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tween nitrate and head circumference or LBW. Future studies in other populations and with data on dietary sources of nitrate are encouraged to confirm or refute these findings. https//doi.org/10.1289/EHP7331.The US response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been plagued with politics driving public health and messaging. As a result, COVID-19 vaccine rollout is occurring in an environment ill equipped to achieve broad acceptance of the vaccine. Addressing public concerns unlocks the potential for high vaccine coverage; this is best achieved when science and values, not politics, inform public health. A multifaceted and thorough engagement and communication plan that is responsive to the concerns and values of different groups must be swiftly yet carefully implemented in a coordinated manner by federal, state, and local governments. Effective communication will require rapid and rigorous science to promptly differentiate between adverse events following immunization that are causally related versus simply coincidental. Health care providers, in particular, will need support to process the otherwise potentially overwhelming amount of relevant information and effectively integrate it into discussions with their patients to support their decision making. An equitable COVID-19 immunization program could substantively reduce the disproportionate risks associated with this pandemic.
Thirty-day unplanned readmission is one of the key components in measuring quality in patient care. Risk of readmission in oncology patients may be associated with a wide variety of specific factors including laboratory results and diagnoses, and it is hard to include all such features using traditional approaches such as one-hot encoding in predictive models.

We used clinical embeddings to represent complex medical concepts in lower dimensional spaces. For predictive modeling, we used gradient-boosted trees and adopted the shapley additive explanation framework to offer consistent individualized predictions. We used retrospective inpatient data between 2013 and 2018 with temporal split for training and testing.

Our best performing model predicting readmission at discharge using clinical embeddings showed a testing area under receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.78 (95% CI, 0.77 to 0.80). Use of clinical embeddings led to up to 23.1% gain in area under precision-recall curve and 6% in area under receiver operating characteristic curve. Hematology models had more performance gain over surgery and medical oncology. Our study was the first to develop (1) explainable predictive models for the hematology population and (2) dynamic models to keep track of readmission risk throughout the duration of patient visit.

To our knowledge, our study was the first to develop (1) explainable predictive models for the hematology population and (2) dynamic models to keep track of readmission risk throughout the duration of patient visit.
To our knowledge, our study was the first to develop (1) explainable predictive models for the hematology population and (2) dynamic models to keep track of readmission risk throughout the duration of patient visit.
As health inequities during the pandemic have been magnified, we evaluated how use of SARS-CoV-2 testing differed by race or ethnicity in a large cohort of breast cancer survivors and examined the correlates of testing positive.

We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 22,481 adult breast cancer survivors who were active members of a large California integrated healthcare plan in 2020. We collected data on their breast cancer diagnosis, comorbidity, and demographic characteristics. We examined SARS-CoV-2 testing utilization between March 2020 and September 2020 by race or ethnicity, comorbidity, and other patient characteristics. We also examined the correlates of a having a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result. We conducted bivariable and multivariable logistic regression to identify correlates of testing utilization and test positivity.

Of these 22,481 women, 3,288 (14.6%) underwent SARS-CoV-2 testing. The cohort included 51.8% women of color. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/Vorinostat-saha.html Of the 3,288 tested, 264 (8.0%) women had a positive test rted healthcare system, Asian or Pacific Islander patients were less likely to undergo SARS-CoV-2 testing than White survivors, but more likely to test positive. Additionally, Latinx ethnicity and high body mass index were strongly correlated with a greater odds of SARS-CoV-2 test positivity.
In 2016, there were 1,308,061 cases of cancer being treated in Indonesia, with 2.2 trillion rupiahs spent, amounting to $486,960,633 in US dollars (purchasing power parity 2016). The high burden of cancers in Indonesia requires a valid data collection to inform future cancer-related policies. The purpose of this study is to report cancer epidemiological data from 2008 to 2012 based on Hospital-Based Cancer Registry (HBCR) data from Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, Indonesia.

This was a descriptive study with cross-sectional design. Data were collected from Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital HBCR 2008-2012. Demographical, diagnostic, stages of cancer, and histopathological types of cancer data were extracted.

After screening, 18,216 cases were included. A total of 12,438 patients were older than 39 years of age (68.3%), with a female-to-male ratio of 95. Most patients have cancers at advanced stages (stages III and IV, 10.2%). The most common sites of cancer were cervix uteri (2,878 cases, 15.8%), breast (2,459 castality and Prevalence 2018, which portrayed that Indonesia has been severely afflicted by cervical cancer cases more than any other Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries. The HBCR could serve as a robust database of epidemiological data for cancer cases in Indonesia.Event-based prospective memory (PM) tasks require individuals to remember to perform a previously planned action when they encounter a specific event. Often, the natural environments in which PM tasks occur are embedded are constantly changing, requiring humans to adapt by learning. We examine one such adaptation by integrating PM target learning with the prospective memory decision control (PMDC) cognitive model. We apply this augmented model to an experiment that manipulated exposure to PM targets, comparing a single-target PM condition where the target was well learned from the outset, to a multiple-target PM condition with less initial PM target exposure, allowing us to examine the effect of continued target learning opportunities. Single-target PM accuracy was near ceiling whereas multiple-target PM accuracy was initially poorer but improved throughout the course of the experiment. PM response times were longer for the multiple- compared with single-target PM task but this difference also decreased over time.

