Expression of Nek1 during kidney development and cyst formation in multiple nephron segments in the Nek1-deficient kat2J mouse model of polycystic kidney disease

BACKGROUND: Neks, mammalian orthologs of the fungal protein kinase never-in-mitosis A, have been implicated in the pathogenesis of polycystic kidney disease. Among them, Nek1 is the primary protein inactivated in kat2J mouse models of PKD. RESULT: We report the expression pattern of Nek1 and characterize the renal cysts that develop in kat2J mice. Nek1 is detectable in all murine tissues but its expression in wild type and kat2J heterozygous kidneys decrease as the kidneys mature, especially in tubular epithelial cells. In the embryonic kidney, Nek1 expression is most prominent in cells that will become podocytes and proximal tubules. Kidney development in kat2J homozygous mice is aberrant early, before the appearance of gross cysts: developing cortical zones are thin, populated by immature glomeruli, and characterized by excessive apoptosis of several cell types. Cysts in kat2J homozygous mice form postnatally in Bowman’s space as well as different tubular subtypes. Late in life, kat2J heterozygous mice form renal cysts and the cells lining these cysts lack staining for Nek1. The primary cilia of cells lining cysts in kat2J homozygous mice are morphologically diverse: in some cells they are unusually long and in others there are multiple cilia of varying lengths. CONCLUSION: Our studies indicate that Nek1 deficiency leads to disordered kidney maturation, and cysts throughout the nephron

Bioflavonoid luteolin prevents sFlt-1 release via HIF-1α inhibition in cultured human placenta

Preeclampsia (PE) is a serious hypertensive complication of pregnancy and is a leading cause of maternal death and major contributor to maternal and perinatal morbidity, including establishment of long-term complications. The continued prevalence of PE stresses the need for identification of novel treatments which can target prohypertensive factors implicated in the disease pathophysiology, such as soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase 1 (sFlt-1). We set out to identify novel compounds to reduce placental sFlt-1 and determine whether this occurs via hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1α inhibition. We utilized a commercially available library of natural compounds to assess their ability to reduce sFlt-1 release from primary human placental cytotrophoblast cells (CTBs). Human placental explants from normotensive (NT) and preeclamptic (PE) pregnancies were treated with varying concentrations of luteolin. Protein and mRNA expression of sFlt-1 and upstream mediators were evaluated using ELISA, western blot, and real-time PCR. Of the natural compounds examined, luteolin showed the most potent inhibition of sFlt-1 release, with >95% reduction compared to vehicle-treated. Luteolin significantly inhibited sFlt-1 in cultured placental explants compared to vehicle-treated in a dose- and time-dependent manner. Additionally, significant decreases in HIF-1α expression were observed in luteolin-treated explants, suggesting a mechanism for sFlt-1 downregulation. The ability of luteolin to inhibit HIF-1α may be mediated through the Akt pathway, as inhibitors to Akt and its upstream regulator phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K) resulted in significant HIF-1α reduction. Luteolin reduces anti-angiogenic sFlt-1 through inhibition of HIF-1α, making it a novel candidate for the treatment of PE

Crohn\u27s disease-associated ATG16L1 T300A genotype is associated with improved survival in gastric cancer

