During the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene and in the early Holocene period, hunter-gatherer communities across tropical South America deployed a range of technological strategies to adapt to diverse environmental conditions. This period witnessed a rich tapestry of technological practices, from enduring, widely disseminated tools to local and sporadically utilized technologies, shaping a multifaceted landscape of technological traditions. Lithic technology during this period was mainly marked by localized sourcing of raw materials, the use of multifunctional tools, a variety of projectile point designs, and the frequently utilization of unifacial shaping technology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch on social assistive robots in education faces many challenges that extend beyond technical issues. On one hand, hardware and software limitations, such as algorithm accuracy in real-world applications, render this approach difficult for daily use. On the other hand, there are human factors that need addressing as well, such as student motivations and expectations toward the robot, teachers' time management and lack of knowledge to deal with such technologies, and effective communication between experimenters and stakeholders.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPreeclampsia is a pregnancy disorder with substantial perinatal and maternal morbidity and mortality. Pregnant women at risk of preeclampsia would benefit from early detection for follow-up, timely interventions and delivery. Several attempts have been made to identify protein biomarkers of preeclampsia, but findings vary with demographics, clinical characteristics, and time of sampling.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To describe the use of intraoperative transsplenic injection of agitated saline (TIAS) and confirm temporarily full attenuation of extrahepatic portosystemic shunt (EHPSS) in dogs.
Study Design: Retrospective case series.
Animals: A total of 40 dogs.
Herein, we demonstrate the ability of isonitriles to be used as alkyl radical precursors in a photoredox-catalyzed transformation involving selective C-N cleavage and Csp-Csp bond formation. This protocol allows for the preparation of functionalized heteroarenes from readily available isonitriles through a decyanation process. The reaction is general for primary, secondary, and tertiary substrates, including amino acid derivatives and druglike molecules.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To demonstrate and test the capabilities of the American College of Radiology (ACR) Connect and AI-LAB software platform by implementing multi-institutional artificial intelligence (AI) training and validation for breast density classification.
Methods: In this proof-of-concept study, six U.S.
Introduction: Long-read sequencing (LRS) enables accurate structural variant detection and variant phasing. When a molecular diagnosis is suspected, target enrichment can reduce the cost and duration of sequencing.
Methods: LRS was conducted in five inherited retinal dystrophy (IRD) patients harboring a monoallelic variant in that remained uncharacterized after clinical exome sequencing (CES).
Poor placental development and placental defects can lead to adverse pregnancy outcomes such as pre-eclampsia, fetal growth restriction, and stillbirth. This study introduces two sensors, which use a near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) technique to measure placental oxygen saturation transabdominally. The first one, an NIRS sensor, is a wearable device consisting of multiple NIRS channels.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPreterm birth (PTB), often preceded by preterm labor, is a major cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality worldwide. Most PTB cases involve intra-amniotic inflammation without detectable microorganisms, termed in utero sterile inflammation, for which there is no established treatment. In this study, we propose homeostatic macrophages to prevent PTB and adverse neonatal outcomes caused by in utero sterile inflammation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRationale: Tobacco use is a risk factor for COVID-19 adverse outcomes. Despite health implications, data conflict regarding COVID-19 and tobacco consumption. We present results from a survey of health behaviors during the pandemic to identify how COVID-19 influenced tobacco behaviors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: , or Group B (GBS), is a leading cause of neonatal sepsis. Materno-fetal transmission of the microorganisms present in the lower genital tract/perineum is considered to be the most frequent mode for acquisition of infection. It has also been proposed that, in a subset of cases, GBS causes acute chorioamnionitis, intraamniotic infection, and fetal/neonatal sepsis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGut microbiota-derived metabolites play a pivotal role in the maintenance of intestinal immune homeostasis. Here, we demonstrate that the human commensal possesses a specific metabolic fingerprint, consisting predominantly of the tryptophan catabolite indole-3-propionic acid (IPA), the branched-chain acids (BCFAs) isobutyrate and isovalerate and the short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) acetate and propionate. Mono-colonization of germ-free mice with (CS mice) affected colonic mucosal immune cell phenotypes, including up-regulation of gene expression, and increased abundance of transcriptionally active colonic tuft cells and Foxp3 regulatory T cells (Tregs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHere we describe and illustrate and two new species of the Melastomateae tribe from Serra da Canastra National Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil. We also provide an updated identification key for the members of the tribe that occur in this Protected Area. has coriaceous leaves, broadly ovate to orbicular leaf blade, entire and adpressed-strigose margin, 11-17 basal acrodromous veins, and flowers with white petals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProblem: Preeclampsia is a heterogeneous syndrome of diverse etiologies and molecular pathways leading to distinct clinical subtypes. Herein, we aimed to characterize the extracellular vesicle (EV)-associated and soluble fractions of the maternal plasma proteome in patients with preeclampsia and to assess their value for disease prediction.
Method Of Study: This case-control study included 24 women with term preeclampsia, 23 women with preterm preeclampsia, and 94 healthy pregnant controls.
We developed a spectrally-encoded, line reflectance confocal microscope (RCM) that uses a rotating diffuser to rapidly modulate the illumination speckle pattern. The speckle modulation approach reduced speckle noise while imaging with a spatially coherent light source needed for high imaging speed and cellular resolution. The speckle-modulation RCM device achieved lateral and axial resolutions of 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To enable interactive visualization of the vaginal microbiome across the pregnancy and facilitate discovery of novel insights and generation of new hypotheses.
Material And Methods: Vaginal Microbiome Atlas during Pregnancy (VMAP) was created with R shiny to generate visualizations of structured vaginal microbiome data from multiple studies.
Results: VMAP (http://vmapapp.
We developed an algorithm for automatically analyzing scattering-based light sheet microscopy (sLSM) images of anal squamous intraepithelial lesions. We developed a method for automatically segmenting sLSM images for nuclei and calculating seven features: nuclear intensity, intensity slope as a function of depth, nuclear-to-nuclear distance, nuclear-to-cytoplasm ratio, cell density, nuclear area, and proportion of pixels corresponding to nuclei. 187 images from 80 anal biopsies were used for feature analysis and classifier development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Intra-amniotic inflammation is causally linked to spontaneous preterm labor. The gold standard for the diagnosis of intra-amniotic inflammation is the determination of an amniotic fluid profile obtained from transabdominal amniocentesis, which is invasive. Cervicovaginal fluid fetal fibronectin (fFN) is a widely-used predictive biomarker for spontaneous preterm labor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF