Risk Factors, Complications, and Treatment Modalities for Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss in Pregnant Women: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Background: Sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) during pregnancy is a rare condition and has not been much studied. The study aimed to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of the risk factors, complications, and treatment modalities for SSNHL in pregnant women.

Materials And Methods: PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, ProQuest, and Google Scholar were used for the literature search.

Super-resolution GSDIM microscopy unveils distinct nanoscale characteristics of DNA repair foci under diverse genotoxic stress.

DNA double-strand breaks initiate the DNA damage response (DDR), leading to the accumulation of repair proteins at break sites and the formation of the-so-called foci. Various microscopy methods, such as wide-field, confocal, electron, and super-resolution microscopy, have been used to study these structures. However, the impact of different DNA-damaging agents on their (nano)structure remains unclear.

Using picoliter droplet deposition to track clonal competition in adherent and organoid cancer cell cultures.

Clonal growth and competition underlie processes of key relevance in etiology, progression and therapy response across all cancers. Here, we demonstrate a novel experimental approach, based on multi-color, fluorescent tagging of cell nuclei, in combination with picoliter droplet deposition, to study the clonal dynamics in two- and three-dimensional cell cultures. The method allows for the simultaneous visualization and analysis of multiple clones in individual multi-clonal colonies, providing a powerful tool for studying clonal dynamics and identifying clonal populations with distinct characteristics.

High-Content and High-Throughput Clonogenic Survival Assay Using Fluorescence Barcoding.

The Clonogenic Survival Assay (CSA) is a fundamental tool employed to assess cell survival and proliferative potential in cancer research. Despite its importance, CSA faces limitations, primarily its time- and labor-intensive nature and its binary output. To overcome these limitations and enhance CSA's utility, several approaches have been developed, focusing on increasing the throughput.

Deep learning-based segmentation of the thorax in mouse micro-CT scans.

For image-guided small animal irradiations, the whole workflow of imaging, organ contouring, irradiation planning, and delivery is typically performed in a single session requiring continuous administration of anaesthetic agents. Automating contouring leads to a faster workflow, which limits exposure to anaesthesia and thereby, reducing its impact on experimental results and on animal wellbeing. Here, we trained the 2D and 3D U-Net architectures of no-new-Net (nnU-Net) for autocontouring of the thorax in mouse micro-CT images.

Zinc finger protein ZNF384 is an adaptor of Ku to DNA during classical non-homologous end-joining.

DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) are among the most deleterious types of DNA damage as they can lead to mutations and chromosomal rearrangements, which underlie cancer development. Classical non-homologous end-joining (cNHEJ) is the dominant pathway for DSB repair in human cells, involving the DNA-binding proteins XRCC6 (Ku70) and XRCC5 (Ku80). Other DNA-binding proteins such as Zinc Finger (ZnF) domain-containing proteins have also been implicated in DNA repair, but their role in cNHEJ remained elusive.

A simple microscopy setup for visualizing cellular responses to DNA damage at particle accelerator facilities.

Cellular responses to DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) not only promote genomic integrity in healthy tissues, but also largely determine the efficacy of many DNA-damaging cancer treatments, including X-ray and particle therapies. A growing body of evidence suggests that activation of the mechanisms that detect, signal and repair DSBs may depend on the complexity of the initiating DNA lesions. Studies focusing on this, as well as on many other radiobiological questions, require reliable methods to induce DSBs of varying complexity, and to visualize the ensuing cellular responses.

Computer-Aided Diagnosis Evaluation of the Correlation Between Magnetic Resonance Imaging With Molecular Subtypes in Breast Cancer.

Background: There is a demand for additional alternative methods that can allow the differentiation of the breast tumor into molecular subtypes precisely and conveniently.

Purpose: The present study aimed to determine suitable optimal classifiers and investigate the general applicability of computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) to associate between the breast cancer molecular subtype and the extracted MR imaging features.

Methods: We analyzed a total of 264 patients (mean age: 47.

Selection and techno-economic analysis of hybrid ground source heat pumps used in karst regions.

In order to take advantage of different forms of heat pumps and to mitigate thermal imbalance underground caused by long-term operation of ground source heat pumps, hybrid ground source heat pump systems have received an increasing attention. In this research, based on the fact that abundant groundwater resources are commonly available in karst regions, a new strategy is introduced for selecting and determining hybrid ground source heat pump capacity. Five scenarios of hybrid ground source heat pump system coupling groundwater source heat pumps with other supplementary heat pumps are proposed in this article to provide appropriate options to eliminate heat buildup under different hydrogeologic conditions.

Catalytic transport of molecular cargo using diffusive binding along a polymer track.

Transport at the molecular scale is a prerequisite for the development of future molecular factories. Here, we have designed oligoanionic molecular sliders on polycationic tracks that exploit Brownian motion and diffusive binding to transport cargo without using a chemical fuel. The presence of the polymer tracks increases the rate of bimolecular reactions between modified sliders by over two orders of magnitude.