Biomedical Issues Research Articles

Trajectory Inference for Unraveling Dynamic Biological Processes from Raman Spectral Data.

Cell heterogeneity is a crucial parameter for understanding the complexity of numerous biomedical issues. Trajectory inference-based approaches are recent tools developed for single-cell transcriptomics (scRNA-seq) data analysis. They aim to reconstruct evolving pathways from the variety of cell states that coexist simultaneously in a cell population. We propose to expand this concept to Raman spectroscopy, a label-free modality that probes the global molecular nature of a sample, by investigating the dynamics of adipocyte differentiation.

A Critique of Principlism

A Critique of Principlism

(De)Bonding with embryos: The emotional choreographies of Portuguese IVF patients

In this article we develop the new concept of emotional choreography to describe how patients bond, debond and/or rebond with their embryos created in vitro using assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Using this concept, we explore how the patients' management of their own emotions intertwines with political, scientific, and religious factors. Our analysis relies on and further advances Thompson's concepts of ethical and ontological “choreography”. It is through these forms of choreography that complex contemporary biomedical issues with high political, ethical, and scientific stakes are negotiated, and through which different actors, entities, practices, roles, and norms undergo mutual constitution, reinforcement and (re)definition. Our article draws on the analysis of 69 in-depth interviews and the results of an online survey with 85 respondents.

Biomedical and Psychosocial Determinants of Early Neurodevelopment After Preterm Birth.

Prematurity and them related conditions are subject of scientific discussion. From the point of view optimization of postpartum processes, timely assessment of individual biomedical and psychosocial conditions and management of preventive intervention is very important, because of its linkage to issues of preterm infants and their families in long-term perspectives. The goal of the literature review is to bring together existing body of knowledge on biomedical, psychological, and social issues of premature infants related to early neurodevelopment in order to achieve better systemic vision. For this goal scientific articles related to neurological development delay of premature children and the possibilities of their timely identification were processed using electronic scientific search systems. Diagnostic tools to identify at-risk children and early intervention programs discussed in the article, significantly improve the chances of premature child development. In the article Introduced materials are to support: Clinicians to make correct decisions regarding important components of premature infants; Healthcare policy makers to plan targeted programs and activities; Public to better understand prematurity issues, especially in case of prematurely-born family members.

Применение спатиального анализа показателей заболеваемости и смертности от COVID-19 (на примере Псковской области)

Apart from biomedical and organizational issues, the emergence of the new coronavirus COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, set large-scale tasks for creating and improving mathematical and information technologies that operate spatial data in statistical analysis and forecasting. The regional level is seen as a suitable choice for spatial analysis of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality due to the availability of statistics, as well as data on geographical patterns, characteristics of the distribution space (population density, concentration in one city, density of the transport network, distance to the focus of the disease, etc.). The case of the Pskov region shows that the regional healthcare system experiences a significant shortage of personnel and a noticeable lack of resources. When assessing the existing and prospective healthcare infrastructure, it is advisable to take these points into account while developing an effective, evidence-based healthcare policy. The article shows that graph-based models are more likely to be efficient for adequate modeling at the interregional and regional level, while the geographical distribution of patients should be taken into account for the analysis of processes in individual settlements.

Image restoration for blurry optical images caused by photon diffusion with deep learning.

Optical macroscopic imaging techniques have shown great significance in the investigations of biomedical issues by revealing structural or functional information of living bodies through the detection of visible or near-infrared light derived from different mechanisms. However, optical macroscopic imaging techniques suffer from poor spatial resolution due to photon diffusion in biological tissues. This dramatically restricts the application of optical imaging techniques in numerous situations. In this paper, an image restoration method based on deep learning is proposed to eliminate the blur caused by photon diffusion in optical macroscopic imaging. Two blurry images captured at orthogonal angles are used as the additional information to ensure the uniqueness of the solution and restore the small targets at deep locations. Then a fully convolutional neural network is proposed to accomplish the image restoration, which consists of three sectors: V-shaped network for central view, V-shaped network for side views, and synthetical path. The two V-shaped networks are concatenated to the synthetical path with skip connections to generate the output image. Simulations as well as phantom and mouse experiments are implemented. Results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

The Mutual Incorporation of Mg2+ and CO32- into Hydroxyapatite: A DFT Study.

