Finite element modeling to predict the influence of anatomic variation and implant placement on performance of biological intervertebral disc implants.

Background: Tissue-engineered intervertebral disc (TE-IVD) constructs are an attractive therapy for treating degenerative disc disease and have previously been investigated in vivo in both large and small animal models. The mechanical environment of the spine is notably challenging, in part due to its complex anatomy, and implants may require additional mechanical support to avoid failure in the early stages of implantation. As such, the design of suitable support implants requires rigorous validation.

Stochastic modeling of obesity status in United States adults using Markov Chains: A nationally representative analysis of population health data from 2017-2020.

Importance: The prevalence of obesity among United States adults has increased from 34.9% in 2013-2014 to 42.8% in 2017-2018.

Counterion Association of Ionic Drugs with Sodium Tetradecyl Sulfate in the Aqueous Medium.

This work highlighted the counterion association of diphenhydramine hydrochloride (DPC) and chlorpheniramine maleate (CPM) with anionic sodium tetradecyl sulfate (STS) by conductivity, fluorescence, and UV spectrophotometer measurements. The presence of drugs and the formation of premicellar aggregates of STS were highlighted. The modified Corrin-Harkins CH approaches assessed the STS counterion binding values = 0.

The Latest in Resuscitation Research: Highlights From the 2022 American Heart Association's Resuscitation Science Symposium.

Background: Every year the American Heart Association's Resuscitation Science Symposium (ReSS) brings together a community of international resuscitation science researchers focused on advancing cardiac arrest care.

Methods And Results: The American Heart Association's ReSS was held in Chicago, Illinois from November 4th to 6th, 2022. This annual narrative review summarizes ReSS programming, including awards, special sessions and scientific content organized by theme and plenary session.

Enabling Al sacrificial anodes in tetrahydrofuran electrolytes for reductive electrosynthesis.

Al is widely used as a sacrificial anode in organic electrosynthesis. However, there remains a notable knowledge gap in the understanding of Al anode interface chemistry under electrolysis conditions. We hypothesize that Al interfacial chemistry plays a pivotal role in the discernible bias observed in solvent selections for reductive electrosynthesis.

Tellurolate: an effective Te-atom transfer reagent to prepare the triad of group 5 metal bis(tellurides).

We show in this work how lithium tellurolate Li(X)TeCHSiMe (X = THF, = 1, 1; X = 12--4, = 2, 2), can serve as an effective Te-atom transfer reagent to all group 5 transition metal halide precursors irrespective of the oxidation state. Mononuclear and bis(telluride) complexes, namely (PNP)M(Te) (M = V; Nb, 3; Ta, 4; PNP = N[2-PPr-4-methylphenyl]), are reported herein including structural and spectroscopic data. Whereas the known complex (PNP)V(Te) can be readily prepared from the trivalent precursor (PNP)VCl, two equiv.

Synthesis of graded CdSSe nanoplatelet alloys and heterostructures from pairs of chalcogenoureas with tailored conversion reactivity.

A mixture of ,,'-trisubstituted thiourea and cyclic ,,','-tetrasubstituted selenourea precursors were used to synthesize three monolayer thick CdSSe nanoplatelets in a single synthetic step. The microstructure of the nanoplatelets could be tuned from homogeneous alloys, to graded alloys to core/crown heterostructures depending on the relative conversion reactivity of the sulfur and selenium precursors. UV-visible absorption and photoluminescence spectroscopy and scanning transmission electron microscopy electron energy loss spectroscopy (STEM-EELS) images demonstrate that the elemental distribution is governed by the relative precursor conversion kinetics.

Synthesis of multifunctional amorphous metallic shell on crystalline metallic nanoparticles.

Colloidal nanoparticles can be coated with a conformal shell to form multifunctional nanoparticles. For instance, plasmonic, magnetic, and catalytic properties, chemical stability and biocompatibility can be mixed and matched. Here, a facile synthesis for depositing metal boride amorphous coatings on colloidal metallic nanocrystals is introduced.

