Principal Effect Research Articles

Caftaric Acid Ameliorates Oxidative Stress, Inflammation, and Bladder Overactivity in Rats Having Interstitial Cystitis: An In Silico Study.

Interstitial cystitis (IC) is the principal unwanted effect associated with the use of cyclophosphamide (CYP). It results in increased oxidative stress, overexpression of proinflammatory cytokines, and bladder overactivity. Patients receiving CYP treatment had severely depreciated quality of life, as the treatment available is not safe and effective. The goal of this study was to assess the protective effect of caftaric acid in CYP-induced IC. IC was induced in female Sprague Dawley by injecting CYP (150 mg/kg, i.p.). In the present study, oral administration of caftaric acid (20, 40, and 60 mg/kg) significantly decreased inflammation. Caftaric acid significantly increased SOD (93%), CAT (92%), and GSH (90%) while decreased iNOS (97%), IL-6 (90%), TGF 1-β (83%), and TNF-α (96%) compared to the diseased. DPPH assay showed the antioxidant capacity comparable to ascorbic acid. Molecular docking of caftaric acid with selected protein targets further confirmed its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. The cyclophosphamide-induced bladder overactivity had been decreased possibly through the inhibition of M3 receptors, ATP-sensitive potassium channels, calcium channels, and COX enzyme by caftaric acid. Therefore, our findings demonstrate that caftaric acid has a considerable protective role against CYP-induced IC by decreasing the oxidative stress, inflammation, and bladder smooth muscle hyperexcitability. Thus, caftaric acid signifies a likely adjuvant agent in CYP-based chemotherapy treatments.

A Simple Solution and Dilatancy Characterization for a Circular Tunnel Excavated in the Nonlinear Strain-Softening and Nonlinear Dilatancy Rock Mass

Tunnel opening or excavation in the strain-softening rock masses primarily leads to initial stress release and rock deformation. The increasing plastic shear strain induces a nonlinear variation of dilatancy in rock masses. Therefore, tunnel stability is strongly dependent on the stress state and the strain-softening and dilatancy behaviors of rock masses. In view of this, this paper proposes an elastoplastic finite difference solution based on the triple-shear element (TS) unified strength criterion (USC) and the nonassociative flow law; thereafter, some typical examples are referred to verify its validity. This solution allows for the description of the intermediate principal stress effect, the nonlinear strain-softening and dilatancy behaviors of the rock mass. Parametric analysis finally determines the influence characteristics of the intermediate principal stress effect (b), the critical softening parameter ( η ∗ ), softening factor (δ), and support force (pi) on the dilation angle (ψ) of the rock mass in the plastic zone. The findings confirm that the intermediate principal stress mainly affects peak values of ψ, which increases as b grows. The rate of change of ψ mainly depends on η ∗ , which tends to be slower with increasing η ∗ . The variation pattern of ψ in the residual zone under different δ is generally consistent, while the variability of ψ in the softening zone is significant. For a given intermediate principal stress state and strain-softening behavior of the rock mass, the values and the developed form of ψ in the plastic zone is independent of pi.

Synergistic effect of cold gas plasma and experimental drug exposure exhibits skin cancer toxicity in vitro and in vivo

IntroductionSkin cancer is often fatal, which motivates new therapy avenues. Recent advances in cancer treatment are indicative of the importance of combination treatments in oncology. Previous studies have identified small molecule-based therapies and redox-based technologies, including photodynamic therapy or medical gas plasma, as promising candidates to target skin cancer. ObjectiveWe aimed to identify effective combinations of experimental small molecules with cold gas plasma for therapy in dermato-oncology. MethodsPromising drug candidates were identified after screening an in-house 155-compound library using 3D skin cancer spheroids and high content imaging. Combination effects of selected drugs and cold gas plasma were investigated with respect to oxidative stress, invasion, and viability. Drugs that had combined well with cold gas plasma were further investigated in vascularized tumor organoids in ovo and a xenograft mouse melanoma model in vivo. ResultsThe two chromone derivatives Sm837 and IS112 enhanced cold gas plasma-induced oxidative stress, including histone 2A.X phosphorylation, and further reduced proliferation and skin cancer cell viability. Combination treatments of tumor organoids grown in ovo confirmed the principal anti-cancer effect of the selected drugs. While one of the two compounds exerted severe toxicity in vivo, the other (Sm837) resulted in a significant synergistic anti-tumor toxicity at good tolerability. Principal component analysis of protein phosphorylation profiles confirmed profound combination treatment effects in contrast to the monotherapies. ConclusionWe identified a novel compound that, combined with topical cold gas plasma-induced oxidative stress, represents a novel and promising treatment approach to target skin cancer.

