Dysfunctional T cells can render the immune system unable to eliminate infections and cancer. Therapeutic targeting of the surface receptors that inhibit T cell function has begun to show remarkable ...success in clinical trials. In this Review, we discuss the potential mechanisms of action of the clinical agents that target two of these receptors, programmed cell death protein 1 (PD1) and lymphocyte activation gene 3 protein (LAG3). We also suggest correlative studies that may define the predominant mechanisms of action and identify predictive biomarkers.
Having geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Vietnam was expected to have a high risk of ...transmission. However, as of 4 April 2020, in comparison to attempts to containing the disease around the world, responses from Vietnam are seen as prompt and effective in protecting the interests of its citizens, with 239 confirmed cases and no fatalities. This study analyzes the situation in terms of Vietnam’s policy response, social media and science journalism. A self-made web crawl engine was used to scan and collect official media news related to COVID-19 between the beginning of January and April 4, yielding a comprehensive dataset of 14,952 news items. The findings shed light on how Vietnam—despite being under-resourced—has demonstrated political readiness to combat the emerging pandemic since the earliest days. Timely communication on any developments of the outbreak from the government and the media, combined with up-to-date research on the new virus by the Vietnamese science community, have altogether provided reliable sources of information. By emphasizing the need for immediate and genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals, the case study offers valuable lessons for other nations concerning not only the concurrent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic but also the overall responses to a public health crisis.
Sixth-generation (6G) mobile networks will have to cope with diverse threats on a space-air-ground integrated network environment, novel technologies, and an accessible user information explosion. ...However, for now, security and privacy issues for 6G remain largely in concept. This survey provides a systematic overview of security and privacy issues based on prospective technologies for 6G in the physical, connection, and service layers, as well as through lessons learned from the failures of existing security architectures and state-of-the-art defenses. Two key lessons learned are as follows. First, other than inheriting vulnerabilities from the previous generations, 6G has new threat vectors from new radio technologies, such as the exposed location of radio stripes in ultra-massive MIMO systems at Terahertz bands and attacks against pervasive intelligence. Second, physical layer protection, deep network slicing, quantum-safe communications, artificial intelligence (AI) security, platform-agnostic security, real-time adaptive security, and novel data protection mechanisms such as distributed ledgers and differential privacy are the top promising techniques to mitigate the attack magnitude and personal data breaches substantially.
Adopting improved seed varieties is a type of agricultural investment that has substantially ensured food security in developing countries and helped farmers transition out of poverty. This paper ...examines the impact of land rights on the adoption of high-yield rice varieties by farmers in Vietnam. Using panel data from representative surveys of Vietnamese households, I find that having land-use certificates has a positive influence on households' adoption of improved rice varieties. Additionally, I explore the channels through which land rights affect improved seeds adoption. Within households, having a land title matters at the plot level, which suggests the significance of the tenure security channel. I also find evidences of the credit channel, in which holding land titles encourages a household to take loans for rice production.
Increasingly emerging technologies in micro-electromechanical systems and wireless communications allows mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSNs) to be a more and more powerful mean in many ...applications such as habitat and environmental monitoring, traffic observing, battlefield surveillance, smart homes and smart cities. Nevertheless, due to sensor battery constraints, energy-efficiently operating an MWSN is paramount importance in those applications; and a plethora of approaches have been proposed to elongate the network longevity at most possible. Therefore, this paper provides a comprehensive review on the developed methods that exploit mobility of sensor nodes and/or sink(s) to effectively maximize the lifetime of an MWSN. The survey systematically classifies the algorithms into categories where the MWSN is equipped with mobile sensor nodes, one mobile sink or multiple mobile sinks. How to drive the mobile sink(s) for energy efficiency in the network is also fully reviewed and reported.
The World Health Organization has set ambitious targets for the global elimination of tuberculosis. However, these targets will not be achieved at the current rate of progress.
We performed a ...cluster-randomized, controlled trial in Ca Mau Province, Vietnam, to evaluate the effectiveness of active community-wide screening, as compared with standard passive case detection alone, for reducing the prevalence of tuberculosis. Persons 15 years of age or older who resided in 60 intervention clusters (subcommunes) were screened for pulmonary tuberculosis, regardless of symptoms, annually for 3 years, beginning in 2014, by means of rapid nucleic acid amplification testing of spontaneously expectorated sputum samples. Active screening was not performed in the 60 control clusters in the first 3 years. The primary outcome, measured in the fourth year, was the prevalence of microbiologically confirmed pulmonary tuberculosis among persons 15 years of age or older. The secondary outcome was the prevalence of tuberculosis infection, as assessed by an interferon gamma release assay in the fourth year, among children born in 2012.
In the fourth-year prevalence survey, we tested 42,150 participants in the intervention group and 41,680 participants in the control group. A total of 53 participants in the intervention group (126 per 100,000 population) and 94 participants in the control group (226 per 100,000) had pulmonary tuberculosis, as confirmed by a positive nucleic acid amplification test for
(prevalence ratio, 0.56; 95% confidence interval CI, 0.40 to 0.78; P<0.001). The prevalence of tuberculosis infection in children born in 2012 was 3.3% in the intervention group and 2.6% in the control group (prevalence ratio, 1.29; 95% CI, 0.70 to 2.36; P = 0.42).
