A MIL-53(Fe) analogue was successfully synthesized by a HF free-solvothermal method. The sample was characterized by XRD, N
2
adsorption (BET), TEM, FTIR, XPS and AAS. From the N
2
...adsorption-desorption isotherms, it can be seen that the structure of MIL-53(Fe) in the anhydrous form exhibits closed pores with almost no accessible porosity to nitrogen gas. The XPS results reveal that Fe is really incorporated into the MIL-53(Fe) framework. In the hydrated form, the pores of MIL-53(Fe) are filled with water molecules. Thus, MIL-53(Fe) exhibited a very high adsorption capacity of As(
v
) in aqueous solution (
Q
max
of 21.27 mg g
−1
). Adsorption kinetics data revealed that As(
v
) adsorption isotherms fit the Langmuir model and obey the pseudo-second-order kinetic equation.
A MIL-53(Fe) analogue was successfully synthesized by a HF free-solvothermal method.
A two-stage treatment system that included vertical flow (VF) and free-water surface (FWS) constructed wetlands was investigated for the dual purposes of sewage treatment and reuse. The VF included ...four layers (biochar, sand, gravel, and sandy soil), and the FWS was installed after the VF and used as a polishing tank. Two types of local plants, namely Colocasia esculenta and Canna indica, were planted in the VF and FWS, respectively. The system operated for approximately six months, and the experimental period was categorized into four stages that corresponded to changes in the hydraulic loading rate (HLR) (0.02–0.12 m/d). The removal efficiencies for total suspended solids (TSS), chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD5), ammonia (NH4-N), and total coliform (Tcol) were 71 ± 11%, 73 ± 13%, 79 ± 11%, 91 ± 3%, and 70 ± 20%, respectively. At HLRs of 0.04–0.06 m/d, the COD and BOD5 levels satisfied Vietnam's irrigation standards, with removable rates of 64% and 88%, respectively, and the TSS and Tcol levels satisfied Vietnam's standards for potable water. Furthermore, the NO3-N levels satisfied the reuse limits, whereas the NH4-N levels exceeded the reuse standards. At high HLRs (e.g., 0.12 m/d), all the effluent parameters, except Tcol and NO3-N, exceeded the standards.
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•A sewage treatment system with biochar and a constructed wetland was studied.•The COD and BOD5 levels of the system effluents met the irrigation standards.•All indicators except NH4-N satisfied the Vietnamese water supply standards.•The system most optimally processes water for irrigation at an HLR of 0.04–0.06 m/d.•Biochar is a promising medium for soil-based wastewater treatment systems.
Tuberculosis transmission continues to be a major public health challenge. In this cluster-randomized, controlled trial conducted in Vietnam, active community-wide screening for tuberculosis over 4 ...years is shown to decrease the prevalence of tuberculosis.
Capsaicin receptor TRPV1 is a nociceptor for vanilloid molecules, such as capsaicin and resiniferatoxin (RTX). Even though cryo-EM structures of TRPV1 in complex with these molecules are available, ...how their binding energetically favors the open conformation is not known. Here, we report an approach to control the number of bound RTX molecules (0–4) in functional rat TRPV1. The approach allowed direct measurements of each of the intermediate open states under equilibrium conditions at both macroscopic and single-molecule levels. We found that RTX binding to each of the four subunits contributes virtually the same activation energy, which we estimated to be 1.70 to 1.86 kcal/mol and found to arise predominately from destabilizing the closed conformation. We further showed that sequential bindings of RTX increase open probability without altering single-channel conductance, confirming that there is likely a single open-pore conformation for TRPV1 activated by RTX.
