Evaluating the Paucity of Female Surgeons in Plastic Surgery: A Review of the Systemic Barriers to Entry and Success.

The percentage of practicing female plastic surgeons in the United States is notably low. This narrative review sought to identify prominent barriers affecting women's entry and success in plastic surgery. A literature search was conducted using the National Library of Medicine from 2013 to 2023, using MeSH terms of gender disparity and plastic surgery.

Deriving and validating a risk prediction model for long COVID: a population-based, retrospective cohort study in Scotland.

Objectives: Using electronic health records, we derived and internally validated a prediction model to estimate risk factors for long COVID and predict individual risk of developing long COVID.

Design: Population-based, retrospective cohort study.

Setting: Scotland.

Analysis and Prediction of Chymotrypsin Substrate Preferences through Large Data Acquisition with Target-Free mRNA Display.

Oral delivery of peptide therapeutics is limited by degradation by gut proteases like chymotrypsin. Existing databases of peptidases are limited in size and do not enable systematic analyses of protease substrate preferences, especially for non-natural amino acids. Thus, stability optimization of hit compounds is time and resource intensive.

A proposal for further developing fatigue-related post COVID-19 health states for burden of disease studies.

Previous efforts to estimate the burden of fatigue-related symptoms due to long COVID have a very high threshold for inclusion of cases, relative to the proposed definition from the World Health Organization. In practice this means that milder cases, that may be occurring very frequently, are not included in estimates of the burden of long COVID which will result in underestimation. A more comprehensive approach to modelling the disease burden from long COVID, in relation to fatigue, can ensure that we do not only focus on what is easiest to measure; which risks losing focus of less severe health states that may be more difficult to measure but are occurring very frequently.

Elongation Factor P Modulates the Incorporation of Structurally Diverse Noncanonical Amino Acids into Dihydrofolate Reductase.

The introduction of noncanonical amino acids into proteins and peptides has been of great interest for many years and has facilitated the detailed study of peptide/protein structure and mechanism. In addition to numerous nonproteinogenic α-l-amino acids, bacterial ribosome modification has provided the wherewithal to enable the synthesis of peptides and proteins with a much greater range of structural diversity, as has the use of endogenous bacterial proteins in reconstituted protein synthesizing systems. In a recent report, elongation factor P (EF-P), putatively essential for enabling the incorporation of contiguous proline residues into proteins, was shown to facilitate the introduction of an N-methylated amino acid in addition to proline.

Clinico-Epidemiologic Characteristics of Patients Reported in the Mycotic Infections in COVID-19 Registry.

We update results from the Mycotic Infections in COVID-19 (MUNCO) Registry, May-September 2021. Data collection from May to September 2021 yielded 728 cases from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Thailand, and the United States. The cases consisted of mostly mucormycosis (97.

Megacolon as a Feature of Suspected Robinow Syndrome.

This study presents the routine prosection findings of a 73-year-old male cadaver, with the cause of death reported to be hypertension and respiratory failure. Deep thorax and abdomen dissection exposed profound external and internal anatomical abnormalities. Externally, the body exhibited the following: pectus excavatum; short-limbed dwarfism; and abnormalities of the head, face, and external genitalia.

A Case of Latent Plasmodium Falciparum Malaria in a Patient With Coexisting Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) and Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder (NMOSD).

Malaria is a global health concern with high morbidity and mortality. It is often attributed to the species, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and it normally has an incubation period of seven to 14 days. Dormant disease secondary to and is well-reported, yet only a handful of cases report dormant malaria secondary to .

Microscopic Insights into the Mechanism of White Light Generation by Disruptive Interaction between Human Serum Albumin Amyloid Fibrils and Surfactant-AIEgen Nanorods.

Dimethyl-2,5-bis[4-(methoxyphenyl)amino] terephthalate (DBMPT) exhibits aggregation-induced enhancement of emission with Tween 40 and formation of nanorods with strong orange fluorescence. These nanorods disrupt fibrils of human serum albumin and lead to partial refolding of the protein, as monitored by circular dichroism and thioflavin T (ThT) fluorescence. The resultant milieu emits white light, the mechanism of which is explored in this study.

Safety and Efficacy of BroadBand Intense Pulsed Light Therapy for Dry Eye Disease with Meibomian Gland Dysfunction.

Background: BroadBand light intense pulsed light (BBL-IPL) therapy has shown to reduce hordeolum and blepharitis frequency. This study aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of BBL-IPL therapy in patients with dry eye disease (DED) from meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD).

Methods: This is a retrospective, consecutive case series of 48 patients with DED from MGD who underwent BBL-IPL therapy from October 2016 to January 2019 at a single, outpatient clinic in Ontario, Canada.

