PLoS ONE最新文献

Zinc has been demonstrated to boost immune response during SAR-CoV-2 infection, where it prevents coronavirus multiplication. Clinical investigations have testified to its beneficial effects on respiratory health and its deficiency may reduce immune function. A highly sensitive detection of Zn(II) ion via differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) utilizing an environmentally friendly modified screen-printed carbon electrode (SPCE) of electrochemically reduced graphene oxide (ErGO) embedded with carboxylated-8-carboxamidoquinoline (CACQ) as Zn(II) chelating ligand. The green CACQ/ErGO-modified SPCE was characterized by spectroscopy techniques, such as Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and field-emission scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray (FESEM-EDX). The modified electrode-solution interface was studied by electrochemical cyclic voltammetry (CV) and DPV methods. The CACQ-modified wrinkled ErGO electrode conferred a large surface-to-volume ratio with multiple binding sites resulting in greater opportunity for multiple dative covalent binding events with Zn(II) via coordination chemistry, and considerably accelerated the electron transfer rate at the electrode surface. The green Zn(II) sensor demonstrated a quick response time (60 s), broad linear range [1 pM-1 μM Zn(II) ion], a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.53 pM, 35 days of storage period (≥80% of its initial response retained), good reproducibility [relative standard deviation (RSD) = 3.4%], and repeatability (RSD = 4.4%). The developed electrode was applied to determine Zn(II) ion concentration in dietary supplement samples, and the results were in good agreement with those obtained from inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS).

A continuous-wave (CW) orthogonally polarized dual-wavelength (OPDW) Nd:GdVO4/Nd:YVO4 laser at 1341 and 1342 nm on the 4F3/2 →4I13/2 transition was realized using in-band laser diode (LD) pumping with tunable wavelength from 909.40 to 915.02 nm for the first time. The operating temperature of the LD and the position of the pump beam waist were optimized to achieve high efficiency and balanced output powers of the OPDW laser. The OPDW laser at 1341 and 1342 nm was obtained with the highest total output power of 6.15 W and the power ratio of 1:1. The highest total slope efficiency and total optical-to-optical conversion efficiency with respect to the absorbed pump power at 913.61 nm were 34.9% and 32.0%, respectively. The OPDW laser at 1341 and 1342 nm have important application prospects in the fields of laser medicine, scientific research and terahertz radiation.

Objective: To evaluate the relative strengths of 3 frailty assessment instruments for predicting mortality and prolonged hospitalization in acute coronary syndrome patients.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Setting: Acute cardiac care units in New Zealand.

Participants: 1174 patients >70 years of age hospitalized with an acute coronary syndrome.

Interventions: The Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS), Edmonton Frail Scale (EFS) and Fried Criteria (Fried), were completed during hospital admission following an acute coronary syndrome when the patient was clinically stable.

Primary and secondary outcome measures: All-cause mortality over the next ~5 years and hospitalization for >10 days in the next year determined from national administrative data.

Results: During median follow-up of 5.1 years there were 353 deaths. Harrell's C-statistic for mortality for EFS was 0.663, Fried 0.648 and CFS 0.640 (p<0.001 for all). C-statistics for hospitalization >10 days (n = 267, 22%) were EFS 0.649, Fried 0.628, and CFS 0.584 (p<0.001 for all). Associations between increase in frailty scores and mortality were graded including in patients not classified as frail. The hazard ratio (HR) for mortality, adjusted for age and sex, for patients with an EFS score ≥9 (n = 197) compared to ≤2 (n = 331) was 5.0 (95% CI: 3.4-7.4). In models which included the Euroscore II or GRACE risk scores the EFS improved risk discrimination for both mortality and prolonged hospitalization more than the CFS and Fried.

Conclusion: In older patients assessed following an acute coronary syndrome the EFS discriminated the risk of all cause mortality and prolonged hospitalization better than the CFS and Fried tests, and improved risk discrimination when added to clinical risk scores.

We conducted controlled experimental bias audits for four versions of ChatGPT, which we asked to recommend an opening offer in salary negotiations for a new hire. We submitted 98,800 prompts to each version, systematically varying the employee's gender, university, and major, and tested prompts in voice of each side of the negotiation: the employee versus their employer. Empirically, we find many reasons why ChatGPT as a multi-model platform is not robust and consistent enough to be trusted for such a task. We observed statistically significant salary offers when varying gender for all four models, although with smaller gaps than for other attributes tested. The most substantial gaps were different model versions and between the employee- vs employer-voiced prompts. We also observed substantial gaps when varying university and major, but many of the biases were not consistent across model versions. We also tested for fictional and fraudulent universities and found wildly inconsistent results across different cases and model versions. We also make broader contributions to the AI/ML fairness and trustworthiness literature. Our salary negotiation advice scenario and our experimental design differ from mainstream AI/ML auditing efforts in key ways. Bias audits typically test discrimination for protected classes like gender, which we contrast with testing non-protected classes of university and major. Asking for negotiation advice includes how aggressive one ought to be in a negotiation relative to known empirical salary distributions and scales, which is a deeply contextual and personalized task that has no objective ground truth to validate. These results raise concerns for not only for the specific model versions we tested, but also around the consistency and robustness of the ChatGPT web platform as a multi-model platform in continuous development. Our epistemology does not permit us to definitively certify these models as either generally biased or unbiased on the attributes we test, but our study raises matters of concern for stakeholders to further investigate.

