bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Protein liposomes-mediated targeted acetylcholinesterase gene delivery for effective liver cancer therapy
Authors: Wang Kai , Shang Fusheng , Chen Dagui , Cao Tieliu , Wang Xiaowei , Jiao Jianpeng , He Shengli , Liang Xiaofei 
Published: January 2021

Abstract
Background
Effective methods to deliver therapeutic genes to solid tumors and improve their bioavailability are the main challenges of current medical research on gene therapy. The development of efficient non-viral gene vector with tumor-targeting has very important application value in the field of cancer therapy. Proteolipid integrated with tumor-targeting potential of functional protein and excellent gene delivery performance has shown potential for targeted gene therapy.

Results
Herein, we prepared transferrin-modified liposomes (Tf-PL) for the targeted delivery of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) therapeutic gene to liver cancer. We found that the derived Tf-PL/AChE liposomes exhibited much higher transfection efficiency than the commercial product Lipo 2000 and shown premium targeting efficacy to liver cancer SMMC-7721 cells in vitro. In vivo, the Tf-PL/AChE could effectively target liver cancer, and significantly inhibit the growth of liver cancer xenografts grafted in nude mice by subcutaneous administration.

Conclusions
This study proposed a transferrin-modified proteolipid-mediated gene delivery strategy for targeted liver cancer treatment, which has a promising potential for precise personalized cancer therapy.
The state of health research governance in Africa: what do we know and how can we improve?
Authors: Nabyonga-Orem Juliet , Asamani James Avoka , Makanga Micheal 
Published: January 2021

Abstract
Background
The developments in global health, digital technology, and persistent health systems challenges, coupled with global commitments like attainment of universal health coverage, have elevated the role of health research in low- and middle-income countries. However, there is a need to strengthen health research governance and create a conducive environment that can promote ethics and research integrity and increase public trust in research.

Objective
To assess whether the necessary structures are in place to ensure health research governance.

Methods
Employing a cross-sectional survey, we collected data on research governance components from 35 Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) African Region. Data were analysed using basic descriptive and comparative analysis.

Results
Eighteen out of 35 countries had legislation to regulate the conduct of health research, while this was lacking in 12 countries. Some legislation was either grossly outdated or too limiting in scope, while some countries had multiple laws. Health research policies and strategies were in place in 16 and 15 countries, respectively, while research priority lists were available in 25 countries. Overlapping mandates of institutions responsible for health research partly explained the lack of strategic documents in some countries. The majority of countries had ethical committees performing a dual role of ethical and scientific review. Research partnership frameworks were available to varying degrees to govern both in-country and north–south research collaboration. Twenty-five countries had a focal point and unit within the ministries of health (MoH) to coordinate research.

Conclusion
Governance structures must be adaptive to embrace new developments in science. Further, strong coordination is key to ensuring comprehensiveness and complementarity in both research development and generation of evidence. The majority of committees perform a dual role of ethics and scientific review, and these need to ensure representation of relevant expertise. Opportunities that accrue from collaborative research need to be seized through strong MoH leadership and clear partnership frameworks that guide negotiations.
Assessing the clinical utility of genetic risk scores for targeted cancer screening
Authors: Conran Carly A. , Shi Zhuqing , Resurreccion William Kyle , Na Rong , Helfand Brian T. , Genova Elena , Zheng Siqun Lilly , Brendler Charles B. , Xu Jianfeng 
Published: January 2021

Abstract
Background
Genome-wide association studies have identified thousands of disease-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A subset of these SNPs may be additively combined to generate genetic risk scores (GRSs) that confer risk for a specific disease. Although the clinical validity of GRSs to predict risk of specific diseases has been well established, there is still a great need to determine their clinical utility by applying GRSs in primary care for cancer risk assessment and targeted intervention.

