Effects of different degrees of anthracosis on pleural structure: a preliminary exploratory study.

Background: Pleural anthracosis (PA) appears as superficial black discoloration or scattered focal black spots on the surface of the pleura. Few studies have investigated the relationship between PA and changes in pleural structure. The aim of this study is to perform a detailed morphometric characterization of pleura in patients with different degrees of PA at both macroscopic and microscopic levels.

Assembled granular hydrogels loaded with growth factors for enhanced mesenchymal stem cell therapy in abdominal wall defect repair.

Abdominal wall defects caused by trauma, congenital rupture, and intra-abdominal infection remain challenging due to the large wound area and complex complications. Herein, an assembled mesenchymal stem cell (MSCs)-laden granular hydrogel (termed assembled GSD@FPs), loaded with basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), was developed. This hydrogel was constructed through dynamic covalent cross-linking (via borate ester bonds) among dopamine-grafted gelatin methacrylamide (GelMA-DA), phenylborate-modified hyaluronic acid (HA-PBA), and epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), serving as multifunctional bulk building blocks for cell delivery and abdominal wall repair.

Loss of MAF bZIP transcription factor G restores ATG7/BECN1-mediated autophagy to inhibit ferroptosis and improve angiogenesis in diabetic foot ulcer wound healing.

Background: Diabetic foot ulcer (DFU), a complication of diabetes, is associated with an increased risk of major amputation and mortality. However, the underlying pathogenesis of DFU remains unclear. The goal of this study was to investigate the role and underlying mechanism of MAF bZIP transcription factor G (MAFG) in DFU wound healing.

Magnesium-induced strengthening, degradation and osteogenesis for additively manufactured Zn-Mg orthopedic implants.

Additively manufactured biodegradable metals demonstrate great potential in orthopedic implants, enabling patient-specific designs and eliminating the need for secondary surgeries through degradation. Zinc (Zn)-magnesium (Mg) alloys reconcile the dilemma between Zn's low biological activity and Mg's rapid degradation, and become promising bone-repair materials. However, Zn-Mg alloys currently fabricated via additive manufacturing exhibit high strength but low ductility, and the effects and mechanisms by which Mg influences their degradation and bone regeneration remain unclear and debated.

Domain alignment method based on masked variational autoencoder for predicting patient anticancer drug response.

Predicting the patient's response to anticancer drugs is essential in personalized treatment plans. However, due to significant distribution differences between cell line data and patient data, models trained well on cell line data may perform poorly on patient anticancer drug response predictions. Some existing methods use transfer learning strategies to implement domain feature alignment between cell lines and patient data and leverage knowledge from cell lines to predict patient anticancer drug responses.

Reshaping UDP-binding pocket of bacterial sucrose synthase to improve efficiency of UDP-glucose production.

UDP-glucose (UDPG), a nucleoside diphosphate sugar, is an important sugar donor for the biosynthesis of various glycoside compounds. Sucrose synthase (SuSy) can catalyze the synthesis of high-value UDPG from the cost-effective sucrose. By redesigning the substrate-binding pocket of SuSy in Denitrovibrio acetiphilus DSM 12809, a variant with 8.

Rapid enrichment of anaerobic ammonia oxidation bacteria by combining low nitrogen strength with microbial viability.

The rapid enrichment of anaerobic ammonia oxidation (anammox) bacteria (AnAOB) is challenging owing to their slow growth rate. Substrate supply strategies influence the AnAOB yield and anammox performance. In this study, a feeding strategy for low nitrogen strength with constant substrate concentrations and a hydraulic retention time decreasing over a gradient was investigated in an up-flow sludge blanket reactor.

Long-term effects of catheter ablation with vein of Marshall ethanol infusion vs. pulmonary vein isolation alone on persistent atrial fibrillation.

Objective: To evaluate the safety, efficacy, and long-term effects of catheter ablation with vein of Marshall ethanol infusion for bidirectional mitral isthmus block in patients with persistent atrial fibrillation.

Methods: Two hundred and forty patients from five centers with persistent atrial fibrillation (AF) who underwent radiofrequency ablation from October 2018 to December 2023 were retrospectively analyzed, including 120 patients who underwent traditional pulmonary vein isolation (PVI Only group) and 120 patients who underwent PVI and Marshall vein ablation (Marshall Plus group). The operation time, X-ray exposure, incidence of AF/atrial tachycardia (AT) and complications were compared between the two groups.

A computed tomography angiography-based radiomics model for prognostic prediction of endovascular abdominal aortic repair.

Objective: This study aims to develop a radiomics machine learning (ML) model that uses preoperative computed tomography angiography (CTA) data to predict the prognosis of endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) patients.

Methods: In this retrospective study, 164 AAA patients underwent EVAR and were categorized into shrinkage (good prognosis) or stable (poor prognosis) groups based on post-EVAR sac regression. From preoperative AAA and perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) image, radiomics features (RFs) were extracted for model creation.

Development and Validation of Cough Hypersensitivity Assessment Test (CHAT).

Background: Cough hypersensitivity is an important clinical and pathophysiological feature of chronic cough, which involves chemical, mechanical, thermal stimuli, and sensory dysfunction. Currently, there is lack of a comprehensive method for evaluating cough hypersensitivity.

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop and validate a questionnaire to assess the degree of cough hypersensitivity.

Mechanism of Nitrogen Conversion and Microbial Communities Controlling the Acidification and Storage of Pig Farm Fecal Water.

The effect of acidifiers on nitrogen transformation during manure wastewater storage remains unclear. In this study, we investigate the effects of two types of acidifiers on nitrogen transformation, bacterial structure, and functional genes during manure wastewater storage. The results indicate that the internal reactions in manure wastewater storage could be divided into three stages, i.

Micro-doping tin-bismuth on modification of CoO electrocatalyst and degradation of ammonia nitrogen.

CoO has exhibited chlorine evolution reaction (CER) activity comparable to that of RuO. However, it is plagued by relatively low catalytic activity and insufficient long-term stability. In the field of cobalt oxide doping, typically, a relatively large quantity of dopants is used to modulate its performance.

Ecological restoration reduces greenhouse gas emissions by altering planktonic and sedimentary microbial communities in a shallow eutrophic lake.

Ecological restoration is a promising approach to alleviate eutrophication. However, its impacts on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the underlying microbial mechanisms in different habitats of lakes remain unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we measured carbon dioxide (CO), methane (CH) and nitrous oxide (NO) fluxes at both water-air and sediment-water interfaces of eutrophic (Caohai) and restored area (Dapokou) of Dianchi Lake, a typical eutrophic lake in China.

Spinel-based zinc-doped CoO (ZCO) catalytic membrane for efficient peroxymonosulfate activation and Chloroquine phosphate degradation: an atom doping strategy.

The degradation of emerging contaminants (ECs) in wastewater remains a significant challenge, primarily due to the low activation efficiency and difficulty in catalyst recovery associated with traditional heterogeneous peroxymonosulfate (PMS) systems. In this study, a zinc (Zn)-doped CoO spinel (ZCO) catalyst was designed via an atom doping strategy and immobilized onto a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane to construct a ZCO@PVDF catalytic membrane, thereby developing an efficient and innovative approach for ECs degradation. The innovation of this study is the Zn doping-induced electron-polarized distribution, which creates electron-rich Co centers and significantly enhances the PMS activation efficiency.

Photobiomodulation therapy facilitates transplantation of dental pulp stem cells for spinal cord injury.

Background: While dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) show therapeutic potential for spinal cord injury (SCI), post-traumatic oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction critically compromise grafted cell survival. Photobiomodulation therapy (PBMT) is a noninvasive approach that may enhance regenerative efficacy. This study investigates whether PBMT improves the survival and neural differentiation of transplanted DPSCs in SCI models.

Identification of Two Immunoglobulin Light Chain Types and Expression of Immunoglobulin Diversity in Chinese Giant Salamander (Andrias davidianus).

Lacking research on immunoglobulins in the Chinese giant salamanders (Andrias davidianus) has left their populations vulnerable to pathogen infections, contributing to a sharp decline in their numbers. In this study, we employed the rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) technique along with paired-end 300 bp read length (PE300) sequencing. This approach was used to construct a DNA library, which enabled us to investigate the diversity of immunoglobulin gene expression.

Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics analysis reveals that Pros1 oligodendrocytes are involved in endogenous neuroprotection after brainstem stroke.

Background: Brainstem stroke accounts only 7-10 % of all ischemic stroke while it had more morbidity and mortality. As the predominant cellular component of nerve tracts, oligodendrocytes might provide some neuroprotection against ischemic injury in the context of brainstem stroke, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear.

Method: A mouse model of brainstem stroke was established, and single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomic sequencing analysis were performed to elucidate the phenotype of oligodendrocytes within this context.

A hepatitis B virus-free cccDNA-producing stable cell for antiviral screening.

The covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) of the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) serves as a template for producing progeny viruses in virally infected hepatocytes. Promising cccDNA-targeting antiviral agents remain unavailable and unpredictable in the research and development pipelines, making sterile HBV elimination challenging at the current stage. The major challenge of discriminating trace amounts of cccDNA from the abundant HBV relaxed circular DNA (rcDNA), which is nearly identical to cccDNA in sequence, substantially discourages efforts to discover and directly screen cccDNA-targeting drugs.

Rational cyclodextrin formulation design through insights into drug release mechanism in the gastrointestinal tract via molecular dynamic simulations.

Cyclodextrin formulations are crucial for enhancing the solubility of drugs. Bile salts are recognized as potential agents for displacing drugs from cyclodextrin formulations in intestinal fluids. However, the mechanism underlying this displacement remains unclear.

Spatial patterns of individual morphological deformation in schizophrenia: Putative cortical compensatory of unaffected sibling.

Background: Neuroimaging advancements have revealed morphological deformation across various indicators, illuminating the neuropathological origins of schizophrenia. However, consolidating the findings across indicators and assessing regional global deformation at individual-level poses a significant challenge.

Methods: We propose individual morphological deformation index (IMDI) as potential biomarker for schizophrenia leveraging a distance algorithm that incorporates three key indicators (cortical thickness, gyrification, and volume), and applied it for 199 schizophrenia patients, 218 healthy controls, and 47 unaffected siblings.

Dynamics of antibiotic resistance genes and the bacterial community after stress from a single Dazomet fumigation.

Although chemical fumigants are widely applied in agriculture to control soil-borne diseases, their influence on soil antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) remains poorly understood. This study employed metagenomic sequencing to investigate the dynamic response and recovery processes of soil bacterial communities and ARGs after the end of fumigation with Dazomet. The results revealed that the effects of Dazomet were both phased and recoverable.

Mechanism of Chondrocyte Injury Induced by Benzophenone-3 through Modulation of the IL-6/JAK2/STAT3 Pathway.

Currently, limited research exists on the relationship between osteoarthritis (OA) and Benzophenone-3 (BP-3). This study aims to explore the potential molecular pathways involved, using both in vivo and in vitro biological experiments. In vivo experiments revealed that exposure to BP-3 leads to cartilage damage in the knee joints of rats, suggesting that BP-3 may be a significant risk factor in the development and progression of osteoarthritis.

Network pharmacology and in vitro experiments based strategy to explore the effects of Jujuboside A on the proliferation and migration ability of glioma cells.

Objective: This study predicted and verified the effects of Jujuboside A (JuA) on the proliferation and migration ability of glioma cells to developing new therapies for glioma treatment.

Methods: The druggability of JuA was determined by using cheminformatics. Network pharmacology was used to analyse common targets, biological function and metabolic pathways of JuA against glioma.

Modulating excitation of the mediodorsal thalamus rescues dysfunction after administration of MK-801 in rats.

The excitation/inhibition (E/I) balance in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is a dynamic equilibrium maintained by the concerted efforts of excitatory glutamatergic neurons and inhibitory γ-aminobutyric acid neurons (INs). The medial dorsal nucleus (MD) of the thalamus provides abundant pyramidal glutamatergic neural (PNs) projections to the PFC and regulates the E/I balance within the PFC. In schizophrenia, an imbalance in the E/I ratio in the PFC, along with reduced thalamocortical connectivity, has been observed.