Remote Online Project: Traveling in a Virtual World, Researching Microbes.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Adil A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8011873 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Rationale: Remote ischemic perconditioning during cerebral ischemia (RIPerC) refers to the application of brief episodes of transient limb ischemia commonly to a limb, it represents a new safe, simple and low-cost paradigm in neuroprotection. Aim and/or Hypothesis: To evaluate the effects of RIPerC on acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients, applied in the ambulance, to improve functional outcomes compared with standard of care. Sample Size Estimates: A sample size of 286 patients in each arm achieves 80% power to detect treatment differences of 14% in the outcome, using a two-sided binomial test at significance level of 0.05, assuming that 40% of the control patients will experience good outcome and an initial misdiagnosis rate of 29%. Methods and Design: We aim to conduct a multicentre study of pre-hospital RIPerC application in AIS patients. A total of 572 adult patients diagnosed of suspected clinical stroke within 8 h of symptom onset and clinical deficit >0 according to prehospital rapid arterial occlusion evaluation (RACE) scale score will be randomized, in blocks of size 4, to RIPerC or sham. Patients will be stratified by RACE score scale. RIPerC will be started in the ambulance before hospital admission and continued in the hospital if necessary. It will consist of five cycles of electronic tourniquet inflation and deflation (5 min each). The cuff pressure for RIPerC will be 200 mmHg during inflation. Sham will only simulate vibration of the device. Study Outcome(s): The primary outcome will be the difference in the proportion of patients with good outcomes as defined by a mRS score of 2 or less at 90 days. Secondary outcomes to be monitored will include early neurological improvement rate, treatment related serious adverse event rates, size of the infarct volume, symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage, metabolomic and lipidomic response to RIPerC and Neuropsychological evaluation at 90 days. Discussion: Neuroprotective therapies could not only increase the benefits of available reperfusion therapies among AIS patients but also provide an option for patients who are not candidates for these treatments. REMOTE-CAT will investigate the clinical benefit of RIC as a new neuroprotective strategy in AIS. Clinical Trial Registration: www.ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier: NCT03375762.
| S-EPMC7546310 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Teaching ecology effectively and experientially has become more challenging for at least two reasons today. Most experiences of our students are urban, and we now face the near immediate and continuing need to deliver courses (either partially or wholly) online because of COVID-19. Therefore, providing a learning experience that connects students to their environment within an ecological framework remains crucial and perhaps therapeutic to mental health. Here, we describe how prior to the pandemic we adapted our field-based laboratories to include data collection, analysis, and interpretation, along with the development of a citizen-science approach for online delivery. This design is simple to implement, does not require extensive work, and maintains the veracity of original learning outcomes. Collaboration online following field data collection in ecology courses within the context of cities offers further options to adapt to student experience levels, resource availability, and accessibility, as well as bringing instructors and students together to build an open well-curated data set that can be used in ecology courses where no laboratories are available. Finally, it promotes an open collaboration among ecology instructors that can drive lasting conversations about ecology curriculum.
| S-EPMC8057323 | biostudies-literature
Project description:A cephalosomatic anastomosis (CSA; also called HEAVEN: head anastomosis venture) has been proposed as an option for patients with neurological impairments, such as spinal cord injury (SCI), and terminal medical illnesses, for which medicine is currently powerless. Protocols to prepare a patient for life after CSA do not currently exist. However, methods used in conventional neurorehabilitation can be used as a reference for developing preparatory training. Studies on virtual reality (VR) technologies have documented VR's ability to enhance rehabilitation and improve the quality of recovery in patients with neurological disabilities. VR-augmented rehabilitation resulted in increased motivation towards performing functional training and improved the biopsychosocial state of patients. In addition, VR experiences coupled with haptic feedback promote neuroplasticity, resulting in the recovery of motor functions in neurologically-impaired individuals. To prepare the recipient psychologically for life after CSA, the development of VR experiences paired with haptic feedback is proposed. This proposal aims to innovate techniques in conventional neurorehabilitation to implement preoperative psychological training for the recipient of HEAVEN. Recipient's familiarity to body movements will prevent unexpected psychological reactions from occurring after the HEAVEN procedure.
