Angular sway propagation in One Leg Stance and quiet stance with Inertial Measurement Units for older adults

Postural stability degrades with age, threating the health and life quality of the older adults. One Leg Stance (OLS) is one of the standard and commonly adopted assessments for postural stability, and the postural sway in OLS has been demonstrated to be related with age. The propagation of postural sway between body segments could be a hint to the underlying mechanism of balance control. However, it is not yet fully understood. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to study the angular sways and their propagation of the head, trunk, and lower limb in healthy older adults. A cross-correlation of the normalized angular speeds was performed and the experiment with 68 older adults was conducted. The results showed that the head, hip and ankle joints affected the transfer of angular sway with a relatively lower correlation and longer latency

How Can the European Federation for Colposcopy Promote High Quality Colposcopy Throughout Europe?

Since its inception in 1998, the European Federation for Colposcopy (EFC) now comprises 26 member societies. Its principle aim is to promote high quality colposcopy throughout Europe with special emphasis on training, education and treatment. This review summarises EFC’s activities and achievements to date

MOESM1 of Efficient conformational ensemble generation of protein-bound peptides

Additional file 1. The average accuracies and standard deviations of MODPEP for the peptides of 3–30 amino acids on ten randomly splitted training/test sets

New Knowledge-Based Scoring Function with Inclusion of Backbone Conformational Entropies from Protein Structures

Accurate prediction of a protein’s structure requires a reliable free energy function that consists of both enthalpic and entropic contributions. Although considerable progresses have been made in the calculation of potential energies in protein structure prediction, the computation for entropies of protein has lagged far behind, due to the challenge that estimation of entropies often requires expensive conformational sampling. In this study, we have used a knowledge-based approach to estimate the backbone conformational entropies from experimentally determined structures. Instead of conducting computationally expensive MD/MC simulations, we obtained the entropies of protein structures based on the normalized probability distributions of back dihedral angles observed in the native structures. Our new knowledge-based scoring function with inclusion of the backbone entropies, which is referred to as ITScoreDA or ITDA, was extensively evaluated on 16 commonly used decoy sets and compared with 50 other published scoring functions. It was shown that ITDA is significantly superior to the other tested scoring functions in selecting native structures from decoys. The present study suggests the role of backbone conformational entropies in protein structures and provides a way for fast estimation of the entropic effect

Broadband Microwave Spectroscopy of Prototypical Amino Alcohols and Polyamines: Competition between H‑Bonded Cycles and Chains

The rotational spectra of the amino alcohols d-allo-threoninol, 2-amino-1,3-propanediol, and 1,3-diamino-2-propanol and the triamine analog, propane-1,2,3-triamine, have been investigated under jet-cooled conditions over the 7.5–18.5 GHz frequency range using chirped-pulsed Fourier transform microwave spectroscopy. Microwave transitions due to three conformers of d-allothreoninol, four conformers of 2-amino-1,3-propanediol, four conformers of 1,3-diamino-2-propanol, and four conformers of propane-1,2,3-triamine have been identified and assigned, aided by comparison of the fitted experimental rotational constants with the predictions for candidate structures based on an exhaustive conformational search using force field, <i>ab initio</i> and DFT methods. Distinctions between conformers with similar rotational constants were made on the basis of the observed nuclear quadrupole splittings and relative line strengths, which reflect the direction of the permanent dipole moment of the conformers. With three adjacent H-bonding substituents along the alkyl chain involving a combination of OH and NH₂ groups, hydrogen-bonded cycles (3 H-bonds) and chains (2 H-bonds) remain close in energy, no matter what the OH/NH₂ composition. Two families of H-bonded chains are possible, with H-bonding substituents forming curved chain or extended chain structures. Percent populations of the observed conformers were extracted from the relative intensities of their microwave spectra, which compare favorably with relative energies calculated at the B2PLYP-D3BJ/aug-cc-pVTZ level of theory. In glycerol (3 OH), d-allothreoninol (2 OH, 1 NH₂), 2-amino-1,3-propanediol (2 OH, 1 NH₂), and 1,3-diamino-2-propanol (1 OH, 2 NH₂), H-bonded cycles are most highly populated, followed by curved chains (3 OH or 2 OH/1 NH₂) or extended chains (1 OH/2 NH₂). In propane-1,2,3-triamine (3 NH₂), H-bonded cycles are pushed higher in energy than both curved and extended chains, which carry all the observed population. The NH₂ group serves as a better H-bond acceptor than donor, as is evidenced by optimized structures in which H-bond lengths fall into the following order: <i>r</i>(OH···N) ≈ <i>r</i>(OH···O) < <i>r</i>(NH···N) ≈ <i>r</i>(NH···O)

