The coronavirus pandemic caused a state of panic worldwide. Mixed messages were given about its risk and how to contain it, when trust in authorities and reliable scientific information are essential ...to reduce unnecessary scares and inappropriate risk perceptions. We know little about public concerns and opinions in health authorities in the Arab world. Thus, an attempt was made to generate such information through a web-based survey. A total of 1074 subjects from Lebanon, Jordan, and Tunisia were recruited to explore their perception of food and non-food risks of infection and the influence of the source of information, trust, and attitudes towards the local authorities' communication of risk. Seventy percent of the respondents were concerned that COVID-19 may be transmitted through food. The perception of risk from touching contaminated surfaces and food packaging and being exposed to infected people during food shopping was even higher. For only less than half of the respondents, the information from local authorities was considered trustworthy and the associated risk communication and response to false rumors were timely, effective, and clear. But the satisfaction level among the Jordanians was remarkably stronger than for the Lebanese and Tunisian respondents. The demographic factors, trust in information, and attitudes towards authorities' performance in risk communication did not influence risk perceptions. Respondents’ knowledge was limited based on their chief sources of information, such as social media, local news media broadcasts, and announcements by the World Health Organization. Our conclusion is that unnecessary fear increases among the public when risks that impact heath are unknown. More research in the Arab region is needed to understand the determinants of risk perceptions considering psychological factors on the risk to health. Unfortunately, it is difficult to restrict or contain misleading information from various forms of social media. We recommend that for reducing fear and building confidence with the public for appropriate action during the pandemic, local authorities should enhance the quality and level of details of the information that they share during such crises.
•The concern over contracting COVID-19 from foods was high in Arab countries.•The participants perceived the risk of COVID-19 transmission via contaminated surfaces higher than from food consumption.•Only participants from Jordan showed highly positive attitudes towards received risk communication.•Social media, local news, and the WHO were the chief source of information on COVID-19.
In remote sensing studies, the photosynthetically active radiation absorbed by chlorophyll in the green leaves of vegetation canopies is measured using Red and Near-Infra Red bands. The Normalized ...Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is one of the most commonly used vegetation indices that are generally obtained from a calculation of the above mentioned bands; it presents a decent surrogate measures of the physiologically functioning surface greenness level. In this study, the latest version of the GIMMS NDVI data set, between the period of January 1982 and December 2015, were used to classify the global vegetation areas into five main categories (i.e. Agriculture Areas, Boreal Forests, Deciduous Forests, Evergreen and Tropical Forests, and Other Vegetation), using a simple and straight-forward method of classification, surnamed Global Vegetation Types Classification (GVTC). The total accuracy of the model reached 90.4% with a kappa value of 87.1%.
In each category, a trend analysis has been carried out at both global and continental levels. The objective was to highlight the changes within each category, throughout the past thirty-four years. Results show that Agriculture Areas are increasing worldwide, with a huge upsurge observed since 2011 coinciding with a remarkable decrease in Boreal Forests. Changes in vegetation's classes, between 1982 and 2015, were more pronounceable in continents such as Asia, America and Africa; Europe and Oceania showed limited variations throughout this same period. Following these results, regional policies should be reformed and mitigation plans should be established in order to maintain a sustainable development of the global vegetation lands. The GVTC could be implemented with higher spatial resolution imageries for more local-based assessments.
•Proposing a simple NDVI-derived method to classify global vegetation.•Highlighting the most affected areas in each vegetation type across the Globe.•Assessing global vegetation trends and changes between 1982 and 2015.•It is a proof-of-concept approach and can be applied for regional-scale studies.
Objective and design
The objective of the study is to uncover the influence of human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs) on the generation of Th17 lymphocytes in co-cultures of both ...BM-MSCs and T cells.
Materials and methods
BM-MSCs, characterized according to the international society for cellular therapy (ISCT) criteria, were co-cultured with T cells isolated from peripheral blood. The expression levels of IL-17 receptor, RORγt and IL-23 receptor were evaluated using flow cytometry. The levels of cytokines involved in Th17 immunomodulation were measured using multiplex assay.
Treatment
Inflammatory primed and non-primed BM-MSCs were co-cultured with either activated or non-activated T cells either at (1/80) and (1/5) ratio respectively.
