| 1. |
- Alves, Marina Amaral, et al.
(författare)
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Systems biology approaches to study lipidomes in health and disease
- 2021
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Ingår i: Biochimica et Biophysica Acta - Molecular and Cell Biology of Lipids. - : Elsevier. - 1388-1981 .- 1879-2618. ; 1866:2
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Lipids have many important biological roles, such as energy storage sources, structural components of plasma membranes and as intermediates in metabolic and signaling pathways. Lipid metabolism is under tight homeostatic control, exhibiting spatial and dynamic complexity at multiple levels. Consequently, lipid-related disturbances play important roles in the pathogenesis of most of the common diseases. Lipidomics, defined as the study of lipidomes in biological systems, has emerged as a rapidly-growing field. Due to the chemical and functional diversity of lipids, the application of a systems biology approach is essential if one is to address lipid functionality at different physiological levels. In parallel with analytical advances to measure lipids in biological matrices, the field of computational lipidomics has been rapidly advancing, enabling modeling of lipidomes in their pathway, spatial and dynamic contexts. This review focuses on recent progress in systems biology approaches to study lipids in health and disease, with specific emphasis on methodological advances and biomedical applications.
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| 2. |
- Bertoluci, Jaime, et al.
(författare)
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Anuran fauna of the Parque Estadual Carlos Botelho - Nficleo Sete Barras, southeastern Brazil: species composition, use of breeding sites, and seasonal patterns of breeding activity
- 2021
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Ingår i: Biota neopropica. - : REVISTA BIOTA NEOTROPICA. - 1678-6424 .- 1676-0603. ; 21:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The goal of this work was to study the species composition, the use of breeding sites, and the seasonal patterns of breeding activity of the anuran fauna from Parque Estadual Carlos Botelho - Nucleo Sete Barras, state of Sao Paulo, southeastern Brazil. Fieldwork was carried out from September 2005 to October 2007 through two main methods: active visual search inside a 10 ha- permanent plot and aural and visual search in seven previously selected aquatic breeding habitats. Species richness was related to the sampling effort by means of species accumulation curve and through non-parametric estimators. Thirty-three species distributed in 12 families were recorded, from which 69% are endemic to the Atlantic Forest. Trachycephalus mesophaeus represents a new record for the park. Cycloramphus lutzorum is included as Data Deficient in the IUCN list. The species accumulation curve did not stabilize, showing some tendency to rise. The use of breeding sites by 20 species was compared using cluster analysis, which revealed two major groups: the first with five species (two habitat generalists and three stream specialists) and the second composed by the other species (with different reproductive modes associated with flooded environments). The breeding period of most species was associated to the rainy season (October to February), and only Scinax hayii showed continuous breeding activity during the entire period of study.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- da Cunha, Wiliam Ferreira, et al.
(författare)
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Quasiparticle description of transition metal dichalcogenide nanoribbons
- 2019
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Ingår i: Physical Review B. - : AMER PHYSICAL SOC. - 2469-9950 .- 2469-9969. ; 99:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- An effective two-dimensional real-space model is developed to investigate the nature of charge distribution in nanoribbons of transition metal dichalcogenides. Our description is based on a lattice relaxation endowed tight-binding Hamiltonian with spin-orbit and Hubbard interactions, which is parameterized to describe molybdenum disulfide lattices. As our main finding, we observed that electron-phonon coupling induces the creation of quasiparticles such as polarons in the same fashion as observed in conducting polymers and graphene nanoribbons. These similarities suggest that the charge transport in transition metal dichalcogenides can also be mediated by quasiparticles, which is a fundamental aspect concerning the application of these structures in electronics. We determine a range of possible electron-phonon coupling that correctly describes the system and also the critical value where quasiparticle transport is present. Our findings may have profound consequences on the understanding of the transport mechanism of transition metal dichalcogenides nanoribbons.
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| 5. |
- Daelman, Bo, et al.