Hydroxyapatite (HA) with a stoichiometry composition of Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2 is widely applied for various biomedical issues, first of all for bone defect substitution, as a catalyst, and as an adsorbent for soil and water purification. The incorporation of foreign ions changes the acid-base relation, microstructure, porosity, and other properties of the HA materials. Here, we report the results of calculations of the density functional theory and analyze the possibility of two foreign ions, CO32- and Mg2+, to be co-localized in the HA structure. The Na+ was taken into account for charge balance preservation. The analysis revealed the favorable incorporation of CO32- and Mg2+ as a complex when they interact with each other. The energy gain over the sole ion incorporation was pronounced when CO32- occupied the A position and Mg2+ was in the Ca(2) position and amounted to -0.31 eV. In the most energy-favorable complex, the distance between Mg2+ and the O atom of carbonate ion decreased compared to Mg…O distances to the surrounding phosphate or hydroxide ions, and amounted to 1.98 Å. The theoretical calculations agree well with the experimental data reported earlier. Understating the structure-properties relationship in HA materials varying in terms of composition, stoichiometry, and morphology paves the way to rational designs of efficient bio-based catalytic systems.

The scenario of the studies on ragweed (Ambrosia Sp.) and related issues from its beginning to today: a useful tool for future goals in a one health approach.

Airborne ragweed pollen is one of the agents of respiratory allergies in our changing environment. The monitoring of pollen is essential to manage pollen allergy and to improve its forecasting methods. Moreover, the control and fight against ragweed plants is important. Aim of this study is to understand the scenario of the studies on ragweed over time. We searched PubMed and Scopus for articles published until July 2022 reporting the words "ragweed". Articles written in all languages were included. Scopus was the database with the highest number of published papers. Among the papers on ragweed, the papers citing the word "allergy" were 59.4% in PubMed and 37,6% in Scopus. The subject areas more addressed were medicine, immunology, genetics/molecular biology, but agricultural/biological sciences too and, interestingly, other subjects like social sciences, art, humanistic, etc.). Among the top 40 institutions supporting research, 8 were European, 4 Asian, 1 Russian and 21 were American, the other 6 were pharmaceutical companies. This study shows a picture of the ragweed studies and some related subjects over time. A gap between the number of biomedical and not biomedical issues was evident. There is a need for greater involvement of institutions into support of knowledge and fight ragweed. The results will provide a useful tool to identify future goals in a global approach of ragweed related issues.

Transgenic Rodent Models in Toxicological and Environmental Research: Future Perspectives

The coexistence of humans and animals has existed for centuries. Over the past decade, animal research has played a critical role in drug development and discovery. More and more diverse animals, including transgenic animals, are used in basic research than in applied research. Transgenic animals are generated using molecular genetic techniques to add functional genes, alter gene products, delete genes, insert reporter genes into regulatory sequences, replace or repair genes, and make changes in gene expression. These genetically engineered animals are unique tools for studying a wide range of biomedical issues, allowing the exhibition of specific genetic alterations in various biological systems. Over the past two decades, transgenic animal models have played a critical role in improving our understanding of gene regulation and function in biological systems and human disease. This review article aims to highlight the role of transgenic animals in pharmacological, toxicological, and environmental research. The review accounts for various types of transgenic animals and their appropriateness in multiple types of studies.

Examining the Influences of COVID-19 Information Avoidance and Uncertainty on Perceived Severity of the Pandemic: Applications from the Health Belief Model and Weick’s Model of Organizing

Public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have been insufficient at keeping the virus from spreading rapidly and threatening public health around the globe. Not only has society been challenged by biomedical issues of disease contagion, infection, morbidity, and mortality, but has also confronted complex cognitive challenges to making sense of this health threat, especially related to accurately evaluating and responding appropriately to the severity of the pandemic. Perceived severity is an important cognitive factor associated with public willingness to adopt needed prevention, protection, and treatment behaviors for responding to serious health risks, like COVID-19. Information avoidance and uncertainty are important constructs from powerful public health and communication theories, including the health belief model and Weick’s model of organizing, that guide this study by describing how information influences responses to health threats. We used survey data collected from 561 college students to clarify the relationships among information avoidance, beliefs about unpredictability, and the perceived severity of COVID-19. We found that higher information avoidance was associated with lower perceived severity, and that this association depended on people’s unpredictability beliefs. Specifically, for those who had low assessments about unpredictability, we observed a strong negative association between information avoidance and perceived severity. Among those who had high perceived unpredictability levels, we observed a weak negative association between information avoidance and perceived severity. This study evaluates influences of information avoidance and uncertainty on perceived severity of COVID-19. The findings can help guide strategies for enhancing public response to this pandemic and future health threats.

