Era Of Hope Research Articles

Transition Metal Complexes as Therapeutics: A New Frontier in Combatting Neurodegenerative Disorders through Protein Aggregation Modulation.

Neurodegenerative disorders (NDDs) are a class of debilitating diseases that progressively impair the protein structure and result in neurological dysfunction in the nervous system. Among these disorders, Alzheimer's disease (AD), prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), and Parkinson's disease (PD) are caused by protein misfolding and aggregation at the cellular level. In recent years, transition metal complexes have gained significant attention for their potential applications in diagnosing, imaging, and curing these NDDs. These complexes have intriguing possibilities as therapeutics due to their diverse ligand systems and chemical properties and can interact with biological systems with minimal detrimental effects. This review focuses on the recent progress in transition metal therapeutics as a new era of hope in the battle against AD, CJD, and PD by modulating protein aggregation in vitro and in vivo. It may shed revolutionary insights into unlocking new opportunities for researchers to develop metal-based drugs to combat NDDs.

Advances and Challenges in Cancer Stem Cells for Onco-Therapeutics

Six decades have passed since the foundational recognition of the primary properties of the stem cells. Research on stem cells has since remained at the forefront of efforts to combat a spectrum of diseases, most notably cancer. Despite remarkable progress in medical science, a definitive cure for cancer has remained elusive, spurring the pursuit of diverse therapeutic strategies, among which stem cell therapy is a particularly promising avenue. Moreover, the utilization of cancer stem cells as a therapeutic source holds immense potential for addressing intractable diseases. The strategy of targeting cancer stem cells is beset with challenges, including immune rejection and disease relapse. Additionally, the capacity to inadvertently generate cancer stem cells upon transplantation underscores the critical need to eliminate these cells to ensure the efficacy of cell-based therapies. This paper underscores the pivotal role of cancer stem cells in onco-therapeutics and their potential to aid in early cancer diagnosis. With the proliferation of tissue banks and their collection of malignant tissue types, a renewable source of medications to combat cancer is on the horizon. While cancer stem cell-based therapy presents sophisticated and significant challenges, it offers unprecedented opportunities to extend human life. Continued technological advancements in stem cell therapy promise to provide new insights and refine approaches for cancer treatment, ushering in a new era of hope and innovation in the fight against this formidable disease.

Reductive Amination of Levulinic Acid to Pyrrolidones: Key Step in Biomass Valorization towards Nitrogen-Containing Chemicals.

Nowadays, the field of biomass conversion is gradually moving towards an encouraging stage. The preparation of nitrogen-containing chemicals using various biomass resources instead of fossil resources do not only reduce carbon emissions, but also diversify the products of biomass conversion, thus increasing the economic competitiveness of biomass refining systems. Levulinic acid (LA) can be used as a promising intermediate in biomass conversion for further synthesis of pyrrolidone via reductive amination. However, there are still many critical issues to be solved. Particularly, the specific effects of catalysts on the performance of LA reductive amination have not been sufficiently revealed, and the potential impacts of key conditional factors have not been clearly elucidated. In view of this, this review attempts to provide theoretical insights through an in-depth interpretation of the above key issues. The contribution of catalysts to the reductive amination of LA as well as the catalyst structural preferences for improving catalytic performance are discussed. In addition, the role of key conditional factors is discussed. The insights presented in this review will contribute to the design of catalyst nanostructures and the rational configuration of green reaction conditions, which may provide inspiration to facilitate the nitrogen-related transformation of more biomass platform molecules.

Brain Tuberculosis: An Odyssey through Time to Understand This Pathology.

Tuberculosis is a contagious disease that has been a concern for humanity throughout history, being recognized and referred to as the white plague. Since ancient times, starting with Hippocrates and Galen of Pergamon, doctors and scientists have attempted to understand the pathogenesis of tuberculosis and its manifestations in the brain. If, in the medieval period, it was believed that only the touch of a king could cure the disease, it was only in the early 17th and 18th centuries that the first descriptions of tuberculous meningitis and the first clinico-pathological correlations began to emerge. While the understanding of neurotuberculosis progressed slowly, it was only after the discovery of the pathogenic agent in the late 19th century that there was an upward curve in the occurrence of treatment methods. This review aims to embark on an odyssey through the centuries, from ancient Egypt to the modern era, and explore the key moments that have contributed to the emergence of a new era of hope in the history of neurotuberculosis. Understanding the history of treatment methods against this disease, from empirical and primitive ones to the emergence of new drugs used in multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, leads us, once again, to realize the significant contribution of science and medicine in treating a disease that was considered incurable not long ago.