Social Vulnerability Indices as a Risk Factor for Heart Failure Readmissions.

The objective of our study was to use the parameters of social vulnerability index (SVI) to observe their association with the 30-day hospital readmissions in the heart failure population. Data required for analysis were extracted from the electronic medical record. The geographic SVI data was then merged with the clinical data.

Evaluating newer generation intraocular lens calculation formulas in manual versus femtosecond laser-assisted cataract surgery.

Aim: To determine the refractive accuracy of the Haigis, Barrett Universal II (Barrett), and Hill-radial basis function 2.0 (Hill-RBF) intraocular lens (IOL) power calculations formulas in eyes undergoing manual cataract surgery (MCS) and refractive femtosecond laser-assisted cataract surgery (ReLACS).

Methods: This was a REB-approved, retrospective interventional comparative case series of 158 eyes of 158 patients who had preoperative biometry completed using the IOL Master 700 and underwent implantation of a Tecnis IOL following uncomplicated cataract surgery using either MCS or ReLACS.

Altered Mental Status: An Important but Overlooked Presenting Symptom of COVID-19 in Older Adults.

Objectives: To determine whether altered mental status (AMS) as a presenting symptom in older adults with COVID-19 is independently associated with adverse outcomes.

Methods: A retrospective single center observational study of admitted patients (n = 421) age greater than 60 and a positive COVID-19 test. Outcomes included mortality, intubation, acute respiratory distress syndrome, acute kidney injury, and acute cardiac injury.

Lasso-grafting of macrocyclic peptide pharmacophores yields multi-functional proteins.

Protein engineering has great potential for devising multifunctional recombinant proteins to serve as next-generation protein therapeutics, but it often requires drastic modifications of the parental protein scaffolds e.g., additional domains at the N/C-terminus or replacement of a domain by another.

An assessment of race and gender-based biases among readmission predicting tools (HOSPITAL, LACE, and RAHF) in heart failure population.

Background: The objective of our study is to retrospectively investigate if the HOSPITAL score, LACE index, and RAHF scale exhibit any bias based on gender and race in heart failure readmissions.

Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study with all adult medical patients discharged with congestive heart failure from 2016 to 2018 from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine Hospitalist service. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was constructed comparing prediction tools (HOSPITAL score, LACE index, and RAHF scale) performance based on gender and race by measuring the area under the curve (AUC).

Non-invasive positive pressure ventilation versus endotracheal intubation in treatment of COVID-19 patients requiring ventilatory support.

Importance: Initial guidelines recommended prompt endotracheal intubation rather than non-invasive ventilation (NIV) for COVID-19 patients requiring ventilator support. There is insufficient data comparing the impact of intubation versus NIV on patient-centered outcomes of these patients.

Objective: To compare all-cause 30-day mortality for hospitalized COVID-19 patients with respiratory failure who underwent intubation first, intubation after NIV, or NIV only.

Morphological Evolution of Strongly Fluorescent Water Soluble AIEEgen-Triblock Copolymer Mixed Aggregates with Shape-Dependent Cell Permeability.

Dimethyl-2,5-bis(4-methoxyphenylamino)terephthalate (DBMPT) is a water-insoluble fluorogenic molecule, which has been rendered water-soluble in physiological conditions, by the addition of triblock copolymers (TBPs), P123 (PEOPPOPEO), and F127 (PEOPPOPEO). DBMPT-TBP mixed aggregates, formed in the process, exhibit significant aggregation-induced enhancement of emission, with nanosecond fluorescence lifetimes. Dynamics involved in suppression of nonradiative pathways and consequent enhancement of fluorescence are followed by femtosecond transient absorption and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopic techniques.

The impact of obesity on COVID-19 complications: a retrospective cohort study.

Background: Obesity is an epidemic in New York City, the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. Previous studies suggest that obesity is a possible risk factor for adverse outcomes in COVID-19.

Objective: To elucidate the association between obesity and COVID-19 outcomes.

White Light Generation from a Self-Assembled Fluorogen-Surfactant Composite Light Harvesting Platform.

Nonionic surfactant modulated aggregation induced emission enhancement (AIEE) of Dimethyl-2,5-bis(4-(methoxyphenyl)amino)terephthalate (DBMPT) has been investigated. DBMPT exhibits unidirectional aggregated growth with nonionic triton X-100 (TX-100) to produce highly luminescent nanorods, the dimensions and emission intensities of which are controlled by concentration of DBMPT. Energy transfer from perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic acid dianhydride (PTAD) to these nanorods in aqueous medium produces pure white light emission with the CIE chromaticity coordinates (0.