Identifying and Evaluating Online Kidney Stone Pain Resources: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Introduction and objectives With the continuous growth of social media platforms, an increasing number of individuals are turning to them as their main source of medical information. This article aims to pinpoint the most widely accessed online resources on kidney stone pain among those who suffer from kidney stones and to assess the reliability, understandability, quality, and actionability of their content. Materials and methods The social media analysis platform BuzzSumo was employed to identify pertinent articles and assess their engagement levels.

Effect of non-additive mixing on entropic bonding strength and phase behavior of binary nanocrystal superlattices.

Non-additive mixing plays a key role in the properties of molecular fluids and solids. In this work, the potential for athermal order-disorder phase transitions is explored in non-additive binary colloidal nanoparticles that form substitutionally ordered compounds, namely, for equimolar mixtures of octahedra + spheres, which form a CsCl lattice compound, and cubes + spheres, which form a NaCl crystal. Monte Carlo simulations that target phase coexistence conditions were used to examine the effect on compound formation of varying degrees of negative non-additivity created by component size asymmetry and by size-tunable indentations in the polyhedra's facets, intended to allow the nestling of neighboring spheres.

Diffusionless rotator-crystal transitions in colloidal truncated cubes.

Upon osmotic compression, rotationally symmetric faceted colloidal particles can form translationally ordered, orientationally disordered rotator mesophases. This study explores the mechanism of rotator-to-crystal phase transitions where orientational order is gained in a translationally ordered phase, using rotator-phase forming truncated cubes as a testbed. Monte Carlo simulations were conducted for two selected truncations (s), one for s = 0.

Characterization of size-tuneable aescin-lipid nanoparticles as platform for stabilization of membrane proteins.

Disc-like lipid nanoparticles stabilized by saponin biosurfactants display fascinating properties, including their temperature-driven re-organization. β-Aescin, a saponin from seed extract of the horse chestnut tree, shows strong interactions with lipid membranes and has gained interest due to its beneficial therapeutic implications as well as its ability to decompose continuous lipid membranes into size-tuneable discoidal nanoparticles. Here, we characterize lipid nanoparticles formed by aescin and the phospholipid 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine.

Boundary of ecosystem services: Differentiating between ecosystem services and geosystem services is needed.

Geosystem services (GSs) and ecosystem services (ESs) are interconnected, both representing nature's contributions to people. Whether GSs are a subset of ESs depends on the definition of ESs. The answer would be "not necessarily" (i.

Revealing the Origin of Cooperative Adsorption of Chains on Nanoparticle Surfaces through Coarse-Grained Simulations.

This work aims to deepen our understanding of the molecular origin of the recently observed phenomenon of polymer cooperative adsorption onto faceted nanoparticle (NP) surfaces. By exploring a large parameter space for polymer/NP interactions through coarse-grained (CG) molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, it is found that consistent with experiments the presence or absence of cooperativity is related to solvent quality and relative interaction strengths between the polymer and the adsorbent. Specifically, positive cooperativity is associated with stronger polymer-polymer interaction than polymer-surface interactions and vice versa for negative cooperativity.

Molecular and functional characterization of the Drosophila melanogaster conserved smORFome.

Short polypeptides encoded by small open reading frames (smORFs) are ubiquitously found in eukaryotic genomes and are important regulators of physiology, development, and mitochondrial processes. Here, we focus on a subset of 298 smORFs that are evolutionarily conserved between Drosophila melanogaster and humans. Many of these smORFs are conserved broadly in the bilaterian lineage, and ∼182 are conserved in plants.

Self-Assembling of Nonadditive Mixtures Containing Patchy Particles with Tunable Interactions.

Mixtures of nanoparticles (NPs) with hybridizing grafted DNA or DNA-like strands have been of particular interest because of the tunable selectivity provided for the interactions between the NP components. A richer self-assembly behavior would be accessible if these NP-NP interactions could be designed to give nonadditive mixing (in analogy to the case of molecular components). Nonadditive mixing occurs when the mixed-state volume is smaller (negative) or larger (positive) than the sum of the individual components' volumes.

