bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The cell viability assay analysis and physicochemical characterization of porous hydroxyapatite scaffold using honeycomb and paraffin wax as polymeric porogen for bone tissue engineering
Authors: Sari W , Sari M , Yusuf Y 
Published: March 2022

Abstract
To fabricate and characterize the porous hydroxyapatite-based scaffold, honeycomb as a natural polymer (HA/HCB) and paraffin wax (HA/Wax) were used. The fabrication of scaffold using the porogen leaching method was varied temperatures between 700, 900, and 1100 °C. Theoretically, the temperature of calcination influenced the morphology of the scaffold, crystallite size, functional group, and porosity. According to the previous study, the crystallite size of the polymer scaffold is less than 100 nm. The HA-based scaffold was analyzed by the Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDS), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), X-Ray Diffractometer (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), and tested by the cell viability. According to the XRD results, the crystallite size of HA/HCB scaffold decreases, while scaffold HA/Wax crystallite size tends to decrease when calcination temperature increases. As calcination temperature increases, porosity tends to be small for both HA/HCB and HA/wax scaffolds. The scaffold HA/HCB 900 °C has interconnected pores, uniform, and small porosity. In contrast, the scaffold HA/Wax 900 °C has fewer interconnected pores and non-uniform particles. The FTIR result of the HA/HCB 900 °C has C-H functional group, affecting cell viability. Through MTT (3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)−2,5 diphenyltetrazolium bromide) assays, the cell viability value of the HA/Wax 900 °C was greater than the HA/HCB 900 °C for 48 h incubated time. It is caused by the alkane chains on HA/HCB, causing the death of cells. Considering cell viability assay studies for the nanocomposite scaffold, the obtained results confirm the non-toxicity of the material.
Ocimum tenuiflorum L mediated green synthesis of silver and selenium nanoparticles: antioxidant activity, cytotoxicity and density functional theory studies
Authors: Olawale Femi , Ariatti Mario , Singh Moganavelli 
Published: March 2022

Abstract
Inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) have found extensive application in medicine and pharmaceutics. Although chemical synthesis of NPs is the most commonly employed technique, it is often associated with toxicities due to the nature of the precursors and the experimental conditions used. Hence, there is a need for a safer biosynthetic approach. The current study involves the green synthesis of silver (Ag) and selenium (Se) NPs using an aqueous Ocimum tenuiflorum inflorescence extract. Total phenol and HPLC-MS based phytochemical analysis of the extract was performed. NPs were analysed using UV-visible, and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, electron microscopy (EM), x-ray diffraction (XRD) and nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA). Surface plasmon resonance bands at 433 nm and 285 nm confirmed the synthesis of the Ag and SeNPs, respectively. NPs were monodisperse, small (<65 nm), with good stability and significant antioxidant activity. Cytotoxicity evaluated in the human embryonic kidney (HEK293), cervical carcinoma (HeLa) and breast adenocarcinoma (MCF-7) cells showed a dose-dependent trend with Se possessing better biocompatibility in the normal HEK293 cells than Ag. Density functional theory identified anthocyanins (delphinidin-5-O-beta-d-glucoside and delphinidin-3-O-glucoside) to have the most favourable NP-reducing and stabilising potential from the identified plant compounds.
A Combined Biomarker of Bright CD38 and MYC ≥55% Is Highly Predictive of Double-/Triple-Hit High-Grade B-Cell Lymphoma
Authors: Alsuwaidan Abdullah , Koduru Prasad , Fuda Franklin , Manuel Jaso Jesse , Chen Mingyi , Rosado Flavia , Luu Hung S , Sweed Nathan , Garcia Rolando , Doucet Meggie , Desai Neil B , Kumar Kiran A , Awan Farrukh T , Ramakrishnan Geethakumari Praveen , Chen Weina 
Published: March 2022

Abstract

Objectives
Diagnosis of high-grade B-cell lymphoma with MYC and BCL2 or BCL6 rearrangements (double-/triple-hit lymphoma [DTHL]) appears to mandate fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) testing for all large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL). Given the low incidence of DTHL, we aimed to identify flow cytometry (FC) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) features of DTHL that could be used to develop an optimal screening strategy. This combined FC-IHC approach has not yet been studied.

