bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Review of the millipede tribe Polydrepanini, with the description of a new species from Kerala state, southern India (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Paradoxosomatidae, Alogolykinae)
Authors: GOLOVATCH SERGEI I. , ASWATHY MATHILAKATH DASAN , BHAGIRATHAN USHA , SUDHIKUMAR AMBALAPARAMBIL VASU
Published: November 2021

The tribe Polydrepanini is rediagnosed through an elongate, mostly slender, sometimes twisted/helicoid gonofemorite and a more or less thin, mostly flagelliform, suberect, apical or subapical solenomere often forming a conspicuous loop/curve near the base. The tribe presently encompasses seven genera, all redefined, illustrated and keyed: Dasypharkis Attems, 1936, stat. revalid., Delarthrum Attems, 1936, Grammorhabdus Carl, 1932, stat. revalid., Pocockina Jeekel, 1965, Polydrepanum Carl, 1932 (= Gyrodrepanum Carl, 1932 and Hindomorpha Golovatch, 1984, both syn. nov.), Telodrepanum Carl, 1932, and Xiphidiogonus Carl, 1932. The genus Polydrepanum is shown to currently comprise only four described species, all also redefined, depicted and keyed: Polydrepanum tamilum Carl, 1932 (the type species), P. horridum Golovatch, 1984, P. granuliferum (Attems, 1936), comb. nov. ex Hindomorpha, and P. lamprum (Chamberlin, 1920), comb. nov. ex Gyrodrepanum. Grammorhabdus fissus (Sankaran & Sebastian, 2018) is formally transferred from Polydrepanum, comb. nov. Because Polydrepanum implicatum Carl, 1941 shows a strongly shortened gonopodal femorite, coupled with a distal and flagelliform solenomere, this species is considered as not only somewhat intermediate between the tribes Alogolykini and Polydrepanini as redefined here, but it is formally assigned to Alogolykini as the type species of Carlogonopus gen. nov. (masculine), with C. implicatus (Carl, 1941), comb. nov. ex Polydrepanum, as well as a comb. nov. ex Telodrepanum. A somewhat similar situation concerns Manikidesmus suriensis Bhakat, 2021, a still invalid genus and species from West Bengal, eastern India that likewise shows a clearly shortened gonofemorite. However, this being even more important, Manikidesmus suriensis is a “nomen nudum” not available yet for zoological nomenclature. The large and mainly Himalayan genus Delarthrum is briefly reassessed, mainly in connection with a new species, D. anomalans sp. nov., described from Kerala, southern India and placed in a species-group of its own. Some general considerations concerning the diversity and distribution of the subfamily Alogolykinae are presented.
Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells (BMSCs)-Derived Exosomes Promotes Proliferation and Differentiation of Retinal Neuron-Like Cells to Repair Corneal Epithelial Damage
Authors: Qu Cuiping , Zhao Yue , Zhang Huijuan , Xu Wenshuang , Zhang Xiaofeng
Published: November 2021

Dry eye disease (DED) is a common ocular surface disease. Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) can differentiate into various cells, and BMSC-derived exosomes (BMSC-exo) is essential to maintaining BMSCs stemness. This study aimed to elucidate the mechanism underlying BMSCexo
in DED. Sixty rats with corneal epithelial injury were treated with BMSCs or BMSC-exo and untreated (each group, n = 20) followed by analysis of the effect of BMSCs and BMSC-exo by evaluating the corneal epithelium damage via measuring the Basso-Beattie-Bresnahan (BBB) score on 1st,
3rd, 7th, 14th, 28th day after treatments. TUNEL staining assessed cell apoptosis, NF200 expression and the number of BrdU-positive cells. There was no significant difference in BBB scores among three groups on the 1st and 3rd day after treatment (p > 0.05) with significant difference
on the 7th, 14th, and 28th day (p <0.05); compared with control group, BMSCs group and combination group had significantly higher BBB score (p < 0.05). The amount of apoptotic cells rose on 3rd and then gradually decreased since 7th day. Moreover, BMSCs and BMSC-exo decreased
the apoptotic index and increased absorbance of NF200 and BrdU-positive rate (p < 0.05). BMSC-exo alleviates corneal epithelial damage in DED and facilitates wound healing possibly through reducing cell apoptosis and increasing retinal neuron-like cell proliferation protein.
MiRNA-335 Modulates Hepatoma Cell Lines Apoptosis and Proliferation by Targeting Forkhead Box O3a (FOXO3a)
Authors: Yang Zhanxiang , Zhang Lihong
Published: November 2021

This study intends to elucidate MiRNA-335’s role in hepatoma cell lines (HCC). Real-time PCR was used to detect MiRNA-335 expression in HCC, flow cytometry and MTT were used to detect apoptosis and proliferation. Luciferase reporting system analyzed the targeting relationship
between Foxo3a and MiRNA-335. HCC (SMMC7721 cell) exhibited significantly reduced MiRNA-335 compared to normal hepatocyte cell (HL7702). MiRNA-335 mimic inhibited HCC proliferation and enhanced apoptosis, which were reversed by MiRNA-335 inhibitor. Luciferase reporter gene system showed that
MiRNA-335 significantly inhibited the fluorescent activity of Foxo3a 3′-UTR, indicating that MiRNA-335 could target Foxo3a RNA. In conclusion, the decrease of MiRNA-335 can promote the proliferation of hepatoma cells and inhibit apoptosis possibly through regulating Foxo3a, which provides
a new direction for the treatment of liver cancer.
Mesenchymal Stem Cells Inhibits the Shh/GLi (Sonic Hedgehog/GLi) Axis and Promotes Repair of Tissue Injury in Severe Acute Pancreatitis
Authors: Qian Bo , Zhang Hongmei , Zhang Jijun , Bai Chao , Sun Wencai
Published: November 2021