Viral upper respiratory infections are associated with significant health and economic impact. This study sought to determine the efficacy of routine immune system micronutrient supplementation on ...the incidence, duration and severity of common cold symptoms. This pilot study was a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial of N = 259 with asymptomatic participants aged 18 to 65 in two cold seasons of 2016 and 2017. The treatment group received an immune system targeted micronutrient caplet, while the placebo group received a micronized cellulose caplet externally identical to the treatment caplet. Weekly surveys were sent electronically to participants to document common cold incidence, duration and severity. Primary statistical results were obtained using mixed-effects logistic regressions to account for longitudinal measurements for participants. The odds of acquiring an upper respiratory infection, adjusted for potential confounders, was estimated to be 0.74 times lower in the treatment group (p = 0.14). The odds of reporting specific symptoms were statistically lower in the treatment arm compared to the placebo arm for runny nose (OR = 0.53, p = 0.01) and cough (OR = 0.51, p = 0.04). Shorter durations of runny nose and cough were also observed in the treatment arm compared to placebo (both p < 0.05). There was no significant difference in severity of symptoms in either group. The observed proportion of reported cold symptoms in the treatment group was lower compared to the placebo group between late January and February in two consecutive cold seasons. Given the physical, workplace and economic impact of upper respiratory infections, this low cost and low risk intervention should be further studied with more robust investigation and meticulous experimental design.
The striped catfish, Pangasianodon hypophthalmus, is a freshwater and benthopelagic fish common in the Mekong River delta. Catfish constitute a valuable source of dietary protein. Therefore, they are ...cultured worldwide, and P. hypophthalmus is a food staple in the Mekong area. However, genetic information about the culture stock, is unavailable for breeding improvement, although genetics of the channel catfish, Ictalurus punctatus, has been reported. To acquire genome sequence data as a useful resource for marker-assisted breeding, we decoded a draft genome of P. hypophthalmus and performed comparative analyses.
Using the Illumina platform, we obtained both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences. Molecular phylogeny using the mitochondrial genome confirmed that P. hypophthalmus is a member of the family Pangasiidae and is nested within a clade including the families Cranoglanididae and Ictaluridae. The nuclear genome was estimated at approximately 700 Mb, assembled into 568 scaffolds with an N50 of 14.29 Mbp, and was estimated to contain ~ 28,600 protein-coding genes, comparable to those of channel catfish and zebrafish. Interestingly, zebrafish produce gadusol, but genes for biosynthesis of this sunscreen compound have been lost from catfish genomes. The differences in gene contents between these two catfishes were found in genes for vitamin D-binding protein and cytosolic phospholipase A
, which have lost only in channel catfish. The Hox cluster in catfish genomes comprised seven paralogous groups, similar to that of zebrafish, and comparative analysis clarified catfish lineage-specific losses of A5a, B10a, and A11a. Genes for insulin-like growth factor (IGF) signaling were conserved between the two catfish genomes. In addition to identification of MHC class I and sex determination-related gene loci, the hypothetical chromosomes by comparison with the channel catfish demonstrated the usefulness of the striped catfish genome as a marker resource.
We developed genomic resources for the striped catfish. Possible conservation of genes for development and marker candidates were confirmed by comparing the assembled genome to that of a model fish, Danio rerio, and to channel catfish. Since the catfish genomic constituent resembles that of zebrafish, it is likely that zebrafish data for gene functions is applicable to striped catfish as well.
Background
Although shoulder arthroplasties generally are effective in improving patients’ comfort and function, the results are variable for reasons that are not well understood.
Questions/Purposes
...We posed two questions: (1) What factors are associated with better 2-year outcomes after shoulder arthroplasty? (2) What are the sensitivities, specificities, and positive and negative predictive values of a multivariate predictive model for better outcome?
Methods
Three hundred thirty-nine patients having a shoulder arthroplasty (hemiarthroplasty, arthroplasty for cuff tear arthropathy, ream and run arthroplasty, total shoulder or reverse total shoulder arthroplasty) between August 24, 2010 and December 31, 2012 consented to participate in this prospective study. Two patients were excluded because they were missing baseline variables. Forty-three patients were missing 2-year data. Univariate and multivariate analyses determined the relationship of baseline patient, shoulder, and surgical characteristics to a “better” outcome, defined as an improvement of at least 30% of the maximal possible improvement in the Simple Shoulder Test. The results were used to develop a predictive model, the accuracy of which was tested using a 10-fold cross-validation.