Examining the New York Times coverage of the crisis at the southern border in Biden’s America

With Biden’s election in 2020, the United States and the world anticipated a major shift in US immigration policy and a different approach to the US–Mexico border crisis. This study examines how media covered this through a textual analysis of 40 news stories published by the New York Times (NYT) between November 2020 and November 2021. It identifies four categories of content: ‘the Biden presidency – an era of hope and positive change’; ‘causes and complexities of the southern border crisis’; ‘critique of the Biden presidency’ and ‘migrant journeys, of confusion, suffering and hope’. Subcategories are also developed for these categories. The findings indicate that though violence in Central America is still a primary driver leading to a migrant surge at the US southern border, climate crises and the COVID-19 pandemic are two major events causing more migrations from Central America as well as bringing in new migrants to the United States from other countries around the world. The study shows that though the NYT does not portray the migrants negatively and offers some context about the causes of the crisis and a critique of the Biden administration’s handling of the crisis, the reporting lacks a long-term perspective about the deeper causes of the crisis.

A retrospective cohort study of Libmeldy (atidarsagene autotemcel) for MLD: What we have accomplished and what opportunities lie ahead.

Metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) results from ARSA gene mutations. Affected individuals meet early milestones before neurological deterioration and early death. Atidarsagene autotemcel (arsa-cel), an autologous haematopoietic stem cell gene therapy (HSC-GT) product, has demonstrated sustained clinical benefits in MLD. Arsa-cel was approved for NHS treatment in February 2022 for asymptomatic late infantile or early juvenile disease, or early symptomatic early juvenile MLD. We evaluate the impact of this approval in the largest real-world dataset of MLD HSC-GT. Hospital records were reviewed for all patients referred for NHS treatment following arsa-cel approval. Information was gathered about disease phenotype, presentation, eligibility, and affected siblings. In the year following NHS approval, 17 UK MLD patients were referred for treatment. Four patients met eligibility criteria and have been treated, including 1 infant who weighed 5 kg at leukapheresis. Eleven patients failed screening: 10 symptomatic patients with late infantile disease and 1 with early juvenile disease and cognitive decline. Two further patients with later onset subtypes did not meet the approval criteria. Three out of four treated patients were diagnosed by screening after MLD was diagnosed in a symptomatic older sibling. The success of HSC-GT for MLD has heralded a new era of hope for families affected by this devastating disease, yet currently, most patients are ineligible for treatment at diagnosis. The feasibility of apheresis in infants and the availability of a licenced, effective HSC-GT product highlights the urgent need for newborn screening to ensure that patients can be diagnosed and treated before symptom onset.

Understanding the mode of transmission of malaria agents: an astonishing series of hypotheses, observations, research and controversy

In 1880, Laveran observed the causative agent of malaria. As early as 1884, he considered that mosquitoes could be responsible for the transmission of haematozoa, a hypothesis which resulted from the observation and reflection of an informed hygienist. But, as Laveran himself said, "the opinion that I defended was considered by most observers to be highly unlikely".Nearly 15 years after the discovery of the haematozoan, the elucidation of the mechanism of transmission still proved difficult to establish. A link with the existence of swamps had been established a long time before, but the true mode of transmission remained a mystery until the end of the 19th century. The implication, by Manson in 1877, of mosquitoes in the cycle of the Bancroftian filaria, then other observations of the same order, ended up attracting the attention of malariologists. Laveran himself was quickly convinced of the role of mosquitoes in carrying out the natural cycle and propagating Plasmodium, but this theory had as many detractors as supporters.In 1897, Ross showed the presence of oocysts on the stomach of mosquitoes previously gorged on a malaria patient, then in 1898, of sporozoites of bird plasmodia in mosquitoes. He was convinced that, through their bite, these insects were responsible for the transmission of human malaria agents, without being able to prove it. The results obtained by Ross were immediately confirmed in Italy by Grassi and his collaborators who, in November 1898, described the stages of Plasmodium in man and, through various experiments carried out in collaboration with British researchers, showed the role of Anopheles, a result far from being accepted by all. Skepticism persisted for a long time.An excellent protozoologist, Laveran was not an entomologist. He was however among the first defenders of the anopheline theory. He worked extensively on establishing the relationships between Anopheles mosquitoes and malaria and took a close interest in the environmental conditions of the transmission. In his mind, malaria fever should henceforth be classified as a preventable disease. An era of hope thus dawned: malaria prophylaxis, based on fight against mosquitoes, could begin.

