Modified basket plate for inferior patellar pole avulsion fractures—A report of three cases

AbstractIn patients who have sustained an avulsion fracture of the inferior patellar pole, the extensor mechanism is disrupted and should be repaired. The normal height of the patella can be maintained by preserving the patellar pole, but fractures of the inferior pole of the patella are not easy to reduce and fix firmly. In contrast with partial patellectomy, which requires postoperative immobilization, internal fixation with a basket plate allows for immediate mobilization and early weight-bearing. Owing to the unavailability of the basket plate in Taiwan, we have modified the plate with the titanium mesh as a possible alternative. We present three cases of this modified basket plate, which took place between 2008 and 2010. This technique avoided long-term immobilization of the knee with good clinical results

Ocimum gratissimum Aqueous Extract Induces Apoptotic Signalling in Lung Adenocarcinoma Cell A549

Ocimum gratissimum (OG) is widely used as a traditional herb for its antibacterial activity in Taiwan. Recently, antitumor effect of OG on breast cancer cell is also reported; however, the effects of OG on human pulmonary adenocarcinoma cell A549 remain unclear. Therefore, we aimed to investigate whether aqueous OG extract (OGE) affects viability of A549 cells and the signals induced by OGE in A549 cells. Cell viability assays revealed that OGE significantly and dose-dependently decreased the viability of A549 cell but not that of BEAS-2B cell. Morphological examination and DAPI staining indicated that OGE induced cell shrinkage and DNA condensation for A549 cells. Further investigation showed that OGE enhanced activation of caspase-3, caspase-9 and caspase-8 and increased protein level of Apaf-1 and Bak, but diminished the level of Bcl-2. Additionally, OGE inhibited the phosphorylation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) yet enhanced the phosphorylation of c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) and p38 MAP kinase (p38). In conclusion, our findings indicate that OGE suppressed the cell viability of A549 cells, which may result from the activation of apoptotic signaling and the inhibition of anti-apoptotic signaling, suggesting that OGE might be beneficial to lung carcinoma treatment

Genetic Polymorphism of XRCC1 Arg399Gln Is Associated With Survival in Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer Patients Treated With Gemcitabine/Platinum

IntroductionElevated DNA-repair capacity has been related to chemoresistance of platinum doublet chemotherapy in non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We evaluated whether single nucleotide polymorphisms of DN- repair genes excision repair cross-complementing group 1 (ERCC1), ERCC2, x-ray repair cross-complementing group 1 (XRCC1), XRCC3, and RRM1 associate with treatment outcome in NSCLC patients receiving gemcitabine plus platinum as their first-line chemotherapy.MethodsGenotyping for eight polymorphisms in five DNA-repair genes was performed with the GenomeLab nucleotide polymorphismstream Genotyping System in 62 advanced NSCLC patients in a training set and 45 patients in a validation set treated with gemcitabine/platinum.ResultsIn the training set, the wild-type genotype of XRCC1 Arg399Gln (G/G) was associated with decreased median overall survival (OS) (22 months, 95% confidence interval [CI], 10–34 months versus not reached, log-rank test, p = 0.005) than those carrying variant genotypes (G/A+A/A). In addition, there was a statistically significant longer median OS in patients carrying wild-type ERCC2 Asp312Asn genotype (G/G) (51 months, 95% CI, 19–82 months versus 10 months, log-rank test, p < 0.001) than those carrying heterozygous variant genotypes (G/A). In the multivariate Cox model, we found a significant effect of XRCC1 Arg399Gln (G/A+A/A versus G/G, hazard ratio [HR] 0.290; 95%CI, 0.12–0.705, p = 0.006) and ERCC2 Asp312Asn (G/A versus G/G, HR 14.04; 95% CI, 2.253–87.513, p = 0.005) polymorphisms on patients’ OS. In the validation set, only XRCC1 399ConclusionsGenetic polymorphism of XRCC1 Arg399Gln may be a candidate for contributing interindividual difference in the OS of gemcitabine/platinum-treated advanced NSCLC patients

Oil palm waste: An abundant and promising feedstock for microwave pyrolysis conversion into good quality biochar with potential multi-applications

