Background: Despite increased interest in MSC-based cell therapies for the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), clinical investigations have not yet been successful and understanding of the potential in vivo mechanisms of MSC actions in ARDS remain limited. ARDS is driven by an acute severe innate immune dysregulation, often characterized by inflammation, coagulation, and cell injury. How t

Background: A distorted blood lipid profile is an important risk factor for ischemic heart disease (IHD) but the predictive ability of the different lipid measures has rarely been studied. Our aim was to examine and compare, in a large sample of women, the predictive ability of total cholesterol/HDL cholesterol ratio (TC/HDL-C) and non-HDL-C in relation to IHD, adjusted for age, exercise, smoking,

Background: General practitioners (GPs) play a key role in managing the COVID-19 outbreak. However, they may encounter difficulties adapting their practices to the pandemic. We provide here an analysis of guidelines for the reorganisation of GP surgeries during the beginning of the pandemic from 15 countries. Methods: A network of GPs collaborated together in a three-step process: (i) identificati

Background: Administration of various exogenous surfactant preparations has been shown to decrease lung injury and pneumothorax and improve survival in very preterm infants with respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). There is no consensus on the threshold for surfactant administration, to allow timely intervention and avoid over-treatment, also considering the invasiveness of the procedure and its c

The binocular field of vision differs widely in birds depending on ecological traits such as foraging. Owls (Strigiformes) have been considered to have a unique binocular field, but whether it is related to foraging has remained unknown. While taking into account allometry and phylogeny, we hypothesized that both daily activity cycle and diet determine the size and shape of the binocular field in

Objectives: Women living with HIV are underrepresented in clinical trials assessing outcomes of antiretroviral treatment (ART), justifying the need for observational studies. We investigated differences in viral non-suppression between women and men in the Swedish InfCareHIV cohort and analysed results in relation to biological and socio-demographic variables and patient-reported outcome measures

We investigate the dynamics of the adaptive Kuramoto model with slow adaptation in the continuum limit, N → ∞ . This model is distinguished by dense multistability, where multiple states coexist for the same system parameters. The underlying cause of this multistability is that some oscillators can lock at different phases or switch between locking and drifting depending on their initial condition

Pollinators have been negatively impacted by agricultural intensification, loss of natural habitats and habitat fragmentation. This has raised concern about the persistence of plant species dependent on insect pollination in semi-natural grasslands where these are remnants of larger grazed areas, now surrounded by intensive agriculture and forests. To better understand landscape composition effect

In the present study, three-dimensional direct numerical simulations (DNS) of experimental ammonia/air premixed jet flames with different turbulent intensities were performed. The DNS results were first compared to the measurements with good agreements. Based on the DNS data, the turbulent flame structure, stabilization mechanism and NO emission characteristics of the flames were investigated. It

Urban planning is increasingly embedded in a neoliberal paradigm, resulting in decentralization and deregulation of planning practice. This affects how compact cities are materialized. However, few studies of the effects of neoliberal planning for density consider the resulting geographies of green space. To address this research gap, this paper explores how the idea of green space is being reconf

Covid-19 has triggered a massive global challenge with 1,576,069 overall confirmed cases, 1,545,429 recovered cases, and 30,640 deaths across Pakistan. Epidemiological models have always played an important role in understanding the dynamics of such infectious diseases. The severity of Covid-19 infection depends on several factors such as immune system and virus variants. Although detailed epidemi

PURPOSE: Sunitinib has demonstrated antitumor activity in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) when given at 50 mg/d on a 4-weeks-on 2-weeks-off regimen. Herein, we report results of an open-label, multicenter phase II mRCC study of sunitinib administered on a continuous once-daily dosing regimen. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Eligibility criteria included histologically proven mRCC with measurable dise

l-dopa-induced dyskinesia (LID) is a common debilitating complication of dopamine replacement therapy in Parkinson's disease. Recent evidence suggests that LID may be linked causally to a hyperactivation of the Ras-ERK signaling cascade in the basal ganglia. We set out to determine whether specific targeting of Ras-guanine nucleotide-releasing factor 1 (Ras-GRF1), a brain-specific activator of the

General expressions for the quality factor (Q) of antennas are minimized to obtain lower-bound formulas for the Q of electrically small, lossy or lossless, combined electric and magnetic dipole antennas confined to an arbitrarily shaped volume. The lower-bound formulas for Q are derived for the dipole antennas excited by both electric and magnetic surface currents as well as by electric surface cu

Diamond-Blackfan anemia (DBA) is a congenital erythroid hypoplasia caused by a functional haploinsufficiency of genes encoding for ribosomal proteins. Among these genes, ribosomal protein S19 (RPS19) is mutated most frequently. Generation of animal models for diseases like DBA is challenging since the phenotype is highly dependent on the level of RPS19 downregulation. We report the generation of m

Proteome analysis involves many steps that generate large quantities of data in different formats. This creates a need for automatic data merging and extraction of important features from data. Furthermore, metadata need to be collected and reported to enable critical evaluation of results. Many data analysis tools are developed locally in research laboratories and are nontrivial to adapt for othe

Background: Short-term exposure to high levels of air pollution can increase stroke risk. In this study we investigated the short-term effects of air pollution on hospital admissions for stroke in a setting where pollutant levels are rather low. We also addressed methodological issues in evaluating the short-term effects of air pollution. Methods: Daily admissions of ischemic (n = 11,267) and hemo

Aberrant DNA methylation is frequently observed in breast cancer. However, the relationship between methylation patterns and the heterogeneity of breast cancer has not been comprehensively characterized.

Estrogens are sex hormones that are central to health and disease in both genders. These hormones have long been recognized to act in complex ways, both through relatively slow genomic mechanisms and via fast non-genomic mechanisms. Several recent in vitro studies suggest that GPR30, or G protein-coupled estrogen receptor 1 (GPER1), is a functional membrane estrogen receptor involved in non-genomi

A statistical approach to a posteriori blockmodeling for graphs is proposed. The model assumes that the vertices of the graph are partitioned into two unknown blocks and that the probability of an edge between two vertices depends only on the blocks to which they belong. Statistical procedures are derived for estimating the probabilities of edges and for predicting the block structure from observa