Preliminary tests on PEG-based thermoresponsive polymers for the production of 3D bioprinted constructs

In the last years, the growing demand for tissues and organs led to the development of novel techniques, such as 3D bioprinting. This technique proved to be promising for both patient-specific and custom-made applications when using autologous cells, and for the creation of standardized models that in the future could be used for instance for high-throughput drug screening. Within this context, the formulation of bioinks that could provide reliable, reproducible, and replicable structures with good mechanical properties and high biocompatibility is a crucial challenge. In this work, the use of a thermoresponsive PEG-based formulation was investigated as a bioink, allowing its use for 4D bioprinting applications triggered by thermal changes. First, the polymer was synthesized by reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization (RAFT), which allows for optimal control over the final properties of the polymer. Then, the printability for extrusion-based bioprinting of this formulation was assessed through in-situ imaging. Finally, the use of this polymer as bioink was tested by encapsulation of endothelial cells and evaluating cell distribution within the construct

In-situ monitoring of defects in extrusion-based bioprinting processes using visible light imaging

Tissue engineering techniques are central for the development of biomedical scaffolds, which are primarily employed in the biofabrication of various artificial human tissue and organ models. Bioprinting is a new technique of creating tissue constructs that can sustain cell proliferation. The development of printing techniques proceeds together with the development of the biomaterials to be printed, which is why studying the printability of these specific biomaterials must be explored. An appropriate hydrogel used as bioink should have numerous rheological, mechanical, and biological properties for producing appropriate tissue constructs. However, reaching the right trade-off between a desirable bioactivity and high printability is challenging, and despite numerous optimization studies for different materials, printing defects often occur during printing. Herein, methods are proposed to automatically identify these drifting processes in commonly used geometries and how they affected subsequent layers, as well as printing defects within each layer. Several structures were printed with standard commercial bioink as proof of concept. The constructs were analyzed using optical images from a coaxial camera. The images were then digitally processed to get geometrical data from which patterns of defectology to be monitored were derived. This automation should decrease the time in post-processing characterization of constructs and should provide a standardized tool to compare different bioinks

Data preparation and interannotator agreement: BioCreAtIvE Task 1B

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We prepared and evaluated training and test materials for an assessment of text mining methods in molecular biology. The goal of the assessment was to evaluate the ability of automated systems to generate a list of unique gene identifiers from PubMed abstracts for the three model organisms Fly, Mouse, and Yeast. This paper describes the preparation and evaluation of answer keys for training and testing. These consisted of lists of normalized gene names found in the abstracts, generated by adapting the gene list for the full journal articles found in the model organism databases. For the training dataset, the gene list was pruned automatically to remove gene names not found in the abstract; for the testing dataset, it was further refined by manual annotation by annotators provided with guidelines. A critical step in interpreting the results of an assessment is to evaluate the quality of the data preparation. We did this by careful assessment of interannotator agreement and the use of answer pooling of participant results to improve the quality of the final testing dataset.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Interannotator analysis on a small dataset showed that our gene lists for Fly and Yeast were good (87% and 91% three-way agreement) but the Mouse gene list had many conflicts (mostly omissions), which resulted in errors (69% interannotator agreement). By comparing and pooling answers from the participant systems, we were able to add an additional check on the test data; this allowed us to find additional errors, especially in Mouse. This led to 1% change in the Yeast and Fly "gold standard" answer keys, but to an 8% change in the mouse answer key.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We found that clear annotation guidelines are important, along with careful interannotator experiments, to validate the generated gene lists. Also, abstracts alone are a poor resource for identifying genes in paper, containing only a fraction of genes mentioned in the full text (25% for Fly, 36% for Mouse). We found that there are intrinsic differences between the model organism databases related to the number of synonymous terms and also to curation criteria. Finally, we found that answer pooling was much faster and allowed us to identify more conflicting genes than interannotator analysis.</p

From Profile to Surface Monitoring: SPC for Cylindrical Surfaces Via Gaussian Processes

Quality of machined products is often related to the shapes of surfaces that are constrained by geometric tolerances. In this case, statistical quality monitoring should be used to quickly detect unwanted deviations from the nominal pattern. The majority of the literature has focused on statistical profile monitoring, while there is little research on surface monitoring. This paper faces the challenging task of moving from profile to surface monitoring. To this aim, different parametric approaches and control-charting procedures are presented and compared with reference to a real case study dealing with cylindrical surfaces obtained by lathe turning. In particular, a novel method presented in this paper consists of modeling the manufactured surface via Gaussian processes models and monitoring the deviations of the actual surface from the target pattern estimated in phase I. Regardless of the specific case study in this paper, the proposed approach is general and can be extended to deal with different kinds of surfaces or profiles