Methods
We compared features of 40 cases of DTHL and 39 cases of diffuse LBCL (DLBCL) without MYC rearrangement.

Results
Bright CD38 expression (CD38bright) by FC, high MYC expression (≥55%), and double-expressor phenotype by IHC were significantly associated with DTHL. The biomarker combining FC and IHC, CD38bright and/or MYC ≥55%, was superior to FC and IHC markers alone in predicting DTHL. Restricting FISH testing to approximately 25% of LBCL based on CD38brightand/or MYC ≥55% would detect approximately 95% of DTHL-BCL2 and approximately 75% of DHL-BCL6.

Conclusions
Our study demonstrated that the novel biomarker of CD38bright and/or MYC ≥55% is highly predictive of DTHL. Awareness of the advantages and limitations of this screening strategy would facilitate development of a rational diagnostic workflow to provide high-quality patient care.
Occupational Benzene Exposure in the Norwegian Offshore Petroleum Industry, 2002–2018
Authors: Ridderseth Hilde , Daltveit Dagrun Slettebø , Hollund Bjørg Eli , Kirkeleit Jorunn , Kromhout Hans , Krüger Kirsti , Austgulen Liv-Torill , Bråtveit Magne 
Published: March 2022

Abstract

Purpose
Workers on offshore petroleum installations are at risk of being exposed to benzene which is carcinogenic to humans. The present study aimed to assess the time trend of full-shift benzene exposure from 2002 to 2018 in order to characterize benzene exposure among laboratory technicians, mechanics, process operators, and industrial cleaners, and to examine the possible determinants of benzene exposure.

Methods
A total of 924 measurements of benzene exposure from the Norwegian petroleum offshore industry were included. The median sampling duration was 680 min, ranging from 60 to 940 min. The overall geometric mean (GM) and 95% confidence interval, time trends, and determinants of exposure were estimated using multilevel mixed-effects tobit regression analyses. Time trends were estimated for sampling duration below and above 8 h, both overall and for job groups. The variability of exposure between installation and workers was investigated in a subset of data containing worker identification.

Results
The overall GM of benzene exposure was 0.004 ppm. When adjusting for job group, design of process area, season, wind speed, and sampling duration, industrial cleaners had the highest exposure (GM = 0.012). Laboratory technicians, mechanics, and process operators had a GM exposure of 0.004, 0.003, and 0.004 ppm, respectively. Overall, the measured benzene exposure increased by 7.6% per year from 2002 to 2018. Mechanics had an annual increase of 8.6% and laboratory technicians had an annual decrease of 12.6% when including all measurements. When including only measurements above 8 h, mechanics had an increase of 16.8%. No statistically significant time trend was found for process operators. Open process area, high wind speed, and wintertime were associated with reduced exposure level.

Conclusions
An overall increase in measured exposure was observed from 2002 to 2018. The increase may reflect changes in measurement strategy from mainly measuring on random days to days with expected exposure. However, the time trend varied between job groups and was different for sampling duration above or below 8 h. Industrial cleaners had the highest exposure of the four job groups while no differences in exposure were observed between laboratory technicians, mechanics, and process operators. The design of the process area, job group, wind speed, and season were all significant determinants of benzene exposure.
Functional Cognitive Disorder: Differential Diagnosis of Common Clinical Presentations
Authors: Kemp Steven , Kapur Narinder , Graham Christopher D , Reuber Markus 
Published: March 2022

Abstract

Background
Cognitive symptoms in the absence of neurological disease are common. Functional cognitive disorder (FCD) has been conceptualized as a cognitive subtype of functional neurological disorder. Although FCD is understood as different from exaggerated or feigned cognitive complaints, previous accounts have provided little practical advice on how FCD can be separated from factitious or malingered cognitive complaints. Also, the distinction of FCD from other medical or mental health disorders that impact on cognition is an area of ongoing study and debate. Diagnostic precision is important to prevent iatrogenesis and for the development of needed treatment protocols.

