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Traditional sensing technologies have drawbacks as they are time-consuming, cost-intensive, and do not attain the required accuracy and reproducibility. Therefore, new methods of measurements are necessary to improve the detection of bacteria. Well-established electrical measurement methods can connect high sensitive sensing systems with biological requirements. One approach is to functionalize an extended-gate field-effect transistor's (EGFET) sensing area with modified porphyrins containing two different linkers. One linker connects the electrode surface with the porphyrin. The other linker bonds bacteria on the functional layer through a specific peptide chain. The negative charge on the surface of the cells regulates the surface potential which has an impact on the electrical behavior of the EGFET. The attendance of attached bacteria on the functionalized sensing area could successfully be detected.Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is an important cause of irreversible central blindness worldwide. Clinical manifestations range from asymptomatic in early and intermediate AMD to significant vision loss in late AMD. Approximately 10% of cases of early AMD eventually progress to the late advanced stage, influenced by the upregulation of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). In this study, we evaluated VEGF concentration in the tears and serum of AMD patients. Our study revealed a significantly higher level of VEGF in the tears of patients with AMD compared with controls. The tear VEGF level has high sensitivity and specificity, and is significantly related to the severity of AMD, whilst serum VEGF level is non-specific and non-predictive of AMD severity. Thus, VEGF level in the tears may be used as a non-invasive biomarker for AMD progression. A large cohort study is needed for further verification.Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is the most common vaginal infection affecting women worldwide. This infection is characterized by the loss of the dominant Lactobacillus community in the vaginal microbiota and an increase of anaerobic bacteria, that leads to the formation of a polymicrobial biofilm, mostly composed of Gardnerella spp. Treatment of BV is normally performed using broad-spectrum antibiotics, such as metronidazole and clindamycin. However, the high levels of recurrence of infection after treatment cessation have led to a demand for new therapeutic alternatives. Thymbra capitata essential oils (EOs) are known to have a wide spectrum of biological properties, including antibacterial activity. Thus, herein, we characterized two EOs of T. capitata and tested their antimicrobial activity as well as some of their main components, aiming to assess possible synergistic effects. Our findings showed that carvacrol and ρ-cymene established a strong synergistic antimicrobial effect against planktonic cultures of Gardnerella spp. On biofilm, carvacrol and linalool at sub-MIC concentrations proved more efficient in eliminating biofilm cells, while showing no cytotoxicity observed in a reconstituted human vaginal epithelium. The antibiofilm potential of the EOs and compounds was highlighted by the fact cells were not able to recover culturability after exposure to fresh medium.With an increasing human population access to ruminant products is an important factor in global food supply. While ruminants contribute to climate change, climate change could also affect ruminant production. Here we investigated how the plant response to climate change affects forage quality and subsequent rumen fermentation. Models of near future climate change (2050) predict increases in temperature, CO2, precipitation and altered weather systems which will produce stress responses in field crops. We hypothesised that pre-exposure to altered climate conditions causes compositional changes and also primes plant cells such that their post-ingestion metabolic response to the rumen is altered. This "stress memory" effect was investigated by screening ten forage grass varieties in five differing climate scenarios, including current climate (2020), future climate (2050), or future climate plus flooding, drought or heat shock. While varietal differences in fermentation were detected in terms of gas production, there was little effect of elevated temperature or CO2 compared with controls (2020). All varieties consistently showed decreased digestibility linked to decreased methane production as a result of drought or an acute flood treatment. These results indicate that efforts to breed future forage varieties should target tolerance of acute stress rather than long term climate.Considering cell migration is essential for understanding physiological processes and diseases. The vertical migration of cells in three dimensions is vital, but most previous studies on cell migration have only focused on two-dimensional horizontal migration. In this paper, cell migration in the vertical direction was studied. Barriers with a height of 1, 5, 10, and 25 µm with grating and arrows in channels as guiding patterns were fabricated. The effects of barrier height and guiding patterns on the vertical migration of MC3T3 cells were explored. The study revealed that taller barriers hinder vertical migration of MC3T3 cells, whereas grating and arrows in channels promote it. The time-lapse and micrograph images showed that as the barrier height increased, the cell climbing angle along the barrier sidewall decreased, and the time taken to climb over the barrier increased. These results indicate that taller barriers increase the difficulty of vertical migration by MC3T3 cells. To