Experience

BACKGROUND: The global COVID-19 crisis has underscored the critical role of effective decision-making in healthcare systems. Saudi Arabia has shown resilience by implementing comprehensive testing, tracing, and vaccination measures. Given the unique cultural and religious characteristics of Makkah, specific challenges have prompted efforts to uncover local pandemic responses. This qualitative assessment aims to delineate the challenges faced by decision-makers during COVID-19 in Makkah and identify key interventions implemented by the Makkah healthcare cluster to manage and coordinate care...

BACKGROUND: Lupus erythematosus (LE) is an autoimmune condition that is associated with significant detriments to quality of life and daily functioning. TikTok, a popular social networking platform for sharing short videos, provides a unique opportunity to understand experiences with LE within a nonclinical sample, a population that is understudied in LE research. This is the first qualitative study that explores LE experiences using the TikTok platform. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to evaluate the disease-related experiences of TikTok users with LE using qualitative and content analysis...

The sea cucumber plasmalogen PlsEtn has been shown to be associated with various chronic diseases related to lipid metabolism. However, the mechanism is unclear. Therefore, the present study used the sea cucumber plasmanylcholine PakCho as a structural contrast to PlsEtn and assessed its effect in 8 week high-fat diet (HFD)-fed mice. The lipidomic approach based on high-resolution mass spectrometry combined with molecular biology techniques was used to evaluate the mechanism of PlsEtn. The results showed that both PlsEtn and PakCho significantly inhibited an increase in mouse body weight and liver total triglyceride and total cholesterol levels caused by HFD...

The continuous deciphering of crucial biological roles of RNA modifications and their involvement in various pathological conditions, together with their key roles in the use of RNA-based therapeutics, has reignited interest in studying the occurrence and identity of non-canonical ribonucleoside structures during the past years. Discovery and structural elucidation of new modified structures is usually achieved by combination of liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) at the nucleoside level and stable isotope labeling experiments...

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to examine the effect of an educational intervention on nurses' knowledge defined as understanding, beliefs, and actions to be taken, regarding nurse suicide. BACKGROUND: Between 2007 and 2018, nurses were 18% more likely to die by suicide than the general public. As a result, an assessment of nurses' knowledge regarding suicide has become an important issue for nursing administration. METHODS: A quasi-experiment (N = 225) was conducted...

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a heterogeneous disease with distinct molecular subtypes described as classical/progenitor and basal-like/squamous PDAC. We hypothesized that integrative transcriptome and metabolome approaches can identify candidate genes whose inactivation contributes to the development of the aggressive basal-like/squamous subtype. Using our integrated approach, we identified endosome-lysosome associated apoptosis and autophagy regulator 1 (ELAPOR1/KIAA1324) as a candidate tumor suppressor in both our NCI-UMD-German cohort and additional validation cohorts...

The synthesis of a well-defined dicopper carbene complex supported by the PNNP (2,7-bis(di-tert-butylphosphaneyl)methyl-1,8-naphthyridine) expanded pincer ligand is reported. This carbene complex is remarkably stable, even in the presence of air and water. The reactivity of this complex was explored towards typical carbene transfer substrates and its electronic structure was investigated. Using a combination of experiments and DFT calculations, the principles that underly the stability of dinuclear carbene complexes are probed...

Although in vitro experiments have demonstrated the potential of flavonoid compounds in regulating blood pressure, there is still a lack of evidence from large population studies. We conducted a cross-sectional study using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to investigate the relationship between flavonoid intake levels (natural log transformation) and hypertension events. A total of 15 752 participants aged over 20 years were included, and a weighted multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed to explore the relationship between total flavonoids, five sub types intake, and hypertension events...

Identification of promising seed cells plays a pivotal role in achieving tissue regeneration. This study demonstrated that LepR-expressing cells (LepR+ cells) are required for maintaining periodontal homeostasis at the adult stage. We further investigated how LepR+ cells behave in periodontal healing using a ligature-induced periodontitis (PD) and a self-healing murine model with LepRCre/+; R26RtdTomato/+ mice. Lineage tracing experiments revealed that the largely suppressed osteogenic ability of LepR+ cells results from periodontal inflammation...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Soft tissue defects after total knee arthroplasties (TKA) represent a major orthopedic challenge with amputation as a feared outcome. Microvascular free flap coverage (FFC) can increase limb salvage rates, but complications related to the procedure are yet to be explored further. We aimed to review a single-center experience with FFC for soft tissue defects related to revision total knee arthroplasty. METHODS: Through a retrospective chart review from 2006 to 2021, we identified all patients who had FFC of a knee with an existing TKA...