Method
We summarize the current literature and present seven anonymized case vignettes to characterize the challenges in this area and develop proposals for solutions.

Results/Conclusions
Recognizing the limitations of categorical diagnostic systems, we position FCD as distinct from feigning and cognitive symptoms of psychiatric disorders, although with overlapping features. We set out typical clinical features and neuropsychological profiles for each category of cognitive disorder and a statistical method to analyze performance validity tests/effort tests to assist in determining feigned or invalid responding.
Influence of mutation in the regulatory domain of α-isopropylmalate synthase from Saccharomyces cerevisiae on its activity and feedback inhibition
Authors: Takagi Hironobu , Yamamoto Kazuki , Matsuo Yoshifumi , Furuie Miki , Kasayuki Yasuha , Ohtani Rina , Shiotani Mizuki , Hasegawa Tetsuya , Ohnishi Toru , Ohashi Masataka , Johzuka Katsuki , Kurata Atsushi , Uegaki Koichi 
Published: March 2022

ABSTRACT
Isoamyl alcohol (i-AmOH) is produced from α-ketoisocaproate in the l-leucine biosynthetic pathway in yeast and controlled by the negative feedback regulation of α-isopropylmalate synthase (IPMS), which senses the accumulation of l-leucine. It is known that i-AmOH production increases when mutations in the regulatory domain reduce the susceptibility to feedback inhibition. However, the impact of mutations in this domain on the IPMS activity has not been examined. In this study, we obtained 5 IPMS mutants, encoding the LEU4 gene, N515D/S520P/S542F/A551D/A551V, that are tolerant to 5,5,5-trifluoro-dl-leucine. All mutant proteins were purified and examined for both IPMS activity and negative feedback activity by in vitro experiments. The results showed that not only the negative-feedback regulation by l-leucine was almost lost in all mutants, but also the IPMS activity was greatly decreased and the difference in IPMS activity among Leu4 mutants in the presence of l-leucine was significantly correlated with i-AmOH production.
Fully connected autoencoder and convolutional neural network with attention-based method for inferring disease-related lncRNAs
Authors: Xuan Ping , Gong Zhe , Cui Hui , Li Bochong , Zhang Tiangang 
Published: March 2022

AbstractSince abnormal expression of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) is often closely related to various human diseases, identification of disease-associated lncRNAs is helpful for exploring the complex pathogenesis. Most of recent methods concentrate on exploiting multiple kinds of data related to lncRNAs and diseases for predicting candidate disease-related lncRNAs. These methods, however, failed to deeply integrate the topology information from the meta-paths that are composed of lncRNA, disease and microRNA (miRNA) nodes. We proposed a new method based on fully connected autoencoders and convolutional neural networks, called ACLDA, for inferring potential disease-related lncRNA candidates. A heterogeneous graph that consists of lncRNA, disease and miRNA nodes were firstly constructed to integrate similarities, associations and interactions among them. Fully connected autoencoder-based module was established to extract the low-dimensional features of lncRNA, disease and miRNA nodes in the heterogeneous graph. We designed the attention mechanisms at the node feature level and at the meta-path level to learn more informative features and meta-paths. A module based on convolutional neural networks was constructed to encode the local topologies of lncRNA and disease nodes from multiple meta-path perspectives. The comprehensive experimental results demonstrated ACLDA achieves superior performance than several state-of-the-art prediction methods. Case studies on breast, lung and colon cancers demonstrated that ACLDA is able to discover the potential disease-related lncRNAs.
Environmental epigenetic interaction of gametes and early embryos
Authors: Li Xin-Yuan , Pan Jie-Xue , Zhu Hong , Ding Guo-Lian , Huang He-Feng 
Published: March 2022

