Changes in Conception Rates, Not in Pregnancy-Related Behavior, Likely Caused Decline in Pre-Term Births in Developed Countries During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic 11* Corresponding author: Peter Fallesen, peter.fallesen@sofi.su.se, Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm 106 91, Sweden.Peter Fallesen, PhDSwedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm 106 91, Sweden ROCKWOOL Foundation, Ny Kongensgade 6, 1472 Copenhagen C, DenmarkMoritz Oberndorfer, DSc  Institute of Social Medicine, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Kinderspitalgasse 15/1. Stock, A-1090, Vienna, Austria; MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Berkeley Square, 99 Berkeley Street, Glasgow, G3 7HR, UK  Population Research Unit, University of Helsinki, Unioninkatu 35 (P.O. Box 18). 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland  

We report two cases of anterior displacement of the grafted bone after posterior lumbar interbody fusion. The patients did not require additional surgery. Anterior migration of grafted bone or cage can cause damage to anterior organs and blood vessels, so a careful surgical procedure is necessary.

Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation as Acute Rescue Therapy for Negative Pressure Pulmonary Edema in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit: A Case ReportKatrina J. Augustin, MD1,*; Christina M. Creel-Bulos, MD1,2; Gaurav F. Budhrani, MD1,3; Casey F. Miller, ANP-BC4 ; Babar Fiza, MD1;1Department of Anesthesiology, Division of Critical Care Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA; 2Department of Emergency Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA;3Anesthesiology Service Line, Atlanta VA Medical Center, Atlanta, GA, USA; 4 Department of Surgery, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA*Corresponding author: Department of Anesthesiology; Emory University; 1364 Clifton Road, NE; Atlanta, GA 30322; +1-404-778-7777;

In this study, we performed numerical simulations using SILVACO-TICAD considering microelectronic and photonic structures to determine the feasibility and design the device structure to optimize the performance of a vertical multijunctions thin films solar cell based CIGS under air mass 1.5 global (AM1.5G) spectrums. The vertical tandem structure consists of a three junctions. The main purpose of this work is to show how conversion efficiency depends on thickness of the CIGS absorbing layer for the proposed (VMJ), our calculations product optimal photovoltaic parameters, namely the short-circuit current density (Jsc), open circuit voltage (Voc), are Jsc = 32.42 mA/cm 2, Voc = 2.52 V respectively with a conversion efficiency equal 34.68%.

The article discusses the interconnected fields of computing and machine learning, and their impact on various areas such as energy, economics, indoor positioning, and business. Computing provides the foundation for data processing and storage, while machine learning enables algorithms and models to learn from data and make predictions. These advancements have revolutionized how we approach complex problems and opened up new avenues for research and innovation. The article highlights the potential of computing and data science to solve complex problems and the importance of staying up-to-date with the latest developments.

Zexie Decoction which was composed of Zexie (Alisma orientale) and Baizhu (Atractylodes macrocephala) played an important role in the treatment of vertigo. The methods of network pharmacology were used to explore the possible targets of the effective components of Zexie Decoction in the treatment of vertigo. 12 main active components were selected and screened out in this study, containing 8 compounds from Alisma orientale and 4 compounds from Atractylodes macrocephala. 331 targets of active ingredients, including MAPK1, EGFR, MAPK14, ERBB2, PIK3CA were determined as the target proteins for the active site for the Zexie Decoction in the treatment of vertigo. The results of KEGG pathway enrichment analysis showed that it mainly involved Proteoglycans in cancer, ErbB signaling pathway, HIF-1 signaling pathway, chord metabolism in cancer, Estrogen signaling pathway, Prolactin signaling pathway and osteogenic class differentiation, etc. This study reflected the characteristics of multi-component, multi-target and multi-channel action of compound Zexie Decoction, providing new ideas and targets for the intervention mechanism of Zexie Decoction on vertigo.

Background: The aim of this study was to compare the technical and clinical effectiveness of two platforms (Phadia ImmunoCAP™ and Hycor NOVEOS) for the measurement of IgE specific for 10 food allergens. Methods: 289 patients, as part of allergy diagnosis or of their follow-up were included and tested for IgE specific for six food allergen extracts (egg white, cow’s milk, peanut, hazelnut, fish, shrimp) and four molecular allergens (Gal d 1, Bos d 8, Ara h 2, Cor a 14). Specific IgE measurements were carried out using the ImmunoCAP™ and NOVEOS methods. Food allergy diagnosis was established according to international guidelines. Results: A very good correlation (rho>0.9) was present between the two platforms, while specific IgE concentrations measured with NOVEOS were consistently lower (mean -15%) than with ImmunoCAP™. NOVEOS provided higher overall odd-ratios and relative risks for allergen extracts than ImmunoCAP™, but the difference was not significant. When all ten allergens were considered, NOVEOS provided better ROC curves (p=0.03) and thus, had a better ability to establish the true value. Finally, we found that the most discordant results were observed with hazelnut and peanut extracts, and were related to cross-reactive carbohydrate determinants on these two ImmunoCAP™. Conclusions: Specific IgE determination by either ImmunoCAP™ (odd-ratios of allergy = 25.1) or NOVEOS (odd-ratios of allergy = 33.0) is similarly highly informative on the risk of allergy in the selected population. The NOVEOS platform presents the advantage of being less affected by unwanted reactivity due to IgE specific for carbohydrate determinants, while requiring a ten-fold lower test sample volume.