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are indicated to severe pancreatitis (SAP), whilst level of Shh/GLi axis varies in severe acute pancreatitis (SAP). However, little is known the interaction between MSCs and Shh in SAP. In this study, we established animal model of SAP in 10 rats and transplanted
MSCs into 10 rats, with another 10 sham-operated rats as control group. The pathological changes of rat pancreatic tissue were observed. ELISA was conducted to determine the MPO level of pancreatic inflammation, and Western blot to detect the expression level of Shh, Gli1 and Gli2 in tissues.
Administration of MSCs remarkably alleviated the pancreatic tissue necrosis and inflammation and decreased blood loss in SAP rats. Up-regulated expression of Shh, Gli1 and Gli2 was observed in SAP tissues when compared to tissues in control group, but their expressions declined in the presence
of MSCs, and 24 hour later returned to normal levels. Collectively, MSCs regulates the balance of Shh/GLi axis by decreasing Shh and Gli1, thereby attenuating progression and symptoms of SAP.
Propranolol Inhibits the Growth of Cervical Cancer Cells by Inhibiting Cyclic Guanosine Monophosphate/Protein Kinase G (cGMP/PKG) Pathway
Authors: Li Mi , Ji Yanqin
Published: November 2021

This study assesses the therapeutic effect of propranolol on cervical cancer and its mechanism. Propranolol’s effect on cervical cancer was evaluated by MTT, Western blotting, flow cytometry and colony formation. By searching Drug Bank and String, cGMP/PKG signaling might be downstream
targets of propranolol for subsequent analysis. Our results found that propranolol could significantly inhibit Hela and SiHA cell vitality and clone formation in a dose dependent manner. Further, Annexin V-PE/7-AAD Apoptosis Detection assay showed that propranolol could increase Hela and SiHA
cell apoptosis. Finally, propranolol attenuated the phosphorylation level of VASP at Ser239 which is critical for PKG activation. In conclusion, propranolol suppressed cervical cancer cell proliferation via inhibition of cGMP/PKG signaling, which provides an affordable and effective method
for cervical cancer remedy.
Longitudinal Study of Vocal Development and Language Environments in Infants With Cleft Palate
Authors: Ha Seunghee , Oller Kimbrough D.
Published: November 2021

Objective

This study investigated vocalization and language environment longitudinally in infants with cleft palate (CP) based on day-long audio recordings collected in their natural environments.

Design

Language Environment Analysis (LENA) data from all-day recordings at home were collected at 3-month intervals for infants from 4-6 to 16-18 months of age. The recordings were analyzed using experimentally blinded human coding as well as LENA automated analysis.

Participants

Ten infants with CP (± cleft lip) and 10 age-matched infants without CP.

Main Outcome Measures

Several measurements were obtained from the LENA automated analysis software. In addition, human coded measurements of vocalization and language environment, including the true canonical babbling ratio and the infant-directed speech ratio, were analyzed for each time point of data collection for each infant. Statistical analyses were performed to conduct group and age comparisons for each measure of vocalization and language environment.

Results

No group differences emerged in number of syllables produced. Infants with CP exhibited late onset and fewer productions of canonical syllables compared to infants without CP. Infants with CP did not show significant differences from infants without CP in measures related to language environment across ages.

Conclusion

This study provides detailed information through naturalistic all-day home recordings about vocal development and early language environments in infants with CP before and after palatal repair. Clinical implications for early intervention are discussed.
CoRe: a robustly benchmarked R package for identifying core-fitness genes in genome-wide pooled CRISPR-Cas9 screens
Authors: Vinceti Alessandro , Karakoc Emre , Pacini Clare , Perron Umberto , De Lucia Riccardo Roberto , Garnett Mathew J. , Iorio Francesco
Published: November 2021

Background

CRISPR-Cas9 genome-wide screens are being increasingly performed, allowing systematic explorations of cancer dependencies at unprecedented accuracy and scale. One of the major computational challenges when analysing data derived from such screens is to identify genes that are essential for cell survival invariantly across tissues, conditions, and genomic-contexts (core-fitness genes), and to distinguish them from context-specific essential genes. This is of paramount importance to assess the safety profile of candidate therapeutic targets and for elucidating mechanisms involved in tissue-specific genetic diseases.

Results

We have developed CoRe: an R package implementing existing and novel methods for the identification of core-fitness genes (at two different level of stringency) from joint analyses of multiple CRISPR-Cas9 screens. We demonstrate, through a fully reproducible benchmarking pipeline, that CoRe outperforms state-of-the-art tools, yielding more reliable and biologically relevant sets of core-fitness genes.