4 hrs ago

Citizen gathering evidence that geoengineering is happening in California

https://www.naturalnews.com/2025-02-10-dark-side-of-geoengineering-citizen-brave-stand.html

MellowKat, a concerned citizen from Tuolumne County, California, has documented the presence of heavy metals in rainwater samples, raising concerns about the cloud-seeding operations in her area. MellowKat confronted pilots involved in cloud-seeding operations, revealing the use of aluminum, zinc and other metals. The pilots directed her to their company’s leadership without offering immediate solutions. […]

www.naturalnews.com

02/09/2025


Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors have been widely adopted for delivery of CRISPR-Cas components, especially for therapeutic gene editing. For a single vector system, both the Cas9 and guide RNA (gRNA) are encoded within a single transgene, usually from separate promoters. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/taurochenodeoxycholic-acid.html Careful design of this bi-cistronic construct is required due to the minimal packaging capacity of AAV. We investigated how placement of the U6 promoter expressing the gRNA on the reverse strand to SaCas9 driven by a cytomegalovirus promoter affected gene editing rates compared to placement on the forward strand. We show that orientation in the reverse direction reduces editing rates from an AAV vector due to reduced transcription of both SaCas9 and guide RNA. This effect was observed only following AAV transduction; it was not seen following plasmid transfection. These results have implications for the design of AAV-CRISPR vectors, and suggest that results from optimizing plasmid transgenes may not translate when delivered via AAV.RNA interference is a powerful experimental tool for RNA knockdown, but not all organisms are amenable. Here, we provide a proof of principle demonstration that a type III Csm effector complex can be used for programmable mRNA transcript degradation in eukaryotes. In zebrafish, Streptococcus thermophilus Csm complex (StCsm) proved effective for knockdown of maternally expressed EGFP in germ cells of Tg(ddx4ddx4-EGFP) fish. It also led to significant, albeit less drastic, fluorescence reduction at one day postfertilization in Tg(myl7GFP) and Tg(fli1EGFP) fish that express EGFP zygotically. StCsm targeted against the endogenous tdgf1 elicited the characteristic one-eyed phenotype with greater than 50% penetrance, and hence with similar efficiency to morpholino-mediated knockdown. We conclude that Csm-mediated knockdown is very efficient for maternal transcripts and can also be used for mixed maternal/early zygotic and early zygotic transcripts, in some cases reaching comparable efficiency to morpholino-based knockdown without significant off-target effects.Over the past 8 years, the widespread adoption of CRISPR-based technologies has fueled the global genome editing revolution. This platform is based on Cas molecular machines such as Cas9, Cas12, Cas13, as well as other CRISPR effector proteins that are able to alter the genome, transcriptome, and epigenome of virtually any species. Technological improvements have rendered these tools more efficient and precise, and enabled functional diversification and specialization, as recently illustrated by the rise of base editing and the quickly growing demand for prime editing constructs. Here, we discuss the continued adoption of CRISPR tools and constructs distributed by the nonprofit organization Addgene, highlight the trends in the global demand for the CRISPR toolbox, and consider the widespread attitude changes around open sharing that are having a transformative effect on speeding up science.Humans carrying homozygous loss-of-function mutations in the Wnt co-receptor, low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 5 (LRP5), develop osteoporosis and a defective retinal vasculature known as familial exudative vitreoretinopathy (FEVR) due to disruption of the Wnt signaling pathway. The purpose of this study was to use CRISPR-Cas9-mediated gene editing to create strains of Lrp5-deficient rats and to determine whether knockout of Lrp5 resulted in phenotypes that model the bone and retina pathology in LRP5-deficient humans. Knockout of Lrp5 in rats produced low bone mass, decreased bone mineral density, and decreased bone size. The superficial retinal vasculature of Lrp5-deficient rats was sparse and disorganized, with extensive exudates and decreases in vascularized area, vessel length, and branch point density. This study showed that Lrp5 could be predictably knocked out in rats using CRISPR-Cas9, causing the expression of bone and retinal phenotypes that will be useful for studying the role of Wnt signaling in bone and retina development and for research on the treatment of osteoporosis and FEVR.Background Latinos are the largest minority group in the United States and when compared with non-Latino whites suffer from higher rates of certain chronic diseases. Latino community health workers (promotores de salud) are successful in improving the health of their communities. However, evidence of their effectiveness in increasing awareness of palliative care (PC) is limited. Objective To evaluate the feasibility of applying a promotores de salud model to improve PC awareness among Latinos within the context of chronic disease management. Methods Bilingual promotores from Familias en Acción trained 76 southern California promotores on PC and chronic disease management. Promotores agreed to disseminate the information learned to 10+ Latino community members. The strengths of the curriculum and the community's needs were identified during phone interviews six months post-training. Results In 406 diverse settings, 69 promotores trained 2734 community members. Interviews with promotores at follow-up established four themes (1) holistic health in chronic disease management; (2) communication with doctors; (3) shared decision making, patients' rights, and control; and (4) need for PC information (awareness, access, and support groups). Conclusion Promotores proved effective at disseminating information related to PC within chronic disease management to Latino community members. Future training should include information on support groups and where caregivers can seek help while caring for those with a terminal disease.
To explore the basic values of regional cerebral oxygen saturation (rSO
) among different age groups.