Results
MSC/T-cell ratio and inflammation significantly influenced the effect of BM-MSCs on the generation of Th17 lymphocytes. Cocultures of either primed or non-primed BM-MSCs with activated T cells significantly induced IL-17A-expressing lymphocytes. Interestingly, the expression of the transcription factor RORγt was significantly increased when compared to levels in activated T cells. Finally, both cell ratio and priming of BM-MSCs with cytokines substantially influenced the cytokine profile of BM-MSCs and T cells.
Conclusion
Our findings suggest that BM-MSCs significantly modulate the Th17 lymphocyte pathway in a complex manner.
Pathological conditions including cancers lead to accumulation of a morphological mixture of highly immunosuppressive cells termed as myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC). The lack of conclusive ...markers to identify human MDSC, due to their heterogeneous nature and close phenotypical and functional proximity with other cell subsets, made it challenging to identify these cells. Nevertheless, expansion of MDSC has been reported in periphery and tumor microenvironment of various cancers. The majority of studies on breast cancers were performed on murine models and hence limited literature is available on the relation of MDSC accumulation with clinical settings in breast cancer patients. The aim of this study was to investigate levels and phenotypes of myeloid cells in peripheral blood (
n
= 23) and tumor microenvironment of primary breast cancer patients (
n
= 7), compared with blood from healthy donors (
n
= 21) and paired non-tumor normal breast tissues from the same patients (
n
= 7). Using multicolor flow cytometric assays, we found that breast cancer patients had significantly higher levels of tumor-infiltrating myeloid cells, which comprised of granulocytes (
P
= 0.022) and immature cells that lack the expression of markers for fully differentiated monocytes or granulocytes (
P
= 0.016). Importantly, this expansion was not reflected in the peripheral blood. The immunosuppressive potential of these cells was confirmed by expression of Arginase 1 (ARG1), which is pivotal for T-cell suppression. These findings are important for developing therapeutic modalities to target mechanisms employed by immunosuppressive cells that generate an immune-permissive environment for the progression of cancer.
An electroactive and luminescent foldamer based on an oligopyridine biscarboxamide skeleton was synthesized and characterised. Its conformation in the solid state proved to be strongly affected by ...the peripheral pyrene units. The latter also endow the target derivative with recognition abilities toward electron-withdrawing molecules, which allow tuning of the spectroscopic properties of the foldamer.
Adipose tissue‐derived mesenchymal stromal cells (ASCs) hold the promise of achieving successful immunotherapeutic results due to their ability to regulate different T‐cell fate. ASCs also show ...significant adaptability to environmental stresses by modulating their immunologic profile. Cell‐based therapy for inflammatory diseases requires a detailed understanding of the molecular relation between ASCs and Th17 lymphocytes taking into account the influence of inflammation and cell ratio on such interaction. Accordingly, a dose‐dependent increase in Th17 generation was only observed in high MSC:T‐cell ratio with no significant impact of inflammatory priming. IL‐23 receptor (IL‐23R) expression by T cells was not modulated by ASCs when compared to levels in activated T cells, while ROR‐γt expression was significantly increased reaching a maximum in high (1:5) unprimed ASC:T‐cell ratio. Finally, multiplex immunoassay showed substantial changes in the secretory profile of 15 cytokines involved in the Th17 immune response (IL‐1β, IL‐4, IL‐6, IL‐10, IL‐17A, IL‐17F, IL‐22, IL‐21, IL‐23, IL‐25, IL‐31, IL‐33, IFN‐γ, sCD40, and TNF‐α), which was modulated by both cell ratio and inflammatory priming. These findings suggest that Th17 lymphocyte pathway is significantly modulated by ASCs that may lead to immunological changes. Therefore, future ASC‐based immunotherapy should take into account the complex and detailed molecular interactions that depend on several factors including inflammatory priming and cell ratio.
The concept of day surgery is becoming an increasingly important part of elective surgery worldwide. Relentless pressure to cut costs may constrain clinical judgment regarding the most appropriate ...location for a patient's surgical care. The aim of this study was to determine clinical and quality indicators relating to our experience in orthopedic day durgery, mainly in relation to unplanned overnight admission and readmission rates. Additionally, we focused on describing the main characteristics of the patients that experienced complications, and compared the patient satisfaction rates following ambulatory and non-ambulatory procedures.
We evaluated 10,032 patients who underwent surgical orthopedic procedures according to the protocols of our Ambulatory Surgery Unit. All complications that occurred were noted. A quality-of-life assessment (SF-36 test) was carried out both pre- and postoperatively. Ambulatory substitution rates and quality indicators for orthopedic procedures were also determined.