Phenol adsorption onto olive pomace activated carbon: modelling and optimization

Purpose. To depollute water contaminated by phenol using the adsorption process in a batch reactor with valorization of olive pomace for the preparation of activated carbon to be used as an adsorbent. Methodology. In this present work, study on the influence of four principal parameters on the adsorption yield during the treatment of polluted water by the process of adsorption were studied, namely: the activated carbon mass, the contact time, the phenol initial concentration and the stirring speed. In addition, the process was optimized with full factorial designs using the response surface methodology by the MINITAB software. Findings. The phenol removal by adsorption on the activated carbon made from olive pomace makes it possible to achieve an adsorption efficiency of 91 % with the use of following optimal conditions: adsorbent mass of 0.48 g, a contact time of 110.80 min, a phenol concentration of 100.98 mg/L, and a stirring speed of 462.89 rpm. Contact time and adsorbent mass showed a positive effect on phenol removal efficiency. The principal effect results illustrate that all four examined factors significantly affected the phenol removal by olive pomace activated carbon with a confidence level of 95 %. Originality. The experimental data of the phenol adsorption on the olive pomace activated carbon were examined by adjustment of a second-degree polynomial model. This model is validated by a statistical method using an analysis of variance (­ANOVA). Numerical optimization was performed by the desirability function to identify the optimal parameters for maximum phenol recovery. Practical value. In order to highlight a process for treating waters contaminated with phenol, we have chosen the processes that are considered to be best suited, which is adsorption with the recovery of a waste such as an adsorbent, which is prepared by physical and chemical activation of olive pomace. The full factorial design applied makes it possible to show the influence of each parameter independently and their dependencies, as well as to find the optimal experimental conditions quickly which lead to the realization of this process.

Macro-micro mechanical study of principal stress rotation in granular materials using DEM simulations of hollow cylinder test

The dependency of sand behavior anisotropy on microstructure reveals the importance of macro-micro mechanical analysis of the principal stresses rotation effect on the strength-deformation response of granular material. In this study multi-scale analysis of the granular material's behavior using three-dimensional discrete element method simulations of the hollow cylinder test was presented. The effect of principal stresses rotation (α) on the macro-mechanical behavior of the soil was investigated from the micro-mechanical anisotropy aspect. It was observed that principal stress rotation affects the anisotropy coefficient and directional distribution of all micro-parameters which can change the soil's behavior according to loading conditions. The stress-force-fabric relationship was used to analyze the microstructure's stress state based on micro-parameters anisotropy coefficients. In addition to the good agreement between stress-force-fabric and general stress tensors, the decreasing trend of the maximum deviator stress and internal friction coefficient angle with increasing α can be observed for both stress tensors.

Influence of stress state on dynamic behaviors of concrete under true triaxial confinements

The strain rate sensitivity and stress state are two important factors affecting the mechanical behavior of concrete under dynamic load. However, few studies involved high strain rates and different stress states. Herein, the strain rate effect and intermediate principal stress effect of concrete are studied by using the true triaxial Hopkinson test system, and the influence of heterogeneity under dynamic load is also discussed. A series of experiments, including the static biaxial and static triaxial confinements, are conducted to investigate the intermediate principal stress effects by a dynamic testing system for cubic concrete specimens under static triaxial confinements. The results show that the triaxial experimental data show good consistency with the dynamic M-C strength, but the biaxial experimental data deviate greatly from the dynamic M-C strength, which indicates evident the intermediate principal stress effect. The Drucker-Prager (D-P) model is then modified to describe the intermediate principal stress dependence and loading rate effect by introducing the Lode angle (θ) and the strain rate, and better simulation results are obtained. The meso finite element model (meso‑FEM) is employed to further explain the effects of non-uniformity in concrete specimens, and a Weibull-type modification is introduced to describe the transversal inertia effect due to concrete heterogeneity. Although the relative dynamic stress (η=(σx−σe)/σx) in the x-axis is rate-dependent, hydrostatic pressure-dependent, and size-dependent, the relation of η to the stress triaxiality is insensitive to these effects. This work would provide experimental and theoretical guidance for the effect of stress state on the mechanical behavior of concrete under dynamic load.