Methods
This clinical study involved 281 primary care patients without a personal history of breast, prostate or colorectal cancer who were 40–70 years old. DNA was obtained from a pre-existing biobank at NorthShore University HealthSystem. GRSs for colorectal cancer and breast or prostate cancer were calculated and shared with participants through their primary care provider. Additional data was gathered using questionnaires as well as electronic medical record information. A t-test or Chi-square test was applied for comparison of demographic and key clinical variables among different groups.

Results
The median age of the 281 participants was 58 years and the majority were female (66.6%). One hundred one (36.9%) participants received 2 low risk scores, 99 (35.2%) received 1 low risk and 1 average risk score, 37 (13.2%) received 1 low risk and 1 high risk score, 23 (8.2%) received 2 average risk scores, 21 (7.5%) received 1 average risk and 1 high risk score, and no one received 2 high risk scores. Before receiving GRSs, younger patients and women reported significantly more worry about risk of developing cancer. After receiving GRSs, those who received at least one high GRS reported significantly more worry about developing cancer. There were no significant differences found between gender, age, or GRS with regards to participants’ reported optimism about their future health neither before nor after receiving GRS results.

Conclusions
Genetic risk scores that quantify an individual’s risk of developing breast, prostate and colorectal cancers as compared with a race-defined population average risk have potential clinical utility as a tool for risk stratification and to guide cancer screening in a primary care setting.
Locked compression plating versus retrograde intramedullary nailing in the treatment of periprosthetic supracondylar knee fractures: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Authors: Magill Henry , Ponugoti Nikhil , Selim Amr , Platt James 
Published: January 2021

Abstract
Background
Periprosthetic fractures of the distal femur above a total knee arthroplasty (TKA) have traditionally been managed by locking compression plating (LCP). This technique is technically demanding and is associated with high rates of non-union and revision. More recently, retrograde intramedullary nailing (RIMN) has been proposed as an acceptable alternative. This meta-analysis aims to evaluate clinical outcomes in patients with periprosthetic supracondylar femoral fractures who were treated with LCP and RIMN.

Methods
An up-to-date literature search was carried out using the pre-defined search strategy. All studies that met the inclusion criteria were assessed for methodological quality with the Cochrane’s collaboration tool. Operative time, functional score, time-to-union, non-union rates and revision rates were all considered.

Conclusion
Ten studies with a total of 531 periprosthetic fractures were included. This meta-analysis has suggested that there is no significant difference in any of the outcome measures assessed. Further, more extensive literature is required on the subject to draw more robust conclusions.
In vivo performance of Al2O3-Ti bone implants in the rat femur
Authors: Bahraminasab Marjan , Arab Samaneh , Safari Manouchehr , Talebi Athar , Kavakebian Fatemeh , Doostmohammadi Nesa 
Published: January 2021

Abstract
Background
Alumina-titanium (Al2O3-Ti) biocomposites have been recently developed with improved mechanical properties for use in heavily loaded orthopedic sites. Their biological performance, however, has not been investigated yet.

Methods
The aim of the present study was to evaluate the in vivo biological interaction of Al2O3-Ti. Spark plasma sintering (SPS) was used to fabricate Al2O3-Ti composites with 25 vol.%, 50 vol.%, and 75 vol.% Ti content. Pure alumina and titanium were also fabricated by the same procedure for comparison. The fabricated composite disks were cut into small bars and implanted into medullary canals of rat femurs. The histological analysis and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observation were carried out to determine the bone formation ability of these materials and to evaluate the bone-implant interfaces.

Results
The histological observation showed the formation of osteoblast, osteocytes with lacuna, bone with lamellar structures, and blood vessels indicating that the healing and remodeling of the bone, and vasculature reconstruction occurred after 4 and 8 weeks of implantation. However, superior bone formation and maturation were obtained after 8 weeks. SEM images also showed stronger interfaces at week 8. There were differences between the composites in percentages of bone area (TB%) and the number of osteocytes. The 50Ti composite showed higher TB% at week 4, while 25Ti and 75Ti represented higher TB% at week 8. All the composites showed a higher number of osteocytes compared to 100Ti, particularly 75Ti.