Lipid-mRNA nanoparticles landscape for cancer therapy.

Intracellular delivery of message RNA (mRNA) technique has ushered in a hopeful era with the successive authorization of two mRNA vaccines for the Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. A wide range of clinical studies are proceeding and will be initiated in the foreseeable future to treat and prevent cancers. However, efficient and non-toxic delivery of therapeutic mRNAs maintains the key limited step for their widespread applications in human beings. mRNA delivery systems are in urgent demand to resolve this difficulty. Recently lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) vehicles have prospered as powerful mRNA delivery tools, enabling their potential applications in malignant tumors via cancer immunotherapy and CRISPR/Cas9-based gene editing technique. This review discusses formulation components of mRNA-LNPs, summarizes the latest findings of mRNA cancer therapy, highlights challenges, and offers directions for more effective nanotherapeutics for cancer patients.

An era of hope, ambition and collaborative partnerships

An era of hope, ambition and collaborative partnerships

Optimizing Treatment of Breast Cancer Related Lymphedema Using Combined DIEP Flap and Lymphedema Surgery.

Patients undergoing treatment for breast cancer who undergo an axillary dissection and require adjuvant therapies such as radiation and chemotherapy are at high risk of developing lymphedema of the associated extremity. Historically, patients with lymphedema were treated with ablative procedures aimed simply to remove excess fluid and adiposity; however, the field of lymphatic surgery employing super-microsurgery techniques has witnessed tremendous advances in a relatively short period of time. Advancements in surgical instruments, microscope magnification and optics, imaging technology, and surgeon experience have ushered in a new era of hope to treat patients suffering from breast cancer–related lymphedema (BCRL). Here we aim to present the available options for patients suffering from BCRL, and the pinnacle in reconstruction and restoration for these patients.

The Post-Soviet Space and Turkey: The Results of 30 Years

The article scrutinizes the main results of the 30-year independent existence of the former Soviet republics under the conditions of modern political realities and the formation of a polycentric system of international relations, where regional states such as Turkey begin to exert an increasing influence on the ongoing processes. Based on the results of the analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, two trends have developed in the post-Soviet space: integration and disintegration. e main task of the Republic of Turkey in the post-Soviet region is to set the pro-Turkish model of integration of key Turkic states and to create the so-called “Turkic world” – a new subsystem of international relations under its auspices. In order to implement these plans, Ankara pursues three main goals in the post-Soviet space: to replace the “Turkic” with the “Turkish”; secondly, to bring loyal elites to power in the partner countries; and to concentrate the movement of resources within the framework of the “hub” ideology. Meanwhile, during its interaction with the former USSR countries Turkey has passed or is still passing through several stages: the “era of hope”, the “step-by-step era” and the “era of Turkish-centric integration”, which continues up to the present time and is expressed in exerting a significant influence on the Turkic actors.

Anthropology and diplomacy

Diplomacy is today undergoing rapid change, shaken by new populisms, seismic shifts in the balance of world powers, the digital revolution, planetary crisis and declining confidence in institutions of world governance that were conceived in a more hopeful era. Far from offering another idealistic solution, this introduction sketches a theorization anchored in the comparison of empirical case studies that lie outside of classic definitions of diplomacy, centred on relations between states. By privileging a pragmatic and interactionalist approach, and through attention to the particular political inventiveness of the vanquished, it aims to identify some commonalities across diverse diplomatic situations, namely a particular relation to violence (not always one of exclusion), the invention of rituals that model, in miniature, the world, and the destabilizing imitation of the other.

Left ventricular assist device therapy: the Kuwait experience.

