A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Short-Term Ambient Ozone Exposure and COPD Hospitalizations

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death globally and ozone exposure is

Ten-year population trends of immunoglobulin use, burden of adult antibody deficiency and feasibility of subcutaneous immunoglobulin (SCIg) replacement in Hong Kong Chinese

BackgroundAdult antibody deficiency remains under-recognised and under-studied – especially among Asian populations. Patterns of immunoglobulin use and the feasibility of subcutaneous immunoglobulin (SCIg) replacement among Chinese patients remains unclear.ObjectiveTo investigate the trends of immunoglobulin use, burden of adult antibody deficiency and the outcomes of patients on SCIg compared to intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) replacement in Hong Kong through a retrospective observational study.MethodsPopulation-wide data of immunoglobulin recipients in Hong Kong between 2012 and 2021, and longitudinal clinical data of adult immunodeficiency patients at Queen Mary Hospital were collected and analysed.ResultsTotal immunoglobulin consumption and recurrent immunoglobulin recipients increased continuously from 175,512g to 298,514g (ρ=0.99, p<0.001) and 886 to 1,508 (ρ=0.89, p=0.001) between 2012-21 in Hong Kong. Among 469 immunoglobulin recipients at Queen Mary Hospital in 2021, 344 (73.3%) were indicated for replacement. Compared to those on IVIg (n=14), patients on SCIg replacement (n=8) had fewer immunodeficiency-related hospitalisations (IRR=0.11) and shorter duration of hospitalisation stay (IRR=0.10) per year, as well as better quality of life (SF-36v2 Health Survey and Life Quality Index). Estimated annual healthcare cost of SCIg replacement per patient was lower than that of IVIg (HKD196,850 [USD25,096] vs HKD222,136 [USD28,319]).ConclusionThere was a significantly increasing burden of adult antibody deficiency and immunoglobulin consumption in Hong Kong. SCIg was feasible and more cost-effective when compared to IVIg, with SCIg patients experiencing better clinical outcomes and quality of life. Future prospective studies to confirm the long-term efficacy and superiority of SCIg are required

Cellular metabolism constrains innate immune responses in early human ontogeny

Pathogen immune responses are profoundly attenuated in fetuses and premature infants, yet the mechanisms underlying this developmental immaturity remain unclear. Here we show transcriptomic, metabolic and polysome profiling and find that monocytes isolated from infants born early in gestation display perturbations in PPAR-γ-regulated metabolic pathways, limited glycolytic capacity and reduced ribosomal activity. These metabolic changes are linked to a lack of translation of most cytokines and of MALT1 signalosome genes essential to respond to the neonatal pathogen Candida. In contrast, they have little impact on house-keeping phagocytosis functions. Transcriptome analyses further indicate a role for mTOR and its putative negative regulator DNA Damage Inducible Transcript 4-Like in regulating these metabolic constraints. Our results provide a molecular basis for the broad susceptibility to multiple pathogens in these infants, and suggest that the fetal immune system is metabolically programmed to avoid energetically costly, dispensable and potentially harmful immune responses during ontogeny

Annealing of gold nanostructures sputtered on polytetrafluoroethylene

Gold nanolayers sputtered on polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) surface and their changes induced by post-deposition annealing at 100°C to 300°C are studied. Changes in surface morphology and roughness are examined by atomic force microscopy, electrical sheet resistance by two point technique, zeta potential by electrokinetic analysis and chemical composition by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) in dependence on the gold layer thickness. Transition from discontinuous to continuous gold coverage takes place at the layer thicknesses 10 to 15 nm and this threshold remains practically unchanged after the annealing at the temperatures below 200°C. The annealing at 300°C, however, leads to significant rearrangement of the gold layer and the transition threshold increases to 70 nm. Significant carbon contamination and the presence of oxidized structures on gold-coated samples are observed in XPS spectra. Gold coating leads to a decrease in the sample surface roughness. Annealing at 300°C of pristine PTFE and gold-coated PTFE results in significant increase of the sample surface roughness

A bilingual advantage in 54-month-olds’ use of referential cues in fast mapping

Research has demonstrated a bilingual advantage in how young children use referential cues such as eye gaze and pointing gesture to locate an object or to categorize objects. This study investigated the use of referential cues (i.e., eye gaze) in fast mapping in three groups of children that differed in their language exposure. One hundred and seven 54-month-old children who were English monolinguals (n=29), English-Mandarin bilinguals (n=48), and English-Mandarin bilinguals with exposure to a third language (i.e., trilinguals, n=31) were assessed with a wordlearning task using two types of tests – a referent test and a mutual exclusivity test. During the task, following the gaze of an adult speaker was needed to be able to indicate the correct referent of a novel word at test. All three groups of children demonstrated successful word learning in explicit selection of and implicit looking time toward the target object during testing. However, bilingual and trilingual children outperformed their monolingual peers in both types of tests when they were asked to explicitly select the correct objects. These findings suggest positive effects of bilingualism on children’s use of referential cues in fast mapping

Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990-2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015