Assessing the Effects of Health Insurance Status on Compliance with Diabetes Care

Background: Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects millions of people in the United States. Compliance with treatment plans is important for preventing life-threatening complications of the disease. However, many diabetics forgo recommended testing and other management standards due to lack of health insurance. Purpose: This study aims to assess the effect of health insurance status on compliance with diabetes care. Methods: This study was a secondary analysis using 2005–2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data. For participants who reported having diabetes, compliance with care was assessed based on insurance status. Compliance indicators included hemoglobin A1C check by a doctor in the past year, seeing a diabetes specialist in the past two years, taking diabetic pills to lower blood sugar, and taking insulin. Weighted multivariable logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between insurance status and compliance with diabetes care. Results: Of participants who reported having diabetes (n=5,152), there were clear sociodemographic differences in insurance status. Uninsured individuals were less likely to have their A1C checked by a doctor in the past year (aOR=0.25, 95% CI=0.18-0.35), to have seen a diabetes specialist in the past two years (aOR=0.77, 95% CI=0.60-0.99), or to be currently taking insulin (aOR=0.58, 95% CI=0.43-0.80) when compared to those who were insured. Uninsured individuals who were male, had less than high school education, or had an income below the federal poverty level were much less likely to have their A1C checked by a doctor in the past year or to be currently taking insulin when compared to their insured counterparts. Discussion: Health insurance status plays an important role in compliance with diabetes care and management. There is a need for improved access to care and affordable insurance options for those with diabetes to prevent serious complications of the disease

Review on Occupational Personal Solar UV Exposure Measurements

During leisure time, people can decide if they want to expose themselves to solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation and to which extent. During occupation, people do not have this choice. Outdoor workers are exposed to solar UV radiation (UVR) on a daily basis. This may hold a certain health risk, which can be estimated when the personal solar UVR exposure (PE) is known. During the past decades, a variety of studies was conducted to measure PE of outdoor workers and our knowledge on the PE of outdoor workers has remarkably increased. As shown by this review, studies clearly indicate that PE of most of outdoor workers exceeds the internationally proposed threshold limit value, which is comparable to 1.0 to 1.3 SED, respectively to 1.1 to 1.5 UV Index received over one hour. Besides working in a high UVR environment, monotonic workflow (limited movement, nearly static posture) is a risk factor. In such cases, PE can be higher than ambient UVR. In this review, we provide also a list of milestone, depicting the progress and the most important findings in this field during the past 45 years. However, in many respects our knowledge is still rudimentary, because of several reasons. Different measuring positions have been used so that measured PE is not comparable. Few studies were designed to enable extension of measured PE to other locations or dates. Although the importance of a proper calibration of the measuring devices in respect to the changing solar spectrum was pointed out from the beginning, this is often not performed, which leads to high uncertainties in the presented PE levels. At the end of our review, we provide some key points, which can be used to evaluate the quality of a study respectively to support the design of future studies

A trimodal resonator for three mutually perpendicular magnetic fields

We describe a trimodal resonator for the simultaneous delivery of three perpendicular magnetic fields. The resonator consists of a shielded loop single-mode radio frequency (rf) resonator placed inside of a bimodal waveguide microwave resonator. The microwave modes are nondegenerate, tunable over a range of 100 MHz, and have typical Q factors of 150 and 200. The rf mode is tunable over a range of 125 MHz, and has a typical Q of 45. Control of the relative phase between the three fields is demonstrated. The resonator will be used to drive three magnetic dipole transitions coherently between Zeeman states in the ground state of 87Rb.87Rb. © 1999 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/71204/2/RSINAK-70-3-1780-1.pd

Recurrent Subarachnoid Bleeding and Superficial Siderosis in a Patient with Histopathologically Proven Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy

A 68-year-old man with a history of hypertension presented with recurrent subarachnoid bleeding. Brain MRI showed superficial siderosis, and diagnostic cerebral angiograms did not show any intracranial vascular malformation or arterial aneurism. Post mortem neuropathological examination of the brain was consistent with a diagnosis of cerebral amyloid angiopathy. Clinicians should be aware that cerebral amyloid angiopathy should be considered in patients with unexplained recurrent subarachnoid bleeding, even in cases without familial clustering or transthyretin variant