pksE. coli adhesins-The fine line between good and evil.

Gut bacteria could promote colorectal cancer by generating genotoxins. In a recent issue of Nature, Jans et al. identified bacterial adhesion as an additional determinant for the genotoxic activity of colibactin-producing E.

An ODE-based swift and dynamic sewer airflow model.

Airflow models are powerful tools for ventilation design to achieve odour and corrosion mitigation in sewer networks. Currently, there lacks a model able to efficiently predict in-sewer dynamic airflows, as all available dynamic models with an acceptable accuracy are computationally demanding. In this study, a swift dynamic airflow model based on an ordinary differential equation (ODE) is derived by simplifying the one-dimensional Navier Stokes Equations (NSE), supported by the observation that the NSE solutions always display negligible spatial variations in air velocity when applied to a sewer conduit.

Bayesian estimation of diagnostic accuracy of fecal smears, fecal PCR and serum ELISA for detecting Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis infections in four domestic ruminant species in Saudi Arabia.

Paratuberculosis, a chronic wasting disease affecting domestic and wild ruminants worldwide, is caused by Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP). Various diagnostic tests exist for detecting MAP infection; however, none of them possess perfect accuracy to be qualified as a reference standard test, particularly due to their notably low sensitivity.

Association of serum vitamin D level and live birth rate in women undergoing frozen embryo transfer-a retrospective cohort study.

Purpose: To assess the association of serum vitamin D level and the live birth rate in women undergoing frozen embryo transfer (FET).

Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study involving 1489 infertile women who had frozen embryo transfer at two tertiary reproductive medicine centres from 2019 to 2021. Only the first frozen embryo transfer was included for women who had repeated transfers during the period.

Sustained inhibition of CSF1R signaling augments antitumor immunity through inhibiting tumor-associated macrophages.

Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) are one of the key immunosuppressive components in the tumor microenvironment (TME) and contribute to tumor development, progression, and resistance to cancer immunotherapy. Several reagents targeting TAMs have been tested in preclinical and clinical studies, but they have had limited success. Here, we show that a unique reagent, FF-10101, exhibited a sustained inhibitory effect against colony-stimulating factor 1 receptor by forming a covalent bond and reduced immunosuppressive TAMs in the TME, which led to strong antitumor immunity.

Combination Antithrombotic Therapy for Reduction of Recurrent Ischemic Stroke in Intracranial Atherosclerotic Disease.

Background: Stroke secondary to intracranial atherosclerotic disease (ICAD) is associated with high recurrence risk despite currently available secondary prevention strategies. In patients with systemic atherosclerosis, a significant reduction of stroke risk with no increase in intracranial or fatal hemorrhage was seen when rivaroxaban 2.5 mg twice daily was added to aspirin.

Calculation of the Minimal Clinically Important Difference in Upper and Lower Limb Motor Assessment in Spinal Muscular Atrophy.

Objectives: Physical function assessments in patients with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) are important indicators for assessing the effectiveness of treatment and changes over time in rehabilitation therapy. However, few reports exist on this indicator. This study calculated the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) for assessing motor function in the upper and lower limbs of individuals with SMA to estimate the degree of change within a functional score that is considered clinically meaningful.

Endoscopic Technique: Sciatic Neurolysis and Piriformis Tendon Release for Treating Piriformis Syndrome.

Piriformis syndrome (PS) is an underdiagnosed condition, caused by entrapment of the sciatic nerve by the piriformis muscle tendon and adhesions in the deep gluteal space. We present a step-by-step endoscopic technique with the patient in a prone position through a posterior approach. This approach provides improved orientation for tracking the sciatic nerve from distal to proximal, facilitating the release of all adhesions and concluding with a piriformis tendon release.

All-Inside Arthroscopic Tie-Grip Suture Repair for Radial Tear in the Midbody of Lateral Meniscus Using an All-Inside Device and Slotted Cannula.

Inside-out repair of meniscal tears is the gold standard surgical approach; however, its use is limited by the need for a posterior incision and neurovascular risk. In this Technical Report, we present details of the all-inside arthroscopic tie-grip approach for repairing a radial tear of the midbody of the lateral meniscus using an all-inside device (TRUESPAN) and a slotted cannula. In contrast to the inside-out approach, this technique helps reduce surgical invasiveness and provides stable fixation as the vertical mattress sutures bundle the circumferential fibers and act as rip stops for the horizontal sutures.

[Liver X receptor attenuates renal ischemia-reperfusion injury in mice].

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a clinical syndrome characterized by a rapid decline in renal function. Renal ischemia-reperfusion injury (RIRI) is one of the main causes of AKI with the underlying mechanism incompletely clarified. The liver X receptors (LXRs), including LXRα and LXRβ, are members of the nuclear receptor superfamily.

Dynamic supramolecular snub cubes.

Mimicking the superstructures and properties of spherical biological encapsulants such as viral capsids and ferritin offers viable pathways to understand their chiral assemblies and functional roles in living systems. However, stereospecific assembly of artificial polyhedra with mechanical properties and guest-binding attributes akin to biological encapsulants remains a formidable challenge. Here we report the stereospecific assembly of dynamic supramolecular snub cubes from 12 helical macrocycles, which are held together by 144 weak C-H hydrogen bonds.

Toward expert-level medical question answering with large language models.

Large language models (LLMs) have shown promise in medical question answering, with Med-PaLM being the first to exceed a 'passing' score in United States Medical Licensing Examination style questions. However, challenges remain in long-form medical question answering and handling real-world workflows. Here, we present Med-PaLM 2, which bridges these gaps with a combination of base LLM improvements, medical domain fine-tuning and new strategies for improving reasoning and grounding through ensemble refinement and chain of retrieval.

Intestinal TM6SF2 protects against metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis through the gut-liver axis.