One hundred twenty patients who were scheduled for elective surgery aged 0 to 80 years (American Society of Anesthesiologists [ASA] physical status I or II) or neonates just after birth via cesarean section were enrolled and divided into the following six groups infant (0 month and ≤12 months), toddler (>1 and ≤3 years old), preschool (>3 and ≤6 years old), school age (>6 and ≤18 years old), adult (>18 and ≤65 years old), and elderly (>65 and ≤80 years old) groups. There were 20 patients in each group.

The basic values of rSO
in infant, toddler, preschool, school age, adults, and elderly groups were 70.41% ± 4.66%, 72.43% ± 3.81%, 70.77% ± 3.27%, 70.62% ± 2.20%, 69.76% ± 6.02%, and 62.69% ± 3.14%, respectively. The basic value in the elderly group was lower compared with other five groups. There was no significant difference among infant, toddler, preschool age, school age, and adult groups.

Videos

The first U.S. county to ever experience a decrease in autism has been pinpointed, says economic researcher Toby Rogers. Starting in 2000, parents in Marin County, CA began to do something differently.

The CDC is looking into this huge finding, right?

… Right?

Full interview by Catherine Austin Fitts of The Solari Report on #CHDTV:
https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/shows/good-morning-chd/rising-autism-rates-economic-and-societal-costs/?utm_source=sovren&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=chdtvpromo&utm_id=20240815

06/23/2024

Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker criticized President Joe Biden during a commencement speech at a Catholic University. Butker, a devout Catholic himself, slammed Biden for his response to the coronavirus pandemic as well as his positions on cultural issues such as abortion and radical gender ideology. Meanwhile, Joe Biden is hemorrhaging the minority vote. He thinks the way to relate to his base on his comeback tour is pushing back a ban on menthol cigarettes, trying to legalize marijuana, and speaking at a HBCU commencement speech. On this episode of 360 Scottie Nell Hughes asks her panel (Rainer Shea, Student, Humboldt County, California; Timothy Gordon, Host, Rules for Retrogrades podcast; Angie Wong, Co-Host, The Final Countdown) With the culture wars seeping into commencement speeches these year, are graduations the new social movement?

04/13/2024

15 states vote on Super Tuesday but with overwhelming wins In Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and Michigan... is Donald Trump now guaranteed to be the Republican Presidential nominee? On this edition of 360 View, Scottie Nell Hughes discusses with her panel (Dr. Linda Lee Tarver, Election integrity expert; Robert Patillo, Political commentator) the current state of the Presidential race as well as what the stepping down of National committee chairman Ronna McDaniels means for the party and the candidates in the 2024 election cycle. Plus, while Donald Trump is spending time courting the black vote, Joe Biden is hemorrhaging minority voters. We ask our panel how this shift is happening between the parties.

Circles

Sorry, no results were found.

Videos

The first U.S. county to ever experience a decrease in autism has been pinpointed, says economic researcher Toby Rogers. Starting in 2000, parents in Marin County, CA began to do something differently.

The CDC is looking into this huge finding, right?

… Right?

Full interview by Catherine Austin Fitts of The Solari Report on #CHDTV:
https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/shows/good-morning-chd/rising-autism-rates-economic-and-societal-costs/?utm_source=sovren&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=chdtvpromo&utm_id=20240815

06/23/2024

Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker criticized President Joe Biden during a commencement speech at a Catholic University. Butker, a devout Catholic himself, slammed Biden for his response to the coronavirus pandemic as well as his positions on cultural issues such as abortion and radical gender ideology. Meanwhile, Joe Biden is hemorrhaging the minority vote. He thinks the way to relate to his base on his comeback tour is pushing back a ban on menthol cigarettes, trying to legalize marijuana, and speaking at a HBCU commencement speech. On this episode of 360 Scottie Nell Hughes asks her panel (Rainer Shea, Student, Humboldt County, California; Timothy Gordon, Host, Rules for Retrogrades podcast; Angie Wong, Co-Host, The Final Countdown) With the culture wars seeping into commencement speeches these year, are graduations the new social movement?

