Wormhole Structures in Logarithmic-Corrected R2R^2 Gravity

This paper is devoted to find the feasible shape functions for the construction of static wormhole geometry in the frame work of logarithmic-corrected $R^2$ gravity model. We discuss the asymptotically flat wormhole solutions sustained by the matter sources with anisotropic pressure, isotropic pressure and barotropic pressure. For anisotropic case, we consider three shape functions and evaluate the null energy conditions and weak energy conditions graphically along with their regions. Moreover, for barotropic and isotropic pressures, we find shape function analytically and discuss its properties. For the formation of traversable wormhole geometries, we cautiously choose the values of parameters involved in $f(R)$ gravity model. We show explicitly that our wormhole solutions violates the non-existence theorem even with logarithmic corrections. We discuss all physical properties via graphical analysis and it is concluded that the wormhole solutions with relativistic formalism can be well justified with logarithmic corrections.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSE OF CARDIORESPIRATORY FITNESS PARAMETERS TO EXERCISE IN PREDIABETIC POPULATION: AN EXPERIMENTAL PRE- POST DESIGN

Background: The cardiorespiratory fitness in prediabetic population at pre- and post-interventional stage after 8 weeks of moderate intensity exercise was determined. This study is part of PhD project and carried out in Physiology department, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Khyber Medical University, Peshawar, Pakistan. Methods: It was an experimental study design. Adult prediabetics (n=50), 22 females and 28 males of 18 to 35y age group were included in the study. Diagnosis of prediabetes was made with HbA1c falling in the range of 5.7– 6.4%, and fasting blood glucose (100-125mg/dL). Cardiorespiratory fitness parameters (Ventilation, oxygen consumed during exercise VO2, carbon dioxide exhaled VCO2, metabolic equivalents (ME), heart rate (HR), heart rate reserve (HRR), rate of carbohydrate oxidation (RCHO), fat oxidation (RFO) and energy expenditure (EE)) were determined at pre- and post-exercise intervention using breath-by-breath analyzer. The participants performed moderate exercise protocol of 30 min with HRmax% of 70 ± 5% for 5 days a week for 8 weeks during their leisure time, monitored with pedometers. Results: The results showed a significant improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness parameters at post exercise analysis.  Similar changes were observed for fasting blood glucose (P value < 0.001)  and HbA1c (P value < 0.001).Conclusion: Moderate physical activity for 8 weeks showed significant Improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness parameters and glycemic status of patients with prediabetes

Immune recognition of Pseudomonas aeruginosa mediated by the IPAF/NLRC4 inflammasome

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a Gram-negative bacterium that causes opportunistic infections in immunocompromised individuals. P. aeruginosa employs a type III secretion system to inject effector molecules into the cytoplasm of the host cell. This interaction with the host cell leads to inflammatory responses that eventually result in cell death. We show that infection of macrophages with P. aeruginosa results in activation of caspase-1 in an IPAF-dependent, but flagellin-independent, manner. Macrophages deficient in IPAF or caspase-1 were markedly resistant to P. aeruginosa–induced cell death and release of the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin (IL)-1β. A subset of P. aeruginosa isolates express the effector molecule exoenzyme U (ExoU), which we demonstrate is capable of inhibiting caspase-1–driven proinflammatory cytokine production. This study shows a key role for IPAF and capase-1 in innate immune responses to the pathogen P. aeruginosa, and also demonstrates that virulent ExoU-expressing strains of P. aeruginosa can circumvent this innate immune response

