Dichlorido(6,6′-dimethyl-2,2′-bipyridine-κ2 N,N′)cobalt(II)

In the title compound, [CoCl2(C12H12N2)], the CoII atom is four-coordinated in a distorted tetra­hedral geometry by two N atoms from a 6,6′-dimethyl-2,2′-bipyridine ligand and two terminal Cl atoms. Inter­molecular C—H⋯Cl hydrogen bonds and π–π stacking inter­actions between the pyridine rings [centroid–centroid distances = 3.788 (1) and 3.957 (1) Å] are present in the crystal structure

Dichlorido(2,9-dimethyl-1,10-phenanthroline-κ2 N,N′)cobalt(II)

In the title compound, [CoCl2(C14H12N2)], the CoII atom is four-coordinated in a distorted tetra­hedral geometry by two N atoms from a 2,9-dimethyl-1,10-phenanthroline ligand and two Cl atoms. The Co atom and the phenanthroline unit are located on a mirror plane. The methyl H atoms are disordered about the mirror plane and areeach half-occupied. In the crystal structure, π–π inter­actions between the pyridine and benzene rings and between the pyridine rings [centroid–centroid distances = 3.8821 (9) and 3.9502 (10) Å, respectively] stabilize the structure

Long-Term Follow-up of Autologous Fibroblast Transplantation for Facial Contour Deformities, A Non-Randomized Phase IIa Clinical Trial

Objective: Recently, the promising potential of fibroblast transplantation has become a novel modality for skin rejuvenation. We investigated the long-term safety and efficacy of autologous fibroblast transplantation for participants with mild to severe facial contour deformities. Materials and Methods: In this open-label, single-arm phase IIa clinical trial, a total of 57 participants with wrinkles (n=37, 132 treatment sites) or acne scars (n=20, 36 treatment sites) who had an evaluator’s assessment score of at least 2 out 7 (based on a standard photo-guide scoring) received 3 injections of autologous cultured fibroblasts administered at 4-6 week intervals. Efficacy evaluations were performed at 2, 6, 12, and 24 months after the final injection based on evaluator and patient’s assessment scores. Results: Our study showed a mean improvement of 2 scores in the wrinkle and acne scar treatment sites. At sixth months after transplantation, 90.1% of the wrinkle sites and 86.1% of the acne scar sites showed at least a one grade improvement on evaluator assessments. We also observed at least a 2-grade improvement in 56.1% of the wrinkle sites and 63.9% of the acne scar sites. A total of 70.5% of wrinkle sites and 72.2% of acne scar sites were scored as good or excellent on patient assessments. The efficacy outcomes remained stable up to 24-month. We did not observe any serious adverse events during the study. Conclusion: These results have shown that autologous fibroblast transplantation could be a promising remodeling modality with long-term corrective ability and minimal adverse events (Registration Number: NCT01115634)

Measurement and clinical implications of choroidal thickness in patients with inflammatory bowel disease

ABSTRACTPurpose:Ocular inflammation is a frequent extraintestinal manifestation of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and may parallel disease activity. In this study, we evaluated the utility of a choroidal thickness measurement in assessing IBD activity.Methods:A total of 62 eyes of 31 patients with IBD [Crohn's disease (CD), n=10 and ulcerative colitis (UC), n=21] and 104 eyes of 52 healthy blood donors were included in this study. Choroidal thickness was measured using enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography. The Crohn's disease activity index (CDAI) and the modified Truelove Witts score were used to assess disease activity in CD and UC, respectively.Results:No significant differences in mean subfoveal, nasal 3000 μm, or temporal 3000 μm choroidal thickness measurements (P>0.05 for all) were observed between IBD patients and healthy controls. Age, smoking, CD site of involvement (ileal and ileocolonic involvement), CDAI, CD activity, and UC endoscopic activity index were all found to be significantly correlated with choroidal thickness by univariate analysis (P<0.05). Smoking (P<0.05) and the CD site of involvement (P<0.01) were the only independent parameters associated with increased choroidal thickness at all measurement locations.Conclusions:Choroidal thickness is not a useful marker of disease activity in patients with IBD but may be an indicator of ileal involvement in patients with CD

