We demonstrate a method for producing thickness- and refractive index-tunable antireflection coatings utilizing a one-step spin coating procedure with commercially available silica nanoparticle solutions. Aging nanoparticle solutions under controlled pH and temperature induces nanoparticle aggregation, which provides a precise way to control the porosity and thus refractive index of the ...

With the December issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, I announce the launch of a new category of manuscript called "Clinical Medicine," along with new editorial board members to adjudicate the peer-review process. With this initiative, the journal aims to publish the highest quality human research that reports early-stage, ...

We have exfoliated hexagonal boron nitride by ultrasonication in solutions of polyvinylalcohol in water. The resultant nanosheets are sterically stabilised by adsorbed polymer chains. Centrifugation-based size-selection was used to give dispersions of nanosheets with aspect ratio (length/thickness) of ∼1400. Such dispersions can be used to produce polyvinylalcohol-BN composite films. Helium ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: In a previous study, we demonstrated that Vibrio scophthalmi, the most abundant Vibrio species among the marine aerobic or facultatively anaerobic bacteria inhabiting the intestinal tract of healthy cultured turbot (Scophthalmus maximus), contains at least two quorum-sensing circuits involving two types of signal molecules (a 3-hydroxy-dodecanoyl-homoserine lactone and ...

The surface property of a polyimide gate insulator was successfully modified with an n-octadecyl side-chain. Alkyl chain-grafted poly(amic acid), the polyimide precursor, was synthesized using the diamine comonomer with an alkyl side-chain. By adding a base catalyst to the poly(amic acid) coating solution, the imidization temperature of the spin-coated film ...

The current study investigated the role of fear-avoidance-a concept from chronic pain research-in chronic tinnitus. A self-report measure the "Tinnitus Fear-Avoidance Cognitions and Behaviors Scale (T-FAS)" was developed and validated. Furthermore, the role of fear-avoidance behavior as mediator of the relationship between anxiety sensitivity and tinnitus handicap was investigated. From ...

We report the first flexible hybrid energy cell that is capable of simultaneously or individually harvesting thermal, mechanical, and solar energies to power some electronic devices. For having both the pyroelectric and piezoelectric properties, a polarized poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) film-based nanogenerator (NG) was used to harvest thermal and mechanical energies. ...

Aim:To investigate the antitumor actions of the Crotalus durissus neurotoxin (crotoxin) on human esophageal carcinoma (Eca-109) cells in vitro and transplanted esophageal Eca-109 tumors in nude mice.Methods:The growth-inhibitory effect was analyzed in Eca-109 cells using MTT assay. Cell morphology changes in nuclei were observed using Hoechst 33342 staining, while apoptosis ...

Despite efforts to understand and treat acute myeloid leukemia (AML), there remains a need for more comprehensive therapies to prevent AML-associated relapses. To identify new therapeutic strategies for AML, we screened a library of on- and off-patent drugs and identified the antimalarial agent mefloquine as a compound that selectively kills ...

The revitalized concept of "coordination at carbon" allows relationships between seemingly unrelated families of carbon-centered compounds to be discovered generating fascinating patchwork families of compounds. It is shown how olefins and cyclopropanes can be regarded as donors for carbon acceptors C(1) , C(2) , and C(3) . Through this approach, ...

Down syndrome (DS) patients exhibit abnormalities of hippocampal-dependent explicit memory, a feature that is replicated in relevant mouse models of the disease. Adult hippocampal neurogenesis, which is impaired in DS and other neuropsychiatric diseases, plays a key role in hippocampal circuit plasticity and has been implicated in learning and memory. ...

The majority of cell encapsulation systems applied so far are based on polyelectrolyte complexes of alginate and polyvalent metal cations. Although widely used, these systems suffer from the risk of disintegration. This can be partially solved by applying chitosan as additional outer membrane. However, chitosan can be dissolved in water ...

Retinal ischemia is a very useful model to study the impact of various cell death pathways, such as apoptosis and necrosis, in the ischemic retina. However, it is important to note that the retina is formed as an outpouching of the diencephalon and is part of the central nervous system. ...

Bubble, bubble: Why does champagne bubble? Why does it stop bubbling? Does the vintage affect its fizz? Chemistry can answer these and other questions about the wine that is so often associated with celebrations and anniversaries.

Recent studies investigating possible causes of male subfertility have largely focused on how lifestyle or environmental factors impact on the process of spermatogenesis. Markedly, fewer studies have investigated those risk factors that result in reduced sperm quality, such as poor sperm motility. The speed at which sperm swim is a ...

This month's Genome Watch highlights the advantages of using whole-genome sequencing for infectious-disease surveillance and infection control.