04/13/2024

15 states vote on Super Tuesday but with overwhelming wins In Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and Michigan... is Donald Trump now guaranteed to be the Republican Presidential nominee? On this edition of 360 View, Scottie Nell Hughes discusses with her panel (Dr. Linda Lee Tarver, Election integrity expert; Robert Patillo, Political commentator) the current state of the Presidential race as well as what the stepping down of National committee chairman Ronna McDaniels means for the party and the candidates in the 2024 election cycle. Plus, while Donald Trump is spending time courting the black vote, Joe Biden is hemorrhaging minority voters. We ask our panel how this shift is happening between the parties.

? ATTN CA: AB-659 seeks to mandate HPV vaccine for college students w/ essentially no exemptions‼️

It will ALSO notify all 6th graders that the HPV vaccine is now "expected" for them to advance to 8th grade. This will lead to confusion: IT IS NOT MANDATORY

TAKE ACTION ? http://bit.ly/40cqIby

11/17/2022

The Wicked Witch of the West Coast is abdicating her throne.

Rumors are spreading that President Biden will be offering her the position of Ambassador to Italy. Of course, this would be the equivalent of a taxpayer-funded retirement...

If this happens, maybe her home in Italy will have better security than her home in California did.

Posts


tween nitrate and head circumference or LBW. Future studies in other populations and with data on dietary sources of nitrate are encouraged to confirm or refute these findings. https//doi.org/10.1289/EHP7331.The US response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been plagued with politics driving public health and messaging. As a result, COVID-19 vaccine rollout is occurring in an environment ill equipped to achieve broad acceptance of the vaccine. Addressing public concerns unlocks the potential for high vaccine coverage; this is best achieved when science and values, not politics, inform public health. A multifaceted and thorough engagement and communication plan that is responsive to the concerns and values of different groups must be swiftly yet carefully implemented in a coordinated manner by federal, state, and local governments. Effective communication will require rapid and rigorous science to promptly differentiate between adverse events following immunization that are causally related versus simply coincidental. Health care providers, in particular, will need support to process the otherwise potentially overwhelming amount of relevant information and effectively integrate it into discussions with their patients to support their decision making. An equitable COVID-19 immunization program could substantively reduce the disproportionate risks associated with this pandemic.
Thirty-day unplanned readmission is one of the key components in measuring quality in patient care. Risk of readmission in oncology patients may be associated with a wide variety of specific factors including laboratory results and diagnoses, and it is hard to include all such features using traditional approaches such as one-hot encoding in predictive models.

We used clinical embeddings to represent complex medical concepts in lower dimensional spaces. For predictive modeling, we used gradient-boosted trees and adopted the shapley additive explanation framework to offer consistent individualized predictions. We used retrospective inpatient data between 2013 and 2018 with temporal split for training and testing.

Our best performing model predicting readmission at discharge using clinical embeddings showed a testing area under receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.78 (95% CI, 0.77 to 0.80). Use of clinical embeddings led to up to 23.1% gain in area under precision-recall curve and 6% in area under receiver operating characteristic curve. Hematology models had more performance gain over surgery and medical oncology. Our study was the first to develop (1) explainable predictive models for the hematology population and (2) dynamic models to keep track of readmission risk throughout the duration of patient visit.

To our knowledge, our study was the first to develop (1) explainable predictive models for the hematology population and (2) dynamic models to keep track of readmission risk throughout the duration of patient visit.
To our knowledge, our study was the first to develop (1) explainable predictive models for the hematology population and (2) dynamic models to keep track of readmission risk throughout the duration of patient visit.
As health inequities during the pandemic have been magnified, we evaluated how use of SARS-CoV-2 testing differed by race or ethnicity in a large cohort of breast cancer survivors and examined the correlates of testing positive.

We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 22,481 adult breast cancer survivors who were active members of a large California integrated healthcare plan in 2020. We collected data on their breast cancer diagnosis, comorbidity, and demographic characteristics. We examined SARS-CoV-2 testing utilization between March 2020 and September 2020 by race or ethnicity, comorbidity, and other patient characteristics. We also examined the correlates of a having a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result. We conducted bivariable and multivariable logistic regression to identify correlates of testing utilization and test positivity.

