Comprehensive genomic and transcriptomic analyses of the anaerobic degradation of microcystin in Alcaligenes faecalis D04.

Microcystin LR (MC-LR) pollution is a serious threat to aquatic ecosystems and public health in China and is an environmental problem that urgently needs to be solved. However, few studies have investigated the anaerobic degradation pathway and related molecular biological mechanisms of MC-LR. In this study, a bacterium capable of degrading MC-LR with a degradation efficiency of 0.

Identification of the primary pollution sources and dominant influencing factors of soil heavy metals using a random forest model optimized by genetic algorithm coupled with geodetector.

Identifying and quantifying the dominant factors influencing heavy metal (HM) pollution sources are essential for maintaining soil ecological health and implementing effective pollution control measures. This study analyzed soil HM samples from 53 different land use types in Jiaozuo City, Henan Province, China. Pollution sources were identified using Absolute Principal Component Score (APCS), with 8 anthropogenic factors, 9 natural factors, and 4 soil physicochemical properties mapped using Geographic Information System (GIS) kernel density estimation.

The association of state policies and opioid analgesic amount dispensed from retail pharmacies.

Importance: States have implemented multiple policies likely to influence opioid prescribing; few national general population studies examine those policies' effects on per-capita opioid morphine milligram equivalents (MME) dispensed.

Objective: To examine state policies' effects on opioids per-capita MMEs dispensed at retail pharmacies.

Design: A longitudinal study of associations between MME per capita and implementation of policy interventions at different times across states.

Unsupervised, piecewise linear decoding enables an accurate prediction of muscle activity in a multi-task brain computer interface.

Objective: Creating an intracortical brain-computer interface (iBCI) capable of seamless transitions between tasks and contexts would greatly enhance user experience. However, the nonlinearity in neural activity presents challenges to computing a global iBCI decoder. We aimed to develop a method that differs from a globally optimized decoder to address this issue.

The utility of routine intraoperative CSF during ventricular shunt insertion: a 10-year retrospective cohort study.

Objective: Ventricular shunt insertion is a common procedure in pediatric neurosurgical practice. In many areas of medicine there is a push toward rationalization of healthcare resources and a reduction in low-value tests or procedures. The intraoperative sampling of CSF at the time of shunt insertion is one traditional aspect of care that has not been rigorously evaluated.

Emulsion Polymerization of Styrene to Polystyrene Nanoparticles with Self-Emulsifying Nanodroplets as Nucleus.

The mechanism of the emulsion polymerization of styrene to polystyrene nanoparticles (PSNPs) remains a subject of debate. Herein, a series of reaction parameters with different surfactant concentrations, monomer contents, temperatures, and equilibration times were investigated to understand the formation mechanism of PSNPs, which demonstrate a correlation between the properties of PSNPs and the mesostructure of the premix. Cooling the model systems with self-emulsifying nanodroplets (SENDs) in the early reaction stages resulted in the hollow polystyrene spheres (H-PSSs), ruptured PSNPs, and dandelion-like PSNPs, further indicating that the oil nanodroplets are the key sites for the formation of PSNPs.

Clonal Hematopoiesis in Women With Breast Cancer.

Purpose: Clonal hematopoiesis (CH) has been associated with a variety of adverse outcomes, most notably hematologic malignancy and ischemic cardiovascular disease. A series of recent studies also suggest that CH may play a role in the outcomes of patients with solid tumors, including breast cancer. Here, we review the clinical and biological data that underlie potential connections between CH, inflammation, and breast cancer, with a focus on the prevalence and impact of clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential in patients with breast cancer.

Exploring the Unique Properties and Superior Schwann Cell Guiding Abilities of Spider Egg Sac Silk.

Spider silk (SPSI) is a promising candidate for use as a filler material in nerve guidance conduits (NGCs), facilitating peripheral nerve regeneration by providing a scaffold for Schwann cells (SCs) and axonal growth. However, the specific properties of SPSI that contribute to its regenerative success remain unclear. In this study, the egg sac silk of is investigated, which contains two distinct fiber types: tubuliform (TU) and major ampullate (MA) silk.

