New statistical process control charts for overdispersed count data based on the Bell distribution.

Poisson distribution is a popular discrete model used to describe counting information, from which traditional control charts involving count data, such as the c and u charts, have been established in the literature. However, several studies recognize the need for alternative control charts that allow for data overdispersion, which can be encountered in many fields, including ecology, healthcare, industry, and others. The Bell distribution, recently proposed by Castellares et al.

Silicon in the form of nanosilica mitigates P toxicity in scarlet eggplant.

Intensive fertilization of vegetables can promote phosphorus (P) toxicity. However, it can be reversed using silicon (Si), although there is a lack of research clarifying its mechanisms of action. This research aims to study the damage caused by P toxicity to scarlet eggplant plants and whether Si can mitigate this toxicity.

The burden of disease due to COVID-19 in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil, over a one-year period.

COVID-19 has had a powerful impact on society with high rates of morbidity and mortality. The use of an epidemiological indicator that estimates the burden of a disease by aggregating early mortality and non-fatal cases in a single measure has the potential to assist in the planning of more appropriate actions at different levels of health care. The scope of this article is to estimate the burden of disease due to COVID-19 in Florianópolis/SC from April 2020 through March 2021.

Astrocyte reactivity influences amyloid-β effects on tau pathology in preclinical Alzheimer's disease.

An unresolved question for the understanding of Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathophysiology is why a significant percentage of amyloid-β (Aβ)-positive cognitively unimpaired (CU) individuals do not develop detectable downstream tau pathology and, consequently, clinical deterioration. In vitro evidence suggests that reactive astrocytes unleash Aβ effects in pathological tau phosphorylation. Here, in a biomarker study across three cohorts (n = 1,016), we tested whether astrocyte reactivity modulates the association of Aβ with tau phosphorylation in CU individuals.

Measuring loneliness: Psychometric properties of the three-item loneliness scale among community-dwelling adults.

Loneliness is a prevalent set of negative feelings associated with unsatisfactory and reduced social interactions, inadequate social support, poor satisfaction with life and health, negative emotions, and economic burden. Thus, its measurement is of foremost importance. Therefore, this study aimed (i) to devise the Portuguese version of the three-Item Loneliness Scale (T-ILS), which is ideal for epidemiological studies, and (ii) to evaluate its psychometric properties.

Medicinal Chemistry for Sustainable Development.

Pharmaceutical chemistry has many industrial processes that must be studied and adapted to a new reality where the environment must be the focus of all production chains. Thus, new technologies that are cleaner and use renewable sources of raw materials still need to be developed and applied to materials that go to the market, and they need to reach a level that is less harmful to the environment. This applies especially in areas related to the pharmaceutical industries since chemical products are used in the production of medicines and used in many other areas of everyday life and are included in the Sustainable Development Goals proposed by the United Nations.

Starch-based films doped with porphyrinoid photosensitizers for active skin wound healing.

Starch is a biodegradable and biocompatible carbohydrate that, when combined with bioactive molecules, can be processed as biomimetic platforms with enhanced performance, allowing its use as active wound dressing materials. Porphyrinoid photosensitizers can tune the physicochemical/functional profile of biomacromolecules, allowing their use in anti-infective strategies. In this work, the feasibility of using the cationic 5,10,15,20-tetrakis(1-methylpyridinium-4-yl)porphyrin tetraiodide (TMPyP) to enhance the physicochemical, mechanical, antimicrobial performance, and wound healing ability of casted starch-based films was studied.

Root Phytochemical Studies, In Vitro Cercaricidal Activity on the Larval Stage of and Antioxidant Activities.

Hiern. () is a medicinal plant used in traditional Angolan medicine against schistosomiasis. Our study aimed to investigate the phytochemical composition and the cercaricidal and antioxidant activities in vitro of a traditional herbal preparation (Water-Vbr) and a 70% hydroethanolic extract (EtOH70%-Vbr) prepared with this medicinal plant.

Impact of bacterial cellulose on the physical properties and printing quality of fine papers.

Bacterial nanocellulose (BNC), due to its inherent nanometric scale and strength properties, can be considered as a good candidate to be used in papermaking. This work explored the possibility of using it in the production of fine paper as a wet-end component and for the paper coating. Filler-containing handsheet production was performed with and without the presence of common additives typically used in the furnish of office papers.

Factors associated with demand for emergency medical services by people with hypertension and diabetes.

Objectives: to analyze the association between recurrence of emergency service visits due to lack of blood pressure and/or glycemic control with sociodemographic variables and disease registration in Primary Care.

Methods: quantitative study, which consulted medical records of people who attended these services two or more times for 26 months. Descriptive statistics and multiple logistic regression models were used in analysis.

A Call for Improving Research on Pain Neuroscience Education and Chronic Pain: An Overview of Systematic Reviews.

We aimed to summarize the evidence of the effects of pain neuroscience education delivered alone or combined with other interventions for chronic pain. An overview of systematic reviews with meta-analysis. CINAHL (via EBSCOhost), Embase, PsycINFO (via ProQuest), PubMed, and the Cochrane Library were searched from their inception to November 14, 2022.

Expanding the Physiological Role of Aryl-Alcohol Flavooxidases as Quinone Reductases.

Aryl-alcohol oxidases (AAOs) are members of the glucose-methanol-choline oxidase/dehydrogenase (GMC) superfamily. These extracellular flavoproteins have been described as auxiliary enzymes in the degradation of lignin by several white-rot basidiomycetes. In this context, they oxidize fungal secondary metabolites and lignin-derived compounds using O as an electron acceptor, and supply HO to ligninolytic peroxidases.

Effects of myocardial sheetlet sliding on left ventricular function.

Left ventricle myocardium has a complex micro-architecture, which was revealed to consist of myocyte bundles arranged in a series of laminar sheetlets. Recent imaging studies demonstrated that these sheetlets re-orientated and likely slided over each other during the deformations between systole and diastole, and that sheetlet dynamics were altered during cardiomyopathy. However, the biomechanical effect of sheetlet sliding is not well-understood, which is the focus here.

Polysaccharide-Based Carriers for Pulmonary Insulin Delivery: The Potential of Coffee as an Unconventional Source.

Non-invasive routes for insulin delivery are emerging as alternatives to currently painful subcutaneous injections. For pulmonary delivery, formulations may be in powdered particle form, using carriers such as polysaccharides to stabilise the active principle. Roasted coffee beans and spent coffee grounds (SCG) are rich in polysaccharides, namely galactomannans and arabinogalactans.

Fisetin derivatives exhibit enhanced anti-inflammatory activity and modulation of endoplasmic reticulum stress.

Inflammation and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress are often hand in hand in the context of chronic disease. Both are activated upon perceived disturbances in homeostasis, being deleterious when intensely or chronically activated. Fisetin (FST) is a dietary flavonol that is known to possess multiple relevant bioactivities, raising the question of its potential health benefits and even its use in novel pharmacological approaches against ER stress and inflammation.

Usefulness of machine learning softwares to screen titles of systematic reviews: a methodological study.

Objective: To investigate the usefulness and performance metrics of three freely-available softwares (Rayyan®, Abstrackr® and Colandr®) for title screening in systematic reviews.

Study Design And Setting: In this methodological study, the usefulness of softwares to screen titles in systematic reviews was investigated by the comparison between the number of titles identified by software-assisted screening and those by manual screening using a previously published systematic review. To test the performance metrics, sensitivity, specificity, false negative rate, proportion missed, workload and timing savings were calculated.

On the Design of Aqueous Emulsions of Colophony Resin.

Companies regularly face market pressure to develop products faster but they also need to simultaneously incorporate technological constraints, sustainability trends, and customer requirements into their designs, which requires the use of systematic procedures. Firms that exploit natural resources and convert them into high-value products are among them. However, the literature on the application of such systematic approaches to products of this type remains scarce, as they often requrire extensive experimental plans involving the testing and optimization of multiple formulations.

Advanced Cellulose-Nanocarbon Composite Films for High-Performance Triboelectric and Piezoelectric Nanogenerators.

Natural polymers such as cellulose have interesting tribo- and piezoelectric properties for paper-based energy harvesters, but their low performance in providing sufficient output power is still an impediment to a wider deployment for IoT and other low-power applications. In this study, different types of celluloses were combined with nanosized carbon fillers to investigate their effect on the enhancement of the electrical properties in the final nanogenerator devices. Cellulose pulp (CP), microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) and cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) were blended with carbon black (CB), carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs).

Cerebral Malaria Model Applying Human Brain Organoids.

Neural injuries in cerebral malaria patients are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Nevertheless, a comprehensive research approach to study this issue is lacking, so herein we propose an in vitro system to study human cerebral malaria using cellular approaches. Our first goal was to establish a cellular system to identify the molecular alterations in human brain vasculature cells that resemble the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in cerebral malaria (CM).

A contemporary investigation of burden and natural history of aspergillosis in people living with HIV/AIDS.

Background: Untreated HIV infection can lead to profound immunosuppression and increase susceptibility of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) to aspergillosis.

Objectives: Reporting the burden and natural history of aspergillosis documented in PLHA admitted in five medical centres in Brazil.

Patients And Methods: Clinical, epidemiological and laboratory data were collected in all sequential cases of proven or probable aspergillosis documented in PLHA hospitalised in five medical centres between 2012 and 2020.

Case series: Four fatal rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus infections in urban pet rabbits.

Four pet rabbits () diagnosed with a fatal infection by rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV GI.2) were identified in the same week and further investigated. All animals lived in an urban environment (Lisbon, Portugal), were between 8 months and 2 years old and none had been vaccinated against RHDV2 (GI.

Hepatitis D double reflex testing of all hepatitis B carriers in low-HBV- and high-HBV/HDV-prevalence countries.

Hepatitis D virus (HDV) infection occurs as a coinfection with hepatitis B and increases the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma, decompensated cirrhosis, and mortality compared to hepatitis B virus (HBV) monoinfection. Reliable estimates of the prevalence of HDV infection and disease burden are essential to formulate strategies to find coinfected individuals more effectively and efficiently. The global prevalence of HBV infections was estimated to be 262,240,000 in 2021.

ε4 associates with microglial activation independently of Aβ plaques and tau tangles.

Animal studies suggest that the apolipoprotein E ε4 (ε4) allele is a culprit of early microglial activation in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here, we tested the association between ε4 status and microglial activation in living individuals across the aging and AD spectrum. We studied 118 individuals with positron emission tomography for amyloid-β (Aβ; [F]AZD4694), tau ([F]MK6240), and microglial activation ([C]PBR28).