Results
After controlling for potentially relevant confounding variables, the multivariate analysis showed that the factors significantly associated with better outcomes were American Society of Anesthesiologists Class I (odds ratio OR, 1.94; 95% CI, 1.03–3.65; p = 0.041), shoulder problem not related to work (OR, 5.36; 95% CI, 2.15–13.37; p < 0.001), lower baseline Simple Shoulder Test score (OR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.23–1.42; p < 0.001), no prior shoulder surgery (OR, 1.79; 95% CI, 1.18–2.70; p = 0.006), humeral head not superiorly displaced on the AP radiograph (OR, 2.14; 95% CI, 1.15–4.02; p = 0.017), and glenoid type other than A1 (OR, 4.47; 95% CI, 2.24–8.94; p < 0.001). Neither preoperative glenoid version nor posterior decentering of the humeral head on the glenoid were associated with the outcomes. The model predictive of a better result was driven mainly by the six factors listed above. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve generated from the cross-validated enhanced predictive model was 0.79 (generally values of 0.7 to 0.8 are considered fair and values of 0.8 to 0.9 are considered good). The false-positive fraction and the true-positive fraction depended on the cutoff probability selected (ie, the selected probability above which the prediction would be classified as a better outcome). A cutoff probability of 0.68 yielded the best performance of the model with cross-validation predictions of better outcomes for 236 patients (80%) and worse outcomes for 58 patients (20%); sensitivity of 91% (95% CI, 88%–95%); specificity of 65% (95% CI, 53%–77%); positive predictive value of 92% (95% CI, 88%–95%); and negative predictive value of 64% (95% CI, 51%–76%).
Conclusions
We found six easy-to-determine preoperative patient and shoulder factors that were significantly associated with better outcomes of shoulder arthroplasty. A model based on these characteristics had good predictive properties for identifying patients likely to have a better outcome from shoulder arthroplasty. Future research could refine this model with larger patient populations from multiple practices.
Level of Evidence
Level II, therapeutic study.
Abstract The study of muscle mass as an imaging-derived phenotype (IDP) may yield new insights into determining the normal and pathologic variations in muscle mass in the population. This can be done ...by determining 3D abdominal muscle mass from 12 distinct abdominal muscle regions and groups using computed tomography (CT) in a racially diverse medical biobank. To develop a fully automatic technique for assessment of CT abdominal muscle IDPs and preliminarily determine abdominal muscle IDP variations with age and sex in a clinically and racially diverse medical biobank. This retrospective study was conducted using the Penn Medicine BioBank (PMBB), a research protocol that recruits adult participants during outpatient visits at hospitals in the Penn Medicine network. We developed a deep residual U-Net (ResUNet) to segment 12 abdominal muscle groups including the left and right psoas, quadratus lumborum, erector spinae, gluteus medius, rectus abdominis, and lateral abdominals. 110 CT studies were randomly selected for training, validation, and testing. 44 of the 110 CT studies were selected to enrich the dataset with representative cases of intra-abdominal and abdominal wall pathology. The studies were divided into non-overlapping training, validation and testing sets. Model performance was evaluated using the Sørensen–Dice coefficient. Volumes of individual muscle groups were plotted to distribution curves. To investigate associations between muscle IDPs, age, and sex, deep learning model segmentations were performed on a larger abdominal CT dataset from PMBB consisting of 295 studies. Multivariable models were used to determine relationships between muscle mass, age and sex. The model's performance (Dice scores) on the test data was the following: psoas: 0.85 ± 0.12, quadratus lumborum: 0.72 ± 0.14, erector spinae: 0.92 ± 0.07, gluteus medius: 0.90 ± 0.08, rectus abdominis: 0.85 ± 0.08, lateral abdominals: 0.85 ± 0.09. The average Dice score across all muscle groups was 0.86 ± 0.11. Average total muscle mass for females was 2041 ± 560.7 g with a high of 2256 ± 560.1 g (41–50 year old cohort) and a change of − 0.96 g/year, declining to an average mass of 1579 ± 408.8 g (81–100 year old cohort). Average total muscle mass for males was 3086 ± 769.1 g with a high of 3385 ± 819.3 g (51–60 year old cohort) and a change of − 1.73 g/year, declining to an average mass of 2629 ± 536.7 g (81–100 year old cohort). Quadratus lumborum was most highly correlated with age for both sexes (correlation coefficient of − 0.5). Gluteus medius mass in females was positively correlated with age with a coefficient of 0.22. These preliminary findings show that our CNN can automate detailed abdominal muscle volume measurement. Unlike prior efforts, this technique provides 3D muscle segmentations of individual muscles. This technique will dramatically impact sarcopenia diagnosis and research, elucidating its clinical and public health implications. Our results suggest a peak age range for muscle mass and an expected rate of decline, both of which vary between genders. Future goals are to investigate genetic variants for sarcopenia and malnutrition, while describing genotype–phenotype associations of muscle mass in healthy humans using imaging-derived phenotypes. It is feasible to obtain 3D abdominal muscle IDPs with high accuracy from patients in a medical biobank using fully automated machine learning methods. Abdominal muscle IDPs showed significant variations in lean mass by age and sex. In the future, this tool can be leveraged to perform a genome-wide association study across the medical biobank and determine genetic variants associated with early or accelerated muscle wasting.