Abstract
In recent years, the developmental origins of diseases have been increasingly recognized and accepted. As such, it has been suggested that most adulthood chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and even tumors may develop at a very early stage. In addition to intrauterine environmental exposure, germ cells carry an important inheritance role as the primary link between the two generations. Adverse external influences during differentiation and development can cause damage to germ cells, which may then increase the risk of chronic disease development later in life. Here, we further elucidate and clarify the concept of gamete and embryo origins of adult diseases by focusing on the environmental insults on germ cells, from differentiation to maturation and fertilization.
Staff Perceptions and Capability in using the Mental Capacity Act to Assess Decision Making in those with Acquired Brain Injury and Executive Dysfunction
Authors: Cameron Emma , Codling James , Nash Maxine 
Published: March 2022

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to establish the perceptions and capability of social care professionals (SCPs) in using the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) 2005 to assess decision-making capacity in those who have executive dysfunction and issues pertaining to the frontal lobe paradox, in comparison to health care professionals (HCPs). HCPs and SCPs from inpatient and community neurorehabilitation teams, social care teams and a best interest assessor team were contacted via convenience sampling and participated in semi-structured interviews. Data from these consultations were analysed using a form of thematic analysis known as template analysis. Four over-arching template themes were identified: ‘assessment structure’, ‘implications of brain injury’, ‘professionals’ capability/expertise’ and ‘consent, self-report and mental capacity’. The findings suggest that SCPs would benefit from bespoke practice guidance designed to help with the application of the MCA with the acquired brain injury/long-term neurological conditions population—particularly where there is a concern about a person’s ability to understand, apply or use information outside of an assessment or supportive conversation.
Detection of neuron-derived pathological α-synuclein in blood
Authors: Kluge Annika , Bunk Josina , Schaeffer Eva , Drobny Alice , Xiang Wei , Knacke Henrike , Bub Simon , Lückstädt Wiebke , Arnold Philipp , Lucius Ralph , Berg Daniela , Zunke Friederike 
Published: March 2022

AbstractTo date, no reliable clinically applicable biomarker has been established for Parkinson’s disease. Our results indicate that a long anticipated blood test for Parkinson’s disease may be realized. Following the isolation of neuron-derived extracellular vesicles of Parkinson’s disease patients and non-Parkinson’s disease individuals, immunoblot analyses were performed to detect extracellular vesicle-derived α-synuclein. Pathological α-synuclein forms derived from neuronal extracellular vesicles could be detected under native conditions and were significantly increased in all individuals with Parkinson’s disease and clearly distinguished disease from the non-disease state. By performing an α-synuclein seeding assay these soluble conformers could be amplified and seeding of pathological protein folding was demonstrated. Amplified α-synuclein conformers exhibited β-sheet-rich structures and a fibrillary appearance. Our study demonstrates that the detection of pathological α-synuclein conformers from neuron-derived extracellular vesicles from blood plasma samples has the potential to evolve into a blood-biomarker of Parkinson’s disease that is still lacking so far. Moreover, the distribution of seeding-competent α-synuclein within blood exosomes sheds a new light of pathological disease mechanisms in neurodegenerative disorders.
Relative contagiousness of emerging virus variants: An analysis of the Alpha, Delta, and Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variants
Authors: Hansen Peter Reinhard 
Published: March 2022

