Publications by authors named "Pun M"

Group-equivariant neural networks have emerged as an efficient approach to model complex data, using generalized convolutions that respect the relevant symmetries of a system. These techniques have made advances in both the supervised learning tasks for classification and regression, and the unsupervised tasks to generate new data. However, little work has been done in leveraging the symmetry-aware expressive representations that could be extracted from these approaches.

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Innate and adaptive immune responses at mucosal surfaces play a role in protection against most infectious diseases. However, the relative importance either of mucosal versus systemic, or of cellular versus humoral immunity in protection against such infections remains unclear. We aimed to determine the relative percentages and reproducibility of detection of five major T lymphocyte phenotypes in stimulated whole mouth fluid (SWMF); to compare matched mucosal and blood phenotypes; to evaluate the consistency of phenotypes in SWMF over time; and to determine any associations with age or gender.

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Predicting the stability and fitness effects of amino acid mutations in proteins is a cornerstone of biological discovery and engineering. Various experimental techniques have been developed to measure mutational effects, providing us with extensive datasets across a diverse range of proteins. By training on these data, traditional computational modeling and more recent machine learning approaches have advanced significantly in predicting mutational effects.

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Background: Prostate cancer affects 1 in 6 men, and it is the second‑leading cause of cancer-related death in American men. Surgery is one of the main treatment modalities for prostate cancer, but it often results in incomplete resection margins or complete resection that leads to nerve damage and undesirable side effects. In the present work, we have developed a new bimodal tracer, NODAGA-sCy7.

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Predicting the stability and fitness effects of amino-acid mutations in proteins is a cornerstone of biological discovery and engineering. Various experimental techniques have been developed to measure mutational effects, providing us with extensive datasets across a diverse range of proteins. By training on these data, machine learning approaches have advanced significantly in predicting mutational effects.

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Soft rot Pectobacteriaceae (SRP) are a group of destructive Gram-negative phytopathogens that can infect a wide range of plant hosts, including potatoes. There are no effective control agents available against SRP, making their management challenging. We have developed a novel approach to protect potato tubers against SRP.

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Cow is the national animal of Nepal, yet it is one of the most abused animal species here. Under realized utilities of cow that is nonlactating or pregnant is the reason for demonic cruelty. Since the Vedic period, gaushalas have been caring for cows.

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Very late antigen-4 (VLA-4) is a transmembrane integrin protein that is highly expressed in aggressive forms of metastatic melanoma. A small-molecule peptidomimetic, LLP2A, was found to have a low pM affinity binding to VLA-4. Because LLP2A itself does not inhibit cancer cell proliferation and survival, it is an ideal candidate for the imaging and delivery of therapeutic payloads.

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Proteins play a central role in biology from immune recognition to brain activity. While major advances in machine learning have improved our ability to predict protein structure from sequence, determining protein function from its sequence or structure remains a major challenge. Here, we introduce holographic convolutional neural network (H-CNN) for proteins, which is a physically motivated machine learning approach to model amino acid preferences in protein structures.

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Purpose: To investigate the effectiveness of physiotherapy interventions compared to control conditions on fecal incontinence (FI) and quality of life (QoL) following colorectal surgery.

Methods: Electronic searches in English-language (Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, AMED, CENTRAL, CINAHL, MEDLINE, Ovid, and PEDro) and Chinese-language (CNKI, Wanfang Data) databases were conducted. Trials comparing physiotherapy interventions against control conditions and assessing FI and QoL outcomes were included in the review.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Recent clinical trials for H3K27-altered diffuse midline gliomas (DMGs) are showing promising results, indicating potential advancements in treatment.
  • - The text identifies three key challenges: improving experimental models to include immune and brain-specific factors, fostering collaboration between researchers, clinicians, and the industry, and optimizing clinical processes like biopsy and drug delivery.
  • - Emphasizes that extensive collaboration is crucial for enhancing our understanding of DMGs, as well as improving diagnostics and therapies for these tumors.
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Accurately modeling protein 3D structure is essential for the design of functional proteins. An important sub-task of structure modeling is protein side-chain packing: predicting the conformation of side-chains (rotamers) given the protein's backbone structure and amino-acid sequence. Conventional approaches for this task rely on expensive sampling procedures over hand-crafted energy functions and rotamer libraries.