Iron deficiency during critical windows of brain development is associated with suboptimal neurodevelopmental outcomes. Identifying markers of neonatal iron status that best correlate with ...neurodevelopmental outcome is critical for optimal management of iron supplementation of neonates.
We aimed to evaluate two markers of iron sufficiency, ferritin and zinc protoporphyrin-to-heme ratios (ZnPP/H), with neurodevelopmental outcomes.
This is a retrospective cohort study.
All infants with concurrent ferritin and ZnPP/H measurements obtained between October 2014 and April 2017 and Bayley Scales of Infant Development, 3rd Edition (BSID-III) evaluated at 24 months corrected age were included.
Associations between iron markers (minimum, maximum and median ferritin and ZnPP/H) and BSID-III score at 24 months were assessed.
223 lab measurements from 62 infants were assessed. Mean gestational age was 28.1 weeks (SD = 2.6) with a mean birth weight of 1.1 kg (SD = 0.4). Significant associations between maximum and median ZnPP/H and motor score, and between median ZnPP/H and cognitive score were observed. Trends were also seen with higher minimum, median and maximum ZnPP/H associated with lower BSID-III scores, but did not reach statistical significance (p > 0.05). The associations between ferritin values and BSID scores were less consistent.
A positive association was seen between ZnPP/H values and BSID-III scores. Trends between ferritin and BSID values were less consistent, potentially because ferritin is more affected by inflammation. Consideration should be given to using ZnPP/H preferentially to adjust iron supplementation in the NICU to improve neurodevelopmental outcomes.
•Iron deficiency during the neonatal period is associated with worse neurodevelopmental outcomes.•This study suggests that ZnPP/H is more consistently correlated with neurodevelopmental outcome than ferritin.•Of the two methods evaluated, ZnPP/H may be preferred to adjust neonatal iron supplementation.
Peripheral nerve injury often results in poor functional recovery due to a prolonged period of muscle denervation. In particular, absent axonal contact, denervated muscle can undergo irrevocable ...atrophy and diminished receptiveness for reinnervation over time, ultimately reducing the likelihood for meaningful neuromuscular recovery. While innovative surgical approaches can minimize the harmful effects of denervation by re-routing neighboring-otherwise uninjured-axons, there are no clinically-available approaches to preserve the reinnervation capacity of denervated muscles. Blocking intramuscular connexin hemichannel formation has been reported to improve muscle innervation
and prevent atrophy
. Therefore, the current study investigated the effects of orally administered boldine, a connexin hemichannel inhibitor, on denervated-related muscle changes and nerve regeneration in a rat model of delayed peripheral nerve repair. We found that daily boldine administration significantly enhanced an evoked response in the tibialis anterior muscle at 2 weeks after common peroneal nerve transection, and decreased intramuscular connexin 43 and 45 expression, intraneural Schwann cell expression of connexin 43, and muscle fiber atrophy up to 4 weeks post transection. Additional animals underwent a cross nerve repair procedure (tibial to common peroneal neurorrhaphy) at 4 weeks following the initial transection injury. Here, we found elevated nerve electrophysiological activity and greater muscle fiber maturation at 6 weeks post repair in boldine treated animals. These findings suggest that boldine may be a promising pharmacological approach to minimize the deleterious effects of prolonged denervation and, with further optimization, may improve levels of functional recovery following nerve repair.
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