China's municipal wastewater policies enhanced seafood safety and offset health risks from atmospheric mercury emissions in the past four decades.

The neurotoxin methylmercury in seafood threatens food safety worldwide. China has implemented stringent wastewater policies, established numerous treatment facilities and enforced rigorous water quality standards to address pollution in its waterways. However, the impact of these policies on seafood safety and methylmercury exposure remains unknown.

Mechanistic modelling of allergen-induced airways disease in early life.

Asthma affects approximately 300 million individuals worldwide and the onset predominantly arises in childhood. Children are exposed to multiple environmental irritants, such as viruses and allergens, that are common triggers for asthma onset, whilst their immune systems are developing in early life. Understanding the impact of allergen exposures on the developing immune system and resulting alterations in lung function in early life will help prevent the onset and progression of allergic asthma in children.

European consensus on endoscopic surgery for bilateral vocal fold immobility: classification and nomenclature.

Introduction: There are inconsistencies in how different endoscopic procedures to manage Bilateral Vocal Fold Immobility (BVFI) have been described in the literature. This limits our ability to compare functional outcomes. There is no unifying international terminology available that precisely describes the anatomical boundaries and extent of the different types of treatment.

MCM2-7 ring closure involves the Mcm5 C-terminus and triggers Mcm4 ATP hydrolysis.

The eukaryotic helicase MCM2-7, is loaded by ORC, Cdc6 and Cdt1 as a double-hexamer onto replication origins. The insertion of DNA into the helicase leads to partial MCM2-7 ring closure, while ATP hydrolysis is essential for consecutive steps in pre-replicative complex (pre-RC) assembly. Currently it is unknown how MCM2-7 ring closure and ATP-hydrolysis are controlled.

Design principles for engineering bacteria to maximise chemical production from batch cultures.

Bacteria can be engineered to manufacture chemicals, but it is unclear how to optimally engineer a single cell to maximise production performance from batch cultures. Moreover, the performance of engineered production pathways is affected by competition for the host's native resources. Here, using a 'host-aware' computational framework which captures competition for both metabolic and gene expression resources, we uncover design principles for engineering the expression of host and production enzymes at the cell level which maximise volumetric productivity and yield from batch cultures.

Universal, untargeted detection of bacteria in tissues using metabolomics workflows.

Fast and reliable identification of bacteria directly in clinical samples is a critical factor in clinical microbiological diagnostics. Current approaches require time-consuming bacterial isolation and enrichment procedures, delaying stratified treatment. Here, we describe a biomarker-based strategy that utilises bacterial small molecular metabolites and lipids for direct detection of bacteria in complex samples using mass spectrometry (MS).

A Y chromosome-linked genome editor for efficient population suppression in the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae.

Genetic control - the deliberate introduction of genetic traits to control a pest or vector population - offers a powerful tool to augment conventional mosquito control tools that have been successful in reducing malaria burden but that are compromised by a range of operational challenges. Self-sustaining genetic control strategies have shown great potential in laboratory settings, but hesitancy due to their invasive and persistent nature may delay their implementation. Here, instead, we describe a self-limiting strategy, designed to have geographically and temporally restricted effect, based on a Y chromosome-linked genome editor (YLE).

Comparative 3D ultrastructure of Plasmodium falciparum gametocytes.

Despite the enormous significance of malaria parasites for global health, some basic features of their ultrastructure remain obscure. Here, we apply high-resolution volumetric electron microscopy to examine and compare the ultrastructure of the transmissible male and female sexual blood stages of Plasmodium falciparum as well as the more intensively studied asexual blood stages revisiting previously described phenomena in 3D. In doing so, we challenge the widely accepted notion of a single mitochondrion by demonstrating the presence of multiple mitochondria in gametocytes.

Structural and electronic features enabling delocalized charge-carriers in CuSbSe.

Inorganic semiconductors based on heavy pnictogen cations (Sb and Bi) have gained significant attention as potential nontoxic and stable alternatives to lead-halide perovskites for solar cell applications. A limitation of these novel materials, which is being increasingly commonly found, is carrier localization, which substantially reduces mobilities and diffusion lengths. Herein, CuSbSe is investigated and discovered to have delocalized free carriers, as shown through optical pump terahertz probe spectroscopy and temperature-dependent mobility measurements.

