Average daily contributions (90% CI black bar) to PM10 in relative (%, left pie charts), OPAA and OPDTT per source’s mass in absolute (OPm in nmol/min m−3, middle bar plot) and OPAA and OPDTT per ...volume in relative (OPv in %, right bar plot) values grouped according to sources common activities. Arrows indicate (additional) associations between the sources.
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•Concentrations of PM10 at the site are comparable to other Alpine valleys, however, OP levels are higher compared to European sites.•Extensive tests with PMF were performed including organic tracers.•The most important sources of PM10, OP per µg of source as well as OP per m3 at the site are biomass burning and activities related to cement production.•Sources with important contributions to PM10 do not necessarily have high OP.•An unusual chloride-rich source was identified with high OP per µg of source.
Toxicity of particulate matter (PM) depends on its sources, size and composition. We identified PM10 sources and determined their contribution to oxidative potential (OP) as a health proxy for PM exposure in an Alpine valley influenced by cement industry. PM10 filter sample chemical analysis and equivalent black carbon (eBC) were measured at an urban background site from November 2020 to November 2021. Using an optimized Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) model, the source chemical fingerprints and contributions to PM10 were determined. The OP assessed through two assays, ascorbic acid (AA) and dithiothreitol (DTT), was attributed to the PM sources from the PMF model with a multiple linear regression (MLR) model. Ten factors were found at the site, including biomass burning (34, 40 and 38% contribution to annual PM10, OPAA and OPDDT, respectively), traffic (14, 19 and 7%), nitrate- and sulphate-rich (together: 16, 5 and 8%), aged sea salt (2, 2 and 0%) and mineral dust (10, 12 and 17%). The introduction of innovative organic tracers allowed the quantification of the PM primary and secondary biogenic fractions (together: 13, 8 and 21%). In addition, two unusual factors due to local features, a chloride-rich factor and a second mineral dust-rich factor (named the cement dust factor) were found, contributing together 10, 14 and 8%. We associate these two factors to different processes in the cement plant. Despite their rather low contribution to PM10 mass, these sources have one of the highest OPs per µg of source. The results of the study provide vital information about the influence of particular sources on PM10 and OP in complex environments and are thus useful for PM control strategies and actions.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The capacity of particulate matter (PM) to generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) in vivo leading to oxidative stress is thought to be a main pathway in the health effects of PM inhalation. Exogenous ...ROS from PM can be assessed by acellular oxidative potential (OP) measurements as a proxy of the induction of oxidative stress in the lungs. Here, we investigate the importance of OP apportionment methods for OP distribution by PM10 sources in different types of environments. PM10 sources derived from receptor models (e.g., EPA positive matrix factorization (EPA PMF)) are coupled with regression models expressing the associations between PM10 sources and PM10 OP measured by ascorbic acid (OPAA) and dithiothreitol assay (OPDTT). These relationships are compared for eight regression techniques: ordinary least squares, weighted least squares, positive least squares, Ridge, Lasso, generalized linear model, random forest, and multilayer perceptron. The models are evaluated on 1 year of PM10 samples and chemical analyses at each of six sites of different typologies in France to assess the possible impact of PM source variability on PM10 OP apportionment. PM10 source-specific OPDTT and OPAA and out-of-sample apportionment accuracy vary substantially by model, highlighting the importance of model selection according to the datasets. Recommendations for the selection of the most accurate model are provided, encompassing considerations such as multicollinearity and homoscedasticity.
In 1992, the Early Breast Cancer Trialists' Collaborative Group reported that a meta-analysis of six randomized trials in European and North American women begun from 1948 to 1972 demonstrated ...disease-free and overall survival benefit from adjuvant ovarian ablation. Approximately 350,000 new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed annually in premenopausal Asian women who have lower levels of estrogen than western women.
From 1993 to 1999, we recruited 709 premenopausal women with operable breast cancer (652 from Vietnam, 47 from China) to a randomized clinical trial of adjuvant oophorectomy and tamoxifen (20 mg orally every day) for 5 years or observation and this combined hormonal treatment on recurrence. At later dates estrogen- and progesterone-receptor protein assays by immunohistochemistry were performed for 470 of the cases (66%).
Treatment arms were well balanced. With a median follow-up of 3.6 years, there have been 84 events and 69 deaths in the adjuvant treatment group and 127 events and 91 deaths in the observation group, with 5-year disease-free survival rates of 75% and 58% (P =.0003 unadjusted; P =.0075 adjusted), and overall survival rates of 78% and 70% (P =.041 unadjusted) for the adjuvant and observation groups, respectively. Only patients with hormone receptor-positive tumors benefited from the adjuvant treatment. In Vietnam, for women unselected for hormone receptor status, a cost-effectiveness analysis suggests that this intervention costs $350 per year of life saved.
Vietnamese and Chinese women with hormone receptor-positive operable breast cancer benefit from adjuvant treatment with surgical oophorectomy and tamoxifen.
