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Central nervous system (CNS) disorders like Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson disease (PD), stroke, epilepsy, depression, and bipolar disorder have a high impact on both medical and ...social problems due to the surge in their prevalence. All of these neuronal disorders share some common etiologies including disruption of Ca2+ homeostasis and accumulation of misfolded proteins. These misfolded proteins further disrupt the intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis by disrupting the activity of several ion channels including transient receptor potential (TRP) channels. TRP channel families include non-selective Ca2+ permeable channels, which act as cellular sensors activated by various physio-chemical stimuli, exogenous, and endogenous ligands responsible for maintaining the intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis. TRP channels are abundantly expressed in the neuronal cells and disturbance in their activity leads to various neuronal diseases. Under the pathological conditions when the activity of TRP channels is perturbed, there is a disruption of the neuronal homeostasis through increased inflammatory response, generation of reactive oxygen species, and mitochondrial dysfunction. Therefore, there is a potential of pharmacological interventions targeting TRP channels in CNS disorders. This review focuses on the role of TRP channels in neurological diseases; also, we have highlighted the current insights into the pharmacological modulators targeting TRP channels.
Anthropogenic changes are likely to intensify rainfall extremes, posing a risk to human, environmental and urban systems. Understanding the impact of urbanization on rainfall extremes is critical for ...both reliable climate projections as well as sustainable urban development. This study presents the unexplored impacts of changes arising in urban areas on rainfall extremes over the Contiguous United States. The results show a 2.7-fold higher probability of exceeding a 25% change in 50 year rainfall events over urban areas than over rural areas. Spatially, the changes in rainfall extremes over the central, northeast central, southeast, and northwest central zones were more pronounced due to urbanization. Statistical analyses highlight a positive relationship between changes in rainfall extremes and urbanization within a set of concentric ring buffers around rain gauge stations. Here, we show that urbanization, even though a local feature, influences the mesoscale meteorological setting; and, is statistically associated with an intensification of rainfall extremes across the Contiguous United States.
With the COVID-19 crisis and rapid increase in cases, the need for interprofessional education (IPE) and collaborative practice is more important than ever. Instructors and health professionals are ...exploring innovative methods to deliver IPE programs in online education This paper presents a mixed methods study where an interprofessional education program was delivered/taught using online instruction. Using a survey/questionnaire adapted from the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) and qualitative discussions, students’ readiness towards online IPE program and the importance of such preparation was examined. Out of two hundred fifteen students who completed the IPE program, one hundred eighty five students from clinical and non-clinical health disciplines responded to the questionnaire (86.04% response rate). Additional qualitative content analysis was conducted on a total of seven hundred and thirty six online discussions. Data analysis across all the four subscales of RIPLS suggests that students felt positively about teamwork and collaboration, and valued opportunities for shared learning with other healthcare students. Qualitative data analysis demonstrated that IPE increases awareness of team members’ roles, enhances communication and collaboration and can lead to better care for COVID-19 patients.
Synthesizing materials with specific dimensions and properties via a cost-effective approach has long been a major concern among researchers. As such, much research has focused on improving existing ...synthesis methods or developing new ones. Among the various existing methods, the sol–gel process has been used to synthesize materials for around 100 years. It has recently gained popularity with the evolution of nanoscience and nanotechnology, as it plays a vital role in growing different types of nanostructures, including nanoparticles, thin films, nanotubes, nanorods, nanowalls, and more. The sol–gel process has proven to be a cost-effective, reliable, and reproducible method. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the sol–gel process. It is organized into three sections on the basics and fundamentals of the process, the synthesis of selected materials using the sol–gel method, and the applications of these created materials.
We have realized a distributed mass-sensor using micro-cantilevers. The micro-cantilevers were actuated using piezoelectric ZnO thin films. The micro-cantilevers layer stack consists of Si/SiO 2 .../Pt/ZnO/Pt layers for self-actuation of devices. The mass sensing performance was evaluated by laser Doppler vibrometer. Experimentally, micro-cantilever length was varied in the 100-300-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mu \text{m} </tex-math></inline-formula> range, and it is established that mass-sensitivity increases with reducing length of cantilevers. New relationship has been derived between mass sensitivity (S) and cantilever length (l), which follows the modified power law as S <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\propto 1/l^{2.8} </tex-math></inline-formula>. Remarkable mass-sensitivity (S = 0.3138 Hz/pg) was obtained for a smallest size cantilever, which has dimensions <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">100\,\,\times \,\,50\,\,\times \,\,8.3 \mu \text{m}^{3} </tex-math></inline-formula>. Optimal mass sensor shows high-quality factor (Q ~ 234) at room temperature and one atmospheric pressure. Such ZnO-based mass sensors are biocompatible, safe, and promising candidate for chemical and bio-sensing applications. 2018-0243
We report the fabrication of anisotropic superhydrophobic surface with dual-scale roughness by the deposition of silver nanorods arrays on prestretched poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) using oblique ...angle deposition and subsequent release of strain after the deposition, which resulted in the formation of microbuckles/wrinkles. The amplitude and periodicity of the wrinkles were tuned by varying the prestretching mechanical strain (ε) applied to the PDMS film from 0 to 30% prior to Ag nanorods deposition. The peaks and valleys in the surface topography of Ag nanorods arrays covered PDMS films lead to anisotropic wetting by water droplet. The droplet is free to move along the direction parallel to the wrinkles, but the droplet moving perpendicular to the wrinkles confront energy barrier leading to wetting anisotropy. The anisotropic wettability was tuned from 22 to 37° for 10–30% prestretched PDMS film. The dual scale roughness (nanorods on micro wrinkles) was found to be responsible for the superhydrophobicity (contact angle ∼155°) of the sample prepared for 30% prestretched PDMS film in perpendicular direction. The wetting behavior of the Ag nanorods PDMS film surface was reversibly tuned by applying the mechanical strain, which induces the change in the microscale roughness determined by amplitude (A) and periodicity (λ) of the buckles. Most interestingly, the water droplet also displayed the anisotropy in the roll-off angle. The effect of different A and λ on anisotropic wettability of Ag nanorods arrays/PDMS film was also demonstrated by lattice Boltzmann (LB) modeling. These findings may produce a promising way of controlling the direction of liquid flow such as in microfluidic devices and transportation of the microliter water droplets in a preset direction.