Conclusions
The fabricated composites have the potential to be used in load-bearing orthopedic applications.
Feature selection using distributions of orthogonal PLS regression vectors in spectral data
Authors: Lee Geonseok , Lee Kichun 
Published: January 2021

AbstractFeature selection, which is important for successful analysis of chemometric data, aims to produce parsimonious and predictive models. Partial least squares (PLS) regression is one of the main methods in chemometrics for analyzing multivariate data with inputXand responseYby modeling the covariance structure in theXandYspaces. Recently, orthogonal projections to latent structures (OPLS) has been widely used in processing multivariate data because OPLS improves the interpretability of PLS models by removing systematic variation in theXspace not correlated toY. The purpose of this paper is to present a feature selection method of multivariate data through orthogonal PLS regression (OPLSR), which combines orthogonal signal correction with PLS. The presented method generates empirical distributions of features effects uponYin OPLSR vectors via permutation tests and examines the significance of the effects of the input features onY. We show the performance of the proposed method using a simulation study in which a three-layer network structure exists in compared with the false discovery rate method. To demonstrate this method, we apply it to both real-life NIR spectra data and mass spectrometry data.
High-school students and self-injurious thoughts and behaviours: clues of emotion dysregulation
Authors: Zanus Caterina , Battistutta Sara , Aliverti Renata , Monasta Lorenzo , Montico Marcella , Ronfani Luca , Carrozzi Marco 
Published: January 2021

Abstract
Background
Suicide attempts and self-harm in adolescence are a major public health concern: they are among the main causes of disability-adjusted life-years worldwide, with severe long-term health consequences in terms of mental illness and psychiatric hospitalisation and a significantly increased risk of suicide. Several studies recently focused on the hypothesis that adolescents may be particularly vulnerable to emotional dysregulation and on the relation between problems with emotion regulation and suicidal and self-harming behaviours.
Italian epidemiological data about prevalence of these behaviours at the community level are lacking.
Our study aimed to estimate the prevalence of self-injurious thoughts and behaviours (SITBs) in a representative sample of community adolescents, and to examine the association between SITBs and the emotional and behavioural profiles.

Methods
Anonymous self-report questionnaires were completed by 1507 students aged 11–18 years from 24 high schools in the North-eastern Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. Information was collected on SITBs, on the socio-environmental context, and on the psychological profile (‘Achenbach’s YSR questionnaire 11–18, Multidimensional Test of Self-harm and Multi-Attitude Suicide Tendency Scale).

Results
Overall, 11.1% of adolescents reported self-harming behaviours without suicide ideation or attempts, 6.4% declared having thought to suicide without acting a suicide attempt or self-harm, 1.4% declared having attempted suicide and really thought to take away their life. Access to health services following a suicide thought, a self-harming behaviour or suicide attempt was infrequent, particularly for suicide ideation. At the YSR, all the SITBs groups reported high scores in almost all scales, with the most evident differences in the self-harming groups in which adolescents reported significantly higher scores in all scales, both internalising and externalising. An emotion dysregulation profile was found in almost all the groups.

Conclusions
This study provides us with an estimate of the prevalence of SITBs in the adolescent population and confirms the importance of further investigating the association between SITBs and emotion dysregulation. The naturalistic setting of community studies appears to be useful for studies in this field, and it allows to approach the onerous and often neglected issue of adolescent suicidality.
Sensitivity of soil nitrifying and denitrifying microorganisms to nitrogen deposition on the Qinghai–Tibetan plateau
Authors: Xu Minjie , Li Tingting , Liu Wei , Ding Junjun , Gao Lili , Han Xingguo , Zhang Ximei 
Published: January 2021

Abstract
Purpose
Nitrogen deposition at rate not more than 50 kg ha−1 year−1 is generally considered to stimulate soil nitrifying and denitrifying microorganisms via increases in soil nitrogen content. However, this phenomenon in alpine ecosystems remains largely untested.

Methods
We conducted an 8-year nitrogen deposition experiment on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, with four nitrogen deposition rates of 10 (atmospheric deposition), 20, 30, and 50 kg ha−1 year−1.