BACKGROUND: A non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphism of the ATG16L1 gene, T300A, is a major Crohn\u27s disease (CD) susceptibility allele, and is known to be associated with increased apoptosis induction in the small intestinal crypt base in CD subjects and mouse models. We hypothesized that ATG16L1 T300A genotype also correlates with increased tumor apoptosis and therefore could lead to superior clinical outcome in cancer subjects. METHODS: T300A genotyping by Taqman assay was performed for gastric carcinoma subjects who underwent resection from two academic medical centers. Transcriptomic analysis was performed by RNA-seq on formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded cancerous tissue. Tumor apoptosis and autophagy were determined by cleaved caspase-3 and p62 immunohistochemistry, respectively. The subjects\u27 genotypes were correlated with demographics, various histopathologic features, transcriptome, and clinical outcome. FINDINGS: Of the 220 genotyped subjects, 163 (74%) subjects carried the T300A allele(s), including 55 (25%) homozygous and 108 (49%) heterozygous subjects. The T300A/T300A subjects had superior overall survival than the other groups. Their tumors were associated with increased CD-like lymphoid aggregates and increased tumor apoptosis without concurrent increase in tumor mitosis or defective autophagy. Transcriptomic analysis showed upregulation of WNT/β-catenin signaling and downregulation of PPAR, EGFR, and inflammatory chemokine pathways in tumors of T300A/T300A subjects. INTERPRETATION: Gastric carcinoma of subjects with the T300A/T300A genotype is associated with repressed EGFR and PPAR pathways, increased tumor apoptosis, and improved overall survival. Genotyping gastric cancer subjects may provide additional insight for clinical stratification

The Uses of a Dual-Band Corrugated Circularly Polarized Horn Antenna for 5G Systems

This paper presents the development of a wide-beam width, dual-band, omnidirectional antenna for the mm-wave band used in 5G communication systems for indoor coverage. The 5G indoor environment includes features of wide space and short range. Additionally, it needs to function well under a variety of circumstances in order to carry out its diverse set of network applications. The waveguide antenna has been designed to be small enough to meet the requirements of mm-wave band and utilizes a corrugated horn to produce a wide beam width. Additionally, it is small enough to integrate with 5G communication products and is easy to manufacture. This design is simple enough to have multi-feature antenna performance and is more useful for the femtocell repeater. The corrugated circularly polarized horn antenna has been designed for two frequency bands; namely, 26.5–30 GHz for the low band and 36–40 GHz for high band. The results of this study show that return-loss is better than 18 dB for both low and high band. The peak gain is 6.1 dBi for the low band and 8.7 dBi for the high band. The beam width is 105 degrees and 77 degrees for the low band and the high band, respectively. The axial ratio is less than 5.2 dB for both low and high band. Generally, traditional circularly polarized antennas cannot meet the requirements for broadband. The designs for the antennas proposed here can meet the requirements of FR2 bandwidths. This feature limits axial ratio performance. The measurement error in the current experiment comes from the high precision control on the size of the ridge

A Power-Efficient Multiband Planar USB Dongle Antenna for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) had been applied in Internet of Things (IoT) and in Industry 4.0. Since a WSN system contains multiple wireless sensor nodes, it is necessary to develop a low-power and multiband wireless communication system that satisfies the specifications of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Certification European (CE). In a WSN system, many devices are of very small size and can be slipped into a Universal Serial Bus (USB), which is capable of connecting to wireless systems and networks, as well as transferring data. These devices are widely known as USB dongles. This paper develops a planar USB dongle antenna for three frequency bands, namely 2.30–2.69 GHz, 3.40–3.70 GHz, and 5.15–5.85 GHz. This study proposes a novel antenna design that uses four loops to develop the multiband USB dongle. The first and second loops construct the low and intermediate frequency ranges. The third loop resonates the high frequency property, while the fourth loop is used to enhance the bandwidth. The performance and power consumption of the proposed multiband planar USB dongle antenna were significantly improved compared to existing multiband designs

Efecto del clima organizacional en la autoeficacia de los docentes de instituciones de educación superior