•Ubiquitously present bacterial Toxin-Antitoxin (TA) modules consist of stable toxin associated with labile antitoxin.•Classification of TAs modules based on inhibition of toxin through antitoxin in ...8 different classes.•Variety of specific toxin targets and the abundance of TA modules in various deadly pathogens.•Specific role of TAs modules in conservation of the resistant genes, emergence of persistence & biofilm formation.•Proposed antibacterial strategies involving TA modules for elimination of multi-drug resistance.
Toxin-antitoxin (TA) modules are ubiquitous gene loci among bacteria and are comprised of a toxin part and its cognate antitoxin part. Under normal physiological conditions, antitoxin counteracts the toxicity of the toxin whereas, during stress conditions, TA modules play a crucial role in bacterial physiology through involvement in the post-segregational killing, abortive infection, biofilms, and persister cell formation. Most of the toxins are proteinaceous that affect translation or DNA replication, although some other intracellular molecular targets have also been described. While antitoxins may be a protein or RNA, that generally neutralizes its cognate toxin by direct interaction or with the help of other signaling elements and thus helps in the TA module regulation. In this review, we have discussed the current state of the multifaceted TA (type I–VIII) modules by highlighting their classification and specific targets. We have also discussed the presence of TA modules in the various pathogens and their role in antibiotic persistence development as well as biofilm formation, by influencing the different cellular processes. In the end, assembling knowledge about ubiquitous TA systems from pathogenic bacteria facilitated us to propose multiple novel antibacterial strategies involving artificial activation of TA modules.
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•Presence of three hipBA TA paralogs in the genome of X. nematophila.•HipA homologs represents a class of serine/threonine-protein kinase.•HipB homologs represents a class of ...transcriptional regulator.•hipBA TA paralogs in the genome of X. nematophila are functionally associated.
Bacteria have a particular strategy to invade the host immune system by forming an undetectable dormant state that may resuscitate and cause disease even after inhabiting for years in a host body. Several mechanisms are known to be responsible for bacterial dormancy, among them the hipBA toxin-antitoxin (TA) system which was initially identified in Escherichia coli. Here we explore the genomic distribution and functional association of hipBA TA homologs from an entomopathogenic bacterium Xenorhabdus nematophila. This bacterium is a symbiotic model with the nematode Steinernema carpocapsae. We found that HipA toxin homologs are more closely related than HipB antitoxins and have satisfactory adenine (for HipA homologs) and nucleic acid (for HipB homologs) ligand partners with a typical TA interaction network that may promote the X. nematophila towards a stringent response to form the dormant state. Such homologs distribution is an inclusion in the current TA repertoire of X. nematophila.
Nowadays, Blockchain-based rating/review systems are gaining popularity as a backbone for recommender systems due to the inherent cryptographically secured decentralised architecture, immutability, ...user anonymity, and inclusion of smart contracts. However, the existing Blockchain-based rating/review systems address resistance to the standard attacks, i.e. collusion attack, user threatening, and unfair rating. Still, they do not present security analyses of smart contracts that may result in substantial threats to the users of the systems. This manuscript presents an in-depth study of twelve publicly available security analysis tools and standard vulnerabilities in smart contracts and reviews. The experimental setup uses a two-step approach for selecting the security analysis tool. The first step identifies the seven tools their proposers or independent researchers have compared, and the second step proposes a new method for selecting tools based on continuous improvement. Our experimental results show security issues in 51.72% of the analysed smart contracts of four Blockchain-based rating/review systems. 6.67% of vulnerable smart contracts exhibit high-level severity threats that raise an alarming condition for the current state of system developments.
In this study, a mathematical analysis is presented for the hydromagnetic convective flow of an incompressible, chemically reacting, and electrically and thermally conducting viscoelastic fluid ...through a vertical channel bounded by the porous regime under the action of an applied magnetic field with Hall current and induced magnetic field effects. The left wall of the channel is considered to be nonmagnetic, whereas the right wall of the channel is periodically magnetized. The flow within the channel is induced due to the nonuniform wall temperature and concentration, periodic pressure gradient, and periodic movement of the right wall. The method of separation of variable is used to convert the flow governing coupled partial differential equations into the ordinary differential equations that are solved analytically, and the solution for fluid velocity, induced magnetic field, temperature, and concentration is presented in a closed form. Numerical computation has been performed to demonstrate the impact of various system parameters on the fluid flow behavior. It is observed that oscillations increase the primary flow and primary induced magnetic field. Buoyancy forces have a tendency to lessen the secondary induced magnetic field. Furthermore, it is examined that magnetic diffusivity increases the primary flow, whereas it decreases the secondary flow and primary induced magnetic field.
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