Conjugated Bile Acid and Sphingosine 1-phosophate prompt Cholangiocarcinoma Cell Growth via Releasing Exosomes

Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a fatal primary malignancy that is formed in the bile ducts. Cancer-associated myofibroblasts play a crucial role in CCA proliferation and invasion. Furthermore, there is a growing interest in the role of the exosome in the interaction between the cancer-associated myofibroblasts and cholangiocarcinoma which lead to CCA growth. However how cholangiocarcinoma-derived exosome affect the cancer-associated myofibroblasts in the tumor microenvironment remain unknown. In this study, we examined whether exosome produced by cholangiocarcinoma could involve in the prompt of CCA cells growth by regulation of myofibroblast. We found that cholangiocarcinoma-derived exosome could prompt elevated α-smooth muscle actin and stromal cell-derived factor one expression that induces myofibroblast proliferation. We then demonstrated that cholangiocarcinoma-derived exosome upregulated periostin expression that plays an important role in cancer metastasis. In 3D organotypic rat CCA coculture model, TCA and S1P considerably increase the growth of CCA cell. Conclusion: cholangiocarcinoma-derived exosome trigger cancer-associated myofibroblasts proliferation in the tumor microenvironment that leads to prompt CCA growth

The Utility of Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) in the Emergency Department: A Systematic Review

Point-of-Care Ultrasonography (POCUS) has increasingly become a pivotal tool in emergency medicine, offering significant improvements in diagnostic accuracy and patient care. This systematic review aims to evaluate the utility of POCUS in emergency settings, focusing on its impact on diagnostic accuracy, patient management, and the implications of POCUS training for emergency medicine residents. Following PRISMA guidelines, a comprehensive search across major databases, primarily PubMed, was conducted in November 2023. The review included clinical trials, observational studies, and controlled clinical trials, focusing on the utility of POCUS in emergency departments. Out of 305 articles identified, 8 studies met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed. The review encompassed diverse studies with a total of 1203 participants, demonstrating the effectiveness of POCUS in various emergency scenarios. Key findings include the improvement of diagnostic accuracy for conditions like acute dyspnea and Acute Decompensated Heart Failure (ADHF), the utility of POCUS in pediatric emergency care, and its role in ocular emergencies. POCUS was also found to influence patient care decisions significantly, changing diagnostic impressions and management plans. Additionally, POCUS training for emergency medicine residents led to increased ultrasound usage and improved patient management efficiency. POCUS has emerged as a transformative tool in emergency medicine, enhancing diagnostic accuracy, guiding clinical decision-making, and improving patient care outcomes. Its applications range from general emergency scenarios to specialized pediatric and ocular emergencies. The integration of POCUS training in emergency medicine residency programs is crucial for harnessing its full potential. As technology advances, POCUS is poised to continue revolutionizing patient care in emergency settings, affirming its indispensable role in modern medical practice

Dynamic priority-based efficient resource allocation and computing framework for vehicular multimedia cloud computing

© 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works In intelligent transportation system, smart vehicles are equipped with a variety of sensing devices those offer various multimedia applications and services related to smart driving assistance, weather forecasting, traffic congestion information, road safety alarms, and many entertainment and comfort-related applications. These smart vehicles produce a massive amount of multimedia related data that required fast and real-time processing which cannot be fully handled by the standalone onboard computing devices due to their limited computational power and storage capacities. Therefore, handling such multimedia applications and services demanded changes in the underlaying networking and computing models. Recently, the integration of vehicles with cloud computing is emerged as a challenging computing paradigm. However, there are certain challenges related to multimedia contents processing, (i.e., resource cost, fast service response time, and quality of experience) that severely affect the performance of vehicular communication. Thus, in this paper, we propose an efficient resource allocation and computation framework for vehicular multimedia cloud computing to overcome the aforementioned challenges. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated in terms of quality of experience, service response time, and resource cost by using the Cloudsim simulator

FANET: Smart city mobility off to a flying start with self‐organized drone‐based networks

