Background: Kidney transplant recipients are uniquely exposed to the disordered bone metabolism associated with chronic kidney disease beginning before transplantation followed by chronic corticosteroid use after transplantation. Previous efforts to synthesize the rapidly accruing evidence regarding estimation and management of fracture risk in kidney transplant recipients are outdated and incomplete.
Objective: To synthesize the evidence informing the overall incidence, patient-specific risk prediction, and methods of prevention of fractures in patient living with a kidney transplant.
Objectives: Clinical data on the performance of double-crown-retained removable dental prostheses (dcRDPs), especially beyond university studies, are rare. The objective of this retrospective clinical study was to evaluate the survival and complication-freeness probabilities of dcRDPs and to identify risk factors for failure and complications in a dental practice setting.
Materials And Methods: Anonymized practice data of 174 patients (56.
Polymers are a primary building block in many biomaterials, often interacting with anisotropic backgrounds. While previous studies have considered polymer dynamics within nematic solvents, rarely are the effects of anisotropic viscosity and polymer elongation differentiated. Here, we study polymers embedded in nematic liquid crystals with isotropic viscosity numerical simulations to explicitly investigate the effect of nematicity on macromolecular conformation and how conformation alone can produce anisotropic dynamics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe develop a minimal model to study the stochastic formation of Borromean links within topologically entangled networks without requiring the use of knot invariants. Borromean linkages may form in entangled solutions of open polymer chains or in Olympic gel systems such as kinetoplast DNA, but it is challenging to investigate this due to the difficulty of computing three-body link invariants. Here, we investigate rectangles randomly oriented in three Cartesian planes and densely packed within a volume, and evaluate them for Hopf linking and Borromean link formation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFToxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are widespread in bacteria and implicated in genome stability, virulence, phage defense, and persistence. TA systems have diverse activities and cellular targets, but their physiological roles and regulatory mechanisms are often unclear. Here, we show that the NatR-NatT TA system, which is part of the core genome of the human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, generates drug-tolerant persisters by specifically depleting nicotinamide dinucleotides.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMotivated by the observation of positive Gaussian curvature in kinetoplast DNA networks, we consider the effect of linking chirality in square lattice molecular chainmail networks using Langevin dynamics simulations and constrained gradient optimization. Linking chirality here refers to ordering of over-under versus under-over linkages between a loop and its neighbors. We consider fully alternating linking, maximally non-alternating, and partially non-alternating linking chiralities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To evaluate the effect of different cement types on the incidence of failure and loss of retention of zirconia and metal-ceramic single crowns (SCs) cemented on implant abutments.
Methods: We placed 567 implant-supported SCs in 358 patients and retrospectively evaluated long-term retention for up to 12.8 years.
Monitoring changes of signaling molecules and metabolites with high temporal resolution is key to understanding dynamic biological systems. Here, we use directed evolution to develop a genetically encoded ratiometric biosensor for c-di-GMP, a ubiquitous bacterial second messenger regulating important biological processes like motility, surface attachment, virulence and persistence. The resulting biosensor, cdGreen2, faithfully tracks c-di-GMP in single cells and with high temporal resolution over extended imaging times, making it possible to resolve regulatory networks driving bimodal developmental programs in different bacterial model organisms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParkinson's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder in which loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra results in a clinically heterogeneous group with variable motor and non-motor symptoms with a degree of misdiagnosis. Only 3-25% of sporadic Parkinson's patients present with genetic abnormalities that could represent a risk factor, thus environmental, metabolic, and other unknown causes contribute to the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease, which highlights the critical need for biomarkers. In the present study, we prospectively collected and analyzed plasma samples from 194 Parkinson's disease patients and 197 age-matched non-diseased controls.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLynch syndrome (LS) is the most prevalent heritable form of colorectal cancer. Its early onset and high lifetime risk for colorectal cancer emphasize the necessity for effective chemoprevention. NFE2L2 (NRF2) is often considered a potential druggable target, and many chemopreventive compounds induce NRF2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this study, we simulate mechanically interlocked semiflexible ring polymers inspired by the minicircles of kinetoplast DNA (kDNA) networks. Using coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate the impact of molecular topological linkage and nanoconfinement on the conformational properties of two- and three-ring polymer systems in varying solvent qualities. Under good-quality solvents, for two-ring systems, a higher number of crossing points lead to a more internally constrained structure, reducing their mean radius of gyration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe rehabilitation of free-end situations is a frequent indication in prosthetic dentistry. Cantilever fixed dental prostheses (cFDPs) made of 1st and 2nd generation zirconia are one treatment option. Due to a unique gradient technology, combinations of different zirconium dioxide generations are thus feasible in one restoration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The Oral Impact of Daily Performances (OIDP) is a dental patient-reported outcome measure (dPROM) for the estimation of oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) and takes the frequency as well as the severity of problems into account; however, it is not available in German language. The aim of this study was, therefore, to evaluate the reliability and validity of the German version of the OIDP in patients of a private practice.
