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iPhoneography is the practice of capturing, enhancing, and sharing images using a smartphone device. With the emergence of image-based social media platforms that highlight the experience of making images, it becomes critical to examine how the act of creating images enhances comprehension of visuals. The practice of iPhoneography and image-based social media platforms bring forth new directions for studying visual literacy. The field of visual literacy can be used as a framework to examine both the value of reading and making images. Through the use of purposive sampling and interviews, the study examined the experiences of twelve image-makers to understand how the making and the continuous exposure to them can contribute to enhanced creative growth.

Background/Objectives: The mammalian target of the rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway is a central regulator of cell growth, proliferation, metabolism, and survival. Dysregulation of mTOR signaling contributes to many human diseases, including cancer, diabetes, and obesity. Therefore, inhibitors against mTOR's catalytic kinase domain (KD) have been developed and have shown significant antitumor activities, making it a promising therapeutic target. The ATP–KD interaction is particularly important for mTOR to exert its cellular functions, and such inhibitors have demonstrated efficient attenuation of overall mTOR activity. Methods: In this study, we screened the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) database, which enlists natural products that capture the relationships between drugs targets and diseases. Our aim was to identify potential ATP-competitive agonists that target the mTOR-KD and compete with ATP to bind the mTOR-KD serving as potential potent mTOR inhibitors. Results: We identified two compounds that demonstrated interatomic interactions similar to those of ATP–mTOR. The conformational stability and dynamic features of the mTOR-KD bound to the selected compounds were tested by subjecting each complex to 200 ns molecular dynamic (MD) simulations and molecular mechanics/generalized Born surface area (MM/GBSA) to extract free binding energies. We show the effectiveness of both compounds in forming stable complexes with the mTOR-KD, which is more effective than the mTOR-KD–ATP complex with more robust binding affinities. Conclusions: This study implies that both compounds could serve as potential therapeutic inhibitors of mTOR, regulating its function and, therefore, mitigating human disease progression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Angiopoietins are crucial growth factors for maintaining a healthy, functional endothelium. Patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) exhibit significant levels of angiogenic markers, particularly Angiopoietin-2, which compromises endothelial integrity and is connected to symptoms of endothelial injury and failure. This report examines the levels of circulating angiopoietins in people with T2D and diabetic nephropathy (DN) and explores its link with ANGPTL proteins. We quantified circulating ANGPTL3, ANGPTL4, ANGPTL8, Ang1, and Ang2 in the fasting plasma of 117 Kuwaiti participants, of which 50 had T2D and 67 participants had DN. The Ang2 levels increased with DN (4.34 ± 0.32 ng/mL) compared with T2D (3.42 ± 0.29 ng/mL). This increase correlated with clinical parameters including the albumin-to-creatinine ratio (ACR) (r = 0.244, p = 0.047), eGFR (r = −0.282, p = 0.021), and SBP (r = −0.28, p = 0.024). Furthermore, Ang2 correlated positively to both ANGPTL4 (r = 0.541, p < 0.001) and ANGPTL8 (r = 0.41, p = 0.001). Multiple regression analysis presented elevated ANGPTL8 and ACRs as predictors for Ang2's increase in people with DN. In people with T2D, ANGPTL4 positively predicted an Ang2 increase. The area under the curve (AUC) in receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis of the combination of Ang2 and ANGPTL8 was 0.77 with 80.7% specificity. In conclusion, significantly elevated Ang2 in people with DN correlated with clinical markers such as the ACR, eGFR, and SBP, ANGPTL4, and ANGPTL8 levels. Collectively, this study highlights a close association between Ang2 and ANGPTL8 in a population with DN, suggesting them as DN risk predictors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]