Results
The abundances of two nitrifying genes and four denitrifying genes and the N2O emission rate initially increased and subsequently decreased as the nitrogen deposition rate increased. The observed decrease in these indices at the rate of 50 kg ha−1 year−1 was caused by the toxicity of excessive NH4+.

Conclusions
Our study demonstrates the vulnerability of alpine microorganisms under global changes.
Exosomes derived from stem cells from apical papilla promote craniofacial soft tissue regeneration by enhancing Cdc42-mediated vascularization
Authors: Liu Yao , Zhuang Xueying , Yu Si , Yang Ning , Zeng Jianhong , Liu Xuemei , Chen Xu 
Published: January 2021

Abstract
Background
Reconstruction of complex critical-size defects (CSD) in the craniofacial region is a major challenge, and soft tissue regeneration is crucial in determining the therapeutic outcomes of craniofacial CSD. Stem cells from apical papilla (SCAP) are neural crest-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) that are homologous to cells in craniofacial tissue and represent a promising source for craniofacial tissue regeneration. Exosomes, which contain compound bioactive compounds, are the key factors in stem cell paracrine action. However, the roles of exosomes derived from SCAP (SCAP-Exo) in tissue regeneration are not fully understood. Here, we explored the effects and underlying mechanisms of SCAP-Exo on CSD in maxillofacial soft tissue.

Methods
SCAP-Exo were isolated and identified by transmission electron microscopy and nanoparticle tracking analysis. The effects of SCAP-Exo on wound healing and vascularization were detected by measuring the wound area and performing histological and immunofluorescence analysis on the palatal gingival CSD of mice. Real-time live-cell imaging and functional assays were used to assess the effects of SCAP-Exo on the biological functions of endothelial cells (ECs). Furthermore, the molecular mechanisms of SCAP-Exo-mediated EC angiogenesis in vitro were tested by immunofluorescence staining, Western blot, and pull-down assays. Finally, in vivo experiments were carried out to verify whether SCAP-Exo could affect vascularization and wound healing through cell division cycle 42 (Cdc42).

Results
We found that SCAP-Exo promoted tissue regeneration of palatal gingival CSD by enhancing vascularization in the early phase in vivo and that SCAP-Exo improved the angiogenic capacity of ECs in vitro. Mechanistically, SCAP-Exo elevated cell migration by improving cytoskeletal reorganization of ECs via Cdc42 signalling. Furthermore, we revealed that SCAP-Exo transferred Cdc42 into the cytoplasm of ECs and that the Cdc42 protein could be reused directly by recipient ECs, which resulted in the activation of Cdc42-dependent filopodium formation and elevation in cell migration of ECs.

Conclusion
This study demonstrated that SCAP-Exo had a superior effect on angiogenesis and effectively promoted craniofacial soft tissue regeneration. These data provide a new option for SCAP-Exo to be used in a cell-free approach to optimize tissue regeneration in the clinic.
Activation of regulated cell death in the lung of piglets infected with virulent PRRSV-1 Lena strain occurs earlier and mediated by cleaved Caspase-8
Authors: Sánchez-Carvajal Jose María , Ruedas-Torres Inés , Carrasco Librado , Pallarés Francisco José , Mateu Enric , Rodríguez-Gómez Irene Magdalena , Gómez-Laguna Jaime 
Published: January 2021