Of these 22,481 women, 3,288 (14.6%) underwent SARS-CoV-2 testing. The cohort included 51.8% women of color. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/Vorinostat-saha.html Of the 3,288 tested, 264 (8.0%) women had a positive test rted healthcare system, Asian or Pacific Islander patients were less likely to undergo SARS-CoV-2 testing than White survivors, but more likely to test positive. Additionally, Latinx ethnicity and high body mass index were strongly correlated with a greater odds of SARS-CoV-2 test positivity.
In 2016, there were 1,308,061 cases of cancer being treated in Indonesia, with 2.2 trillion rupiahs spent, amounting to $486,960,633 in US dollars (purchasing power parity 2016). The high burden of cancers in Indonesia requires a valid data collection to inform future cancer-related policies. The purpose of this study is to report cancer epidemiological data from 2008 to 2012 based on Hospital-Based Cancer Registry (HBCR) data from Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, Indonesia.

This was a descriptive study with cross-sectional design. Data were collected from Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital HBCR 2008-2012. Demographical, diagnostic, stages of cancer, and histopathological types of cancer data were extracted.

After screening, 18,216 cases were included. A total of 12,438 patients were older than 39 years of age (68.3%), with a female-to-male ratio of 95. Most patients have cancers at advanced stages (stages III and IV, 10.2%). The most common sites of cancer were cervix uteri (2,878 cases, 15.8%), breast (2,459 castality and Prevalence 2018, which portrayed that Indonesia has been severely afflicted by cervical cancer cases more than any other Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries. The HBCR could serve as a robust database of epidemiological data for cancer cases in Indonesia.Event-based prospective memory (PM) tasks require individuals to remember to perform a previously planned action when they encounter a specific event. Often, the natural environments in which PM tasks occur are embedded are constantly changing, requiring humans to adapt by learning. We examine one such adaptation by integrating PM target learning with the prospective memory decision control (PMDC) cognitive model. We apply this augmented model to an experiment that manipulated exposure to PM targets, comparing a single-target PM condition where the target was well learned from the outset, to a multiple-target PM condition with less initial PM target exposure, allowing us to examine the effect of continued target learning opportunities. Single-target PM accuracy was near ceiling whereas multiple-target PM accuracy was initially poorer but improved throughout the course of the experiment. PM response times were longer for the multiple- compared with single-target PM task but this difference also decreased over time.

4 hrs ago

Citizen gathering evidence that geoengineering is happening in California

https://www.naturalnews.com/2025-02-10-dark-side-of-geoengineering-citizen-brave-stand.html

MellowKat, a concerned citizen from Tuolumne County, California, has documented the presence of heavy metals in rainwater samples, raising concerns about the cloud-seeding operations in her area. MellowKat confronted pilots involved in cloud-seeding operations, revealing the use of aluminum, zinc and other metals. The pilots directed her to their company’s leadership without offering immediate solutions. […]

