Novel semiconducting iron–quinizarin metal–organic framework for application in supercapacitors^*

We present conductivity data for a newly synthesised metal organic framework FeQ, Fe(C14H6O4).H2O demonstrating significant electronic transport. The electrical conductivity of the material is expected to be through the π-π interaction of the ligand- quinizarin and is measured to be 1.73 × 10-2 Scm-1. Its potential role as supercapacitor electrodes is discussed

Purtscher-like retinopathy following valsalva maneuver effect: case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Purtscher's retinopathy is a rare condition that is noted in cases related to various types of trauma. The characteristic finding in the fundus is the presence of multiple Purtscher flecken. Purtscher-like retinopathy has a similar presentation in the fundus, but without an association with trauma.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 43-year old Malay man presented with a sudden onset of central foggy vision in the left eye after holding his breath for two minutes while catching a falling object. It was not associated with floaters, flashes of light, or head trauma. His vision in the right eye was 6/6, and in his left eye it was finger counting. He had bilateral temporal sub-conjunctival hemorrhages. An examination of his left fundus revealed multiple white cotton wool spots and dot-blot retinal hemorrhages with diffuse retinal edema at the posterior pole. His right fundus was noted to have only mild temporal peri-papillary edema associated with a few dot-blot hemorrhages. Fundus fluorescein angiography showed good arterial perfusion and no evidence of leaking or neo-vascularization. A diagnosis of Purtscher-like retinopathy was made, and the patient was treated with indomethacin tablets for six weeks. At his six-week follow-up examination, his left eye visual acuity had improved to 6/12. His bilateral sub-conjunctival hemorrhage had resolved. His left fundus showed residual multiple cotton wool spots and reduced retinal edema.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Treatment with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs seems to be effective in reducing edema in patients with Purtscher-like retinopathy.</p

Personality, gender, and age in the language of social media: the open-vocabulary approach

We analyzed 700 million words, phrases, and topic instances collected from the Facebook messages of 75,000 volunteers, who also took standard personality tests, and found striking variations in language with personality, gender, and age. In our open-vocabulary technique, the data itself drives a comprehensive exploration of language that distinguishes people, finding connections that are not captured with traditional closed-vocabulary word-category analyses. Our analyses shed new light on psychosocial processes yielding results that are face valid (e.g., subjects living in high elevations talk about the mountains), tie in with other research (e.g., neurotic people disproportionately use the phrase ‘sick of’ and the word ‘depressed’), suggest new hypotheses (e.g., an active life implies emotional stability), and give detailed insights (males use the possessive ‘my’ when mentioning their ‘wife’ or ‘girlfriend’ more often than females use ‘my’ with ‘husband’ or 'boyfriend’). To date, this represents the largest study, by an order of magnitude, of language and personalit

A MIQE-Compliant Real-Time PCR Assay for Aspergillus Detection

PMCID: PMC3393739This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Re-framing the climate change debate in the livestock sector: mitigation and adaptation options

Livestock play a key role in the climate change debate. As with crop-based agriculture, the sector is both a net greenhouse gas emitter and vulnerable to climate change. At the same time, it is an essential food source for millions of people worldwide, with other functions apart from food security such as savings and insurance. By comparison with crop-based agriculture, the interactions of livestock and climate change have been much less studied. The debate around livestock is confusing due to the coexistence of multiple livestock farming systems with differing functions for humans, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission profiles and different characteristics and boundary issues in their measurement, which are often pooled together. Consequently, the diversity of livestock farming systems and their functions to human systems are poorly represented and the role of the livestock sector in the climate change debate has not been adequately addressed. In this article, building upon the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC 5AR) findings, we review recent literature on livestock and climate change so as better to include this diversity in the adaptation and mitigation debate around livestock systems. For comparative purposes we use the same categories of managerial, technical, behavioral and policy-related action to organize both mitigation and adaptation options. We conclude that different livestock systems provide different functions to different human systems and require different strategies, so they cannot readily be pooled together. We also observe that, for the different livestock systems, several win-win strategies exist that effectively tackle both mitigation and adaptation options as well as food security