Extreme temperatures associated with climate change are expected to impact the physiology and fertility of a variety of insects, including honey bees. Most previous work on this topic has focused on female honey bees (workers and queens), and comparatively little research has investigated how heat exposure affects males (drones). To address this gap, we tested body mass, viral infections, and population origin as predictors of drone survival and sperm viability in a series of heat challenge assays. We found that individual body mass was highly influential, with heavier drones being more likely to survive a heat challenge (4 h at 42°C) than smaller drones. In a separate experiment, we compared the survival of Northern California and Southern California drones in response to the same heat challenge (4 h at 42°C), and found that Southern Californian drones - which are enriched for African ancestry - were more likely to survive a heat challenge than drones originating from Northern California. To avoid survivor bias, we conducted sperm heat challenges using in vitro assays and found remarkable variation in sperm heat resilience among drones sourced from different commercial beekeeping operations, with some exhibiting no reduction in sperm viability after heat challenge and others exhibiting a 75% reduction in sperm viability. Further investigating potential causal factors for such variation, we found no association between drone mass and viability of sperm in in vitro sperm heat challenge assays, but virus inoculation (with Israeli acute paralysis virus) exacerbated the negative effect of heat on sperm viability. These experiments establish a vital framework for understanding the importance of population origin and comorbidities for drone heat sensitivity.

Functional movement is a valuable indicator of physical performance, injury risk, and/or musculoskeletal impairment following injury. However, genetic variation and gene-environment interactions that may affect functional movement are largely unexplored. We recently reported a linkage between trauma exposure and functional movement in male tactical athletes. Here, we examined the effect of a common genetic variant, rs737865, within the catechol-O-methyltransferase gene on functional movement in specialized military personnel (N = 134). We also explored whether rs737865 modulated the influence of trauma exposure. Genotyping was determined from saliva, trauma exposure was self-reported using the Brief Trauma Questionnaire, and functional movement was evaluated using the Functional Movement Screen™. The effect of rs737865 on functional movement was evaluated using general linear models, while associations between trauma and functional movement were determined with regression models. An alpha level of 0.05 was set as the threshold for significance. In the standard three-genotype model (GG, AG, AA), rs737865 predicted functional movement (p = 0.03, η2p = 0.05). Specifically, GG (n = 9) exhibited the highest functional movement scores (mean [M] ± standard deviation [SD] = 17.2±1.9), followed by AG (n = 45; M±SD = 15.9±2.5), and then AA (n = 80; M±SD = 15.2±2.3). The connection between rs737865 and functional movement was preserved in both the dominant G model (G vs AA; p = 0.03, η2p = 0.04) and the dominant A model (A vs GG; p = 0.03, η2p = 0.03). The rs737865 variant also modulated the influence of trauma on functional movement. To our knowledge, this is the first discovery linking rs737865 to functional movement, which may lead to greater precision in musculoskeletal injury risk stratification and increased efficacy of strength and conditioning programs in tactical athletes. In resource constrained settings, genomic modeling may help to direct limited assets to at-risk subgroups (for screening purposes). It may also help to individualize, and enhance, strength and conditioning programs based on the genomic signature of a person's training response.

Calmodulin is a calcium binding protein that is essential in calcium signalling in the brain. There are many computational models of calcium-calmodulin binding that capture various calmodulin features. However, existing models have generally been fit to different data sets, with some publications not reporting their training and validation performance. Moreover, there is no model comparison using a common benchmark data set as is common practice in other modeling domains. Finally, some calmodulin models have been fit as a part of a larger kinetic scheme, which may have resulted in parameters being underdetermined. We address these three limitations of previous models by fitting the published calcium-calmodulin schemes to a common calcium-calmodulin data set comprising equilibrium data from Shifman et al. and dynamical data from Faas et al. Due to technical limitations, the amount of uncaged calcium in Faas et al. data could not be predicted with certainty. To find good parameter fits, despite this uncertainty, we used non-linear mixed effects modelling as implemented in the Pumas.jl package. The Akaike information criterion values for our reaction rate constants were significantly lower than for the published parameters, indicating that the published parameters are suboptimal. Moreover, there were significant differences in calmodulin activation, both between the schemes and between our reaction rate and those previously published. A kinetic scheme with independent lobes and unique, rather than identical, binding sites fit the data best. Our results support two hypotheses: (1) partially bound calmodulin is important in cellular signalling; and (2) calcium binding sites within a calmodulin lobe are kinetically distinct rather than identical. We conclude that more attention should be given to validation and comparison of models of individual molecules.

Objective: The association between red blood cell distribution width-to-albumin (RDW/ALB) ratio (RAR) and all-cause mortality in patients with acute pancreatitis has not been fully delineated. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of RAR at admission on 28-day all-cause mortality in patients with acute pancreatitis.

Design: This investigation was conducted as a retrospective analysis utilizing data from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care (MIMIC)-III database.

Participants: Patients with acute pancreatitis were selected from the MIMIC-III database according to predefined eligibility criteria.

Outcome: The outcome was the all-cause mortality rates within 28 days.

Results: Upon screening and excluding ineligible participants, a total of 931 patients with acute pancreatitis who met the inclusion criteria were analyzed. The overall mortality at 28 days was 11.71%. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis indicated that RAR had a moderate predictive value for all-cause mortality at 28 days, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.669 (95%CI, 0.617-0.720; p<0.05), and the cutoff value was 4.39. Divide the patients into a high RAR group and a low RAR group based on the cutoff value. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis demonstrated a statistically significant increase in 28-day mortality among patients in the high RAR group compared to those in the low RAR group. Multivariate analysis indicated that potassium levels, total bilirubin, blood urea nitrogen, lactate, partial thromboplastin time, neutrophil and RAR were independently associated with the 28-day mortality. Multivariate Cox regression analysis confirmed that an elevated RAR was independently associated with increased mortality at 28 day (HR, 2.72; 95% CI, 1.64-4.52; p < 0.001).

Conclusions: This study demonstrated that RAR at admission functioned as a significant prognostic indicator for mortality in patients with acute pancreatitis.