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Yearb Med Inform 2021 Apr 21. Epub 2021 Apr 21.

On behalf of the Swedish interest organizations for Elderly, Stockholm, Sweden. Member of SeniorNet and Active Seniors non-profit organizations.

Background: The ambient assisted living (AAL) market is rapidly becoming fundamental to the delivery of health and social care services for the elderly. Worldwide many different steps have been taken to increase the engagement of older adults with these technologies. Much of this work has focused on the development of novel digital services that increase wellbeing or tackle social challenges. Read More

Yearb Med Inform 2021 Apr 21. Epub 2021 Apr 21.

Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University, USA.

Background: The worldwide tragedy of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic vividly demonstrates just how inadequate mitigation and control of the spread of infectious diseases can be when faced with a new microorganism with unknown pathogenic effects. Responses by governments in charge of public health, and all other involved organizations, have proved largely wanting. Data infrastructure and the information and communication systems needed to deal with the pandemic have likewise not been up to the task. Read More

J Mech Behav Biomed Mater 2021 Apr 18;119:104518. Epub 2021 Apr 18.

Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.

Nature provides many biological materials and structures with exceptional energy absorption capabilities. Few, relatively simple molecular building blocks (e.g. Read More

Acta Biomater 2021 Apr 18. Epub 2021 Apr 18.

Key Laboratory of Drug-Targeting and Drug Delivery System of the Education Ministry and Sichuan Province, Sichuan Engineering Laboratory for Plant-Sourced Drug and Sichuan Research Center for Drug Precision Industrial Technology, West China School of Pharmacy, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, People's Republic of China. Electronic address:

The dilemma of tumor accumulation and deep penetration has always been a barrier in antitumor therapy. Stimuli-responsive size changeable drug delivery systems provide possible solutions. Nevertheless, the low size-shrinkage efficiency limited the antitumor effects. Read More

J Org Chem 2021 Apr 21. Epub 2021 Apr 21.

School of Chemical Engineering and Light Industry, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, P. R. China.

A three-component reaction involving arynes, trialkyl phosphites, and halides has been achieved under mild reaction conditions. This transformation provides a direct synthetic approach to -halogenated arylphosphonates, which could be rapidly converted to diversely -functionalized arylphosphorus compounds. Read More

Acta Neuropathol 2021 Apr 21. Epub 2021 Apr 21.

Network Center for Biomedical Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIBERNED), L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain.

Triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) is an innate immune cell surface receptor that regulates microglial function and is involved in the pathophysiology of several neurodegenerative diseases. Its soluble form (sTREM2) results from shedding of the TREM2 ectodomain. The role of TREM2 in prion diseases, a group of rapidly progressive dementias remains to be elucidated. Read More

Ophthalmologe 2021 Apr 21. Epub 2021 Apr 21.

Klinik für Augenheilkunde, Universitätsklinikum Münster, Münster, Deutschland.

Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A) is a very promising noninvasive imaging modality. For the first time it enables a precise 3‑dimensional depiction of the retinal microcirculation without the use of contrast medium and can be carried out rapidly and simply. This makes OCT‑A interesting for both scientific and clinical applications. Read More

Analyst 2021 Apr 21. Epub 2021 Apr 21.

Laboratory of Biometrology, Division of Chemistry and Ionizing Radiation Measurement Technology, Shanghai Institute of Measurement and testing technology, Shanghai, 201203, P.R. China.

Since the application of RNA interference (RNAi) is rapidly developing in GMO technology, accurate and sensitive detection of functional RNA molecules was urgently needed, for the safety and functional assessment of RNAi crops. In this work, we developed an electrochemical biosensor for transgene-derived long RNA based on a poly-adenine (polyA) DNA capture probe. The polyA self-assembling monolayer (SAM) provided enhanced interface stability and optimized surface density for the subsequent hybridization of the long RNA molecule. Read More

EMBO Rep 2021 Apr 20:e52146. Epub 2021 Apr 20.

