Publications by authors named "JOHNSON M"

Gametogenesis involves active protein synthesis and is proposed to rely on proteostasis. Our previous work in C. elegans indicates that germline development requires coordinated activities of insulin/IGF-1 signaling (IIS) and HSF-1, the central regulator of the heat shock response.

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Successful reduction of oil and gas sector methane emissions to meet near-zero intensity targets requires the identification and mitigation of all possible sources. One potentially important source is catalytic heaters, which have largely escaped attention in regulatory and mitigation efforts despite being ubiquitous at upstream production sites in cold climate regions. This study reports direct in situ measurements of the exhaust streams of 38 natural gas-fired catalytic heaters at upstream production sites in British Columbia, Canada.

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  • High mechanical loading induces temporary disruptions in cell membranes (PMD) that initiate a process called mechanotransduction, which is essential for bone adaptation.
  • The study hypothesized that disrupting a protein called β2-spectrin (Sptbn1), which supports cell structure, would increase membrane fragility, leading to altered responses in osteocytes (bone cells) under mechanical stress.
  • Results showed that disrupting Sptbn1 led to more PMD formation and slower repair rates in cells, impaired cell survival, and reduced bone thickening in response to mechanical loading, highlighting Sptbn1's crucial role in bone adaptation and cell response to stress.
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Purpose: To examine if coronal deformity angular ratio (C-DAR) serves as a predictor for progression to surgical magnitude in patients with Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS) treated with thoracolumbar sacral orthosis (TLSO).

Methods: Patients with AIS, prescribed a full-time TLSO, Cobb angle 20-40°, Risser 0-2, who wore the brace ≥ 12.9 h and reached skeletal maturity/surgery were included retrospectively.

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Age is the greatest risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD) as well as for other disorders that increase the risk of AD such as diabetes and obesity. There is growing interest in determining if interventions that promote metabolic health can prevent or delay AD. Acarbose is an anti-diabetic drug that not only improves glucose homeostasis, but also extends the lifespan of wild-type mice.

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  • * It features a longer fiber length than its predecessor, leading to improved blood flow, gas exchange, and lower pressure drop during testing—showing a significant drop in resistance at pediatric flow rates.
  • * In vivo tests indicate excellent performance, achieving 100% blood oxygen saturation and minimal pressure drop, making the PAL-LR a potential breakthrough in reducing strain on the heart for patients with pulmonary issues.
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  • Three generations of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) exist for ALK fusion-positive non-small cell lung cancer, but they fail to effectively address resistance, brain activity, and TRK inhibition issues.* -
  • NVL-655, a new TKI, shows superior selectivity and potency against ALK mutations, significantly outperforming current approved ALK TKIs in preclinical studies.* -
  • Preliminary results from a phase I/II trial indicate NVL-655's promise for treating heavily pretreated patients, including those with brain metastases and resistance mutations, potentially making it a fourth-generation advancement for ALK-driven cancers.*
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Background: The prevalence of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising for prescription drugs has led to concerns about how consumers interpret the medical information conveyed in these ads. One strategy for improving lay understanding of medical information involves incorporating quantitative information about a treatment's potential benefits and risks.

Objective: This literature review investigates laypersons' interpretations of statistical concepts, expanding on past reviews and including terms that may be used in DTC prescription drug advertising.

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Background: Breathlessness frequently becomes severe among people with respiratory disease. Mirtazapine, a widely used antidepressant, has shown promise in the modulation of respiratory sensation and the response to it, as well as reducing feelings of panic, which often accompanies breathlessness. We aimed to determine the effectiveness of mirtazapine to alleviate severe persisting breathlessness.

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  • - The study assesses the impact of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) and the COVID-19 pandemic on pediatric burn incidents, utilizing data from 2002 to 2021 from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System.
  • - A total of 21,962 burn cases were analyzed, revealing a decrease in both thermal and electrical burns after CPSIA implementation in 2009 and during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially notable for hand burns associated with household appliances.
  • - The findings suggest that while CPSIA and the pandemic contributed to fewer pediatric burns, there remains a significant risk for hand burns among children, emphasizing the need for ongoing education for guardians about potential hazards.
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Beta-lactam therapeutic drug monitoring has been growing in prevalence in the acute care hospital setting. Expansion of its use to outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy requires careful consideration of potential logistical and therapeutic barriers.

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  • The study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on substance use disorders (SUD) in people with HIV, highlighting a significant increase in SUD risk post-pandemic shelter-in-place orders.
  • Data from over 7,000 participants revealed that moderate/high SUD risk rose from 24% pre-pandemic to 43% post-pandemic, with notable increases in the use of drugs like heroin and methamphetamine.
  • The findings suggest that increased social isolation and reduced access to treatment during COVID-19 exacerbated SUD among people with HIV, emphasizing the need for better integrated treatment solutions moving forward.
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  • Demand for computing power in major scientific experiments, like the CMS at CERN, is expected to significantly increase over the coming decades.
  • The implementation of coprocessors, particularly GPUs, in data processing workflows can enhance performance and efficiency, especially for machine learning tasks.
  • The Services for Optimized Network Inference on Coprocessors (SONIC) approach allows for improved use of coprocessors, demonstrating successful integration and acceleration of workflows across various environments without sacrificing throughput.
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Introduction: The primary analysis (median follow-up 34.9 mo across all arms) of the phase 3 POSEIDON study revealed a statistically significant overall survival (OS) improvement with first-line tremelimumab plus durvalumab and chemotherapy (T+D+CT) versus CT in patients with EGFR and ALK wild-type metastatic NSCLC (mNSCLC). D+CT had a trend for OS improvement versus CT that did not reach statistical significance.

