bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The “Skull Flap” a new conceived device for decompressive craniectomy experimental study on dogs to evaluate the safety and efficacy in reducing intracranial pressure and subsequent impact on brain perfusion
Authors: Salvatore Chibbaro , Leonardo Tigan , Pierre Kehrli , Paolo Diemidio , Fabrice Vallee , Marco Marsella , Thomas Lilin , Benoit Lecuelle , Salvatore Chibbaro , Bernard George , Eric Vicaut 
Published: October 2013

ABSTRACT
Background: Decompressive craniectomy (DC) is a procedure performed increasingly often in current neurosurgical practice. Significant perioperative morbidity may be associated to this procedure because of the large skull defect; also, later closure of the skull defect (cranioplasty) may be associated to post‑operative morbidity as much as any other reconstructive operation. The authors present a newly conceived/developed device: The “Skull Flap” (SF). This system, placed at the time of the craniectomy, offers the possibility to provide cranial reconstruction sparing patients a second operation. In other words, DC and cranioplasty essentially take place at the same time and in addition, patients retain their own bone flap. The current study conducted on animal models, represents the logical continuation of a prior recent study, realized on cadaver specimens, to assess the efficacy and safety of this recently developed device. Materials and Methods: This is an experimental pilot study on dogs to assess both safety and efficacy of the SF device. Two groups of experimental raised intracranial pressure animal models underwent DC; in the first group of dogs, the bone flap was left in raised position above the skull defect using the SF device; on the second group the flap was discarded. All dogs underwent transcranial Doppler (TCD) to assess brain perfusion. Head computed tomography (CT) scan to determine flap position was also obtained in the group in which the SF device was placed. Results: SF has proved to be a strong fixation device that allows satisfactory brain decompression by keeping the bone flap elevated from the swollen brain; later on, the SF allows cranial reconstruction in a simple way without requiring a second staged operation. In addition, it is relevant to note that brain perfusion was measured and found to be better in the group receiving the SF (while the flap being in a raised as well as in its natural position) comparing to the other group. Conclusion: The SF device has proved to be very easy to place, well‑adaptable to a different type of flaps and ultimately very effective in maintaining satisfactory brain decompression and later on, making easy bone flap repositioning after brain swelling has subsided.
ASHAs in rural India, the ray of hope for diabetes care
Authors: Bhatt Bharathi 
Published: October 2013

AbstractOut of 1.21 billion population of India, 69% of them live in rural areas. There is a wide disparity in the distribution of health infrastructure and services in rural areas as compared to that of urban areas. The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) launched in 2005, aimed to bridge this gap has introduced Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), as health activists into the rural health care. ASHA is an acronym for Accredited Social Health Activists and she has been so far instrumental in facilitating institutionalised delivery, child immunisation, ensuring family planning, besides organising village nutrition day. She has been the vital link between the community and the health care. India, as a nation that is progressing is trying to combat communicable diseases significantly but it is also witnessing the surfacing of a different problem. There is an increasing prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including diabetes which poses a big economic burden so much so that NCDs have been labelled as ′a health and developmental emergency′. Diabetes competes with other health concerns in a struggle to secure government health funding. In this resource-limited context, innovative methods are required to reach out to people at grass root levels. ASHA, which means hope in Sanskrit, can be true to her name in providing increased access to diabetes care to the rural population, if adequately trained and empowered. A multi-stakeholder approach through a public-private-people partnership (PPPP) is needed to tackle the issue with this kind of magnitude. The current review focuses on providing suggestions on utilising ASHAs′ services in spreading awareness on diabetes and ensuring that people with diabetes (PWD) receive optimal diabetes care.
Psychosocial aspects of diabetes in pregnancy
Authors: Kalra Bharti , Balhara Yatan , Kalra Sanjay 
Published: October 2013