College of Animal Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.

Obesity has become a major health problem that has rapidly prevailed over the past several decades worldwide. Curcumin, a natural polyphenolic compound present in turmeric, has been shown to have a protective effect on against obesity and metabolic diseases. However, its underlying mechanism remains largely unknown. Read More

Mol Med Rep 2021 Jun 21;23(6). Epub 2021 Apr 21.

Institute of Disaster Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, P.R. China.

Acute kidney injury (AKI) has become a global public health problem with high morbidity and mortality rates, as well as high healthcare costs. Immune cells, particularly macrophages, which regulate tissue development, destroy pathogens, control homeostasis and repair wounds, play crucial and complex roles in AKI. In various types of AKI, numerous rapidly recruited monocytes and tissue‑resident macrophages act in a coordinated manner. Read More

Beijing Da Xue Xue Bao Yi Xue Ban 2021 Mar;53(2):425-433

Institute of Medical Technology, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing 100191, China.

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) imaging has the unique potential to bridge the gap between cellular and molecular biology. Therefore, cryo-EM three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction has been rapidly developed in recent several years and applied widely in life science research to reveal the structures of large macromolecular assemblies and cellular complexes, which is critical to understanding their functions at all scales. Although the technical breakthrough in recent years, for example, the introduction of the direct detection device (DDD) camera and the development of cryo-EM software tools, made the three cryo-EM pioneers share the 2017 Nobel Prize, several bottleneck problems still exist that hamper the further increase of the resolution of single-particle reconstruction and hold back the application of subnanometer structure determination by cryo-tomography. Read More

Nat Commun 2021 Apr 20;12(1):2336. Epub 2021 Apr 20.

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA.

Surface meltwater runoff dominates present-day mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet. In Greenland's interior, porous firn can limit runoff by retaining meltwater unless perched low-permeability horizons, such as ice slabs, develop and restrict percolation. Recent observations suggest that such horizons might develop rapidly during extreme melt seasons. Read More

Addict Sci Clin Pract 2021 Apr 20;16(1):24. Epub 2021 Apr 20.

Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle, WA, USA.

Telemedicine (TM) enabled by digital health technologies to provide medical services has been considered a key solution to increasing health care access in rural communities. With the immediate need for remote care due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many health care systems have rapidly incorporated digital technologies to support the delivery of remote care options, including medication treatment for individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD). In responding to the opioid crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials and scientific communities strongly support and advocate for greater use of TM-based medication treatment for opioid use disorder (MOUD) to improve access to care and have suggested that broad use of TM during the pandemic should be sustained. Read More

BMC Bioinformatics 2021 Apr 20;22(1):201. Epub 2021 Apr 20.

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA, 92093, USA.

Background: A major challenge in evaluating quantitative ChIP-seq analyses, such as peak calling and differential binding, is a lack of reliable ground truth data. Accurate simulation of ChIP-seq data can mitigate this challenge, but existing frameworks are either too cumbersome to apply genome-wide or unable to model a number of important experimental conditions in ChIP-seq.

Results: We present ChIPs, a toolkit for rapidly simulating ChIP-seq data using statistical models of key experimental steps. Read More

Water Res 2021 Apr 8;198:117132. Epub 2021 Apr 8.

College of Environment, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310014, China. Electronic address:

The interaction of As(III) with micron-sized, mechanochemically sulfidated zero-valent iron (S-mZVI) has been studied under both anoxic and oxic conditions. The As(III) removal capacity varied with the increase of S/Fe molar ratio under anoxic conditions, while it continuously decreased under oxic conditions. A series of sequential extractions, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy analyses were used to investigate As(III) removal mechanisms. Read More

Forensic Sci Int 2021 Apr 17;323:110781. Epub 2021 Apr 17.

Département de chimie, biochimie et physique, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, 3351 boul. des Forges, Trois-Rivières, G8Z 4M3 Québec, Canada.

