Evaluating Quality and Readability of AI-generated Information on Living Kidney Donation.

Background: The availability of high-quality and easy-to-read informative material is crucial to providing accurate information to prospective kidney donors. The quality of this information has been associated with the likelihood of proceeding with a living donation. Artificial intelligence-based large language models (LLMs) have recently become common instruments for acquiring information online, including medical information.

Production of active human iduronate-2-sulfatase (IDS) enzyme in Nicotiana benthamiana.

Many strategies have been developed to produce high levels of biologically active recombinant proteins in plants for biopharmaceutical purposes. However, the production of an active form of human iduronate-2-sulfatase (hIDS) for the treatment of Hunter syndrome by enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) is challenging due to the requirement for cotranslational modification by a formylglycine-producing enzyme encoded by sulfatase modifying factor 1 (hSUMF1) at the Cys84 residue, which converts it to C(alpha)-formylglycine. In this study, we have shown that hIDS can be highly expressed in N.

A modified decontamination and storage method for sputum from patients with tuberculosis.

Background: Collecting and storing large number of sputum samples with a view to culturing these in the future requires an efficient initial handling method. We devised a modified sputum digestion and decontamination method that maximised storage capacity and (M.tb) recovery from culture while minimising laboratory workload and risk of contamination.

Three Pillars of Support for Orphan Drug Programs: Individual Valuations, Societal Valuations, and Anonymous Altruism.

Objectives: To identify and describe potential societal and individual sources of support for orphan drug programs.

Methods: The Generalized Risk-Adjusted Cost-Effectiveness method shows that acute illness and disability severity increase individuals' willingness to pay for health gains. We develop a social welfare function (SWF) that incorporates individuals' own values, combined with politically or ethically determined weights.

The Asymmetric Response Concept explains ecological consequences of multiple stressor exposure and release.

Our capacity to predict trajectories of ecosystem degradation and recovery is limited, especially when impairments are caused by multiple stressors. Recovery may be fast or slow and either complete or partial, sometimes result in novel ecosystem states or even fail completely. Here, we introduce the Asymmetric Response Concept (ARC) that provides a basis for exploring and predicting the pace and magnitude of ecological responses to, and release from, multiple stressors.

Mangrove health assessment using spatial metrics and multi-temporal remote sensing data.

Mangrove forest plays a very important role for both ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation. In Vietnam, mangrove is mainly distributed in the Mekong delta. Recently, mangrove areas in this region decreased rapidly in both quality and quantity.

Importance of different imperviousness measures for predicting runoff and nutrient emissions from non-urban and urban land-uses at large spatial coverage.

Growing population and urbanization challenge water resources sustainability and require stringent solutions in terms of emission measurements and pollution controls. Advancements in observation techniques have improved the availability of impervious surface data that cover both urban and non-urban areas to assess the impacts of urbanization. However, most models used in macroscale studies continue to derive surface imperviousness based on land-use classes and population data, and the contributions of non-urban impervious surfaces to runoff and nutrient emissions remain largely ignored.

The Acyl-Proteome of Syntrophus aciditrophicus Reveals Metabolic Relationships in Benzoate Degradation.

Syntrophus aciditrophicus is a model syntrophic bacterium that degrades fatty and aromatic acids into acetate, CO, formate, and H that are utilized by methanogens and other hydrogen-consuming microbes. S. aciditrophicus benzoate degradation proceeds by a multistep pathway with many intermediate reactive acyl-coenzyme A species (RACS) that can potentially N-acylate lysine residues.

Spatial regulation of RBOHD via AtECA4-mediated recycling and clathrin-mediated endocytosis contributes to ROS accumulation during salt stress response but not flg22-induced immune response.

Various environmental stresses can induce production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) to turn on signaling for proper responses to those stresses. Plasma membrane (PM)-localized respiratory burst oxidase homologs (RBOHs), in particular RBOHD, produce ROS via the post-translational activation upon abiotic and biotic stresses. Although the mechanisms of RBOHD activation upon biotic stress have been elucidated in detail, it remains elusive how salinity stress activates RBOHD.