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Common buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench) is a gluten-free underutilized pseudocereal with excellent therapeutic and nutraceutical potential. Sprouts and microgreens produced from this plant species can be consumed regularly owing to a rich nutritional profile that can be improved by regulating the abiotic factors during their growth. Therefore, this study explores the responses of common buckwheat sprouts and microgreens in terms of growth and phytochemicals accumulation under temperature (16, and 25 ºC) and photoperiodic (16/8 h and 20/4 h, light/dark intervals) variations.

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Longitudinal research can assess how diverging development of multiple cognitive skills during infancy, as well as familial background, are related to the emergence of neurodevelopmental conditions. Sensorimotor and effortful control difficulties are seen in infants later diagnosed with autism; this study explored the relationships between these skills and autism characteristics in 340 infants (240 with elevated familial autism likelihood) assessed at 4-7, 8-10, 12-15, 24, and 36 months. We tested: (1) the relationship between parent-reported effortful control (Rothbart's temperament questionnaires) and sensorimotor skills (Mullen Scales of Early Learning), using random intercept cross-lagged panel modelling; (2) whether household income and maternal education predicted stable individual differences in cognition; (3) sensorimotor and effortful control skills as individual and interactive predictors of parent-reported autism characteristics (Social Responsiveness Scale) at 3 years, using multiple regression; and (4) moderation of interactions by familial likelihood.

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Pacific salmon are well known for their homing migrations; juvenile salmon learn odors associated with their natal streams prior to seaward migration, and then use these retained odor memories to guide them back from oceanic feeding grounds to their river of origin to spawn several years later. This memory formation, termed olfactory imprinting, involves (at least in part) sensitization of the peripheral olfactory epithelium to specific odorants. We hypothesized that this change in peripheral sensitivity is due to exposure-dependent increases in the expression of odorant receptor (OR) proteins that are activated by specific odorants experienced during imprinting.

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Purpose: To describe a new retinal phenotype characterized by bilateral, multifocal, subretinal vitelliform lesions along the vascular arcades that we refer to as multifocal vitelliform paravascular retinopathy (MVPR).

Design: Observational case series.

Methods: Multimodal retinal imaging including color fundus photography, fundus autofluorescence and cross sectional and en-face optical coherence tomography was performed to evaluate and characterize the lesions of MVPR.

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Background: Primary brain tumors (PBTs) pose a significant health challenge, affecting patients and their caregivers. While early integration of palliative care (PC) has shown benefits in advanced cancer, its integration for PBT patients, particularly glioblastoma (GBM) patients, remains complex. We hypothesized that our previous PC integration efforts may have failed due to knowledge-gaps and misconceptions among patients, caregivers, and providers.

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Prokaryotic CRISPR-Cas immunity is subverted by anti-CRISPRs (Acrs), which inhibit Cas protein activities when expressed during the phage lytic cycle or from resident prophages or plasmids. Acrs often bind to specific cognate Cas proteins, and hence inhibition is typically limited to a single CRISPR-Cas subtype. Furthermore, although acr genes are frequently organized together in phage-associated gene clusters, how such inhibitors initially evolve has remained unclear.

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Decades of neuroimaging studies have shown modest differences in brain structure and connectivity in depression, hindering mechanistic insights or the identification of risk factors for disease onset. Furthermore, whereas depression is episodic, few longitudinal neuroimaging studies exist, limiting understanding of mechanisms that drive mood-state transitions. The emerging field of precision functional mapping has used densely sampled longitudinal neuroimaging data to show behaviourally meaningful differences in brain network topography and connectivity between and in healthy individuals, but this approach has not been applied in depression.

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Late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) research has principally focused on neurons over the years due to their known role in the production of amyloid beta plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. In contrast, recent genomic studies of LOAD have implicated microglia as culprits of the prolonged inflammation exacerbating the neurodegeneration observed in patient brains. Indeed, recent LOAD genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have reported multiple loci near genes related to microglial function, including , , and .

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  • The co-evolution of prokaryotes, phages, and mobile genetic elements has led to the development of various defense and anti-defense systems, which are challenging to detect due to the diverse nature of anti-defense proteins.
  • The newly developed "AntiDefenseFinder" is an open-source tool that identifies 156 anti-defense systems across prokaryotic genomes and has revealed 47,981 systems in total, highlighting the occurrence of "anti-defense islands" in some cases.
  • The study indicates that many anti-defense systems are located in specific mobile genetic elements, with notable findings on the Apyc1 protein, which likely started in bacteria and has been adapted by phages to bypass bacterial defenses.
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Chemical investigation of extracts from the Irish deep-sea soft coral revealed cadinene-like sesquiterpenes, anthoteibinenes A-E, bearing unusual dimethylamine substitution. Structure elucidation was accomplished using 1D/2D NMR spectroscopy and high-resolution mass spectrometry, while NOESY NMR experiments, gauge invariant atomic orbital (GIAO) NMR calculations coupled with DP4+ probabilities measures, and ECD comparisons were incorporated to propose their relative and absolute configurations. Anthoteibinene B () exhibited 49% inhibition of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) at 3.

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Background: Despite improvements in treatment and oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) access, 1.3 million people acquired HIV in 2022. Six-monthly lenacapavir PrEP could benefit tens of millions of people at high risk of infection.

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