Este estudio trata del análisis de las relaciones entre el clima organizacional y la autoeficacia, en grupos de trabajo formados por profesores y/o investigadores que trabajan en un departamento de una universidad.La muestra del presente estudio está compuesta por profesores e investigadores miembros de 59 grupos de trabajo (departamentos), 23 de universidades españolas y 36 de universidades chilenas, 30 de universidades privadas y 29 de universidades públicas.Para lograr los objetivos descritos se procedió a la aplicación del instrumento elaborado (Chiang, 2003) para la recolección de los datos. El instrumento consta de 49 ítems repartidos en siete escalas para medir el clima organizacional y una escala para medir autoeficacia. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que el instrumento utilizado entregó, para las muestras del presente estudio, una fiabilidad adecuada en cada una de las escalas que componen este cuestionario.Sobre la relación entre las dimensiones del clima organizacional y la autoeficacia concluimos que, los profesores que perciben una mayor libertad para tomar sus propias decisiones (empowerment), un mayor consenso con la misión de su universidad y un mayor interés por el aprendizaje de sus alumnos se sienten más capaces para cumplir su tarea docente (autoeficacia). En la mayoría de los casos los docentes que perciben un clima de mayor libertad de cátedra, mayor interés por la investigación y el estudio y mayor afiliación, también se sienten más capaces de realizar su tarea (autoeficacia). Además, solamente en las universidades privadas, la variable de clima organizacional presión laboral, esta relacionada negativamente con la autoeficacia.Por lo que respecta a las diferencias entre departamentos, en los departamentos de las Universidades Privadas españolas existe mayor presión laboral. En los departamentos de las Universidades Privadas chilenas existe mayor interés por el aprendizaje de los estudiantes, mayor presión laboral y mayor autoeficacia

Intensive care nurse-family engagement from a global perspective: A qualitative multi-site exploration

Background: Critical illness is distressing for families, and often results in negative effects on family health that influence a family\u27s ability to support their critically ill family member. Although recent attention has been directed at improving care and outcomes for families of critically ill patients, the manner in which nurses engage with families is not fully understood. Objectives: To describe nurses’ perceptions and practices of family engagement in adult intensive care units from a global perspective. Design: A qualitative-descriptive multi-site design using content analysis. Settings: The study was conducted in 26 intensive care units of 12 urban, metropolitan, academic medical centers in ten countries, spanning five continents. Participants: A total of 65 registered nurses (77% women, age of M = 39.5, SD = 11.4 years) participated. Most held intensive care certification (72%) and had worked on average 10 (SD = 9.6) years in the ICU. Methods: Semi-structured, individual interviews (M = 38.4 min, SD = 12.0) were held with ICU nurses at the hospital (94%) or their home using an interview guide. Qualitative interview data were analysed using inductive content analysis. Results: We found that nurse-family engagement was an ebb and flow of relational power that needed to be carefully negotiated and balanced, with nurses holding and often exerting more power than families. Constant fluctuations in nurses’ practices of engagement occurred in day-to-day practice from shift-to-shift and from nurse-to-nurse. Family engagement was dependent on individual nurses’ attitudes and perceptions of family, the patient\u27s condition, and workload. Lastly, family engagement was shaped by the ICU context, with team culture, collaborative relationships, unit structures and organizational resources either enabling or limiting nurses’ ability to engage with families. Conclusions: This global study provides an in-depth understanding of the way nurses engage with families in ICU and reflects many different cultures and health systems. We found that nurse-family engagement was marked by a shifting, yet often unequal power distribution in the nurse-family relationship, inconsistent nurse engagement practices, both of which resulted in variable family engagement in intensive care. Our research contributes a detailed description of engagement as practiced in the everyday delivery of health care. A more concentrated team effort, based on a shared culture and defined framework of family care is needed to ensure that families of critically ill persons are fully engaged in all aspects of intensive care

Caries and Restoration Detection Using Bitewing Film Based on Transfer Learning with CNNs