Condominium to the Country: The Sprawl of Ownership within Private Local Government in British Columbia

As a form of land ownership, condominium enables subdivision and produces local government. Designed to facilitate the production of apartments as distinct parcels of land, ownership within condominium now dominates many urban housing markets. In some jurisdictions, including British Columbia, condominium (labelled strata property) may also be deployed to subdivide land for single-house lots within a structure of private local government. The principal effect of extending condominium to unbuilt land is not to enable subdivision, which is something that was already possible and common, but, rather, to endow groups of single-house lot owners with fiscal capacity and governing authority to assume important aspects of local government. Through an analysis of bare land strata property in British Columbia, we reveal how the condominium form, which brought an architecture of ownership and government from the homeowners association of the American suburbs to the North American city, has spread back from the city into the suburban, exurban, and rural, producing a sprawl of ownership within private local government.

Influence of moisture content and intermediate principal stress on cracking behavior of sandstone subjected to true triaxial unloading conditions

The presence of water has been confirmed to play an important role in affecting the failure properties of underground surrounding rock when subjected to complicated stress circumstances. In the current study, the crack propagation behavior of red sandstone affected by various moisture contents and intermediate principal stresses were investigated by using the QKX-YB200 true triaxial test system with unloading minimum principal stress. The experimental results demonstrate that the failure mode can be divided into shear, tension with shear, and slabbing. A clear observation of the fractured specimen shows that the extensional cracks tend to increase while shear cracks gradually diminish with the increase of moisture content and intermediate principal stress. For natural sandstone (with lower moisture content), the transition of failure mode from shear to slabbing requires higher intermediate principal stress. However, with the increase of moisture content, the occurrence of slabbing failure requires lower intermediate principal stress. The analysis of failure process indicates that the presence of water may restrain the possibility of rockburst, and the intermediate principal stress exhibits distinct functions in the failure behavior of natural and saturated sandstone. The surface microscopic morphological characteristics and acoustic emission signal feature were also analyzed to validate the transformation of the cracking mode. The current research indicated that the water-induced micro defect and damage effect, “water wedge” effect, intermediate principal stress effect are the key factors that contribute to the final slabbing failure in immersed hard rocks under true‑triaxial unloading conditions.

Biotechnological plant breeding applied to purple blackberries

The current project addresses the great potential of S. caripense Dunal (Tzimbalo) for intraspecific breeding and interspecific gene flow towards the related commercial crop S. muricatum Aiton (Pepino) to develop fruits with improved antioxidants, flavor, and fruit weight. This study aims to determine the interaction between genotype x altitude and identify significant differences between treatments according to fruit weight. Tzimbalo varieties GenPurpura, Gennbiotz, and GenDulce, were used. Fruit weight was analyzed using a factorial experiment under a completely randomized design (CRD). The interaction Var. x m.a.s.l. was significant (mean ± SE), Gennbiotz:a1 (4.88 g ± 0.44; C) and GenDulce:a2 (4.38 g ± 0.25; BC), followed by GenPurpura:a1 (3.33 g ± 0.36; AB); also the principal effect Var. was significant, Gennbiotz (3.93 g ± 0.23; B) and GenDulce (3.64 g ± 0.25; B), followed by GenPurpura (2.90 g ± 0.19; A). These results demonstrate distinctness, uniformity, and stability (DUS) of at least one tzimbalo variety. Fruit weight and other characteristics are relevant to improve quality and commercial potential. They are used to develop biofortified beer, jam, ice cream, and plant tissue culture media with sucrose and vitamins to strengthen biotechnological production in Cotopaxi-Ecuador. Keywords: factorial experiment; tzimbalo varieties; fruit quality; genotype; agri-biotechnology.