BACKGROUND: Phronesis is a way of knowing, implying wisdom, experiences, and reflections that guide our judgements. Phronesis, important for learning, is a neglected form of knowledge when applied to research. AIM: To examine how phronesis is conceptualised and practiced in three research projects. METHOD: Data from eight interviews with researchers involved in three research projects was generated. The interview material was analysed. A theoretical matrix of contemporary understanding of phronesis was applied to the material...

BACKGROUND: Digital inequity refers to the inequality and exclusion experienced by those who lack the same opportunities or circumstances to support the development of digital skills as the rest of modern society. One rapidly growing and highly vulnerable group to digital inequity is older people attempting to reintegrate into society after release from prison, where technology access is limited. Inadequate support for digital skills in this population entails widespread consequences for public health, human rights, social welfare and recidivism...

A change of orbital state alters the coupling between ions and their surroundings drastically. Orbital excitations are hence key to understand and control interaction of ions. Rare-earth elements with strong magneto-crystalline anisotropy (MCA) are important ingredients for magnetic devices. Thus, control of their localized 4 f magnetic moments and anisotropy is one major challenge in ultrafast spin physics. With time-resolved x-ray absorption and resonant inelastic scattering experiments, we show for Tb metal that 4 f -electronic excitations out of the ground-state multiplet occur after optical pumping...

What time does a clock tell after quantum tunneling? Predictions and indirect measurements range from superluminal or instantaneous tunneling to finite durations, depending on the specific experiment and the precise definition of the elapsed time. Proposals and implementations use the atomic motion to define this delay, although the inherent quantum nature of atoms implies a delocalization and is in sharp contrast to classical trajectories. Here, we rely on an operational approach: We prepare atoms in a coherent superposition of internal states and study the time read-off via a Ramsey sequence after the tunneling process without the notion of classical trajectories or velocities...

As a type of parasitic agent, satellite RNAs (satRNAs) rely on cognate helper viruses to achieve their replication and transmission. During the infection of satRNAs, helper virus RNAs serve as templates for synthesizing viral proteins, including the replication proteins essential for satRNA replication. However, the role of non-template functions of helper virus RNAs in satRNA replication remains unexploited. Here we employed the well-studied model that is composed of cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) and its associated satRNA...

BACKGROUND: Currently, it is acknowledged that vitamin E, insulin sensitizers and anti-diabetic drugs are used to manage non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), however, these therapeutic interventions harbour adverse side effects. Pioglitazone, an anti-diabetic drug, is currently the most effective therapy to manage NAFLD. The use of natural medicines is widely embraced due to the lack of evidence of their negative side effects. Rooibos has been previously shown to decrease inflammation and oxidative stress in experimental models of diabetes, however, this is yet to be explored in a setting of NAFLD...

This paper takes the establishment of the Green Financial Reform and Innovation Pilot Zone (GFPZ) in 2017 as a natural experiment, adopts the data of a-share industrial listed enterprises in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2020, and utilizes the difference-in-differences (DID) method to carry out empirical tests. The results show that (1) GFPZ policy significantly improves the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance of enterprises, and the positive effect is mainly realized by improving the external financing ability and green-technology innovation level of enterprises...

Animacy plays a key role for human cognition, which is also reflected in the way humans process language. However, while experiments on sentence processing show reliable effects of animacy on word order and grammatical function assignment, effects of animacy on conjoined noun phrases (e.g., fish and shoe vs. shoe and fish) have yielded inconsistent results. In the present study, we tested the possibility that effects of animacy are outranked by reading and writing habits. We examined adult speakers of German (left-to-right script) and speakers of Arabic (right-to-left script), as well as German preschool children who do not yet know how to read and write...

The COVID-19 pandemic was a socionatural disaster that unprecedentedly disrupted the daily lives of individuals, families, and communities. Prior research indicates that Black American men living in rural contexts, particularly in Southern parts of the United States of America, were disproportionately affected by the psychological and economic effects of the pandemic. Despite these disparities, few studies have examined the pandemic's impact on rural Black American men's social networks. This study aimed to explore the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural Black American men's interpersonal relationships...

BACKGROUND: Understanding the current practice and the associated challenges in applying monitoring tools is essential to improving football performance in the Middle East, thus the purpose was to translate and culturally adapt a published questionnaire that assessed the practice and perception of High-Level football teams toward Training Load and Player Monitoring to be used in the Arabic context, aiming to contribute to the enhancement of football performance, player welfare, and training quality in the region...