Systemic immune-inflammation states in US adults with seropositivity to infectious pathogens: A nutrient-wide association study.

Background: Limited understanding exists regarding the association between daily total dietary nutrient intakes and immune-inflammation states in US adults exposed to various pathogens. This study sought to examine the correlation between nutrient intakes and immune-inflammation indicators and to assess their performance in distinguishing immune-inflammation states.

Methods: This study was derived from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which included 33,804 participants aged 20 years or older between 2005 and 2018.

Effects of Ferroelastic Domain Walls on the Macroscopic Transport and Photoluminescent Properties of Bulk CsPbBr Single Crystals.

The all-inorganic halide perovskite CsPbBr has emerged as an excellent class of semiconductive and optoelectronic materials, in which its excellent properties are strongly related to the dynamics of its microstructures, i.e., ferroelastic domain walls.

DeepMonitoring: a deep learning-based monitoring system for assessing the quality of cornea images captured by smartphones.

Smartphone-based artificial intelligence (AI) diagnostic systems could assist high-risk patients to self-screen for corneal diseases (e.g., keratitis) instead of detecting them in traditional face-to-face medical practices, enabling the patients to proactively identify their own corneal diseases at an early stage.

Cost-benefit analysis of serological and nucleic acid testing for hepatitis B virus in blood donors in southern China.

Background: Most Chinese blood centers have implemented mini pool (MP) HBV nucleic acid testing (NAT) together with HBsAg ELISA in routine blood donor screening for HBV infection since 2015, and a few centers upgraded MP to individual donation (ID) NAT screening recently, raising urgent need for cost-benefit analysis of different screening strategies. In an effort to prevent transfusion-transmitted infections (TTIs) for HBV, cost-benefit analyses of three different screening strategies: HBsAg alone, HBsAg plus MP NAT and HBsAg plus ID NAT were performed in blood donors from southern China where HBV infection was endemic.

Methods: MP-6 HBV NAT and ID NAT were adopted in parallel to screen blood donors for further comparative analysis.

Testing the sequence of successional processes in miniature ecosystems.

Unlabelled: Dispersal, environmental filtering, and biotic interactions define the species inventory of local communities. Along successional gradients, these assembly processes are predicted to sequentially vary in their relative importance with dispersal as the dominating process early in succession, followed by environmental filtering and biotic interactions at later stages. While observational data from field studies supported this prediction, controlled experiments confirming a sequence of successional processes are still lacking.

Hospitalized children with COVID-19 infection during large outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron strain: a retrospective study in Chaozhou, Guangdong, China.

Objective: We aimed to investigate the clinical findings of hospitalized paediatric COVID-19 patients by the end of 2022.

Method: All confirmed children with COVID-19 infection admitted into Chaozhou Central Hospital during the COVID-19 outbreak from 19 December 2022 to 1 February 2023 were included. Detailed clinical data of those children were evaluated retrospectively.

Insights into the flavor profiles of different grades of Huangpu black tea using sensory histology techniques and metabolomics.

Significant differences exist in aroma and taste of different grades of large-leaf black tea. In this study, sensory histology combined with metabolomics were used to investigate the sensory characteristics and phytochemical profiles of different grades of Huangpu black tea (HPBT). Sensory evaluation showed that high grade HPBT had high intensity of pekoe, fresh aroma and umami, with aroma and taste scores declining with decreasing grades.

Link prediction accuracy on real-world networks under non-uniform missing-edge patterns.

Real-world network datasets are typically obtained in ways that fail to capture all edges. The patterns of missing data are often non-uniform as they reflect biases and other shortcomings of different data collection methods. Nevertheless, uniform missing data is a common assumption made when no additional information is available about the underlying missing-edge pattern, and link prediction methods are frequently tested against uniformly missing edges.

Tailored Monoacyl Poly(2-oxazoline)- and Poly(2-oxazine)-Lipids as PEG-Lipid Alternatives for Stabilization and Delivery of mRNA-Lipid Nanoparticles.

The successful use of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for clinical development of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines marked a breakthrough in mRNA-LNP therapeutics. As one of the vital components of LNPs, poly(ethylene glycol)-lipid conjugates (PEG-lipids) influence particle biophysical properties and stability, as well as interactions within biological environments. Reports suggesting that anti-PEG antibodies can be detected quite commonly within the human population raise concerns that PEG content in commercial LNP products could further stimulate immune responses to PEG.

Autophagy-related protein 5 (ATG5) interacts with bone marrow stromal cell antigen 2 (BST2) to stimulate HBV replication through antagonizing the antiviral activity of BST2.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a major global health burden with 820 000 deaths per year. In our previous study, we found that the knockdown of autophagy-related protein 5 (ATG5) significantly upregulated the interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs) expression to exert the anti-HCV effect. However, the regulation of ATG5 on HBV replication and its underlying mechanism remains unclear.

Phytoalexin sakuranetin attenuates endocytosis and enhances resistance to rice blast.