Viscoelastic or Viscoplastic Glucose Theory (VGT #48): Investigating the Role of Strain, Strain Rate, and the Viscosity Factor in Biomedical VGT Applications using Sensor FPG Versus Body Weight over 18 Months from 10/1/2020 to 3/23/2022, along with Finger FPG Versus Body Weight over 11 Years from 1/1/2012 to 3/23/2022, with Biomedical Illustrations of the Physics and Engineering Analysis Results Based

The author was a professional engineer working in the fields of the space shuttle, naval battleships, nuclear power plant, computer hardware and software, artificial intelligence, and semiconductor chips. After retiring from his work based in the disciplines of mathematics, physics, and engineering, he has initiated self-study and research on internal medicine with an emphasis on biomarker relationships exploration and disease prevention. Since 2010, he has utilized these disciplines learned from 7 different universities along with work experiences to formulate his current medical research work. One thing he has learned is that in engineering or medicine, we are seeking answers or illustrations for the relationships between the input variable (force on a structure or cause of a disease) and output variable (deformation on a structure or symptom of a disease). However, the relationships between input and output could be expressed with a matrix format of 1 x 1, 1 x n, m x 1, or m x n (m or n means different multiple variables). In addition to the described complications, the output resulting from one or more inputs can turn into another input of different outputs, i.e., a symptom of certain causes can be a cause of the different symptoms. This phenomenon becomes a complex chain “effect”. In other words, an engineering or biomedical issue is fundamentally a mathematical problem that correlates with many inherent physical laws or principles. Over the past 13 years, he has investigated approximately 100 different sets of cause/input variables versus symptom/ output variables in the biomedical field. For example, food and exercise influence the glucose level, where persistent high glucose can result in diabetes. When diabetes combines with hypertension (high blood pressure) and hyperlipidemia (high blood lipids), it can cause cardiovascular diseases. Furthermore, diabetes is also linked with various kinds of cancers. These sets of biomedical input versus output scenarios and problems have been researched by the author using different tools from mathematics, physics, computer science, and engineering. Recently, he has applied theories of viscoelasticity and viscoplasticity to various biomedical problems and has written nearly 50 papers. In this article, he selected two datasets to investigate the role played by strain, stress, strain rate, viscosity factor, and relative energy. The first dataset is a symptom of the sensor collected fasting plasma glucose (FPG) versus a cause of body weight (BW) during the 18 months from October 2020 to March 2022. The second dataset is a symptom of the finger pierced FPG versus a cause of BW during the 11 years from Y2012 to Y2022. The appearance of the two waveforms in the time domain is quite different due to two selected time windows and two glucose measurement methods.

(Invited) Nanomaterial-Based Electrochemical Sensors for the Detection of Pharmaceutical Compounds

The surging growth of the pharmaceutical industry is a result of the rapidly increasing human population, which has inevitably led to new biomedical and environmental issues. Aside from the quality control of pharmaceutical production and drug delivery, there is an urgent need for precise, sensitive, portable, and cost-effective technologies to track patient overdosing and to monitor ambient water sources and wastewater for pharmaceutical pollutants. The development of advanced nanomaterial-based electrochemical sensors for the detection of pharmaceutical compounds has garnered immense attention due to their advantages, such as high sensitivity and selectivity, real-time monitoring, and ease of use. Recently, my research team has designed and fabricated a variety of functional nanomaterials and nanocomposites. In this talk, the synthesis of nanoporous gold and the development of graphene-based nanomaterials as well as their promising applications in electrochemical sensing of different pharmaceutical compounds (e.g., acetaminophen, naproxen and isoniazid) are presented. The design rationale and the performance of the proposed electrochemical sensors are highlighted.