On the longevity and inherent hermeticity of silicon-ICs: evaluation of bare-die and PDMS-coated ICs after accelerated aging and implantation studies.

Silicon integrated circuits (ICs) are central to the next-generation miniature active neural implants, whether packaged in soft polymers for flexible bioelectronics or implanted as bare die for neural probes. These emerging applications bring the IC closer to the corrosive body environment, raising reliability concerns, particularly for chronic use. Here, we evaluate the inherent hermeticity of bare die ICs, and examine the potential of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a moisture-permeable elastomer, as a standalone encapsulation material.

Degradation bottlenecks and resource competition in transiently and stably engineered mammalian cells.

Degradation tags, otherwise known as degrons, are portable sequences that can be used to alter protein stability. Here, we report that degron-tagged proteins compete for cellular degradation resources in engineered mammalian cells leading to coupling of the degradation rates of otherwise independently expressed proteins when constitutively targeted human degrons are adopted. We show the effect of this competition to be dependent on the context of the degrons.

Dynamics of specialization in neural modules under resource constraints.

The brain is structurally and functionally modular, although recent evidence has raised questions about the extent of both types of modularity. Using a simple, toy artificial neural network setup that allows for precise control, we find that structural modularity does not in general guarantee functional specialization (across multiple measures of specialization). Further, in this setup (1) specialization only emerges when features of the environment are meaningfully separable, (2) specialization preferentially emerges when the network is strongly resource-constrained, and (3) these findings are qualitatively similar across several different variations of network architectures.

Intrahepatic levels of microbiome-derived hippurate associates with improved metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease.

Objective: Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is characterised by lipid accumulation in the liver and is often associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes. The gut microbiome recently emerged as a significant player in liver metabolism and health. Hippurate, a host-microbial co-metabolite has been associated with human gut microbial gene richness and with metabolic health.

Oral Food Challenge Protocols in Food Protein-Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome: A Systematic Review.

Background: Oral Food Challenges (OFC) are essential for the diagnosis and follow-up of acute Food Protein-Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome (FPIES) because no diagnostic or prognostic biomarkers are available. However, the optimal OFC procedure remains unclear.

Objectives: This systematic review aimed to assess OFC procedures' design and clinical outcomes in patients with FPIES.

IPEM topical report: guidance on 3D printing in radiotherapy.

There has been an increase in the availability and utilization of commercially available 3D printers in radiotherapy, with applications in phantoms, brachytherapy applicators, bolus, compensators, and immobilization devices. Additive manufacturing in the form of 3D printing has the advantage of rapid production of personalized patient specific prints or customized phantoms within a short timeframe. One of the barriers to uptake has been the lack of guidance.

What Should Clinicians Know About How Coding Influences Epidemiological Research?

Coded health care data from patients' health records are used in epidemiological research, especially on incidence or prevalence of disease; for drug safety monitoring or long-term cohort tracking; and to inform policy making. This article briefly summarizes the evolution of internationally recognized coding ontologies and nomenclature and describes applications of coded electronic health record (EHR) data in day-to-day health care operations, research, auditing, and policy development. This article also illuminates how errors can occur when EHR information is coded, considers errors' consequences, and suggests strategies for mitigating errors and improving overall use of coded EHR data.

Artificial Intelligence-Enhanced Electrocardiography for Prediction of Incident Hypertension.

Importance: Hypertension underpins significant global morbidity and mortality. Early lifestyle intervention and treatment are effective in reducing adverse outcomes. Artificial intelligence-enhanced electrocardiography (AI-ECG) has been shown to identify a broad spectrum of subclinical disease and may be useful for predicting incident hypertension.

NADPH-Independent Fluorescent Probe for Live-Cell Imaging of Heme Oxygenase-1.

Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) catalyzes heme degradation on the consumption of NADPH and molecular oxygen. As an inducible enzyme, HO-1 is highly induced in various disease states, including cancer. Currently, two fluorescent probes for HO-1 have been designed based on the catalytic activity of HO-1, in which the probes serve as a substrate, so NADPH is required to enable the detection.