| S-EPMC5421260 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In the boundaries of chromosome-centric Human Proteome Project c-HPP to obtain information about proteoforms coded by chromosome 18, several cell lines were analyzed. In our study we have been using proteoform separation by 2DE (sectional analysis) and semi-virtual 2DE with following shotgun mass-spectrometry using LC ESI-MS/MS. Previously, we published a first draft of this research, where only HepG2 cells were used. Here, next step was done using liver, glioblastoma, fibroblasts, kidney cells and plasma. Altogether, confident (2 significant sequences minimum) information about proteoforms coded by ~80 genes was obtained. The 3D-graphs showing distribution of different proteoforms from the same gene in 2D map were generated. Additionally, semi-virtual 2DE approach allowed for detecting more proteoforms and estimate their pI more precisely
2018-09-24 | PXD010142 | Pride
Project description:The discovery of microbial expansins emerged from studies of the mechanism of plant cell growth and the molecular basis of plant cell wall extensibility. Expansins are wall-loosening proteins that are universal in the plant kingdom and are also found in a small set of phylogenetically diverse bacteria, fungi, and other organisms, most of which colonize plant surfaces. They loosen plant cell walls without detectable lytic activity. Bacterial expansins have attracted considerable attention recently for their potential use in cellulosic biomass conversion for biofuel production, as a means to disaggregate cellulosic structures by nonlytic means ("amorphogenesis"). Evolutionary analysis indicates that microbial expansins originated by multiple horizontal gene transfers from plants. Crystallographic analysis of BsEXLX1, the expansin from Bacillus subtilis, shows that microbial expansins consist of two tightly packed domains: the N-terminal domain D1 has a double-? ?-barrel fold similar to glycosyl hydrolase family-45 enzymes but lacks catalytic residues usually required for hydrolysis; the C-terminal domain D2 has a unique ?-sandwich fold with three co-linear aromatic residues that bind ?-1,4-glucans by hydrophobic interactions. Genetic deletion of expansin in Bacillus and Clavibacter cripples their ability to colonize plant tissues. We assess reports that expansin addition enhances cellulose breakdown by cellulase and compare expansins with distantly related proteins named swollenin, cerato-platanin, and loosenin. We end in a speculative vein about the biological roles of microbial expansins and their potential applications. Advances in this field will be aided by a deeper understanding of how these proteins modify cellulosic structures.
| S-EPMC4427351 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Histological visualizations are critical to clinical disease management and are fundamental to biological understanding. However, current approaches that rely on bright-field microscopy require extensive tissue preparation prior to imaging. These processes are both labor intensive and contribute to creating significant delays in clinical feedback for treatment decisions that can extend to 2-3 weeks for standard paraffin-embedded tissue preparation and interpretation, especially if ancillary testing is needed. Here, we present the first comprehensive study on the broad application of a novel label-free reflection-mode imaging modality known as photoacoustic remote sensing (PARS) for visualizing salient subcellular structures from various common histopathological tissue preparations and for use in unprocessed freshly resected tissues. The PARS modality permits non-contact visualizations of intrinsic endogenous optical absorption contrast to be extracted from thick and opaque biological targets with optical resolution. The technique was examined both as a rapid assessment tool that is capable of managing large samples (> 1 cm2) in under 10 min, and as a high contrast imaging modality capable of extracting specific biological contrast to simulate conventional histological stains such as hematoxylin and eosin (H&E). The capabilities of the proposed method are demonstrated in a variety of human tissue preparations including formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue blocks and unstained slides sectioned from these blocks, including normal and neoplastic human brain, and breast epithelium involved with breast cancer. Similarly, PARS images of human skin prepared by frozen section clearly demonstrated basal cell carcinoma and normal human skin tissue. Finally, we imaged unprocessed murine kidney and achieved histologically relevant subcellular morphology in fresh tissue. This represents a vital step towards an effective real-time clinical microscope that overcomes the limitations of standard histopathologic tissue preparations and enables real-time pathology assessment.
| S-EPMC7644651 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Limited research has been done to understand outcomes of continuing medical education offered in three-dimensional, immersive virtual worlds. We studied a case of a virtual world workshop on motivational interviewing (MI) applied to smoking cessation counseling and its educational impact.To facilitate content development and evaluation, we specified desired MI competencies. The workshop consisted of three sessions, which included lectures, practice with standardized patients, and chat interactions. Data were collected from 13 primary care physicians and residents through workshop observation, and pre- and 3-month post-workshop telephone/Skype interviews and interactions with standardized patients. Interactions with standardized patients were assessed by an expert using a validated MI tool and by standardized patients using a tool developed for this study. For 11 participants who attended two or three sessions, we conducted paired-samples t tests comparing mean differences between the competency scores before and after the workshop.Expert assessment showed significant improvement on six of seven MI competencies. All participants reported learning new knowledge and skills, and nine described incorporating new learning into their clinical practice. Practicing MI with standardized patients and/or observing others' practice appeared to be the most helpful workshop component.The evaluated workshop had positive impact on participants' competencies and practice as related to MI applied to smoking cessation counseling. Our findings support further exploration of three-dimensional virtual worlds as learning environments for continuing medical education.