High Prevalence of HIV, HCV and Tuberculosis and Associated Risk Behaviours among New Entrants of Methadone Maintenance Treatment Clinics in Guangdong Province, China

<div><p>Background</p><p>Methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) has been available in Guangdong province, China since 2006. This study aims to estimate the prevalence levels of HIV, Hepatitis C (HCV), Tuberculosis (TB) and their co-infections and associated demographic and risk behaviours among MMT entrants.</p> <p>Method</p><p>A total of 2296 drug users at the time of their MMT enrolment were recruited from four clinics during 2006-2011. Participants’ demographic characteristics, infection status and self-reported high-risk drug-use and sexual behaviours were surveyed. Log-linear contingency analysis was employed to investigate the demographic and behavioural differences between gender and drug-user type, while multivariate regression analysis was used to identify the associated factors of HIV, HCV and TB infections.</p> <p>Results</p><p>Female drug users demonstrate significantly higher frequency of daily drug consumption (Log-linear contingency analysis, G²=10.86, <i>p</i>=0.013) and higher proportion of having had sex in the past three months (G²=30.22, <i>p</i><0.001) than their male counterparts. Among injecting drug users, females also inject (χ²=16.15, <i>p</i>=0.001) and share syringes (χ²=13.24, <i>p</i>=0.004) more frequently than males. Prevalence of HIV, HCV and TB among MMT entrants are 6.3%, 78.7% and 4.4% respectively. Co-infections of HIV/HCV, HIV/TB, HCV/TB and HIV/HCV/TB reportedly infect 5.6%, 0.5%, 3.8% and 0.3% of study participants. Infection risks of HIV, HCV and TB are consistently associated with increasing length of drug use, injecting drugs, financial dependence and reduced sexual activities.</p> <p>Conclusion</p><p>Injecting drug use is the major contributing factor in prevalence levels of HIV, HCV and TB among MMT entrants. Female drug users are more disadvantaged in their social status and risk-taking in their drug use behaviours than males.</p> </div

Simultaneous Formation of Artificial SEI Film and 3D Host for Stable Metallic Sodium Anodes

Metallic sodium is a promising anode for sodium-based batteries, owing to its high theoretical capacity (1165 mAh g^–1) and low potential (−2.714 V vs standard hydrogen electrode). However, the growth of sodium dendrites and the infinite volume change of metallic sodium during sodium striping/plating result in a low Coulombic efficiency and poor cycling stability, generating a safety hazard of sodium-based batteries. Here, an efficient approach was proposed to simultaneously generate an artificial SEI film and 3D host for metallic sodium based on a conversion reaction (CR) between sodium and MoS₂ (4Na + MoS₂ = 2Na₂S + Mo) at room temperature. In the resultant sodium–MoS₂ hybrid after the conversion reaction (Na–MoS₂ (CR)), the production Na₂S is homogeneously dispersed on the surface of metallic sodium, which can act as an artificial SEI film, efficiently preventing the growth of sodium dendrites; the residual MoS₂ nanosheets can construct a 3D host to confine metallic sodium, accommodating largely the volume change of sodium. Consequently, the Na–MoS₂ (CR) hybrid exhibits very low overpotential of 25 mV and a very long cycle stability more than 1000 cycles. This novel strategy is promising to promote the development of metal (lithium, sodium, zinc)-based electrodes

