A tough soft-hard interface in the human knee joint driven by multiscale toughening mechanisms.

Joining heterogeneous materials in engineered structures remains a significant challenge due to stress concentration at interfaces, which often leads to unexpected failures. Investigating the complex, multiscale-graded structures found in animal tissue provides valuable insights that can help address this challenge. The human meniscus root-bone interface is an exemplary model, renowned for its exceptional fatigue resistance, toughness, and interfacial adhesion properties throughout its lifespan.

Perceived benefits, costs, and relationships on provincial doctors' inclination to participate in urban-rural medical consortia in Central China: a social exchange theory perspective.

Objective: This study aims to investigate the perceived benefits, costs, and relationships that influence doctors' inclination to participate in urban-rural medical consortia (URMC). Furthermore, the study analyzes how perceived relationships moderate the impact of perceived benefits and costs on the inclination to take part in URMC.

Methods: The study was conducted between September 2022 and June 2023 utilizing an online survey in Henan Province, Central China, which included 749 respondents from provincial hospitals.

Ultrasound-assisted immersion freezing improves the digestion properties of beef myofibrillar protein.

This study focused on the effect of ultrasound-assisted immersion freezing (UIF) with different ultrasound power (200, 400, 600 W) on the physicochemical and digestive properties of beef myofibrillar proteins (BMP). The results showed that the solubility and thermal stability of BMP were significantly increased, when treated with 400 W ultrasound, and the α-helix, β-sheets, β-turns, and random-coil fractions structures content were higher and the fluorescence intensity was closest to that of the control group, demonstrating enhanced structural stability of BMP. The protein digestibility of the UIF-400 W group was significantly enhanced while the particle size of the digested product was reduced, which proved its enhanced digestion characteristics.

The association of gut microbiota, immunocyte dynamics, and protein-protein ratios with tuberculosis susceptibility: a Mendelian randomization analysis.

This study focused on the relationships among gut microbiota, plasma protein ratios, and tuberculosis. Given the unclear causal relationship between gut microbiota and tuberculosis and the scarcity of research on relevant plasma protein ratios in tuberculosis, Mendelian randomization analysis (MR) was employed for in-depth exploration. By analyzing the GWAS data of individuals with European ancestry (the FinnGen dataset included 409,568 controls and 2613 cases), using the two-sample MR method, we focused on evaluating the impact of immunocyte-mediated gut microbiota on tuberculosis and the associations between 2821 plasma protein-to-protein ratios and tuberculosis.

Mucin1 N-domain variant contributes to dry eye syndrome in diabetes by increasing immature mucus secretory granules.

Background: Diabetes-associated dry eye syndrome (DMDES) affects 20-54 % of diabetes, leading to ocular irritation and blurry vision. Decreased conjunctival goblet cell mucus secretion is one of the major pathological processes of DMDES. This study aims to investigate the mechanism of mucus granule maturation and secretion disturbance in DMDES.