www.naturalnews.com

02/09/2025


Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors have been widely adopted for delivery of CRISPR-Cas components, especially for therapeutic gene editing. For a single vector system, both the Cas9 and guide RNA (gRNA) are encoded within a single transgene, usually from separate promoters. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/taurochenodeoxycholic-acid.html Careful design of this bi-cistronic construct is required due to the minimal packaging capacity of AAV. We investigated how placement of the U6 promoter expressing the gRNA on the reverse strand to SaCas9 driven by a cytomegalovirus promoter affected gene editing rates compared to placement on the forward strand. We show that orientation in the reverse direction reduces editing rates from an AAV vector due to reduced transcription of both SaCas9 and guide RNA. This effect was observed only following AAV transduction; it was not seen following plasmid transfection. These results have implications for the design of AAV-CRISPR vectors, and suggest that results from optimizing plasmid transgenes may not translate when delivered via AAV.RNA interference is a powerful experimental tool for RNA knockdown, but not all organisms are amenable. Here, we provide a proof of principle demonstration that a type III Csm effector complex can be used for programmable mRNA transcript degradation in eukaryotes. In zebrafish, Streptococcus thermophilus Csm complex (StCsm) proved effective for knockdown of maternally expressed EGFP in germ cells of Tg(ddx4ddx4-EGFP) fish. It also led to significant, albeit less drastic, fluorescence reduction at one day postfertilization in Tg(myl7GFP) and Tg(fli1EGFP) fish that express EGFP zygotically. StCsm targeted against the endogenous tdgf1 elicited the characteristic one-eyed phenotype with greater than 50% penetrance, and hence with similar efficiency to morpholino-mediated knockdown. We conclude that Csm-mediated knockdown is very efficient for maternal transcripts and can also be used for mixed maternal/early zygotic and early zygotic transcripts, in some cases reaching comparable efficiency to morpholino-based knockdown without significant off-target effects.Over the past 8 years, the widespread adoption of CRISPR-based technologies has fueled the global genome editing revolution. This platform is based on Cas molecular machines such as Cas9, Cas12, Cas13, as well as other CRISPR effector proteins that are able to alter the genome, transcriptome, and epigenome of virtually any species. Technological improvements have rendered these tools more efficient and precise, and enabled functional diversification and specialization, as recently illustrated by the rise of base editing and the quickly growing demand for prime editing constructs. Here, we discuss the continued adoption of CRISPR tools and constructs distributed by the nonprofit organization Addgene, highlight the trends in the global demand for the CRISPR toolbox, and consider the widespread attitude changes around open sharing that are having a transformative effect on speeding up science.Humans carrying homozygous loss-of-function mutations in the Wnt co-receptor, low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 5 (LRP5), develop osteoporosis and a defective retinal vasculature known as familial exudative vitreoretinopathy (FEVR) due to disruption of the Wnt signaling pathway. The purpose of this study was to use CRISPR-Cas9-mediated gene editing to create strains of Lrp5-deficient rats and to determine whether knockout of Lrp5 resulted in phenotypes that model the bone and retina pathology in LRP5-deficient humans. Knockout of Lrp5 in rats produced low bone mass, decreased bone mineral density, and decreased bone size. The superficial retinal vasculature of Lrp5-deficient rats was sparse and disorganized, with extensive exudates and decreases in vascularized area, vessel length, and branch point density. This study showed that Lrp5 could be predictably knocked out in rats using CRISPR-Cas9, causing the expression of bone and retinal phenotypes that will be useful for studying the role of Wnt signaling in bone and retina development and for research on the treatment of osteoporosis and FEVR.Background Latinos are the largest minority group in the United States and when compared with non-Latino whites suffer from higher rates of certain chronic diseases. Latino community health workers (promotores de salud) are successful in improving the health of their communities. However, evidence of their effectiveness in increasing awareness of palliative care (PC) is limited. Objective To evaluate the feasibility of applying a promotores de salud model to improve PC awareness among Latinos within the context of chronic disease management. Methods Bilingual promotores from Familias en Acción trained 76 southern California promotores on PC and chronic disease management. Promotores agreed to disseminate the information learned to 10+ Latino community members. The strengths of the curriculum and the community's needs were identified during phone interviews six months post-training. Results In 406 diverse settings, 69 promotores trained 2734 community members. Interviews with promotores at follow-up established four themes (1) holistic health in chronic disease management; (2) communication with doctors; (3) shared decision making, patients' rights, and control; and (4) need for PC information (awareness, access, and support groups). Conclusion Promotores proved effective at disseminating information related to PC within chronic disease management to Latino community members. Future training should include information on support groups and where caregivers can seek help while caring for those with a terminal disease.
To explore the basic values of regional cerebral oxygen saturation (rSO
) among different age groups.

One hundred twenty patients who were scheduled for elective surgery aged 0 to 80 years (American Society of Anesthesiologists [ASA] physical status I or II) or neonates just after birth via cesarean section were enrolled and divided into the following six groups infant (0 month and ≤12 months), toddler (>1 and ≤3 years old), preschool (>3 and ≤6 years old), school age (>6 and ≤18 years old), adult (>18 and ≤65 years old), and elderly (>65 and ≤80 years old) groups. There were 20 patients in each group.

The basic values of rSO
in infant, toddler, preschool, school age, adults, and elderly groups were 70.41% ± 4.66%, 72.43% ± 3.81%, 70.77% ± 3.27%, 70.62% ± 2.20%, 69.76% ± 6.02%, and 62.69% ± 3.14%, respectively. The basic value in the elderly group was lower compared with other five groups. There was no significant difference among infant, toddler, preschool age, school age, and adult groups.

02/09/2025


Distribution of the rate of case reports is mostly commanded by the states in the extreme north (Gulf of California and northern Gulf of Mexico) and south (Gulf of southern Mexico and the Caribbean Sea). Likewise, the Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average model was selected as the best-fit model for the forecast analysis. This model was used to forecast AS cases during 2018-2019. AS may have a slight fluctuation (on the rise) during the following 24 months.

These findings underscore the importance of intensifying, as well as expanding screening and treatment in adult population, including men, who are not routinely benefiting from maternal and reproductive service-based syphilis screening and treatment.
These findings underscore the importance of intensifying, as well as expanding screening and treatment in adult population, including men, who are not routinely benefiting from maternal and reproductive service-based syphilis screening and treatment.
Food comminution during chewing is due to intra-oral particle selection and subsequent breakage. Under conditions of habitual chewing and a nearly complete selection, the influence of initial breakage on particle size reduction was studied in trials with a first chewing cycle (N = 1) from a sequence of randomized trials with various cycle numbers. Furthermore, relationships were examined between degree of fragmentation from breakage (r-fr), molar maximal bite force (MBF) and chewing efficiency (the number of cycles needed to half the initial particle size, N(1/2-Xo)).