Heart Failure is an epidemic with a current prevalence of over 5.8 million patients in the USA and almost 23 million patients worldwide, with high associated mortality risks. The severe shortage of donor organs for cardiac transplants and increasing number of heart failure patients has led to the increasing popularity of left ventricular assist device (LVAD) therapy for treatment of end-stage heart failure patients. This paper describes our initial clinical experience with LVAD therapy of heart failure patients at our clinic. Ten patients (eight males and two females) with a mean age of 48 years (range, 14-68 years) were implanted with LVADs as bridge to transplantation (BT) or destination therapy (DT) at our clinic between January 2015 and October 2017. Preliminary results were very promising with 0% 30-day mortality rates and no major surgical complications or LVAD thrombosis. Such results of LVAD implantation in Kuwait indicate the feasibility of establishing De Novo LVAD programs in low volume LVAD centers (≤10 implants/year) with promising results and offer a new era of hope for treating advanced heart failure patients.

Are the walls giving way to fences? Is racial integration within Kwadukuza municipality leading to income-based class segregation?

The racial and development imbalances created by apartheid have made a profound impact on the urban and social landscape in South Africa. Despite it being 20 years into the dawn of a new South Africa, many parts of society are still bearing the brunt of the harsh impacts of apartheid. The first democratic elections in 1994 heralded a new era of hope and optimism for a better life in a racially integrated country. However 20 years into democracy, it is essential to monitor changes in integration. Literature suggests that, in the absence of legally enforced segregation as with apartheid, society will segregate itself on class or other factors. The purpose of this study is to measure whether the changes in racial integration are leading to class-based segregation in KwaDukuza, South Africa. The Neighbourhood Diversity Index was used to investigate how the racial patterns changed over the years and a Geographic Weighted Regression (GWR) model was used to determine if there is a relationship between racial integration and income that could explain transference from racial to classed-based segregation. The study found that low levels of racial integration have taken place but certain areas of the municipality have become increasingly segregated. The GWR model found a positive relationship between income and racial segregation in certain areas. This study further highlights that politicians, decision makers, and town and social planners face a long and socially demanding challenge in redressing past imbalances and promoting integration by breaking down the current trend of class-based segregation.

Targeted therapy combined with immunotherapy in gastrointestinal stromal tumor: a new era of hope and challenges

New immunotherapy represented by immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy and chimeric antigen receptor T-Cell immunotherapy (CAR-T) has already become hot trend in the treatment of malignant tumors. In gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), with notable tumor-infiltrating immune cells existing in GIST tissues and immunological effects reported in imatinib mesylate (IM) treatment, the clinicians and researchers started to realize the possibilities of immunotherapy in GIST. Recent studies reported that PD-1/PD-L1 or CTLA-4 blockade may enhance the T-cell activity and anti-tumor effect of targeted therapy, which can be applied in advanced GIST, and anti-KIT CAR T-cells indicated a new immunotherapeutic targeted strategy for GIST patients with TKI resistance. All the immunotherapies in GIST mentioned above are frontline researches but their efficacies still need more evidence from clinical trials to verify.

Through children’s eyes

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore young students' perceptions about the impacts of Indian residential schools. A hopeful era of reconciliation has been ushered in to confront the injustices committed to approximately 150,000 indigenous children and youth in Canada’s Indian residential schools in the not-so-distant past. Of these children, there were at least 6,000 recorded deaths; those who survived, faced the devastating impacts of forced assimilation. In the spirit of making “relation to and with the past, opening us to a reconsideration of the terms of our lives now as well as in the future” (Simon, 2006, p. 189), the author invited eight- and nine-year-olds to depict their thoughts about Indian residential schools. Design/methodology/approach A practitioner inquiry stance was used in this study. This approach takes into account that teachers are uniquely positioned to carry out highly contextualized classroom research. The data include a documentary analysis, observations of students’ work and short interview-like prompts. The data also included stimulated recall using student-participant responses to elicit feelings, thoughts, attitudes and beliefs (Freeman, 1998). A collaborative approach to the data analysis“engaging the author’s own and students’ interpretations of their work”allowed for a range of perspectives that address representativeness (Cornish et al., 2014). Findings Students’ representations reveal that even young children engage in political thought by understanding governance structures that are impinged upon young lives in Indian residential schools. The students in this study positioned themselves as “cultural citizens” (Kuttner, 2015) by contributing compelling ideas on power, relationships, displacement, assimilation and identity, in their mixed media texts. Rather than reducing what they had learned only to questions of oppression, they proposed possibilities of living a more ethical present by including teachings about living more ethically than those that have come before them. Originality/value This work aims to deepen decolonizing possibilities in classroom research, particularly in elementary classrooms.

