Experiments and modelling of pulmonary surfactant disruption by aerosolised compounds.

Within the deep lung, pulmonary surfactant coats the air-liquid interface at the surface of the alveoli. This complex mixture of amphiphilic molecules and proteins modifies the surface tension and mechanical properties of this interface to assist with breathing. In this study, we examine the effects on pulmonary surfactant function by two industrially used compounds composing surfactants and polymers.

Symptomatic glucocorticoid-induced adrenal suppression in the United Kingdom and Ireland: a BPSU study.

Objective: To determine the incidence and describe the presentation and management of unexpected symptomatic glucocorticoid-induced adrenal suppression (AS) in children and young people aged 0-15 years.

Setting And Design: Surveillance study of symptomatic glucocorticoid (GC)-induced AS with supportive biochemical evidence or presenting as an adrenal crisis, reported via the British Paediatric Surveillance Unit (BPSU) from September 2020 to September 2022.

Results: Over a 25-month period, 190 reports of symptomatic GC-induced AS/adrenal crisis were made, of which 22 were confirmed cases: 18 AS and 4 adrenal crises.

Rap1 regulates lumen continuity via Afadin in renal epithelia.

The continuity of a lumen within an epithelial tubule is critical for its function. We previously found that the F-actin binding protein Afadin is required for timely lumen formation and continuity in renal tubules formed from the nephrogenic mesenchyme in mice. Afadin is a known effector and interactor of the small GTPase Rap1, and in the current study, we examine the role of Rap1 in nephron tubulogenesis.

Rab11 is essential to pancreas morphogenesis, lumen formation and endocrine mass.

The molecular links between tissue-level morphogenesis and the differentiation of cell lineages in the pancreas remain elusive despite a decade of studies. We previously showed that in pancreas both processes depend on proper lumenogenesis. The Rab GTPase Rab11 is essential for epithelial lumen formation in vitro, however few studies have addressed its functions in vivo and none have tested its requirement in pancreas.

Xenotransplantation of Genetically Modified Neonatal Pig Islets Cures Diabetes in Baboons.

Xenotransplantation using porcine donors is rapidly approaching clinical applicability as an alternative therapy for treatment of many end-stage diseases including type 1 diabetes. Porcine neonatal islet cell clusters (NICC) have normalised blood sugar levels for relatively short periods in the preclinical diabetic rhesus model but have met with limited success in the stringent baboon model. Here we report that NICC from genetically modified (GM) pigs deleted for αGal and expressing the human complement regulators CD55 and CD59 can cure diabetes long-term in immunosuppressed baboons, with maximum graft survival exceeding 22 months.

Predictability of temporal variation in climate and the evolution of seasonal polyphenism in tropical butterfly communities.

Phenotypic plasticity in heterogeneous environments can provide tight environment-phenotype matching. However, the prerequisite is a reliable environmental cue(s) that enables organisms to use current environmental information to induce the development of a phenotype with high fitness in a forthcoming environment. Here, we quantify predictability in the timing of precipitation and temperature change to examine how this is associated with seasonal polyphenism in tropical Mycalesina butterflies.

Ductile and Brittle Yielding in Thermal and Athermal Amorphous Materials.

We study theoretically the yielding of sheared amorphous materials as a function of increasing levels of initial sample annealing prior to shear, in three widely used constitutive models and three widely studied annealing protocols. In thermal systems we find a gradual progression, with increasing annealing, from smoothly "ductile" yielding, in which the sample remains homogeneous, to abruptly "brittle" yielding, in which it becomes strongly shear banded. This progression arises from an increase with annealing in the size of an overshoot in the underlying stress-strain curve for homogeneous shear, which causes a shear banding instability that becomes more severe with increasing annealing.

Cyp26b1 is an essential regulator of distal airway epithelial differentiation during lung development.

Proper organ development depends on coordinated communication between multiple cell types. Retinoic acid (RA) is an autocrine and paracrine signaling molecule essential for the development of most organs, including the lung. Despite extensive work detailing effects of RA deficiency in early lung morphogenesis, little is known about how RA regulates late gestational lung maturation.

Arylation Using Sulfonamides: Phenylacetamide Synthesis through Tandem Acylation-Smiles Rearrangement.

A range of electron-poor and heterocyclic sulfonamides react with phenylacetyl chlorides to produce benzhydryl derivatives in a single step. The reaction proceeds via tandem amide bond formation/Dohmori-Smiles rearrangement under the simple conditions of an aqueous base. In the case of -nosylamides, a further reaction takes place at the nitro group to yield indazoles.

Building Blood Vessels-One Rho GTPase at a Time.

