Characterization of proteins, mRNAs, and miRNAs of circulating extracellular vesicles from prostate cancer patients compared to healthy subjects

Prostate cancer (PC) is the fifth leading cause of death in men globally. Measurement of the blood PSA level is still considered the gold-standard biomarker test for PC despite its high rate of delivering false positives and negatives that result in an inappropriate medical response, including overtreatment. We collected extracellular vesicles (EVs) from the blood plasma of PC patients with organ-confined, extracapsular-invading, and seminal vesicle–invading tumors and from healthy subjects. We examined the protein, mRNA, and miRNA content of these EVs using mass spectrometry (MS), a human PC PCR array, and a miScript miRNA PCR array, respectively. The proteomic analysis showed distinct groups of proteins that are differently expressed in each group of patients, as well as in healthy subjects. Samples from healthy subjects and each tumor type were used for both mRNA and miRNA arrays. The mRNA analysis showed distinct groups of mRNAs that were overexpressed in healthy or in one of the three tumor types but not in the EVs of the other groups. The miRNA analysis showed distinct groups of miRNAs as well. The fold of regulation in the expression of the identified mRNA and miRNA of each stage of the disease from healthy subjects showed that various mRNAs and miRNAs could discriminate the disease stage. Overall, our data suggest many molecular marker candidates for distinguishing between healthy subjects and PC patients using the cargo of circulating vesicles, as well as markers to discriminate between the different tumor types. Once verified, these markers might have a diagnostic value for PC

Seeing lockdown through the eyes of children from around the world: Reflecting on a children's artwork project.

The COVID-19 pandemic created new challenges for children including access to education and limiting social and emotional connections to extended family, friends, and the community. Globally, opportunities for sharing children’s self-reported experiences during lockdown were limited. The primary aim of this project was to create an art-E-Book that reflects children’s experiences of life during the COVID-19 pandemic that could be shared with other children around the world. Secondly, we wanted to reflect on the consultation undertaken within the International Network of Child and Family Centered Care (INCFCC) using Gibbs (1988) reflective cycle framework. Children from around the world were invited to submit a piece of artwork that reflected their experience during the COVID-19 pandemic via a Qualtrics-survey in May 2020. The children’s artwork and written pieces were transcribed verbatim into an E-Book and the artwork was further placed into groups based on similarity of meaning. Fifty-five children from 17 countries submitted an artwork piece. Four groups were evident within the children’s artwork including infection control measures, positive experiences and emotions (connection to family, fun activities), negative experiences and emotions (social impact, emotional impact), and uniting children globally. The E-Book is available to download free of charge via the INCFCC website. The E-Book illustrates how children of all ages can provide meaningful insightful commentary and valuable information on their experiences during an unprecedented pandemic

The built environment element of economic development in post conflict response in Indonesia

The recent violent communal conflicts events at the end of 1990s in Indonesia has appointed to the importance of relationship within the community and linked to the role of economic sector and built environment. This paper presents some findings from interviews with four groups of stakeholders related to urban development on a recent study in the context of the communal conflict that occurred on three cases: Solo (Central Java), Poso (Central Sulawesi), and Sambas (West Kalimantan). The finding suggests that the economic development needs to seriously consider the role of traditional market place and informal sector, as well as urban heritage conservation

Hydrogen sulfide removal from biogas using a salak fruit seeds packed bed reactor with sulfur oxidizing bacteria as biofilm

A packed bed reactor was evaluated for hydrogen sulfide (H2S) removal by sulfur-oxidizing bacteria attached as a biofilm on salak fruit seeds (SFS). The bacteria were isolated from the sludge of the wastewater of a biogas plant. The promising isolate from the previous work was used in a biofilter, and its capacity to remove H2S was evaluated at effects of time of operation, effects of biogas flow rate, effects of axial distance, and packing material. Obtained results showed that isolate attached to SFS in an 80 cm height and 8 cm inside diameter biofilter column could decrease H2S in biogas from 142.48 ppm to 4.06 ppm (97.15% removal efficiency) for a biogas flow rate of 8550 g m3 h1 corresponding to a residence time of 4 h. Simple kinetic models of sulfide removal and bacterial growth was proposed to describe the operation of the biofilter. The radial H2S concentration gradient in the flowing gas is to be neglected so is the H2S concentration in the biofilm at certain axial distance. Meanwhile, the rate of H2S degradation was approximated by Monod type equation. The obtained simultaneous ordinary differential equations solved by Runge-Kutta method. Comparing the calculated results and the experimental data, it can be concluded that model proposed can sufficiently describe the performance of the H2S removal. The suitable values of the parameters are as follows: max = 0.0000007 (s1), KS = 0.0000039 (g cm3), kG = 0.0086 (cm s1), HS = 0.9 ((g cm3)/(g cm3)), and Yx/s = 10.Directorate General of Higher Educations of Indonesia - scholarship of doctorate program (BPPDN) at Gadjah Mada University ; Hibah Bersaing 2015 and Sandwich-Like program 201

