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The past three decades have seen a surge in access to information (ATI) legislation at the global level. The right to freely review government information has become a component of political liberalization movements in countries transitioning to democracy as well as reform efforts in already established democracies. ATI is seen as an important measure in fighting corruption and promoting transpare
Mammalian metabolism comprises a series of interlinking pathways that include two major cycles: the folate and methionine cycles. The folate-mediated metabolic cycle uses several oxidation states of tetrahydrofolate to carry activated one-carbon units to be readily used and interconverted within the cell, which are required for nucleotide synthesis, methylation and metabolism, particularly for pro
Disturbances of the gut microbiota may influence the development of various autoimmune diseases. This study investigated the effects of supplementations with the probiotic bacteria, Lactiplantibacillus plantarum HEAL9 and Lacticaseibacillus paracasei 8700:2, on the microbial community in children with celiac disease autoimmunity (CDA). The study included 78 genetically predisposed children for cel
Molecular profiling of extracellular vesicles (EVs) offers novel opportunities for diagnostic applications, but the current major obstacle for clinical translation is the lack of efficient, robust, and reproducible isolation methods. To bridge that gap, we developed a microfluidic, non-contact, and low-input volume compatible acoustic trapping technology for EV isolation that enabled downstream sm
Current immune-based therapies signify a major advancement in cancer therapy; yet, they are not effective in the majority of patients. Physically based local destruction techniques have been shown to induce immunologic effects and are increasingly used in order to improve the outcome of immunotherapies. The various local destruction methods have different modes of action and there is considerable
Background: Stable atherosclerotic plaques are characterized by thick fibrous caps of smooth muscle cells, collagen, and macrocalcifications. Identifying factors of plaque stability is necessary to design drugs to prevent plaque rupture and symptoms. Osteomodulin, originally identified in bones, is expressed by bone synthesizing osteoblasts and involved in mineralization. In the present study, we
Circulating inflammatory markers are essential to human health and disease, and they are often dysregulated or malfunctioning in cancers as well as in cardiovascular, metabolic, immunologic and neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the genetic contribution to the physiological variation of levels of circulating inflammatory markers is largely unknown. Here we report the results of a genome-wide gen
The age of COVID-19 calls for a different approach toward global well-being and flourishing through the transcendence suffering as advocated by existential positive psychology. In the present study, we primarily explained what self-transcendence is and why it represents the most promising path for human beings to flourish through the transformation of suffering in a difficult and uncertain world.
Purpose: The dependence of patients with chronic diseases on drugs may affect their health-related quality of life (HRQoL). This study aims to assess the relationship between the direct economic burden caused by out-of-pocket (OOP) payments, drug accessibility, sociodemographic characteristics, and health-related quality of life. Methods: 1,055 patients with chronic diseases from Gansu, Hebei, Sic
We show that a generalized version of the holographic principle can be derived from the Hamiltonian description of information flow within a quantum system that maintains a separable state. We then show that this generalized holographic principle entails a general principle of gauge invariance. When this is realized in an ambient Lorentzian space-time, gauge invariance under the Poincaré group is
The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual introduced the diagnosis of Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) for acute pathological reactions including dissociative ones, following a traumatic event. Various measures of ASD have been developed, with the Stanford Acute Stress Reaction Questionnaire (SASRQ) being one of the most commonly used across the world. This paper systematically covers
PURPOSE: Underground diesel exhaust exposure is an occupational health risk. It is not known how recent intensified emission legislation and use of renewable fuels have reduced or altered occupational exposures. We characterized these effects on multipollutant personal exposure to diesel exhaust and underground ambient air concentrations in an underground iron ore mine.METHODS: Full-shift personal
Recently, multi-agent systems have become a central study topic in many different disciplines including biology, engineering, physics, and social science. This has led to the emergence of large and constantly growing interdisciplinary research field, known as network science. The analysis of the mathematical models describing such systems has achieved significant results, but remains mostly an ope
Stability of Wardrop equilibria is analyzed for dynamical transportation networks in which the drivers' route choices are influenced by information at multiple temporal and spatial scales. The considered model involves a continuum of indistinguishable drivers commuting between a common origin/destination pair in an acyclic transportation network. The drivers' route choices are affected by their, r
A single-letter characterization is provided for the capacity region of finite-state multiple-access channels, when the channel state process is an independent and identically distributed sequence, the transmitters have access to partial (quantized) state information, and complete channel state information is available at the receiver. The partial channel state information is assumed to be asymmet
The problem of reliably transmitting a real-va lued random vector through a digital noisy channel is relevant for the design of distributed estimation and control techniques over networked systems. One important example consists in the remote state estimation under communication constraints. In this case, an anytime transmission scheme consists of an encoder-which maps the real vector into a seque
A class of large-scale stochastic discrete-time continuous-opinion dynamical systems is analyzed. Agents have pairwise random interactions in which their vector-valued opinions are updated to a weighted average of their current values. The intensity of the interactions is allowed to depend on the agents' opinions themselves through an interaction kernel. This class of models includes as a special
Technological advances have increased the energy performance of integrated daylighting and lighting systems to unprecedented levels. The shift to LED technologies, innovative shadings, and advanced lighting and shading controls promises a dramatic reduction in energy use for lighting. Work will continue to save more energy with technological solutions, but additional savings can be attained by und
The capacity of finite Abelian group codes over symmetric memoryless channels is determined. For certain important examples, such as m-PSK constellations over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels, with m a prime power, it is shown that this capacity coincides with the Shannon capacity; i.e., there is no loss in capacity using group codes. (This had previously been known for binary-linear