The major complication rate was minimal, with no mortal cases, and there was a high rate of ambulatory substitution for the procedures studied. Outcomes of the SF-36 questionnaire showed significant improvement postoperatively. An unplanned overnight admission rate of 0.14 % was achieved.
Our institution has shown that it is possible to provide good-quality ambulatory orthopedic surgery. There still appears to be the potential to increase the proportion of these procedures. Surgeons and anesthesiologists must strongly adhere to strict patient selection criteria for ambulatory orthopedic surgery in order to reduce complications in the immediate postoperative term.
Surface soil moisture (SSM) is a key variable for many environmental studies, including hydrology and agriculture. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data in the C-band are widely used nowadays to ...estimate SSM since the Sentinel-1 provides free-of-charge C-band SAR images at high spatial resolution with high revisit time, whereas the use of L-band is limited due to the low data availability. In this context, the main objective of this paper is to develop an operational approach for SSM estimation that mainly uses data in the C-band (Sentinel-1) with L-bands (ALOS/PALSAR) as additional data to improve SSM estimation accuracy. The approach is based on the use of the artificial neural networks (NNs) technique to firstly derive the soil roughness (Hrms) from the L-band (HH polarization) to then consider the L-band-derived Hrms and C-band SAR data (VV and VH polarizations) in the input vectors of NNs for SSM estimation. Thus, the Hrms estimated from the L-band at a given date is assumed to be constant for a given times series of C-band images. The NNs were trained and validated using synthetic and real databases. The results showed that the use of the L-band-derived Hrms in the input vector of NN in addition to C-band SAR data improved SSM estimation by decreasing the error (bias and RMSE), mainly for SSM values lower than 15 vol.% and regardless of Hrms values. Based on the synthetic database, the NNs that neglect the Hrms underestimate and overestimate the SSM (bias ranges between −8.0 and 4.0 vol.%) for Hrms values lower and higher than 1.5 cm, respectively. For Hrms <1.5 cm and most SSM values higher than 10 vol.%, the use of Hrms as an input in the NNs decreases the underestimation of the SSM (bias ranges from −4.5 to 0 vol.%) and provides a more accurate estimation of the SSM with a decrease in the RMSE by approximately 2 vol.%. Moreover, for Hrms values between 1.5 and 2.0 cm, the overestimation of SSM slightly decreases (bias decreased by around 1.0 vol.%) without a significant improvement of the RMSE. In addition, for Hrms >2.0 cm and SSM between 8 to 22 vol.%, the accuracy on the SSM estimation improved and the overestimation decreased by 2.2 vol.% (from 4.5 to 2.3 vol.%). From the real database, the use of Hrms estimated from the L-band brought a significant improvement of the SSM estimation accuracy. For in situ SSM less than 15 vol.%, the RMSE decreased by 1.5 and 2.2 vol.% and the bias by 1.2 and 2.6 vol.%, for Hrms values lower and higher than 1.5 cm, respectively.
As a form of immunomodulatory therapeutics, mesenchymal stromal/stem cells (MSCs) from umbilical cord (UC) tissue were assessed for their dynamic interplay with the Th-17 immune response pathway. ...UC-MSCs were able to modulate lymphocyte response by promoting a Th-17-like profile. Such modulation depended on the cell ratio of the cocultures as well as the presence of an inflammatory setting underlying their plasticity. UC-MSCs significantly increased the expression of IL-17A and RORγt but differentially modulated T cell expression of IL-23R. In parallel, the secretion profile of the fifteen factors (IL1β, IL-4, IL-6, IL-10, IL-17A, IL-17F, IL-22, IL-21, IL-23, IL-25, IL-31, IL-33, INF-γ, sCD40, and TNF-α) involved in the Th-17 immune response pathway was substantially altered during these cocultures. The modulation of these factors demonstrates the capacity of UC-MSCs to sense and actively respond to tissue challenges. Protein network and functional enrichment analysis indicated that several biological processes, molecular functions, and cellular components linked to distinct Th-17 signaling interactions are involved in several trophic, inflammatory, and immune network responses. These immunological changes and interactions with the Th-17 pathway are likely critical to tissue healing and may help to identify molecular targets that will improve therapeutic strategies involving UC-MSCs.
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