Conclusions

CoRe offers a flexible pipeline, compatible with many pre-processing methods for the analysis of CRISPR data, which can be tailored onto different use-cases. The CoRe package can be used for the identification of high-confidence novel core-fitness genes, as well as a means to filter out potentially cytotoxic hits while analysing cancer dependency datasets for identifying and prioritising novel selective therapeutic targets.
Telomere-to-telomere genome assembly of asparaginase-producing Trichoderma simmonsii
Authors: Chung Dawoon , Kwon Yong Min , Yang Youngik
Published: November 2021

Background

Trichoderma is a genus of fungi in the family Hypocreaceae and includes species known to produce enzymes with commercial use. They are largely found in soil and terrestrial plants. Recently, Trichoderma simmonsii isolated from decaying bark and decorticated wood was newly identified in the Harzianum clade of Trichoderma. Due to a wide range of applications in agriculture and other industries, genomes of at least 12 Trichoderma spp. have been studied. Moreover, antifungal and enzymatic activities have been extensively characterized in Trichoderma spp. However, the genomic information and bioactivities of T. simmonsii from a particular marine-derived isolate remain largely unknown. While we screened for asparaginase-producing fungi, we observed that T. simmonsii GH-Sj1 strain isolated from edible kelp produced asparaginase. In this study, we report a draft genome of T. simmonsii GH-Sj1 using Illumina and Oxford Nanopore technologies. Furthermore, to facilitate biotechnological applications of this species, RNA-sequencing was performed to elucidate the transcriptional profile of T. simmonsii GH-Sj1 in response to asparaginase-rich conditions.

Results

We generated ~ 14 Gb of sequencing data assembled in a ~ 40 Mb genome. The T. simmonsii GH-Sj1 genome consisted of seven telomere-to-telomere scaffolds with no sequencing gaps, where the N50 length was 6.4 Mb. The total number of protein-coding genes was 13,120, constituting ~ 99% of the genome. The genome harbored 176 tRNAs, which encode a full set of 20 amino acids. In addition, it had an rRNA repeat region consisting of seven repeats of the 18S-ITS1–5.8S-ITS2–26S cluster. The T. simmonsii genome also harbored 7 putative asparaginase-encoding genes with potential medical applications. Using RNA-sequencing analysis, we found that 3 genes among the 7 putative genes were significantly upregulated under asparaginase-rich conditions.

Conclusions

The genome and transcriptome of T. simmonsii GH-Sj1 established in the current work represent valuable resources for future comparative studies on fungal genomes and asparaginase production.
Time to death and its determinants among under-five children in Sub-Saharan Africa using the recent (2010–2018) demographic and health survey data: country-based shared frailty analyses
Authors: Tesfa Desalegn , Tiruneh Sofonyas Abebaw , Azanaw Melkalem Mamuye , Gebremariam Alemayehu Digssie , Engdaw Melaku Tadege , Kefale Belayneh , Abebe Bedilu , Dessalegn Tsion
Published: November 2021

Background

Substantial global progress has been made in reducing under-five mortality since 1990, yet progress is insufficient to meet the sustainable development goal of 2030 which calls for ending preventable child deaths. There are disproportional survivals among children in the world. Therefore, the study aimed to assess the Survival status of under-five mortality and determinants in Sub-Saharan African Countries using the recent DHS data.

Methods

The data was retrieved from the birth record file from the standard Demographic and Health Survey dataset of Sub-Saharan Africa countries. Countries that have at least one survey between 2010 and 2018 were retrieved. Parametric shared frailty survival analysis was employed.

Results

A total of 27,221 (7.35%) children were died before celebrating their fifth birthday. Children at an early age were at higher risk of dying and then decrease proportionally with increased age. The risk of death among rich and middle family were lowered by 18 and 8% (AHR =0.82, 95% CI: 0.77-0.87) and (AHR = 0.92, 95% CI: 0.87-0.97) respectively, the hazard of death were 11, 19, 17, 90 and 55% (AHR = 1.06, 95% CI: 1.00-1.12), (AHR = 1.11,95%CI:1.04-1.19), (AHR = 1.17, 95% CI:1.12-1.23), (AHR = 1.90, 95%CI: 1.78-2.04) and (AHR = 1.55, 95% CI:1.47-1.63) higher than among children in rural, use unimproved water, delivered at home, born less than 18 months and between 18 and 23 months birth intervals respectively. The hazard of death was 7% among females and low birth weights (AHR = 0.93, 95%CI: 0.90 – 0.97) and (AHR = 0.93 95%CI: 0.89-0.97) respectively. There was also a significant association between multiple births and birth orders (AHR = 2.11, 95%CI: 2.51 – 2.90), (AHR = 3.01, 95%CI: 2.85-3.19) respectively.

Conclusions

Death rate among under-five children was higher at an early age then decreases as age advanced. Wealth status, residence, water source, place of delivery, sex of the child, plurality, birth size, preceding birth interval, and birth order were the most predictor variables. The health care program should be designed to encourage a healthy family structure. The health care providers should intervene in the community to inspire maternal health services.
Academic motivation among senior students majoring in rehabilitation related professions in China
Authors: Hu Huiling , Luo Hongmei
Published: November 2021

Objective/background

In mainland China, most universities offer general rehabilitation curricula rather than specialized curricula. The purpose of the current study is to investigate senior students’ academic motivation for rehabilitation and examine whether it varies among different curriculum structures, students’ gender, specific interests, and parental average education level.

Methods

This cross-sectional study recruited both senior students in general and those who specialized in rehabilitation curricula using an online survey. The Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) was used to measure academic motivation.