SummaryBackground The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2015 provides an up-to-date synthesis of the evidence for risk factor exposure and the attributable burden of disease. By providing national and subnational assessments spanning the past 25 years, this study can inform debates on the importance of addressing risks in context. Methods We used the comparative risk assessment framework developed for previous iterations of the Global Burden of Disease Study to estimate attributable deaths, disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), and trends in exposure by age group, sex, year, and geography for 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks from 1990 to 2015. This study included 388 risk-outcome pairs that met World Cancer Research Fund-defined criteria for convincing or probable evidence. We extracted relative risk and exposure estimates from randomised controlled trials, cohorts, pooled cohorts, household surveys, census data, satellite data, and other sources. We used statistical models to pool data, adjust for bias, and incorporate covariates. We developed a metric that allows comparisons of exposure across risk factors—the summary exposure value. Using the counterfactual scenario of theoretical minimum risk level, we estimated the portion of deaths and DALYs that could be attributed to a given risk. We decomposed trends in attributable burden into contributions from population growth, population age structure, risk exposure, and risk-deleted cause-specific DALY rates. We characterised risk exposure in relation to a Socio-demographic Index (SDI). Findings Between 1990 and 2015, global exposure to unsafe sanitation, household air pollution, childhood underweight, childhood stunting, and smoking each decreased by more than 25%. Global exposure for several occupational risks, high body-mass index (BMI), and drug use increased by more than 25% over the same period. All risks jointly evaluated in 2015 accounted for 57·8% (95% CI 56·6–58·8) of global deaths and 41·2% (39·8–42·8) of DALYs. In 2015, the ten largest contributors to global DALYs among Level 3 risks were high systolic blood pressure (211·8 million [192·7 million to 231·1 million] global DALYs), smoking (148·6 million [134·2 million to 163·1 million]), high fasting plasma glucose (143·1 million [125·1 million to 163·5 million]), high BMI (120·1 million [83·8 million to 158·4 million]), childhood undernutrition (113·3 million [103·9 million to 123·4 million]), ambient particulate matter (103·1 million [90·8 million to 115·1 million]), high total cholesterol (88·7 million [74·6 million to 105·7 million]), household air pollution (85·6 million [66·7 million to 106·1 million]), alcohol use (85·0 million [77·2 million to 93·0 million]), and diets high in sodium (83·0 million [49·3 million to 127·5 million]). From 1990 to 2015, attributable DALYs declined for micronutrient deficiencies, childhood undernutrition, unsafe sanitation and water, and household air pollution; reductions in risk-deleted DALY rates rather than reductions in exposure drove these declines. Rising exposure contributed to notable increases in attributable DALYs from high BMI, high fasting plasma glucose, occupational carcinogens, and drug use. Environmental risks and childhood undernutrition declined steadily with SDI; low physical activity, high BMI, and high fasting plasma glucose increased with SDI. In 119 countries, metabolic risks, such as high BMI and fasting plasma glucose, contributed the most attributable DALYs in 2015. Regionally, smoking still ranked among the leading five risk factors for attributable DALYs in 109 countries; childhood underweight and unsafe sex remained primary drivers of early death and disability in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Interpretation Declines in some key environmental risks have contributed to declines in critical infectious diseases. Some risks appear to be invariant to SDI. Increasing risks, including high BMI, high fasting plasma glucose, drug use, and some occupational exposures, contribute to rising burden from some conditions, but also provide opportunities for intervention. Some highly preventable risks, such as smoking, remain major causes of attributable DALYs, even as exposure is declining. Public policy makers need to pay attention to the risks that are increasingly major contributors to global burden. Funding Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

High Performance Field Emitters.

The field electron emission performance of bulk, 1D, and 2D nanomaterials is here empirically compared in the largest metal-analysis of its type. No clear trends are noted between the turn-on electric field and maximum current density as a function of emitter work function, while a more pronounced correlation with the emitters dimensionality is noted. The turn-on field is found to be twice as large for bulk materials compared to 1D and 2D materials, empirically confirming the wider communities view that high aspect ratios, and highly perturbed surface morphologies allow for enhanced field electron emitters.M.T.C. thanks the Oppenheimer Trust, Cambridge University, for generous financial support. This work was supported by an EPSRC Impact Acceleration grant and an Innovate UK Advanced Materials Feasibility Study award. CC thanks the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Ultra Precision.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Wiley via http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/advs.20150031

Automatic 3D tooth segmentation using convolutional neural networks in harmonic parameter space

Automatic segmentation of 3D tooth models into individual teeth is an important step in orthodontic CAD systems. 3D tooth segmentation is a mesh instance segmentation task. Complex geometric features on the surface of 3D tooth models often lead to failure of tooth boundary detection, so it is difficult to achieve automatic and accurate segmentation by traditional mesh segmentation methods. We propose a novel solution to address this problem. We map a 3D tooth model isomorphically to a 2D harmonic parameter space and convert it into an image. This allows us to use a CNN to learn a highly robust image segmentation model to achieve automated and accurate segmentation of 3D tooth models. Finally, we map the image segmentation mask back to the 3D tooth model and refine the segmentation result using an improved Fuzzy Clustering-and-Cuts algorithm. Our method has been incorporated into an orthodontic CAD system, and performs well in practice