Enhancing nanopore adaptive sampling for PromethION using readfish at scale.

A unique feature of Oxford Nanopore Technologies sequencers, adaptive sampling, allows precise DNA molecule selection from sequencing libraries. Here we present enhancements to our tool, readfish, enabling all features for the industrial scale PromethION sequencer, including standard and "barcode-aware" adaptive sampling. We demonstrate effective coverage enrichment and assessment of multiple human genomes for copy number and structural variation on a single PromethION flow cell.

Subdermal contraceptive implant migration to pulmonary artery branch.

Subdermal contraceptive implants are now commonly used throughout the world. One of the rare complications of these implants is migration to the lungs due to misplacement of the implant during insertion, with only a limited number of cases documented. Here, we present a case where a subdermal contraceptive implant embolised in the subsegmental branch of the pulmonary artery within the anterobasal segment of the left lower lobe.

Cross-National Validation of the WHO-5 Well-Being Index Within Adolescent Populations: Findings From 43 Countries.

The five-item World Health Organization Well-Being Index (WHO-5) is among the most frequently used brief standard measures to assess hedonic well-being. Numerous studies have investigated different facets of its psychometric properties in adult populations. However, whether these results apply to adolescents is uncertain, and only few psychometric studies employed adolescent populations.

S100A9 protein activates microglia and stimulates phagocytosis, resulting in synaptic and neuronal loss.

S100 calcium-binding protein A9 (S100A9, also known as calgranulin B) is expressed and secreted by myeloid cells under inflammatory conditions, and S100A9 can amplify inflammation. There is a large increase in S100A9 expression in the brains of patients with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, and S100A9 has been suggested to contribute to neurodegeneration, but the mechanisms are unclear. Here we investigated the effects of extracellular recombinant S100A9 protein on microglia, neurons and synapses in primary rat brain neuronal-glial cell cultures.

SERCA2 dysfunction accelerates angiotensin II-induced aortic aneurysm and atherosclerosis by induction of oxidative stress in aortic smooth muscle cells.

Background And Aim: Our previous research indicates that sarcoplasmic/endoplasmic reticulum calcium ATPase 2 (SERCA2) dysfunction facilitates the phenotypic transformation of aortic smooth muscle cells (ASMCs) and intensifies aortic aneurysm through the regulation of calcium-dependent pathways and endoplasmic reticulum stress. Our hypothesis is that additional mechanisms are involved in aortic aneurysm and atherosclerosis induced by SERCA2 dysfunction from the perspective of ASMC phenotypic transformation.

Methods & Results: In SERCA2 dysfunctional mice and their control littermates, ASMCs were isolated to analyze protein expression and cell functions, and angiotensin II was infused into these mice that were backcrossed into LDL receptor deficient background to induce aortic aneurysm and atherosclerosis.

Understanding Local Thermal Comfort and Physiological Responses in Older People Under Uniform Thermal Environments.

The ageing population has increased the attention on care services for older people, particularly concerning their health and thermal comfort. However, most existing studies focus on the overall thermal comfort of older people, with insufficient research into their local thermal needs for different body parts, impeding precise thermal adjustments and optimal thermal satisfaction. This study investigated the local thermal comfort and skin temperature of older people under various environmental conditions.

Assessing the potential role of deer in the dissemination of Mycobacterium bovis infection to cattle in Northern Ireland.

Mycobacterium bovis, the causative agent of animal tuberculosis, exhibits a broad host range - infecting, inducing pathology and transmitting from both bovine and wildlife hosts. Considerable effort has been extended to understanding the role wildlife may play in persistence and spread of infection. Infected cervids can spread infection to conspecifics and sympatric livestock as observed in the white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginanus) population of Michigan, USA.

Antimicrobial susceptibility testing of Clostridioides difficile: a dual-site study of three different media and three therapeutic antimicrobials.

Objectives: Increasing resistance to antimicrobials used for the treatment of Clostridioides difficile infections necessitates reproducible antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Current guidelines take a one-size-fits-all approach and/or offer limited guidance. We investigated how the choice of medium affects measured MIC values across two sites.

