Insects are the most abundant animals on Earth, and the microbiota within their guts play important roles by engaging in beneficial and pathological interactions with these hosts. In this study, we ...comprehensively characterized insect-associated gut bacteria of 305 individuals belonging to 218 species in 21 taxonomic orders, using 454 pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA genes. In total, 174,374 sequence reads were obtained, identifying 9,301 bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) at the 3% distance level from all samples, with an average of 84.3 (± 97.7) OTUs per sample. The insect gut microbiota were dominated by Proteobacteria (62.1% of the total reads, including 14.1% Wolbachia sequences) and Firmicutes (20.7%). Significant differences were found in the relative abundances of anaerobes in insects and were classified according to the criteria of host environmental habitat, diet, developmental stage, and phylogeny. Gut bacterial diversity was significantly higher in omnivorous insects than in stenophagous (carnivorous and herbivorous) insects. This insect-order-spanning investigation of the gut microbiota provides insights into the relationships between insects and their gut bacterial communities.
Abstract
A submerged dielectric barrier discharge plasma reactor (underwater DBD) has been used to inactivate biofilm produced by three different food-borne pathogens, namely
Escherichia coli
O157:H7 ...(ATCC 438),
Cronobacter sakazakii
(ATCC 29004), and
Staphylococcus aureus
(KCCM 40050). The inactivation that were obtained after 90 minutes of plasma operation were found to measure 5.50 log CFU/coupon, 6.88 log CFU/coupon and 4.20 log CFU/coupon for
Escherichia coli
O157:H7 (ATCC 438),
Cronobacter sakazakii
(ATCC 29004), and
Staphylococcus aureus
(KCCM 40050), respectively. Secondary Electron Images (SEI) obtained from Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM) show the biofilm morphology and its removal trend by plasma operation at different time intervals. An attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) measurement was performed to elucidate the biochemical changes that occur on the bacterial cell and extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) of biofilm during the plasma inactivation process. The ATR-FTIR measurement shows the gradual reduction of carbohydrates, proteins, and lipid and DNA peak regions with increased plasma exposure time. The presence of an EPS layer on the upper surface of the biofilm plays a negative and significant role in its removal from stainless steel (SS) coupons.
Lipotoxic hepatocyte injury is a primary event in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), but the mechanisms of lipotoxicity are not fully defined. Sphingolipids and free cholesterol (FC) mediate ...hepatocyte injury, but their link in NASH has not been explored. We examined the role of free cholesterol and sphingomyelin synthases (SMSs) that generate sphingomyelin (SM) and diacylglycerol (DAG) in hepatocyte pyroptosis, a specific form of programmed cell death associated with inflammasome activation, and NASH.
Wild-type C57BL/6J mice were fed a high fat and high cholesterol diet (HFHCD) to induce NASH. Hepatic SMS1 and SMS2 expressions were examined in various mouse models including HFHCD-fed mice and patients with NASH. Pyroptosis was estimated by the generation of the gasdermin-D N-terminal fragment. NASH susceptibility and pyroptosis were examined following knockdown of SMS1, protein kinase Cδ (PKCδ), or the NLR family CARD domain-containing protein 4 (NLRC4).
HFHCD increased the hepatic levels of SM and DAG while decreasing the level of phosphatidylcholine. Hepatic expression of
but not
was higher in mouse models and patients with NASH. FC in hepatocytes induced
expression, and
knockdown prevented HFHCD-induced NASH. DAG produced by SMS1 activated PKCδ and NLRC4 inflammasome to induce hepatocyte pyroptosis. Depletion of
prevented hepatocyte pyroptosis and the development of NASH. Conditioned media from pyroptotic hepatocytes activated the NOD-like receptor family pyrin domain containing 3 inflammasome (NLRP3) in Kupffer cells, but
knockout mice were not protected against HFHCD-induced hepatocyte pyroptosis.
SMS1 mediates hepatocyte pyroptosis through a novel DAG-PKCδ-NLRC4 axis and holds promise as a therapeutic target for NASH.
Aim
To examine the relationships among nurse staffing, nurses prioritization of nursing activities, missed care, quality of nursing care, and nurse outcomes.
Background
Inadequate staffing is ...associated with increased missed care, which threatens the quality of care and nurse outcomes.
Methods
The study sample included 2114 staff nurses from 156 medical or surgical units of 49 general hospitals who had participated in a cross‐sectional survey conducted in 2015. Nurse staffing was measured using the patient‐to‐nurse ratio and perceived staffing adequacy. The Missed Nursing Care Survey was used to measure how frequently nurses had missed each of 24 activities. Multilevel regression analyses were employed to examine the relationships among variables.
