Impact of plasma discharge pressure on implant surface properties and osteoblast activities in vacuum-assisted plasma treatment.

Nonthermal plasma has been extensively utilized in various biomedical fields, including surface engineering of medical implants to enhance their biocompatibility and osseointegration. To ensure robustness and cost effectiveness for commercial viability, stable and effective plasma is required, which can be achieved by reducing gas pressure in a controlled volume. Here, we explored the impact of reduced gas pressure on plasma properties, surface characteristics of plasma-treated implants, and subsequent biological outcomes.

Critical assessment of commercially available microtitre panels for antimicrobial susceptibility testing of veterinary pathogens.

Antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) in the veterinary sector by broth microdilution is mainly based on commercially available microtitre plates with specific panels. A critical review of commercially available microtitre panels identified AST panels that fulfil the requirements for obtaining reliable AST results by covering the necessary antimicrobial concentrations for both clinical breakpoints as well as quality control (QC) ranges for approved QC strains. However, there are AST panels in which these prerequisites are only in part fulfilled, and some AST panels that do not fulfil the aforementioned criteria at all.

Risk of acute kidney injury after contrast-enhanced MRI examinations in a pediatric population.

Objectives: To investigate the associations between gadolinium-based contrast agent (GBCA) administration and the occurrence of acute kidney injury (AKI) in pediatric patients, and to determine the risks associated with AKI.

Materials And Methods: This retrospective study was conducted on pediatric patients who underwent contrast-enhanced or unenhanced MRI between January 1st, 2015, and June 30th, 2021. Examinations were included if they had data on height and serum creatinine levels within 3 months before and 2 days after the examinations.

The Relationship of Pork Meat Consumption with Nutrient Intakes, Diet Quality, and Biomarkers of Health Status in Korean Older Adults.

Background: Pork meat is a widely consumed protein food with the potential to differentially affect health and nutritional status across social and cultural contexts.

Objectives: We evaluated the association between pork meat consumption and nutrient intake, diet quality, and biomarkers of health among older adults (age ≥ 65 years) in Korea.

Methods: Our analyses utilized dietary and health examination data from the 2016-2020 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey ( = 2068).

Sample-efficient inverse design of freeform nanophotonic devices with physics-informed reinforcement learning.

Finding an optimal device structure in the vast combinatorial design space of freeform nanophotonic design has been an enormous challenge. In this study, we propose physics-informed reinforcement learning (PIRL) that combines the adjoint-based method with reinforcement learning to improve the sample efficiency by an order of magnitude compared to conventional reinforcement learning and overcome the issue of local minima. To illustrate these advantages of PIRL over other conventional optimization algorithms, we design a family of one-dimensional metasurface beam deflectors using PIRL, exceeding most reported records.