Due to recent advancements in smart city traffic and transport monitoring industry 4.0 applications. Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANETs) ability to cover geographically large areas, makes it a suitable technology to address the challenges faced during remote areas traffic monitoring. The implementation of drone based FANETs have several advantages in remote traffic monitoring, including free air-to-air drone assisted communication zone and smart surveillance and security. The drone-based FANETs can be deployed within minutes without requiring physical infrastructure, making it suitable for mission critical applications in several areas of interests. Here a drone-based FANETs application for smart city remote traffic monitoring is presented while addressing several challenges including coverage of larger geographical area and data communication links between FANETs nodes. A FANET-inspired enhanced ACO algorithm that easily coped with drone assisted technology of FANETs is proposed to cover the large areas. Simulation results are presented to compare the proposed technique against different network lifetime and number of received packets. The presented results show that the proposed technique perform better compared to other state-of-the-art techniques

Patients Undergoing Dental Surgery who are Taking Antiplatelet Medications

For the undergoing dental surgery patients taking antiplatelet medications, physicians and dentists must weigh the bleeding risks in continuing antiplatelet medications versus the thrombotic risks in interrupting antiplatelet medications. Bleeding complications requiring more than local measures for hemostasis are rare after dental surgery in patients taking antiplatelet medications. Conversely, the risk for thrombotic complications after interruption of antiplatelet therapy for dental procedures apparently is significant, although small. When a clinician is faced with a decision to continue or interrupt antiplatelet therapy for a dental surgical patient, the decision comes down to “bleed or die.” That is, there is a remote chance that continuing antiplatelet therapy will result in a (nonfatal) bleeding problem requiring more than local measures for hemostasis versus a small but significant chance that interrupting antiplatelet therapy will result in a (possibly fatal) thromboembolic complication. The decision is simple: It is time to stop interrupting antiplatelet therapy for dental surgery

Heterostructured WO3–TiVO4 thin-film photocatalyst for efficient photoelectrochemical water splitting

This is the final version. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record. Data availability: Data associated with this study have not been deposited into a publicly available repository. Data will be made available on request to the corresponding author.Photoelectrochemical water splitting via solar irradiation has garnered significant interest due to its potential in large-scale renewable hydrogen production. Heterostructure materials have emerged as an effective strategy, demonstrating enhanced performance in photoelectrochemical water-splitting applications compared to individual photocatalysts. In this study, to augment the performance of sprayed TiVO4 thin films, a hydrothermally prepared WO3 underlayer was integrated beneath the spray pyrolised TiVO4 film. The consequent heterostructure demonstrated notable enhancements in optical, structural, microstructural attributes, and photocurrent properties. This improvement is attributed to the strategic deposition of WO3 underlayer, forming a heterostructure composite electrode. This led to a marked increase in photocurrent density for the WO3/TiVO4 photoanode, reaching a peak of 740 μA/cm2 at an applied potential of 1.23 V vs RHE, about nine-fold that of standalone TiVO4. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy revealed a reduced semicircle for the heterostructure, indicating improved charge transfer compared to bare TiVO4. The heterostructure photoelectrode exhibited enhanced charge carrier conductivity at the interface and sustained stability over 3 h. The distinct attributes of heterostructure photoelectrode present significant opportunities for devising highly efficient sunlight-driven water splitting systems.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)Saudi Arabia Culture Bureau in the United Kingdo

Antibacterial efficacy of indigenous Pakistani honey against extensively drug-resistant clinical isolates of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi: an alternative option to combat antimicrobial resistance