Transmembrane-6 superfamily member 2 (TM6SF2) regulates hepatic fat metabolism and is associated with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH). TM6SF2 genetic variants are associated with steatotic liver disease. The pathogenesis of MASH involves genetic factors and gut microbiota alteration, yet the role of host-microbe interactions in MASH development remains unclear.

Identifying ADME-related gene signature for immune landscape and prognosis in KIRC by single-cell and spatial transcriptome analysis.

Kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC) is the most prevalent subtype of kidney cancer. Although multiple therapeutic agents have been proven effective in KIRC, their clinical application has been hindered by a lack of reliable biomarkers. This study focused on the prognostic value and function of drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion- (ADME-) related genes (ARGs) in KIRC to enhance personalized therapy.

A tellurium iodide perovskite structure enabling eleven-electron transfer in zinc ion batteries.

The growing potential of low-dimensional metal-halide perovskites as conversion-type cathode materials is limited by electrochemically inert B-site cations, diminishing the battery capacity and energy density. Here, we design a benzyltriethylammonium tellurium iodide perovskite, (BzTEA)TeI, as the cathode material, enabling X- and B-site elements with highly reversible chalcogen- and halogen-related redox reactions, respectively. The engineered perovskite can confine active elements, alleviate the shuttle effect and promote the transfer of Cl on its surface.

Cardiac dose comparison of abdominal and thoracic deep inspiration breath hold in adult female with left-sided breast cancer receiving radiation therapy: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Introduction: Deep inspiration breath hold technique has shown promise in reducing cardiac toxicity and improving patient outcomes. However, there is a lack of consensus regarding the implementation of abdominal breath hold technique and its impact on cardiac dose. This systematic review and meta-analysis aim to provide insights into the comparative effectiveness of abdominal and thoracic breath hold in mitigating cardiac toxicity during radiation therapy for left-sided breast cancer.

MIFS: An adaptive multipath information fused self-supervised framework for drug discovery.

The production of expressive molecular representations with scarce labeled data is challenging for AI-driven drug discovery. Mainstream studies often follow a pipeline that pre-trains a specific molecular encoder and then fine-tunes it. However, the significant challenges of these methods are (1) neglecting the propagation of diverse information within molecules and (2) the absence of knowledge and chemical constraints in the pre-training strategy.

Domain-guided conditional diffusion model for unsupervised domain adaptation.

Limited transferability hinders the performance of a well-trained deep learning model when applied to new application scenarios. Recently, Unsupervised Domain Adaptation (UDA) has achieved significant progress in addressing this issue via learning domain-invariant features. However, the performance of existing UDA methods is constrained by the possibly large domain shift and limited target domain data.

Recent Advances and Perspectives on Coupled Water Electrolysis for Energy-Saving Hydrogen Production.

Overall water splitting (OWS) to produce hydrogen has attracted large attention in recent years due to its ecological-friendliness and sustainability. However, the efficiency of OWS has been forced by the sluggish kinetics of the four-electron oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The replacement of OER by alternative electrooxidation of small molecules with more thermodynamically favorable potentials may fundamentally break the limitation and achieve hydrogen production with low energy consumption, which may also be accompanied by the production of more value-added chemicals than oxygen or by electrochemical degradation of pollutants.

Homeostats: The hidden rulers of ion homeostasis in plants.

Ion homeostasis is a crucial process in plants that is closely linked to the efficiency of nutrient uptake, stress tolerance and overall plant growth and development. Nevertheless, our understanding of the fundamental processes of ion homeostasis is still incomplete and highly fragmented. Especially at the mechanistic level, we are still in the process of dissecting physiological systems to analyse the different parts in isolation.

Rotator Cuff Repair Study Designs Correlate With Revision Shoulder Surgery Rates: A Systematic Review.

Purpose: To identify arthroscopic rotator cuff repair study groups and evaluate if study design or other study characteristics correlate with a repeat ipsilateral shoulder surgery.

Methods: A systematic search of the PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases was conducted on March 20, 2021, and April 2, 2021. The following search terms were used by 2 different researchers: ((Rotator cuff repair[Title/Abstract]) AND (Revision[Title/Abstract]) NOT (Systematic Review[Title/Abstract]) NOT (arthroplasty[Title/Abstract]).

The valuation of older adult homecare services under a joint medical-social budgetary perspective.

Background: Homecare, a cornerstone of public health, is essential for health systems to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of universal health coverage while maintaining its own sustainability. Notwithstanding homecare's system-level significance, there is a lack of economic evaluations of homecare services in terms of their system-wide cost-savings. Specifically, decisions informed by a joint medical-social budgetary perspective can maximize the allocative efficiency of assigning a diverse service mix to address the complex needs of the older adult population.

Therapeutic Efficacy Studies on the Monoterpenoid Hinokitiol in the Treatment of Different Types of Cancer.

Hinokitiol (HK), a monoterpenoid that naturally occurs in plants belonging to the Cupressaceae family, possesses important biological activities, including an anticancer effect. This review summarizes its anticancer potential and draws possible molecular interventions. In addition, it evaluates the biopharmaceutical, toxicological properties, and clinical application of HK to establish its viability for future advancement as a dependable anticancer medication.

Acquisition of Speech Prosody in a Non-native Tone Language by Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Purpose: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often show abnormal speech prosody. Tonal languages can pose more difficulties as speakers need to use acoustic cues to make lexical contrasts while encoding the focal function, but the acquisition of speech prosody of non-native languages, especially tonal languages has rarely been investigated.

Methods: This study aims to fill in the aforementioned gap by studying prosodic focus-marking in Mandarin by native Cantonese-speaking children with ASD (n = 25), in comparison with their typically developing (TD) peers (n = 20) and native Mandarin-speaking children (n = 20).