Results

The response rate was 74.68%, and 59 senior students in total (male: 34.48%; female: 65.52%) were analyzed. Twenty-nine (50.00%) students were from a general rehabilitation curriculum at Guangxi Medical University, and the rest (n = 29, 50.00%) were from a specialized curriculum at West China Medical School of Sichuan University. The overall average academic motivation score was 30.96 ± 5.92. Students in the specialized rehabilitation curriculum (32.85 ± 6.26) showed a significantly higher academic motivation score than those in the general rehabilitation curriculum (29.10 ± 5.00, p<0.05). Male (31.13 ± 5.67) and female (30.88 ± 6.12) students had equally high scores (p = 0.88). Students who had specific interests (29.81 ± 4.73) and those who did not (24.69 ± 4.92) shared the same academic motivation (t = 2.00, p = 0.06).

Conclusions

Senior rehabilitation science students in specialized curricula have higher levels of academic motivation than those in general curricula. There was no significant difference in academic motivation scores based on students’ gender, specific interests, or parental average education levels.
An explainable CNN approach for medical codes prediction from clinical text
Authors: Hu Shuyuan , Teng Fei , Huang Lufei , Yan Jun , Zhang Haibo
Published: November 2021

Background

Clinical notes are unstructured text documents generated by clinicians during patient encounters, generally are annotated with International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes, which give formatted information about the diagnosis and treatment. ICD code has shown its potentials in many fields, but manual coding is labor-intensive and error-prone, lead to researches of automatic coding. Two specific challenges of this task are (1) given an annotated clinical notes, the reasons behind specific diagnoses and treatments are  implicit; (2) explainability is important for practical automatic coding method, the method should not only explain its prediction output but also have explainable internal mechanics. This study aims to develop an explainable CNN approach to address these two challenges.

Method

Our key idea is that for the automatic ICD coding task, the presence of informative snippets in the clinical text that correlated with each code plays an important role in the prediction of codes, and an informative snippet can be considered as a local and low-level feature. We infer that there exists a correspondence between a convolution filter and a local and low-level feature. Base on the inference, we come up with the Shallow and Wide Attention convolutional Mechanism (SWAM) to improve the CNN-based models’ ability to learn local and low-level features for each label.

Results

We evaluate our approach on MIMIC-III, an open-access dataset of ICU medical records. Our approach substantially outperforms previous results on top-50 medical code prediction on MIMIC-III dataset, the precision of the worst-performing 10% labels in previous works is increased from 0% to 53% on average. We attribute this improvement to SWAM, by which the wide architecture with attention mechanism gives the model ability to more extensively learn the unique features of different codes, and we prove it by an ablation experiment. Besides, we perform manual analysis of the performance imbalance between different codes, and preliminary conclude the characteristics that determine the difficulty of learning specific codes.

Conclusions

Our main contributions can be summarized into the following three: (1) We present local and low-level features, a.k.a. informative snippets play an important role in the automatic ICD coding task, and the informative snippets extracted from the clinical text provide explanations for each code. (2) We propose that there exists a correspondence between a convolution filter and a local and low-level feature. A combination of wide and shallow convolutional layer and attention layer can help the CNN-based models better learn local and low-level features. (3) We improved the precision of the worst-performing 10% labels from 0 to 53% on average.
Construction of the cervical cancer common terminology for promoting semantic interoperability and utilization of Chinese clinical data
Authors: Hong Na , Chang Fengxiang , Ou Zhengjie , Wang Yishang , Yang Yating , Guo Qiang , Ma Jianhui , Zhao Dan
Published: November 2021

Background

We aimed to build a common terminology in the domain of cervical cancer, named Cervical Cancer Common Terminology (CCCT), that will facilitate clinical data exchange, ensure quality of data and support large scale data analysis.

Methods

The standard concepts and relations of CCCT were collected from ICD-10-CM Chinese Version, ICD-9-PC Chinese Version, officially issued commonly used Chinese clinical terms, Chinese guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of cervical cancer and Chinese medical book Lin Qiaozhi Gynecologic Oncology. 2062 cervical cancer electronic medical records (EMRs) from 16 hospitals, belong to different regions and hospital tiers, were collected for terminology enrichment and building common terms and relations. Concepts hierarchies, terms and relationships were built using Protégé. The performance of natural language processing results was evaluated by average precision, recall, and F1-score. The usability of CCCT were evaluated by terminology coverage.

Results

A total of 880 standard concepts, 1182 common terms, 16 relations and 6 attributes were defined in CCCT, which organized in 6 levels and 11 classes. Initial evaluation of the natural language processing results demonstrated average precision, recall, and F1-score percentages of 96%, 72.6%, and 88.5%. The average terminology coverage for three classes of terms, clinical manifestation, treatment, and pathology, were 87.22%, 92.63%, and 89.85%, respectively. Flexible Chinese expressions exist between regions, traditions, cultures, and language habits within the country, linguistic variations in different settings and diverse translation of introduced western language terms are the main reasons of uncovered terms.

