Translation of mechanical strain to a scalable biomanufacturing process for acellular matrix production from full thickness porcine bladders.

Bladder acellular matrix has promising applications in urological and other reconstructive surgery as it represents a naturally compliant, non-immunogenic and highly tissue-integrative material. As the bladder fills and distends, the loosely-coiled bundles of collagen fibres in the wall become extended and orientate parallel to the lumen, resulting in a physical thinning of the muscular wall. This accommodating property can be exploited to achieve complete decellularisation of the full-thickness bladder wall by immersing the distended bladder through a series of hypotonic buffers, detergents and nucleases, but the process is empirical, idiosyncratic and does not lend itself to manufacturing scale up.

Associations Between Maternal Depression, Antidepressant Use During Pregnancy, and Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes: An Individual Participant Data Meta-analysis.

Objective: To evaluate the associations of depressive symptoms and antidepressant use during pregnancy with the risks of preterm birth, low birth weight, small for gestational age (SGA), and low Apgar scores.

Data Sources: MEDLINE, EMBASE, ClinicalTrials.gov, and PsycINFO up to June 2016.

Prolonged Normothermic Ex Vivo Kidney Perfusion Is Superior to Cold Nonoxygenated and Oxygenated Machine Perfusion for the Preservation of DCD Porcine Kidney Grafts.

Unlabelled: The increased usage of marginal grafts has triggered interest in perfused kidney preservation to minimize graft injury. We used a donation after circulatory death (DCD) porcine kidney autotransplantation model to compare 3 of the most frequently used ex vivo kidney perfusion techniques: nonoxygenated hypothermic machine perfusion (non-oxHMP), oxygenated hypothermic machine perfusion (oxHMP), and normothermic ex vivo kidney perfusion (NEVKP).

Methods: Following 30 min of warm ischemia, grafts were retrieved and preserved with either 16 h of non-oxHMP, oxHMP, or NEVKP (n = 5 per group).

Giant Topological Hall Effect in van der Waals Heterostructures of CrTe/BiTe.

Discoveries of the interfacial topological Hall effect (THE) provide an ideal platform for exploring the physics arising from the interplay between topology and magnetism. The interfacial topological Hall effect is closely related to the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) at an interface and topological spin textures. However, it is difficult to achieve a sizable THE in heterostructures due to the stringent constraints on the constituents of THE heterostructures, such as strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC).

"Perspectives" in Health Technology Assessment.

This article considers 2 types of standard by which health technology assessment (HTA) studies should be judged: methodological and social. Methodological desiderata specify characteristics of a good quality analysis and should be met regardless of context. Transparency about an HTA study's perspective (eg, specifying whose costs and whose benefits from an intervention should be counted) is one such desideratum.

Glycosylated cyclophellitol-derived activity-based probes and inhibitors for cellulases.

Cellulases and related β-1,4-glucanases are essential components of lignocellulose-degrading enzyme mixtures. The detection of β-1,4-glucanase activity typically relies on monitoring the breakdown of purified lignocellulose-derived substrates or synthetic chromogenic substrates, limiting the activities which can be detected and complicating the tracing of activity back to specific components within complex enzyme mixtures. As a tool for the rapid detection and identification of β-1,4-glucanases, a series of glycosylated cyclophellitol inhibitors mimicking β-1,4-glucan oligosaccharides have been synthesised.

Modern cemented Furlong hemiarthroplasty: Are dislocations rates better?

Background: Dislocation following hip hemiarthroplasty is a major complication with increased mortality and morbidity. Data looking at dislocation following contemporary bipolar stems are lacking in literature.

Methods: Retrospective review of our prospective national hip fracture database over a two-year period.

AI-Assisted CT as a Clinical and Research Tool for COVID-19.

There is compelling support for widening the role of computed tomography (CT) for COVID-19 in clinical and research scenarios. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing, the gold standard for COVID-19 diagnosis, has two potential weaknesses: the delay in obtaining results and the possibility of RT-PCR test kits running out when demand spikes or being unavailable altogether. This perspective article discusses the potential use of CT in conjunction with RT-PCR in hospitals lacking sufficient access to RT-PCR test kits.

Listening to Slugs: Acceptability and Consumption of Molluscicide Pellets by the Grey Field Slug, .

Gastropod damage to crop plants has a significant economic impact on agricultural and horticultural industries worldwide, with the Grey Field Slug ( (Müller)) considered the main mollusc pest in the United Kingdom and in many other temperate areas. The prevailing form of crop protection is pellets containing the active ingredient, metaldehyde. Metaldehyde can cause paralysis and death in the mollusc, depending on the amount ingested.

Realising the full potential of data-enabled trials in the UK: a call for action.

Rationale: Clinical trials are the gold standard for testing interventions. COVID-19 has further raised their public profile and emphasised the need to deliver better, faster, more efficient trials for patient benefit. Considerable overlap exists between data required for trials and data already collected routinely in electronic healthcare records (EHRs).

Periscope Proteins are variable-length regulators of bacterial cell surface interactions.

Changes at the cell surface enable bacteria to survive in dynamic environments, such as diverse niches of the human host. Here, we reveal "Periscope Proteins" as a widespread mechanism of bacterial surface alteration mediated through protein length variation. Tandem arrays of highly similar folded domains can form an elongated rod-like structure; thus, variation in the number of domains determines how far an N-terminal host ligand binding domain projects from the cell surface.

