Biomedic

BACKGROUND: As global populations age and become susceptible to neurodegenerative illnesses, new therapies for Alzheimer disease (AD) are urgently needed. Existing data resources for drug discovery and repurposing fail to capture relationships central to the disease's etiology and response to drugs. OBJECTIVE: We designed the Alzheimer's Knowledge Base (AlzKB) to alleviate this need by providing a comprehensive knowledge representation of AD etiology and candidate therapeutics...

Cellulose-based nanocomposites are highly appealing for the development of next-generation sustainable functional materials. Although many advances have been made in this direction, the true potential of fibrillar nanocomposites has yet to be realized because available fabrication approaches are inadequate for achieving precise structural control at the sub-micrometer scale. Here a spray-assisted alignment methodology of cellulose nanofibrils is combined with the layer-by-layer assembly into an additive manufacturing process in which the alignment direction of each cellulose layer is rationally selected to achieve thin films with a helicoidal arrangement of the nanofibrils...

Sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting (SAWH) is a promising technology to alleviate freshwater scarcity. Recently, hygroscopic salt-hydrogel composites (HSHCs) have emerged as attractive candidates with their high water uptake, versatile designability, and scale-up fabrication. However, achieving high-performance SAWH applications for HSHCs has been challenging because of their sluggish kinetics, attributed to their limited mass transport properties. Herein, a universal network engineering of hydrogels using a cryogelation method is presented, significantly improving the SAWH kinetics of HSHCs...

BACKGROUND: Considering the expected increase in the elderly population and the growing emphasis on aging-related biomedical research, the demand for aged laboratory animals has surged, challenging established husbandry practices. Our objective was to establish a cost-effective method for environmental enrichment, utilizing the liver as a representative organ to assess potential metabolic changes in response to differing enrichment levels. METHODS: We conducted a six-month study involving 24 male Sprague Dawley rats, randomly assigned to four environmental enrichment groups...

PHENOMENON: Learners in medical education are often exposed to content and situations that might be experienced as traumatic, which in turn has both professional and personal implications. The purpose of this study was to synthesize the literature on how trauma has been conceptualized and approached within medical education, and the implications thereof. APPROACH: A metanarrative approach was adopted following the RAMESES guidelines. Searches of 7 databases conducted in January 2022 with no date limitations yielded 7,280 articles, of which 50 were identified for inclusion through purposive and theoretical sampling...

Diabetes is a chronic health condition that is characterized by increased levels of glucose (sugar) in the blood. It can have harmful effects on different parts of the body, such as the retina of the eyes, skin, nervous system, kidneys, and heart. Diabetes affects the structure of electrocardiogram (ECG) impulses by causing cardiovascular autonomic dysfunction. Multi-resolution analysis of the input ECG signal is utilized in this paper to develop a machine learning-based system for the automated detection of diabetic patients...

The dilemma between the thickness and accessible active site triggers the design of porous crystalline materials with mono-layered structure for advanced photo-catalysis applications. Here, we report a kind of sub-nanometer mono-layered nanosheets (Co-MOF MNSs) through the exfoliation of a specifically designed Co3 cluster-based metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). The sub-nanometer thickness and inherent light-sensitivity endow Co-MOF MNSs with fully exposed Janus Co3 sites that can selectively photo-reduce CO2 into formic acid under simulated flue gas...

Bistable electrochromic (EC) materials and systems offer significant potential for building decarbonization through their optical modulation and energy efficiency. However, challenges such as limited design strategies and bottlenecks in cost, fabrication, and color have hindered the full commercialization of energy-saving EC windows and displays, with few materials achieving true bistability. Herein, a novel strategy for designing bistable electrochromic materials is proposed by leveraging supramolecular interactions...

Biological functions of glycans are intimately linked to fine details in branches and linkages, which make structural identification extremely challenging. Here, we present a protocol for automated N-glycan sequencing using multi-stage mass spectrometry (MSn ). We describe steps for release/purification and derivation of glycans and procedures for MSn scanning. We then detail "glycan intelligent precursor selection" to computationally guide MSn experiments. The protocol can be used for both discrete individual glycans and isomeric glycan mixtures...

The ERBBprofiler assay measures compound effects on ERBB family receptors and key downstream signaling pathways that are implicated in cancer or other complex diseases. Here, we present a protocol for identifying properties of ERBB receptor antagonists using the barcoded ERBBprofiler assay. We describe steps for in-solution transfection, cell treatment, combined processing of samples, amplification and indexing of PCRs, sequencing, and data analysis. This approach allows for the simultaneous assessment of drug effects and cell-type-dependent effects...