Cognitive hierarchy in mood disorders and relations to daily functioning.

Cognitive impairment affects approximately 50 % of patients with mood disorders during remission, which correlates with poorer daily-life functioning. The hierarchical organization of cognitive processes may mean that some cognitive deficits, e.g.

A multi-modal transformer for cell type-agnostic regulatory predictions.

Sequence-based deep learning models have emerged as powerful tools for deciphering the cis-regulatory grammar of the human genome but cannot generalize to unobserved cellular contexts. Here, we present EpiBERT, a multi-modal transformer that learns generalizable representations of genomic sequence and cell type-specific chromatin accessibility through a masked accessibility-based pre-training objective. Following pre-training, EpiBERT can be fine-tuned for gene expression prediction, achieving accuracy comparable to the sequence-only Enformer model, while also being able to generalize to unobserved cell states.

Competitive behaviors in Serratia marcescens are coordinately regulated by a lifestyle switch frequently inactivated in the clinical environment.

Opportunistic bacterial pathogens must compete with other bacteria and switch between host- and environment-adapted states. Type VI secretion systems (T6SSs) occur widely in gram-negative bacteria and can efficiently kill neighboring competitors. We determined the distribution of T6SSs across the genus Serratia and observed that a highly conserved antibacterial T6SS is differentially active between closely related clinical isolates of Serratia marcescens.

International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes Clinical Practice Consensus Guidelines 2024: Insulin and Adjunctive Treatments in Children and Adolescents with Diabetes.

The International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes (ISPAD) guidelines represent a rich repository that serves as the only comprehensive set of clinical recommendations for children, adolescents, and young adults living with diabetes worldwide. This chapter builds on the 2022 ISPAD guidelines, and updates recommendations on the principles of intensive insulin regimens, including more intensive forms of multiple daily injections with new-generation faster-acting and ultra-long-acting insulins; a summary of adjunctive medications used alongside insulin treatment that includes details on pramlintide, metformin, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists (GLP-1RA) and sodium-glucose cotransporter inhibitors; and key considerations with regard to access to insulin and affordability to ensure that all persons with diabetes who need insulin can obtain it without financial hardship.

New N-Alkylketonetetrahydroisoquinoline derivatives exhibits antitumor effect by HA-CD44 interaction inhibition in MDA-MB-231 breast cancer.

Molecular interactions at the cell surface, in particular between hyaluronic acid (HA) and the cluster of differentiation 44 (CD44) receptor, are crucial in several biological processes and diseases such as cancer. Thus, inhibition of the HA-CD44 interaction has become a promising therapeutic strategy. Etoposide was the only antitumor compound known to inhibit the binding of CD44 to HA, thereby disrupting key functions that drive malignancy.

Clinical outcomes of adults with intracranial grade 1 and 2 ganglioglioma.

Ganglioglioma is a rare primary brain tumour that most frequently occurs in children and young adults. They are generally low-grade and have a favourable prognosis, but there is limited literature to guide the optimal management. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical outcomes of adults with intracranial ganglioglioma, and to determine the frequency and duration of radiological follow-up.

A miniature FUS transducer based on an acoustic Fresnel lens for integration with a surgical robot.

A new focussed ultrasound surgery (FUS) transducer for soft tissue ablation is proposed, with a miniaturised configuration that can be readily integrated with a surgical robot. The transducer fills a gap in FUS technology at this size, with capability for acoustic focus steering within a very simple transducer configuration. Miniaturisation is enabled by the incorporation of an acoustic Fresnel lens as the focussing element driven by a single piezoceramic disc.

Deep learning image registration for cardiac motion estimation in adult and fetal echocardiography via a focus on anatomic plausibility and texture quality of warped image.

Temporal echocardiography image registration is important for cardiac motion estimation, myocardial strain assessments, and stroke volume quantifications. Deep learning image registration (DLIR) is a promising way to achieve consistent and accurate registration results with low computational time. DLIR seeks the image deformation that enables the moving image to be warped to match the fixed image.