterm-born adult population is ever increasing following improved survival rates of premature births. We conducted a meta-analysis to investigate long-term effects of preterm birth on renal function in preterm-born survivors. We searched PubMed and EMBASE to identify studies that compared renal function in preterm-born survivors and full-term-born controls, published until 2 February 2019. A random effects model with standardized mean difference (SMD) was used for meta-analyses. Heterogeneity of the studies was evaluated using Higgin’s I2 statistics. Risk of bias was assessed using the Newcastle–Ottawa quality assessment scale. Of a total of 24,388 articles screened, 27 articles were finally included. Compared to full-term-born controls, glomerular filtration rate and effective renal plasma flow were significantly decreased in preterm survivors (SMD −0.54, 95% confidence interval (CI), −0.85 to −0.22, p = 0.0008; SMD −0.39, 95% CI, −0.74 to −0.04, p = 0.03, respectively). Length and volume of the kidneys were significantly decreased in the preterm group compared to the full-term controls (SMD −0.73, 95% CI, −1.04 to −0.41, p < 0.001; SMD −0.82, 95% CI, −1.05 to −0.60, p < 0.001, respectively). However, serum levels of blood urea nitrogen, creatinine, and cystatin C showed no significant difference. The urine microalbumin to creatinine ratio was significantly increased in the preterm group. Both systolic and diastolic blood pressures were also significantly elevated in the preterm group, although the plasma renin level did not differ. This meta-analysis demonstrates that preterm-born survivors may be subject to decreased glomerular filtration, increased albuminuria, decreased kidney size and volume, and hypertension even though their laboratory results may not yet deteriorate.
The Role of the Surface Acid–Base Nature of Nanocrystalline Hydroxyapatite Catalysts in the 1,6-Hexanediol Conversion

Hydroxyapatite is known to have excellent catalytic properties for ethanol conversion and lactic acid conversion, and their properties are influenced by the elemental composition, such as Ca/P ratio and sodium content. However, few reports have been examined for the surface acid–base nature of hydroxyapatites containing sodium ions. We prepared nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite (Ca-HAP) catalysts with various Ca/P ratios and sodium contents by the hydrothermal method. The adsorption and desorption experiments using NH3 and CO2 molecules and the catalytic reactions for 2-propenol conversion revealed that the surface acid–base natures changed continuously with the bulk Ca/P ratios. Furthermore, the new catalytic properties of hydroxyapatite were exhibited for 1,6-hexanediol conversion. The non-stoichiometric Ca-HAP(1.54) catalyst with sodium ions of 2.3 wt% and a Ca/P molar ratio of 1.54 gave a high 5-hexen-1-ol yield of 68%. In contrast, the Ca-HAP(1.72) catalyst, with a Ca/P molar ratio of 1.72, gave a high cyclopentanemethanol yield of 42%. Both yields were the highest ever reported in the relevant literature. It was shown that hydroxyapatite also has excellent catalytic properties for alkanediol conversion because the surface acid–base properties can be continuously controlled by the elemental compositions, such as bulk Ca/P ratios and sodium contents.
Effects of Temperature and Relative Humidity on the Embryonic Development of Hypera postica Gyllenhal (Col.: Curculionidae)