Evaluating of HPV-DNA ISH as an adjunct to p16 testing in oropharyngeal cancer

© 2020 Jeffrey Chi. Aim: Current guidelines recommend p16 immunohistochemistry (IHC) for testing human papillomavirus (HPV) in oropharyngeal carcinoma (OPSCC). We evaluated the value of adding DNA in situ hybridization (ISH) to p16 IHC. Methods: Fifty patients with OPSCC were analyzed. Concordance between HPV-DNA ISH and p16 IHC was measured by Gwet\u27s agreement coefficient. Results: p16 IHC was positive in 35/48 (72.9%), negative in 8/48 (16.7%) patients. Wide spectrum DNA-ISH was positive in 9/23 (39%) and negative in 14/23 (60.9%) patients. High-risk 16/18 (HR) HPV DNA-ISH was positive in 11/23 (47.8%) and negative in 12 (52.2%) patients. The agreement between HPV DNA-ISH and p16 IHC is fair (Gwet\u27s AC1 = 0.318). Conclusion: The agreement between p16 IHC and HPV-DNA ISH was fair. However, ISH sensitivity was low. Our findings add to the current data that p16 IHC testing is reliable and may be enough as a stand-alone test for HPV detection in OPSCC. Current testing guidelines recommend p16 immunochemistry (IHC) for detecting human papillomavirus (HPV) in oropharyngeal cancer (OPSCC). We evaluated the value of adding HPV DNA in situ hybridization (ISH) to p16 IHC. Fifty patients with OPSCC were analyzed. p16 IHC was positive in 72.9% of patients and DNA-ISH was positive in 39% of patients when wide spectrum probe was used and positive in 47.8% of patients when high-risk probe was used. The agreement between the two tests was fair. However, DNA-ISH sensitivity was low. p16 IHC may be enough as a stand-alone test for detection of HPV in OPSCC

Enhancement of mechanical and corrosion resistance properties of electrodeposited Ni–P–TiC composite coatings

In the present study, the effect of concentration of titanium carbide (TiC) particles on the structural, mechanical, and electrochemical properties of Ni–P composite coatings was investigated. Various amounts of TiC particles (0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 g L−1) were co-electrodeposited in the Ni–P matrix under optimized conditions and then characterized by employing various techniques. The structural analysis of prepared coatings indicates uniform, compact, and nodular structured coatings without any noticeable defects. Vickers microhardness and nanoindentation results demonstrate the increase in the hardness with an increasing amount of TiC particles attaining its terminal value (593HV100) at the concentration of 1.5 g L−1. Further increase in the concentration of TiC particles results in a decrease in hardness, which can be ascribed to their accumulation in the Ni–P matrix. The electrochemical results indicate the improvement in corrosion protection efficiency of coatings with an increasing amount of TiC particles reaching to ~ 92% at 2.0 g L−1, which can be ascribed to a reduction in the active area of the Ni–P matrix by the presence of inactive ceramic particles. The favorable structural, mechanical, and corrosion protection characteristics of Ni–P–TiC composite coatings suggest their potential applications in many industrial applications

An analysis of climate change and health hazards: results from an international study

Purpose: The interconnections between climate change and health are well studied. However, there is a perceived need for studies that examine how responses to health hazards (e.g. cardiovascular diseases, ozone layer effects, allergens, mental health and vector-borne diseases) may assist in reducing their impacts. The purpose of this paper is to review the evidence on health responses to climate hazards and list some measures to address them. Design/methodology/approach: A mixed literature review, bibliometric analysis and an original online survey were undertaken on 140 participants from 55 countries spread across all geographical regions. Findings: The bibliometric analysis identified that most climate-related health hazards are associated with extreme weather events. However, only one-third of the investigated papers specifically analysed the connections between climate change and health hazards, revealing a thematic gap. Also, although Africa is highly affected by climate change, only 5% of the assessed studies focused on this continent. Many respondents to the survey indicated “heat distress” as a significant vulnerability. The survey also identified social determinants relevant to climate-induced health vulnerabilities, such as socioeconomic and environmental factors, infrastructure and pre-existing health conditions. Most respondents agree that policies and regulations are the most effective adaptation tools to address the public health hazards triggered by climate change. This paper presents some suggestions for optimising public health responses to health hazards associated with climate change, such as the inclusion of climate-related components in public health policies, setting up monitoring systems to assess the extent to which specific climate events may pose a health threat, establishing plans to cope with the health implications of heatwaves, increased measures to protect vulnerable groups and education and awareness-raising initiatives to reduce the overall vulnerability of the population to climate-related health hazards. These measures may assist the ongoing global efforts to understand better – and cope with – the impacts of climate change on health. Originality/value: The combination of a literature review, bibliometric analysis and an original world survey identified and presented a wide range of responses

