scholarly journals mRNA vaccines: Why is the biology of retroposition ignored?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomislav Domazet-Lošo
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Insertional Mutagenesis ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Vaccine Safety ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Genome Integration ◽  
Scientific Papers ◽  
Evolutionary Aspects

The major advantage of mRNA vaccines over more conventional approaches is their potential for rapid development and large-scale deployment in pandemic situations. In the current COVID-19 crisis the two mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been conditionally approved and broadly applied, while others are still in clinical trials. However, there is no previous experience with the use of mRNA vaccines on the large scale in general population. This warrants a careful evaluation of mRNA vaccine safety properties by considering all available knowledge on the mRNA molecular biology and evolution. Here, I discuss the pervasive claim that mRNA-based vaccines cannot alter genomes. Surprisingly, this notion is widely stated in the mRNA vaccine literature, but never supported by referencing any primary scientific papers that would specifically address this question. This discrepancy becomes even more puzzling if one considers previous work on the molecular and evolutionary aspects of retroposition in murine and human populations that clearly documents the frequent integration of mRNA molecules into genomes, including clinical contexts. By performing basic comparisons, I showed that the sequence features of mRNA vaccines meet all known requirements for retroposition by L1 elements — the only active and the most abundant retrotransposons in the human genome. In contrast, I found an evolutionary bias in the set of known retrocopy generating genes — a pattern that might help in the future development of retroposition-resistant therapeutic mRNAs. I conclude that is unfounded to a priori assume that mRNA-based therapeutics do not impact genomes, and that the route to genome integration of vaccine mRNAs via endogenous L1 retroelements is easily conceivable. This implies that we urgently need experimental studies that would rigorously test for the potential retroposition of vaccine mRNAs. At present, the insertional mutagenesis safety of mRNA-based vaccines should be considered unresolved.

scholarly journals A Fully Coupled Simulation of Planar Deposition Flow and Fiber Orientation in Polymer Composites Additive Manufacturing

Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 2596
Author(s):  
Zhaogui Wang ◽  
Douglas E. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Additive Manufacturing ◽  
Polymer Composites ◽  
Fiber Orientation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene ◽  
Numerical Approach ◽  
Fully Coupled ◽  
Fiber Interaction

Numerical studies for polymer composites deposition additive manufacturing have provided significant insight promoting the rapid development of the technology. However, little of existing literature addresses the complex yet important polymer composite melt flow–fiber orientation coupling during deposition. This paper explores the effect of flow–fiber interaction for polymer deposition of 13 wt.% Carbon Fiber filled Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (CF/ABS) composites through a finite-element-based numerical approach. The molten composite flow in the extrusion die plus a strand of the deposited bead contacting the deposition substrate is modelled using a 2D isothermal and incompressible Newtonian planar flow model, where the material deposition rate is ~110 mm/s simulating a large scale additive manufacturing process. The Folgar–Tucker model associated with the Advani–Tucker orientation tensor approach is adopted for the evaluation of the fiber orientation state, where the orthotropic fitted closure is applied. By comparing the computed results between the uncoupled and fully coupled solutions, it is found that the flow-orientation effects are mostly seen in the nozzle convergence zone and the extrusion-deposition transition zone of the flow domain. Further, the fully coupled fiber orientation solution is highly sensitive to the choice of the fiber–fiber interaction coefficient , e.g., assigning as 0.01 and 0.001 results in a 23% partial relative difference in the predicted elastic modulus along deposition direction. In addition, Structural properties of deposited CF/ABS beads based on our predicted fiber orientation results show favorable agreements with related experimental studies.

scholarly journals Leisure Time Sports Activities and Life Satisfaction: Deeper Insights Based on a Representative Survey from Germany

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Mutz ◽  
Anne K. Reimers ◽  
Yolanda Demetriou
Keyword(s):  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Leisure Time ◽  
Organizational Context ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Activity Level ◽  
Leisure Satisfaction ◽  
General Life Satisfaction ◽  
Sports Activities