Phytoalexin sakuranetin functions in resistance against rice blast. However, the mechanisms underlying the effects of sakuranetin remains elusive. Here, we report that rice lines expressing resistance (R) genes were found to contain high levels of sakuranetin, which correlates with attenuated endocytic trafficking of plasma membrane (PM) proteins.

Simple, sensitive, and visual detection of 12 respiratory pathogens with one-pot-RPA-CRISPR/Cas12a assay.

Respiratory infections pose a serious threat to global public health, underscoring the urgent need for rapid, accurate, and large-scale diagnostic tools. In recent years, the CRISPR/Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated) system, combined with isothermal amplification methods, has seen widespread application in nucleic acid testing (NAT). However, achieving a single-tube reaction system containing all necessary components is challenging due to the competitive effects between recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) and CRISPR/Cas reagents.

Cascaded signal amplification strategy for ultra-specific, ultra-sensitive, and visual detection of Shigella flexneri.

Pathogen infections including Shigella flexneri have posed a significant threat to human health for numerous years. Although culturing and qPCR were the gold standards for pathogen detection, time-consuming and instrument-dependent restrict their application in rapid diagnosis and economically less-developed regions. Thus, it is urgently needed to develop rapid, simple, sensitive, accurate, and low-cost detection methods for pathogen detection.

UMP-CMP kinase 2 inhibits ZIKV replication through activation of type I IFN signaling pathway.

Cytidine/uridine monophosphate kinase 2 (UMP-CMP kinase 2, CMPK2) has been reported as an antiviral interferon-stimulated gene (ISG). We previously observed that the expression of CMPK2 was significantly upregulated after Zika Virus (ZIKV) infection in A549 cells. However, the association and the underlying mechanisms between CMPK2 induction and ZIKV replication remain to be determined.

Evaluating the accuracy of the Ophthalmologist Robot for multiple blindness-causing eye diseases: a multicentre, prospective study protocol.

Introduction: Early eye screening and treatment can reduce the incidence of blindness by detecting and addressing eye diseases at an early stage. The Ophthalmologist Robot is an automated device that can simultaneously capture ocular surface and fundus images without the need for ophthalmologists, making it highly suitable for primary application. However, the accuracy of the device's screening capabilities requires further validation.

Adding experimental precision to the realism of field observations: Plant communities structure bacterial communities in a glacier forefield.

Ecological studies are aligned along a realism-precision continuum ranging from field observations to controlled lab experiments that each have their own strengths and limitations. Ecological insight may be most robust when combining approaches. In field observations along a successional gradient, we found correlations between plant species composition and soil bacterial communities, while bacterial Shannon diversity was unrelated to vegetation characteristics.

Sequential stacking link prediction algorithms for temporal networks.

Link prediction algorithms are indispensable tools in many scientific applications by speeding up network data collection and imputing missing connections. However, in many systems, links change over time and it remains unclear how to optimally exploit such temporal information for link predictions in such networks. Here, we show that many temporal topological features, in addition to having high computational cost, are less accurate in temporal link prediction than sequentially stacked static network features.

Role of Exosomal Modulation of Macrophages in Liver Fibrosis.

Exosomes are 60-120 nm diameter double-membrane lipid organelles discharged by cells. Various studies have shown that exosomes exert multiple functions in both physical and diseased processes, such as intercellular information exchange, immune response, and disease progression. Repeated chronic injury to the liver often leads to inflammation and liver fibrosis (LF), a disorder that, if unchecked, may progress to cirrhosis, liver failure, portal hypertension, and even hepatocellular carcinoma.

Resurgence of influenza A after SARS-CoV-2 omicron wave and comparative analysis of hospitalized children with COVID-19 and influenza A virus infection.

Context: The highly infectious Omicron variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have caused large-scale transmission from Dec 2022 to Feb 2023 in China. After this event, a remarkable surge of influenza A (Flu A) occurred from March to May 2023, especially in pediatric patients.

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the differences between pediatric patients infected with COVID-19 Omicron and Flu A virus.

Characteristic volatiles of Fu brick tea formed primarily by extracellular enzymes during Aspergillus cristatus fermentation.

Fu brick tea (FBT) has unique "fungal flower" aroma traits, but its source of crucial aroma compounds is still controversial. Aspergillus cristatus is the dominant fungus that participated in the fermentation of FBT. In this study, volatiles of Aspergillus cristatus and corresponding fermented FBT were examined using GC × GC-Q-TOFMS.

Exploring the Frequency and Distribution of Ecological Non-monotonicity in Associations among Ecosystem Constituents.

Unlabelled: Complex links between biotic and abiotic constituents are fundamental for the functioning of ecosystems. Although non-monotonic interactions and associations are known to increase the stability, diversity, and productivity of ecosystems, they are frequently ignored by community-level standard statistical approaches. Using the copula-based dependence measure capable of quantifying the directed and asymmetric dependence between variables for all forms of (functional) relationships, we determined the proportion of non-monotonic associations between different constituents of an ecosystem (plants, bacteria, fungi, and environmental parameters).