Segregation Practices by Health Workers in Urban Hospitals - A Step Necessary to Achieve Minimization and Effective Biomedical Waste Management

Effective segregation practice of biomedical waste is a critical process in hospital waste management and maintenance of a ‘risk-free’ health care environment. Failure to appropriately identify and isolate infectious from non-infectious wastes could lead to a myriad of health and biomedical waste management issues, which include high risk of cross-contamination, high risk of infection, difficulty in the assessment of waste generation, categorization, and composition of hospital waste. The aim of this study is to assess the segregation practice among health workers in selected hospitals in Abuja towards achieving effective waste management. A descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted among 430 participants from six hospitals in Abuja. Data were collected using a pretested, structured questionnaire and on-the-spot observation. Reliability analysis and descriptive statistics were employed for the analysis of data. Most of the respondents agreed to the segregation at the point of generation 366 (91.5%), majority of the respondents supported the use of color-coded bins for segregation. The Cronbach’s alpha α = 0.830, loading factor (0.601- 0.949) which indicates that the measuring tool was reliable and the items on the questionnaire showed co-relatedness and consistency. The study revealed that most of the respondents were sensitized and practiced the process of segregation. Although these practices were observed on the spot, they could later change thus, sustenance of these practices is expedient to maintain a lasting and workable waste management framework. Government and hospital waste management team to prioritize the segregation process through an adequate budget for supplies of segregation materials.

Social Engagement in the Fight Against COVID-19 in the Urban and Peri-Urban Areas of Cotonou (Benin, Sub-saharan Africa): Acceptability of the Vaccination and Tracking Program.

IntroductionThis article aims at investigating social engagement in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in low-resource settings (LRSs). In particular, it focuses on Benin (Sub-Saharan Africa), and reports the results of a field study that investigated the local people's acceptance of the vaccine and the tracking program.MethodsThis project is the product of a collaboration between the ABSPIE (Applied Biomedical and Signal Processing E-Health) Lab of the University of Warwick (UK) and the LAMA (Laboratoire d'Antropologie Medical Appliqué) of the University of Abomey Calavi (Benin). This international multidisciplinary collaboration brought together engineers, sociologists, anthropologists, and bioethicists. In light of the aims of the project, a qualitative methodology was deemed appropriate. The research team prepared two questionnaires that provided the basis for semi-structured interviews that took place between June and August 2021.ResultsThe research team interviewed 34 Beninese respondents, comprising people aged 60+ (with multiple comorbidities), who were primarily healthcare workers and/or traditional therapists. The results of this work highlight the fact that there is widespread reticence about the vaccination program in Benin, both due to local beliefs and uncertainty about governmental management. In this study, we uncovered several local reasons interfering with the involvement of the population in the vaccination campaign against COVID-19, e.g., the existence of traditional medical practices considered as valid alternatives to vaccines, and many beliefs showing a fear of neo-colonialism hidden in the pandemic threat. Yet, another hindrance can be traced to shortcomings in the management of the vaccination campaign which resulted in obstacles to the implementation of the program.ConclusionsThis work does not intend to denounce any governmental effort or foster a regressive mindset, but shows how the overall confusion (defined by the World Health Organization as infodemic) linked to the pandemic and its management has caused even more dramatic consequences in LRSs. In addition, the paper proposes a specific framework for the interpretation and management of bioethical and biomedical issues in LRSs that the authors are validating in their current research.

Social and health implications of alcohol consumption among women of reproductive age in Anambra state, southeast Nigeria

Much of the research concerning women’s alcohol use and misuse has focused on biomedical issues associated with female drinking; In contrast, little attention has been paid to the social dimensions of maternal drinking. Using the Symbolic interactionist’s paradigm, this paper interrogates the social and health consequences of drinking among women of reproductive age. Data were collected using a concurrent mixed research approach (quantitative and qualitative data) Three hundred and seventy-three (373) close-ended questionnaires were analysed, and in-depth interviews were conducted among 12 mothers randomly selected from different occupational backgrounds. Findings reveal that heavy alcohol intake can cause divorce in marriages, loss of social respect, stigmatisation for the children, and loss of social bonds within the family. The researcher concluded that health and social issues relating to alcohol use can only be understood within the social and cultural context. However, the paper recommends an all-encompassing approach which involves continuous sensitization of women (especially of reproductive age) on the dangers of maternal alcohol use and the need to implement policies to regulate the production, marketing, and consumption of alcohol.