A document by Rohit Gupta . Click on the document to view its contents.

Cutaneous vasculitis after COVID-19 vaccination in a 41-year-old maleMehran Pournazari1, Shirin Assar1, Faraneh Farsad2, Dena Mohamadzadeh11Clinical Research Development Center, Imam Reza Hospital, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran2 Research Centre of Loghman Hakim Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

A computational modeling is employed for quantitative assessment of weld formation and area of tissue temperature necrosis during the human skin laser soldering. The evaluation is carried out depending on the components composition of using solders, including bovine serum albumin (BSA), indocyanine green (ICG), and carbon nanotubes (CNT), as well as the angle of incidence of laser light and its pulse duration. The influence of CNT on the change of thermodynamic characteristics of albumin denaturation and the rate of formation of the laser weld is investigated. The obtained results suggest to limit the duration of laser light pulse by temperature relaxation time to minimize transfer of thermal energy to reduce the heating of human skin tissues. The developed model has a great potential for further optimization of laser soldering of biological tissues technology with greater efficiency in minimizing the weld area.

Based on the data of indexed papers from Inspec database, scientometrics and statistics-related analysis methods are used to study the overall development trend of international cooperation in advanced manufacturing, the characteristics and evolution of major countries in four dimensions of cooperation scale, cooperation intensity, cooperation network and cooperation network from 2011 to 2020, and this article focuses on the changing trend of China and the differences existing with other countries. The study shows that cooperation in advanced manufacturing has an upward trend, with China and the US having a clear lead in cooperation scale and intensity. China leads the most in the aspect of international cooperation in advanced manufacturing. And the U.S. is at the heart of a network of cooperation across the field.

A total number of 64 bacterial strains isolated from two volcanic tuff rock located in Teisani, Prahova and Malul Alb, Buzau areas were investigated for ability to producing factor with antagonistic activity (AF). From these, 59 strains have the ability to synthesis AF acting against other strains isolated from these ecosystems. Some of the strains (1-2 and 1-7 respectively, isolated from Malul Alb) are acting as antimicrobial against pathogenic strains Staphyloccocus aureus and Lysteria monocytogenes. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-Ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis revealed a chemically composition based on the compounds of silica, calcium, potassium, aluminum, iron and titanium as well as the presence of groups characteristic to organic compounds. A relatively high number of microbial strains as colony-forming units (CFU) were quantified at 7x104 for the Teişani sample and 1.5x105 for the Malul Alb sample per gram of rock.

A document by Jiada Li. Click on the document to view its contents.

Traditional stormwater control measures are designed to handle system loadings induced by fixed-size storm events. However, climate change is predicted to alter the frequency and intensity of flooding events, stimulating the need to explore another more adaptive flooding solution like real-time control (RTC). This study assesses the performance of RTC to mitigate impacts of climate change on urban flooding resilience. A simulated, yet realistic, urban drainage system in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, shows that RTC improves the flooding resilience by up to 17% under climatic rainfall changes. Compared with green stormwatrer infrastructure (GSI), RTC exhibits a lower resistibility, lower flooding failure level, and higher recovery rate in system performance curves. Results articulate that keeping RTC’s performance consistent under ‘back-to-back’ storms requires a tradeoff between upstream dynamical operation and downstream flooding functionality loss. This research suggests that RTC provides a new path towards smart and resilient stormwater management strategy.

Assessing the resilience of urban drainage systems requires the consideration of future threats that will disrupt the system performance and trigger urban flooding failures. However, most existing resilience assessments of urban drainage systems rarely consider the uncertainties from future urban redevelopment and climate change, which leads to the underestimation of future disturbances toward system performance. This paper fills in the gap of assessing the combined and relative impacts of future impervious land cover and rainfall changes on flooding resilience in the context of a densely-infilled urban catchment severed by an urban drainage system in Salt Lake City, Utah, the USA. An event-based flooding resilience index is proposed to measure climatic and urbanized impacts on flooding resilience from system-level to junction-level, enabling engineers to harvests high-resolution infrastructure adaptation strategies at the vulnerable spots. Impact comparison shows that imperious urban surface induces more effects on the system performance curves by magnifying the maximum failure level, lengthening the recovery duration, and aggravating the flooding severity than future rainfall changes. A nonlinear logarithm resilience correlation is found, and this finding shows that flooding resilience is more sensitive to the land imperviousness change due to urban redevelopment than rainfall intensity change in the case study. This research work predicts the system response to the uncertainties induced by climate change and urban redevelopment, improving the understanding of impacts analysis and contributing to the advancement of resilient urban drainage systems in changing environments.