A generalized nonlinear three-dimensional failure criterion based on fracture mechanics

Based on fracture mechanics theory and wing crack model, a three-dimensional strength criterion for hard rock was developed in detail in this paper. Although the basic expression is derived from initiation and propagation of a single crack, it can be extended to microcrack cluster so as to reflect the macroscopic failure characteristic. Besides, it can be derived as Hoek–Brown criterion when the intermediate principal stress σ2 is equal to the minimum principal stress σ3. In addition, the opening direction of the microcrack cluster decreases with the increase of the intermediate principal stress coefficient, which could be described by an empirical function and verified by 10 kinds of hard rocks. Rock strength is influenced by the coupled effect of stress level and the opening direction of the microcrack clusters related to the stress level. As the effects of these two factors on the strength are opposite, the intermediate principal stress effect is induced.

Assessing the Commonly Used Assumptions in Estimating the Principal Causal Effect in Clinical Trials

–In clinical trials, it is often of interest to understand the Principal Causal Effect (PCE), the average treatment effect for a principal stratum (a subset of patients defined by the potential outcomes of one or more post-baseline variables). Commonly used assumptions include monotonicity, principal ignorability, and cross-world assumptions of principal ignorability and principal strata independence. In this article, we evaluate these assumptions through a 2 × 2 cross-over study in which the potential outcomes under both treatments can be observed, provided there are no carry-over and study period effects. From this example, it seemed the monotonicity assumption and the within-treatment principal ignorability assumptions did not hold well. On the other hand, the assumptions of cross-world principal ignorability and cross-world principal stratum independence conditional on baseline covariates seemed reasonable. With the latter assumptions, we estimated the PCEs, defined by whether the blood glucose standard deviation increased in each treatment period, without relying on the cross-over feature, producing estimates close to the results when exploiting the cross-over feature. To the best of our knowledge, this article is the first attempt to evaluate the plausibility of commonly used assumptions for estimating PCEs using a cross-over trial.

Targeting interleukin-4 and interleukin-13 in the treatment of severe eosinophilic asthma

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory airway disease affecting about 300 million people and responsible for 500,000 deaths annually globally. Eosinophilic asthma is one of the most common phenotypes of asthma. It constitutes about 50% to 60% of all cases of asthma, and it is the most common phenotype in children presenting with severe acute asthma. The mechanism of eosinophilic asthma is chronic airway inflammation which leads to airway hyperresponsiveness, and remodeling due to the immunopathological effects of inflammatory cytokines. The duet cytokines interleukin-4 (IL-4) and IL-13 play the most central role in the pathophysiology of eosinophilic asthma. The two sister cytokines are slightly similar with a 25% homology, they share a common signaling IL-4Rα chain, and have identical biological effects. Their principal biological effect is the development of Th2 cells from naïve T helper type 0 (Th0) lymphocytes. Th2 cells produce several cytokines responsible for inducing airway eosinophilic inflammation. They induce the ε isotype switch and the switching of the B cell immunoglobulin (Ig) production from IgM to IgE. Furthermore, they stimulate eosinophil proliferation, and migration to the allergic airways and promote eosinophil survival by suppressing eosinophil apoptosis. Activated eosinophils secrete several cytotoxic cationic proteins which damage the airway epithelium, and amplify the inflammatory cascade and airway remodeling. Most patients with eosinophilic asthma can achieve control on a long-acting β2-agonist, inhaled corticosteroid, and a leukotriene receptor antagonist. However, about 3.6-10% do not achieve asthma control. These patients usually benefit from treatment with a biologic. Dupilumab is the only biologic targeting IL-4 and IL-13 approved for the treatment of moderate-to-severe eosinophilic asthma. Clinical trials have shown that treatment with dupilumab results in good asthma control, and significantly reduces moderate-to-severe exacerbation rates (p < 0.001). Additionally, treatment with dupilumab has been shown to significantly improve lung function (p < 0.001), and health-related quality of life, and allows patients to taper or discontinue corticosteroid treatment.

Bayesian inference for a principal stratum estimand on recurrent events truncated by death.

