Does Telehealth Reduce Rural-Urban Care Access Disparities? Evidence from Covid-19 Telehealth Expansion

Using hospital claims data, we study the effect of telehealth expansion on the disparities between care access in rural and urban areas during Covid-19. We use urban areas as the control group and compare the changes in patients' access to care before and after the telehealth expansion. We find that the rural-urban disparities in overall access to care (i.e., the total number of visits) remain unchanged after the policy. We further distinguish in-person from telehealth visits and find enlarged disparities in patients' visiting modalities. In particular, urban patients substitute in-person visits with telehealth visits, yet rural patients have a much lower adoption rate of telehealth services and continue with in-person visits. Finally, we perform visit-level analyses and identify patients' social determinants and physicians' characteristics associated with telehealth adoptions

Does Telemedicine Affect Physician Decisions? Evidence from Antibiotic Prescriptions

Telemedicine has long been of interest to the U.S. general public. Yet, despite the advent of high-speed internet and mobile device technology, telemedicine did not reach its full potential until the COVID-19 pandemic spurred its unparalleled adoption. This sudden shift in the setting of healthcare delivery raises questions regarding possible changes in clinical decision-making. Using a unique set of patient-provider encounter data from the U.S. in 2020 and 2021, we examine the effect of telemedicine on antibiotic prescription errors for urinary tract infections. After accounting for potential endogeneity issues using provider fixed effects and an instrumental variable approach, we find a significantly lower likelihood of prescription errors with telemedicine relative to in-person encounters. We also find heterogeneous effects by a provider's patient volume and the patient-provider relationship

1,2,3-Triazole-Containing Compounds as Anti–Lung Cancer Agents: Current Developments, Mechanisms of Action, and Structure–Activity Relationship

Lung cancer is the most common malignancy and leads to around one-quarter of all cancer deaths. Great advances have been achieved in the treatment of lung cancer with novel anticancer agents and improved technology. However, morbidity and mortality rates remain extremely high, calling for an urgent need to develop novel anti–lung cancer agents. 1,2,3-Triazole could be readily interact with diverse enzymes and receptors in organisms through weak interaction. 1,2,3-Triazole can not only be acted as a linker to tether different pharmacophores but also serve as a pharmacophore. This review aims to summarize the recent advances in 1,2,3-triazole–containing compounds with anti–lung cancer potential, and their structure–activity relationship (SAR) together with mechanisms of action is also discussed to pave the way for the further rational development of novel anti–lung cancer candidates

Cascade conversion of furfural to fuel bioadditive ethyl levulinate over bifunctional zirconium-based catalysts

Abstract(#br)Biomass-derived ethyl levulinate (EL) is currently deemed as a promising fuel bioadditive to improve (bio)diesel combustion performance without the sacrifice of its octane number. In this contribution, a range of Zr–Al bimetallic catalysts were prepared for the cascade conversion of furfural to EL by the integration of transfer hydrogenation and ethanolysis in ethanol. The ratio of Lewis to Brønsted acid sites (L/B) could be tuned by the ratio of Al 2 O 3 to ZrO 2 over SBA-15 support. Among these catalysts, Zr–Al/SBA-15(30:10) with appropriate L/B ratio of 2.25 exhibited an outstanding catalytic performance to give a furfural (FF) conversion up to 92.8% with a EL selectivity as high as 71.4% at 453 K in 3 h

Downregulation of TLX induces TET3 expression and inhibits glioblastoma stem cell self-renewal and tumorigenesis

International audienceGlioblastomas have been proposed to be maintained by highly tumorigenic glioblastoma stem cells (GSCs) that are resistant to current therapy. Therefore, targeting GSCs is critical for developing effective therapies for glioblastoma. In this study, we identify the regulatory cascade of the nuclear receptor TLX and the DNA hydroxylase Ten eleven translocation 3 (TET3) as a target for human GSCs. We show that knockdown of TLX expression inhibits human GSC tumorigenicity in mice. Treatment of human GSC-grafted mice with viral vector-delivered TLX shRNA or nanovector-delivered TLX siRNA inhibits tumour development and prolongs survival. Moreover, we identify TET3 as a potent tumour suppressor downstream of TLX to regulate the growth and self-renewal in GSCs. This study identifies the TLX-TET3 axis as a potential therapeutic target for glioblastoma

Insights into the active sites and catalytic mechanism of oxidative esterification of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural by metal-organic frameworks-derived N-doped carbon

Abstract(#br)Directly oxidative esterification of Biomass-derived 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) into dimethyl furan dicarboxylate (DMFDCA) is a promising route for the replacement of petroleum-derived commodity chemical terephthalic acid (TPA) extensively employed in polyester synthesis. Co-based N-doped carbon materials are one of the most promising applied catalysts for oxidative esterification reaction, however, the active sites and reaction pathway of these catalysts have not been clearly clarified, which is crucial to the practical application. Herein, we report that ZIF-67 (a zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF)-type cobalt-containing MOF) derived Co@C-N material is a highly effective catalyst for the selective conversion of HMF into DMFDCA in 95% yield. The high activity of the ZIF-67 derived nanocarbon composites Co@C-N can be attributed to the electron transfer between nitrogen-doped carbon shells and Co nanoparticles. The appropriate graphitic N and pyridinic N doping increases the electronic mobility and active sites. Density functional theory (DFT) simulations indicated that oxygen, HMF and methanol molecules are adsorbed and activated on C-N materials. Furthermore, no 2, 5-diformylfuran (DFF) was captured as an intermediate because the oxidative esterification of aldehyde preferentially occurred than the oxidation of hydroxyl group in HMF. We anticipate that these results can drive progress in the bio-based polymers sector and oxidative esterification reaction

Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies Candidate Genes Related to Seed Oil Composition and Protein Content in Gossypium hirsutum L.