Clustering Algorithms: Their Application to Gene Expression Data

Gene expression data hide vital information required to understand the biological process that takes place in a particular organism in relation to its environment. Deciphering the hidden patterns in gene expression data proffers a prodigious preference to strengthen the understanding of functional genomics. The complexity of biological networks and the volume of genes present increase the challenges of comprehending and interpretation of the resulting mass of data, which consists of millions of measurements; these data also inhibit vagueness, imprecision, and noise. Therefore, the use of clustering techniques is a first step toward addressing these challenges, which is essential in the data mining process to reveal natural structures and iden-tify interesting patterns in the underlying data. The clustering of gene expression data has been proven to be useful in making known the natural structure inherent in gene expression data, understanding gene functions, cellular processes, and subtypes of cells, mining useful information from noisy data, and understanding gene regulation. The other benefit of clustering gene expression data is the identification of homology, which is very important in vaccine design. This review examines the various clustering algorithms applicable to the gene expression data in order to discover and provide useful knowledge of the appropriate clustering technique that will guarantee stability and high degree of accuracy in its analysis procedure

Modeling water absorption in concrete and mortar with distributed damage

The deterioration rate of concrete structures is directly influenced by the rate of moisture ingress. Modeling moisture ingress in concrete is therefore essential for quantitative estimation of the service life of concrete structures. While models for saturated moisture transport are commonly used, concrete, during its service life, is rarely saturated and some degree of damage is often present. In this work, we investigate whether classical isothermal unsaturated moisture transport can be used to simulate moisture ingress in damaged mortar and concrete and we compare the results of numerical simulations with experimental measurements of water sorption. The effect of hysteresis of moisture retention is also considered in the numerical simulations. The results indicate that the unsaturated moisture transport models well simulate early stages of moisture ingress at all damage levels, where capillary suction is the prominent mechanism. At later stages of moisture transport, where air diffusion and dissolution have a more significant contribution, simulations that consider moisture hysteresis compare most favorably with experimental results

Global burden of 288 causes of death and life expectancy decomposition in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

BACKGROUND Regular, detailed reporting on population health by underlying cause of death is fundamental for public health decision making. Cause-specific estimates of mortality and the subsequent effects on life expectancy worldwide are valuable metrics to gauge progress in reducing mortality rates. These estimates are particularly important following large-scale mortality spikes, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. When systematically analysed, mortality rates and life expectancy allow comparisons of the consequences of causes of death globally and over time, providing a nuanced understanding of the effect of these causes on global populations. METHODS The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 cause-of-death analysis estimated mortality and years of life lost (YLLs) from 288 causes of death by age-sex-location-year in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations for each year from 1990 until 2021. The analysis used 56 604 data sources, including data from vital registration and verbal autopsy as well as surveys, censuses, surveillance systems, and cancer registries, among others. As with previous GBD rounds, cause-specific death rates for most causes were estimated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model-a modelling tool developed for GBD to assess the out-of-sample predictive validity of different statistical models and covariate permutations and combine those results to produce cause-specific mortality estimates-with alternative strategies adapted to model causes with insufficient data, substantial changes in reporting over the study period, or unusual epidemiology. YLLs were computed as the product of the number of deaths for each cause-age-sex-location-year and the standard life expectancy at each age. As part of the modelling process, uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated using the 2·5th and 97·5th percentiles from a 1000-draw distribution for each metric. We decomposed life expectancy by cause of death, location, and year to show cause-specific effects on life expectancy from 1990 to 2021. We also used the coefficient of variation and the fraction of population affected by 90% of deaths to highlight concentrations of mortality. Findings are reported in counts and age-standardised rates. Methodological improvements for cause-of-death estimates in GBD 2021 include the expansion of under-5-years age group to include four new age groups, enhanced methods to account for stochastic variation of sparse data, and the inclusion of COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality-which includes excess mortality associated with the pandemic, excluding COVID-19, lower respiratory infections, measles, malaria, and pertussis. For this analysis, 199 new country-years of vital registration cause-of-death data, 5 country-years of surveillance data, 21 country-years of verbal autopsy data, and 94 country-years of other data types were added to those used in previous GBD rounds. FINDINGS The leading causes of age-standardised deaths globally were the same in 2019 as they were in 1990; in descending order, these were, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lower respiratory infections. In 2021, however, COVID-19 replaced stroke as the second-leading age-standardised cause of death, with 94·0 deaths (95% UI 89·2-100·0) per 100 000 population. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the rankings of the leading five causes, lowering stroke to the third-leading and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to the fourth-leading position. In 2021, the highest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (271·0 deaths [250·1-290·7] per 100 000 population) and Latin America and the Caribbean (195·4 deaths [182·1-211·4] per 100 000 population). The lowest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 were in the high-income super-region (48·1 deaths [47·4-48·8] per 100 000 population) and southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania (23·2 deaths [16·3-37·2] per 100 000 population). Globally, life expectancy steadily improved between 1990 and 2019 for 18 of the 22 investigated causes. Decomposition of global and regional life expectancy showed the positive effect that reductions in deaths from enteric infections, lower respiratory infections, stroke, and neonatal deaths, among others have contributed to improved survival over the study period. However, a net reduction of 1·6 years occurred in global life expectancy between 2019 and 2021, primarily due to increased death rates from COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality. Life expectancy was highly variable between super-regions over the study period, with southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania gaining 8·3 years (6·7-9·9) overall, while having the smallest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 (0·4 years). The largest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean (3·6 years). Additionally, 53 of the 288 causes of death were highly concentrated in locations with less than 50% of the global population as of 2021, and these causes of death became progressively more concentrated since 1990, when only 44 causes showed this pattern. The concentration phenomenon is discussed heuristically with respect to enteric and lower respiratory infections, malaria, HIV/AIDS, neonatal disorders, tuberculosis, and measles. INTERPRETATION Long-standing gains in life expectancy and reductions in many of the leading causes of death have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the adverse effects of which were spread unevenly among populations. Despite the pandemic, there has been continued progress in combatting several notable causes of death, leading to improved global life expectancy over the study period. Each of the seven GBD super-regions showed an overall improvement from 1990 and 2021, obscuring the negative effect in the years of the pandemic. Additionally, our findings regarding regional variation in causes of death driving increases in life expectancy hold clear policy utility. Analyses of shifting mortality trends reveal that several causes, once widespread globally, are now increasingly concentrated geographically. These changes in mortality concentration, alongside further investigation of changing risks, interventions, and relevant policy, present an important opportunity to deepen our understanding of mortality-reduction strategies. Examining patterns in mortality concentration might reveal areas where successful public health interventions have been implemented. Translating these successes to locations where certain causes of death remain entrenched can inform policies that work to improve life expectancy for people everywhere. FUNDING Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Intelligent Fault Diagnosis of Wind Turbines Using Adaptive Fuzzy Threshold