Long-term climate resilience and poverty eradication in Kenya are expected to be affected by continued global warming. Using observed climate data and projections from a regionally downscaled global climate model, and environmental and socioeconomic data, we mapped hotspots of climate change vulnerability to support the prioritization of resilience-building interventions. Significant decreasing trends in rainfall were found in most of the eastern and coastal areas of the country. High rainfall variability was observed in most arid and semi-arid regions. A higher increase in mean annual temperatures was observed in the cooler highlands of central and western regions and lower in the arid and semi-arid regions. The decreasing trends in rainfall coupled with high variability and increases in mean temperatures were projected to continue. Similarly, hotspots of high vulnerability were mostly located in arid and semi-arid regions. The vulnerability was mainly driven by climate stresses that were observed in these areas including high temperatures, high rainfall variability, decreasing rainfall, and where access to clean water, good housing, health services, and market services was poor. Additionally, these areas had high poverty rates and occupied about 68% of the country with an estimated population of eight million people in 2016. Projections show that “high" vulnerability could increase by 45% and 47% under RCP 4.5 and 8.5 respectively, roping in an additional 5–9 million people by 2050. The vulnerability maps developed here can be used to establish drought impact models that take into account existing adaptation measures, and the expected intensification of vulnerability with climate change. In addition, they can also be used to drive adaptation funding models that are tied to outcomes that result in significant and scalable benefits.

Three-dimensional (3D) printed bioactive scaffolds have been widely used in the field of bone tissue engineering. However, its visualization in vivo and bacterial inflammation are intractable issues during the surgery and treatment. Herein, we firstly synthesized an aggregation-induced emission-active luminogen (AIEgen), named as 4BC, with efficient reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation. Then, a series of 3D bioactive scaffolds loading 4BC were fabricated by precipitation adsorption method, namely 4BC@scaffolds, which showed good in situ imaging performance for the implanted scaffolds by using simple UV light irradiation. Among them, 4BC@TMP scaffold composed of trimagnesium phosphate (TMP) had an excellent bactericidal ability for E. coli and S. aureus in vitro and resisted bacterial inflammation in vivo through photodynamic action. H&E and immunofluorescence staining were performed to further evaluate the inhibitory effect of bacterial inflammation in vivo. This work verified that AIEgen-based 3D scaffolds are promising bioactive frameworks for bioimaging and antibacterial application.

A document by Sunday Ochai. Click on the document to view its contents.

Background: Sofosbuvir, a very effective new direct-acting antiviral agent (DAA), has revolutionized the therapeutic management of people infected with hepatitis C virus. It has a low reported rate of side effects. Leukocytoclastic vasculitis can be associated with hepatitis C but can also be induced by many drugs. We describe a case of leucocytoclasic vasculitis induced by Sofosbuvir that resolved 3 days after drug withdrawal. We observed a temporal relationship between the treatment and the onset of vasculitis. We emphasize the multidisciplinary approach to patients with hepatitis C to make the difference between drug-induced skin damage and damage caused by the virus itself. Case presentation: A 61-year-old woman, with a history of hepatitis C virus infection started treatment with the combination ledipasvir sofosbuvir in June 2020, 400 mg per day. Five weeks later, she developed a slightly itchy erythematous and symmetrical rash on lower members. The patient initially suspected the treatment and she stopped it. Histological finding revealed a diffuse neutrophile infiltration of vessel walls confirming leukocytoclastic vasculitis. These lesions disappeared completely three days after drug withdrawal without any symptomatic treatment. Conclusions: Sofosbuvir is one of the several recent drugs that should be prone to further attention.

