Urban greenery and mental wellbeing in adults: Cross-sectional mediation analyses on multiple pathways across different greenery measures

Multiple mechanisms have been proposed to explain how greenery enhances their mental wellbeing. Mediation studies, however, focus on a limited number of mechanisms and rely on remotely sensed greenery measures, which do not accurately capture how neighborhood greenery is perceived on the ground. To examine: 1) how streetscape and remote sensing-based greenery affect people's mental wellbeing in Guangzhou, China; 2) whether and, if so, to what extent the associations are mediated by physical activity, stress, air quality and noise, and social cohesion; and 3) whether differences in the mediation across the streetscape greenery and NDVI exposure metrics occurred. Mental wellbeing was quantified by the WHO-5 wellbeing index. Greenery measures were extracted at the neighborhood level: 1) streetscape greenery from street view data via a convolutional neural network, and 2) the NDVI remote sensing images. Single and multiple mediation analyses with multilevel regressions were conducted. Streetscape and NDVI greenery were weakly and positively, but not significantly, correlated. Our regression results revealed that streetscape greenery and NDVI were, individually and jointly, positively associated with mental wellbeing. Significant partial mediators for the streetscape greenery were physical activity, stress, air quality and noise, and social cohesion; together, they explained 62% of the association. For NDVI, only physical activity and social cohesion were significant partial mediators, accounting for 22% of the association. Mental health and wellbeing and both streetscape and satellite-derived greenery seem to be both directly correlated and indirectly mediated. Our findings signify that both greenery measures capture different aspects of natural environments and may contribute to people's wellbeing by means of different mechanisms

Circulating microparticles: square the circle

Background: The present review summarizes current knowledge about microparticles (MPs) and provides a systematic overview of last 20 years of research on circulating MPs, with particular focus on their clinical relevance. Results: MPs are a heterogeneous population of cell-derived vesicles, with sizes ranging between 50 and 1000 nm. MPs are capable of transferring peptides, proteins, lipid components, microRNA, mRNA, and DNA from one cell to another without direct cell-to-cell contact. Growing evidence suggests that MPs present in peripheral blood and body fluids contribute to the development and progression of cancer, and are of pathophysiological relevance for autoimmune, inflammatory, infectious, cardiovascular, hematological, and other diseases. MPs have large diagnostic potential as biomarkers; however, due to current technological limitations in purification of MPs and an absence of standardized methods of MP detection, challenges remain in validating the potential of MPs as a non-invasive and early diagnostic platform. Conclusions: Improvements in the effective deciphering of MP molecular signatures will be critical not only for diagnostics, but also for the evaluation of treatment regimens and predicting disease outcomes

Enantioselective copper catalysed, direct functionalisation of allenes via allyl copper intermediates

The direct functionalisation of allenes under copper catalysis enables efficient access to enantioenriched, densely functionalised molecules. In this review we explore the breadth and depth of a versatile reaction manifold, which involves the element-cupration of allenes to generate allyl copper intermediates that are subsequently coupled with diverse arrays of electrophiles