The occurrence of mass disasters has increased worldwide due to changing environments from global warming and a heightened threat of terrorism acts. When these disasters strike, it is imperative to rapidly locate and recover human victims, both the living and deceased. While search and rescue dogs are used to locate the living, cadaver detection dogs are typically tasked with locating the dead. Read More

Acta Biomater 2021 Apr 17. Epub 2021 Apr 17.

Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado - Boulder, 1111 Engineering Center, 427 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309. Electronic address:

The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a complex network of biomolecules that mechanically and biochemically directs cell behavior and is crucial for maintaining tissue function and health. The heterogeneous organization and composition of the ECM varies within and between tissue types, directing mechanics, aiding in cell-cell communication, and facilitating tissue assembly and reassembly during development, injury and disease. As technologies like 3D printing rapidly advance, researchers are better able to recapitulate in vivo tissue properties in vitro; however, tissue-specific variations in ECM composition and organization are not given enough consideration. Read More

J Pharm Sci 2021 Apr 17. Epub 2021 Apr 17.

Department of Polymer Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310018, China.

In this work, the rapidly separable microneedles (MNs) consisted of needle-tips and supporting bases have been fabricated by a step-by-step coating method. Poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) have been used to prepare the needle-tips of MNs in which they are capped on the solvable supporting bases consisted of sodium bicarbonate, poly (vinyl pyrolidone) (PVP), and tartaric acid (TA) (NaHCO/PVP/TA). After insertion into the skin, the needle-tips can be separated rapidly from the patches within 90 s due to the generation of air bubbles in the supporting bases by the reaction between NaHCO and TA after absorption of tissue fluid, leading to the needle-tips remaining in the skin tissue. Read More

J Clin Invest 2021 Apr 20. Epub 2021 Apr 20.

School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Rapidly growing tumors often experience hypoxia and nutrient (e.g., glucose) deficiency because of poor vascularization. Read More

Inform Health Soc Care 2021 Apr 20:1-12. Epub 2021 Apr 20.

Centre for Statistics, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu, India - 603 203.

Burden due to infectious and noncommunicable disease is increasing at an alarming rate. Social media usage is growing rapidly and has become the new norm of communication. It is imperative to examine what is being discussed in the social media about diseases or conditions and the characteristics of the network of people involved in discussion. Read More

J Phys Chem Lett 2021 Apr 20:3983-3988. Epub 2021 Apr 20.

ICFO - Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Castelldefels, Barcelona 08860, Spain.

The performance of nonfullerene-acceptor-(NFA)-based organic solar cells is rapidly approaching the efficiency of inorganic cells. The chemical versatility of NFAs extends the light-harvesting range to the infrared, while preserving a considerably high open-circuit-voltage, crucial to achieve power-conversion efficiencies >17%. Such low voltage losses in the charge separation process have been attributed to a low-driving-force and efficient exciton dissociation. Read More

Bull Environ Contam Toxicol 2021 Apr 20. Epub 2021 Apr 20.

Department of Ecological Sciences and Engineering, College of Environment and Ecology, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400045, China.

Artificial lakes that form during rapid urbanization often fail to achieve their desired functions, and gradually become eutrophic. Whether the external discharge or internal release of nutrients dominates the eutrophication of urban lakes has rarely been reported. In this study, a lake that had been formed during ten years of urbanization had become hyper-eutrophic. Read More

Food Funct 2021 Apr 22;12(7):3219-3232. Epub 2021 Mar 22.

Department of Biotechnology and Food Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), N-7491, Trondheim, Norway.

Emulsions play an important role in the process of triglyceride (TG) digestion (lipolysis). Through emulsification, the oil-water interface is increased by orders of magnitude. This often leads to faster and more efficient lipolysis, which is potentially beneficial for the intestinal uptake of oils and lipophilic compounds. Read More

Free Radic Res 2021 Apr 20:1-17. Epub 2021 Apr 20.