Compression of Structured High-Throughput Sequencing Data

Large biological datasets are being produced at a rapid pace and create substantial storage challenges, particularly in the domain of high-throughput sequencing (HTS). Most approaches currently used to store HTS data are either unable to quickly adapt to the requirements of new sequencing or analysis methods (because they do not support schema evolution), or fail to provide state of the art compression of the datasets. We have devised new approaches to store HTS data that support seamless data schema evolution and compress datasets substantially better than existing approaches. Building on these new approaches, we discuss and demonstrate how a multi-tier data organization can dramatically reduce the storage, computational and network burden of collecting, analyzing, and archiving large sequencing datasets. For instance, we show that spliced RNA-Seq alignments can be stored in less than 4% the size of a BAM file with perfect data fidelity. Compared to the previous compression state of the art, these methods reduce dataset size more than 40% when storing exome, gene expression or DNA methylation datasets. The approaches have been integrated in a comprehensive suite of software tools (http://goby.campagnelab.org) that support common analyses for a range of high-throughput sequencing assays.National Center for Research Resources (U.S.) (Grant UL1 RR024996)Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of America (Translational Research Program Grant LLS 6304-11)National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.) (R01 MH086883

Hyperstable U1snRNA complementary to the K-ras transcripts induces cell death in pancreatic cancer cells

One of the critical steps that governs the inhibitory effect of antisense RNA on target gene expression is the association of the antisense RNA with the target RNA molecules. However, until now, no systematic method has been available to select the suitable parts of a gene as antisense targets. In this study, we utilised U1 small nuclear RNA (snRNA) that binds physiologically to the 5′ splice site (5′ss) of pre-mRNA, to develop a novel vector system that permits imposed binding of antisense RNA to its target. The 5′ free end of U1snRNA was replaced with the antisense sequence against the K-ras gene to generate a hyperstable U1snRNA, whose binding stability to 5′ss of the K-ras transcript is ten-fold higher than that of wild-type U1snRNA. The efficacy of such hyperstable U1snRNA was examined by transducing the expression plasmids into human pancreatic cancer cell lines. This revealed that two of the hyperstable U1snRNAs induced cell death after gene transduction, and significantly reduced the number of G418-resistant colonies to less than 10% of the controls. Furthermore, hyperstable U1snRNA suppressed intraperitoneal dissemination of pancreatic cancer cells in vivo. Hyperstable U1snRNA might be a novel approach to express effective antisense RNA in target cells

Adverse events after first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccination in England: a national vaccine surveillance platform self-controlled case series study

Objectives: To estimate the incidence of adverse events of interest (AEIs) after receiving their first and second doses of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccinations, and to report the safety profile differences between the different COVID-19 vaccines. Design: We used a self-controlled case series design to estimate the relative incidence (RI) of AEIs reported to the Oxford-Royal College of General Practitioners national sentinel network. We compared the AEIs that occurred seven days before and after receiving the COVID-19 vaccinations to background levels between 1 October 2020 and 12 September 2021. Setting: England, UK. Participants: Individuals experiencing AEIs after receiving first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Main outcome measures: AEIs determined based on events reported in clinical trials and in primary care during post-license surveillance. Results: A total of 7,952,861 individuals were vaccinated with COVID-19 vaccines within the study period. Among them, 781,200 individuals (9.82%) presented to general practice with 1,482,273 AEIs. Within the first seven days post-vaccination, 4.85% of all the AEIs were reported. There was a 3–7% decrease in the overall RI of AEIs in the seven days after receiving both doses of Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 (RI = 0.93; 95% CI: 0.91–0.94) and 0.96; 95% CI: 0.94–0.98), respectively) and Oxford-AstraZeneca ChAdOx1 (RI = 0.97; 95% CI: 0.95–0.98) for both doses), but a 20% increase after receiving the first dose of Moderna mRNA-1273 (RI = 1.20; 95% CI: 1.00–1.44)). Conclusions: COVID-19 vaccines are associated with a small decrease in the incidence of medically attended AEIs. Sentinel networks could routinely report common AEI rates, which could contribute to reporting vaccine safety