Addressing the Challenges of Pathogen Evolution on the World's Arable Crops.

Advances in genomic and molecular technologies coupled with an increasing understanding of the fine structure of many resistance and infectivity genes, have opened up a new era of hope in controlling the many plant pathogens that continue to be a major source of loss in arable crops. Some new approaches are under consideration including the use of nonhost resistance and the targeting of critical developmental constraints. However, the major thrust of these genomic and molecular approaches is to enhance the identification of resistance genes, to increase their ease of manipulation through marker and gene editing technologies and to lock a range of resistance genes together in simply manipulable resistance gene cassettes. All these approaches essentially continue a strategy that assumes the ability to construct genetic-based resistance barriers that are insurmountable to target pathogens. Here we show how the recent advances in knowledge and marker technologies can be used to generate more durable disease resistance strategies that are based on broad evolutionary principles aimed at presenting pathogens with a shifting, landscape of fluctuating directional selection.

INSIDE INDUSTRY

Speed Reading for Broken Bones. Sanofi Pasteur's Dengue Vaccine Approved in the Philippines. Breakthrough Medicines Usher in Hopeful Era for Lung Cancer Patients. Genetic Technologies Announces Publication of Key Scientific Validation Results in Support of BREVAGenplus®. Pioneering Artificial Pancreas to Undergo Final Tests. Novaseek Research and Massachusetts Hospital Association (MHA) Partner to Help Hospitals and Patients Contribute to Biomedical Research.

Post-imperial Nostalgia and Miguel Gomes’ Tabu

With Europe in a prolonged and threatening political crisis, post-imperial nostalgia, the dreaming of a glorious past that never was, is a current threat. Fuelled by instability, a loss of hope for a better future, and the collapse of emancipatory ideologies in the face of a seemingly unstoppable global capitalism that has entered a savage phase, imperial nostalgia is more than a simple palliative for the present malaise. In the case of Portugal, with a still-fragile democratic society after many decades of numbing totalitarian rule, imperial nostalgia is all the more ominous given the fact that the loss of empire has not yet been properly assimilated by the society at large. Miguel Gomes’ recent and internationally acclaimed film Tabu (2012) plays along this fraught ideological terrain by imagining a ‘lost Africa’ that plays in aesthetically seductive imagery, shot in black and white, the dream of a more innocent and hopeful era in the current imagination of a Portugal wrecked by debilitating and systemic sovereign debt. The film, also effusively received by the general public, appeals to the past and ironizes it, both in historical terms as well as in relation to other cinema and especially its cited predecessor, Friedrich W. Murnau's eponymous 1931 film. A more detailed analysis of the film's imbrication in cinematic and imperial histories can help sketch out an analysis of the complexity of post-imperial nostalgia.

Disoriented Temporalities: Narrating postcolonial Progress(ions) in the Novels of Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Ahmadou Kourouma.

Gilbert Ndi Shang Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, University of Bayreuth Email: ndishang@yahoo.co.uk Tel:004917637065255 Postal Address: Bussardweg 43, Bayreuth 95445, Bayern- Germany Abstract The African novel is one of the prescient prisms through which social, cultural and political transformations on the continent can be apprehended. As such, it is not merely a site of reflection on the society, but a pole of constructive imagination on the intricate link between the past and the present, the global and the local, the ephemeral and the enduring. In this paper, we examine artistic representations of “moments of change” and historical progression in Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow and Kourouma’s En Attendant le Vote des Betes Sauvages . Through diverse narrative techniques, characterization and thematic articulations, we examine how the two novels expose the ‘disturbed movement’ of historical “progression”in the postcolony wherein the new era of hope often carries shades of the past and seeds of future disillusionment. Transitions therefore become instances where past practices are embedded and complexified in the present. However, despite the tendency towards historical determinism in the two novels whereby any moment of change is fictionalized as a repetition of history, both authors, through different artistic forms and with different intensity, expound an open-ended and equivocal future where hope is juxtaposed with despair and optimism contrasted with uncertainty.