Indian Cryogenebank Conserving Diverse Plant Genetic Resources for the Last Three Decades: Achievements and Way Forward.

Ex situ conservation of plant genetic resources (PGR) plays a crucial role in sustainable growth and development, as highlighted by the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC). Seed genebanks, a key component of ex situ conservation, have been instrumental in preserving plant diversity. However, challenges arise with the conservation of non-orthodox (recalcitrant and intermediate) seeds and vegetative tissues, which are not amenable to storage in traditional genebanks at temperatures of -20°C.

MAFLD: Exploring the Systemic Effects Beyond Liver.

Metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is a growing global health concern which is driven by the increasing prevalence of diabetes and obesity. MAFLD is characterized by excessive fat accumulation in the liver, which encompasses a range of conditions, from simple hepatic steatosis to more severe forms. This condition is associated with various complications, including chronic kidney disease (CKD), Cardiovascular Disease (CVD), liver cirrhosis, and even malignancy.

Immunological Regulation of Fibrosis During Heart Failure: It Takes Two to Tango.

Immuno-fibrotic networks and their protein mediators, such as cytokines and chemokines, have increasingly been appreciated for their critical role in cardiac healing and fibrosis during cardiomyopathy. Immune activation, trafficking, and extravasation are tightly regulated to ensure a targeted and effective response against non-self antigens/pathogens while preserving tolerance towards self-antigens and coordinate fibrotic responses for efficient scar formation, a distinction that is severely compromised during chronic diseases. It is clear that immune cells are not only the critical regulators of post-infarct healing and scarring but are also the key players in regulating fibroblast activation during left-ventricular (LV) remodeling.

Distinct Urinary Metabolite Signatures Mirror In Vivo Oxidative Stress-Related Radiation Responses in Mice.

Exposure to ionizing radiation disrupts metabolic pathways and causes oxidative stress, which can lead to organ damage. In this study, urinary metabolites from mice exposed to high-dose and low-dose whole-body irradiation (WBI HDR, WBI LDR) or partial-body irradiation (PBI BM2.5) were analyzed using targeted and untargeted metabolomics approaches.

Stakeholders' Roles in Evolutionizing Education: An Evolutionary-Based Toolkit Surrounding Elementary Education.

There is a rapidly growing body of research in the field of evolutionary educational psychology that examines children's evolved motivational and educational inclinations as they relate to modern learning and schooling. It is generally agreed that schools are inherently mismatched with how children of our species evolved to learn, thereby contributing to difficulty learning and associated adverse schooling outcomes. Many researchers argue that, by making small changes to schools that help to better align instructional methods and childhood as a whole with our species' evolved learning mechanisms, we can lessen the negative impacts from evolutionary mismatch and create better outcomes for modern students.

Dermatologist Driven Aesthetic Nail Enhancement.

Background: Nail aesthetic procedures so far have been a neglected domain of nail medicine. With changing times, more people are getting sensitized towards nail enhancement; hence, there is an ever-increasing need for dermatologist driven aesthetic nail procedures.

Discussion: The management of various nail disorders takes a long time and might not be very rewarding with regard to complete aesthetic improvement.

Metabolic interactions underpinning high methane fluxes across terrestrial freshwater wetlands.

Current estimates of wetland contributions to the global methane budget carry high uncertainty, particularly in accurately predicting emissions from high methane-emitting wetlands. Microorganisms drive methane cycling, but little is known about their conservation across wetlands. To address this, we integrate 16S rRNA amplicon datasets, metagenomes, metatranscriptomes, and annual methane flux data across 9 wetlands, creating the Multi-Omics for Understanding Climate Change (MUCC) v2.

FLT3 is genetically essential for ITD-mutated leukemic stem cells but dispensable for human hematopoietic stem cells.

Leukemic stem cells (LSCs) fuel acute myeloid leukemia (AML) growth and relapse, but therapies tailored towards eradicating LSCs without harming normal hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are lacking. FLT3 is considered an important therapeutic target due to frequent mutation in AML and association with relapse. However, there has been limited clinical success with FLT3 drug targeting, suggesting either that FLT3 is not a vulnerability in LSC, or that more potent inhibition is required, a scenario where HSC toxicity could become limiting.

