Glial cells are key players in the proper formation and maintenance of the nervous system, thus contributing to neuronal health and disease in humans. However, little is known about the molecular ...pathways that govern glia-neuron communications in the diseased brain.
provides a useful in vivo model to explore the conserved molecular details of glial cell biology and their contributions to brain function and disease susceptibility. Herein, we review recent studies that explore glial functions in normal neuronal development, along with
models that seek to identify the pathological implications of glial defects in the context of various central nervous system disorders.
•Measurements of the flow boiling CHF of FeCrAl alloy, Zircaloy, and Inconel.•Comparison of the steady and transient flow boiling CHF for FeCrAl alloy.•No appreciable flow CHF changes for repeated ...CHF tests on the same sample.•Limited significance of surface characteristics on flow CHF.•Thermal properties primarily responsible for the material-sensitive flow CHF.
Steady and transient (with a heating rate of 685 °C/s) internal-flow CHF (Critical Heat Flux) experiments were conducted under atmospheric pressure at a fixed inlet temperature (40 °C or 60 °C) and mass flow (300 kg/m2 s) on Fe-13Cr-6Al alloy, Inconel 600 and Zircaloy-4 tube samples. Multiple experiments were repeated on the same specimen to investigate the effect of surface characteristic changes (i.e., roughness, wettability, and oxide scale morphology) on the occurrence of CHF. Despite notable changes of wettability, roughness, and oxide layer characteristics on samples that had already been subjected to CHF, measured flow CHF remained unchanged throughout repeated experiments for tested materials. This demonstrates that the surface effects on flow CHF are limited in the test conditions. In the steady-state flow boiling condition, Fe-13Cr-6Al alloy demonstrated a 22% and 14% increase in CHF compared to Zircaloy-4 and Inconel 600, respectively. Compared to the 2006 Groeneveld CHF lookup table, Fe-13Cr-6Al alloy gives a 13% increase in the tested flow boiling condition. Material properties are considered primarily responsible for the observed CHF differences among the tested materials. The surface thermal economy parameter (ρcp3/2k) is proposed as an explanation for the observed CHF differences; this parameter is related to material’s ability to avoid an irreversible dry spot formation. The apparent disagreement of Zircaloy-4 CHF with both the look up table predictions and Inconel 600 shows the limitation of departure of nucleate boiling (DNB) evaluations that do not consider cladding materials. The transient Fe-13Cr-6Al CHF is 39% and 23% higher than the lookup table prediction and the steady-state condition experimental result, respectively.
•We propose a predictive traffic control system for the autonomous vehicle routing problem.•We develop an applicable control system to complement the existing routing algorithm.•Proposed method can ...predict and prevent traffic congestion.•A real times simulation presents the utility and superiority of the proposed method.
This study aimed to resolve a real-world traffic problem in a large-scale plant. Autonomous vehicle systems (AVSs), which are designed to use multiple vehicles to transfer materials, are widely used to transfer wafers in semiconductor manufacturing. Traffic control is a significant challenge with AVSs because all vehicles must be monitored and controlled in real time, to cope with uncertainties such as congestion. However, existing traffic control systems, which are primarily designed and controlled by human experts, are insufficient to prevent heavy congestion that impedes production. In this study, we developed a traffic control system based on machine learning predictions, and a routing method that dynamically determines AVS routes with reduced congestion rates. We predicted congestion for critical bottleneck areas, and utilized the predictions for adaptive routing control of all vehicles to avoid congestion. We conducted an experimental evaluation to compare the predictive performance of four popular algorithms. We performed a simulation study based on data from semiconductor fabrication to demonstrate the utility and superiority of the proposed method. The experimental results showed that AVSs with the proposed approach outperformed the existing approach in terms of delivery time, transfer time, and queuing time. We found that adopting machine learning-based traffic control can enhance the performance of existing AVSs and reduce the burden on the human experts who monitor and control AVSs.
Nuclear receptor-binding SET domain-containing protein 1 (NSD1) inactivation in tumor cells contributes to an immune-cold phenotype, indicating its potential association with immune disturbances.