Neural Developmental Biology Lab, Department of Life Science, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Odisha, India.

Nanotechnology is a rapidly developing technology in the twenty-first century. Nanomaterials are extensively used in numerous industries including cosmetics, food, medicines, industries, agriculture, etc. Along with its wide application toxicity is also reported from studies of various model organisms including . Read More

J Epidemiol Glob Health 2021 Feb 22. Epub 2021 Feb 22.

Department of Mathematics, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275, USA.

The novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) remains a worldwide threat to community health, social stability, and economic development. Since the first case was recorded on December 29, 2019, in Wuhan of China, the disease has rapidly extended to other nations of the world to claim many lives, especially in the USA, the United Kingdom, and Western Europe. To stay ahead of the curve consequent of the continued increase in case and mortality, predictive tools are needed to guide adequate response. Read More

J Epidemiol Glob Health 2021 Mar 9. Epub 2021 Mar 9.

Global Institute of Public Health, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India.

Background: On September 5, 2020, India reported the second highest COVID-19 cases globally. Given India's unique disease burden including both infectious and chronic diseases, there is a need to study the survival patterns of COVID-19. We aimed to describe the factors associated with COVID-19 deaths in the State of Tamil Nadu that has the highest COVID-19 case burden among the Indian states, and to compare deaths among COVID patients with and without comorbidities. Read More

Brief Bioinform 2021 Apr 20. Epub 2021 Apr 20.

Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, 12 Iowa 50011, USA.

Current cancer genomics databases have accumulated millions of somatic mutations that remain to be further explored. Due to the over-excess mutations unrelated to cancer, the great challenge is to identify somatic mutations that are cancer-driven. Under the notion that carcinogenesis is a form of somatic-cell evolution, we developed a two-component mixture model: while the ground component corresponds to passenger mutations, the rapidly evolving component corresponds to driver mutations. Read More

Nat Chem 2021 Apr 19. Epub 2021 Apr 19.

Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Republic of Singapore.

Recent advances in end-to-end continuous-flow synthesis are rapidly expanding the capabilities of automated customized syntheses of small-molecule pharmacophores, resulting in considerable industrial and societal impacts; however, many hurdles persist that limit the number of sequential steps that can be achieved in such systems, including solvent and reagent incompatibility between individual steps, cumulated by-product formation, risk of clogging and mismatch of timescales between steps in a processing chain. To address these limitations, herein we report a strategy that merges solid-phase synthesis and continuous-flow operation, enabling push-button automated multistep syntheses of active pharmaceutical ingredients. We demonstrate our platform with a six-step synthesis of prexasertib in 65% isolated yield after 32 h of continuous execution. Read More

Sci Rep 2021 Apr 19;11(1):8505. Epub 2021 Apr 19.

Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Tehran University of Medical Sciences and Research Center for Science and Technology in Medicine, Tehran, Iran.

Fuchs uveitis (FU) is a chronic and often unilateral ocular inflammation and characteristic iris atrophic changes, other than heterochromia, are common in FU and are key to the correct diagnosis in many cases. With the advent of anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT), some investigators attempted to quantitatively study these atrophic changes; mostly by introducing various methods to measure iris thickness in AS-OCT images. We aimed to present an automated method in an observational case series to measure the smoothness index (SI) of the iris surface in AS-OCT images. Read More

Expert Opin Drug Discov 2021 May 1;16(5):553-565. Epub 2020 Dec 1.

Department Biochemistry and Biophysics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.

: The capability of cell-penetrating peptides (CPP), also known as protein transduction domains (PTD), to enter into cells possibly with an attached cargo, makes their application as delivery vectors or as direct therapeutics compelling. They are generally biocompatible, nontoxic, and easy to synthesize and modify. Three decades after the discovery of the first CPPs, ~2,000 CPP sequences have been identified, and many more predicted. Read More