We develop a novel time series feature extraction technique to address the encrypted traffic/application classification problem. The proposed method consists of two main steps. First, we propose a ...feature engineering technique to extract significant attributes of the encrypted network traffic behavior by analyzing the time series of receiving packets. In the second step, we develop a deep learning-based technique to exploit the correlation of time series data samples of the encrypted network applications. To evaluate the efficiency of the proposed solution on the encrypted traffic classification problem, we carry out intensive experiments on a raw network traffic dataset, namely VPN-nonVPN, with three conventional classifier metrics including Precision, Recall, and F1 score. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed approach can significantly improve the performance in identifying encrypted application traffic in terms of accuracy and computation efficiency.
In the treatment of bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis through oral administration, an effective drug delivery system targeting the colon is crucial for enhancing efficacy and minimizing side ...effects of therapeutic agents. This study focuses on the development of a novel nanocomposite hydrogel bead comprising a synergistic blend of biological macromolecules, namely sodium alginate (ALG) and hyaluronic acid (HA), reinforced with layered double hydroxide nanoparticles (LDHs) for the oral delivery of dual therapeutics. The synthesized hydrogel bead exhibits significantly enhanced gel strength and controllable release of methylprednisolone (MP) and curcumin (CUR), serving as an anti-inflammatory drug and a mucosal healing agent, compared to native ALG or ALG/HA hydrogel beads without LDHs. The physicochemical properties of the synthesized LDHs and hydrogel beads were characterized using various techniques, including scanning electron microscopy, zeta potential measurement, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. In vitro release studies of MP and CUR under simulated gastrointestinal tract (GIT) conditions demonstrate the superior controlled release property of the nanocomposite hydrogel bead, particularly in minimizing premature drug release in the upper GIT environment while sustaining release of over 82 % of drugs in the colonic environment. Thus, the modularly engineered carrier designed for oral colon targeting holds promise as a potential candidate for the treatment of ulcerative colitis.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
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•A semi-nested, heptaplex RT-PCR assay for SARS-CoV-2 detection has been developed.•The complex melting spectrum was interpreted by an artificial intelligence algorithm.•The developed ...assay enables 96-sample pooled testing for increase of testing capacity.•About 8,000 pre-amplified samples could be screened in one realtime PCR run.
Asymptomatic transmission was found to be the Achilles’ heel of the symptom-based screening strategy, necessitating the implementation of mass testing to efficiently contain the transmission of COVID-19 pandemic. However, the global shortage of molecular reagents and the low throughput of available realtime PCR facilities were major limiting factors.
A novel semi-nested and heptaplex (7-plex) RT-PCR assay with melting analysis for detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA has been established for either individual testing or 96-sample pooled testing. The complex melting spectrum collected from the heptaplex RT-PCR amplicons was interpreted with the support of an artificial intelligence algorithm for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. The analytical and clinical performance of the semi-nested RT-PCR assay was evaluated using RNAs synthesized in-vitro and those isolated from nasopharyngeal samples.
The LOD of the assay for individual testing was estimated to be 7.2 copies/reaction. Clinical performance evaluation indicated a sensitivity of 100% (95% CI: 97.83–100) and a specificity of 99.87% (95% CI: 99.55–99.98). More importantly, the assay supports a breakthrough sample pooling method, which makes possible parallel screening of up to 96 samples in one real-time PCR well without loss of sensitivity. As a result, up to 8,820 individual pre-amplified samples could be screened for SARS-CoV-2 within each 96-well plate of realtime PCR using the pooled testing procedure.
The novel semi-nested RT-PCR assay provides a solution for highly multiplex (7-plex) detection of SARS-CoV-2 and enables 96-sample pooled detection for increase of testing capacity.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are emerging as a severe stressor in marine ecosystems. Extreme warm sea surface temperatures during MHWs often exceed the optimal thermal range for more than one generation ...of tropical coastal zooplankton. However, it is relatively unknown whether transgenerational plasticity (TGP) to MHWs may shape the offspring's fitness, particularly in an ecologically relevant context with biotic interactions such as predation stress. We addressed these novel research questions by determining the survival, reproductive success, and grazing rate of the copepod Pseudodiaptomus incisus exposed to MHW and fish predator cues (FPC) for two generations (F1 and F2). The experiment was designed in a full orthogonal manner with 4 treatments in F1 and 16 treatments in F2 generation. In both generations, MHW reduced P. incisus survival, reproductive parameters, and grazing by 10%–62% in MHW, but these parameters increased by 2%–15% with exposure to FPC, particularly at control temperature. F2 reproductive success and grazing rate as indicated by cumulative fecal pellets were reduced by 20%–30% in F1‐MHW, but increased by ~2% in F1‐FPC. Strikingly, MHW exposure reduced 17%–18% survival, but transgenerational exposure to MHWs fully ameliorated its lethal effect and this transgenerational effect was independent of FPC. Increased survival came with a cost of reduced reproductive success, constrained by reduced grazing. The rapid transgenerational MHW acclimation and its associated costs are likely widespread and crucial mechanisms underlying the resilience of coastal tropical zooplankton to MHWs in tropical coastal marine ecosystems.