Abstract Observational and experimental studies show that leisure time sporting activity (LTSA) is associated with higher well-being. However, scholars often seem to assume that 1) LTSA fosters “general” life satisfaction, thereby ignoring effects on domain satisfaction; 2) the effect of LTSA on well-being is linear and independent of a person’s general activity level; 3) the amount of LTSA is more important than the repertoire of LTSA, i.e. the number of different activities; 4) all kinds of LTSA are equal in their effects, irrespective of spatial and organisational context conditions. Using data from the German SALLSA-Study (“Sport, Active Lifestyle and Life Satisfaction”), a large-scale CAWI-Survey (N = 1008) representing the population ≥ 14 years, the paper takes a closer look on these assumptions. Findings demonstrate that LTSA is associated with general life satisfaction and domain-specific satisfaction (concerning relationships, appearance, leisure, work and health), but that the relationship is most pronounced for leisure satisfaction. Associations of sport with life satisfaction, leisure satisfaction and subjective health are non-linear, approaching an injection point from which on additional LTSA is no longer beneficial. Moreover, findings lend support to the notion that diversity in LTSA matters, as individuals with higher variation in sports activities are more satisfied. Finally, results with regard to spatial and organizational context suggest that outdoor sports and club-organized sports have additional benefits.

scholarly journals Faster than warp speed: early attention to COVD-19 by anti-vaccine groups on Facebook

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth C Kalichman ◽  
Lisa A Eaton ◽  
Valerie A Earnshaw ◽  
Natalie Brousseau
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Vaccine Development ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Development Program ◽  
Vaccine Safety ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Vaccine Information

Abstract Background The unprecedented rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines has faced SARS-CoV- (COVID-19) vaccine hesitancy, which is partially fueled by the misinformation and conspiracy theories propagated by anti-vaccine groups on social media. Research is needed to better understand the early COVID-19 anti-vaccine activities on social media. Methods This study chronicles the social media posts concerning COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines by leading anti-vaccine groups (Dr Tenpenny on Vaccines, the National Vaccine Information Center [NVIC] the Vaccination Information Network [VINE]) and Vaccine Machine in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic (February–May 2020). Results Analysis of 2060 Facebook posts showed that anti-vaccine groups were discussing COVID-19 in the first week of February 2020 and were specifically discussing COVID-19 vaccines by mid-February 2020. COVID-19 posts by NVIC were more widely disseminated and showed greater influence than non-COVID-19 posts. Early COVID-19 posts concerned mistrust of vaccine safety and conspiracy theories. Conclusion Major anti-vaccine groups were sowing seeds of doubt on Facebook weeks before the US government launched its vaccine development program ‘Operation Warp Speed’. Early anti-vaccine misinformation campaigns outpaced public health messaging and hampered the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.

scholarly journals High-Rate Transition Metal-based Cathode Materials for Battery-Supercapacitor Hybrid Devices

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cong Wang ◽  
Zehao Song ◽  
Pei Shi ◽  
Lin Lv ◽  
Houzhao Wan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Electronic Devices ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Specific Power ◽  
Energy Storage Devices ◽  
Storage Devices ◽  
Electrochemical Devices ◽  
Hybrid Devices ◽  
Scale Grid

With the rapid development of portable electronic devices, electric vehicles and large-scale grid energy storage devices, it needs to reinforce specific energy and specific power of related electrochemical devices meeting...

scholarly journals Why does the spread of COVID-19 vary greatly in different countries? Revealing the efficacy of face masks in epidemic prevention

2021 ◽  
Vol 149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jincheng Wei ◽  
Shurui Guo ◽  
Enshen Long ◽  
Li Zhang ◽  
Bizhen Shu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Isolation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Weighted Average ◽  
Filtration Efficiency ◽  
Volume Distribution ◽  
Particle Sizes ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Protection Measure ◽  
Source Of Infection