Blood vessels are required for the survival of any organism larger than the oxygen diffusion limit. Blood vessel formation is a tightly regulated event and vessel growth or changes in permeability are linked to a number of diseases. Elucidating the cell biology of endothelial cells (ECs), which are the building blocks of blood vessels, is thus critical to our understanding of vascular biology and to the development of vascular-targeted disease treatments.

Internet Access Influences Community Clinic Portal Use.

To assess whether individuals attending a community clinic had the necessary Internet access and experience to use the patient portal, while examining covariates of education, income, and self-perception of health with past and anticipated portal use. Adults attending an urban, community primary care clinic were invited to participate in a brief survey assessing current Internet access and use, past portal use, and anticipated future portal use. Survey responses were analyzed using descriptive and multivariate statistics.

Ruthenium-Catalyzed meta-Carboxylation.

The meta-carboxylation of arenes containing pyridine and other azine-directing groups is reported. Using carbon tetrabromide as the C1 source, ruthenium(III) trichloride catalysis enables functionalization of the arene meta-C-H position, affording carboxy methyl ester products after in situ reaction with methanol.

Extracting autism spectrum disorder data from the electronic health record.

Background: Little is known about the health care utilization patterns of individuals with pediatric autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Objectives: Electronic health record (EHR) data provide an opportunity to study medical utilization and track outcomes among children with ASD.  Methods: Using a pediatric, tertiary, academic hospital's Epic EHR, search queries were built to identify individuals aged 2-18 with International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes, 299.

A life uncertain - My baby's vulnerability: Mothers' lived experience of connection with their preterm infants in a Botswana neonatal intensive care unit.

Background: Preterm and low-birth weight infants are often separated from their mothers when admitted to neonatal units for stabilisation of body temperature and technological support.

Objectives: The aim of the study was to explore and describe the lived experiences of mothers regarding care of their hospitalised preterm infants in a neonatal unit in a public hospital in Gaborone, Botswana.

Method: This study utilised a qualitative exploratory and descriptive phenomenological study design.

Control of IBMIR in neonatal porcine islet xenotransplantation in baboons.

The instant blood-mediated inflammatory reaction (IBMIR) is a major obstacle to the engraftment of intraportal pig islet xenografts in primates. Higher expression of the galactose-α1,3-galactose (αGal) xenoantigen on neonatal islet cell clusters (NICC) than on adult pig islets may provoke a stronger reaction, but this has not been tested in the baboon model. Here, we report that WT pig NICC xenografts triggered profound IBMIR in baboons, with intravascular clotting and graft destruction occurring within hours, which was not prevented by anti-thrombin treatment.

The effect of different kick start positions on OMEGA OSB11 blocks on free swimming time to 15m in developmental level swimmers.

The introduction of the OMEGA OSB11 starting blocks (Swiss Timing, Corgémont, Switzerland) which feature an adjustable inclined plate built into the rear of the platform, have led to the evolution of the "kick start" style of swimming start. Previous studies examining the effect of different starting positions using the OSB11 starting blocks have not examined swimming performance over distances beyond 7.5m.

Journal club: Integrating research awareness into postgraduate nurse training.

Background: Evidence-based nursing requires nurses to maintain an awareness of recently published research findings to integrate into their clinical practice. In the South African setting keeping up with recent literature has additional challenges, including the diversity of nurses' home language, geographically foreign origins of published work, and limited economic resources. Students enrolled in a postgraduate programme came from various paediatric settings and displayed limited awareness of nursing literature as an evidence base for practice.

Linking minds and brains.

When I first came across William James' dictum that " … this sense of sameness is the very keel and backbone of our thinking," I thought he had foreseen the importance of cross-correlation in the brain, and told myself to find out how he had reached this conclusion. When I finally did this a year or two ago, I slowly came to realize that I had completely misunderstood him; from the full quote it is absolutely clear that his dictum cannot be referring to the process by which a cortical simple cell responds selectively to the orientation of features in a visual image, as I had originally supposed. If one translates the original dictum into two more prosaic modern versions, his version would say: "Our minds could not think at all without neural circuits in our brains that compute auto-correlations," but in my mistaken interpretation the last word would be "cross-correlations.

Clinical nurse specialists: essential resource for an effective NHS.

Despite emerging evidence for the clinical and financial efficacy of the clinical nurse specialist (CNS), the provision of this role is patchy across the country. There is also a risk that incumbent CNS' may be redirected to less specialist work in trusts that do not appreciate the full value of the service that these nurses provide. Optimal and equitable patient access to CNS care will require the development of a strong evidence base showing that specialist nurses not only deliver patient-focused care, but that they can also help to meet healthcare managers' objectives of streamlined, cost-effective clinical services.

Perceived motion is influenced by random dynamic information.

Distortions of the local spatial-frequency power spectrum caused by motion blur may be used by the visual system to improve motion analysis (e.g., Barlow and Olshausen, 2004 Journal of Vision 4415-426).