Simple Summary The alfalfa weevil, Hypera postica, is a destructive pest around the world and has become, in recent years, the most important pest of alfalfa in Spain. The damage from these weevils reduces the alfalfa forage yield and quality. The factors that affect the population development are poorly known in Europe. This study integrates laboratory experiments and field sampling to address population growth at different temperature and humidity conditions. In the laboratory experiments, we evaluated the combined effect of eight temperatures (8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, and 36 °C) and three relative humidity regimes (low, medium, and high) on the survival and development time of eggs of Spanish pest populations. The lowest egg survival occurred at high temperatures and low relative humidity. The egg developmental time decreased from 8 to 32 °C, and, at low relative humidity (RH), this time was longer. The minimum threshold and thermal requirements for egg development were determined. In the field sampling, we obtained information regarding the occurrence of eggs and larvae (in winter) and the adult reproductive status (in autumn). Combining the laboratory and field results, the oviposition period was determined. The results of the study contribute to a better understanding of the annual cycle of H. postica in Spain and Europe and are useful for developing sustainable pest management strategies. Abstract The combined effect of the temperature and relative humidity on the survival and development time of the eggs of Spanish populations of the weevil Hypera postica, a key pest of alfalfa around the world, was evaluated under laboratory conditions. The experimental temperatures ranged from 8 to 36 °C, in 4 °C increments. Three relative humidity ranges were defined: high, medium, and low. Eggs of the alfalfa weevil successfully developed until larval emergence at all of the 24 conditions tested. However, the temperature and relative humidity affected the survival of the eggs. The egg developmental time decreased as the temperature increased from 8 to 32 °C, and the longest time was recorded at a low relative humidity (RH). The relationship between the development rate and temperature fit well to the lineal model for relative humidity. The minimum development threshold (T0) and the thermal requirement for egg development (K) ranged between 3 and 4 °C and 209 and 246 degree-days, respectively. According to these values and the occurrence of eggs and larvae (in winter) and adults (in autumn) in field samplings, the period of oviposition was determined. The results of the study contribute to better understanding the annual cycle and phenology of H. postica in the Iberian Peninsula and southern Europe.
The Improvement of Energy Storage Performance by Sucrose-Derived Carbon Foams via Incorporating Nitrogen Atoms

This paper addresses the problem of improving electrochemical energy storage with electrode materials obtained from common raw ingredients in a facile synthesis. In this study, we present a simple, one-pot route of synthesizing microporous carbon via a very fast reaction of sucrose and graphene (carbon source), chitosan (carbon and nitrogen source), and H3PO4. Porous carbons were successfully produced during high temperature carbonization, using nitrogen as a shielding gas. Samples were characterized using X-ray powder diffractometry, elemental analysis, N2 adsorption-desorption measurements, scanning electron microscopy, and Raman spectroscopy. The developed carbon material possessed a high surface area, up to 1313 m2 g−1, with no chemical or physical activators used in the process. The structural parameters of the microporous carbons varied depending on the ratio of reagents and mass composition. Samples were prepared both with and without chitosan. The present synthesis route has the advantages of being a single-step approach and only involving low-cost and environmentally friendly sources of carbon. More importantly, microporous carbon was prepared without any activators and potentially offers great application in supercapacitors. Cyclic voltammetry and constant current charge–discharge tests show that sucrose-based porous carbons show excellent electrochemical performance with a specific capacitance of up to 143 F g−1 at a current density of 1 A g−1 in a 6 M KOH electrolyte.
Understanding Traditional Chinese Medicine Therapeutics: An Overview of the Basics and Clinical Applications

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a systematic healthcare system developed from clinical experience based on a scientific model of regulation. TCM relies on unique theories and practices to treat diseases and enhance health. These practices include Chinese herbal medicine and dietetics, acupuncture and moxibustion, and other non-medication therapies such as Chinese bodywork or manual therapy, known as “Tuina”, and traditional biofeedback exercises, known as “Qigong” and “Taijiquan”. The integration of TCM in Western health systems and research requires a rational communicable theory, scientific proof of efficacy and safety, and quality control measures. Understanding the structural concepts of the TCM language makes possible the parallelism to Western physiology, and the inherent rational use of the reflex therapeutic systems, anti-inflammatory mechanisms and mental training involved, for example, in acupuncture and “Qigong”. The results of TCM clinical trials and fundamental research on its nature and mechanisms have encouraged the development and application of well-designed research strategies such as double blinding in acupucture to overcome limitations and resistances in integrating these practices into the existing biomedical paradigms of the West. This review aims to overview some TCM theoretical concepts and the evidence-based clinical application of TCM’s leading practices to create an easy-to-consult and condensed source of information, available for the healthcare community, facilitating the understanding and communication between conventional health professionals and TCM practitioners and acupuncturists.
An Efficient DenseNet-Based Deep Learning Model for Malware Detection