Peritoneal dialysis in patients with severe obesity: A successful single center experience.

There is growing emphasis on increasing utilization of peritoneal dialysis (PD) in patients with end stage kidney disease (ESKD); however, use in patients with severe obesity has still been fraught for various reasons. We aim to assess the viability of PD in patients with severe obesity (BMI > 40 Kg/m). We conducted a retrospective chart review of patients admitted at the home dialysis center of an academic center between 2014 and 2020 (n = 99).

Design of an integrated model with temporal graph attention and transformer-augmented RNNs for enhanced anomaly detection.

It is important in the rising demands to have efficient anomaly detection in camera surveillance systems for improving public safety in a complex environment. Most of the available methods usually fail to capture the long-term temporal dependencies and spatial correlations, especially in dynamic multi-camera settings. Also, many traditional methods rely heavily on large labeled datasets, generalizing poorly when encountering unseen anomalies in the process.

Pan-tumor analysis to investigate the obesity paradox in immune checkpoint blockade.

Background: Obesity is a risk factor for developing cancer but is also associated with improved outcomes after treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), a phenomenon called the obesity paradox. To interrogate mechanisms of divergent immune responses in obese and non-obese patients, we examined the relationship among obesity status, clinical responses, and immune profiles from a diverse, pan-tumor cohort of patients treated with ICI-based therapy.

Methods: From June 2021 to March 2023, we prospectively collected serial peripheral blood samples from patients with advanced or metastatic solid tumors who received ICI as standard of care at Johns Hopkins.

In-vitro assay studies and molecular docking of functionalized chitosan decorated vanadium pentoxide nano-agents as an antidiabetic drug.

This study aims to enhance the antidiabetic potential of Vanadium pentoxide (VO) by synthesizing chitosan-based nanoparticles (NPs). Chitosan and its derivatives were used to fabricate VO NPs, ensuring enhanced antioxidant and antidiabetic activity. Surface topography was analyzed using atomic force microscopy (AFM), revealing bioactive sites on the NPs with improved electron-transfer capability, as confirmed by cyclic voltammetry (CV).

Improved feature reduction framework for sign language recognition using autoencoders and adaptive Grey Wolf Optimization.

Automatic Sign Language Recognition Systems (ASLR) offers smooth communication between hearing-impaired and normal-hearing individuals, enhancing educational opportunities for impaired. However, it struggles with "curse of dimensionality" due to excessive features resulting in prolonged training time and exhaustive computational demand. This paper proposes technique that integrates machine learning and swarm intelligence to effectively address this issue.

Exploring the Frontiers of Nanopore Sequencing in Food Safety and Food Microbiology.

Foodborne illnesses are a significant global public health challenge, with an estimated 600 million cases annually. Conventional food microbiology methods tend to be laborious and time consuming, pose difficulties in real-time utilization, and can display subpar accuracy or typing capabilities. With the recent advancements in third-generation sequencing and microbial omics, nanopore sequencing technology and its long-read sequencing capabilities have emerged as a promising platform.

Factors Regulating the Potential for Freshwater Mineral Soil Wetlands to Function as Natural Climate Solutions.

There are increasing global efforts and initiatives aiming to tackle climate change and mitigate its impacts via natural climate solutions (NCS). Wetlands have been considered effective NCS given their capacity to sequester and retain atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO) while also providing a myriad of other ecosystem functions that can assist in mitigating the impacts of climate change. However, wetlands have a dual impact on climate, influencing the atmospheric concentrations of both CO and methane (CH).

Integrating genetics, metabolites, and clinical characteristics in predicting cardiometabolic health outcomes using machine learning algorithms - A systematic review.

Background: Machine learning (ML) integration of clinical, metabolite, and genetic data reveals variable results in predicting cardiometabolic health (CMH) outcomes. Therefore, we aim to (1) evaluate whether a multi-modal approach incorporating all three data types using ML algorithms can improve CMH outcome prediction compared to single-modal or paired-modal models, and (2) compare the methodologies used in existing prediction models.