The grand canonical constant potential approach is a cornerstone for modeling the electrochemical reactions under work conditions. Here, we present a protocol for evaluating the effect of potential on electrochemical reactions using the grand canonical fixed-potential technique. We describe steps for installing PWmat software, preparing input files for the fixed-potential calculation, and simulating different electrochemical states under the same potential. We then detail procedures for analyzing the free energy evolution under the same potential...

Respirometry is a technique for studying mitochondrial function that has proven compatibility with ≥0.5 mg of brain tissue. Here, we present a protocol for assessing oxygen consumption and H2 O2 production rates in hippocampal tissue using the Oroboros O2k system. We describe steps for brain harvesting, tissue preparation, hippocampal microdissection, and respirometry assays. This approach has been valuable to study the metabolism of dentate granule cells of the hippocampus and could be applicable to other brain subregions...

In vitro cell culture serves as an efficient system for studying animal cell behavior in a controlled setting. Here, we present a 3D culture model for forming ruminant adipose organoids using stromal vascular fraction cells. We describe steps for forming cell spheroids and growing them on a Matrigel-coated surface. We then detail procedures for inducing organoids to undergo angiogenesis and adipogenesis followed by capillary sprouting. This protocol can be utilized to study the interaction between blood vessels and adipocytes...

Vacuole formation is a key hallmark of age-dependent neurodegeneration in the Drosophila brain. Here, we present a protocol to analyze 3D neurodegenerative vacuoles in the whole-mount Drosophila melanogaster brain. We describe steps for whole-brain dissection, staining, 3D imaging, and z-stack image processing using Fiji ImageJ. We then detail procedures for annotating and 3D-reconstructing neurodegenerative vacuoles with WEBKNOSSOS and Python, and performing statistical analysis in Python. This protocol enables measurement of parameters such as the number and volume of each vacuole...

The identification of EEG biomarkers to discriminate Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD) from Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) conditions is a complex task which requires great clinical effort and expertise. We exploit the self-attention component of the Transformer architecture to obtain physiological explanations of the model's decisions in the discrimination of 56 SCD and 45 MCI patients using resting-state EEG. Specifically, an interpretability workflow leveraging attention scores and time-frequency analysis of EEG epochs through Continuous Wavelet Transform is proposed...

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most frequent birth defect and a leading cause of infant mortality, emphasizing the crucial need for its early diagnosis. Ultrasound is the primary imaging modality for prenatal CHD screening. As a complement to the four-chamber view, the three-vessel view (3VV) plays a vital role in detecting anomalies in the great vessels. However, the interpretation of fetal cardiac ultrasound images is subjective and relies heavily on operator experience, leading to variability in CHD detection rates, particularly in resource-constrained regions...

Despite the vast potential for insights and value present in Electronic Health Records (EHRs), it is challenging to fully leverage all the available information, particularly that contained in the free-text data written by clinicians describing the health status of patients. The utilization of Named Entity Recognition and Linking tools allows not only for the structuring of information contained within free-text data, but also for the integration with medical ontologies, which may prove highly beneficial for the analysis of patient medical histories with the aim of forecasting future medical outcomes, such as the diagnosis of a new disorder...

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), a cancer of B cells, has been one of the most challenging and complicated diseases because of its considerable variation in clinical behavior, response to therapy, and prognosis. Radiomic features from medical images, such as PET images, have become one of the most valuable features for disease classification or prognosis prediction using learning-based methods. In this paper, a new flexible ensemble deep learning model is proposed for the prognosis prediction of the DLBCL in 18 F-FDG PET images...

Timely diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) remains challenging due to the rapid recovery of acute symptoms and the absence of evidence of injury in static neuroimaging scans. Furthermore, while longitudinal tracking of mTBI is essential in understanding how the diseases progresses/regresses over time for enhancing personalized patient care, a standardized approach for this purpose is not yet available. Recent functional neuroimaging studies have provided evidence of brain function alterations following mTBI, suggesting mTBI-detection models can be built based on these changes...

Polysomnography (PSG) recordings have been widely used for sleep staging in clinics, containing multiple modality signals (i.e., EEG and EOG). Recently, many studies have combined EEG and EOG modalities for sleep staging, since they are the most and the second most powerful modality for sleep staging among PSG recordings, respectively. However, EEG is complex to collect and sensitive to environment noise or other body activities, imbedding its use in clinical practice. Comparatively, EOG is much more easily to be obtained...