Recently, there has been a huge rise in malware growth, which creates a significant security threat to organizations and individuals. Despite the incessant efforts of cybersecurity research to defend against malware threats, malware developers discover new ways to evade these defense techniques. Traditional static and dynamic analysis methods are ineffective in identifying new malware and pose high overhead in terms of memory and time. Typical machine learning approaches that train a classifier based on handcrafted features are also not sufficiently potent against these evasive techniques and require more efforts due to feature-engineering. Recent malware detectors indicate performance degradation due to class imbalance in malware datasets. To resolve these challenges, this work adopts a visualization-based method, where malware binaries are depicted as two-dimensional images and classified by a deep learning model. We propose an efficient malware detection system based on deep learning. The system uses a reweighted class-balanced loss function in the final classification layer of the DenseNet model to achieve significant performance improvements in classifying malware by handling imbalanced data issues. Comprehensive experiments performed on four benchmark malware datasets show that the proposed approach can detect new malware samples with higher accuracy (98.23% for the Malimg dataset, 98.46% for the BIG 2015 dataset, 98.21% for the MaleVis dataset, and 89.48% for the unseen Malicia dataset) and reduced false-positive rates when compared with conventional malware mitigation techniques while maintaining low computational time. The proposed malware detection solution is also reliable and effective against obfuscation attacks.
First Detection of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 on the Surfaces of Tourist-Recreational Facilities in Italy

A Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by a new virus called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), spreads via direct contact through droplets produced by infected individuals. The transmission of this virus can also occur via indirect contact if objects and surfaces are contaminated by secretions from individuals with COVID-19 or asymptomatic carriers. Environmental contamination with SARS-CoV-2 is high in hospital settings; on the contrary, surface contamination in non-healthcare settings is still poorly studied. In this study, the presence of SARS-CoV-2 on the surfaces of 20 tourist-recreational facilities was investigated by performing a total of 100 swabs on surfaces, including refrigerator handles, handrails, counters, tables, and bathroom access doors. Six (6%) swabs from four (20%) tourist-recreational facilities tested positive for SARS-CoV-2; the surfaces that were involved were toilet door handles, refrigerator handles, handrails, and bar counters. This study highlights that SARS-CoV-2 is also present in non-healthcare environments; therefore, in order to limit this worrying pandemic, compliance with behavioral rules and the adoption of preventive and protective measures are of fundamental importance not only in healthcare or work environments but also in life environments.
Tongue and Upper Airway Dimensions: A Comparative Study between Three Popular Brachycephalic Breeds

Simple Summary Brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome is a debilitating disease complex, that affects severely brachycephalic dogs, impairs their quality of life and shortens life expectancy. Macroglossia has been identified as part of the soft tissue conditions that characterize brachycephalic breeds. Despite similar degrees of brachycephalism comparing the common breeds French bulldogs, English bulldogs and pugs, several breed specific characteristics contributing to brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome have been described in the past. The present study aimed to examine the tongue volume and at three levels cross-sectional areas of the tongue, oropharyngeal airways, soft palate and nasopharyngeal airways in the aforementioned breeds. Assessment of computed tomography scans revealed smaller tongues in pugs compared to French and English bulldogs, with values being close to previously published data in mesaticephalic breeds. Comparing the cross-sectional areas between breeds, several differences were identified, however, calculating the impact of soft tissue on total airways areas uncovered only differences between pugs and French bulldogs at the most caudal location, where the latter breed had a greater ratio, presumably in consequence to a significantly larger oropharyngeal airway area. These findings corroborate the importance of respecting breed specific differences in regard to surgical treatment of brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome. Abstract Relative macroglossia has been identified in brachycephalic compared to mesaticephalic dogs. This study assessed the tongue volume comparing three common brachycephalic breeds, including 30 French bulldogs, 30 pugs, and 15 English bulldogs. Computed tomography scans of intubated dogs with the hard palate suspended were examined for total tongue volume and cross-sectional areas (CSAs) of the tongue, oropharynx, soft palate, and nasopharyngeal airways at three levels: 1, caudal tip of the hard palate; 2, caudal tip of the hamulus; 3 cranial to the basihyoid bone. Tongue volume normalized to bodyweight, was significantly higher in English and French bulldogs than in pugs. Normalized to skull length, CSA of the tongue was smaller in pugs than in French and English bulldogs. At level 3, French bulldogs had larger oropharyngeal CSA than English bulldogs and pugs. Soft palate CSA was the largest in English bulldogs at level 3. At levels 1 and 2, soft palate and nasopharyngeal CSA was the smallest in pugs. At level 3, French bulldogs had higher total airway/soft tissue ratios than pugs. The smaller tongue volume in pugs questions the accuracy of the term macroglossia in this breed and these findings should be considered if surgical correction is sought.
Recent Development toward the Next Clinical Practice of Primary Aldosteronism: A Literature Review

