Summary: Background: Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), produced in response to hypoxia or some proinflammatory cytokines, is a fundamental regulator of angiogenesis.Methods: In this review we describe the reciprocal relationships between VEGF, endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS), and haem oxygenase-1 (HO-1) pathways.Results: Proangiogenic activities of VEGF depend on the enhanced generation of nitric oxide (NO), a downstream mediator of VEGF signalling in endothelial cells. Additionally, NO can operate upstream of VEGF, inducing its synthesis and producing a positive NO/VEGF feedback involved in regulation of angiogenesis. NO also activates HO-1, the stress inducible enzyme, metabolizing haem to iron, carbon monoxide (CO), and biliverdin. Haem oxygenase generates both inducer (CO) and inhibitor (iron) of VEGF synthesis and can be suggested as an important modulator of NO- and VEGF-mediated activities.Conclusions: Further studies should elucidate to what extent the by-products of HO activity play a protective or a detrimental role in pathological angiogenesis. Zusammenfassung: Grundlagen: Der Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) wird als Reaktion auf Hypoxie und einige proinflammatorische Zytokine gebildet und ist ein grundlegender Regulator der Angiogenese.Methodik: Anhand einer Übersicht werden die verschiedenen Verbindungen zwischen VEGF, eNOS und Hämoxygenase-1 (HO-1)-Stoffwechselwegen beschrieben.Ergebnisse: Die proangiogenetische Aktivität des VEGF ist von einer verstärkten Bildung von Stickoxid (NO), einem Mediator von VEGF, abhängig. NO kann auch VEGF regulieren, indem es seine Synthese induziert, und eine positive Rückkopplung, die an der Regulation der Angiogenese beteiligt ist, zwischen NO und VEGF entsteht. NO aktiviert auch HO-1, stressinduzierbare Enzyme und metabolisiert Häm zu Eisen, Kohlenmonoxyd und Biliverin. Hämoxygenase bildet sowohl einen Agonist (CO) als auch einen Inhibitor (Eisen) der VEGF-Synthese und könnte deshalb ein wichtiger Modulator der NO- und VEGF-mediierten Vorgänge sein.Schlußfolgerungen: Weitere Studien werden zeigen, inwieweit Nebenprodukte der HO-Aktivität förderlich oder nachteilig auf eine gestörte Angiogenese wirken.

Erhard was a rare and remarkable person who had incredibly broad interests and intellect. He was born in Vienna, Austria September 8, 1926 to Leo Anton and Marianne Haus, being christened Erhard Le...

Objectives: To assess the information needs of patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), and to identify possible methods to improve the information given. Design: Questionnaire. Setting: 31-bed mixed medico-surgical ICU. Subjects: 50 ICU patients treated following elective cardiac, neuro, thoracic, or vascular surgery. Main results: Thirty-four of 41 (83%) patients felt that it is necessary to receive information during the ICU stay, with oral communication being seen as the most valuable method of communicating, followed by a brochure. Thirty-six of 41 (88%) patients felt it would be valuable to receive information about their stay in advance. In general, patients would have preferred to receive more information than they were given. Conclusions: Many ICU patients would like to receive more information than they are given and would like to receive this prior to their ICU stay. Good verbal staff/patient communication is essential and the use of a brochure may also facilitate the transfer of information.

Molecular typing was used to investigate an outbreak of infection caused by multidrug-resistant Enterobacter aerogenes (MREA) susceptible only to gentamicin and imipenem in an intensive care unit (ICU). Over a 9-month period, ciprofloxacin-resistant E. aerogenes isolates were isolated from 34 patients, or 4.1% of ICU admissions, compared with a baseline rate of 0.1% in the previous period (P < 0.001). Infection developed in 15 (44%) patients. In vivo emergence of imipenem resistance (MIC, 32 micrograms/ml) of organisms causing deep-seated infection was observed in two (13%) of these patients following prolonged therapy with imipenem and gentamicin. Arbitrarily primed PCR (AP-PCR) analysis with ERIC1R and ERIC2 primers and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) analysis of XbaI macrorestriction patterns concordantly showed that outbreak-associated MREA isolates were clonally related and distinct from epidemiologically unrelated strains. AP-PCR and PFGE showed discrimination indices of 0.88 and 0.98, respectively. Space-time clustering of cases within units suggests that the epidemic-related MREA isolates were transmitted on the hands of the health care personnel. A case-control study and repeated environmental culture surveys failed to identify a common source or procedure associated with transmission. In spite of the early implementation of isolation measures, the incidence of MREA colonization remained stable until all colonized patients were discharged. This study confirms the usefulness of AP-PCR and PFGE analyses for the epidemiological study of E. aerogenes and underscores the difficulty of controlling the spread of multiresistant clones of this organism in the ICU setting. The emergence of imipenem resistance represents a threat because virtually no therapeutic option is available for such strains.