Results
The prevalence of missed care differed by nursing activity. Poorer staffing was associated with an increased number of missed activities. A higher number of missed activities and poorer staffing were associated with poorer patient safety, quality of nursing care and job satisfaction, and a higher intent to leave. Nurses gave the highest priority to focused patient reassessments, timely medications, and patient teaching, under hypothetical conditions of improved staffing.
Conclusion
Adequate staffing is required to reduce missed care and to improve quality of care and nurse outcomes.
SUMMARY STATEMENT
What is already known about this topic?
Low nurse staffing is associated with a high prevalence of missed care, which has negative effects on patient and nurse outcomes.
Nurses are known to prioritize their nursing tasks in the face of time scarcity. However, insufficient studies have investigated how nurses prioritize nursing care and, further, how their prioritization would be modified if nurse staffing were to improve.
What is already known about this topic?
Poorer perceptions of staffing adequacy and the patient‐to‐RN ratio had a significant association with a higher number of missed nursing activities.
Nurses gave the highest priority to focused reassessments, timely medications, and patient teaching, which were less frequently missed than basic care (eg, mouth care, bathing, and ambulation), even under hypothetical conditions of improved staffing.
The implications of this paper:
Adequate staffing is required to meet patients needs and to improve patient and nurse outcomes.
Nurses perceptions and reports of missed care appear to be influenced by their health care system and culture (eg, family caregiving).
This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of sinapic acid, a cinnamic acid derivative, on inflammatory changes in a mouse model of colitis. Colitis was induced by intracolonic instillation of ...2,4,6-trinitrobenzenesulfonic acid (TNBS). Sinapic acid (10, 30, and 100 mg/kg) and dexamethasone (2 mg/kg) were orally administered to Balb/c female mice after TNBS instillation. The anti-inflammatory effect of sinapic acid on colonic injury or damage was assessed by clinical, macroscopic, microscopic, and biochemical analyses. Compared with TNBS control, treatment with sinapic acid significantly improved colonic weight and length and decreased the macroscopic and microscopic changes in TNBS-induced colitis. Furthermore, myeloperoxidase activity and the colonic tissue levels of malondialdehyde and tumor necrosis factor alpha were decreased by administration of sinapic acid. The findings of this study suggest that sinapic acid exerts anti-inflammatory effects on intestinal inflammation and can be selected as a novel therapeutic candidate in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease.
Several intervention studies have suggested that vegetarian or vegan diets have clinical benefits, particularly in terms of glycemic control, in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D); however, no ...randomized controlled trial has been conducted in Asians who more commonly depend on plant-based foods, as compared to Western populations. Here, we aimed to compare the effect of a vegan diet and conventional diabetic diet on glycemic control among Korean individuals.
Participants diagnosed with T2D were randomly assigned to follow either a vegan diet (excluding animal-based food including fish; n = 46) or a conventional diet recommended by the Korean Diabetes Association 2011 (n = 47) for 12 weeks. HbA1c levels were measured at weeks 0, 4, and 12, and the primary study endpoint was the change in HbA1c levels over 12 weeks.
The mean HbA1c levels at weeks 0, 4, and 12 were 7.7%, 7.2%, and 7.1% in the vegan group, and 7.4%, 7.2%, and 7.2% in the conventional group, respectively. Although both groups showed significant reductions in HbA1C levels, the reductions were larger in the vegan group than in the conventional group (-0.5% vs. -0.2%; p-for-interaction = 0.017). When only considering participants with high compliance, the difference in HbA1c level reduction between the groups was found to be larger (-0.9% vs. -0.3%). The beneficial effect of vegan diets was noted even after adjusting for changes in total energy intake or waist circumference over the 12 weeks.
Both diets led to reductions in HbA1c levels; however, glycemic control was better with the vegan diet than with the conventional diet. Thus, the dietary guidelines for patients with T2D should include a vegan diet for the better management and treatment. However, further studies are needed to evaluate the long-term effects of a vegan diet, and to identify potential explanations of the underlying mechanisms.
CRiS KCT0001771.