Boundary of ecosystem services: Guiding future development and application of the ecosystem service concepts.

Ecosystem Services (ESs) are either material or non-material benefits humans receive from ecosystems. Definitions, classifications, and typologies of ESs can vary to address different research and policy purposes. However, a boundary that distinguishes ESs from other ecosystem-related benefits (e.

Coarse-Grained Molecular Simulation of Bolapolyphiles with a Multident Lateral Chain: Formation and Structural Analysis of Cubic Network Phases.

Bolapolyphiles constitute a versatile class of materials with a demonstrated potential to form a wide variety of complex ordered mesophases. In particular, cubic network phases (like the gyroid, primitive, and diamond phases) have been a target of many studies for their ability to create percolating 3D nanosized channels. In this study, molecular simulations are used to explore the phase behavior of bolapolyphiles containing a rigid rodlike core, associating hydrophilic core ends and a hydrophobic side chain with a multident architecture, i.

Influence of Nonadditive Mixing on Colloidal Diamond Phase Formation from Patchy Particles.

Mixtures of nanoparticles (NPs) with hybridizing grafted DNA or DNA-like strands have been shown to create highly tunable NP-NP interactions, which, if designed to give nonadditive mixing, could lead to a richer self-assembly behavior. While nonadditive mixing is known to result in nontrivial phase behavior in molecular fluids, its effects on colloidal/NP materials have been much less studied. Such effects are explored here via molecular simulations for a binary system of tetrahedral patchy NPs, known to self-assemble into the diamond phase.

Effect of particle anisotropy on the thermodynamics and kinetics of ordering transitions in hard faceted particles.

Monte Carlo simulations were used to study the influence of particle aspect ratio on the kinetics and phase behavior of hard gyrobifastigia (GBF). First, the formation of a highly anisotropic nucleus shape in the isotropic-to-crystal transition in regular GBF is explained by the differences in interfacial free energies of various crystal planes and the nucleus geometry predicted by the Wulff construction. GBF-related shapes with various aspect ratios were then studied, mapping their equations of state, determining phase coexistence conditions via interfacial pinning, and computing nucleation free-energy barriers via umbrella sampling using suitable order parameters.

Ion Transport in 2D Nanostructured π-Conjugated Thieno[3,2-]thiophene-Based Liquid Crystal.

Leveraging the self-assembling behavior of liquid crystals designed for controlling ion transport is of both fundamental and technological significance. Here, we have designed and prepared a liquid crystal that contains 2,5-bis(thien-2-yl)thieno[3,2-]thiophene (BTTT) as mesogenic core and conjugated segment and symmetric tetra(ethylene oxide) (EO4) as polar side chains for ion-conducting regions. Driven by the crystallization of the BTTT cores, BTTT/dEO4 exhibits well-ordered smectic phases below 71.

Two neuronal peptides encoded from a single transcript regulate mitochondrial complex III in .

Naturally produced peptides (<100 amino acids) are important regulators of physiology, development, and metabolism. Recent studies have predicted that thousands of peptides may be translated from transcripts containing small open-reading frames (smORFs). Here, we describe two peptides in encoded by conserved smORFs, Sloth1 and Sloth2.

A burning issue: Reviewing the socio-demographic and environmental justice aspects of the wildfire literature.

Larger and more severe wildfires are becoming more frequent and impacting different communities and human settlements. Much of the scientific literature and media on wildfires has focused on area of ecosystems burned and numbers of structures destroyed. Equally unprecedented, but often less reported, are the increasing socioeconomic impacts different people and communities face from wildfires.

Ligand Interactions and Nanoparticle Shapes Guide the Pathways toward Interfacial Self-Assembly.

Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations are used to probe the driving forces behind the formation of highly ordered, epitaxially connected superlattices of polyhedral-shaped nanoparticles (NPs) at fluid-fluid interfaces. By explicitly modeling coarse-grained ligands that cap the NP surface, it is shown that differences in NP shapes and time-dependent facet-specific ligand densities give rise to drastically different transformation mechanisms. Our results indicate that the extent of screening of the inter-particle interactions by the surrounding solvation environment has a significant impact on reversibility and ultimately the coherence of the final two-dimensional superlattice obtained.

Computing free energy barriers for the nucleation of complex network mesophases.

A previously introduced framework to identify local order parameters (OPs) distinctive of incipient complex mesophases, such as bicontinuous network phases, is used in this work to evaluate nucleation free-energy barriers. The sampling techniques considered are the mean-first-passage-time (MFPT) method and novel variants of umbrella sampling, including Hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) and a dual-OP-method that uses a blunter global OP for the umbrella bias while keeping record of configurations for analysis with a local OP. These methods were chosen for their ability to minimize or avoid frequent calculation of the expensive local OP, which makes their continuous on-the-fly tracking computationally very inefficient.

Evaluating the role of spatial landscape literacy in public participation processes and opinions on environmental issues and ecosystem services.

Little is known about how spatial literacy influences mapping and decision-making related to environmental management and ecosystem services. We assessed the role of spatial landscape literacy in participatory environmental management and ecosystem service assessments in peri-urban Bogota, Colombia. Spatial landscape literacy (SL) was evaluated by testing stakeholder's ability to locate specific landscapes and landmarks.

Online Engagement with Surgical Treatments for Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia: Are Minimally Invasive Surgical Therapies Outpacing the Gold Standard?

Patients suffering from progressive symptoms of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) increasingly turn to the internet for information on invasive and minimally invasive surgical therapies (MIST). This study aimed to identify online articles accessed by patients seeking guidance on said options and to evaluate the quality and readability of their content. Social media analytics tool Buzzumo was used to identify the most shared articles on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Pinterest related to BPH surgical treatments from 2016 to 2021.

Re-entrant transition as a bridge of broken ergodicity in confined monolayers of hexagonal prisms and cylinders.

The entropy-driven monolayer assembly of hexagonal prisms and cylinders was studied under hard slit confinement. At the conditions investigated, the particles have two distinct and dynamically disconnected rotational states: unflipped and flipped, depending on whether their circular/hexagonal face is parallel or perpendicular to the wall plane. Importantly, these two rotational states cast distinct projection areas over the wall plane that favor either hexagonal or tetragonal packing.

On the calculation of free energies over Hamiltonian and order parameters via perturbation and thermodynamic integration.

In this work, complementary formulas are presented to compute free-energy differences via perturbation (FEP) methods and thermodynamic integration (TI). These formulas are derived by selecting only the most statistically significant data from the information extractable from the simulated points involved. On the one hand, commonly used FEP techniques based on overlap sampling leverage the full information contained in the overlapping macrostate probability distributions.

Low Interfacial Free Energy Describes the Bulk Ordering Transition in Colloidal Cubes.

Many hard faceted nanoparticles are known to undergo disorder-to-order phase transitions following a classical nucleation and growth mechanism. In a previous study [ , , 9264-9273], it was shown that hard cubes undergo a nonclassical phase transition with a bulk character instead of originating from consolidated nuclei. Significantly, an unusually high fraction of ordered particles was observed in the metastable basin of the disordered phase, even for very low degrees of supersaturation.

Recognizing the insurance value of resilience: Evidence from a forest restoration policy in the southeastern U.S.

The long-term supply of ecosystem services is dependent on properly functioning ecosystems and their susceptibility to natural and anthropogenic disturbances such as climate change and urbanization, as they can alter ecosystem structure and function. Forest function is not static, but rather a risky asset that fluctuates and can decrease as a result of forest disturbance. Therefore, concepts such as resilience and insurance value as well effective policy formulation, management, and restoration are key to maintaining these benefits.