Journal Article Interferometric Imaging of Twisted Trilayer Graphene Moiré Superlattices Get access Isaac M Craig, Isaac M Craig Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Madeline Van Winkle, Madeline Van Winkle Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Catherine Groschner, Catherine Groschner Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Kaidi Zhang, Kaidi Zhang Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Nikita Dowlatshahi, Nikita Dowlatshahi Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Takashi Taniguchi, Takashi Taniguchi Research Center for Functional Materials, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Kenji Watanabe, Kenji Watanabe International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sinéad Griffin, Sinéad Griffin The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar D Kwabena Bediako D Kwabena Bediako Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USAChemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA Corresponding author: bediako@berkeley.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Microscopy and Microanalysis, Volume 29, Issue Supplement_1, 1 August 2023, Page 1641, https://doi.org/10.1093/micmic/ozad067.844 Published: 22 July 2023

The polymorphic transition from 2H to 1<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi class="MJX-variant" mathvariant="normal">′</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math>-MoTe₂, which was thought to be induced by high-energy photon irradiation among many other means, has been intensely studied for its technological relevance in nanoscale transistors due to the remarkable improvement in electrical performance. However, it remains controversial whether a crystalline 1<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi class="MJX-variant" mathvariant="normal">′</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> phase is produced because optical signatures of this putative transition are found to be associated with the formation of tellurium clusters instead. Here we demonstrate the creation of an intrinsic 1<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi class="MJX-variant" mathvariant="normal">′</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> lattice after irradiating a mono- or few-layer 2H-MoTe₂ with a single field-enhanced terahertz pulse. Unlike optical pulses, the low terahertz photon energy limits possible structural damages. We further develop a single-shot terahertz-pump-second-harmonic-probe technique and reveal a transition out of the 2H-phase within 10 ns after photoexcitation. Our results not only provide important insights to resolve the long-standing debate over the light-induced polymorphic transition in MoTe₂ but also highlight the unique capability of strong-field terahertz pulses in manipulating quantum materials.

The Perdew-Zunger (PZ) self-interaction correction (SIC) was designed to correct the one-electron limit of any approximate density functional for the exchange-correlation (xc) energy, while yielding no correction to the exact functional. Unfortunately, it spoils the slowly varying (in space) limits of the uncorrected approximate functionals, where those functionals are right by construction. The right limits can be restored by locally scaling down the energy density of the PZ SIC in many-electron regions, but then a spurious correction to the exact functional would be found unless the self-Hartree and exact self-xc terms of the PZ SIC energy density were expressed in the same gauge. Only the local density approximation satisfies the same-gauge condition for the energy density, which explains why the recent local-scaling SIC is found here to work excellently for atoms and molecules only with this basic approximation and not with the more advanced generalized gradient approximations (GGAs) and meta-GGAs, which lose the Hartree gauge via simplifying integrations by parts. The transformation of energy density that achieves the Hartree gauge for the exact xc functional can also be applied to approximate functionals. Doing so leads to a simple scaled-down self-interaction correction that is typically much more accurate than PZ SIC in tests for many molecular properties (including equilibrium bond lengths). The present work unambiguously shows that the largest errors of PZ SIC applied to standard functionals at three levels of approximation can be removed by restoring their correct slowly varying density limits. It also confirms the relevance of these limits to atoms and molecules.

Silk fibroin (SF) is an ideal biomaterial for next-generation clinical wound dressings due to its biocompatibility and tunable mechanical properties. Cell therapies for wound healing have explored using SF as the base for delivering beneficial cargo; however, retention is poor due to exudate "wash out." To address concerns with the premature release of cargo from SF-fabricated wound dressings, we utilized amine-reactive chemistry to conjugate SF mats with azido-reactive dibenzocyclooctyne (DBCO) that can then attach complementary azido-tagged cargo through chemoselective immobilization. SF mats were made using electrospinning of a 1:1 SF/PCL solution and were then conjugated with N-Hydroxysuccinimide-dibenzocyclooctyne ester (DBCO). PBS soaking was used for control SF mats. SF mats were then imaged and characterized using the following metrics: pore size, fiber alignment, fiber distribution, fiber diameter, ultimate tensile strength, tangent modulus, proteolytic degradation, absorption, and retention. Successful DBCO conjugation of SF mats was confirmed through the presence of the Az-Cy5 dye while exhibiting no significant changes to the DBCO SF mats in any of the tested metrics compared to controls. Our results provide evidence that the amine chemistry responsible for the DBCO conjugation does not alter important SF mat properties. This confirms that DBCO augmentation paired with Az-Cy5 tags may be a viable approach for immobilizing different therapeutic cargoes to aid wound healing efforts.

Abstract A significant sample of children in any class may be categorised as having a preferred visual learning style. The writing outcomes of a case study group of five upper primary children with a strongly preferred visual learning style were examined when the children were encouraged to write with the aid of a computer and a visually rich software medium. A constructionist classroom environment was established in which children were exhorted to dare to experiment, play and problem set, especially when using microworlds and laptop computers. The writing outcomes of this group grew in volume and linguistic complexity when the students were offered the opportunity to use the visual and animation features of the software at the same time as engaging in narrative writing tasks. These outcomes are situated in recent neuro‐psychological theory of the role of the right brain hemisphere as a platform for language development and comprehension, and suggest the possible vital place of computers in the full realisation of their potential by children with a visually preferred learning style.

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The addition of filgrastim to the antibiotic and supportive care treatment of patients with pneumonia complicated by severe sepsis appeared to be safe, but not efficacious in reducing mortality rates or complications from this infection.

info:eu-repo/semantics/published