NSD ...is a homolog of the human NSD1. Thus, in this study, we investigated the effect of NSD overexpression in the fat body, the central organ involved in
immune responses. Upon ectopic expression of NSD in the fat body, the mRNA levels of antimicrobial peptides increased. Using reporter constructs containing deletions of various NF-κB sites in the Attacin-A (
) promoter, we found that transcriptional activation by NSD is mainly mediated via the IMD pathway by activating Relish. Since the IMD pathway is required to resist Gram-negative bacterial infections, we further examined the effect of fat body-specific NSD overexpression on
immune defenses. Upon oral ingestion of Gram-negative
, the survival rate of the NSD-overexpressing larvae was higher than that of the wild type, suggesting a positive role of NSD in immune responses. Taken together, these results suggest the association of NSD with the IMD pathway and is thus expected to contribute to the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms of immune malfunction in various NSD1-associated human diseases.
We evaluated the ability of various grading scales including platelet-albumin-bilirubin (PALBI) and albumin-bilirubin (ALBI) grades to predict overall survival (OS) according to treatment modality in ...patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
The cohort of 6,669 patients with HCC was selected randomly from the 2008-2012 national cohort of the Korean Central Cancer Registry. The OS of 6,507 of these patients was evaluated using the Child-Turcotte-Pugh (CTP) class, Model for End-stage Liver Disease (MELD) score, and ALBI and PALBI grades.
The patient's mean age was 59.7 years. The most patients were hepatitis B virus (63.4%) and CTP class A (71.8%). The median OS durations of PALBI grade1 (38.4%), grade2 (33.2%), and grade3 (28.4%) patients were 81, 30, and 5 months, respectively (P<0.001). The PALBI grade had a larger area under the receiver operator characteristic curve (AUC) than did the CTP class, MELD score, and ALBI grade (overall AUC: 0.675 vs. 0.633, 0.645, and 0.642, respectively; P < 0.001). Moreover, the PALBI and ALBI grades enabled sub-classification of CTP A patients (P < 0.001). In a multivariate analysis, the PALBI and ALBI grades were significant risk factors for OS (P < 0.05). According to treatment modality, the PALBI grade was predictive of OS in patients receiving transarterial chemoembolization or supportive care. The ALBI grade was predictive of OS in patients undergoing surgical resection or radiofrequency ablation.
The PALBI and ALBI grades are more reliable for accessing liver function and predicting OS in patients with HCC. Moreover, according to treatment modality, appropriate use of the ALBI and PALBI grades will enable accurate determination of the prognosis of patients with HCC.
COVID-19 has created tensions across different sectors of the society, but the impact has been unequal. Vulnerable people have been most affected, especially those with insecure employment and who ...have experienced economic hardships due to unemployment and lost wages. The combination of social change and economic hardships due to the pandemic increases the risk of poor mental health. Some countries have utilized financial assistance to alleviate economic hardships caused by COVID-19, and in South Korea, the central and local governments have implemented COVID-19 financial assistance. This study analysed the impact of financial assistance on mental health associated with working status during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea.
The participants of this study were randomly selected from residents of Gyeonggi-do after being proportionally allocated by resident registration population status. A total of 1,000 adult males and females aged 19 years or older in Gyeonggi-do who received financial assistance from the central and local governments were selected. A retrospective pre-post-study design was applied, and mental health surveys including the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale (GAD-7) were applied.
The results show that depression scores averaged 5.5 and anxiety scores averaged 4.4 before COVID-19 Financial Assistance. It is similar to the national average of 5.1 and 4.5 respectively at that time. After the assistance, depression scores dropped to 4.5, and anxiety scores dropped to 3.2. Before the assistance, depression and anxiety were higher among temporary day labourers with less job security, and they showed the most significant improvement in mental health. For full-time workers, there was no significant change in anxiety or depression after receiving the assistance.
Financial assistance can provide material resources and also positively affect mental health. In particular, it had a greater impact on the relatively vulnerable groups, such as those in unstable employment.
•Biodynamic management has a significant and complex effect on vineyard fungi.•Fungi in biodynamic soil, bark and fruit are all significantly affected in some way.•However, biodynamics does not ...affect juice diversity nor key flavors in final wines.•While management affects biodiversity, it may not affect harvested crops.