Conclusions

Our study demonstrated the initial results of CCCT construction. This study is an ongoing work, with the update of medical knowledge, more standard clinical concepts will be added in, and with more EMRs to be collected and analyzed, the term coverage will be continuing improved. In the future, CCCT will effectively support clinical data analysis in large scale.
Recognition of risk and prevention in safeguarding of children and young people: a mapping review and component analysis of service development interventions aimed at health and social care professionals
Authors: Chambers Duncan , Cantrell Anna , Booth Andrew
Published: November 2021

Background

The term ‘safeguarding’ covers the protection of health, wellbeing and human rights. Effective safeguarding enables people (particularly children, young adults and other vulnerable people) to live free from fear of abuse, harm or neglect. The UK Children Act 2004 required key agencies, including health and social care providers, to consider the need to safeguard children and promote their welfare. Within a larger evidence synthesis project, we sought to identify and map service development interventions (excluding provision of training) aimed at improving awareness of safeguarding and identifying at-risk children and young people in health and social care settings.

Methods

We searched fourteen health and social care databases from 2004 (date of Children Act) to October 2019 and updated the review via a citation search in March 2021.

Studies of any design were eligible if they described or evaluated an intervention (other than training) aimed at health or social care professionals in the United Kingdom and designed to improve recognition of risk in the context of safeguarding children and young people. Studies with no intervention (e.g. qualitative studies) were included to explain why interventions work or fail to work. Included studies were summarised using narrative synthesis. Risk of bias of included studies and overall strength of evidence were assessed using standard methods. We used a 5-item checklist (“TIDieR-Lite”) to map intervention components.

Results

Thirty-nine publications were included, of which 31 dealt with service developments, six with use of data and two with other initiatives. Promising service development initiatives include liaison nurses, assessment clinics, secondment, joint protocols and a ‘hub and spoke’ model. Initiatives involving use of routine data appeared promising and unlikely to generate significant additional costs. However, the quality of the evidence was generally low, with a shortage of controlled and long-term studies.

Conclusions

Health and social care services wishing to improve awareness of child safeguarding issues may benefit from looking beyond high-quality training provision. Future research should focus on service-relevant outcomes and ensure the active involvement of young people and their families/carers.
Prevalence and characteristics of ever regular use of non-combustible nicotine for 1 year or more: a population survey in England
Authors: Cox Sharon , Brown Jamie , Kock Loren , Shahab Lion
Published: November 2021

Introduction

Up-to-date monitoring of non-combustible nicotine products (e.g. e-cigarettes, nicotine replacement therapies (NRT), heated tobacco products (HTP); NNP) is important to assess their impact. To date, there is little evidence on the association between ever regular use (defined here as 1 year or more) of NNP and current smoking status.

Aims/methods

The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence, and sociodemographic, alcohol and smoking status correlates, of ever regular use of NNP in England in 2020. A cross-sectional survey of adults in England was conducted between February and June 2020.

Results

A total of 8486 adults were surveyed; 94.9% (8055) were complete cases. The weighted prevalence of ever regular NNP use was 5.4% (n = 436; 95% CI 5.0–6.0), of which 82% (n = 360; 95% CI 78.7–85.8) was single and 18% (n = 79; 95% CI 14.8–22) multiple product use. Amongst ever regular NNP users, the prevalence of ever regular NRT, e-cigarette and HTP use was 64.7% (95% CI 60.1–69), 43.4% (95% CI 38.8–48) and 2.5% (95% CI 1.4–4.5), respectively. In adjusted analysis, ever regular NNP use was associated with smoking status, being significantly higher among current (22.3%; adjusted OR (aOR) 34.9, 95% CI 24.0–50.8) and ex-smokers (12.7%, aOR 19.8, 95% CI 11.1–14.4) than among never-smokers (0.6%). More advantaged occupational grade (aOR, 1.27 95% CI 1.02–1.57) and at least hazardous alcohol use (aOR, 1.38 95% CI 1.06–1.78) were associated with greater prevalence of ever regular NNP use.

Conclusions

Ever regularly using NNP was highest among smokers and ex-smokers and rare among never-smokers. Among people who have ever regularly used NNP, NRT is the most popular.
Altered expression of fragile X mental retardation-1 (FMR1) in the thymus in autoimmune myasthenia gravis
Authors: Thomas Scott , Fayet Odessa-Maud , Truffault Frédérique , Fadel Elie , Provost Bastien , Hamza Abderaouf , Berrih-Aknin Sonia , Bonnefont Jean-Paul , Le Panse Rozen
Published: November 2021

Predisposition to autoimmunity and inflammatory disorders is observed in patients with fragile X-associated syndromes. These patients have increased numbers of CGG triplets in the 5’ UTR region of FMR1 (Fragile X Mental Retardation 1) gene, that affects its expression. FMR1 is decreased in the thymus of myasthenia gravis (MG) patients, a prototypical autoimmune disease. We thus analyzed the number of CGG triplets in FMR1 in MG, and explored the regulatory mechanisms affecting thymic FMR1 expression. We measured the number of CGGs using thymic DNA from MG and controls, but no abnormalities in CGGs were found in MG that could explain thymic decrease of FMR1. We next analyzed by RT-PCR the expression of FMR1 and its transcription factors in thymic samples, and in thymic epithelial cell cultures in response to inflammatory stimuli. In control thymuses, FMR1 expression was higher in males than females, and correlated with CTCF (CCCTC-binding factor) expression. In MG thymuses, decreased expression of FMR1 was correlated with both CTCF and MAX (Myc-associated factor X) expression. Changes in FMR1 expression were supported by western blot analyses for FMRP. In addition, we demonstrated that FMR1, CTCF and MAX expression in thymic epithelial cells was also sensitive to inflammatory signals. Our results suggest that FMR1 could play a central role in the thymus and autoimmunity. First, in relation with the higher susceptibility of females to autoimmune diseases. Second, due to the modulation of its expression by inflammatory signals that are known to be altered in MG thymuses.
LncRNA MNX1-AS1 promotes ovarian cancer process via targeting the miR-744-5p/SOX12 axis
Authors: Shen Yang , Lv Mengmeng , Fang Yichen , Lu Jin , Wu Yuzhong
Published: November 2021

Purpose

Ovarian cancer (OC) is the most common malignancy in women with high mortality. Increasing studies have revealed that long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) MNX1-AS1 has a promoting effect on various cancers. However, the mechanisms of MNX1-AS1 in OC are still unclear. Therefore, this study focused on exploring the mechanisms of MNX1-AS1 in OC.