Summary
We propose a simple dynamic model for estimating the relative contagiousness of two virus variants. Maximum likelihood estimation and inference is conveniently invariant to variation in the total number of cases over the sample period and can be expressed as a logistic regression. We apply the model to Danish SARS-CoV-2 variant data. We estimate the reproduction numbers of Alpha and Delta to be larger than that of the ancestral variant by a factor of 1.51 [CI 95%: 1.50, 1.53] and 3.28 [CI 95%: 3.01, 3.58], respectively. In a predominately vaccinated population, we estimate Omicron to be 3.15 [CI 95%: 2.83, 3.50] times more infectious than Delta. Forecasting the proportion of an emerging virus variant is straight forward and we proceed to show how the effective reproduction number for a new variant can be estimated without contemporary sequencing results. This is useful for assessing the state of the pandemic in real time as we illustrate empirically with the inferred effective reproduction number for the Alpha variant.
Enhanced perchloroethene dechlorination by humic acids via increasing the dehalogenase activity ofDehalococcoidesstrains
Authors: Wan Jixing , Chen Kezhen , Chen Jingwen , Qin Zhihui , Adrian Lorenz , Shen Chaofeng 
Published: March 2022

AbstractPerchloroethene (PCE) is a widely used chlorinated solvent. PCE is toxic to humans and has been identified as an environmental contaminant at thousands of sites worldwide. Several Dehalococcoides mccartyi strains can transform PCE to ethene, and thus contribute to bioremediation of contaminated sites. Humic acids (HA) are ubiquitous redox-active compounds of natural aquatic and soil systems and have been intensively studied because of their effect in electron transfer. In this study, we observed the dechlorination of PCE was accelerated by HA in mixed cultures containing Dehalococcoides strains. Anthraquinone-2,6-disulfonic acid (AQDS), a humic acid analogue, inhibited PCE dechlorination in our cultures and thus induced an opposite effect on PCE dehalogenation than HA. We observed the same effect on PCE dechlorination with the pure culture of Dehalococcoides mccartyi strain CBDB1. Not only in mixed cultures but also in pure cultures, growth of Dehalococcoides was not influenced by HA but inhibited by AQDS. Enzymatic activity tests confirmed the dehalogenating activity of strain CBDB1 was increased by HA, especially when using hydrogen as electron donor. We conclude that HA enhanced PCE dechlorination by increasing the reaction speed between hydrogen and the dehalogenase enzyme rather than acting as electron shuttle through its quinone moieties.
Framework for near real-time forest inventory using multi source remote sensing data
Authors: Coops Nicholas C , Tompalski Piotr , Goodbody Tristan R H , Achim Alexis , Mulverhill Christopher 
Published: March 2022

AbstractForestry inventory update is a critical component of sustainable forest management, requiring both the spatially explicit identification of forest cover change and integration of sampled or modelled components like growth and regeneration. Contemporary inventory data demands are shifting, with an increased focus on accurate attribute estimation via the integration of advanced remote sensing data such as airborne laser scanning (ALS). Key challenges remain, however, on how to maintain and update these next-generation inventories as they age. Of particular interest is the identification of remotely sensed data that can be applied cost effectively, as well as establishing frameworks to integrate these data to update information on forest condition, predict future growth and yield, and integrate information that can guide forest management or silvicultural decisions such as thinning and harvesting prescriptions. The purpose of this article is to develop a conceptual framework for forestry inventory update, which is also known as the establishment of a ‘living inventory’. The proposed framework contains the critical components of an inventory update including inventory and growth monitoring, change detection and error propagation. In the framework, we build on existing applications of ALS-derived enhanced inventories and integrate them with data from satellite constellations of free and open, analysis-ready moderate spatial resolution imagery. Based on a review of the current literature, our approach fits trajectories to chronosequences of pixel-level spectral index values to detect change. When stand-replacing change is detected, corresponding values of cell-level inventory attributes are reset and re-established based on an assigned growth curve. In the case of non–stand-replacing disturbances, cell estimates are modified based on predictive models developed between the degree of observed spectral change and relative changes in the inventory attributes. We propose that additional fine-scale data can be collected over the disturbed area, from sources such as CubeSats or remotely piloted airborne systems, and attributes updated based on these data sources. Cells not identified as undergoing change are assumed unchanged with cell-level growth curves used to increment inventory attributes. We conclude by discussing the impact of error propagation on the prediction of forest inventory attributes through the proposed near real-time framework, computing needs and integration of other available remote sensing data.