AbstractPRRSV-1 virulent strains cause high fever, marked respiratory disease and severe lesions in lung and lymphoid organs. Regulated cell death (RCD), such as apoptosis, necroptosis and pyroptosis, is triggered by the host to interrupt viral replication eliminating infected cells, however, although it seems to play a central role in the immunopathogenesis of PRRSV, there are significant gaps regarding their sequence and activation upon PRRSV-infection. The present study evaluated RCD events by means of caspases expression in the lung of PRRSV-1-infected pigs and their impact on pulmonary macrophage subpopulations and lung lesion. Conventional piglets were intranasally inoculated with the virulent subtype 3 Lena strain or the low virulent subtype 1 3249 strain and euthanised at 1, 3, 6, 8 and 13 dpi. Lena-infected piglets showed severe and early lung damage with a high frequency of PRRSV-N-protein+ cells, depletion of CD163+ cells and high viral load in the lung. The number of TUNEL+ cells was significantly higher than cCasp3+ cells in Lena-infected piglets during the first week post-infection. cCasp8 and to a lesser extent cCasp9 were activated by both PRRSV-1 strains after one week post-infection together with a replenishment of both CD163+ and Arg-1+ pulmonary macrophages. These results highlight the induction of other forms of RCD beyond apoptosis, such as, necroptosis and pyroptosis during the first week post-infection followed by the activation of, mainly, extrinsic apoptosis during the second week post-infection. The recovery of CD163+ macrophages at the end of the study represents an attempt to restore pulmonary macrophage subpopulations lost during the early stages of the infection but also a macrophage polarisation into M2 macrophages.
Development of a laboratory monitoring system for elastic waves transmitted through sand under dry and nearly saturated conditions
Authors: Nakayama Masayuki , Kawakata Hironori , Hirano Shiro , Doi Issei 
Published: January 2021

AbstractLaboratory experiments with seismic measurements have the potential to be highly useful for understanding the physical process of water-induced landslides, and fundamental experiments are helpful for the appropriate interpretation of recorded seismograms. We developed a laboratory measurement system to investigate the relationships between wave propagation and water saturation in sand. We considered that the wavelength should be comparable to or sufficiently shorter than the sensing intervals. Furthermore, we embedded a wave source that can repeatedly emit an arbitrary and identical signal in an octave frequency band under both dry and nearly saturated conditions. We measured the transmitted waves by embedded accelerometers over 24 h under dry and nearly saturated conditions. The difference in the slowness between the two conditions was one-thousand-fold larger than the fluctuations in slowness over 24 h for each condition. Also, the difference in amplitude between the two conditions was about double the fluctuations in amplitude over 24 h for each condition. These results suggested that our system can monitor the water content change in sand via the change in spectral amplitude and phase slowness.
An investigation into the cause of road failure along Sagamu-Papalanto highway southwestern Nigeria
Authors: Emmanuel Ubido Oyem , Ogbonnaya Igwe , Uche Ukah Bernadette 
Published: January 2021

AbstractInvestigation into the cause of road failure has been carried out along a 60 km long Sagamu –Papalanto highway southwestern Nigeria. Geochemical, mineralogical, geotechnical and geophysical analyses were conducted to evaluate the cause of failure along the study area. The results of the laboratory tests showed that the percentage amount of fines ranges from 12 to 61.3%, natural moisture content from 6.8 to 19.7%, liquid limit in the range of 25.1–52.2%, linear shrinkage between 3.96 to 12.71%, plastic limit ranges from 18.2–35%, plasticity index ranges from 5.2 to 24.6%, free swell in the range from 5.17–43.9%, maximum dry density ranges from 1.51–1.74 g /cm3, specific gravity ranges from 2.52–2.64 and CBR between 3 and 12%. The Cone Penetrometer Test (CPT) shows a resistance value of 20–138 kgf/cm2. The major clay mineral that is predominant in the studied soil is kaolinite. The major oxides present are SiO2, Al2O3, Fe2O3, K2O, Na2O, MgO and CaO. The result of the 2D Electrical Resistivity Imaging revealed a low resistivity values for profile 2 and 3 ranging from 100 Ωm – 300 Ωm, between a distance of 20 m – 240 m along the profile to a depth of 7.60 m and a low resistivity value ranging from 50 Ωm – 111Ωm, between a distance of 80 m − 120 m along the profile to a depth of 15 m. It was concluded that the low CBR, low MDD and the class of subsoils namely A-26, A-7, A-2-7 (clayey soils) which were identified are responsible for the cause of failure experienced in the study area. These makes the soils unsuitable as road construction materials and hence, there is need for stabilization during the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the road.