Material And Methods: Translation of the original OIDP version was performed by a forward-backward process.
Cancer patients seeking emergency care can be vulnerable in increasingly overcrowded Emergency Departments and timely delivery of care is often aspirational rather than reality in many acute care systems. Ambulatory emergency care and its various international models are recognized as contributing to the safety and sustainability of emergency care services. This schema can logically be extended to the emergency oncology setting.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScholars have long upheld the notion that exposure to nature benefits individuals. Recently, organizational researchers have theorized that these benefits extend to the workplace, leading to calls for organizations to incorporate contact with nature into employees' jobs. However, it is unclear whether the effects of nature are strong enough to meaningfully impact employee performance, thereby justifying organizations' investments in them.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTeaching green chemistry within the K-12 classroom has a positive impact on attitudes and perceptions of chemistry in society for future scientists and professionals, resulting in safer, less hazardous chemistry experiments and demonstrations. The state of New York has taken advantage of the benefits that green chemistry provide in the classroom and is a leader in professional development for high school teachers throughout the state. Between 2011 and 2016, Beyond Benign and Siena College implemented 14 workshops across the state as part of New York's Department of Environmental Conservation goal of reducing hazardous chemicals in schools.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To investigate the impact of the severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic on stress and anxiety of preclinical and clinical dental students.
Materials And Methods: Dental students (participants) in their clinical course (CC; = 64) or preclinical course (PCC; = 53) were included in the study. The subjective perceived levels of stress and anxiety were evaluated using the Dental Environment Stress (DES) questionnaire and the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales (DASS) questionnaire.
Inducible gene expression systems are powerful genetic tools to study bacterial physiology, probing essential and toxic gene functions, gene dosage effects, and overexpression phenotypes. For the opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, dedicated inducible gene expression systems are scarce. In the current study, we developed a minimal synthetic 4-isopropylbenzoic acid (cumate)-inducible promoter, called P, that is tunable over several orders of magnitude.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInspired by experiments on topologically linked DNA networks, we consider the connectivity of Borromean networks, in which no two rings share a pairwise-link, but groups of three rings form inseparable triplets. Specifically, we focus on square lattices at which each node is embedded a loop which forms a Borromean link with pairs of its nearest neighbors. By mapping the Borromean link network onto a lattice representation, we investigate the percolation threshold of these networks (the fraction of occupied nodes required for a giant component), as well as the dissolution properties: the spectrum of topological links that would be released if the network were dissolved to varying degrees.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe electrical signal associated with a biopolymer translocating through a nanoscale pore depends on the size, topology, and configuration of each molecule. Building upon recent interest in using solid-state nanopores for studying the topology of knotted and supercoiled DNA, we present experimental observations of topologically linked catenanes translocating through a solid-state nanopore. Using restriction enzymes, linked circular molecules were isolated from the mitochondrial DNA of Crithidia fasciculata, a structure known as a kinetoplast that comprises thousands of topologically interlocked minicircles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHow myofilaments operate at short mammalian skeletal muscle lengths is unknown. A common assumption is that thick (myosin-containing) filaments get compressed at the Z-disc. We provide ultrastructural evidence of sarcomeres contracting down to 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith increasing urbanization and industrialization, the prevalence of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) has steadily been rising over the past two decades. IBD involves flares of gastrointestinal (GI) inflammation accompanied by microbiota perturbations. However, microbial mechanisms that trigger such flares remain elusive.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs organizational research continues to globalize, scholars increasingly must translate established scales into languages other than those in which the scales were originally developed. In organizational psychology research, back-translation is the dominant procedure for translating scales. Back-translation has notable strengths in maintaining the psychometric properties of an established scale in a translated version.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: To develop a German version of the Dental Environment Stress (DES) questionnaire, and to evaluate its reliability and validity.
Methods: The original English DES questionnaire was translated into German using a forward-backward translation process. To evaluate construct stability, a subgroup of dental students (n = 43) completed the DES twice (interval: 1 week).