Opportunities to accelerate extracellular vesicle research with cell-free synthetic biology

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are lipid-membrane nanoparticles that are shed or secreted by many different cell types. The extracellular vesicle (EV) research community has rapidly expanded in recent years and are leading efforts to deepen our understanding of EV biological functions in human physiology and pathology. These insights are also providing a foundation on which future EV-based diagnostics and therapeutics are poised to positively impact human health. However, current limitations in our understanding of EV heterogeneity, cargo loading mechanisms and the nascent development of EV metrology are all areas that have been identified as important scientific challenges. The field of synthetic biology is also contending with the challenge of understanding biological complexity as it seeks to combine multidisciplinary scientific knowledge with engineering principles, to build useful and robust biotechnologies in a responsible manner. Within this context, cell-free systems have emerged as a powerful suite of in vitro biotechnologies that can be employed to interrogate fundamental biological mechanisms, including the study of aspects of EV biogenesis, or to act as a platform technology for medical biosensors and therapeutic biomanufacturing. Cell-free gene expression (CFE) systems also enable in vitro protein production, including membrane proteins, and could conceivably be exploited to rationally engineer, or manufacture, EVs loaded with bespoke molecular cargoes for use in foundational or translational EV research. Our pilot data herein, also demonstrates the feasibility of cell-free EV engineering. In this perspective we discuss the opportunities and challenges for accelerating EV research and healthcare applications with cell-free synthetic biology

Conflict and complementarity between religious and occupational identities in the workplace

Despite its recognition as an organizational diversity issue impacting personal well-being, little research to date addresses religious identity in the workplace. We conduct a systematic review of relevant literature and develop a conceptual framework to address a critical question: How do religious and occupational identities relate to each other in the workplace and with what antecedents and consequences?’ We specify key definitions and explicate the importance of the connection between religious and organizational identity to contemporary debates regarding workplace diversity. The systematic review uses a search strategy informed by an advisory panel of experts. Through a well-specified search process we conduct comprehensively screen the literature and ultimately identify 32 relevant peer-reviewed articles that form the basis of our synthesis and analysis. Findings point to three forms of religious and occupational identity relationships: compatible, incompatible and non-overlapping. Each has distinct implications for identity tension and employee well-being. Evidence suggests the benefits of expressing religious identity at work and helping employees negotiate their religious and occupational identities. Finally, we develop a theoretical framework that specifies the antecedents of the activation of religious and occupational identity in the workplace, the nature of the identity negotiation that activation triggers and its outcomes for individuals and the organization

Evolution of central pattern generators for the control of a five-link bipedal walking mechanism

Central pattern generators (CPGs), with a basis is neurophysiological studies, are a type of neural network for the generation of rhythmic motion. While CPGs are being increasingly used in robot control, most applications are hand-tuned for a specific task and it is acknowledged in the field that generic methods and design principles for creating individual networks for a given task are lacking. This study presents an approach where the connectivity and oscillatory parameters of a CPG network are determined by an evolutionary algorithm with fitness evaluations in a realistic simulation with accurate physics. We apply this technique to a five-link planar walking mechanism to demonstrate its feasibility and performance. In addition, to see whether results from simulation can be acceptably transferred to real robot hardware, the best evolved CPG network is also tested on a real mechanism. Our results also confirm that the biologically inspired CPG model is well suited for legged locomotion, since a diverse manifestation of networks have been observed to succeed in fitness simulations during evolution.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures; substantial revision of content, organization, and quantitative result

Simple scoring system to predict in-hospital mortality after surgery for infective endocarditis

BACKGROUND: Aspecific scoring systems are used to predict the risk of death postsurgery in patients with infective endocarditis (IE). The purpose of the present study was both to analyze the risk factors for in-hospital death, which complicates surgery for IE, and to create a mortality risk score based on the results of this analysis. METHODS AND RESULTS: Outcomes of 361 consecutive patients (mean age, 59.1\ub115.4 years) who had undergone surgery for IE in 8 European centers of cardiac surgery were recorded prospectively, and a risk factor analysis (multivariable logistic regression) for in-hospital death was performed. The discriminatory power of a new predictive scoring system was assessed with the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Score validation procedures were carried out. Fifty-six (15.5%) patients died postsurgery. BMI >27 kg/m2 (odds ratio [OR], 1.79; P=0.049), estimated glomerular filtration rate 55 mm Hg (OR, 1.78; P=0.032), and critical state (OR, 2.37; P=0.017) were independent predictors of in-hospital death. A scoring system was devised to predict in-hospital death postsurgery for IE (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, 0.780; 95% CI, 0.734-0.822). The score performed better than 5 of 6 scoring systems for in-hospital death after cardiac surgery that were considered. CONCLUSIONS: A simple scoring system based on risk factors for in-hospital death was specifically created to predict mortality risk postsurgery in patients with IE

On the Exposure Dose Minimization of Multi-antenna Multi-carrier System Users

—From the fourth generation (4G) of cellular systems onward, wireless personal devices (WPDs) support multi-input multi-output (MIMO) communication. However, the impact of MIMO communication on the electromagnetic field (EMF) of WPD users has yet to be fully understood and analyzed at the system level. In this paper, we first provide a generic model for assessing the individual exposure dose of multi-antenna WPD users in a multiuser multi-carrier communication system. An optimization framework for minimizing this exposure dose is then developed based on our exposure model. This framework helps us to identify a new criterion, i.e., the ratio between the normalized exposure dose and the channel to noise ratio (CNR), as the main system level criterion for minimizing the individual exposure dose of multi-antenna WPD users. This criterion is further integrated in the design of two novel centralized resource allocation schemes that take advantage of the multiple antennas at the WPD to minimize the per-user exposure dose, when full or limited knowledge of each user channel is available. Our new schemes can significantly reduce the individual exposure dose of WPD users (by approximately 80%) in comparison with the most relevant existing resource allocation schemes. Our results also provide insights into the logarithmic relationship between the per-user exposure dose and the number of receive antennas (or the number of time slots), and how such a parameter can be exploited to further reduce the exposure and/or provide a higher SE while maintaining a low exposure dose. Index Terms—EMF exposure dose, MIMO, Multi-carrier system , SAR, optimization

Dual band two element rim based MIMO antennas with coupling manipulation for low SAR mobile handsets

In this paper, the mutual coupling from a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) rim antenna has been utilized to control the level of specific absorption rate (SAR), when the mobile handset comes in close contact to the human body. The proposed antenna is capable of operating at 2.1 GHz and 4.3 GHz, respectively. A periodic defective ground structure (DGS) in conjunction with diodes and capacitors are used to manipulate the coupling between antenna elements. The working of the proposed dual band antenna design is validated using the characteristic mode analysis (CMA), and the current distribution. The MIMO performance is studied by using envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) and loss in capacity analysis. The effect of hand and LCD on the antenna performance is shown. The SAR analysis shows up to 30% reduction, in comparison to the baseline value of the SAR of the proposed antenna design