Caries is a dental disease caused by bacterial infection. If the cause of the caries is detected early; the treatment will be relatively easy; which in turn prevents caries from spreading. The current common procedure of dentists is to first perform radiographic examination on the patient and mark the lesions manually. However; the work of judging lesions and markings requires professional experience and is very time-consuming and repetitive. Taking advantage of the rapid development of artificial intelligence imaging research and technical methods will help dentists make accurate markings and improve medical treatments. It can also shorten the judgment time of professionals. In addition to the use of Gaussian high-pass filter and Otsu’s threshold image enhancement technology; this research solves the problem that the original cutting technology cannot extract certain single teeth; and it proposes a caries and lesions area analysis model based on convolutional neural networks (CNN); which can identify caries and restorations from the bitewing images. Moreover; it provides dentists with more accurate objective judgment data to achieve the purpose of automatic diagnosis and treatment planning as a technology for assisting precision medicine. A standardized database established following a defined set of steps is also proposed in this study. There are three main steps to generate the image of a single tooth from a bitewing image; which can increase the accuracy of the analysis model. The steps include (1) preprocessing of the dental image to obtain a high-quality binarization; (2) a dental image cropping procedure to obtain individually separated tooth samples; and (3) a dental image masking step which masks the fine broken teeth from the sample and enhances the quality of the training. Among the current four common neural networks; namely; AlexNet; GoogleNet; Vgg19; and ResNet50; experimental results show that the proposed AlexNet model in this study for restoration and caries judgments has an accuracy as high as 95.56% and 90.30%; respectively. These are promising results that lead to the possibility of developing an automatic judgment method of bitewing film

Detection of Dental Apical Lesions Using CNNs on Periapical Radiograph

Apical lesions, the general term for chronic infectious diseases, are very common dental diseases in modern life, and are caused by various factors. The current prevailing endodontic treatment makes use of X-ray photography taken from patients where the lesion area is marked manually, which is therefore time consuming. Additionally, for some images the significant details might not be recognizable due to the different shooting angles or doses. To make the diagnosis process shorter and efficient, repetitive tasks should be performed automatically to allow the dentists to focus more on the technical and medical diagnosis, such as treatment, tooth cleaning, or medical communication. To realize the automatic diagnosis, this article proposes and establishes a lesion area analysis model based on convolutional neural networks (CNN). For establishing a standardized database for clinical application, the Institutional Review Board (IRB) with application number 202002030B0 has been approved with the database established by dentists who provided the practical clinical data. In this study, the image data is preprocessed by a Gaussian high-pass filter. Then, an iterative thresholding is applied to slice the X-ray image into several individual tooth sample images. The collection of individual tooth images that comprises the image database are used as input into the CNN migration learning model for training. Seventy percent (70%) of the image database is used for training and validating the model while the remaining 30% is used for testing and estimating the accuracy of the model. The practical diagnosis accuracy of the proposed CNN model is 92.5%. The proposed model successfully facilitated the automatic diagnosis of the apical lesion

Tooth Position Determination by Automatic Cutting and Marking of Dental Panoramic X-ray Film in Medical Image Processing

This paper presents a novel method for automatic segmentation of dental X-ray images into single tooth sections and for placing every segmented tooth onto a precise corresponding position table. Moreover, the proposed method automatically determines the tooth’s position in a panoramic X-ray film. The image-processing step incorporates a variety of image-enhancement techniques, including sharpening, histogram equalization, and flat-field correction. Moreover, image processing was implemented iteratively to achieve higher pixel value contrast between the teeth and cavity. The next image-enhancement step is aimed at detecting the teeth cavity and involves determining the segment and points separating the upper and lower jaw, using the difference in pixel values to cut the image into several equal sections and then connecting each cavity feature point to extend a curve that completes the description of the separated jaw. The curve is shifted up and down to look for the gap between the teeth, to identify and address missing teeth and overlapping. Under FDI World Dental Federation notation, the left and right sides receive eight-code sequences to mark each tooth, which provides improved convenience in clinical use. According to the literature, X-ray film cannot be marked correctly when a tooth is missing. This paper utilizes artificial center positioning and sets the teeth gap feature points to have the same count. Then, the gap feature points are connected as a curve with the curve of the jaw to illustrate the dental segmentation. In addition, we incorporate different image-processing methods to sequentially strengthen the X-ray film. The proposed procedure had an 89.95% accuracy rate for tooth positioning. As for the tooth cutting, where the edge of the cutting box is used to determine the position of each tooth number, the accuracy of the tooth positioning method in this proposed study is 92.78%