Recurrent events are often important endpoints in randomized clinical trials. For example, the number of recurrent disease-related hospitalizations may be considered as a clinically meaningful endpoint in cardiovascular studies. In some settings, the recurrent event process may be terminated by an event such as death, which makes it more challenging to define and estimate a causal treatment effect on recurrent event endpoints. In this paper, we focus on the principal stratum estimand, where the treatment effect of interest on recurrent events is defined among subjects who would be alive regardless of the assigned treatment. For the estimation of the principal stratum effect in randomized clinical trials, we propose a Bayesian approach based on a joint model of the recurrent event and death processes with a frailty term accounting for within-subject correlation. We also present Bayesian posterior predictive check procedures for assessing the model fit. The proposed approaches are demonstrated in the randomized Phase III chronic heart failure trial PARAGON-HF (NCT01920711).

Upper bound analysis of the anti-seismic stability of slopes considering the effect of the intermediate principal stress

Considering the intermediate principal stress effect of soils, the unified strength theory was applied to correct the shear strength index of soils. Based on a mechanical model of the anti-seismic stability of slopes, the analytical formula of the stability coefficient was deduced by the upper bound method and the quasi-static method. Then the optimal solution of the stability coefficient was figured out via the Matlab software. The result shows that, if the intermediate principal stress is ignored, the shear strength of soils would obviously be underestimated; this is also the case with the slope stability coefficient, the relative error of which could reach 39.87%. The horizontal and vertical seismic forces significantly affect slope stability. When the horizontal seismic force is considered, the slope stability coefficient Ns is reduced by 79.82%. Similarly, if the seismic effect is not neglected, the stability of the slope would be seriously overestimated. Slope cutting can significantly improve slope stability. When the slope angle is reduced from 90° to 50°, the stability factor increases by 279.82%. The suitable design angle of the slope is between 50° and 60° without taking into account additional elements like groundwater level and stratum structure.