Abstract The severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is highly contagious, and the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by it has forced many countries to adopt ‘lockdown’ measures to prevent the spread of the epidemic through social isolation of citizens. Some countries proposed universal mask wearing as a protection measure of public health to strengthen national prevention efforts and to limit the wider spread of the epidemic. In order to reveal the epidemic prevention efficacy of masks, this paper systematically evaluates the experimental studies of various masks and filter materials, summarises the general characteristics of the filtration efficiency of isolation masks with particle size, and reveals the actual efficacy of masks by combining the volume distribution characteristics of human exhaled droplets with different particle sizes and the SARS-CoV-2 virus load of nasopharynx and throat swabs from patients. The existing measured data show that the filtration efficiency of all kinds of masks for large particles and extra-large droplets is close to 100%. From the perspective of filtering the total number of pathogens discharged in the environment and protecting vulnerable individuals from breathing live viruses, the mask has a higher protective effect. If considering the weighted average filtration efficiency with different particle sizes, the filtration efficiencies of the N95 mask and the ordinary mask are 99.4% and 98.5%, respectively. The mask can avoid releasing active viruses to the environment from the source of infection, thus maximising the protection of vulnerable individuals by reducing the probability of inhaling a virus. Therefore, if the whole society strictly implements the policy of publicly wearing masks, the risk of large-scale spread of the epidemic can be greatly reduced. Compared with the overall cost of social isolation, limited personal freedoms and forced suspension of economic activities, the inconvenience for citizens caused by wearing masks is perfectly acceptable.

scholarly journals High-Throughput Phenotyping Methods for Breeding Drought-Tolerant Crops

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (15) ◽  
pp. 8266
Author(s):  
Minsu Kim ◽  
Chaewon Lee ◽  
Subin Hong ◽  
Song Lim Kim ◽  
Jeong-Ho Baek ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Drought Stress ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Crop Yields ◽  
Plant Traits ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Plant Responses ◽  
Phenotypic Data ◽  
Agricultural Technologies ◽  
High Throughput Phenotyping

Drought is a main factor limiting crop yields. Modern agricultural technologies such as irrigation systems, ground mulching, and rainwater storage can prevent drought, but these are only temporary solutions. Understanding the physiological, biochemical, and molecular reactions of plants to drought stress is therefore urgent. The recent rapid development of genomics tools has led to an increasing interest in phenomics, i.e., the study of phenotypic plant traits. Among phenomic strategies, high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) is attracting increasing attention as a way to address the bottlenecks of genomic and phenomic studies. HTP provides researchers a non-destructive and non-invasive method yet accurate in analyzing large-scale phenotypic data. This review describes plant responses to drought stress and introduces HTP methods that can detect changes in plant phenotypes in response to drought.

scholarly journals Interventions to optimize medication use in nursing homes: a narrative review

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Spinewine ◽  
Perrine Evrard ◽  
Carmel Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Homes ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Adverse Drug Events ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Medication Use ◽  
Nursing Home Residents ◽  
Qualitative Studies ◽  
Patient Centered ◽  
Barriers And Enablers ◽  
Specific Medication

Abstract Purpose Polypharmacy, medication errors and adverse drug events are frequent among nursing home residents. Errors can occur at any step of the medication use process. We aimed to review interventions aiming at optimization of any step of medication use in nursing homes. Methods We narratively reviewed quantitative as well as qualitative studies, observational and experimental studies that described interventions, their effects as well as barriers and enablers to implementation. We prioritized recent studies with relevant findings for the European setting. Results Many interventions led to improvements in medication use. However, because of outcome heterogeneity, comparison between interventions was difficult. Prescribing was the most studied aspect of medication use. At the micro-level, medication review, multidisciplinary work, and more recently, patient-centered care components dominated. At the macro-level, guidelines and legislation, mainly for specific medication classes (e.g., antipsychotics) were employed. Utilization of technology also helped improve medication administration. Several barriers and enablers were reported, at individual, organizational, and system levels. Conclusion Overall, existing interventions are effective in optimizing medication use. However there is a need for further European well-designed and large-scale evaluations of under-researched intervention components (e.g., health information technology, patient-centered approaches), specific medication classes (e.g., antithrombotic agents), and interventions targeting medication use aspects other than prescribing (e.g., monitoring). Further development and uptake of core outcome sets is required. Finally, qualitative studies on barriers and enablers for intervention implementation would enable theory-driven intervention design.

scholarly journals Cloud-based intelligent self-diagnosis and department recommendation service using Chinese medical BERT