AbstractRecent guidelines promote a patient-centered approach to the management of diabetes. The relevance of the bio-psychosocial model or holistic approach has also been explored in women′s health. Specifically, psychosocial and psychiatric morbidity has been appreciated and analyzed in pregnancy and the postpartum period. However, minimal attention has been focused on the psychosocial and social factors that impact pregnancy complicated by diabetes. This is even more surprising from a South Asian perspective, where deep-rooted sociocultural mores create a milieu that may not be very friendly to the antenatal woman with diabetes. This review discusses the psychosocial issues relevant in the context of pregnancy among diabetics. An approach to address these issues has also been highlighted.
Estimating global black carbon emissions using a top‐down Kalman Filter approach
Authors: Cohen Jason Blake , Wang Chien 
Published: October 2013

AbstractBlack carbon (BC) is an important aerosol constituent in the atmosphere and climate forcer. A good understanding of the radiative forcing of BC and associated climate feedback and response is critical to minimize the uncertainty in predicting current and future climate influenced by anthropogenic aerosols. One reason for this uncertainty is that current emission inventories of BC are mostly obtained from the so‐called bottom‐up approach, an approach that derives emissions based on categorized emitting sources and emission factors used to convert burning mass to emissions. In this work, we provide a first global‐scale top‐down estimation of global BC emissions, as well as an estimated error range, by using a Kalman Filter. This method uses data of both column aerosol absorption optical depth and surface concentrations from global and regional networks to constrain our fully coupled climate‐aerosol‐urban model and thus to derive an optimized estimate of BC emissions as 17.8 ± 5.6 Tg/yr, a factor of more than 2 higher than commonly used global BC emissions data sets. We further perform 22 additional optimization simulations that incorporate the known uncertain ranges of various important physical, model, and measurement parameters and still yield an optimized value within the above given range, from a low of 14.6 Tg/yr to a high of 22.2 Tg/yr. Furthermore, we show that the emissions difference between our optimized and a priori estimation is not uniform, with East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe underestimated, while North America is overestimated in the a priori inventory.
Isolation, Culture, and Characterization of Bacteriophages
Authors: Pelzek Adam J. , Schuch Raymond , Schmitz Jonathan E. , Fischetti Vincent A. 
Published: October 2013

AbstractBacteriophages (phages) are viruses that infect bacteria. Phages are the most abundant biological entities on Earth, and have influential effects on every ecosystem. Phage genomes represent a vast gene pool from which bacteria can draw upon for rapid evolution. Since the co‐discovery of phages in 1915 by Frederick Twort and 1917 by Felix d'Herelle, their potential as subjects of laboratory research has been exploited to great effect. Phage research has resulted in important strides in biology, from the elucidation of the function of DNA and the discovery of messenger RNA to the study of basic molecular interactions and genetic regulation. These fascinatingly simple and diverse entities are also valuable as diagnostic tools, genetic screening vectors, and potential therapeutics. This article provides an overview of techniques essential for entering the world of bacteriophage study, and contains protocols for the propagation, maintenance, storage, and basic characterization of phages. Curr. Protoc. Essential Lab. Tech. 7:4.4.1‐4.4.33. © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
The “early life” origins of obesity‐related health disorders: New discoveries regarding the intergenerational transmission of developmentally programmed traits in the global cardiometabolic health crisis
Authors: Benyshek Daniel C. 
Published: October 2013

ABSTRACTPopular media reports concerning the causes of the current global obesity pandemic and its related sequelae—the cardiometabolic syndrome—are often couched in terms of dramatic changes in diet and lifestyle around the world; namely, drastically increasing dietary intakes of high energy foods and plummeting levels of daily physical activity—the hallmarks of the so called “nutrition transition.” Far less attention is generally drawn to the important role phenotypic plasticity during early life (i.e., “developmental programming”) plays in the cardiometabolic health crisis. Recently, however, researchers working within the field of the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) and epigenetics have extended our understanding of the role played by these developmental processes and capacities in health and disease even further by investigating the transmissible nature of developmentally programmed cardiometabolic traits to subsequent generations. In this review, after briefly revisiting the fundamental discoveries of first‐generation DOHaD research, I consider how recent discoveries regarding the transmissibility of developmentally acquired traits are providing new insights into the current global cardiometabolic pandemic, and how a better understanding of developmental programming—including transmissibility—are essential for the conceptualization and implementation of public health initiatives aimed at stemming this global health crisis. Am J Phys Anthropol 57:79–93, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Production facilities for second‐generation biofuels in the USA and the EU – current status and future perspectives
Authors: Janssen Rainer , Turhollow Anthony F , Rutz Dominik , Mergner Rita 
Published: October 2013