Harmonized assessment of nutrient pollution from urban systems including losses from sewer exfiltration: a case study in Germany.

A growing literature indicates that untreated wastewater from leaky sewers stands among major sources of pollution to water resources of urban systems. Despite that, the quantification and allocation of sewer exfiltration are often restricted to major pipe areas where inspection data are available. In large-scale urban models, the emission from sewer exfiltration is either neglected (particularly from private sewers) or represented by simplified fixed values, and as such its contribution to the overall urban emission remains questionable.

Leveraging Immonium Ions for Targeting Acyl-Lysine Modifications in Proteomic Datasets.

Acyl modifications vary greatly in terms of elemental composition and site of protein modification. Developing methods to identify acyl modifications more confidently can help to assess the scope of these modifications in large proteomic datasets. The utility of acyl-lysine immonium ions is analyzed for identifying the modifications in proteomic datasets.

"I can make more from selling medicine when breaking the rules" - understanding the antibiotic supply network in a rural community in Viet Nam.

Background: As in many other low and middle income countries (LIMCs), Vietnam has experienced a major growth in the pharmaceutical industry, with large numbers of pharmacies and drug stores, and increasing drug expenditure per capita over the past decade. Despite regulatory frameworks that have been introduced to control the dispensing and use of prescription-only drugs, including antibiotics, compliance has been reported to be strikingly low particularly in rural parts of Vietnam. This qualitative study aimed to understand antibiotic access and use practices in the community from both supplier and consumer perspectives in order to support the identification and development of future interventions.

N-terminal autoprocessing and acetylation of multifunctional-autoprocessing repeats-in-toxins (MARTX) Makes Caterpillars Floppy-like effector is stimulated by adenosine diphosphate (ADP)-Ribosylation Factor 1 in advance of Golgi fragmentation.

Studies have successfully elucidated the mechanism of action of several effector domains that comprise the multifunctional-autoprocessing repeats-in-toxins (MARTX) toxins of Vibrio vulnificus. However, the biochemical linkage between the cysteine proteolytic activity of Makes Caterpillars Floppy (MCF)-like effector and its cellular effects remains unknown. In this study, we identify the host cell factors that activate in vivo and in vitro MCF autoprocessing as adenosine diphosphate (ADP)-Ribosylation Factor 1 (ARF1) and ADP-Ribosylation Factor 3 (ARF3).

Comparison of the alternative models SOURCE and SWAT for predicting catchment streamflow, sediment and nutrient loads under the effect of land use changes.

Quantifying the water quantity and quality variations resulting from human induced activities is important for policy makers in view of increasing water scarcity and water pollution. Simple models can be robust tools in estimating the runoff from catchments, but do they also sufficiently reflect complex physio-chemical processes required for spatially-explicit simulation of soil-water interactions, and the resulting pollutant responses in catchments? Do these models respond sensitive to the impacts of different land use change representations? These questions are considered by applying the semi-distributed process-based catchment models SWAT and SOURCE to the Sixth Creek catchment in South Australia. Both models used similar data whereas inputs for SOURCE were generated from land-use based Functional Units (FUs), while FUs for SWAT were based on land use, soil and slope combinations.

An integrated native mass spectrometry and top-down proteomics method that connects sequence to structure and function of macromolecular complexes.

Mass spectrometry (MS) has become a crucial technique for the analysis of protein complexes. Native MS has traditionally examined protein subunit arrangements, while proteomics MS has focused on sequence identification. These two techniques are usually performed separately without taking advantage of the synergies between them.

The A/ENTH Domain-Containing Protein AtECA4 Is an Adaptor Protein Involved in Cargo Recycling from the trans-Golgi Network/Early Endosome to the Plasma Membrane.

Endocytosis and subsequent trafficking pathways are crucial for regulating the activity of plasma membrane-localized proteins. Depending on cellular and physiological conditions, the internalized cargoes are sorted at (and transported from) the trans-Golgi network/early endosome (TGN/EE) to the vacuole for degradation or recycled back to the plasma membrane. How this occurs at the molecular level remains largely elusive.

Modelling the impacts of altered management practices, land use and climate changes on the water quality of the Millbrook catchment-reservoir system in South Australia.