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Project description:Hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) is an important tool for measuring and monitoring protein structure. A bottom-up approach to HDX-MS provides peptide level deuterium uptake values and a more refined localization of deuterium incorporation compared with global HDX-MS measurements. The degree of localization provided by HDX-MS is proportional to the number of peptides that can be identified and monitored across an exchange experiment. Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) has been shown to improve MS-based peptide analysis of biological samples through increased separation capacity. The integration of IMS within HDX-MS workflows has been commercialized but presently its adoption has not been widespread. The potential benefits of IMS, therefore, have not yet been fully explored. We herein describe a comprehensive evaluation of traveling wave ion mobility integrated within an online-HDX-MS system and present the first reported example of UDMSE acquisition for HDX analysis. Instrument settings required for optimal peptide identifications are described and the effects of detector saturation due to peak compression are discussed. A model system is utilized to confirm the comparability of HDX-IM-MS and HDX-MS uptake values prior to an evaluation of the benefits of IMS at increasing sample complexity. Interestingly, MS and IM-MS acquisitions were found to identify distinct populations of peptides that were unique to the respective methods, a property that can be utilized to increase the spatial resolution of HDX-MS experiments by >60%. Graphical Abstract ?.
| S-EPMC5438439 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundHealth and social service providers receive limited education on recognizing and responding to family violence. With adequate education, providers could be prepared to identify individuals subjected to family violence and help reduce the risk of associated impairment. Informed by the Active Implementation Frameworks, our research will determine the scope of strategies needed for the uptake and sustainability of educational interventions focused on family violence for providers. It will also determine the acceptability, feasibility, and proof-of-concept for a new educational intervention, called VEGA (Violence, Evidence, Guidance, Action), for developing and improving primary care provider knowledge and skills in family violence.MethodsThis paper details the protocol for the Researching the Impact of Service provider Education (RISE) Project. The RISE Project follows a sequential multiphase mixed method research design; qualitative and quantitative data are being collected and integrated over three conceptually and methodologically linked research phases. Activities primarily occur in Ontario, Alberta, and Quebec. Phase 1 uses a sequential exploratory mixed method research design to characterize the scope and salience of learning and implementation needs and preferences for family violence education. Phase 2 will use an embedded mixed method research design to determine whether VEGA technology supports providers to achieve their family violence learning goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. Phase 3 will use a concurrent mixed method research design to determine acceptability, feasibility, and proof-of-concept for evaluating whether VEGA improves primary care providers' knowledge and skills in family violence. This final phase will provide information on implementation strategies for family violence education in the "real world." It will also generate data on provider recruitment, retention, and data completeness, as well as exploratory estimates of the effect for provider outcome measures proposed for a randomized controlled trial.DiscussionThe RISE Project comprehensively integrates an implementation approach to improve family violence education for the health and social service professions. It will provide important information about factors that could influence the uptake and effectiveness of a health profession's educational intervention into the real world, as well as provide foundational evidence concerning the tenability of using a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of VEGA in primary care settings.
| S-EPMC9250197 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Course-based research experiences (CREs) have been proposed as an inclusive model to expose all students, including those at institutions without a strong research infrastructure, to research at an early stage. Converting an entire semester-long course can be time consuming for instructors and expensive for institutions, so we have developed a short CRE that can be implemented in a variety of life science course types. The Prevalence of Antibiotic Resistance in the Environment (PARE) project uses common microbiology methods and equipment to engage students in nationwide surveillance of environmental soil samples to document the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The project has been implemented at institutions ranging from community colleges to doctoral-granting institutions in 30 states plus Puerto Rico. Programmatic feedback was obtained from instructors over three iterations, and revisions were made based on this feedback. Student learning was measured by pre/post assessment in a subset of institutions. Outcomes indicate that students made significant gains in the project learning goals. Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education.
| S-EPMC6203630 | biostudies-literature