Marine heatwaves emerge as a severe stressor in marine ecosystems, yet it is relatively unknown whether transgenerational effect of marine heatwaves may shape the offspring fitness, particularly in an ecologically relevant context with biotic interactions such as predation stress. Our study showed that transgenerational exposure to marine heatwaves fully ameliorated its lethal effect on tropical copepod Pseudiaptomus incisus with a cost of reduced reproductive success constrained by the lowered grazing. Fish predation stress played a minor role in shaping the copepod performance, both within and across generations with or without marine heatwaves.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The corrosion of metals is still a huge challenge for various industries, and the pursuit of effective treatments ensures environmental sustainability. In this study, we utilized
banana sap-water ...extract (BSWE) to prevent mild steel from electrochemical corrosion in a 0.1 M HCl at room temperature. Corrosion resistance was assessed using various electrochemical methodologies, combining with surface characterization techniques. The results showed a high level of effectiveness when the corrosion current density decreased from 3292.67 μA cm
(for the sample immerged in the blank solution) to 187.33 μA cm
after 24 hours of immersion in the solution containing BSWE at a 2000 ppm concentration, equivalent to corrosion efficiency of 94.32%. Surface characterization revealed diminished corrosion on the inhibited steel surface due to the formation of a protective layer. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy results demonstrated the presence of BSWE ingredients combining with iron oxides and hydroxides to form a smooth protective layer. Furthermore, theoretical calculations also indicated that the addition of BSWE can reduce steel surface damage when exposing to corrosive environment. The inhibitor based on banana sap extract can be referred to as a sustainable protective coating since it is biodegradable, abundantly available in banana plants and free of other harmful substances.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, UL, UM, UPUK
•Scrub typhus, caused by O. tsutsugamushi, is a common fever in Southeast Asia.•Delayed diagnosis of scrub typhus leads to high mortality rates, of up to 70%.•Primers and probe are designed to be ...specific to Southeast Asia's O. tsutsugamushi.•Developed RPA assay showed high sensitivity and high specificity.•Developed RPA assay is promising for field testing.
Scrub typhus, caused by Orientia tsutsugamushi, is a common fever in parts of Southern and Southeast Asia. As delayed diagnosis of scrub typhus leads to inappropriate treatment and high mortality rates, of up to 70%, sensitive and rapid detection of O. tsutsugamushi is required for timely and appropriate treatment. Molecular assays, such as PCR and real-time PCR, have been shown to be more sensitive than conventional immunoassay, however, they are only available in centralized laboratories. In contrast to PCR assays, Recombinase Polymerase Amplification (RPA) is conducted under a constant temperature ranging from 24°C to 45°C. Therefore, this technology is very promising for nucleic acid testing in the field, and in resource-limited areas. An RPA assay for the detection of O. tsutsugamushi based on the target gene encoding for the 47 kDa outer membrane protein has been reported, but the primer and probe sequences of this assay are suboptimal for detection of the majority of recently published sequences of O. tsutsugamushi isolates from Southeast Asia. We have established a real-time RPA assay with primer and probe sequences that are optimized for most Southeast Asia's isolates of O. tsutsugamushi. As a result, the new RPA assay showed better performance than the previous assay in detecting O. tsutsugamushi in clinical samples of scrub typhus cases found in Vietnam. The specificity of RPA assay was also evaluated using genomic DNA from microorganisms commonly encountered in the differential diagnosis of scrub typhus, and blood samples from healthy controls and O. tsutsugamushi negative confirmed cases.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Objectives: The increasing number of elderly patients with severe aortic valve stenosis undergoing transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) has prompted concerns regarding their clinical ...outcomes compared with the younger population. This study evaluated the outcomes of TAVR on the basis of age group (<80 or ≥80 years) among Vietnamese patients with severe aortic valve stenosis at intermediate surgical risk. Methods: From March 2017 to December 2022, 21 patients ≥80 years of age and 69 patients <80 years of age underwent TAVI at a single center. Clinical characteristics, procedures, and outcomes at 30 days and 1 year were compared with the Valve Academic Research Consortium (VARC-2) criteria. Results: Patients ≥80 years of age had a higher prevalence of comorbidities but no significant differences in other clinical characteristics and procedures. No statistically significant differences were observed in procedural mortality (4.8% vs. 0.0%, P = 0.233), 30-day mortality (5.0% vs. 1.5%, P = 0.405), and 1-year mortality (11.8% vs. 3.7%, P = 0.241) between age groups. Major endpoints at specified time points also showed no significant differences. Conclusions: TAVR in patients with aortic stenosis at intermediate surgical risk has similar clinical outcomes at 30 days and 1 year, according to VARC-2 criteria, with no statistically significant age-associated differences (≥80 vs. <80 years). However, further studies with larger patient populations are needed to better understand the effects of age on TAVI outcomes in patients with similar characteristics.
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