Wind turbines are exposed to a variety of faults some of which can cause irreparable economic losses. Therefore, identifying the faults in a short time, ensures the correct operation of the system and prevents the mentioned losses. In this paper, using a dynamic model for wind turbines which includes mechanical and electrical parts with appropriate details, an intelligent fault detection and isolation system is designed utilizing recurrent neural networks. The proposed system can identify the occurred faults in pitch sensors and pitch actuators. Then, in order to consider the robustness of the system, it is suggested to use an adaptive fuzzy threshold in decision making block. Simulation results for the fixed threshold, robust thresholds, and the proposed adaptive fuzzy threshold validate that the suggested adaptive threshold reduces the detection time. In addition, the number of false alarms, and the number of missed ones are reduced by using the intelligent fault detection system

Investigation the effect of copper nanoparticles on the toxicity and migration of keratinocyte cells

Background: Re-epithelialization has an important role in skin wound healing. Delays in re-epithelialization are more likely to create the chronic wound. Impaired wound healing leads to a large burden of morbidity and mortality. Current treatments based on the use of autografts, allografts and xenografts, suffer from limitations such as, quantity of donor skin available, donor-site infection, potential risk of disease transmission and rejection of the graft. Given this problems, nanomaterial such as copper nanoparticles has attracted considerable research interest because of their high surface area to volume ratio, high stability, clinical safety, and antibacterial effects. Epithelialization involves keratinocyte migration and proliferation to the wound site. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the effect of copper nanoparticles on keratinocyte cell migration and proliferation. Methods: This experimental study was performed in Royan Institute, Tehran in 2016. In this study we investigated the effect of copper nanoparticles on viability, migration and proliferation of keratinocyte cells. Cultured human foreskin Keratinocyte cells were exposed to various concentration (1, 10 and 100 µmol) and sizes (40 and 80 nm) of copper nanoparticles for 24, 48 and 72 hours. The copper nanoparticles toxicity was examined by MTS assay. Cell migration has also been investigated with the Scratch assay. Results: The results showed that the 1, 10 and 100 µmol concentrations of 40 and 80 nm copper nanoparticles were not toxic for cultured human foreskin keratinocyte cells after 24h. It was also found keratinocyte cell proliferation was increased by 1 µmol concentration of 80 nm copper nanoparticles after 72h. The results of the Scratch assay showed that the 1 µmol concentration of 80 nm copper nanoparticles significantly (P<0.05) increased keratinocyte cell migration compared to deionized water as of control group after 24h. Conclusion: It seems the 1 µmol concentration of 80 nm copper nanoparticle could stimulate keratinocyte cell migration and proliferation. However, in vivo studies conducted on animal model wound healing subjects are needed for determining re-epithelialization