基于谷歌地球引警和改进型遥感生态指数的西安市生态环境质量动态监测

PDF HTML阅读 XML下载 导出引用 引用提醒 基于谷歌地球引警和改进型遥感生态指数的西安市生态环境质量动态监测 DOI: 10.5846/stxb202112103510 作者: 作者单位: 作者简介: 通讯作者: 中图分类号: 基金项目: 国家自然科学基金项目（41371220，42071345）；陕西省重点研发项目（2020ZDLSF06-07） Dynamic monitoring of eco-environmental quality in Xi'an based on GEE and adjusted RSEI Author: Affiliation: Fund Project: National?Natural?Science?Foundation?of?China,No.41371220,No.42071345；Key Research and Development Program of Shaanxi Province,No.2020ZDLSF06-07 摘要 | 图/表 | 访问统计 | 参考文献 | 相似文献 | 引证文献 | 资源附件 | 文章评论 摘要:近年来，在经济全球化的背景下，西安市经济迅速增长，生态环境问题日益突出，快速全面地定量监测生态环境质量的时空变化，对指导生态环境保护具有重要意义。基于谷歌地球引警（GEE）平台，筛选2000、2004、2010、2015、2020年及其前后各一年的四季Landsat影像，利用主成分分析基于绿度（NDVI）、热度（LST）、干度（NDSI）、湿度（Wet）和气溶胶光学厚度（AOD）构建改进型遥感生态指数（ARSEI），实现西安市2000-2020年生态环境质量的动态监测，并运用莫兰指数（Moran's I）探讨西安市生态环境质量的空间自相关。以主成分效果最好的夏季为例，结果表明：（1）构建的ARSEI将大气污染因素考虑在内，第1主成分（PC1）贡献度在83%以上，能较好地集中各指标特征，有助于更加全面地评价研究区生态环境质量；（2）西安市2000-2020年平均ARSEI分别为0.565、0.521、0.572、0.644、0.695，生态环境质量总体呈现先退化后转好的趋势。20年来，生态环境质量较差和极差等级的面积减少了1339.08 km2，主要分布在秦岭以北地区，良好和极好等级区面积增加了2241.80 km2，主要位于南部的秦岭地区；（3）西安市生态环境质量改善区面积大于退化区，改善和退化情况在各辖区均有发生。2000-2004年退化情况最为严重，占比29.41%，而2010-2015年改善区占比最大，达31.62%；（4）5个年度的全局莫兰指数（Global Moran's I）均在0.627以上，表明西安市生态环境质量的空间分布具有较强的正相关，呈聚集分布，且以高-高、低-低分布为主。研究基于GEE平台实现了西安市生态环境质量的快速监测，可为生态环境监测与治理保护提供方法借鉴与数据支撑。 Abstract:As the capital city of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an has experienced rapid economic growth and urbanization under the economic globalization background in recent decades and still besets by increasingly prominent ecological problems. Xi'an is also one of the typical cities suffering from severe aerosol pollution in China. Rapidly and comprehensively quantitative monitoring of the spatio-temporal variations of eco-environmental quality in Xi'an is crucial for regional eco-environmental guidance and protection. This study was carried out on Google Earth Engine (GEE), a new cloud-computing platform with the merits of easy access to tremendous public resources and convenient processing of substantially geospatial data. Four-season Landsat images of 2000, 2004, 2010, 2015, 2020 and those previous-successive target years were selected firstly. Then, principal component analysis (PCA) was used to improve the previously developed remote sensing ecological index (RSEI) by adding aerosol optical depth (AOD) to it, and an adjusted RSEI (ARSEI) including greenness (NDVI), heat (LST), dryness (NDSI), humidity (Wet) and AOD was proposed to dynamically monitor the eco-environmental quality in Xi'an from 2000 to 2020. Moreover, Moran index was adopted to explore the spatial autocorrelation of the eco-environmental quality in Xi'an. Using summer, the season with the best principal component effect, as an example, the results showed that:(1) taking the effect of air pollution into account, the first principal component (PC1) contribution of ARSEI proposed in this paper was more than 83%. ARSEI could better concentrate the characteristics of each index and provide a more comprehensive evaluation for the eco-environmental quality of Xi'an. (2) The average ARSEIs of Xi'an from 2000 to 2020 were 0.565, 0.521,0.572, 0.644 and 0.695, respectively, indicating that the urban eco-environmental quality degraded from 2000 to 2004 and promoted from 2004 to 2020. In the past 20 years, the areas with poor and very poor eco-environmental quality decreased by 1339.08 km2, which were mainly located in the north of Qinling Mountains. The areas with good and excellent eco-environmental quality increased by 2241.80 km2 and were concentrated in Qinling areas, southern part of the city. (3) The improved areas were larger than the degraded areas in Xi'an over the past 20 years, and each district has undergone both the improvement and degradation processes. It was worth noting that the city experienced the worst degradation from 2000 to 2004, accounting for 29.41%, and the greatest improvement between 2010 and 2015, accounting for 31.62%. Generally speaking, the eco-environmental quality of Xi'an has been improved in the past 20 years. (4) All the five Global Moran's I values were above 0.627 in 2000, 2004, 2010, 2015 and 2020, which indicated that the spatial distribution of the urban eco-environmental quality has a strongly positive correlation. The LISA cluster map showed that the aggregation distribution was dominated by high-high and low-low patterns. The low-low areas were mainly located in the northern Qinling Mountains, while the high-high areas were concentrated in the southern part of the city. Based on GEE cloud platform, this study accomplished fast eco-environmental quality monitoring in Xi'an and will provide method reference and data support for regional eco-environmental monitoring, management and restoration. 参考文献 相似文献 引证文献

Numerical study of the effect of sidewalls on shock train behaviour

Strongly coupled sequences of shock waves, known as shock trains, are present in high-speed propulsion systems, where the presence of sidewalls substantially modifies the boundary layer thickness, skin friction and streamwise pressure distribution. In the present contribution, scale-resolved numerical simulations are performed on supersonic channel (infinite span) and square duct flows to evaluate the effect of sidewall confinement with and without shock trains. Comparable secondary flow vortices are observed in the duct case with and without the presence of the shock train. The absence of a separation region at the leading shock of the duct case results in lower flow deflection compared with the channel case, leading to a reduced shock strength. The principal effect of the sidewalls is to cause a shock train that is approximately twice as long and composed of a larger number of shocks. A modification of previous models, based on a momentum thickness-based blockage parameter, leads to an improved collapse of the channel and duct cases.

COVID-19 and the central nervous system: What is the interplay?