RNA, just another starting material? Nobel Laureate Tom Cech shows that with an education steeped in kinetics, thermodynamics, and molecular structure, and armed with the ability to synthesize molecules, the chemist is ideally suited to investigate RNA.

Because early treatment choice is critical in first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (FES), this meta-analysis compared efficacy and tolerability of individual second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) with first-generation antipsychotics (FGAs) in FES. We conducted systematic literature search (until 12 December 2010) and meta-analysis of acute, randomized trials with ⩾1 FGA vs. SGA comparison; patients ...

Background. Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is a common manifestation of cardiovascular disease and has an important prognostic value in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Vitamin D receptor (VDR) has been intensively investigated, and one of these (BsmI) already has been associated with survival in the dialysis population. Objective. The ...

The rate of organ donations from deceased donors in Malaysia is among the lowest in the world. This may be because of the passivity among health professionals in approaching families of potential donors. A questionnaire-based study was conducted amongst health professionals in two tertiary hospitals in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Four ...

ABSTRACT Background: Anxiety and depression contribute to morbidity in elderly adults and may be associated with diet. We investigated the association between diet and psychological distress as a marker for depression. Methods: Dietary patterns were defined by factor analysis or the Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS); depression and anxiety were assessed ...

The objective of this study was to determine the concentration of total selenium (Se) and the proportions of total Se comprised as selenomethionine (SeMet) and selenocysteine (SeCys) in the postmortem tissues of female pheasants (Phasianus Colchicus Torquator) offered diets that contained graded additions of selenised-enriched yeast (SY) or a single ...

There is growing literature exploring the possibility of parallel retrieval of location memories, although this literature focuses primarily on the speed of retrieval with little attention to the accuracy of location memory recall. Baguley, Lansdale, Lines, and Parkin (2006) found that when a person has two or more memories for ...

Well-designed hierarchical nanostructures with one dimensional (1D) TiO(2) nanofibers (120-350 nm in diameter and several micrometers in length) and ultrathin hexagonal SnS(2) nanosheets (40-70 nm in lateral size and 4-8 nm in thickness) were successfully synthesized by combining the electrospinning technique (for TiO(2) nanofibers) and a hydrothermal growth method (for ...

PURPOSE: To explore whether the presence of specific health services impact the time to death in schizophrenia. METHODS: Cox's proportional hazard model was used to assess the effect of country-specific health care variables (total health care expenditure, public health care expenditure, number of hospital beds, number of physicians, and World ...

Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) is a key trace detection technique for explosives and the development of simple, stable and efficient nonradioactive ionization source is highly demanded. A dopant-assisted negative photoionization (DANP) source has been developed for IMS, which uses a commercial VUV krypton lamp to ionize acetone as the source ...

Aberrant expression of the homeodomain transcription factor CDX2 occurs in most cases of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and promotes leukemogenesis, making CDX2, in principle, an attractive therapeutic target. Conversely, CDX2 acts as a tumor suppressor in colonic epithelium. The effectors mediating the leukemogenic activity of CDX2 and the mechanism underlying ...

OBJECTIVE: Unequal mental health among U.S. underserved racial-ethnic populations has become a prominent national concern. Contributing to this inequity is our limited ability to engage individuals from underserved populations into treatment. To help address this, a systematic literature review was conducted to examine the evidence base for interventions that can ...

For almost 200 years, the synthesis of natural products has been practiced. In this time span, not only the target structures have become increasingly more complex (see two examples from the 1970s), the objectives of natural product synthesis have also changed. Likewise, the standards and criteria for the conduction of ...

Beta-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme-1 (BACE1) is a target of interest for treating patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Inhibition of BACE1 may prevent amyloid-ß (Aß) plaque formation and the development or progression of Alzheimer's disease. Known BACE1 inhibitors were analyzed using computational chemistry and cheminformatics techniques to search for ...

The residue depletion profile of sulfachlorpyrazine was studied in healthy broilers after oral administration of Sulfatyf®, given at a dose of 50 mg sulfachlorpyrazine (SCP) per kg body weight once daily for 3 consecutive days. Twenty-five medicated broilers were slaughtered on the 5th, 10th, 14th and 16th day of post-medication, and ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: As low and middle-income countries such as Viet Nam experience the health transition from infectious to chronic diseases, the morbidity and mortality from stroke will rise. In line with the recommendation of the Institute of Medicine's report on "Promoting Cardiovascular Health in the Developing World" to "improve local ...

A very brief history of Portuguese twin research in sport and human movement sciences is presented. Recruitment procedures, zygosity determination, and phenotypes are given for twins and their parents from the mainland, and Azores and Madeira archipelagos. Preliminary findings are mostly related to physical activity, health-related physical fitness, gross motor ...