promote the vertical migration of MC3T3 cells, 10 µm tall barriers with 18° and 40° sloped sidewalls were fabricated. For barriers with 18° sloped sidewalls, the probability for MC3T3 cells to climb up and down the 10 µm tall barriers was 40.6% and 20.3%, respectively; this is much higher than the migration probability over vertical barriers. This study shows topographic guidance on the vertical migration of MC3T3 cells and broadens the understanding of cell migration in the vertical direction.Water evaporation systems with solar energy as the primary driving energy have received extensive attention in recent years. This work studies the preparation method and performance of hydrogel evaporators using chitosan and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a framework and carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) as the photothermal material. The evaporation rate of CPC (chitosan/PVA and CNPs) hydrogel obtained reaches 2.28 kg m-2 h-1. Simultaneously, a three-dimensional structure is designed based on the two-dimensional double-layer evaporation system in this study. An evaporator with a tiny-pool structure and a hydrogel with a dome-arrayed structure is designed. These two structures achieve highly efficient evaporation rates of 2.28 kg m-2 h-1 and 3.80 kg m-2 h-1, respectively. These optimized designs improve the evaporation rate of the overall system by ~ 66.7%. The developed evaporation devices provide a promising pathway for developing the double-layer evaporators, which promote the new development of water purification with a solar-driven evaporation system.Myocardial infarction patients had decreased methylation at four growth differentiating factor-15 (GDF-15) related CpG sites (cg13033858, cg16936953, cg17150809, and cg18608055). These sites had not been studied for their association with cardiovascular disease (CVD) deaths. Thus, we aimed to assess the associations independent of genes, shared environment, and traditional CVD risk factors. Nineteen white, male, monozygotic twin pairs discordant for CVD deaths were included from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Twin Study (NHLBI) initiated in 1969. Data on vital status was collected through December 31, 2014. Methylation of buffy coat DNA at exam 3 (1986-87) was measured using the Illumina HumanMethylation450 BeadChip. Principal component analysis was used to generate a score representing blood leukocyte composition and baseline CVD risk factors and predominated with natural killer cells, CD4+ T cells, and Framingham risk score. Conditional logistic regression demonstrated that methylation at the four CpG sites was not associated with CVD deaths before (all p > 0.05, bootstrapped p > 0.05) and after adjustment for the score (all p > 0.05). Joint influences of cg16936953 and the score were statistically significant (p  less then  0.05). In conclusion, joint influences of methylation at the site cg16936953 and the score are prospectively associated with CVD deaths independent of germline and common environment.ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier for NHLBI Twin Study NCT00005124.To study the correlation between urine and serum estradiol (E2) controlled ovarian hyperstimulation (COH). This is a cross-sectional analytical study that was conducted in a tertiary care hospital. Seventy-seven urine and blood samplings were collected from infertile women who were treated with COH. An electrochemiluminescent immunoassay was performed to evaluate E2 levels between urine and serum samples on the 6th day and the day of ovarian trigger. In addition, the correlations were evaluated between urine E2 level and number of follicles, retrieved, metaphase II oocytes, and fertilization rate. A sub-analysis was performed for age, responding status and BMI. Seventy-seven infertile women were recruited. The medians of serum and urine E2 level levels on the day 6th of ovarian stimulation were 833.20 pg/ml (IQR; 516.90-1371.00) and 3.67 (IQR; 2.84-4.81), respectively. On the day of ovarian trigger, the median of serum E2 level was 2113.00 pg/ml (IQR; 1382.00-3885.00) and urine E2 level (E2/creatinine) was 6.84 (IQR; 5.34-8.70). The correlation between serum and urine E2 level on day 6th was 0.53 and the day of ovarian trigger was 0.59, p  less then  0.001. Moreover, the correlations of urine E2 level on the day of ovarian trigger to number of follicles, number of oocytes retrieved, metaphase II oocytes and fertilization rate were 0.57, 0.58, 0.61, and 0.64 (p  less then  0.001). The urine E2 level was moderately correlated to serum E2, number of follicles growth, oocytes retrieved and fertilization rate.Anti-dementia medications are widely prescribed to patients with Alzheimer's dementia (AD) in South Korea. selleckchem This study investigated the pattern of medical management in newly diagnosed patients with AD using a standardized data format-the Observational Medical Outcome Partnership Common Data Model from five hospitals. We examined the anti-dementia treatment patterns from datasets that comprise > 5 million patients during 2009-2019. The medication utility information was analyzed with respect to treatment trends and persistence across 11 years. Among the 8653 patients with newly diagnosed AD, donepezil was the most commonly prescribed anti-dementia medication (4218; 48.75%), followed by memantine (1565; 18.09%), rivastigmine (1777; 8.98%), and galantamine (494; 5.71%). The rising prescription trend during observation period was found only with donepezil. The treatment pathways for the three cholinesterase inhibitors combined with N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist were different according to the drugs (19.