Oil palm waste (OPW), comprising mainly of empty fruit bunch, mesocarp fiber, frond, trunk, and palm kernel shell generated from palm oil industry, was collected, characterized, and then pyrolyzed to evaluate their potential to be converted into biochar with desirable properties for use in multi-applications. The OPW was detected to have considerable amounts of carbon (43–51 wt%) and fixed carbon (30–39 wt%), showing potential to be converted into carbon-rich biochar. Microwave pyrolysis of palm kernel shell as the selected OPW produced a biochar with zero sulphur content and high heating value (23–26 MJ/kg) that is nearly comparable to conventional coal, thus indicating its potential as an eco-friendly solid fuel. The biochar obtained was also showed low moisture (<3 wt%) and ash (3 wt%), and a highly porous structure with high BET surface area (210 m2/g), indicating the presence of many adsorption sites and thus showing desirable characteristics for potential use as pollutant adsorbent in wastewater treatment, or bio-fertilizer to absorb nutrient and promote plant growth. Our results demonstrate that OPW is a biowaste that shows exceptional promise to be transformed into high-grade biochar rather than simply disposed by landfilling or burned as low-grade fuel in boiler

Spatial analyses on pre-earthquake ionospheric anomalies and magnetic storms observed by China seismo-electromagnetic satellite in August 2018

The China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES), with a sun-synchronous orbit at 507 km altitude, was launched on 2 February 2018 to investigate pre-earthquake ionospheric anomalies (PEIAs) and ionospheric space weather. The CSES probes manifest longitudinal features of four-peak plasma density and three plasma depletions in the equatorial/low-latitudes as well as mid-latitude troughs. CSES plasma and the total electron content (TEC) of the global ionosphere map (GIM) are used to study PEIAs associated with a destructive M7.0 earthquake and its followed M6.5 and M6.3/M6.9 earthquakes in Lombok, Indonesia, on 5, 17, and 19 August 2018, respectively, as well as to examine ionospheric disturbances induced by an intense storm with the Dst index of − 175 nT on 26 August 2018. Anomalous increases (decreases) in the GIM TEC and CSES plasma density (temperature) frequently appear specifically over the epicenter days 1–5 before the M7.0 earthquake and followed earthquakes, when the geomagnetic conditions of these PEIA periods are relatively quiet, Dst: − 37 to 19 nT. In contrast, TEC and CSES plasma parameter anomalies occur globally in the southern hemisphere during the storm days of 26–28 August 2018. The CSES ion velocity shows that the electric fields of PEIAs associated with the M7.0 earthquake are 0.21/0.06 mV/m eastward and 0.11/0.10 mV/m downward at post-midnight/post-noon on 1–3 August 2018, while the penetration electric fields during the storm periods of 26–28 August 2018 are 0.17/0.45 mV/m westward/downward at post-midnight of 02:00 LT and 0.26/0.26 mV/m eastward/upward at post-noon of 14:00 LT. Spatial analyses on CSES plasma discriminate PEIAs from global effects and locate the epicenter of possible forthcoming large earthquakes. CSES ion velocities are useful to derive PEIA- and storm-related electric fields in the ionosphere

Chromosome segregation in Archaea : SegA– and SegB–DNA complex structures provide insights into segrosome assembly

Genome segregation is a vital process in all organisms. Chromosome partitioning remains obscure in Archaea, the third domain of life. Here, we investigated the SegAB system from Sulfolobus solfataricus. SegA is a ParA Walker-type ATPase and SegB is a site-specific DNA-binding protein. We determined the structures of both proteins and those of SegA–DNA and SegB–DNA complexes. The SegA structure revealed an atypical, novel non-sandwich dimer that binds DNA either in the presence or in the absence of ATP. The SegB structure disclosed a ribbon–helix–helix motif through which the protein binds DNA site specifically. The association of multiple interacting SegB dimers with the DNA results in a higher order chromatin-like structure. The unstructured SegB N-terminus plays an essential catalytic role in stimulating SegA ATPase activity and an architectural regulatory role in segrosome (SegA–SegB–DNA) formation. Electron microscopy results also provide a compact ring-like segrosome structure related to chromosome organization. These findings contribute a novel mechanistic perspective on archaeal chromosome segregation

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe