As the COVID-19 pandemic intensified the global health crisis, the containment of SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancies, and the inherent risk of vertical transmission of virus from mother-to-fetus (or neonate) poses a major concern. Most COVID-19-Pregnancy patients showed mild to moderate COVID-19 pneumonia with no pregnancy loss and no congenital transmission of the virus; however, an increase in

OBJECTIVE: Neutrophil extracellular traps (NET) are essential in host defense, but are also linked to inflammation and autoimmunity, including in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). We recently described that immune complexes (IC) induce NET formation, promoting SLE-like disease in mice. In the current study, we investigated, for the first time to our knowledge, the role of NET in human SLE and th

While human enteroviruses are generally regarded as a lytic virus, and persistent non-cytolytic enterovirus infection in pancreatic beta cells has been suspected of playing a role in type 1 diabetes pathogenesis. However, it is still unclear how enteroviruses could exit the pancreatic beta cell in a non-lytic manner. This study aimed to investigate the role of beta cell-derived extracellular vesic

In this paper, a system level model for a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) system, which is capable of characterizing transient behavior using the control volume method, is developed. Three different cases based on different mass transfer assumptions in the cathode channel are explicitly discussed, i.e., considering the presence of 1) only oxygen, 2) both oxygen and nitrogen or 3) oxygen as we

We prepared triplet-triplet annihilation photon upconverters combining thin-film methylammonium lead iodide (MAPI) perovskite with a rubrene annihilator in a bilayer structure. Excitation of the perovskite film leads to delayed, upconverted photoluminescence emitted from the annihilator layer, with triplet excitation of the rubrene being driven by carriers excited in the perovskite layer. To bette

Data-independent acquisition-mass spectrometry (DIA-MS) is the method of choice for deep, consistent, and accurate single-shot profiling in bottom-up proteomics. While classic workflows for targeted quantification from DIA-MS data require auxiliary data-dependent acquisition (DDA) MS analysis of subject samples to derive prior-knowledge spectral libraries, library-free approaches based on in silic

Adversarial examples have received a lot of attention over the past decade, particularly with the rise of deep neural networks. Adversarial manipulation of sensitive health-related information, e.g., if such information is used for prescribing medicine, may have irreversible consequences, involving patients' lives. In this article, we consider adversarial perturbations in the context of medical an

Epilepsy affects more than 50 million people and ranks among the most common neurological diseases worldwide. Despite advances in treatment, one-third of patients still suffer from refractory epilepsy. Wearable devices for real-time patient monitoring can potentially improve the quality of life for such patients and reduce the mortality rate due to seizure-related accidents and sudden death in epi

Today, the security of wearable and mobile-health technologies represents one of the main challenges in the Internet of Things (IoT) era. Adversarial manipulation of sensitive health-related information, e.g., if such information is used for prescribing medicine, may have irreversible consequences involving patients' lives. In this article, we demonstrate the power of such adversarial attacks base

Monitoring stress and, in general, emotions has attracted a lot of attention over the past few decades. Stress monitoring has many applications, including high-risk missions and surgical procedures as well as mental/emotional health monitoring. In this paper, we evaluate the possibility of stress and emotion monitoring using off-the-shelf wearable sensors. To this aim, we propose a multi-modal mac

The integration of wearable devices in humans' daily lives has grown significantly in recent years and still continues to affect different aspects of high-quality life. Thus, ensuring the reliability of the decisions becomes essential in biomedical applications, while representing a major challenge considering battery-powered wearable technologies. Transferring the complex and energy-consuming com

Today, security can no longer be treated as a secondary issue in embedded and cyber-physical systems. Therefore, one of the main challenges in these domains is the design of secure embedded systems under stringent resource constraints and real-time requirements. However, there exists an inherent trade-off between the security protection provided and the amount of resources allocated for this purpo

The present study investigates the high-temperature oxidation behaviour of nanostructure surface layered AISI 304L stainless steel. A severely deformed layer of ∼300 μm thickness, consisting of nanoscale grains (∼40 nm size) in the topmost region, is successfully developed using the surface mechanical attrition treatment (SMAT) process. The SMATed layer is substantially stable up to 700 °C; howeve

We used Raman spectroscopy to investigate phonon modes of single InP-InAs core-shell nanowire with a pure wurtzite phase to reveal the embedded strained state. Raman spectra show that the InP core exhibits tensile strain and the InAs shell exhibits compressive strain due to the radial heterostructure growth. Using different polarization excitation configurations, we identified distinct A1 (TO) and

The so-called super-short fission mode, in which a nucleus divides nearly symmetrically into two unusually energetic fragments, competes favorably with the standard asymmetric fission mode for spontaneous fission of a limited number of nuclei near Fm264 but it quickly fades away at finite excitations. We investigate the energy-dependent competition between those two fission modes for even fermium

The barrier function of the skin mainly relies on its outermost layer, the stratum corneum (SC), which is a lipid-protein composite biomaterial. In addition, SC contains a mixture of small polar compounds, the natural moisturizing factor (NMF). Most of the NMF components are solid at ambient relative humidities (RHs). We herein raise the question of what the effects of adding a mixture of chemical

Aims:Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination plays a key role in the prevention of cervical cancer. Yet, disparities in HPV vaccination in Sweden have persisted. Previous research on such disparities has typically focused on singular sociodemographic variables and measures of average risk. Using a multi-categorical approach and drawing on intersectionality theory, this study aimed to provide a more

Demonstration of Majorana non-Abelian properties is a major challenge in the field of topological superconductivity. In this work, we propose a minimal device and protocol for testing non-Abelian properties using charge-transfer operations between a quantum dot and two Majorana bound states combined with reading the parity state using a second dot. We use an adiabatic perturbation theory to find f