There is increased need to identify sustainable agricultural methods which avoid environmental degradation. Previous studies have focused on the effect of specific agricultural interventions on large organisms, but we have fewer data evaluating how microbes, which are key components of ecosystems, might be affected. Additionally, previous studies have been constrained as they only examined one habitat in an ecosystem and have not gone on to evaluate the effect of agricultural approach on harvested crops. Here we take an ecosystems approach and evaluate the net effect of conventional versus biodynamic management on agricultural ecosystems by quantifying fungal communities in multiple habitats using metagenomics. We go on to measure biodiversity in the crop and key chemical quality parameters in the product consumed by humans. We find that the method of management significantly affects communities in soil, on plant structures, and on the developing crop in subtle but importantly different ways in terms of number, type, and abundance of species. However, management approach has no effect on communities in the final harvested juice, nor on product traits aligned with quality. This shows that while management approach impacts different habitats in the environment in different ways, this does not automatically flow onto the harvested crop.
Data on illicit drug use by Korean people infected with HIV are lacking. Here, we examined the prevalence and patterns of illicit drug use among people infected with HIV in Korea.
In this ...cross-sectional study, we included all patients infected with HIV who visited a tertiary care hospital in Korea from January 1990 to May 2020. Sociodemographic data of patients, including drug use, were collected at the first visit and during follow-up.
Among 1,267 patients, 5.13% reported the use of an illicit drug in their lifetime, and 2.61% were users of injection drugs. The most commonly used drugs were cannabis/marijuana and methamphetamine, followed by nitrite inhalants, cocaine, dextromethorphan, carisoprodol, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine. The illicit drug users tended to be younger than non-users, homosexuals/bisexuals, and infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV); they had a higher CD4+ cell count than non-users. Among 65 users of illicit drugs, only 24.6% revealed their drug use at the first visit interview, and 24.6% reported using two or more drugs in their lifetime. Individuals who used injection drugs were more likely to be arrested for drug-related charges than the users of non-injection drugs. Moreover, they tended to be heavy users of illicit drugs, to report using two or more drugs in their lifetime, and to be HCV seropositive. In contrast, the users of non-injection drugs were more likely to be experimental users and to start using drugs overseas for the first time, but less likely to report their drug use at the first interview.
The prevalence of illicit drug use in people with HIV infection in Korea may have been underestimated. Further research based on more accurate measurements are warranted.
Huntington’s disease (HD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease caused by cytosine-adenine-guanine trinucleotide repeat expansion in the huntingtin gene. Growing evidence supports the regulatory ...functions of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the disease process, but little is known about the association between lncRNAs and neuronal death in HD. Here, we evaluated the altered expression profiles of lncRNA in HD by using microarrays. Among dysregulated lncRNAs, we focused on the upregulation of nuclear paraspeckle assembly transcript 1 (NEAT1). Quantitative PCR analysis validated increased NEAT1 levels in the R6/2 mouse brain as well as the human HD postmortem brain. To determine the biological effects of NEAT1 on neuronal survival, neuro2A cells were transfected with the NEAT1 short isoform vector and were subjected to H
2
O
2
-induced injury. Subsequently, NEAT1-transfected cells showed increased viability under oxidative stress. Our observations support the notion that NEAT1 upregulation in HD contributes to the neuroprotective mechanism against neuronal injury rather than the pathological process underlying neurodegeneration in HD.
Abstract
Since the serum neurofilament light (NfL) chain is known as a promising biomarker in neurodegenerative diseases, we aimed to evaluate serum NfL as a biomarker indicating neuronal damage in ...autosomal-dominant (AD) spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA). We reviewed patients diagnosed with AD SCA in the outpatient clinic of Seoul National University Hospital’s (SNUH) Department of Neurology between May and August of 2019. We reviewed the demographic data, clinical characteristics, Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA) score, and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. The serum NfL was measured by electrochemiluminescence (ECL) immunoassay. Forty-nine patients with AD SCA were reviewed and their serum NfL level was determined. The median serum NfL level (109.5 pg/mL) was higher than control (41.1 pg/mL) (p-value < 0.001). Among the AD SCA patients, there was a positive correlation between the serum NfL level and the trinucleotide repeat number (r = 0.47,
p
-value = 0.001), disease duration (r = 0.35,
p
-value = 0.019), disease duration/age × trinucleotide repeat number (r = 0.330,
p
-value = 0.021), and SARA score (n = 33; r = 0.37,
p
-value = 0.033). This study shows that serum NfL is elevated in AD SCA patients and correlates with clinical severity.
PDF