Packing spheres in high dimensions with moderate computational effort.

We generate nonlattice packings of spheres in up to 22 dimensions using the geometrical constraint satisfaction algorithm RRR. Our aggregated data suggest that it is easy to double the density of Ball's lower bound and, more tentatively, that the exponential decay rate of the density can be improved relative to Minkowski's longstanding 1/2.

"Freedom of design" in chemical compound space: towards rational design of molecules with targeted quantum-mechanical properties.

The rational design of molecules with targeted quantum-mechanical (QM) properties requires an advanced understanding of the structure-property/property-property relationships (SPR/PPR) that exist across chemical compound space (CCS). In this work, we analyze these fundamental relationships in the sector of CCS spanned by small (primarily organic) molecules using the recently developed QM7-X dataset, a systematic, extensive, and tightly converged collection of 42 QM properties corresponding to ≈4.2M equilibrium and non-equilibrium molecular structures containing up to seven heavy/non-hydrogen atoms (including C, N, O, S, and Cl).

Nitrene transfer from a sterically confined copper nitrenoid dipyrrin complex.

Despite the myriad Cu-catalyzed nitrene transfer methodologies to form new C-N bonds (, amination, aziridination), the critical reaction intermediates have largely eluded direct characterization due to their inherent reactivity. Herein, we report the synthesis of dipyrrin-supported Cu nitrenoid adducts, investigate their spectroscopic features, and probe their nitrene transfer chemistry through detailed mechanistic analyses. Treatment of the dipyrrin Cu complexes with substituted organoazides affords terminally ligated organoazide adducts with minimal activation of the azide unit as evidenced by vibrational spectroscopy and single crystal X-ray diffraction.

Ionomer degradation in catalyst layers of anion exchange membrane fuel cells.

Anion exchange membrane fuel cells (AEMFCs) that operate at high pH, offer the advantage of enabling the use of abundant 3d-transition metal-based electrocatalysts. While they have shown remarkable improvement in performance, their long-term durability remains insufficient for practical applications with the alkaline polymer electrolytes (APEs) being the limiting factor. The stability of APEs is generally evaluated in concentrated alkaline solutions, which overlooks/oversimplifies the complex electrochemical environment of the catalyst layer in membrane electrode assembly (MEA) devices.

Identification of genes associated with abiotic stress tolerance in sweetpotato using weighted gene co-expression network analysis.

Sweetpotato, (L.), a key food security crop, is negatively impacted by heat, drought, and salinity stress. The orange-fleshed sweetpotato cultivar "Beauregard" was exposed to heat, salt, and drought treatments for 24 and 48 h to identify genes responding to each stress condition in leaves.

Tissue-Like 3D Standard and Protocols for Microscope Quality Management.

This article outlines a global study conducted by the Association of Biomedical Resource Facilities (ABRF) Light Microscopy Research Group (LMRG). The results present a novel 3D tissue-like biologically relevant standard sample that is affordable and straightforward to prepare. Detailed sample preparation, instrument-specific image acquisition protocols and image analysis methods are presented and made available to the community.

An Outlook on Harnessing Technological Innovative Competence in Sustainably Transforming African Agriculture.

Agricultural value chains worldwide provide essential support to livelihoods, ecosystem services, and the growing bioeconomy. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic slowed down or reversed decades of agricultural growth and exposed the vulnerabilities of farmers and the food insecure in Africa, thus reiterating the need to build resilience, agility, and adaptability for a sustainable agriculture. Existing social, political, environmental, and economic challenges demonstrate that a path to faster sustainable growth is increased productivity through improved input quality, of which technical inputs are a part.

Nutritional status and dietary diversity of pregnant and nonpregnant reproductive-age Rohingya women.

