BMC Musculoskelet Disord
February 2025
Background: Fracture healing is commonly evaluated through physical examination and radiographic results. However, these methods rely on the surgeons' subjective experience, without including the objective biomechanical properties of the bony callus. This paper presents an innovative method for measuring the callus stiffness in vivo to evaluate fracture healing, further instructing surgeons to remove external fixator safely.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHigher strength and higher ductility are desirable for structural materials. However, ultrastrong alloys inevitably show decreased strain-hardening capacity, limiting their uniform elongation. We present a supranano (<10 nanometers) and short-range ordering design for grain interiors and grain boundary regions, respectively, in fine-grained alloys based on vanadium, cobalt, and nickel, with additions of tungsten, copper, aluminum, and boron.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIEEE Trans Biomed Eng
November 2024
Objective: Accurate alignment of long bone fractures under minimally invasive procedures is a prerequisite for excellent treatment outcomes. However, the existing technologies suffer from the drawbacks of complex operations and excessive dependence on the surgeon's expertise. To solve these problems, we have developed a novel computer-assisted system to achieve rapid and effective reduction of fractures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLabel-free real-time monitoring of cellular behavior using impedance spectroscopy is important for drug development and toxicological assessments. Parallelization and miniaturization of such experiments are essential for increasing throughput and enabling experiments with low abundant stem or primary cells. Traditional methods are not miniaturized and require large volumes of reagents and number of cells, limiting their suitability for cost effective high-throughput screening of cells of limited availability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The occurrence of complications following radical gastrectomy for gastric cancer significantly impacts patients' quality of life. Elderly patients are susceptible to postoperative complications. This study seeks to investigate the risk factors associated with Clavien-Dindo ≥IIgrade complications following radical gastrectomy for advanced gastric cancer in elderly patients, develop a nomogram risk prediction model, and validate its accuracy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDiabetic retinopathy (DR) is characterized as a microvascular disease. Nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR) presents with alterations in retinal blood flow and vascular permeability, thickening of the basement membrane, loss of pericytes, and formation of acellular capillaries. Endothelial-mesenchymal transition (EndMT) of retinal microvessels may play a critical role in advancing NPDR.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Musculoskelet Disord
May 2024
Background: External fixation is widely used in the treatment of traumatic fractures; however, orthopedic surgeons encounter challenges in deciding the optimal time for fixator removal. The axial load-share ratio (LS) of the fixator is a quantitative index to evaluate the stiffness of callus healing. This paper introduces an innovative method for measuring the LS and assesses the method's feasibility and efficacy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRelying solely on soil properties may not fully ensure the performance of capillary barrier covers at limiting landfill gas (LFG) emissions. This study proposed to install passive gas collection pipes in the coarse-grained soil layers of capillary barrier covers to enhance their performance at limiting LFG emissions. First, the LFG generation rate of municipal solid waste and its influencing factors were analyzed based on empirical formulas.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the foremost cause of vision loss among the global working-age population, and statins are among the most frequently prescribed drugs for lipid management in patients with DR. The exact relationship between statins and DR has not been determined. This study sought to validate the causal association between statins usage and diabetic retinopathy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe transformation induced plasticity phenomenon occurs when one phase transforms to another one during plastic deformation, which is usually diffusionless. Here we present elemental partitioning-mediated crystalline-to-amorphous phase transformation during quasi-static plastic deformation, in an alloy in form of a Cr-Ni-Co (crystalline)/Zr-Ti-Nb-Hf-Ni-Co (amorphous) nanolaminated composite, where the constitute elements of the two phases have large negative mixing enthalpy. Upon plastic deformation, atomic intermixing occurs between adjacent amorphous and crystalline phases due to extensive rearrangement of atoms at the interfaces.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMetallic materials are usually composed of single phase or multiple phases, which refers to homogeneous regions with distinct types of the atom arrangement. The recent studies on nanostructured metallic materials provide a variety of promising approaches to engineer the phases at the nanoscale. Tailoring phase size, phase distribution, and introducing new structures via phase transformation contribute to the precise modification in deformation behaviors and electronic structures of nanostructural metallic materials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe inhibition of efflux pumps is a promising approach to combating multidrug-resistant bacteria. We have developed a combined structure- and ligand-based model, using OpenEye software, for the identification of inhibitors of AcrB, the inner membrane protein component of the AcrAB-TolC efflux pump in . From a database of 1391 FDA-approved drugs, 23 compounds were selected to test for efflux inhibition in .