Thirty-one subjects with a natural dentition chewed samples of 2 half-cubes (9.6 × 9.6x4.8 mm) of Optosil®, using sequences with 1-7 cycles, in 2-10 randomized trials; 10 trials with one cycle. Particle size distributions by underweight, characterized by median particle size, X
, were obtained using sieving. N(1/2-Xo) was derived from the log(X
)-log(N) relationship. and r-fr from the cumulative distribution of underweight fractions of daming small amounts of particles. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/ABT-263.html N(1/2-Xo) vs. MBF and r-fr vs. MBF were weakly related (R2≤0.124, p = 0.052-0.127). The lack of a pronounced relationship between r-fr and MBF suggests that either MBF is not relevant but supra-threshold force, or that another factor, occlusion, may influence breakage.Social insects are successful animal invaders. Their survival and success, and in some cases also their impact on invaded ecosystem functioning, is often mediated by symbiosis with microorganisms. Here, we report a comprehensive comparative characterization of the gut microbial communities of different castes and developmental stages of the invasive hornet Vespa velutina nigrithorax. The species recently colonized Europe, becoming a high ecological and economic concern, as it threatens pollinator survival and competes with native hornet species. We used targeted meta-genomics to describe the yeasts and bacteria gut communities of individuals of different reproductive phenotypes (workers and future queens), life stages (larvae, newly emerged individuals and adults) and colony non-living samples (nest paper and larval faeces). Bacilli, Gammaproteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria were the most abundant classes of bacteria, and Saccharomycetes, Dothideomycetes, Tremellomycetes and Eurotiomycetes were the most represented yeast classes. We found that the microbial compositions significantly differ across developmental stages and castes, with yeast and bacterial communities switching in frequency and abundance during ontogeny and according to reproductive phenotype. Moreover, the gut microbial communities poorly mirror those found in the nest, suggesting that hornets possess a specific microbial signature. Our results provide the first metagenomic resource of the microbiome of V. velutina in Europe and suggest the importance of considering life stages, reproductive phenotypes and nest influence in order to obtain a comprehensive picture of social insect microbial communities.Ground-level ozone (O3) is the main phytotoxic air pollutant causing crop yield reduction in China. As the main grain producing area in China, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) is facing serious O3 pollution. This study analyzed the hourly ground-level O3 observation data of 158 stations from 2014 to 2019 in YRD, and grain production data of 193 districts and counties. The exposure-response relationships based on AOT40 (accumulated hourly O3 concentration above 40 ppb) was used to estimate the yield loss and economic loss of two food crops (winter wheat and rice). This study used spatial interpolation and calculated the specific data values of each district and county in order to improve the assessment reliability. For years 2014-2019, averaged O3 concentration during the 75 days growing period of rice and wheat were 33.1-50.6 ppb and 32.2-48.0 ppb, AOT40 value were 5.2-12.0 ppm h and 4.6-9.4 ppm h, and the averaged relative yield losses were 4.9%-11.4% and 9.4%-19.3%, respectively. The trend of O3 in the YRD in a six-year period peaked in 2016 and 2017 for rice and winter wheat, respectively. During 2014-2017, the average estimated yield loss of rice was 2445 Mt. accounting for about 9.1% of the actual production, and the average estimated economic loss was about 1037 million USD; for winter wheat, it was 2025 Mt, 20.4% and 736 million USD, respectively. These results urge governments to provide effective policies and measures to control O3 pollution.The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill marked the largest environmental oil spill in human history, where it was estimated a large amount of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were released with crude oil into the environment. In this study, common PAH compounds were quantitatively determined in crude oil from the DWH spill by gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS). Twelve PAH compounds were identified and quantified from a 100× dilution of DWH crude oil naphthalene (7800 ng/mL), acenaphthylene (590 ng/mL), acenaphtehen (540 ng/mL), fluorene (2550 ng/mL), phenanthrene (2910 ng/mL), anthracene (840 ng/mL), fluoranthene (490 ng/mL), pyrene (290 ng/mL), benzo(k) fluoranthene (1050 ng/mL), benzo(b)fluoranthene (1360 ng/mL), dibenz(a,h)anthracene (2560 ng/mL), and benzo(g, h, i) perylene (630 ng/mL). Toxicity assays using the nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), indicated a single PAH compound naphthalene, exposure increased C. elegans germ cell apoptosis which may adversely affect progeny reproduction.