The long term impact of COVID-19 on nursing: an e-panel discussion from the International Network for Child and Family Centred Care

AIM: To explore the International Network for Child and Family Centred Care (INCFCC) members' experiences and views on the long-term impact of COVID-19 on the nursing workforce. BACKGROUND: On the 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. While some countries adopted a herd immunity approach, others imposed stricter measures to reduce the transmission of the virus. Hospitals in some countries faced an avalanche of extremely sick admissions, whereas others experienced an early surge in cases or were able to control the spread. DESIGN: Discursive paper. METHODS: A web-based survey was e-mailed to 63 INCFCC members from 28 March to 30 April 2022, as an invitation to share their experience concerning the long-term impact of COVID-19 on their role as a nurse educator, clinician or researcher. RESULTS: Sixteen members responded, and the responses were grouped under the themes stress and anxiety, safe staffing and pay, doing things differently, impact on research, impact on teaching and learning, impact on clinical practice, nursing made visible and lessons for the future. CONCLUSION: The INCFCC members provided their views and highlighted the impact on their role in nursing education, administration, research and/or practice. This discussion of international perspectives on the similarities and differences imposed by COVID-19 found that the impact was wide-ranging and prolonged. The overarching theme revealed the resilience of the participating members in the face of COVID-19. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: This study highlights the importance of all areas of nursing, be it in academia or in clinical practice, to work together to learn from the present and to plan for the future. Future work should focus on supporting organizational and personal resiliency and effective interventions to support the nursing workforce both during a disaster and in the recovery phase. Nursing workforce resilience in the face of COVID-19

EphA2 is a functional receptor for the growth factor progranulin.

Although the growth factor progranulin was discovered more than two decades ago, the functional receptor remains elusive. Here, we discovered that EphA2, a member of the large family of Ephrin receptor tyrosine kinases, is a functional signaling receptor for progranulin. Recombinant progranulin bound with high affinity to EphA2 in both solid phase and solution. Interaction of progranulin with EphA2 caused prolonged activation of the receptor, downstream stimulation of mitogen-activated protein kinase and Akt, and promotion of capillary morphogenesis. Furthermore, we found an autoregulatory mechanism of progranulin whereby a feed-forward loop occurred in an EphA2-dependent manner that was independent of the endocytic receptor sortilin. The discovery of a functional signaling receptor for progranulin offers a new avenue for understanding the underlying mode of action of progranulin in cancer progression, tumor angiogenesis, and perhaps neurodegenerative diseases

Negative Priming Under Rapid Serial Visual Presentation

Negative priming (NP) was examined under a new paradigm wherein a target and distractors were temporally separated using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). The results from the two experiments revealed that (a) NP was robust under RSVP, such that the responses to a target were slower when the target served as a distractor in a previous trial than when it did not; (b) NP was found regardless of whether the distractors appeared before or after the targets; and (c) NP was stronger when the distractor was more distinctive. These findings are generally similar to those on NP in the spatial search task. The implications for the processes causing NP under RSVP are discussed in the current paper

A new methodology for automating acoustic emission detection of metallic fatigue fractures in highly demanding aerospace environments: An overview