Methods: We systematically searched five databases from 1998 to 2024 for ML predictive modelling studies using the multi-modal approach for CMH outcomes.

Brain distribution study of [C]-Riluzole following intranasal administration in mice.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) presents a substantial challenge due to its complex nature, limited effective treatment options, and modest benefits from current therapies in slowing disease progression. This study explores the potential of intranasal (IN) delivery to enhance the CNS delivery of riluzole (RLZ), a standard ALS treatment which is subject to blood-brain barrier efflux mechanisms. Additionally, the impact of elacridar (ELC), an efflux pump inhibitor, on IN RLZ CNS bioavailability was examined.

Mixed Pt-Ni Halide Perovskites for Photovoltaic Application.

CsPtI is a promising photoabsorber with a direct bandgap of 1.4 eV and a high carrier lifetime; however, the cost of Pt inhibits its commercial viability. Here, we performed a cost analysis and experimentally explored the effect of replacing Pt with earth-abundant Ni in solution-processed Cs(PtNi)(I,Cl) thin films on the properties and stability of the perovskite material.

Disentangling Sources of Momentum Fluctuations in Xe+Xe and Pb+Pb Collisions with the ATLAS Detector.

High-energy nuclear collisions create a quark-gluon plasma, whose initial condition and subsequent expansion vary from event to event, impacting the distribution of the eventwise average transverse momentum [P([p_{T}])]. Disentangling the contributions from fluctuations in the nuclear overlap size (geometrical component) and other sources at a fixed size (intrinsic component) remains a challenge. This problem is addressed by measuring the mean, variance, and skewness of P([p_{T}]) in ^{208}Pb+^{208}Pb and ^{129}Xe+^{129}Xe collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.

DSIA U-Net: deep shallow interaction with attention mechanism UNet for remote sensing satellite images.

Semantic segmentation of high-resolution images from remote sensing is crucial across various sectors. However, due to limitations in computational resources and the complexity of network architectures, many sophisticated semantic segmentation models struggle with efficiency in real-world applications, leading to an interest in developing lightweight model like borders. These models often employ a dual-branch structure, which balances processing speed and performance effectively.

The electricity cost burden of durable medical equipment in the United States.

Those who rely on durable medical equipment (DME) for their health are more likely to be energy insecure and face higher energy burdens than those who do not. In this article, we evaluate the costs of electricity to run DMEs. We find that the average cost across the most common types of high-frequency DMEs-including oxygen concentrators, continuous positive airway pressure machines, and peritoneal kidney dialysis machines-is between $120 and $333 per year, depending on device size and usage frequency.

Doctor-patient communication practices: A cross-sectional survey on Indian physicians.

Background: Effective communication is a critical and fundamental element of a successful medical practice and exerts a substantial influence on patient contentment, adherence, and disease outcome. This study was planned to identify domains for improvement in doctor-patient communication to enhance good practices in the future.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out involving 500 randomly selected samples of clinicians from government or private medical colleges across India.

Effect of Anti-Seizure Medication Monotherapy on Vitamin D Levels in Indian Children: A Longitudinal Cohort Study.

Background And Purpose: The timeline of alteration of vitamin D and calcium levels in those receiving anti-seizure medication (ASM) remains to be elucidated. To determine the changes in vitamin D levels over a period of 6 months among children receiving monotherapy with commonly used ASM.

Methods: The baseline serum levels of vitamin D, parathyroid hormone (PTH), calcium, alkaline phosphatase (ALP), phosphorus were measured in 32 children (median age 8 years) with newly diagnosed epilepsy.

Delusional Unreality and Predictive Processing.

Background: Phenomenological psychopathologists have recently highlighted how people with delusions experience multiple realities (delusional and non-delusional) and have suggested this double bookkeeping cannot be explained via predictive processing. Here, we present data from Kamin blocking and extinction learning that show how predictive processing might, in principle, explain a pervasive sense of dual reality.

Methods: This cross-sectional study involved three participant groups: patients with schizophrenia (SZ; n=42), healthy participants with elevated esoteric beliefs (EEB; clairaudient psychics; n=31), and heathy controls (with neither illness nor significant delusional ideation, n=62).