AbstractSecond‐generation biofuel production facilities have been slower to reach large‐scale production than was anticipated a few years ago even though in Europe, the Renewable Energy Directive provides incentives; in the United States there are also financial incentives and the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 has targets for second‐generation biofuels. But starting in 2013 it appears that significant quantities of second‐generation biofuels will be produced. A variety of conversion processes, thermochemical and biological, as well as hybrids of the two is being utilized. There will be a variety of fuels – ethanol, drop‐in fuels (e.g. gasoline, diesel), biodiesel, steam, electricity, bio‐oil, sugars, and chemicals; and a variety of feedstocks – crop residues, wood, wood wastes, energy crops, waste oils and municipal solid waste (MSW). One approach to reducing the risk of moving from first‐ to second‐generation biofuel production has been to take incremental steps such as converting the cellulosic part of grains into ethanol in addition to the starch portion. Many of the second‐generation biofuel facilities are co‐located with first‐generation biofuel production facilities to share infrastructure as well as trade by‐products (e.g. excess steam). One of the challenges has been financing, but both private and government sources are being utilized. Private sources include internal corporate funds and debt offerings, and venture capital. Government sources include the US federal government, the European Union, European national governments, and state and local governments. © 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Simultaneous monitoring of intracellular ATP and oxygen levels in chondrogenic differentiation using a dual‐color bioluminescence reporter
Authors: Kwon Hyuck Joon , Ohmiya Yoshihiro , Yasuda Kazunori 
Published: October 2013

ABSTRACTA number of assay methods which measure cellular metabolic activity have only measured intracellular ATP levels because it has been speculated that ATP production and oxygen consumption are obligatorily coupled to each other under normal conditions. However, there exist many cases in which ATP production and oxygen consumption are uncoupled. Therefore, measurement of only intracellular ATP levels has a limit for understanding the overall metabolic states during various cellular functions. Here, we report a novel system for simultaneously monitoring intracellular ATP and oxygen levels using a red‐emitting Phrixothrix hirtus luciferase (PxRe) and a blue‐emitting Renilla luciferase (Rluc). Using this system, we monitored the dynamic changes in both intracellular ATP and oxygen levels during chondrogenesis. We found that the oxygen level oscillated at twice the frequency of ATP in chondrogenesis and the oxygen oscillations have an antiphase mode to the ATP oscillations; we also found an independent mode for the ATP oscillations. This result indicates that both mitochondrial and non‐mitochondrial respiration oscillate and thus play a role in chondrogenesis. This dual‐color monitoring system is useful for studying metabolic regulations that underlie diverse cellular processes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A protease substrate profiling method that links site‐specific proteolysis with antibiotic resistance
Authors: Sandersjöö Lisa , Kostallas George , Löfblom John , Samuelson Patrik 
Published: October 2013