Materials and methods

The expression of SOX12 at the protein level was detected by western blot. Cell proliferation was detected by CCK8 assay and colony formation assay. Cell cycle and cell apoptosis were detected by flow cytometry. Wound-healing assay, transwell assay and western blot were used to detect the ability of cell migration and invasion. The target binding was confirmed through the luciferase reporter assay.

Results

The expression of MNX1-AS1 was increased in OC tumor tissues and cells. Elevated MNX1-AS1 expression is associated with advanced stage and lower overall survival rate. Knockdown of MNX1-AS1 inhibited cell proliferation, migration and invasion, blocked cell cycle, and promoted cell apoptosis in SKOV-3 and OVCAR-3 cells. MNX1-AS1 was competitively binding with miR-744-5p, and its downstream target gene was SOX12. miR-544-5p expression was decreased, while SOX12 expression was increased in OC tumor tissues and cells. Overexpression of miR-744-5p inhibited cell proliferation, migration, invasion and promoted cell apoptosis in SKOV-3 and OVCAR-3 cells.

Conclusion

MNX1-AS1 promoted the development of OC through miR-744-5p/SOX12 axis. This study revealed a novel mechanism of MNX1-AS1 in OC, which may provide a new treatment or scanning target for OC.
Effects of free range-of-motion upper limb exercise based on mirror therapy on shoulder function in patients after breast cancer surgery: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial
Authors: Yuan Ru-Zhen , Li Kun-Peng , Wei Xiao-Lin , Zheng Wei , Ye Yi , Wang Ming-Yue , Jiang Jie-Ting , Wu Cai-Qin
Published: November 2021

Background

Shoulder function complications are common after treatment for breast cancer. Quite a few survivors still report a limited shoulder range of motion, even though the free range-of-motion upper limb exercise is helpful to restore shoulder function. Mirror therapy (MT) is a classical and effective rehabilitation technique to recover motor and sensory function for the limbs; in addition, studies have reported that MT has an influence on patients with shoulder functional dysfunction including increasing shoulder range of motion, improving shoulder function scores, and decreasing pain scores. Here, we describe a protocol of a randomized controlled trial to explore if free range-of-motion upper limb exercise based on MT has efficacy on shoulder function in survivors after surgery of breast cancer.

Methods/design

This is a prospective, single-blind, two-arm randomized controlled trial. An estimated 70 participants will be randomly allocated to (1) the MT group or (2) the control group. The participants in the control group receive free range-of-motion upper limb exercise, and participants in the MT group will engage in free range-of-motion upper limb exercise based on MT. The intervention will start on the first day after surgery and be completed at 8 weeks after surgery. The primary outcome in this protocol is shoulder range of motion (ROM), while the Constant-Murley Score (CMS); Disability of the Arm, Shoulder, and Hand Questionnaire (DASH); Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia (13-item TSK); visual analog scale (VAS); grip strength; arm circumference; and lymphedema are the secondary outcomes. Assessment will be conducted before allocation (baseline) and at 2 weeks, 4 weeks, and 8 weeks after surgery.

Discussion

Based on the results that MT has an influence on shoulder function immediately after intervention in patients without nerve injury, this randomized controlled trial is to observe the efficacy of MT on shoulder function after a long-term intervention in breast cancer survivors. We look forward to the innovation of this study for both breast cancer rehabilitation and MT.

Trial registration

Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (ChiCTR) ChiCTR2000033080. Registered on 19 May 2020
Applications of new contraction mappings on existence and uniqueness results for implicit ϕ-Hilfer fractional pantograph differential equations
Authors: Afshari Hojjat , Marasi H. R. , Alzabut Jehad
Published: November 2021

In this paper, we consider initial value problems for two different classes of implicit ϕ-Hilfer fractional pantograph differential equations. We use different approach that is based on $\alpha -\psi $
α
−
ψ
-contraction mappings to demonstrate the existence and uniqueness of solutions for the proposed problems. The mappings are defined in appropriate cones of positive functions. The presented examples demonstrate the efficiency of the used method and the consistency of the proposed results.
Another class of nonterminating $_{3}F_{2}$-series with a free argument
Authors: Li Nadia N. , Chu Wenchang
Published: November 2021

By means of the linearization method, we evaluate another class of nonterminating $_{3}F_{2}$

F
2

3

-series with a free argument x and two perturbing integer parameters m and n.
Fecal microbiota transplantation protects rotenone-induced Parkinson’s disease mice via suppressing inflammation mediated by the lipopolysaccharide-TLR4 signaling pathway through the microbiota-gut-brain axis
Authors: Zhao Zhe , Ning Jingwen , Bao Xiu-qi , Shang Meiyu , Ma Jingwei , Li Gen , Zhang Dan
Published: November 2021

