In this review, a stem cell concept, initially defined by the author more than 10 years ago focusing on neural stem cells, has been systematically refined and updated. Relative to the conventional ...view which touched principally on the totipotency, pluripotentcy and multipotency of cell lineage differentiation (e.g., the ability of neural stem cells to grow into all three types of neural cells), accumulated data obtained by other researchers and my own team promoted me and my colleagues to propose and establish a new biological concept: Functional Multipotency of Stem Cells. The goal is to recognize the biofunctional multipotency of the stem cell to mediate homeostasis during development and adulthood. Under this academic context, an enriched repertoire of signaling, epigenetic and genetic events has been revealed. Such insight has enabled appreciation of the wide range of molecular tactics the stem cell can use at each developmental or adult stage. The multifunctionality allows stem cells to properly migrate, differentiate, and integrate into as well as prepare, influence, and repair the neighboring cells to steer the micro- and macro-environment towards the formation and self-maintenance of a physiological organ and system. It has been demonstrated that embracing this concept of the stem cell’s “functional multipotency” is pivotal for correctly, efficiently, and optimally investigating stem cells to advance fundamental biology and therapeutic translation.
Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) are characterized by heterogeneous impairments of social reciprocity and sensory processing. Voices, similar to faces, convey socially relevant information. Whether ...voice processing is selectively impaired remains undetermined. This study involved recording mismatch negativity (MMN) while presenting emotionally spoken syllables dada and acoustically matched nonvocal sounds to 20 subjects with ASC and 20 healthy matched controls. The people with ASC exhibited no MMN response to emotional syllables and reduced MMN to nonvocal sounds, indicating general impairments of affective voice and acoustic discrimination. Weaker angry MMN amplitudes were associated with more autistic traits. Receiver operator characteristic analysis revealed that angry MMN amplitudes yielded a value of 0.88 (p<.001). The results suggest that people with ASC may process emotional voices in an atypical fashion already at the automatic stage. This processing abnormality can facilitate diagnosing ASC and enable social deficits in people with ASC to be predicted.
This invited concise review was written for the special issue of Cell Transplantation to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the American Society for Neural Therapy and Repair (ASNTR). I aimed to ...present a succinct summary of two interweaved lines of research work carried out by my team members and collaborators over the past decade. Since the middle of the 20th century, biomedical research has been driven overwhelmingly by molecular technology-based focal endeavors. Our investigative undertakings, however, were orchestrated to define and propose novel theoretical frameworks to enhance the field’s ability to overcome complex neurological disorders. The effort has engendered two important academic concepts: Functional Multipotency of Stem Cells, and Recovery Neurobiology of Injured Spinal Cords. Establishing these theories was facilitated by academic insight gleaned from stem cell-based multimodal cross-examination studies using tactics of material science, systems neurobiology, glial biology, and neural oncology. It should be emphasized that the collegial environment cultivated by the mission of the ASNTR greatly promoted the efficacy of inter-laboratory collaborations. Notably, our findings have shed new light on fundamentals of stem cell biology and adult mammalian spinal cord neurobiology. Moreover, the novel academic leads have enabled determination of potential therapeutic targets to restore function for spinal cord injury and neurodegenerative diseases.
Water splitting is an effective strategy to produce renewable and sustainable hydrogen energy. Especially, seawater splitting, avoiding use of the limited freshwater resource, is more intriguing. ...Nowadays, electrocatalysts explored for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) using natural seawater or saline electrolyte have been increasingly reported. To better understand the current status and challenges of the electrocatalysts for HER and OER from seawater, we comprehensively review the recent advances in electrocatalysts for seawater splitting. The fundamentals, challenges and possible strategies for seawater splitting are firstly presented. Then, the recently reported electrocatalysts that explored for HER and OER from seawater are summarized and discussed. Finally, the perspectives in the development of high-efficient electrocatalysts for seawater splitting are also proposed.
In this study, a wood fiber/polylactic acid composite (WPC) filament was used as feedstock to print the WPC part by means of fused deposition modeling (FDM). The morphology and mechanical properties ...of WPC parts printed at different speeds (30, 50, and 70 mm/s) were determined. The results show that the density of the printed WPC part increased as the printing speed decreased, while its surface color became darker than that of parts printed at a high speed. The printing time decreased with an increasing printing speed; however, there was a small difference in the time saving percentage without regard to the dimensions of the printed WPC part at a given printing speed. Additionally, the tensile and flexural properties of the printed WPC part were not significantly influenced by the printing speed, whereas the compressive strength and modulus of the FDM-printed part significantly decreased by 34.3% and 14.6%, respectively, when the printing speed was increased from 30 to 70 mm/s. Furthermore, scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) illustrated that the FDM process at a high printing speed produced an uneven surface of the part with a narrower width of printed layers, and pull-outs of wood fibers were more often observed on the fracture surface of the tensile sample. These results show that FDM manufacturing at different printing speeds has a substantial effect on the surface color, surface roughness, density, and compressive properties of the FDM-printed WPC part.
Infective endocarditis caused by Actinomyces spp. is extremely rare. However, cases by new species of Actinomyces have been increasingly reported due to advances in laboratory techniques, and many of ...these species do not cause classic presentations of actinomycosis. Actinomyces neuii is reported to have a tendency to cause endovascular infection. The course of infective endocarditis caused by Actinomyces spp. is usually indolent.
A 61-year-old man with history of infective endocarditis, end stage renal disease, and monoclonal gammopathy was admitted for an abrupt fever, confusion, dysarthria, and facial droop after hemodialysis. Echocardiogram showed vegetations on both the aortic and mitral valves. Two sets of blood culture grew A. neuii. Brain MRI showed multiple bilateral cerebral infarcts consistent with septic emboli. The patient recovered after valvular surgery and prolonged intravenous and oral antibiotic therapy.