Extended Duration Orbiter Medical Project

Biomedical issues have presented a challenge to flight physicians, scientists, and engineers ever since the advent of high-speed, high-altitude airplane flight in the 1940s. In 1958, preparations began for the first manned space flights of Project Mercury. The medical data and flight experience gained through Mercury's six flights and the Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab projects, as well as subsequent space flights, comprised the knowledge base that was used to develop and implement the Extended Duration Orbiter Medical Project (EDOMP). The EDOMP yielded substantial amounts of data in six areas of space biomedical research. In addition, a significant amount of hardware was developed and tested under the EDOMP. This hardware was designed to improve data gathering capabilities and maintain crew physical fitness, while minimizing the overall impact to the microgravity environment. The biomedical findings as well as the hardware development results realized from the EDOMP have been important to the continuing success of extended Space Shuttle flights and have formed the basis for medical studies of crew members living for three to five months aboard the Russian space station, Mir. EDOMP data and hardware are also being used in preparation for the construction and habitation of International Space Station. All data sets were grouped to be non-attributable to individuals, and submitted to NASA s Life Sciences Data Archive.

Bio-Medical Issues that concern the Pandemic

Bio-Medical Issues that concern the Pandemic

The evolution of reproductive rights in view of bioeconomics

The article considers a general concept of reproductive rights, its primary enshrinement into international documents, and manifestation in specific laws adopted in post-Soviet space (including the Russian Federation). Various approaches to legal regulation based on direct enshrinement of specific reproductive rights, and determination of a legal regime of assisted reproductive technologies are shown. Some examples taken from legislation of the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Kazakhstan, and the Kyrgyz Republic are given. The Western European experience based on the regulation of technologies rather than on provision of new basic human rights is presented. Effects of inclusion of reproductive technologies into economically evaluated medical industry are analyzed. It is highlighted that regulatory logic of reproductive technologies in Russia is largely based on market approaches, and any medical intervention is considered to be a civil service. Meanwhile, according to 2020 Constitutional amendments, Article 114 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation enshrined preservation of traditional values. Thus, a theological approach to the regulation of most biomedical issues seems to be relevant.

MATR: Multimodal Medical Image Fusion via Multiscale Adaptive Transformer.

Owing to the limitations of imaging sensors, it is challenging to obtain a medical image that simultaneously contains functional metabolic information and structural tissue details. Multimodal medical image fusion, an effective way to merge the complementary information in different modalities, has become a significant technique to facilitate clinical diagnosis and surgical navigation. With powerful feature representation ability, deep learning (DL)-based methods have improved such fusion results but still have not achieved satisfactory performance. Specifically, existing DL-based methods generally depend on convolutional operations, which can well extract local patterns but have limited capability in preserving global context information. To compensate for this defect and achieve accurate fusion, we propose a novel unsupervised method to fuse multimodal medical images via a multiscale adaptive Transformer termed MATR. In the proposed method, instead of directly employing vanilla convolution, we introduce an adaptive convolution for adaptively modulating the convolutional kernel based on the global complementary context. To further model long-range dependencies, an adaptive Transformer is employed to enhance the global semantic extraction capability. Our network architecture is designed in a multiscale fashion so that useful multimodal information can be adequately acquired from the perspective of different scales. Moreover, an objective function composed of a structural loss and a region mutual information loss is devised to construct constraints for information preservation at both the structural-level and the feature-level. Extensive experiments on a mainstream database demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms other representative and state-of-the-art methods in terms of both visual quality and quantitative evaluation. We also extend the proposed method to address other biomedical image fusion issues, and the pleasing fusion results illustrate that MATR has good generalization capability. The code of the proposed method is available at https://github.com/tthinking/MATR.

Public Health, Population Health and the Self-Help Movement in Recovery

The healing process for substance use disorders begins with a serious evaluation of an individual's use of alcohol or drugs. All Change appears to follow a series of stages, which is more spiral or circular than linear. Most people in early recovery progress from sobriety to relapse and back to sobriety. Most growth begins with recognizing guilt, embarrassment, and shame regarding regression (relapses) to previous stages of alcohol and drug use. Therapeutic healing can be accomplished by addressing the social determinants of health that influence many lifestyle choices and keeping our focus on the public health concerns of the community. From a behavioral health perspective, combined population health and public health focus would best be defined by the clinician’s attention to both the biomedical issues and advocacy efforts to intervene and influence these complex social, behavioral, and environmental factors that affect individual members of diverse populations within the communities that one lives and works.