02/09/2025


Non-invasive, molecularly-specific, focal modulation of brain circuits with low off-target effects can lead to breakthroughs in treatments of brain disorders. We systemically inject engineered ultrasound-controllable drug carriers and subsequently apply a novel two-component Aggregation and Uncaging Focused Ultrasound Sequence (AU-FUS) at the desired targets inside the brain. The first sequence aggregates drug carriers with millimeter-precision by orders of magnitude. The second sequence uncages the carrier's cargo locally to achieve high target specificity without compromising the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Upon release from the carriers, drugs locally cross the intact BBB. We show circuit-specific manipulation of sensory signaling in motor cortex in rats by locally concentrating and releasing a GABAA receptor agonist from ultrasound-controlled carriers. Our approach uses orders of magnitude (1300x) less drug than is otherwise required by systemic injection and requires very low ultrasound pressures (20-fold below FDA safety limits for diagnostic imaging). We show that the BBB remains intact using passive cavitation detection (PCD), MRI-contrast agents and, importantly, also by sensitive fluorescent dye extravasation and immunohistochemistry.Oxepinamides are derivatives of anthranilyl-containing tripeptides and share an oxepin ring and a fused pyrimidinone moiety. To the best of our knowledge, no studies have been reported on the elucidation of an oxepinamide biosynthetic pathway and conversion of a quinazolinone to a pyrimidinone-fused 1H-oxepin framework by a cytochrome P450 enzyme in fungal natural product biosynthesis. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/4-hydroxynonenal.html Here we report the isolation of oxepinamide F from Aspergillus ustus and identification of its biosynthetic pathway by gene deletion, heterologous expression, feeding experiments, and enzyme assays. The nonribosomal peptide synthase (NRPS) OpaA assembles the quinazolinone core with D-Phe incorporation. The cytochrome P450 enzyme OpaB catalyzes alone the oxepin ring formation. The flavoenzyme OpaC installs subsequently one hydroxyl group at the oxepin ring, accompanied by double bond migration. The epimerase OpaE changes the D-Phe residue back to L-form, which is essential for the final methylation by OpaF.The influence of seasons on biological processes is poorly understood. In order to identify biological seasonal patterns based on diverse molecular data, rather than calendar dates, we performed a deep longitudinal multiomics profiling of 105 individuals over 4 years. Here, we report more than 1000 seasonal variations in omics analytes and clinical measures. The different molecules group into two major seasonal patterns which correlate with peaks in late spring and late fall/early winter in California. The two patterns are enriched for molecules involved in human biological processes such as inflammation, immunity, cardiovascular health, as well as neurological and psychiatric conditions. Lastly, we identify molecules and microbes that demonstrate different seasonal patterns in insulin sensitive and insulin resistant individuals. The results of our study have important implications in healthcare and highlight the value of considering seasonality when assessing population wide health risk and management.BACKGROUND Declining numbers of deceased donors and prolonged waiting time emphasize the importance of living kidney donation. Furthermore, because of the changing age structures with increasingly older recipients, the question of acceptance of older donors is becoming more relevant. However, sufficient long-term outcome data, especially for older donors - including histopathological analysis - are lacking. The aim of this study was to analyze the Regensburg Living Donor Cohort with regard to age less then 65 and ≥65 years, with a 10-year follow-up to identify attributable risk factors. MATERIAL AND METHODS All donors were analyzed for renal, cardiovascular, and pre-existing conditions at baseline and at follow-up. They were studied for predefined renal and additional end-points, eg cardiovascular ones and various stratifications such as estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). Additionally, as a unique feature in such an analysis, a histopathological workup of pre-existing chronic lesions of the donated kidneys was added. RESULTS On average, donors in the group less then 65 years were 50 years old at the time of donation compared with 68 years in the older group. Creatinine at baseline was 0.8 mg/dl in both groups, corresponding to an eGFR of 96.8±12.8 ml/min (Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration [CKD-EPI]) and 83.7±10.3 ml/min (CKD-EPI). In the follow-up, donors ≥65 years showed a statistically significantly worse eGFR and a greater eGFR decline, being accompanied by more pronounced chronic histopathological lesions, eg glomerulopathy, than the control group. However, this was largely constant over the entire observation period and no donor developed an end-stage renal disease or an eGFR below 30 ml/min. CONCLUSIONS To summarize, living kidney donation after an intensive screening is safe even for older donors; however, a precise aftercare to ensure balanced risk profile for living donors is mandatory.BACKGROUND Sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors are new antihyperglycemic drugs for type 2 diabetes. SGLT2 inhibitors ameliorate cardiovascular morbidity and mortality as well as kidney disease progression by reducing body weight (BW), blood pressure (BP), visceral adiposity, albuminuria, and serum uric acid and blood glucose levels. However, it is not clear which effects are pronounced, and what mechanisms are associated with these effects. MATERIAL AND METHODS This study recruited patients with type 2 diabetes who were prescribed an SGLT2 inhibitor for the first time in our outpatient department. Clinical parameters were measured before and 6 months after the administration of the SGLT2 inhibitor, without the addition of new drugs and dose changes for all prescribed drugs. RESULTS This study recruited 24 patients with type 2 diabetes. No significant differences in BP, glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels were observed after SGLT2 inhibitor administration.