AbstractProteases are involved in many biological processes and have become important tools in biomedical research and industry. Technologies for engineering and characterization of, for example, proteolytic activity and specificity are essential in protease research. Here, we present a novel method for assessment of site‐specific proteolysis. The assay utilizes plasmid‐encoded reporters that, upon processing by a co‐expressed protease, confer antibiotic resistance to bacteria in proportion to the cleavage efficiency. We have demonstrated that cells co‐expressing cleavable reporters together with tobacco etch virus protease (TEVp) could be discriminated from cells with non‐cleavable reporters by growth in selective media. Importantly, the resistance to antibiotics proved to correlate with the substrate processing efficiency. Thus, by applying competitive growth of a mock library in antibiotic‐containing medium, we could show that the substrate preferred by TEVp was enriched relative to less‐efficient substrates. We believe that this simple methodology will facilitate protease substrate identification, and hold great promise for directed evolution of proteases and protease recognition sequences towards improved or even new functionality.
Therapeutic potential and adverse events of everolimus for treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma – systematic review and meta‐analysis
Authors: Yamanaka Kenya , Petrulionis Marius , Lin Shibo , Gao Chao , Galli Uwe , Richter Susanne , Winkler Susanne , Houben Philipp , Schultze Daniel , Hatano Etsuro , Schemmer Peter 
Published: October 2013

AbstractEverolimus is an orally administrated mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitor. Several large‐scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have demonstrated the survival benefits of everolimus at the dose of 10 mg/day for solid cancers. Furthermore, mTOR‐inhibitor‐based immunosuppression is associated with survival benefits for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who have received liver transplantation. However, a low rate of tumor reduction and some adverse events have been pointed out. This review summarizes the antitumor effects and adverse events of everolimus and evaluates its possible application in advanced HCC. For the meta‐analysis of adverse events, we used the RCTs for solid cancers. The odds ratios of adverse events were calculated using the Peto method. Manypreclinical studies demonstrated that everolimus had antitumor effects such as antiproliferation and antiangiogenesis. However, some differences in the effects were observed among in vivo animal studies for HCC treatment. Meanwhile, clinical studies demonstrated that the response rate of single‐agent everolimus was low, though survival benefits could be expected. The meta‐analysis revealed the odds ratios (95% confidence interval [CI]) of stomatitis: 5.42 [4.31–6.73], hyperglycemia: 3.22 [2.37–4.39], anemia: 3.34 [2.37–4.67], pneumonitis: 6.02 [3.95–9.16], aspartate aminotransferase levels: 2.22 [1.37–3.62], and serum alanine aminotransferase levels: 2.94 [1.72–5.02], respectively. Everolimus at the dose of 10 mg/day significantly increased the risk of the adverse events. In order to enable its application to the standard conventional therapies of HCC, further studies are required to enhance the antitumor effects and manage the adverse events of everolimus.
Atmospheric pressure plasma jet treatment evokes transient oxidative stress in HaCaT keratinocytes and influences cell physiology
Authors: Wende Kristian , Straßenburg Susanne , Haertel Beate , Harms Manuela , Holtz Sarah , Barton Annemarie , Masur Kai , von Woedtke Thomas , Lindequist Ulrike 
Published: October 2013

AbstractModern non‐thermal atmospheric pressure plasma sources enable controllable interaction with biological systems. Their future applications – e.g. wound management – are based on their unique mixture of reactive components sparking both stimulatory as well as inhibitory processes. To gain detailed understanding of plasma–cell interaction and with respect to risk awareness, key mechanisms need to be identified. This study focuses on the impact of an argon non‐thermal atmospheric pressure plasma jet (kINPen 09) on human HaCaT keratinocytes. With increasing duration, cell viability decreased. In accordance, cells accumulated in G2/M phase within the following 24 h. DNA single‐strand breaks were detected immediately after treatment and receded in the aftermath, returning to control levels after 24 h. No directly plasma‐related DNA double‐strand breaks were detected over the same time. Concurrently, DNA synthesis decreased. Coincident with treatment time, an increase in intracellular 2′,7′‐dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate (H2DCFDA) conversion increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels. The radical scavenging activity of culture medium crucially influenced these effects. Thus, ROS changed DNA integrity, and the effectiveness of cellular defence mechanisms characterises the interaction of non‐thermal plasma and eukaryotic cells. Effects were time‐dependent, indicating an active response of the eukaryotic cells. Hence, a stimulation of eukaryotic cells using short‐term non‐thermal plasma treatment seems possible, eg in the context of chronic wound care. Long‐term plasma treatments stopped in cell proliferation and apoptosis, which might be relevant in controlling neoplastic conditions.
Flexible Polyester Cellulose Paper Supercapacitor with a Gel Electrolyte
Authors: Karthika Prasannan , Rajalakshmi Natarajan , Dhathathreyan Kaveripatnam S. 
Published: October 2013