Inflammation accompany pregnancy for physiological reasons but can be also involved in pathological process with deleterious effect on placental function and fetal development. Transmembrane exchange of essential and waste substances in the placenta is one of the most important placental roles. This study focusses on two solute carrier transporters, OCTN1 (SLC22A4) and OCTN2 (SLC22A5), with OCTN2 playing a role in the placental uptake of L-carnitine and OCTN1 generally believed to ensure cell protection against oxidative stress. We employed two cellular models and ex vivo cultured human placental villous explants to address possible changes in the expression of placental OCTN1/2 upon inflammatory environment. Our data reveal the upregulation of OCTN1/ SLC22A4 in HTR-8/SVneo treated with TNF-α and IFN-γ. LPS was able to enhance OCTN1 expression in explants and IFN γ increased expression of OCTN1 in BeWo cells. OCTN2/ SLC22A5 expression was upregulated upon exposition of IFN-γ in HTR-8/SVneo cells but decreased following treatment of BeWo cells with TNF-α. TNF-α and also LPS further decreased expression of OCTN2 in ex vivo explants. In conclusion, our data show for the first time that the gene expression of OCTN1 as well as OCTN2 can be affected by inflammatory environment in human placenta.

Objectives: We aimed to clarify the effects of methamphetamine (MA) on myocardial injury, oxidative stress, and apoptosis in myocardial cells and to explore the potential mechanism of nuclear factor-erythroid factor 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) in MA-induced oxidative stress and apoptosis. Methods: An acute mice cardiac toxicity model of MA was established by intraperitoneal injection of MA (2 mg/kg) for 5 days. Nrf2 activation (by sulforaphane (SFN)) and Nrf2 gene knockout were performed to explore the regulatory effects of Nrf2 on cardiac toxicity. Results: The protein expression levels of Nrf2 and HO-1 were increased, suggesting that MA activated the Nrf2/HO-1 pathway. In the MA group, cardiac troponin I (cTnI) protein expression increased. Malondialdehyde (MDA) content increased, superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity decreased. Protein expression levels of Caspase-3 and Bax increased, and protein expression levels of Bcl-2 decreased. These changes were reversed by activation of Nrf2 but became more pronounced after Nrf2 knockout, suggesting that the activation and knockout of Nrf2 attenuated and aggravated MA-induced myocardial injury, oxidative stress and apoptosis in myocardial cells, respectively. Conclusions: MA administration induced myocardial injury, oxidative stress, and apoptosis in mice. Nrf2 attenuated MA-induced myocardial injury by regulating oxidative stress and apoptosis, thus playing a protective role.

In cellular circumstances where carbohydrates are scarce, plants can use alternative substrates for cellular energetic maintenance. In plants, the main protein reserve is present in the chloroplast, which contains most of the total leaf proteins and represents a rich source of nitrogen and amino acids. Autophagy plays a key role in chloroplast breakdown, a well-recognized symptom of both natural and stress-induced plant senescence. Remarkably, an autophagic-independent route of chloroplast degradation associated with Chloroplast Vesiculation (CV) gene was recently demonstrated. During extended darkness, CV is highly induced in the absence of autophagy, contributing to the early senescence phenotype of atg mutants. To further investigate the role of CV under dark-induced senescence conditions, mutants with low expression of CV ( amircv) and double mutants amircv1xatg5 were characterized. Following darkness treatment, no aberrant phenotypes were observed in amircv single mutants; however, amircv1xatg5 double mutants displayed early senescence and enhanced dismantling of chloroplast and membrane structures under these conditions. Metabolic characterization revealed that the functional lack of both CV and autophagy leads to higher impairment of amino acid release and differential organic acid accumulation during starvation conditions. The data obtained are discussed in the context of the role of CV and autophagy, both in terms of cellular metabolism and the regulation of chloroplast degradation.

Chromatographic data processing has garnered attention due to multiple FDA 483 citations and warning letters, highlighting the need for a robust technological solution. The healthcare industry has the potential to greatly benefit from the adoption of digital technologies, but the process of implementing these technologies can be slow and complex. This article presents a “Digital by Design” managerial approach, adapted from pharmaceutical quality by design principles, for designing and implementing an artificial intelligence (AI)-based solution for chromatography peak integration process in the healthcare industry. We report the use of a convolutional neural network model to predict analytical variability for integrating chromatography peaks and propose a potential GxP framework for using artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry that includes elements on data management, model management, and human-in-the-loop processes. The component on analytical variability prediction has a great potential to enable Industry 4.0 objectives on real-time release testing, automated quality control, and continuous manufacturing.

Global studies of organismal distribution and climatic vulnerability rely on the mostly untested assumption that heat tolerance restricts the maximum temperatures estimated at the warm edges of their geographic distribution (Tmax). Herein we test this assumption across the animal kingdom and examine whether the strength of restrictions depends on how challenging heat becomes for their tolerance. Thermal limits restrict species’ warm distributional edges across the animal kingdom, being restrictions less consistent for reptiles and describing a striking non-linear relationship for marine fish that contrast with terrestrial groups. Besides, heat tolerance restricts the geographic warm edges more strongly for species exposed to more defying temperatures at ranges’ warm edges.