The acoustic emission (AE) phenomenon has many attributes that make it desirable as a structural health monitoring or non-destructive testing technique, including the capability to continuously and globally monitor large structures using a sparse sensor array and with no dependency on defect size. However, AE monitoring is yet to fulfil its true potential, due mainly to limitations in location accuracy and signal characterisation that often arise in complex structures with high levels of background noise. Furthermore, the technique has been criticised for a lack of quantitative results and the large amount of operator interpretation required during data analysis. This paper begins by introducing the challenges faced in developing an AE based structural health monitoring system and then gives a review of previous progress made in addresing these challenges. Subsequently an overview of a novel methodology for automatic detection of fatigue fractures in complex geometries and noisy environments is presented, which combines a number of signal processing techniques to address the current limitations of AE monitoring. The technique was developed for monitoring metallic landing gear components during pre-flight certification testing and results are presented from a full-scale steel landing gear component undergoing fatigue loading. Fracture onset was successfully identify automatically at 49,000 fatigue cycles prior to final failure (validated by the use of dye penetrant inspection) and the fracture position was located to within 10. mm of the actual location

The long-term impact of COVID-19 on nursing: An e-panel discussion from the International Network for Child and Family Centred Care

Aim To explore the International Network for Child and Family Centred Care (INCFCC) members\u27 experiences and views on the long-term impact of COVID-19 on the nursing workforce. Background On the 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. While some countries adopted a herd immunity approach, others imposed stricter measures to reduce the transmission of the virus. Hospitals in some countries faced an avalanche of extremely sick admissions, whereas others experienced an early surge in cases or were able to control the spread. Design Discursive paper. Methods A web-based survey was e-mailed to 63 INCFCC members from 28 March to 30 April 2022, as an invitation to share their experience concerning the long-term impact of COVID-19 on their role as a nurse educator, clinician or researcher. Results Sixteen members responded, and the responses were grouped under the themes stress and anxiety, safe staffing and pay, doing things differently, impact on research, impact on teaching and learning, impact on clinical practice, nursing made visible and lessons for the future. Conclusion The INCFCC members provided their views and highlighted the impact on their role in nursing education, administration, research and/or practice. This discussion of international perspectives on the similarities and differences imposed by COVID-19 found that the impact was wide-ranging and prolonged. The overarching theme revealed the resilience of the participating members in the face of COVID-19. Relevance to Clinical Practice This study highlights the importance of all areas of nursing, be it in academia or in clinical practice, to work together to learn from the present and to plan for the future. Future work should focus on supporting organizational and personal resiliency and effective interventions to support the nursing workforce both during a disaster and in the recovery phase. Nursing workforce resilience in the face of COVID-19

Macrophage-derived human resistin is induced in multiple helminth infections and promotes inflammatory monocytes and increased parasite burden.

Parasitic helminth infections can be associated with lifelong morbidity such as immune-mediated organ failure. A better understanding of the host immune response to helminths could provide new avenues to promote parasite clearance and/or alleviate infection-associated morbidity. Murine resistin-like molecules (RELM) exhibit pleiotropic functions following helminth infection including modulating the host immune response; however, the relevance of human RELM proteins in helminth infection is unknown. To examine the function of human resistin (hResistin), we utilized transgenic mice expressing the human resistin gene (hRetnTg+). Following infection with the helminth Nippostrongylus brasiliensis (Nb), hResistin expression was significantly upregulated in infected tissue. Compared to control hRetnTg- mice, hRetnTg+ mice suffered from exacerbated Nb-induced inflammation characterized by weight loss and increased infiltration of inflammatory monocytes in the lung, along with elevated Nb egg burdens and delayed parasite expulsion. Genome-wide transcriptional profiling of the infected tissue revealed that hResistin promoted expression of proinflammatory cytokines and genes downstream of toll-like receptor signaling. Moreover, hResistin preferentially bound lung monocytes, and exogenous treatment of mice with recombinant hResistin promoted monocyte recruitment and proinflammatory cytokine expression. In human studies, increased serum resistin was associated with higher parasite load in individuals infected with soil-transmitted helminths or filarial nematode Wuchereria bancrofti, and was positively correlated with proinflammatory cytokines. Together, these studies identify human resistin as a detrimental factor induced by multiple helminth infections, where it promotes proinflammatory cytokines and impedes parasite clearance. Targeting the resistin/proinflammatory cytokine immune axis may provide new diagnostic or treatment strategies for helminth infection and associated immune-mediated pathology