AbstractA low‐cost polyester cellulose paper has been used as a substrate for a flexible supercapacitor device that contains aqueous carbon nanotube ink as the electrodes and a polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)‐based gel as the electrolyte. Gel electrolytes have attracted much interest due to their solvent‐holding capacity and good film‐forming capability. The electrodes are characterized for their conductivity and morphology. Because of its high conductivity, the conductive paper is studied in supercapacitor applications as active electrodes and as separators after coating with polyvinylidene fluoride. Carbon nanotubes deposited on porous paper are more accessible to ions in the electrolyte than those on flat substrates, which results in higher power density. A simple fabrication process is achieved and paper supercapacitors are tested for their performance in both aqueous and PVA gel electrolytes by using galvanostatic and cyclic voltammetry methods. A high specific capacitance of 270 F g−1 and an energy density value of 37 W h kg−1 are achieved for devices with PVA gel electrolytes. Furthermore, this device can maintain excellent specific capacitance even under high currents. This is also confirmed by another counter experiment with aqueous sulfuric acid as the electrolyte. The cycle life, one of the most critical parameters in supercapacitor operations, is found to be excellent (6000 cycles) and less than 0.5 % capacitance loss is observed. Moreover, the supercapacitor device is flexible and even after twisting does not show any cracks or evidence of breakage, and shows almost the same specific capacitance of 267 F g−1and energy density of 37 W h kg−1. This work suggests that a paper substrate can be a highly scalable and low‐cost solution for high‐performance supercapacitors.
“Clicking” Porphyrins to Magnetic Nanoparticles for Photodynamic Therapy
Authors: Thandu Merlyn , Rapozzi Valentina , Xodo Luigi , Albericio Fernando , Comuzzi Clara , Cavalli Silvia 
Published: October 2013

AbstractA method for the preparation of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticle–porphyrin (SPION‐TPP) conjugates through click chemistry, which can be used as novel theranostic nanoagents for photodynamic therapy is developed. The synthesis, characterisation, and evaluation of the photocytotoxicity profiles of the nanoconjugates prepared is reported. Upon light irradiation, SPION‐TPP nanoconstructs promote a photodynamic effect in vitro in murine amelanotic melanoma B78‐H1 cells, with IC50 values in the region of 800 nM, similarly to unbound TPP, whereas they remain non‐cytotoxic in the dark. However, these nanoconstructs show poor cellular uptake, which influences a linear dose–response effect. Therefore, the improvement of delivery to cells has also been studied by conjugating a well‐known cell‐penetrating peptide (TAT peptide) to the SPION‐TPP nanoparticles. The new nanoconstructs show lower IC50 values (in the region of 500 nM) and a clear dose–response effect. Our results suggest that TAT‐conjugated SPION‐TPP nanoparticles are efficient nanodevices both for tracking drugs by means of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)‐based techniques and for treating cancer cells through photodynamic therapy, thus functioning as promising theranostic nanoagents.
Does Mediation Make Us Better? Exploring the Capacity‐Building Potential of Community Mediation
Authors: Pincock Heather 
Published: October 2013

AbstractThe prevailing measures of the success of mediation have largely focused on rates of settlement and satisfaction while overlooking the capacity‐building goals expressed by many mediation advocates. I address this through empirical study of the effects of mediation on participant capacity at two community mediation organizations in Toronto. I find that mediation has the potential to build participant capacity, but in the majority of cases, it does not have these lasting effects on participants. Based on these findings I conclude that mediation advocates should scale back and reconceptualize, though not entirely abandon, their claims about the capacity‐building potential of mediation.