Improved Items for Estimating SF-36 Profile and Summary Component Scores: Construction and Validation of an 8-item QOL General (QGEN) Survey.

Background: Comprehensive health-related quality of life (QOL) assessment under severe respondent burden constraints requires improved single-item scales for frequently surveyed domains. This article documents how new single-item-per-domain (SIPD) QOL General (QGEN-8) measures were constructed for domains common to SF-36 and results from the first psychometric tests comparing scores for the new measure in relation to those for the SF-36 profile and summary components.

Research Design: Online NORC surveys of adults, ages 19-93 (mean=52 y) representing the US population in 2020 (N=1648) included QGEN-8 and SF-36 items measuring physical (PF), social (SF), role physical (RP) and role emotional (RE) functioning and feelings of bodily pain (BP), vitality (VT), and mental health (MH).

Left Insula and Right Middle Temporal Gyrus Dominate Cortical Network Discriminating Arousal-dependent Emotions.

Emotion processing is an integral part of everyone's life. The basic neural circuits involved in emotion perception are becoming clear, though the emotion's cognitive processing remains under investigation. Utilizing the stereo-electroencephalograph with high temporal-spatial resolution, this study aims to decipher the neural pathway responsible for discriminating low-arousal and high-arousal emotions.

Motion-Compensated Multishot Pancreatic Diffusion-Weighted Imaging With Deep Learning-Based Denoising.

Objectives: Pancreatic diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) has numerous clinical applications, but conventional single-shot methods suffer from off resonance-induced artifacts like distortion and blurring while cardiovascular motion-induced phase inconsistency leads to quantitative errors and signal loss, limiting its utility. Multishot DWI (msDWI) offers reduced image distortion and blurring relative to single-shot methods but increases sensitivity to motion artifacts. Motion-compensated diffusion-encoding gradients (MCGs) reduce motion artifacts and could improve motion robustness of msDWI but come with the cost of extended echo time, further reducing signal.

Affective, Behavioral, and Cognitive Symptoms Associated With Focal Impaired Awareness (Complex Partial) Seizures: Evaluation and Treatment.

The Psychiatric Consultation Service at Massachusetts General Hospital sees medical and surgical inpatients with comorbid psychiatric symptoms and conditions. During their twice-weekly rounds, Dr Stern and other members of the Consultation Service discuss diagnosis and management of hospitalized patients with complex medical or surgical problems who also demonstrate psychiatric symptoms or conditions. These discussions have given rise to rounds reports that will prove useful for clinicians practicing at the interface of medicine and psychiatry.

Strategies to reduce hyperglycemia-related anxiety in elite athletes with type 1 diabetes: A qualitative analysis.

Objective: Managing blood glucose levels is challenging for elite athletes with type 1 diabetes (T1D) as competition can cause unpredictable fluctuations. While fear of hypoglycemia during physical activity is well documented, research on hyperglycemia-related anxiety (HRA) is limited. HRA refers to the heightened fear that hyperglycemia-related symptoms will impair functioning.

A Review of Laboratory Studies on the Heterogeneous Chemistry of NO: Mechanisms and Uptake Kinetics.

NO is a significant primary atmospheric pollutant that plays a key role in atmospheric chemistry. It serves as a crucial precursor to photochemical smog, acid rain, and secondary particulate matter and is instrumental in determining the atmospheric oxidation capacity. In this review, we focus on the heterogeneous chemistry of NO, which has been demonstrated to significantly influence the sources and sinks of various nitrogen-containing species through field measurements and model simulations.

The transcription factor GmFULc regulates soybean plant height by binding the promoter of a gibberellin-responsive gene.

Plant height is a crucial agronomic characteristic that substantially influences soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] yield.

-Loaded Easily Injectable Hydrogel Promotes Endometrial Repair via Long-Term Retention and Microenvironment Modulation.

Regeneration of the injured endometrium, particularly the functional layer, is crucial for the prevention of uterine infertility. At present, clinical treatment using sodium hyaluronate hydrogel injection is limited by its relatively low fluidity, short-term retention, and insufficient bioactive ingredients, so it is necessary to develop an advanced healing-promoting hydrogel. The modulation of the microenvironment by presents a bioactive component that can facilitate the regeneration of the functional layer.

Morphogenesis of bacterial cables in polymeric environments.

Many bacteria live in polymeric fluids, such as mucus, environmental polysaccharides, and extracellular polymers in biofilms. However, laboratory studies typically focus on cells in polymer-free fluids. Here, we show that interactions with polymers shape a fundamental feature of bacterial life-how they proliferate in space in multicellular colonies.

Biologically relevant integration of transcriptomics profiles from cancer cell lines, patient-derived xenografts, and clinical tumors using deep learning.

Cell lines and patient-derived xenografts are essential to cancer research; however, the results derived from such models often lack clinical translatability, as they do not fully recapitulate the complex cancer biology. Identifying preclinical models that sufficiently resemble the biological characteristics of clinical tumors across different cancers is critically important. Here, we developed MOBER, Multi-Origin Batch Effect Remover method, to simultaneously extract biologically meaningful embeddings while removing confounder information.

Peptide-drug conjugates repolarize glioblastoma-associated macrophages to resensitize chemo-immunotherapy of glioblastoma.

The prevalent tumor-supporting glioblastoma-associated macrophages (GAMs) promote glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) progression and resistance to multiple therapies. Repolarizing GAMs from tumor-supporting to tumor-inhibiting phenotype may troubleshoot. However, sufficient accumulation of drugs at the GBM site is restricted by blood-brain barrier (BBB).

Activation of locus coeruleus noradrenergic neurons rapidly drives homeostatic sleep pressure.

Homeostatic sleep regulation is essential for optimizing the amount and timing of sleep for its revitalizing function, but the mechanism underlying sleep homeostasis remains poorly understood. Here, we show that optogenetic activation of locus coeruleus (LC) noradrenergic neurons immediately increased sleep propensity following a transient wakefulness, contrasting with many other arousal-promoting neurons whose activation induces sustained wakefulness. Fiber photometry showed that repeated optogenetic or sensory stimulation caused a rapid reduction of calcium activity in LC neurons and steep declines in noradrenaline/norepinephrine (NE) release in both the LC and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC).

Versatile adhesive skin enhances robotic interactions with the environment.

Electronic skins endow robots with sensory functions but often lack the multifunctionality of natural skin, such as switchable adhesion. Current smart adhesives based on elastomers have limited adhesion tunability, which hinders their effective use for both carrying heavy loads and performing dexterous manipulations. Here, we report a versatile, one-size-fits-all robotic adhesive skin using shape memory polymers with tunable rubber-to-glass phase transitions.

Architects of immunity: How dendritic cells shape CD8 T cell fate in cancer.

Immune responses against cancer are dominated by T cell exhaustion and dysfunction. Recent advances have underscored the critical role of early priming interactions in establishing T cell fates. In this review, we explore the importance of dendritic cell (DC) signals in specifying CD8 T cell fates in cancer, drawing on insights from acute and chronic viral infection models.

An expanding universe of mutational signatures and its rapid evolution in single-stranded RNA viruses.

The study of mutational processes in somatic genomes has gained recent momentum, uncovering a wide array of endogenous and exogenous factors associated with somatic changes. However, the overall landscape of mutational processes in germline mutations across the tree of life and associated evolutionary driving forces are rather unclear. In this study, we analyzed mutational processes in single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) viruses which are known to jump between different hosts with divergent exogenous environments.

Gas-Phase Scattering of Transition Metal Atoms Fe, Ir, and Pt with CH, O, and CO.

Understanding the interactions between transition metal atoms and molecules is important for the study of various related chemical and physical processes. In this study, we have investigated collisions between iron (Fe), iridium (Ir), and platinum (Pt) and the small molecules CH, O, and CO using a crossed-beam and time-sliced ion velocity map imaging technique. Elastic collisions were observed in all cases, except for collisions of Pt with O and CO.