Background

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a prevalent neurodegenerative disorder, displaying not only well-known motor deficits but also gastrointestinal dysfunctions. Consistently, it has been increasingly evident that gut microbiota affects the communication between the gut and the brain in PD pathogenesis, known as the microbiota-gut-brain axis. As an approach to re-establishing a normal microbiota community, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has exerted beneficial effects on PD in recent studies. Here, in this study, we established a chronic rotenone-induced PD mouse model to evaluate the protective effects of FMT treatment on PD and to explore the underlying mechanisms, which also proves the involvement of gut microbiota dysbiosis in PD pathogenesis via the microbiota-gut-brain axis.

Results

We demonstrated that gut microbiota dysbiosis induced by rotenone administration caused gastrointestinal function impairment and poor behavioral performances in the PD mice. Moreover, 16S RNA sequencing identified the increase of bacterial genera Akkermansia and Desulfovibrio in fecal samples of rotenone-induced mice. By contrast, FMT treatment remarkably restored the gut microbial community, thus ameliorating the gastrointestinal dysfunctions and the motor deficits of the PD mice. Further experiments revealed that FMT administration alleviated intestinal inflammation and barrier destruction, thus reducing the levels of systemic inflammation. Subsequently, FMT treatment attenuated blood-brain barrier (BBB) impairment and suppressed neuroinflammation in the substantia nigra (SN), which further decreased the damage of dopaminergic neurons. Additional mechanistic investigation discovered that FMT treatment reduced lipopolysaccharide (LPS) levels in the colon, the serum, and the SN, thereafter suppressing the TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB signaling pathway and its downstream pro-inflammatory products both in the SN and the colon.

Conclusions

Our current study demonstrates that FMT treatment can correct the gut microbiota dysbiosis and ameliorate the rotenone-induced PD mouse model, in which suppression of the inflammation mediated by the LPS-TLR4 signaling pathway both in the gut and the brain possibly plays a significant role. Further, we prove that rotenone-induced microbiota dysbiosis is involved in the genesis of PD via the microbiota-gut-brain axis.
Improving the indoor air quality (IAQ) in naturally ventilated lecture hall with a single facade by solar chimneys
Authors: Fikry Ahmed , Elsayed Asmaa
Published: November 2021

In this paper, the indoor air pollution was investigated inside an educational building which contains air pollutants with elevated concentrations. A field study was conducted in a naturally ventilated, single-faceted lecture’s hall to evaluate the indoor air quality (IAQ). Both air velocity and carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations were measured at the respiratory area level to compare these values with ASHRAE standard (62.01-2019). The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) 3D model was utilized to predict the air velocity, and CO2 concentrations, and to validate the measured air concentrations. The measured results fairly agree with the numerical CFD data with a 6.2% difference between both values. This paper deals with experimental work to study the effect of the cross-section area, the number, and the height of the solar chimneys. The results showed that using solar chimneys improved the natural ventilation in the hall and minimized the CO2 concentrations. Additionally, using the chimney cross-section area of 0.25*0.25 m, 0.30*0.30 m, and 0.40*0.40 to 0.50*0.50 m can reduce the CO2 concentrations to (3%, 6.2%, 6.4%, and 6.7%, respectively). While using three chimneys instead of only one, the ventilation flow rate increased from 61 to 70.9%. The effect of the height of the chimney on the average of CO2 concentrations inside the hall was examined. The modeled height rates (1, 3, 5, and 7 m, respectively) were improved to 26%, 33.6%, and 48.7%, respectively.
Impact of the first COVID-19 outbreak on mental health service utilisation at a Dutch mental health centre: retrospective observational study
Authors: Chow Man Wei , Noorthoorn Eric O. , Wierdsma André I. , van der Horst Marte , de Boer Nini , Guloksuz Sinan , Luykx Jurjen J.
Published: November 2021

Background

Previous studies into mental health service utilisation during the COVID-19 pandemic are limited to a few countries or specific type of service. In addition, data on changes in telepsychiatry are currently lacking.

Aims

We aimed to investigate whether the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with changes in mental health service utilisation, including telepsychiatry, and how these changes were distributed among patients with mental illness during the first COVID-19 outbreak.

Method

This retrospective study obtained routinely assessed healthcare data from a large Dutch mental healthcare institute. Data from the second quarter of 2020 (the first COVID-19 outbreak period) were compared with the pre-pandemic period between January 2018 and March 2020. Time-series analyses were performed with the quasi-Poisson generalised linear model, to examine the effect of the COVID-19 lockdown and the overall trend of mental health service utilisation per communication modality and diagnostic category.

Results

We analysed 204 808 care contacts of 28 038 patients. The overall number of care contacts in the second quarter of 2020 remained the same as in the previous 2 years, because the number of video consultations significantly increased (B = 2.17, P = 0.488 × 10−3) as the number of face-to-face out-patient contacts significantly decreased (B = −0.98, P = 0.011). This was true for all different diagnostic categories, although this change was less pronounced in patients with psychotic disorders.