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019-2020, the highly contiguous disease caused by coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spread worldwide in a short life span causing a disastrous effect and nearly 5.8 million deaths until February 2022. This global health crisis caused concerns about the disease's aetiology, epidemiology, and management. Understanding the virus's long- and short-term consequences on diverse human body organs and systems was one of the scientist's concerns despite the virus' respiratory system principal effect. Thus, after reporting neurological symptoms in approximately one-third of hospitalised patients with COVID-19, demonstrating how COVID-19 infects the central nervous system (CNS), causing neurodegenerative diseases in various patients and how the virus affects CNS function became quintessential. There are various mechanisms for COVID-19 pathophysiology, some implicating the potential virus invasion of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Trans-synaptic and hematogenous routes are the main routes for the virus to pass through the barrier. Binding to the BBB endothelial cells is causing significant alterations in the permeability and integrity properties of the barrier, which cause an elevation of the incidence rate of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis among COVI-19 patients. COVID-19 patients developed neurological manifestations ranging from mild symptoms to severe diseases such as headache and loss of smell, encephalitis and CNS-mediated respiratory distress. However, encephalitis is not a common complication, and it has a significant mortality rate in severely ill patients due to the hyperactivation of the host immune response. Although more investigations are needed, severe COVID- 19 patients are considered at a high risk of neurodegenerative disorder as a long-term consequence of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The Effect of Principal Academic Supervision and Job Satisfaction on Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) Through Teacher Work Motivation

The purpose of this study was to examine how teacher job satisfaction and principal academic supervision effect organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The researchers employed a path analysis model and a quantitative methodology. There were 114 studies and 160 participants in the study. The principal's academic supervision (3 2 items), job satisfaction (21 items), work motivation (20 items), and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) (31 things), all of which have undergone validity and reliability testing, were used as the instruments for data collection. The path analysis was utilized to analyze the study's data. The study's findings revealed that the principal's academic supervision had an effect on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB), job satisfaction with organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB), and work motivation for organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). These findings also revealed that the principal's academic supervision had an effect on work motivation, job satisfaction with work motivation, and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) through work motivation.

Why Biomass Fuels Are Principally Not Carbon Neutral

In order to realistically fulfil global and national climate protection targets, all potential measures have to be made use of to a maximum extent. Because it is readily available, biomass energy has been playing a key practical role for decades, supported by the traditional assumption of its carbon neutrality: under sustainable conditions, carbon dioxide emitted during combustion is held to be equal to its absorption during plant growth. In order to clarify conditions of carbon (C) neutrality, it is therefore necessary to model the annual natural C cycle on the entire planet and to include changes caused by a variety of growth strategies for biomass fuels. The “Combined Energy and Biosphere Model” CEBM calculates the cycle of plant growth, decay, biomass fuel production and its combustion on 2433 grid elements worldwide. CEBM results suggest that over many decades, the C pools of litter and especially soil organic carbon (i.e., humus layer) deplete considerably as a consequence of the interrupted natural carbon cycle. Overall, based on this finding, the earlier assumption of “carbon-neutral biomass fuels” is disapproved of in a long-term evaluation and—as a coarse rule of thumb—might be reduced to “half as carbon neutral as previously assumed” (when compared to a current fuel mix). On top of this principal effect, it is well known that life-cycle emissions, indirect or secondary emissions such as energy input related to production, transport and conversion into fuels will still add to this already principally highly incomplete carbon neutrality of biomass.

Assessing treatment effect through compliance score in randomized trials with noncompliance

A randomized trial is the gold standard for assessing the benefit of a treatment versus a control. When noncompliance is present, treatment effect depends on the tendency to comply—an attribute that is not directly measurable. Though the principal causal effect has been the most important for handling noncompliance, it is not immediately applicable to clinical decision-making as it targets the average effect in the latent strata of potential compliance. In this work, we propose the concept of compliance score, a linear combination of baseline characteristics, that uncovers the inherent attribute of compliance. We then assess the heterogeneous causal effect, namely, the causal effect of treatment as a function of baseline characteristics through the compliance score. A pseudo-response, along with a nonparametric estimation procedure, is proposed to ensure consistent and optimally efficient estimation. Compare to principal causal effect, the proposed effect is actionable and allows prediction of treatment effect at individual level. This work is motivated by and applied to a clinical trial to evaluate the benefit of antiretroviral regimens in HIV-infected patients.