Three years of community-wide screening in persons 15 years of age or older who resided in Ca Mau Province, Vietnam, resulted in a lower prevalence of pulmonary tuberculosis in the fourth year than standard passive case detection alone. (Funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council; ACT3 Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry number, ACTRN12614000372684.).
Background and aims Extreme climate events, including flooding and prolonged drought, may establish long-lasting (legacy) effects on soil abiotic and biotic properties, potentially influencing soil ...N-cycling, microbial communities, and plant productivity. Nitrogen (N) fertilizer often stimulates plant growth, but it remains unknown whether N addition can alleviate the impact of legacy drought or waterlogging events on crops. Our aim was to assess the interactive effects of legacy extreme climate events and N-addition on these processes. Methods Using cotton as a model system, soils previously exposed to waterlogging and prolonged drought were used to examine potential legacy impacts of extreme climate on soil N process rates, abundance and structure of associated microbial communities, and cotton growth and productivity under different levels of N fertilizer application (0, 100, 200 and 300 kg N/ha). Results The deleterious legacy effects of prolonged drought on plant productivity were due to negative impacts on microbial abundance and community structure, and soil nutrient availability, thereby negatively influencing the rate of nitrification, and consequently plant available N. The legacy impacts of prolonged drought persisted throughout the experiment despite fertiliser applications of up to 300 kg of N/ha. The only observed legacy impacts of waterlogging were low NO3− levels in soils without N-addition and shifts in the abundance and structure of the N2O-reducing community. Conclusions There were strong legacy impacts of prolonged drought, but minor legacy impacts of waterlogging, on soils and crop yields which could not be fully counteracted by the high rates of N fertilizer application. This study provides critical knowledge contributing to the development of adaptation and soil N management strategies to minimize the loss of farm productivity, within the context of increased frequencies and intensities of extreme weather events.
We have demonstrated a novel scheme for simultaneous measurement of temperature and refractive index by using an exposed core microstructured optical fiber (ECF). The ECF allows for high sensitivity ...to refractive index due to the small exposed-core, while being supported by a standard fiber diameter cladding making it robust compared to optical microfibers. The sensor combines a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) inscribed into the core of the ECF and a multimode Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). Both the FBG and MZI are sensitive to refractive index (RI) and temperature through a combination of direct access to the evanescent field via the exposed-core, the thermo-optic effect, and thermal expansion. The FBG and MZI respond differently to changes in temperature and RI, thus allowing for the simultaneous measurement of these parameters. In our experiment, RI sensitivities of 5.85 nm/RIU and 794 nm/RIU, and temperature sensitivities of 8.72 pm/°C and -57.9 pm/°C, were obtained for the FBG and MZI respectively. We demonstrate that a transfer matrix approach can be used to simultaneously measure both parameters, solving the problem of temperature sensitivity of RI sensors due to the high thermo-optic coefficient of aqueous samples.
Leukocyte trafficking to the small and large intestines is tightly controlled to maintain intestinal immune homeostasis, mediate immune responses, and regulate inflammation. A wide array of ...chemoattractants, chemoattractant receptors, and adhesion molecules expressed by leukocytes, mucosal endothelium, epithelium, and stromal cells controls leukocyte recruitment and microenvironmental localization in intestine and in the gut-associated lymphoid tissues (GALTs). Naive lymphocytes traffic to the gut-draining mesenteric lymph nodes where they undergo antigen-induced activation and priming; these processes determine their memory/effector phenotypes and imprint them with the capacity to migrate via the lymph and blood to the intestines. Mechanisms of T-cell recruitment to GALT and of T cells and plasmablasts to the small intestine are well described. Recent advances include the discovery of an unexpected role for lectin CD22 as a B-cell homing receptor GALT, and identification of the orphan G-protein–coupled receptor 15 (GPR15) as a T-cell chemoattractant/trafficking receptor for the colon. GPR15 decorates distinct subsets of T cells in mice and humans, a difference in species that could affect translation of the results of mouse colitis models to humans. Clinical studies with antibodies to integrin α4β7 and its vascular ligand mucosal vascular addressin cell adhesion molecule 1 are proving the value of lymphocyte trafficking mechanisms as therapeutic targets for inflammatory bowel diseases. In contrast to lymphocytes, cells of the innate immune system express adhesion and chemoattractant receptors that allow them to migrate directly to effector tissue sites during inflammation. We review the mechanisms for innate and adaptive leukocyte localization to the intestinal tract and GALT, and discuss their relevance to human intestinal homeostasis and inflammation.
The supply chain collaboration has gained significant attention, especially in the presence of disruptions. This paper presents findings from a systematic literature review to answer the question: ...how collaborations help supply chains respond and recover from a disruption. A total of 157 papers from the year 2000 were studied. The thematic and descriptive analysis identified usefulness, used research methodologies, collaboration mechanisms, and influential factors in collaboration. This comprehensive review provides in-depth insights into the current state of literature, proposes a research framework, and identifies several future research directions. It also highlights the role of each collaboration mechanism based on each severity level of disruptions.
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