The degradation of two organophosphates, chlorpyrifos and diazinon, in water using microplasma equipment to produce ozone and the identification of their products were studied by using liquid ...chromatography–mass spectrometry. The organophosphates gradually decreased with time and were completely removed after 10 min, and diazinon was degraded at a relatively fast rate compared to chlorpyrifos. The products formed during the process were identified and determined with accurate mass measurements and tandem mass spectrometry spectra, providing reliable structural determination. Chlorpyrifos oxon was formed through the oxidation of chlorpyrifos, followed by the formation of 3,5,6‐trichloro‐2‐pyridinol and diethyl phosphate by hydrolysis. Diazinon formed various products through more complicated degradation processes than those of chlorpyrifos. The major products of diazinon degradation were 2‐isopropyl‐6‐methyl‐4‐pyrimidinol and diethyl phosphate by hydrolysis after oxidation, exhibiting diazoxon as an intermediate at trace levels. Direct hydrolysis of diazinon also occurred, producing diethyl thiophosphate, which was observed at a low concentration for a transient time and exhibited a less favorable process than sequential oxidation and hydrolysis. The other products, hydroxy diazinons and hydroxy‐2‐isopropyl‐6‐methyl‐4‐pyrimidinols, formed by hydroxylation, were also identified, but they were present in low amounts. Degradation mechanisms of chlorpyrifos and diazinon were proposed with the quantitatively evaluated products.
Recent works on massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) have shown that a potential breakthrough in capacity gains can be achieved by deploying a very large number of antennas at the base ...station. In order to achieve the performance that massive MIMO systems promise, accurate transmit-side channel state information (CSI) should be available at the base station. While transmit-side CSI can be obtained by employing channel reciprocity in time division duplexing (TDD) systems, explicit feedback of CSI from the user terminal to the base station is needed for frequency division duplexing (FDD) systems. In this paper, we propose an antenna grouping based feedback reduction technique for FDD-based massive MIMO systems. The proposed algorithm, dubbed antenna group beamforming (AGB), maps multiple correlated antenna elements to a single representative value using predesigned patterns. The proposed method modifies the feedback packet by introducing the concept of a header to select a suitable group pattern and a payload to quantize the reduced dimension channel vector. Simulation results show that the proposed method achieves significant feedback overhead reduction over conventional approach performing the vector quantization of whole channel vector under the same target sum rate requirement.
Macrophages play an important role in the innate and adaptive immune responses of organ systems, including the lungs, to particles and pathogens. Cumulative results show that macrophages contribute ...to the development and progression of acute or chronic inflammatory responses through the secretion of inflammatory cytokines/chemokines and the activation of transcription factors in the pathogenesis of inflammatory lung diseases, such as acute lung injury (ALI), acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), ARDS related to COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)), allergic asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). This review summarizes the functions of macrophages and their associated underlying mechanisms in the development of ALI, ARDS, COVID-19-related ARDS, allergic asthma, COPD, and IPF and briefly introduces the acute and chronic experimental animal models. Thus, this review suggests an effective therapeutic approach that focuses on the regulation of macrophage function in the context of inflammatory lung diseases.
Objective To evaluate the clinical effect of the presence of a micropapillary or solid subtype on the outcomes in lung adenocarcinoma and to determine the predictors of such a histopathologic ...diagnosis. Methods A total of 511 patients with lung adenocarcinoma ≤3 cm were included. According to the presence of micropapillary or solid subtypes, we classified the patients into 4 subgroups: both subtypes absent (MP−/S−, n = 87), either subtype present (MP+/S−, n = 207 and MP−/S+, n = 196), and both present (MP+/S+, n = 21) to determine the association between the micropapillary or solid subtype and survival outcome or clinical and imaging conditions. Univariate and multivariate analyses were undertaken to determine the parameters, allowing the prediction of the presence of the micropapillary or solid subtype. Results Overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) differed significantly among the 4 subgroups ( P < .001 and P = .004, respectively). The MP−/S− tumors showed better DFS than those containing either the micropapillary or solid subtype. Patients with the micropapillary subtype had significantly worse OS than patients without the micropapillary subtype. This difference remained significant, together with stage, after adjustment for gender, age, adjuvant therapy, tumor size, and solid subtype (DFS and OS, P = .016 and P = .002, respectively). On multivariate analysis, greater than stage I, tumor size ≥2.5 cm, solid mass, and maximal standardized uptake value of ≥7 were independent predictors of the presence of a micropapillary or solid subtype. Conclusions Micropapillary and solid subtypes are common in tumors greater than stage I, with size ≥2.5 cm, pure solid type, and maximal standardized uptake value of ≥7, which were predictors for poor DFS. The presence of the micropapillary subtype was a single prognostic factor for OS.
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