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To investigate the enrollment success rate of cancer clinical trials conducted in 2008-2019 and various factors lowering the enrollment success rate.
Methods: This is a cross-sectional study with clinical trial information from the largest registration database ClinicalTrials.gov.
Thermal stability determines a material's ability to maintain its performance at desired service temperatures. This is especially important for aluminum (Al) alloys, which are widely used in the commercial sector. Herein, an ultra-strong and heat-resistant Al-Cu composite is fabricated with a structure of nano-AlN and submicron-Al O particles uniformly distributed in the matrix.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo alleviate the mechanical instability of major shear bands in metallic glasses at room temperature, topologically heterogeneous structures were introduced to encourage the multiplication of mild shear bands. Different from the former attention on topological structures, here we present a compositional design approach to build nanoscale chemical heterogeneity to enhance homogeneous plastic flow upon both compression and tension. The idea is realized in a Ti-Zr-Nb-Si-XX/Mg-Zn-Ca-YY hierarchically nanodomained amorphous alloy, where XX and YY denote other elements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWorld J Gastrointest Surg
March 2023
Background: Physical activity (PA) can be affected by extreme temperatures, however fewer studies have identified factors impacting this relationship. This study sought to identify factors associated with changes of outdoor PA during extreme cold/heat events in a sub-tropical Chinese urban population, including factors of sociodemographic, health conditions, temperature-related awareness and attitude, and protective behaviours.
Methods: Two telephone surveys were conducted a week after extreme cold/heat events in 2016 and 2017 among a cohort of Hong Kong residents over age 15.
Understanding the fundamental relationship between the structural information of electrocatalysts and their catalytic activities plays a key role in controlling many important electrochemical processes. Recently, single-atom catalysts (SACs) with the so-called MN structure, consisting of a central transition metal quadruply bound to four pyridine nitrogen atoms all situated in an extended carbon-based matrix, have attracted intensive scientific attention owing to their exceptional catalytic performance. In this work, we perform the first-principles density functional theory (DFT) calculations to explore the curvature effects of the carbon matrix surfaces on the catalytic activities for two fundamental electrochemical processes, namely, the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) caused by multiple factors. Studies have shown that epithelial cell damage was associated with ferroptosis in UC. Therefore, our research focused on the effects and mechanism of iron chelator deferasirox in UC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPost-extraction, preventing the absorption of alveolar ridge to retain the supporting construction for implanted teeth is still a challenge. Herein, we developed modified chitosan (CS)-based hydrogel using -hydroxysuccinimide-terminated 4-arm poly (ethylene glycol) (4-arm-PEG-NHS) as the crosslinking agent, after introducing it to the polyhexamethyleneguanidine hydrochloride (PHMB) solution, CS/PEG/PHMB hydrogel with the enhanced antibacterial properties was obtained. The CS/PEG hydrogel and CS/PEG/PHMB hydrogel prepared here showed excellent mechanical strength and their compressive strength could reach 440 kPa and 450 kPa, respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlatinum-based catalysts are widely used in hydrogen evolution reactions; however, their applications are restricted because of the cost-efficiency trade-off. Here, we present a thermodynamics-based design strategy for synthesizing an AlMnRu (atomic %) metal catalyst via combinatorial magnetron co-sputtering. The new electrocatalyst is composed of ~2 nanometers of medium-entropy nanocrystals surrounded by ~2 nanometers of amorphous regions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIonically conductive elastomers are necessary for realizing human-machine interfaces, bioelectronic applications, or durable wearable sensors. Current design strategies, however, often suffer from solvent leakage and evaporation, or from poor mechanical properties. Here, we report a strategy to fabricate ionic elastomers (IHPs) demonstrating high conductivity (0.
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