There are no data on the nutritional status and dietary diversity of the pregnant and nonpregnant reproductive-age Rohingya women who have recently shifted to the Bhasan Char Relocation Camp located on an island in the Bay of Bengal. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in November-December, 2021 to assess the nutritional status and evaluate the dietary diversity of two vulnerable groups of the forcibly displaced Rohingya population: nonpregnant reproductive-age women and pregnant mothers. Multivariable logistic regression was applied to identify the factors associated with nutritional impairments.

How we study cryptic species and their biological implications: A case study from marine shelled gastropods.

Methodological and biological considerations are intertwined when studying cryptic species. A potentially large component of modern biodiversity, the frequency of cryptic species among taxonomic groups is not well documented. The term "cryptic species" is imprecisely used in scientific literature, causing ambiguity when interpreting their evolutionary and ecological significance.

The successes and pitfalls: Deep-learning effectiveness in a Chernobyl field camera trap application.

Camera traps have become in situ sensors for collecting information on animal abundance and occupancy estimates. When deployed over a large landscape, camera traps have become ideal for measuring the health of ecosystems, particularly in unstable habitats where it can be dangerous or even impossible to observe using conventional methods. However, manual processing of imagery is extremely time and labor intensive.

Postural analysis reveals persistent changes in paper wasp foundress behavioral state after conspecific challenge.

Vigilant animals detect and respond to threats in the environment, often changing posture and movement patterns. Vigilance is modulated not only by predators but also by conspecific threats. In social animals, precisely how conspecific threats alter vigilance behavior over time is relevant to long-standing hypotheses about social plasticity.

Temporal dynamics of antibody level against Lyme disease bacteria in roe deer: Tale of a sentinel?

Changes in the risk of exposure to infectious disease agents can be tracked through variations in antibody prevalence in vertebrate host populations. However, information on the temporal dynamics of the immune status of individuals is critical. If antibody levels persist a long time after exposure to an infectious agent, they could enable the efficient detection of the past circulation of the agent; if they persist only a short time, they could provide snap shots of recent exposure of sampled hosts.

When to shed? Patterns and drivers of time to first ecdysis in snakes.

Time from birth or hatching to the first shed (postnatal ecdysis) in snakes ranges from about an hour to several weeks depending upon the species. We assessed patterns in time to postnatal ecdysis in 102 snake species for which we could source appropriate information, covering 2.6% of all extant snake species, and related measures to various biological traits.

Hydration behaviors of nonfouling zwitterionic materials.

Zwitterionic materials have emerged as highly effective ultralow fouling materials for many applications, however the underlying mechanism of fouling resistance remains unclear. Using molecular dynamics simulations and surface-sensitive sum frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy, we studied the hydration behaviors of zwitterionic materials, including trimethylamine--oxide (TMAO) and carboxybetaines of different charge-separation distances, to understand their fouling-resistant mechanism and provide a design principle for improved performance. Our study reveals that the interplay among hydrogen bonding, net charge, and dipole moment is crucial to the fouling-resistant capabilities of zwitterionic materials.

Correlations among morphological and biochemical traits in high-cannabidiol hemp ( L.).

is cultivated for multiple uses including the production of cannabinoids. In developing improved production systems for high-cannabinoid cultivars, scientists and cultivators must consider the optimization of complex and interacting sets of morphological, phenological, and biochemical traits, which have historically been shaped by natural and anthropogenic selection. Determining factors that modulate cannabinoid variation within and among genotypes is fundamental to developing efficient production systems and understanding the ecological significance of cannabinoids.

Non-exploitative human disturbance provides shelter for prey from predator.

Human activities can influence behaviors of predators and prey, as well as predator-prey interactions. Using camera trap data, we investigated whether or to what extent human activities influenced behaviors of predators (tigers and leopards) and prey (sambar deer, spotted deer, wild boar, and barking deer), and predator-prey interactions in the Barandabhar Corridor Forest (BCF), Chitwan District, Nepal. A multispecies occupancy model revealed that the presence of humans altered the conditional occupancy of both prey and predator species.