Exploring what is important to patients with regards to quality of life after experiencing a lower limb reconstructive procedure: a qualitative evidence synthesis.

Background: Patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) are used to understand the impact of lower limb reconstruction surgery on patients' quality of life (QOL). Existing measures have not been developed to specifically capture patient experiences amongst adults with lower limb conditions that require reconstruction surgery. This review aimed to synthesise qualitative evidence to identify what is important to patients requiring, undergoing, or following reconstructive surgery for lower limb conditions.

Spatially explicit analysis identifies significant potential for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage in China.

As China ramped-up coal power capacities rapidly while CO emissions need to decline, these capacities would turn into stranded assets. To deal with this risk, a promising option is to retrofit these capacities to co-fire with biomass and eventually upgrade to CCS operation (BECCS), but the feasibility is debated with respect to negative impacts on broader sustainability issues. Here we present a data-rich spatially explicit approach to estimate the marginal cost curve for decarbonizing the power sector in China with BECCS.

Classifying information-sharing methods.

Background: Sparse relative effectiveness evidence is a frequent problem in Health Technology Assessment (HTA). Where evidence directly pertaining to the decision problem is sparse, it may be feasible to expand the evidence-base to include studies that relate to the decision problem only indirectly: for instance, when there is no evidence on a comparator, evidence on other treatments of the same molecular class could be used; similarly, a decision on children may borrow-strength from evidence on adults. Usually, in HTA, such indirect evidence is either included by ignoring any differences ('lumping') or not included at all ('splitting').

The impact of endogenous Avian Leukosis Viruses (ALVE) on production traits in elite layer lines.

Avian Leukosis Virus subgroup E (ALVE) integrations are endogenous retroviral elements found in the chicken genome. The presence of ALVE has been reported to have negative impacts on multiple traits, including egg production and body weight. The recent development of rapid, inexpensive and specific ALVE detection methods has facilitated their characterization in elite commercial egg production lines across multiple generations.

No Detectable Effect on Visual Responses Using Functional MRI in a Rodent Model of α-Synuclein Expression.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that is typically diagnosed late in its progression. There is a need for biomarkers suitable for monitoring the disease progression at earlier stages to guide the development of novel neuroprotective therapies. One potential biomarker, α-synuclein, has been found in both the familial cases of PD, as well as the sporadic cases and is considered a key feature of PD.

Room-temperature intrinsic ferromagnetism in epitaxial CrTe ultrathin films.

While the discovery of two-dimensional (2D) magnets opens the door for fundamental physics and next-generation spintronics, it is technically challenging to achieve the room-temperature ferromagnetic (FM) order in a way compatible with potential device applications. Here, we report the growth and properties of single- and few-layer CrTe, a van der Waals (vdW) material, on bilayer graphene by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Intrinsic ferromagnetism with a Curie temperature (T) up to 300 K, an atomic magnetic moment of ~0.

Falling fowl of the chicken reference genome: pitfalls of studying polymorphic endogenous retroviruses.

High quality reference genomes have facilitated the study of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). However, there are an increasing number of published works which assume the ERVs in reference genomes are universal; even those of evolutionarily recent integrations. Consequently, these studies fail to properly characterise polymorphic ERVs, and even propose biological functions for ERVs that may not actually be present in the genomes of interest.

Carboxylcellulose hydrogel confined-FeO nanoparticles catalyst for Fenton-like degradation of Rhodamine B.

Facile preparation of functional hydrogel materials for environmental catalysis is a hot research topic of soft materials science and green catalysis. In this study, a carboxylcellulose hydrogel confined FeO nanoparticles composite catalyst (FeO@CHC) with magnetic recyclability has been synthesized by taking the advantages of the newly developed cellulose solution in tetramethyl guanidine/DMSO/CO through in situ acylation using mixed cyclic anhydrides and ion exchange reaction. The achieved FeO@CHC hydrogel catalyst was shown to be an more efficient and better Fenton-like catalyst for decomposition of the organic dye rhodamine B (RhB) in the presence of hydrogen peroxide, with almost complete decomposition occurring within 180 min, in comparison with FeO@cellulose hydrogel (CH) with excellent recyclability.

Chemical reporters to study mammalian O-glycosylation.

Glycans play essential roles in a range of cellular processes and have been shown to contribute to various pathologies. The diversity and dynamic nature of glycan structures and the complexities of glycan biosynthetic pathways make it challenging to study the roles of specific glycans in normal cellular function and disease. Chemical reporters have emerged as powerful tools to characterise glycan structures and monitor dynamic changes in glycan levels in a native context.

Learning in lockdown: Using the COVID-19 crisis to teach children about food and climate change.

Food systems are significant sources of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). Since emission intensity varies greatly between different foods, changing food choices towards those with lower GHGE could make an important contribution to mitigating climate change. Public engagement events offer an opportunity to communicate these multifaceted issues and raise awareness about the climate change impact of food choices.

Tuberculosis and Non-Communicable Disease Multimorbidity: An Analysis of the World Health Survey in 48 Low- and Middle-Income Countries.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading cause of mortality in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). TB multimorbidity [TB and ≥1 non-communicable diseases (NCDs)] is common, but studies are sparse. Cross-sectional, community-based data including adults from 21 low-income countries and 27 middle-income countries were utilized from the World Health Survey.