This case illustrates an unusually acute presentation of A. neuii infective endocarditis. As with other Gram-positive bacilli, Actinomyces spp. isolates are often regarded as a result of contamination. One should keep it in mind as a cause of infective endocarditis in vulnerable patient populations.
We systematically reviewed observational studies of early mortality post-antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) in Asia, Africa, and Central and South ...America, as defined by the World Bank, to summarize what is known.
Studies published in English between January 1996 and December 2010 were searched in Medline and EMBASE. Three independent reviewers examined studies of mortality within one year post-ART. An article was included if the study was conducted in a LMIC, participants were initiating ART in a non-clinical trial setting and were ≥15 years. Fifty studies were included; 38 (76%) from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), 5 (10%) from Asia, 2 (4%) from the Americas, and 5 (10%) were multi-regional. Median follow-up time and pre-ART CD4 cell count ranged from 3-55 months and 11-192 cells/mm(3), respectively. Loss-to-follow-up, reported in 40 (80%) studies, ranged from 0.3%-27%. Overall, SSA had the highest pooled 12-month mortality probability of 0.17 (95% CI 0.11-0.24) versus 0.11 (95% CI 0.10-0.13) for Asia, and 0.07 (95% CI 0.007-0.20) for the Americas. Of 14 (28%) studies reporting cause-specific mortality, tuberculosis (TB) (5%-44%), wasting (5%-53%), advanced HIV (20%-37%), and chronic diarrhea (10%-25%) were most common. Independent factors associated with early mortality in 30 (60%) studies included: low baseline CD4 cell count, male sex, advanced World Health Organization clinical stage, low body mass index, anemia, age greater than 40 years, and pre-ART quantitative HIV RNA.
Significant heterogeneity in outcomes and in methods of reporting outcomes exist among published studies evaluating mortality in the first year after ART initiation in LMIC. Early mortality rates are highest in SSA, and opportunistic illnesses such as TB and wasting syndrome are the most common reported causes of death. Strategies addressing modifiable risk factors associated with early death are urgently needed.
Irradiation Behavior in High Entropy Alloys XIA, Song-qin; WANG, Zhen; YANG, Teng-fei ...
Journal of iron and steel research, international,
10/2015, Letnik:
22, Številka:
10
Journal Article
Recenzirano
As an increasing demand of advanced nuclear fission reactors and fusion facilities, the key requirements for the materials used in advanced nuclear systems should encompass superior high temperature ...property, good behavior in corrosive environment, and high irradiation resistance, etc. Recently, it was found that some selected high entropy alloys (HEAs) possess excellent mechanical properties at high temperature, high corrosion resistance, and no grain coarsening and self-healing ability under irradiation, especially, the exceptional structural stability and lower irradiation-induced volume swelling, compared with other conventional materials. Thus, HEAs have been considered as the potential nuclear materials used for future fission or fusion reactors, which are designed to operate at higher temperatures and higher radiation doses up to several hundreds of displacement per atom (dpa). An insight into the irradiation behavior of HEAs was given, including fundamental researches to investigate the irradiation-induced phase crystal structure change and volume swelling in HEAs. In summary, a brief overview of the irradiation behavior in HEAs was made and the irradiation-induced structural change in HEAs may be relatively insensitive because of their special structures.
Abstract
Coercive power has different effects on individuals, and which were unable to be fully addressed in Milgram’s famous studies on obedience to authority. While some individuals exhibited high ...levels of guilt-related anxiety and refused orders to harm, others followed coercive orders throughout the whole event. The lack of guilt is a well-known characteristic of psychopathy, and recent evidence portrays psychopathic personalities on a continuum of clustered traits, while being pervasive in a significant proportion in the population. To investigate whether psychopathic traits better explain discrepancies in antisocial behavior under coercion, we applied a virtual obedience paradigm, in which an experimenter ordered subjects to press a handheld button to initiate successive actions that carry different moral consequences, during fMRI scanning. Psychopathic traits modulated the association between harming actions and guilt feelings on both behavioral and brain levels. This study sheds light on the individual variability in response to coercive power.
Past historical events and experimental research have shown that complying with orders from an authority has a strong impact on harming/destructive behavior, but no one has ever looked into the ...potential intervention and its neural underpinning to reveal the toll of coercion. We used a paradigm of virtual obedience to authority, in which an experimenter ordered a volunteer to press a handheld button to initiate actions that carried different consequences, including harming or helping others. In this study, we scanned the brain with functional neuroimaging and applied transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to modulate the activation of the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) in healthy volunteers in a single‐blinded, sham‐controlled, crossover trial with anodal, cathodal, and sham stimulation. We observed that cathodal stimulation, compared to anodal and sham stimulation, significantly reduced reaction times (RTs) to initiating harming actions. The effect of tDCS on the rTPJ, orbitofrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex had opposite directions depending on coercive harming or helping actions. Cathodal tDCS‐induced changes in the strength of the functional connectivity between the rTPJ and amygdala predicted the effect of cathodal tDCS on harming RTs. The findings provide evidence supporting the rTPJ having a role in coercion‐induced changes in the sense of agency. Neuromodulation with tDCS might help in unveiling the power of authority and assisting in the emergence of prosocial behavior, thus shedding light on coping strategies against coercion beyond merely examining its effects.
Cathodal stimulation, compared to anodal and sham stimulation, significantly reduced reaction times to initiating harming actions and the strength of functional connectivity between the rTPJ and amygdala. Our findings provide the first evidence supporting that the rTPJ has a role in the coercion‐induced change in the sense of agency. Neuromodulation with tDCS might help in unveiling the power of authority and assist in the emergence of prosocial behavior, thus, shedding light on coping strategies against coercion beyond merely examining its effects.
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