Bioinspired Hierarchical Surface Structures with Tunable Wettability for Regulating Bacteria Adhesion

To circumvent the influence from varied topographies, the systematic study of wettability regulated Gram-positive bacteria adhesion is carried out on bioinspired hierarchical structures duplicated from rose petal structures. With the process of tuning the interfacial chemical composition of the self-assembled films from supramolecular gelators, the varied wettable surfaces from superhydrophilicity to superhydrophobicity can be obtained. The investigation of Gram-positive bacteria adhesion on the hierarchical surfaces reveals that Gram-positive bacteria adhesion is crucially mediated by peptidoglycan due to its different interaction mechanisms with wettable surfaces. The study makes it possible to systematically study the influence mechanism of wettability regulated bacteria adhesion and provides a sight to make the bioinspired topographies in order to investigate wettability regulated bioadhesion

Carbon-Nanotube-Encapsulated FeF₂ Nanorods for High-Performance Lithium-Ion Cathode Materials

Application of iron fluoride, a promising candidate of cathode materials for lithium ion batteries, is being hindered by its poor electrochemical performance caused by low electronic conductivity and large volume change. Design of carbon-encapsulated transitional metal compounds (including fluoride, oxide, sulfide, etc.) structure is one of the most effective strategies in improving their lithium-ion storage performance. In this work, we successfully synthesize for the first time carbon-nanotube-encapsulated FeF₂ nanorods via a facile in situ co-pyrolysis of ferrocene and NH₄F. This kind of core/shell carbon nanotube/FeF₂ nanorod exhibits better cyclic stability and rate-performance used as cathode materials. Better electrochemical performance of the nanorods should be attributed to the protection of the carbon shell because, experimentally, it is observed that outer carbon shells suffer from high internal stress during Li-ion insertion but efficiently keep the nanorods in the one-dimensional morphology and make nanorods a good electrical contact with the conductive carbon black. This work not only prepares high-performance core/shell carbon/iron fluoride cathode materials, but should also open a facile pathway for design of various novel nanostructures of other metal fluoride/carbon core/shell structures for future lithium-ion batteries

Table1_Enhancer-associated regulatory network and gene signature based on transcriptome and methylation data to predict the survival of patients with lung adenocarcinoma.XLS

Accumulating evidence has proved that aberrant methylation of enhancers plays regulatory roles in gene expression for various cancers including lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). In this study, the transcriptome and methylation data of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)-LUAD cohort were comprehensively analyzed with a five-step Enhancer Linking by Methylation/Expression Relationships (ELMER) process. Step 1: 131,371 distal (2 kb upstream from the transcription start site) probes were obtained. Step 2: 10,665 distal hypomethylated probes were identified in an unsupervised mode with the get.diff.meth function. Step 3: 699 probe-gene pairs with negative correlations were screened using the get.pair function in an unsupervised mode. Step 4: After mapping with probes, 768 motifs were obtained and 24 of them were enriched. Step 5: 127 transcription factors (TFs) with differential expressions and negative correlations with methylation levels were screened, which were corresponding to 21 motifs. After the ELMER process, a prognostic “TFs-motifs-genes” regulatory network was constructed. The Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and Stepwise regression analyses were further applied to identify variables in the TCGA-LUAD cohort and an eight-gene signature was constructed for calculating the risk score. The risk score was verified in two independent validation cohorts. The area under curve values of receiver operating characteristic curves predicting 1-, 3-, and 5-years survival ranged from 0.633 to 0.764. With the increase of the risk scores, both the survival statuses and clinical traits showed a worse tendency. There were significant differences in the degrees of immune cell infiltration, TMB values, and TIDE scores between the high-risk and low-risk groups. Finally, a better-performing prognostic nomogram was integrated with the risk score and other clinical traits. In short, this multi-omics analysis demonstrated the application of ELMER in analyzing enhancer-associated regulatory network in LUAD, which provided promising strategies for epigenetic therapy and prognostic biomarkers.</p