The main focus of the current study is to examine the impact of melting heat transfer and chemical reactions on MHD micropolar fluid flow over a sheet that is exponentially stretching and immersed in a porous medium in which the source of heat is not uniform. Also taken into consideration are slip phenomena and thermal radiation. The governing PDEs are converted to a system of ODEs via similarity transformation and the necessary boundary conditions. These nonlinear ODEs are resolved with the help of shooting techniques and an RK-4 iterative strategy. Also, solved this problem using the Bvp4c approach for validating the results of the RK-4 method. Both outcomes are consistent with previously published data. With the help of tables and graphs, we examine the influence of multiple physical parameters on velocity, thermal profile, microrotation, concentration profiles, Nusselt number, Sherwood number, coefficient of skin friction, and Wall couple stress. We see that the temperature distribution and velocity profiles decrease when the melting parameter increases. The temperature profile boost when the heat source parameter is increased.

Hemolytic anaemia often challenges congenital heart surgery. Hereditary spherocytosis is a rare familial hemolytic anaemia. When associated with congenital heart disease, the safe performance of cardiopulmonary bypass becomes a priority. The increased risk of hemolysis during cardiopulmonary bypass could potentially lead to significant secondary organ damage. Till now, only very few reports of successful repair of a congenital heart defect in patients with hereditary spherocytosis have been reported. We report the only case of successful repair of a congenital heart defect in an infant with hereditary spherocytosis.

Ecological research is highlighting different kinds of issues concerning biodiversity conservation policies. Based on a historical study on protected areas, we suggest that these issues are not caused by a lack of knowledge or technical tools but rather by a misuse of ecological knowledge during the implementation of policy instruments. We strongly believe that determining the conditions under which ecological science can enlighten policy decisions is now necessary to address current biodiversity conservation issues. This can only be achieved through the promotion of interdisciplinary research.

Mini-commentary on BJOG-20-1156.R2: Post-mortem confirmation of fetal brain abnormalities: challenges highlighted by the MERIDIAN cohort study

Background: Group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) play a critical role in asthma pathogenesis. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)-exacerbated respiratory disease (NERD) is associated with reduced signaling via EP2, a receptor for prostaglandin E 2 (PGE 2). However, the respective roles for the PGE 2 receptors EP2 and EP4 (both share same downstream signaling) in the regulation of lung ILC2 responses has yet been deciphered. Methods: The roles of PGE 2 receptors EP2 and EP4 on ILC2-mediated lung inflammation were investigated using genetically modified mouse lines and pharmacological approaches in IL-33- and Alternaria alternata (A.A.)-induced lung allergy models. The effects of PGE 2 receptors and downstream signals on ILC2 metabolic activation and effector function were examined using in vitro cell cultures. Results: Deficiency of EP2 rather than EP4 augments IL-33-induced lung ILC2 responses and eosinophilic inflammation in vivo. In contrast, exogenous agonism of EP4 but not EP2 markedly restricts IL-33- and Alternaria alternata-induced lung ILC2 responses and eosinophilic inflammation. Mechanistically, PGE 2 directly suppresses IL-33-dependent ILC2 activation through the EP2/EP4-cAMP pathway, which downregulates STAT5 and MYC pathway gene expression and ILC2 energy metabolism. Blocking glycolysis diminishes IL-33-dependent ILC2 responses in mice lacking endogenous PG synthesis but not in PG-competent mice. Conclusion: We have defined a mechanism for optimal suppression of lung ILC2 responses by endogenous PGE 2-EP2 signaling which underpins the clinical findings of defective EP2 signaling in patients with NERD. Our findings also indicate that exogenously targeting the PGE 2-EP4-cAMP and energy metabolic pathways may provide novel opportunities for treating ILC2-initiated lung inflammation in asthma and NERD.

Severe RSV infection in infancy is associated with increased risk of recurrent wheezing in childhood. Both acute and long-term alterations in airway functions are thought to be related to inefficient anti-viral immune response. The airway epithelium, the first target of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), normally acts as an immunological barrier able to elicit an effective immune reaction but may also be programmed to directly promote a Th2 response, independently from Th2 lymphocyte involvement. Recognition of RSV transcripts and viral replication intermediates by bronchial epithelial cells brings about release of TSLP, IL-33, HMGB1 and IL-25, dubbed “alarmins”. These epithelial cell-derived proteins are particularly effective in stimulating innate lymphoid cells 2 (ILC2) to release IL-4, IL-5, and IL-13. ILC2, reflect the innate counterparts of Th2 cells and, when activate, are potent promoters of airway inflammation and hyperresponsiveness in RSV bronchiolitis and childhood wheezing/asthma. Long-term epithelial progenitors or persistent epigenetic modifications of the airway epithelium following RSV infection, may play a pathogenetic role in the short and long-term increased susceptibility to obstructive lung diseases in response to RSV in the young. Additionally, ILC2 function may be further regulated by RSV-induced changes in gut microbiota community composition that can be associated with disease severity in infants. A better understanding of the alarmin-ILC interactions in childhood might provide insights into the mechanisms characterizing these immune-mediated diseases and indicate new targets for prevention and therapeutic interventions.

An SIS epidemic reaction-diffusion model with saturated incidence rate and spontaneous infection is considered. We establish the existence of endemic equilibrium by using a fixed point theorem. We mainly investigate the effects of diffusion and saturation on asymptotic profiles of the endemic equilibrium. Our analysis shows that the spontaneous infection can enhance persistence of infectious disease.

Mobile edge computing (MEC) seems to be highly efficient to process the generated data from IoT devices by providing computational resources locating in close range to network edge. MEC can be promising in reduction of latency and consumption of energy from data transmissions from offloading computational tasks from IoT devices to nearby edge servers. In this paper, a computation offloading optimization algorithm is proposed which is based on deep deterministic policy gradient for realistic Aurelia X6 Pro unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted MEC systems. The proposed algorithm optimizes the offloading decision for UAVs by taking task characteristics and the communication environment into consideration. The simulation yields outcomes indicating that the suggested algorithm can considerably enhance the competency of MEC systems.

Early signaling events in response to elicitation include reversible protein phosphorylation and re-localization of plasma membrane (PM) proteins. Oligogalacturonides (OGs) are a class of Damage-Associated Molecular Patterns (DAMPs) that act as endogenous signals to activate the plant immune response. Previous data on early phosphoproteome changes in Arabidopsis thaliana upon OG perception uncovered the immune-related phospho-regulation of several membrane proteins, among which PCaP1, a PM-anchored protein with actin filament-severing activity, was chosen for its potential involvement in OG- as well as flagellin-triggered responses. Here we demonstrate that PCaP1 is required for late, but not early, responses induced by OGs and flagellin. Moreover, pcap1 mutants, unlike the wild type, are impaired in the recovery of full responsiveness to a second treatment with OGs performed 24 h after the first one. Localization studies on PCaP1 upon OG treatment in plants expressing a functional PCaP1-GFP fusion under the control of PCaP1 promoter revealed fluorescence on the PM, organized in densely packed punctate structures, previously reported as microdomains. Fluorescence was found to be associated also with endocytic vesicles, the number of which rapidly increased after OG treatment, suggesting both an endocytic turnover of PCaP1 for maintaining its homeostasis at the PM and an OG-induced endocytosis.

The effect of antenatal depressive and anxious symptoms on the rate of physiological birthsA comment on the recently published article by Hulsbosch et al:Association between high levels of comorbid anxiety and depressive symptoms and decreased likelihood of birth without intervention: A longitudinal prospective cohort study

We praise the authors for their work, and for the lyric title of their paper. We give a concise sketch of the present level of understanding of Quercus forest in Colombia. We identify the shortcomings in this published paper. We improve the relevance of this paper about Quercus as well as for future phylogenetic investigations other montane forest taxa to be framed in the rapidly improving palaeoecological understanding of the Northern Andes.

Most biomolecules become functional and bioactive by forming protein complexes through interaction with ligands that are diverse in size, shape, and physicochemical properties. In the complex biological milieu, the interaction is ligand-specific, driven by molecular sensing and recognition of a binding interface localized within a protein structure. Mapping interfaces of protein complexes is a highly sought area of research as it delivers fundamental insights into proteomes and pathology and hence strategies for therapeutics. While X-ray crystallography and electron microscopy still serve as a gold standard for structural elucidation of protein complexes, artificial and static analytic nature thereof often results in a non-native interface that otherwise might be negligible or non-existent in biological environment. In recent years, the mass spectrometry-coupled approaches, chemical crosslinking (CLMS) and hydrogen-deuterium exchange (HDMS), have become valuable analytic complements to traditional techniques. These methods explicitly identify hot residues and motifs embedded in binding interfaces, in particular, for which the interaction is predominantly dynamic, transient, and/or caused by an intrinsically disordered domain. Here we review the principal role of CLMS and HDMS in protein structural biology with a particular emphasis on the contribution of recent examples to exploring biological interfaces. In addition, we describe recent studies that utilized these methods to expand our understanding of protein complex formation and related biological processes and to increase probability of structure-based drug design.

1. Prey metabarcoding has become a popular tool in molecular ecology for resolving trophic interactions at high resolution, from various sample types and animals. To date, most predator-prey studies of small-sized animals (<1 mm) have met the problem of overabundant predator DNA in dietary samples by adding blocking primers/peptide nucleic acids. These primers aim to limit the PCR amplification and detection of the predator DNA but may introduce bias to the prey composition identified by interacting with sequences that are similar to those of the predator. 2. Here we demonstrate the use of an alternative method to explore the prey of small marine copepods using whole-body DNA extracts and deep, brute force metabarcoding of an 18S rDNA fragment. 3. After processing and curating raw data from two sequencing runs of varying depth (0.4 and 5.4 billion raw reads), we isolated 1.3 and 52.2 million prey reads, with average depths of ~15 900 and ~120 000 prey reads per copepod individual, respectively. While data from both sequencing runs were sufficient to distinguish dietary compositions from disparate seasons, locations and copepod species, greater sequencing depth led to better separation of clusters. 4. As computation and sequencing are becoming ever more powerful and affordable, we expect the brute force approach to become a general standard for prey metabarcoding, as it offers a simple and affordable solution to consumers that are impractical to dissect or unknown to science.

The purpose of text classification is to label the text with known labels. In recent years, the method based on graph neural network (GNN) has achieved good results. However, the existing methods based on GNN only regard the text as the set of co-occurring words, without considering the position information of each word in the statement. Meanwhile, this method mainly extracts node features, but neglects the use of edge features between nodes. To solve these problems, a new text classification method, graph convolutional network using positions and edges (PEGCN), is proposed. In the word embedding section, a positional encoding input representation is employed to enable the neural network to learn the relative positional information among words. Meanwhile, the dimension of the adjacency matrix is increased to extract the multi-dimensional edge features. Through experiments on multiple text classification datasets, the proposed method is shown to be superior to the traditional text classification method, and has achieved a maximum improvement of more than 4%.

We experienced refeeding syndrome (RFS) with an eating disorder and distal renal tubular acidosis (dRTA). A low body mass is high-risk factors for RFS development. Therefore, frequently measurement of serum phosphorus levels at the initiation of nutrition and rapid administration of phosphate preparations are required to prevent RFS-related organ failure.

Ageing is accompanied by numerous changes within the sensory and motor component of the muscle spindle pathway. To further document these age-related changes, this study compared the characteristics of the Hoffmann (H) reflex and M wave, evoked with several pulse durations, between young and old adults. The H-reflex and M-wave recruitment curves were analysed from recordings performed at rest in the flexor carpi radialis of 12 young (21-36 yrs) and 12 old adults (62-80 yrs). For each pulse duration (0.05-ms, 0.2-ms, and 1-ms), the maximal H-reflex amplitude (HMAX), the associated M wave (MHmax), and the H-reflex amplitude for a stimulus intensity evoking an M-wave of 5% MMAX (HM5%) were measured. The strength-duration time constant and response threshold were estimated from the charge/stimulus-duration relation for H reflex and M wave. The main results indicate that varying pulse duration mainly induces similar effect on H-reflex and M-wave recruitment curves between young and old adults. However, regardless of pulse duration, old adults had lesser HMAX (p = 0.029) but greater HM5% (p<0.001) and MHmax (p<0.001). The strength-duration time constant was lesser in old than young adults for the H reflex (p=0.048) but not the M wave (p=0.21). The H-reflex and M-wave response thresholds were greater in old than young adults (p=0.003). These results suggest greater age-related changes in the sensory than motor component of the H-reflex pathway, which may be indicative of a greater loss of sensory than motor axons or alterations of synapses between Ia afferents and motor neurones.

The effects of forest conversion from natural forest to agricultural system on soil microbial composition still need further study. Especially, impact on soil function after forest conversion is not yet known. In this study, by using metagenomic sequencing as well as 16S and ITS sequencing technology, we evaluated the soil microbial composition, diversity and functions based on a large number of soil samples of tropical rainforest and rubber plantation across the whole island of Hainan, south China. The results showed that (1) forest conversion changed microbial composition from bacterial groups of Proteobacteria to Chloroflexi, and fungal groups from Basidiomycota to Ascomycota. (2) The bacterial alpha diversity, beta diversity as well as the total diversity did not decrease after forest conversion. However, beta diversity of fungal community reduced resulting a net loss of total OTU richness. (3) There was no difference in soil functional compositions and diversity between rubber plantations and rainforest, however, the relative gene abundance of most COG functions, KEGG functions, CAZy functions as well as Antibiotic gene were significantly different between rubber plantation and tropical rainforest. (4) Soil pH and environmental heterogeneity were the main driver for microbial taxonomic composition and gene functional composition. Land use did not result in changes of functional gene composition, but the relative abundance of functional gene. The changed relative abundance gene would alter the ecosystem processes. In conclusion, our results confirmed that land use changes alter the soil microbial community structure and can have profound effects on ecosystem functions and processes.

Cervical lymphadenopathy is a very common complaint for patients presenting to an endocrinology clinic. This case highlights common locations that malignancy presents at as well as their ultrasound characteristics.