Conclusions

Diminished face-to-face out-patient contacts were well-compensated by the substantial increase of video consultations during the first COVID-19 outbreak in The Netherlands. This increase was less pronounced for psychotic disorders. Further research should elucidate the need for disorder-specific digital mental healthcare delivery.
Erratum: On a contextual model refuting Bell’s theorem
Authors: Muchowski Eugen
Published: November 2021

Original article:
EPL, 134 (2021) 10004.
Media Hot and Cold
Authors: Starosielski Nicole
Published: November 2021

In Media Hot and Cold Nicole Starosielski examines the cultural dimensions of temperature to theorize the ways heat and cold can be used as a means of communication, subjugation, and control. Diving into the history of thermal media, from infrared cameras to thermostats to torture sweatboxes, Starosielski explores the many meanings and messages of temperature. During the twentieth century, heat and cold were broadcast through mass thermal media. Today, digital thermal media such as bodily air conditioners offer personalized forms of thermal communication and comfort. Although these new media promise to help mitigate the uneven effects of climate change, Starosielski shows how they can operate as a form of biopower by determining who has the ability to control their own thermal environment. In this way, thermal media can enact thermal violence in ways that reinforce racialized, colonial, gendered, and sexualized hierarchies. By outlining how the control of temperature reveals power relations, Starosielski offers a framework to better understand the dramatic transformations of hot and cold media in the twenty-first century.
Formation of Design Skills of Schoolchildren As a Meta-Subject Learning Outcome
Authors: Volkova S. , Pustovit S.
Published: November 2021

In the article, design skills are considered as one of the important meta-subject results of the chemical education of schoolchildren. On the example of designing devices, the main stages of their formation in the process of performing educational and research activities are revealed.
The Alarm Burden of Excess Continuous Pulse Oximetry Monitoring Among Patients With Bronchiolitis
Authors: Rasooly Irit R , Makeneni Spandana , Khan Amina N , Luo Brooke , Muthu Naveen , Bonafide Christopher P
Published: November 2021

Guidelines discourage continuous pulse oximetry monitoring of hospitalized infants with bronchiolitis who are not receiving supplemental oxygen. Excess monitoring is theorized to contribute to increased alarm burden, but this burden has not been quantified. We evaluated admissions of 201 children (aged 0‐24 months) with bronchiolitis. We categorized time ≥60 minutes following discontinuation of supplemental oxygen as “continuously monitored (guideline‐discordant),” “intermittently measured (guideline‐concordant),” or “unable to classify.” Across 4402 classifiable hours, 77% (11,101) of alarms occurred during periods of guideline‐discordant monitoring. Patients experienced a median of 35 alarms (interquartile range [IQR], 10‐81) during guideline‐discordant, continuously monitored time, representing a rate of 6.7 alarms per hour (IQR, 2.1‐12.3). In comparison, the median hourly alarm rate during periods of guideline‐concordant intermittent measurement was 0.5 alarms per hour (IQR, 0.1‐0.8). Reducing guideline‐discordant monitoring in bronchiolitis patients would reduce nurse alarm burden.
Intelligent Personal Health Monitoring and Guidance Using Long Short-Term Memory
Authors: Velliangiri S. , Anbarasu V , Karthikeyan P. , Anandaraj S. P.
Published: November 2021

Rapid improvements in information technology have made everything in this world contemporary. The mobile phone plays a vital role in the day to day activities. Many mobile applications are developed by using deep learning models to give health guidance to people. We proposed intelligent personal health monitoring and guidance (IPHMG) using long short-term memory to assess the users’ overall health status to solve the mobile application performance problem. The main objective of the research work is to minimize the delay time of the user’s request and improve the accuracy of health predictions. The proposed system calculates scores using the IPHMG score model to find the health conditions of the users. IPHMG score model uses different time-series data to calculate scores such as environment data, body signal data, parent report data, emotion, and health report. Additionally, an Android application is a module that is designed for mobile users to feed their health data and check their health status. The proposed system was implemented. Results show that the proposed method provides better uploading time, processing time, and the user downloading time than simple RNN and ANN methods.
Detection of Cotton Plant Diseases Using Deep Transfer Learning
Authors: Rajasekar Vani , Venu K , Jena Soumya Ranjan , Varthini R. Janani , Ishwarya S.
Published: November 2021

Agriculture is a vital part of every country’s economy, and India is regarded an agro-based nation. One of the main purposes of agriculture is to yield healthy crops without any disease. Cotton is a significant crop in India in relation to income. India is the world’s largest producer of cotton. Cotton crops are affected when leaves fall off early or become afflicted with diseases. Farmers and planting experts, on the other hand, have faced numerous concerns and ongoing agricultural obstacles for millennia, including much cotton disease. Because severe cotton disease can result in no grain harvest, a rapid, efficient, less expensive and reliable approach for detecting cotton illnesses is widely wanted in the agricultural information area. Deep learning method is used to solve the issue because it will perform exceptionally well in image processing and classification problems. The network was built using a combination of the benefits of both the ResNet pre-trained on ImageNet and the Xception component, and this technique outperforms other state-of-the-art techniques. Every convolution layer with in dense block is tiny, so each convolution kernel is still in charge of learning the tiniest details. The deep convolution neural networks for the detection of plant leaf diseases contemplate utilising a pre-trained model acquired from usual enormous datasets, and then applying it to a specific task educated with their own data. The experimental results show that for ResNet-50, a training accuracy of 0.95 and validation accuracy of 0.98 is obtained whereas training loss of 0.33 and validation loss of 0.5.