(författare)
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Frailty and cognitive function in middle-aged and older adults with congenital heart disease
- 2024
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Ingår i: Journal of the American College of Cardiology. - : Elsevier. - 0735-1097 .- 1558-3597. ; 83:12, s. 1149-1159
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Life expectancy of patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) has increased rapidly, resulting in a growing and aging population. Recent studies have shown that older people with CHD have higher morbidity, health care use, and mortality. To maintain longevity and quality of life, understanding their evolving medical and psychosocial challenges is essential.Objectives: The authors describe the frailty and cognitive profile of middle-aged and older adults with CHD to identify predictor variables and to explore the relationship with hospital admissions and outpatient visits.Methods: Using a cross-sectional, multicentric design, we included 814 patients aged ≥40 years from 11 countries. Frailty phenotype was determined using the Fried method. Cognitive function was assessed by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment.Results: In this sample, 52.3% of patients were assessed as robust, 41.9% as prefrail, and 5.8% as frail; 38.8% had cognitive dysfunction. Multinomial regression showed that frailty was associated with older age, female sex, higher physiologic class, and comorbidities. Counterintuitively, patients with mild heart defects were more likely than those with complex lesions to be prefrail. Patients from middle-income countries displayed more prefrailty than those from higher-income countries. Logistic regression demonstrated that cognitive dysfunction was related to older age, comorbidities, and lower country-level income.Conclusions: Approximately one-half of included patients were (pre-)frail, and more than one-third experienced cognitive impairment. Frailty and cognitive dysfunction were identified in patients with mild CHD, indicating that these concerns extend beyond severe CHD. Assessing frailty and cognition routinely could offer valuable insights into this aging population.
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| 6. |
- de Sousa, Leonardo Evaristo, et al.
(författare)
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Dynamical exciton decay in organic materials: the role of bimolecular recombination
- 2019
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Ingår i: Physical Chemistry, Chemical Physics - PCCP. - : ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY. - 1463-9076 .- 1463-9084. ; 21:4, s. 1711-1716
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Excitons play a critical role in light emission when it comes to organic semiconductors. In high exciton concentration regimes, monomolecular and bimolecular routes for exciton recombination can yield different products affecting significantly the materials optical properties. Here, the dynamical decay of excitons is theoretically investigated using a kinetic Monte Carlo approach that addresses singlet exciton diffusion. Our numerical protocol includes two distinct exciton-exciton interaction channels: exciton annihilation and biexciton cascade emission. Our findings reveal that these channels produce different consequences concerning diffusion and spectroscopic properties, being able to explain diverging experimental observations. Importantly, we estimate critical exciton densities for which bimolecular recombination becomes dominant and investigate its effect on average exciton lifetimes and diffusion lengths.
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| 7. |
- Dias, Diogenes dos Santos, et al.
(författare)
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Large scale manufacturing of puree-only edible films from onion bulb (Allium cepa L.): Probing production and structure–processing–property correlations
- 2020
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Ingår i: Industrial Crops and Products. - : Elsevier BV. - 0926-6690. ; 145:March
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The demand for bioplastics from renewable sources for a range of emerging applications has been as extensive as the efforts to find greener routes for their isolation from nature. Surfing this wave, we report on the production of flexible, optically semi-transparent onion-only bioplastics through different all-aqueous film-forming procedures encompassing hydrothermal, grinding, washing, and/or sieving pre-solvent casting steps. The onion bioplastics were extensively characterized targeting correlations among chemical structure, film-forming protocol, and film properties. HPLC evidenced insoluble carbohydrates/polysaccharides in all samples, though at different contents (11–44%) depending on processing, but washing lixiviated all soluble carbohydrates – the presence of ca. 14% of the latter in unwashed samples provided their films with reduced glass transition temperature – from 73–83 to 13 °C, as indicated by DSC; elastic modulus and tensile strength – from 1.5–3.2 GPa to 47 MPa and from 7–21 to 3 MPa, respectively; increased elongation at break – from 0.7–1.6% to 22%; and decreased contact angle with water – from 39-70° to 22° (in comparison with washed samples). Additionally, SEM provided morphological aspects; thermogravimetry indicated thermal stability profile; FTIR led to hydrogen bond energy [kJ] and distance [Å] as well as total crystallinity index (0.43–0.96), lateral order index (0.8–3.2), and hydrogen bonding intensity (13–4.7); and XRD determined the index of crystallinity (21–49%). Finally, the hydrophilic/hydrophobic nature, water barrier, and moisture sorption of the bioplastics were determined. Altogether, we herein depict the production of novel bioplastics made up exclusively of onion and used a range of characterization techniques to come up with relevant structure-processing-property correlations.
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| 8. |
- Dias, Nicole Geovana, et al.
