is overexpressed in keloid keratinocytes and its inhibition alters profibrotic gene expression.

Background: Keloids are disfiguring, fibrotic scar-like lesions that are challenging to treat and commonly recur after therapy. A deeper understanding of the mechanisms driving keloid formation is necessary for the development of more effective therapies. Reduced vitamin D receptor (VDR) expression has been observed in keloids, implicating vitamin D signaling in keloid pathology.

Development and early life stress sensitivity of the rat cortical microstructural similarity network.

Unlabelled: The rat offers a uniquely valuable animal model in neuroscience, but we currently lack an individual-level understanding of the in vivo rat brain network. Here, leveraging longitudinal measures of cortical magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) from in vivo neuroimaging between postnatal days 20 (weanling) and 290 (mid-adulthood), we design and implement a computational pipeline that captures the network of structural similarity (MIND, morphometric inverse divergence) between each of 53 distinct cortical areas. We first characterized the normative development of the network in a cohort of rats undergoing typical development (N=47), and then contrasted these findings with a cohort exposed to early life stress (ELS, N=40).

Characterization of Bifidobacterium bifidum growth and metabolism on whey protein phospholipid concentrate.

Whey protein phospholipid concentrate (WPPC) is a co-product generated during the manufacture of whey protein isolate. WPPC is depleted of simple sugars but contains numerous glycoconjugates embedded in the milk fat globule membrane, suggesting this fraction may serve as a carbon source for growth of bifidobacteria commonly enriched in breast fed infants. In this work, we demonstrate that WPPC can serve as a sole carbon source for the growth of Bifidobacterium bifidum, a species common to the breastfed infant and routinely used as a probiotic.

Filter-assisted sample preparation for on-site detection using a bi-functional linker-based biosensor demonstrated with Escherichia coli O157:H7.

This study presents an advanced food detection platform that integrates filter-assisted sample preparation (FASP) with a bifunctional linker-based biosensor for on-site detection of Escherichia coli O157:H7 as a model case. FASP isolates bacteria from food samples through multi-filter preprocessing, significantly enhancing the specificity, sensitivity, and reproducibility of the subsequent biosensor analysis. This platform can detect E.

Disentangling Sources of Momentum Fluctuations in Xe+Xe and Pb+Pb Collisions with the ATLAS Detector.

High-energy nuclear collisions create a quark-gluon plasma, whose initial condition and subsequent expansion vary from event to event, impacting the distribution of the eventwise average transverse momentum [P([p_{T}])]. Disentangling the contributions from fluctuations in the nuclear overlap size (geometrical component) and other sources at a fixed size (intrinsic component) remains a challenge. This problem is addressed by measuring the mean, variance, and skewness of P([p_{T}]) in ^{208}Pb+^{208}Pb and ^{129}Xe+^{129}Xe collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.