Anticancer drugs for the modulation of endoplasmic reticulum stress and oxidative stress

Prior research has demonstrated how the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) functions as a multifunctional organelle and as a well-orchestrated protein-folding unit. It consists of sensors which detect stress-induced unfolded/misfolded proteins and it is the place where protein folding is catalyzed with chaperones. During this folding process, an immaculate disulfide bond formation requires an oxidized environment provided by the ER. Protein folding and the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) as a protein oxidative byproduct in ER are crosslinked. An ER stress-induced response also mediates the expression of the apoptosis-associated gene C/EBP-homologous protein (CHOP) and death receptor 5 (DR5). ER stress induces the upregulation of tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis inducing ligand (TRAIL) receptor and opening new horizons for therapeutic research. These findings can be used to maximize TRAIL-induced apoptosis in xenografted mice. This review summarizes the current understanding of the interplay between ER stress and ROS. We also discuss how damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) function as modulators of immunogenic cell death and how natural products and drugs have shown potential in regulating ER stress and ROS in different cancer cell lines. Drugs as inducers and inhibitors of ROS modulation may respectively exert inducible and inhibitory effects on ER stress and unfolded protein response (UPR). Reconceptualization of the molecular crosstalk among ROS modulating effectors, ER stress, and DAMPs will lead to advances in anticancer therapy

CoNIC Challenge: Pushing the Frontiers of Nuclear Detection, Segmentation, Classification and Counting

Nuclear detection, segmentation and morphometric profiling are essential in helping us further understand the relationship between histology and patient outcome. To drive innovation in this area, we setup a community-wide challenge using the largest available dataset of its kind to assess nuclear segmentation and cellular composition. Our challenge, named CoNIC, stimulated the development of reproducible algorithms for cellular recognition with real-time result inspection on public leaderboards. We conducted an extensive post-challenge analysis based on the top-performing models using 1,658 whole-slide images of colon tissue. With around 700 million detected nuclei per model, associated features were used for dysplasia grading and survival analysis, where we demonstrated that the challenge's improvement over the previous state-of-the-art led to significant boosts in downstream performance. Our findings also suggest that eosinophils and neutrophils play an important role in the tumour microevironment. We release challenge models and WSI-level results to foster the development of further methods for biomarker discovery

Pitfalls in machine learning‐based assessment of tumor‐infiltrating lymphocytes in breast cancer: a report of the international immuno‐oncology biomarker working group

The clinical significance of the tumor-immune interaction in breast cancer (BC) has been well established, and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) have emerged as a predictive and prognostic biomarker for patients with triple-negative (estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and HER2 negative) breast cancer (TNBC) and HER2-positive breast cancer. How computational assessment of TILs can complement manual TIL-assessment in trial- and daily practices is currently debated and still unclear. Recent efforts to use machine learning (ML) for the automated evaluation of TILs show promising results. We review state-of-the-art approaches and identify pitfalls and challenges by studying the root cause of ML discordances in comparison to manual TILs quantification. We categorize our findings into four main topics; (i) technical slide issues, (ii) ML and image analysis aspects, (iii) data challenges, and (iv) validation issues. The main reason for discordant assessments is the inclusion of false-positive areas or cells identified by performance on certain tissue patterns, or design choices in the computational implementation. To aid the adoption of ML in TILs assessment, we provide an in-depth discussion of ML and image analysis including validation issues that need to be considered before reliable computational reporting of TILs can be incorporated into the trial- and routine clinical management of patients with TNBC