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Introduction: Nursing students can find clinical learning to be challenging, unpredictable and stressful. To address this problem, this study integrated Mindfulness into Peer-assisted Learning (PAL) for nursing clinical education and investigated the feasibility and effectiveness on improving student participants' emotional reactions, and explored the perception and experience towards the programme.

Method: This quasi-experimental, repeated-measure, mixed methods study was conducted in a convenience sample of 126 Year 2 and Year 3 university nursing students.

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Article Synopsis
  • Recent research shows a potential connection between obstructive sleep apnea and cognitive decline, but the exact reasons behind this link are not fully understood.
  • The study involved 125 middle-aged and older adults, evaluating their sleep patterns and cognitive function, which included analyzing sleep spindles during specific sleep stages using polysomnography.
  • Findings indicated that the characteristics of sleep spindles were more closely related to certain verbal fluency scores rather than severity of obstructive sleep apnea, suggesting that biological sex may also influence these relationships.
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Unlabelled: Patients with H3K27M-mutant diffuse midline glioma (DMG) have no proven effective therapies. ONC201 has recently demonstrated efficacy in these patients, but the mechanism behind this finding remains unknown. We assessed clinical outcomes, tumor sequencing, and tissue/cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) correlate samples from patients treated in two completed multisite clinical studies.

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Calla lily (Zantedeschia hybrida) is widely cultivated as an ornamental plant in China and commonly used as cut flower. Water soaked lesions on the tuber and petiole followed by collapse of entire plant along with foul smell were noticed in a 4-hectare calla lily plantation in the Yanqing District of Beijing, China during August 2022. It was revealed 20%-30% of the plants had these symptoms.

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Introduction: The eons-long co-evolvement of plants and bacteria led to a plethora of interactions between the two kingdoms, in which bacterial pathogenicity is counteracted by plant-derived antimicrobial defense molecules. In return, efflux pumps (EP) form part of the resistance mechanism employed by bacteria to permit their survival in this hostile chemical environment. In this work we study the effect of combinations of efflux pump inhibitors (EPIs) and plant-derived phytochemicals on bacterial activity using 1692 (Pb1692) as a model system.

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Soft rot pectobacteria (SRP) are phytopathogens of the genera Pectobacterium and Dickeya that cause soft rots on a wide range of crops and ornamental plants. SRP produce plant cell wall degrading enzymes (PCWDEs), including pectinases. Bdellovibrio and like organisms are bacterial predators that can prey on a variety of Gram-negative species, including SRP.

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Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) has been promoted as a breakthrough in healthcare because of the impact when professionals work as a team. However, despite its inception dating back to the 1960s, its science has taken a long time to advance. There is a need to theorize IPE to cultivate creative insights for a nuanced understanding of IPE.

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Article Synopsis
  • Diffuse midline gliomas (DMGs), including DIPGs with H3K27M mutations, are aggressive childhood brain tumors characterized by altered histone modifications that impact gene expression.* -
  • The study found that these mutations increase levels of specific SWI/SNF complex proteins, which help regulate chromatin structure and gene activation, making them potential targets for treatment.* -
  • A targeted therapeutic approach using PROTAC compounds to degrade these proteins resulted in cell death in H3K27M mutant cells, suggesting a promising strategy for combating these lethal cancers.*
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Background: Female underrepresentation in oncology clinical trials can result in outcome disparities. We evaluated female participant representation in US oncology trials by intervention type, cancer site, and funding.

Materials And Methods: Data were extracted from the publicly available Aggregate Analysis of ClinicalTrials.

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Globally decreased histone 3, lysine 27 tri-methylation (H3K27me3) is a hallmark of H3K27-altered diffuse midline gliomas (DMGs) and group-A posterior fossa ependymomas (PFAs). H3K27-altered DMGs are largely characterized by lysine-to-methionine mutations in histone 3 at position 27 (H3K27M). Most PFAs overexpress EZH inhibitory protein (EZHIP), which possesses a region of similarity to the mutant H3K27M.

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