Genome Sequence Scanning (GSS) is a bacterial identification technology that detects sparse sequence-specific fluorescent tags on long DNA molecules linearized in a continuous-flow microfunnel. The efficiency and sensitivity of GSS depends on the detection throughput of well-stretched molecules. Previous studies have investigated the fundamental roles of elongational and shear flow ...

The effects of bread consumption change over time on anthropometric measures have been scarcely studied. We analysed 2213 participants at high risk for CVD from the PREvención con DIeta MEDiterránea (PREDIMED) trial to assess the association between changes in the consumption of bread and weight and waist circumference gain over ...

Recent clinical and experimental studies are redefining the cellular and molecular bases of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). The genetic abnormalities first identified in association with the idiopathic form of PAH--together with a vast increase in our understanding of cell signaling, cell transformation, and cell-cell interactions; gene expression; microRNA processing; and ...

Measurements of ocean pH and carbonate ion concentrations in the North Pacific and Arctic Oceans were used to determine calcium carbonate saturation states (Ω(CaCO3)) from spectrophotometric methods alone. Total carbonate ion concentrations, [CO(3)(2-)](T) were, for the first time at sea, directly measured using Pb(II) UV absorbance spectra. The basis of ...

OBJECTIVES: Survivors of pediatric brain tumors and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) are at increased risk for neurocognitive deficits, but few empirically supported treatment options exist. We examined the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a home-based, computerized working memory training program, CogmedRM, with survivors of childhood cancer. METHODS: Survivors of brain ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Intraocular pressure (IOP) in the developing eye of a child is not always easy to measure and there is no technique that is known to be the most accurate for the young eye. Measurements are needed on many cohorts of children with different tonometers to determine how the ...

Phosphorylation of the T cell antigen receptor (TCR) by the tyrosine kinase Lck is an essential step in the activation of T cells. Because Lck is constitutively active, spatial organization may regulate TCR signaling. Here we found that Lck distributions on the molecular level were controlled by the conformational states ...

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the commonest cause of death. Here, we report an association analysis in 63,746 CAD cases and 130,681 controls identifying 15 loci reaching genome-wide significance, taking the number of susceptibility loci for CAD to 46, and a further 104 independent variants (r(2) < 0.2) strongly associated ...

High-throughput sequencing has revolutionized microbial ecology, but read quality remains a considerable barrier to accurate taxonomy assignment and α-diversity assessment for microbial communities. We demonstrate that high-quality read length and abundance are the primary factors differentiating correct from erroneous reads produced by Illumina GAIIx, HiSeq and MiSeq instruments. We present ...

AIM: Adolescence is the final opportunity for a large-scale immunisation programme before adulthood. The Western Australian (WA) school-based vaccination programme provides Year 7 students with free vaccination against hepatitis B virus (HBV); diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (dTpa); varicella zoster virus (VZV); and human papilloma virus (HPV). We aimed to identify ...

AIM: To describe decisions made for babies who died in the delivery room as a result of clinical practice of non-resuscitation or unsuccessful resuscitation. METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted of neonatal deaths (NNDs) ≥ 400 g and/or ≥20 weeks' gestation born at Mater Mothers' Hospitals 1998-2009 who were not admitted ...

AIM: School-based interventions to tackle the rise in childhood overweight and obesity remain inconclusive and are often limited in their application to diverse populations. To inform and measure the effect of the implementation of a primary school-based longitudinal randomised controlled nutrition and activity intervention, Project Energize, baseline measures of body ...

The metastatic cascade which leads to the death of cancer patients results from a multi-step process of tumor progression caused by genetic and epigenetic alterations in key regulatory molecules. It is, therefore, crucial to improve our understanding of the regulation of genes controlling the metastatic process in order to identify ...

We hypothesized that 3D time-of-flight (TOF) and true fast imaging with steady-state precession (true-FISP) fusion imaging could provide more information regarding the arterial vessel wall. The purpose of this study was to compare the accuracy of lesion detection and the diagnostic confidence of VAD between TOF images alone and fused ...

It has been demonstrated that histamine interferes with the recruitment, formation and activity of osteoclasts via H(1) - and H(2) -receptors. Cimetidine is a H(2) -receptor antagonist used for treatment of gastric ulcers that seems to prevent bone resorption. In this study, a possible cimetidine interference was investigated in the ...

AIM: To evaluate the impact of newly designed Paediatric Early Warning Scores and an accompanying education package, COMPASS, on the frequency of documentation of vital signs and communication between health professionals and associated medical review in deteriorating paediatric patients. METHODS: One thousand fifty-nine patients in the pre-intervention phase and 899 ...

In the past decade, the cell-type specific connectivity and activity of local cortical networks have been characterized experimentally to some detail. In parallel, modeling has been established as a tool to relate network structure to activity dynamics. While available comprehensive connectivity maps ( Thomson, West, et al. 2002; Binzegger et ...