For the last seven decades, primary aldosteronism (PA) has been gradually recognized as a leading cause of secondary hypertension harboring increased risks of cardiovascular incidents compared to essential hypertension. Clinically, PA consists of two major subtypes, surgically curable and uncurable phenotypes, determined as unilateral or bilateral PA by adrenal venous sampling. In order to further optimize the treatment, surgery or medications, diagnostic procedures from screening to subtype differentiation is indispensable, while in the general clinical practice, the work-up rate is extremely low even in the patients with refractory hypertension because of the time-consuming and labor-intensive nature of the procedures. Therefore, a novel tool to simplify the diagnostic flow has been recently in enormous demand. In this review, we focus on recent progress in the following clinically important topics of PA: prevalence of PA and its subtypes, newly revealed histopathological classification of aldosterone-producing lesions, novel diagnostic biomarkers and prediction scores. More effective strategy to diagnose PA based on better understanding of its epidemiology and pathology should lead to early detection of PA and could decrease the cardiovascular and renal complications of the patients.
Development of a Solid and Flexible Matching Medium for Microwave Medical Diagnostic Systems

This paper reports the development of a new composite material as a matching medium for medical microwave diagnostic systems, where maximizing the microwave energy that penetrates the interrogated tissue is critical for improving the quality of the diagnostic images. The proposed material has several advantages over what is commonly used in microwave diagnostic systems: it is semi-flexible and rigid, and it can maximize microwave energy coupling by matching the tissue’s dielectric constant without introducing high loss. The developed matching medium is a mirocomposite of barium titanate filler in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) in different weight-based mixing ratios. Dielectric properties of the material are measured using a Keysight open-ended coaxial slim probe from 0.5 to 10 GHz. To avoid systematic errors, a full dielectric properties calibration is performed before measurements of sample materials. Furthermore, the repeatability of the measurements and the homogeneity of the sample of interest are considered. Finally, to evaluate the proposed matching medium, its impact on a printed monopole antenna is studied. We demonstrate that the permittivity of the investigated mixtures can be increased in a controlled manner to reach values that have been previously shown to be optimal for medical microwave imaging (MWI) such as stroke and breast cancer diagnostic applications. As a result, the material is a good candidate for supporting antenna arrays designed for portable MWI scanners in applications such as stroke detection.
Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products for the Eye: Definitions and Regulatory Framework

Advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) are a group of innovative and complex biological products for human use that comprises somatic cell therapy medicinal products, tissue engineered products, gene therapy medicinal products, and the so-called combined ATMPs that consist of one of the previous three categories combined with one or more medical devices. During the last few years, the development of ATMPs for the treatment of eye diseases has become a fast-growing field as it offers the potential to find novel therapeutic approaches for treating pathologies that today have no cure or are just subjected to symptomatic treatments. Therefore, it is important for all professionals working in this field to be familiar with the regulatory principles associated with these types of innovative products. In this review, we outline the legal framework that regulates the development of ATMPs in the European Union and other international jurisdictions, and the criteria that each type of ATMP must meet to be classified as such. To illustrate each legal definition, ATMPs that have already completed the research and development stages and that are currently used for the treatment of eye diseases are presented as examples.