(författare)
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Intimate Partner Violence and Use of Primary and Emergency Care : The Role of Informal Social Support
- 2020
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Ingår i: Health & Social Work. - : Oxford academic. - 0360-7283 .- 1545-6854. ; 45:2, s. 91-100
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Social support may encourage victims to disclose their experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV), but also to seek the appropriate help and care in the social and health services. Using data from a multicenter European project, DOVE (Domestic Violence Against women/men in Europe-prevalence, determinants, effects, and policies/practices), the present study aimed at measuring the frequency of primary care and emergency use according to IPV types of victimization, and to investigate whether victims receiving different levels of informal social support are using health care differently. Results suggested a significant association between IPV types and use of emergency services, and no association was found regarding primary care services. Victims of physical abuse and sexual coercion went to the emergency department (ED) more frequently (more than once a year). Also, victims of physical abuse receiving low social support visited an ED more frequently than those with high social support, whereas victims of sexual coercion with high informal social support went more often to the ED compared with victims of sexual coercion with low social support, even after controlling for other covariates. These results seem to suggest that social support has a significant role in the decision to use health care among victims of IPV.
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| 9. |
- Hansson, Nicolaj C., et al.
(författare)
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The impact of calcium volume and distribution in aortic root injury related to balloon-expandable transcatheter aortic valve replacement
- 2015
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Ingår i: JOURNAL OF CARDIOVASCULAR COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY. - : ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC. - 1934-5925. ; 9:5, s. 382-392
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: A detailed assessment of calcium within the aortic root may provide important additional information regarding the risk of aortic root injury during transcatheter heart valve replacement (TAVR). Objective: We sought to delineate the effect of calcium volume and distribution on aortic root injury during TAVR. Methods: Thirty-three patients experiencing aortic root injury during TAVR with a balloon-expandable valve were compared with a control group of 153 consecutive TAVR patients without aortic root injury (as assessed by post-TAVR multidetector CT). Using commercial software to analyze contrast-enhanced pre-TAVR CT scans, caltium volume was determined in 3 regions: (1) the overall left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT), extending 10 mm down from the aortic annulus plane; (2) the upper LVOT, extending 2 mm down from the annulus plane; and (3) the aortic valve region. Results: Calcium volumes in the upper LVOT (median, 29 vs 0 mm(3); P less than .0001) and overall LVOT (median, 74 vs 3 mm(3); P = .0001) were higher in patients who experienced aortic root injury compared with the control group. Calcium in the aortic valve region did not differ between groups. Upper LVOT calcium volume was more predictive of aortic root injury than overall LVOT calcium volume (area under receiver operating curve [AUG]; 0.78; 95% confidence interval, 0.69-0.86 vs AUC, 0.71; 95% confidence interval, 0.62-0.82; P = .010). Upper LVOT calcium below the noncoronary cusp was significantly more predictive of aortic root injury compared to calcium underneath the right coronary cusp or the left coronary cusp (AUC, 0.81 vs 0.68 vs 0.64). Prosthesis oversizing greater than20% (likelihood ratio test, P = .028) and redilatation (likelihood ratio test, P = .015) improved prediction of aortic root injury by upper LVOT calcium volume. Conclusion: Calcification of the LVOT, especially in the upper LVOT, located below the noncoronary cusp and extending from the annular region, is predictive of aortic root injury during TAVR with a balloon-expandable valve. (C) 2015 Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography. All rights reserved.
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| 10. |
- Lamichhane, Santosh, et al.
(författare)
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Linking Gut Microbiome and Lipid Metabolism : Moving beyond Associations
- 2021
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Ingår i: Metabolites. - : MDPI. - 2218-1989 .- 2218-1989. ; 11:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Various studies aiming to elucidate the role of the gut microbiome-metabolome co-axis in health and disease have primarily focused on water-soluble polar metabolites, whilst non-polar microbial lipids have received less attention. The concept of microbiota-dependent lipid biotransformation is over a century old. However, only recently, several studies have shown how microbial lipids alter intestinal and circulating lipid concentrations in the host, thus impacting human lipid homeostasis. There is emerging evidence that gut microbial communities play a particularly significant role in the regulation of host cholesterol and sphingolipid homeostasis. Here, we review and discuss recent research focusing on microbe-host-lipid co-metabolism. We also discuss the interplay of human gut microbiota and molecular lipids entering host systemic circulation, and its role in health and disease.
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