Cotton (Gossypium spp.) is a leading natural fiber crop and an important source of vegetable protein and oil for humans and livestock. To investigate the genetic architecture of seed nutrients in upland cotton, a genome-wide association study (GWAS) was conducted in a panel of 196 germplasm resources under three environments using a CottonSNP80K chip of 77,774 loci. Relatively high genetic diversity (average gene diversity being 0.331) and phenotypic variation (coefficient of variation, CV, exceeding 3.9%) were detected in this panel. Correlation analysis revealed that the well-documented negative association between seed protein (PR) and oil may be to some extent attributable to the negative correlation between oleic acid (OA) and PR. Linkage disequilibrium (LD) was unevenly distributed among chromosomes and subgenomes. It ranged from 0.10–0.20 Mb (Chr19) to 5.65–5.75 Mb (Chr25) among the chromosomes and the range of Dt-subgenomes LD decay distances was smaller than At-subgenomes. This panel was divided into two subpopulations based on the information of 41,815 polymorphic single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. The mixed linear model considering both Q-matrix and K-matrix [MLM(Q+K)] was employed to estimate the association between the SNP markers and the seed nutrients, considering the false positives caused by population structure and the kinship. A total of 47 SNP markers and 28 candidate quantitative trait loci (QTLs) regions were found to be significantly associated with seven cottonseed nutrients, including protein, total fatty acid, and five main fatty acid compositions. In addition, the candidate genes in these regions were analyzed, which included three genes, Gh_D12G1161, Gh_D12G1162, and Gh_D12G1165 that were most likely involved in the control of cottonseed protein concentration. These results improved our understanding of the genetic control of cottonseed nutrients and provided potential molecular tools to develop cultivars with high protein and improved fatty acid compositions in cotton breeding programs through marker-assisted selection

Paper-based microfluidic aptasensors

For in-situ disease markers detection, point-of-care (POC) diagnosis has great advantages in speed and cost compared with traditional techniques. The rapid diagnosis, prognosis, and surveillance of diseases can significantly reduce disease-related mortality and trauma. Therefore, increasing attention has been paid to the POC diagnosis devices due to their excellent diagnosis speed and portability. Over the past ten years, paper-based microfluidic aptasensors have emerged as a class of critical POC diagnosis devices and various aptasensors have been proposed to detect various disease markers. However, most aptasensors need further improvement before they can actually enter the market and be widely used. There is thus an urgent need to sort out the key points of preparing the aptasensors and the direction that needs to be invested in. This review summarizes the representative articles in the development of paper-based microfluidic aptasensors. These works can be divided into paper-based optical aptasensors and paper-based electrochemical aptasensors according to their output signals. Significant focus is applied to these works according to the following three parts: (1) The ingenious design of device structure; (2) Application and synthesis of nanomaterial; (3) The detection principle of the proposed aptasensor. This is a detailed and comprehensive review of paper-based microfluidic aptasensors. The accomplishments and shortcomings of the current aptasensors are outlined, the development direction and the future prospective are given. It is hoped that the research in this review can provide a reference for further development of more advanced, more effective paper-based microfluidic aptasensors for POC disease markers diagnosi

Anti-osteoporosis mechanism of resistance exercise in ovariectomized rats based on transcriptome analysis: a pilot study

Postmenopausal osteoporosis is the main cause of fractures in women. Resistance exercise has a positive effect on bone mineral density in postmenopausal osteoporosis patients, but its mechanism is unclear. The purpose of this study was to explore the mechanism of resistance exercise in improving ovariectomized osteoporotic rats based on the transcriptome sequencing technique. Eighteen female Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into the sham-operated group, the non-exercise group, and the resistance exercise group. The rat model of postmenopausal osteoporosis was established by bilateral ovariectomy. Ten weeks after the operation, the resistance exercise group received 2 weeks of adaptive training, and 12 weeks of resistance exercise began in the 13th week. The rats were trained 5 days per week, in 4 sets of 3 repetitions per day. After the intervention, all rats were sacrificed, and the body weight, bone mineral density, trabecular bone microarchitecture, and bone biomechanics were examined. At the same time, RNA-seq and enrichment analysis of gene ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes were performed on the left tibias, followed by Elisa and RT-qPCR verification. It had been found that resistance exercise can effectively counteract the weight gain of ovariectomized osteoporotic rats, and has a good effect on bone mineral density and trabecular bone microarchitecture. Enrichment analysis showed that regulation of gene expression and osteoclast differentiation is the most closely related biological process and signaling pathway shared by RE/Ovx and NE/Ovx groups. Our results revealed that resistance exercise can play a role in inhibiting osteoclast activation and preventing the enhancement of osteoclast bone resorption function in ovariectomized osteoporotic rats by inhibiting Fos/Fosb-regulated TRAP activation and relieving Calcr inhibition, which has important application value in preventing bone loss caused by estrogen deficiency