Sustainable management of drinking water reservoirs requires taking into account the potential effects of their catchments' development. This study is an attempt to estimate the daily patterns of nutrients transport in the catchment - reservoir systems through the application of the ensemble of complementary models SWAT-SALMO. SWAT quantifies flow, nitrate and phosphate loadings originating in catchments before entering downstream reservoirs meanwhile SALMO determines phosphate, nitrate, and chlorophyll-a concentrations within the reservoirs.

Cytotoxicity and antiviral activity of electrochemical - synthesized silver nanoparticles against poliovirus.

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have been proven to have noticeable cytotoxicity in vitro and antiviral activity against some types of enveloped viruses. This paper presents the cytotoxicity and antiviral activity of pure AgNPs synthesized by the electrochemical method, towards cell culture and poliovirus (a non-enveloped virus). Prepared AgNPs were characterized by ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy.

Terahertz Time-Domain Spectroscopy of Thermoresponsive Polymers in Aqueous Solution.

The behavior of highly concentrated aqueous solutions of two thermoresponsive polymers poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAm) and poly(N-vinylcaprolactam) (PVCL) have been investigated by terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS). Measurements have been performed for concentrations up to 20 wt %, over a frequency range from 0.3 to 1.

Isolation and characterization of Helicobacter pylori recovered from gastric biopsies under anaerobic conditions.

Background And Aim: Helicobacter pylori can survive long incubation periods under anaerobic conditions, and should be possible to isolate under anaerobic conditions. Our aim was to isolate H. pylori in anaerobic conditions, from gastric biopsies of H.

Naïve CD8(+) T cell derived tumor-specific cytotoxic effectors as a potential remedy for overcoming TGF-β immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment.

Despite of the potential implications for cancer immunotherapy, conventional approaches using in vitro expanded CD8(+) T cells have suboptimal outcomes, mostly due to loss of functionality from cellular exhaustion. We therefore investigated the phenotypic and functional differences among in vitro activated CD8(+) T cells of three different sources, namely naïve (NTeff), memory (MTeff) and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILeff) from human and mice, to better understand mechanisms behind potent effector functions and potential for overcoming current limitations. In line with the greater proliferation activity and longer telomere lengths of NTeff populations, cells of naïve origin exhibited significantly less amounts of T cell exhaustion markers than those of MTeff and TILeff, and moreover, acquired distinct expression patterns of memory-promoting transcription factors, T-bet and Eomes, induced in a rapid and sustainable manner.

Hyperbranched polymer mediated size-controlled synthesis of gadolinium phosphate nanoparticles: colloidal properties and particle size-dependence on MRI relaxivity.

Hyperbranched polymers based on the poly(amidoamine), HyPAM, were used to synthesize gadolinium phosphate nanowires under mild conditions. Control of the average particle size was obtained by adjusting polymer concentration. Proton relaxivity measurements reveal an optimum particle size, reaching relaxivity values as high as 55 ± 9 mM(-1) s(-1) for r1 and 67 ± 11 mM(-1) s(-1) for r2.

Thermoresponsive Properties of PNIPAM-Based Hydrogels: Effect of Molecular Architecture and Embedded Gold Nanoparticles.

Thermoresponsive hydrogels were successfully prepared from poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-based polymers with different architectures (linear, branched, or hyperbranched). The macromolecular architectures strongly influence the internal structure of the hydrogels, therefore modulating their thermoresponsive and rheological properties. These hydrogels were used for the in situ synthesis of gold nanoparticles.

Mesomorphic ionic hyperbranched polymers: effect of structural parameters on liquid-crystalline properties and on the formation of gold nanohybrids.

Branched thermotropic liquid crystals were successfully obtained from ionic interactions between hyperbranched polyamidoamine and sodium dodecylsulfate. These complexes present columnar rectangular and lamellar thermotropic mesophases as demonstrated by polarized optical microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, and small-angle X-ray scattering. The relationships between the structural characteristics of the polymers (size of the hyperbranched core, hyperbranched or dendritic nature of the core, and substitution ratio) and the mesomorphic properties were studied.