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The nearly simultaneous convergence of human genetics and advanced molecular technologies has led to an improved understanding of human diseases. At the same time, the demand for drug screening and gene function identification has also increased, albeit time- and labor-intensive. However, bridging the gap between in vitro evidence from cell lines and in vivo evidence, the lower vertebrate zebrafish possesses many advantages over higher vertebrates, such as low maintenance, high fecundity, light-induced spawning, transparent embryos, short generation interval, rapid embryonic development, fully sequenced genome, and some phenotypes similar to human diseases. Such merits have popularized the zebrafish as a model system for biomedical and pharmaceutical studies, including drug screening. Here, we reviewed the various ways in which zebrafish serve as an in vivo platform to perform drug and protein screening in the fields of rare human diseases, social behavior and cancer studies. Since zebrafish mutations faithfully phenocopy many human disorders, many compounds identified from zebrafish screening systems have advanced to early clinical trials, such as those for Adenoid cystic carcinoma, Dravet syndrome and Diamond-Blackfan anemia. We also reviewed and described how zebrafish are used to carry out environmental pollutant detection and assessment of nanoparticle biosafety and QT prolongation.The widespread outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 has posed an enormous threat to global public health. A different set of policy interventions has been implemented to mitigate the spread in most countries. While the use of personal protective equipment and social distancing has been specifically emphasized, South Korea has deployed massive testing and contact-tracing program from the early stage of the outbreak. Decursin This study aims at investigating the effectiveness of testing and contact-tracing to counter the spread of infectious diseases. Based on the SEICR (susceptible-exposed-infectious-confirmed-recovered) model, an agent-based simulation model is developed to represent the behavior of disease spreading with the consideration of testing and contact-tracing in place. Designed experiments are conducted to verify the effects of testing and contact tracing on the peak number of infections. It has been observed that testing combined with contact tracing may lower the peak infections to a great extent, and it can thus be avoided for the hospital bed capacity to be overwhelmed by infected patients. It is implied that an adequate capability of testing and contact-tracing may enable us to become better prepared for an impending risk of infectious diseases.Since 2006, the foam replica method has been commonly recognized as a valuable technology for the production of highly porous bioactive glass scaffolds showing three-dimensional, open-cell structures closely mimicking that of natural trabecular bone. Despite this, there are important drawbacks making the usage of foam-replicated glass scaffolds a difficult achievement in clinical practice; among these, certainly the high operator-dependency of the overall manufacturing process is one of the most crucial, limiting the scalability to industrial production and, thus, the spread of foam-replicated synthetic bone substitutes for effective use in routine management of bone defect. The present review opens a window on the versatile world of the foam replica technique, focusing the dissertation on scaffold properties analyzed in relation to various processing parameters, in order to better understand which are the real issues behind the bottleneck that still puts this technology on the Olympus of the most used techniques in laboratory practice, without moving, unfortunately, to a more concrete application. Specifically, scaffold morphology, mechanical and mass transport properties will be reviewed in detail, considering the various templates proposed till now by several research groups all over the world. In the end, a comprehensive overview of in vivo studies on bioactive glass foams will be provided, in order to put an emphasis on scaffold performances in a complex three-dimensional environment.Recently, microbial prodigiosin (PG) has received much attention due to its numerous beneficial applications. The aim of this study was to establish the bioprocessing of marine chitinous wastes (MCWs) for the cost-effective preparation of PG. Of the MCWs, demineralized shrimp shell powders (de-SSP) were found to be a potential source of carbon/nitrogen (C/N) for PG production by bacterial fermentation using Serratia marcescens strains. Further, PG scale-up production was investigated in a 15 L bioreactor system, and the highest yield (6200 mg/L) was achieved during fermentation using 5 L of a novel-designed culture broth that included 1.60% C/N sources (a de-SSP/casein ratio of 7/3), 0.02% K2SO4, and 0.05% K2HPO4, with an initial pH of 6-7. Fermentation was conducted in the dark at 27.5 °C for 8.0 h. This study was the first to report on the utilization of shrimp wastes for cost-effective, large-scale (5 L/pilot) PG production with high productivity (6200 mg/L) in a short cultivation time. The combination of 0.02% K2SO4 and 0.05% K2HPO4 was also found to be a novel salt composition that significantly enhanced PG yield. The red compound was purified and confirmed as PG after analyzing its HPLC profile, mass, and UV/vis spectra. The purified PG was then tested for its bioactivities and showed effective anticancer activities, moderated antioxidant activities, and novel anti-NO effects.Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major public health problem in China and worldwide. In this article, we used a joinpoint regression model to calculate the average annual percent change (AAPC) of TB notification and mortality in China from 2004 to 2019. We also used an age-period-cohort (APC) model based on the intrinsic estimator (IE) method to simultaneously distinguish the age, period and cohort effects on TB notification and mortality in China. A statistically downward trend was observed in TB notification and mortality over the period, with AAPCs of -4.2% * (-4.9%, -3.4%) and -5.8% (-7.5%, -4.0%), respectively. A bimodal pattern of the age effect was observed, peaking in the young adult (aged 15-34) and elderly (aged 50-84) groups. More specifically, the TB notification risk populations were people aged 20-24 years and 70-74 years; the TB mortality risk population was adults over the age of 60. The period effect suggested that TB notification and mortality risks were nearly stable over the past 15 years. The cohort effect on both TB notification and mortality presented a continuously decreasing trend, and it was no longer a risk factor after 1978.