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Junshu Wang ◽  
Guoming Zhang ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Ka Zhang ◽  
Yehua Sheng
Keyword(s):  
Cloud Computing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Medical Service ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Language Models ◽  
Computing Environment ◽  
Computing Power ◽  
Cloud Computing Environment ◽  
Proposed Model

AbstractWith the rapid development of hospital informatization and Internet medical service in recent years, most hospitals have launched online hospital appointment registration systems to remove patient queues and improve the efficiency of medical services. However, most of the patients lack professional medical knowledge and have no idea of how to choose department when registering. To instruct the patients to seek medical care and register effectively, we proposed CIDRS, an intelligent self-diagnosis and department recommendation framework based on Chinese medical Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) in the cloud computing environment. We also established a Chinese BERT model (CHMBERT) trained on a large-scale Chinese medical text corpus. This model was used to optimize self-diagnosis and department recommendation tasks. To solve the limited computing power of terminals, we deployed the proposed framework in a cloud computing environment based on container and micro-service technologies. Real-world medical datasets from hospitals were used in the experiments, and results showed that the proposed model was superior to the traditional deep learning models and other pre-trained language models in terms of performance.

scholarly journals Opportunistic Large Array Propagation Models: A Comprehensive Survey

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 4206
Author(s):  
Farhan Nawaz ◽  
Hemant Kumar ◽  
Syed Ali Hassan ◽  
Haejoon Jung
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficient ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Performance Metrics ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Cooperative Transmission ◽  
Analytical Models ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Large Array ◽  
Propagation Models ◽  
Comprehensive Survey

Enabled by the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond 5G communications, large-scale deployments of Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks are expected in various application fields to handle massive machine-type communication (mMTC) services. Device-to-device (D2D) communications can be an effective solution in massive IoT networks to overcome the inherent hardware limitations of small devices. In such D2D scenarios, given that a receiver can benefit from the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) advantage through diversity and array gains, cooperative transmission (CT) can be employed, so that multiple IoT nodes can create a virtual antenna array. In particular, Opportunistic Large Array (OLA), which is one type of CT technique, is known to provide fast, energy-efficient, and reliable broadcasting and unicasting without prior coordination, which can be exploited in future mMTC applications. However, OLA-based protocol design and operation are subject to network models to characterize the propagation behavior and evaluate the performance. Further, it has been shown through some experimental studies that the most widely-used model in prior studies on OLA is not accurate for networks with networks with low node density. Therefore, stochastic models using quasi-stationary Markov chain are introduced, which are more complex but more exact to estimate the key performance metrics of the OLA transmissions in practice. Considering the fact that such propagation models should be selected carefully depending on system parameters such as network topology and channel environments, we provide a comprehensive survey on the analytical models and framework of the OLA propagation in the literature, which is not available in the existing survey papers on OLA protocols. In addition, we introduce energy-efficient OLA techniques, which are of paramount importance in energy-limited IoT networks. Furthermore, we discuss future research directions to combine OLA with emerging technologies.

scholarly journals Solid Dispersions of Anthelmintics and Plant Protection Preparations

Solids ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-75
Author(s):  
Salavat S. Khalikov
Keyword(s):  
Plant Protection ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Solid Dispersions ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
Water Soluble ◽  
Biologically Active ◽  
Cultivated Plants ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Scientific Papers ◽  
Poorly Soluble

Because of the rapid development of nanotechnologies, materials, in particular, solid dispersions (SDs), which are actively introduced into the life of modern man, have been obtained. Special progress in this area is observed in industry and medicine. The use of SDs in agriculture is lagging far behind, despite the growing number of scientific papers on this topic. At the same time, the prospects for the introduction of SDs in the agro-industrial complex are obvious. The review presents the results of research on the development of innovative preparations based on SD to protect plants from diseases and pests of cultivated plants, as well as parasiticides to protect animal health based on modern achievements of nanotechnology. One of these technologies is the methods of mechanochemistry, which improve the properties of poorly soluble biologically active substances by their joint mechanical treatment with water-soluble polymers and auxiliary substances.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document