Abstract Background Extensively drug-resistant (XDR) Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S. Typhi) poses a grave threat to public health due to increased mortality and morbidity caused by typhoid fever. Honey is a promising antibacterial agent, and we aimed to determine the antibacterial activity of honey against XDR S. Typhi. Methods We isolated 20 clinical isolates of XDR S. Typhi from pediatric septicemic patients and determined the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of diferent antibiotics against the pathogens using the VITEK 2 Compact system. Antimicrobial-resistant genes carried by the isolates were identifed using PCR. The antibacterial efcacy of fve Pakistani honeys was examined using agar well difusion assay, and their MICs and minimum bactericidal concentrations (MBCs) were determined with the broth microdilution method. Results All 20 isolates were confrmed as S. Typhi. The antibiogram phenotype was confrmed as XDR S. Typhi with resistance to ampicillin (≥32 µg/mL), ciprofoxacin (≥4 µg/mL), and ceftriaxone (≥4 µg/mL) and sensitivity to azithromycin (≤16 µg/mL) and carbapenems (≤1 µg/mL). Molecular conformation revealed the presence of blaTM-1, Sul1, qnrS, gyrA, gyrB, and blaCTX-M-15 genes in all isolates. Among the fve honeys, beri honey had the highest zone of inhibition of 7–15 mm and neem honey had a zone of inhibition of 7–12 mm. The MIC and MBC of beri honey against 3/20 (15%) XDR S. Typhi isolates were 3.125 and 6.25%, respectively, while the MIC and MBC of neem were 3.125 and 6.25%, respectively, against 3/20 (15%) isolates and 6.25 and 12.5%, respectively, against 7/20 (35%) isolates. Conclusion Indigenous honeys have an efective role in combating XDR S. Typhi. They are potential candidates for clinical trials as alternative therapeutic options against XDR S. Typhi isolates. Keywords Antimicrobial resistance, Natural antibiotics, XDR S. Typhi, MIC, Honey, Resistance gene

A Prevalence Risk Analysis of Waterborne Transmission of SARS-CoV-2

We statistically analyzed 31 published studies comprising 113 water samples collected from 17 countries for SARS-CoV-2 positivity. The pooled estimated prevalence of viral RNA in the tested samples was 64.1% [95% CI:51.6%, 74.9%] with considerable heterogeneity (I2: 90.1%, P<0.001). Notably, wastewater, sewage, hospital septic-tank, biological sludge, and effluent demonstrated statistical significance (P<0.05) for RNA positivity. The country-wise pooled estimated prevalence for Germany, India, Turkey, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, the USA, and Japan were 88% (76%, 94%), 85% (33%, 98%), 83% (43%, 97%), 78% (54%, 92%), 60% (41%, 77%), 53% (36%, 70%), 53% (27%, 77%), and 25% (13%,43%), respectively. Further subgroup analyses showed that the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 among the tested water samples was significantly higher in middle-income countries compared to high-income groups. Our data, therefore, suggests wastewater-based epidemiological surveillance as an important tool for community-wide monitoring of SARS-CoV-2.   Doi: 10.28991/SciMedJ-2022-04-03-02 Full Text: PD

Prospects of Hybrid Energy in Saudi Arabia, Exploring Irrigation Application in Shaqra

Dynamics in rainfall patterns due to climate change are posing a threat to crop production globally. The core issue of food security is expected to intensify, and improving crop yield using motorized power irrigation mechanisms can help in curtailing the impact of drought and changing weather patterns to meet the crop water requirement. To meet the energy demand of irrigation systems, this paper explores the use of hybrid energy sources, i.e., wind and solar energy, taking Shaqra Saudi Arabia as case study. This paper presents a systematic case study that evaluates crop water requirements for 3 different crops using the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s software CROPWAT 8.0 and converts the water requirement into energy demand to design the water pumping system. The energy requirement water pumping system is used to design a hybrid energy system using HOMER PRO 3.14.4 that can reliably meet the energy demand. The results suggests that, contrary to the common consideration in Saudi Arabia, a hybrid of wind and solar energy proves to be more cost effective and yields a higher amount of energy. The results suggest that a significant reduction in cost can be achieved with a hybrid energy system as compared to a solar PV system only

Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease and the Higher Incidence of Clostridium Difficile Infection

This study aimed at analyzing the patients with inflammatory bowel disease and the higher incidence of clostridium difficile infection by emphasizing the theoretical review of studies discussing the  inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), which include Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. And by discussing the treatment of CDI in IBD patients, the diagnosis of CDI in IBD, and the risk factors for CDI in IBD. The study concluded that clinicians should be cautious about the chances of CDI in patients who have an exacerbation of IBD. At times the IBD flare cannot be differentiated from CDI requiring a high degree of clinical suspicion and vouching for early stool testing for toxin assay. When CDI in IBD are established primarily within two days of hospital admission it suggests that a good number of the infection was acquired before admission. CDI should, therefore, be suspected in differentiated diagnosis for intractable IBD patients, because many such patients need not present with a history of antibiotic exposure or hospital admission and may largely be receiving outpatient treatment