Search

Hypersensitivity to a variety of stimuli has been shown in whiplash associated disorders and may be indicative of peripheral nerve involvement. This cross-sectional study utilised Quantitative sensory testing (QST) including vibration, thermal, electrical detection thresholds as an indirect measure of primary afferents that mediate innocuous and painful sensation. Pain thresholds and psychological distress (SCL-90-R) were also measured. Thirty-one subjects with chronic whiplash (>3 months, NDI: 49+/-17) and 31 controls participated. The whiplash group demonstrated elevated vibration, heat and electrical detection thresholds at most hand sites compared to controls (p<0.05). Electrical detection thresholds in the lower limb were no different from controls (p=0.83). Mechanical and cold pain thresholds were lower in the whiplash group (p<0.05) with no group difference in heat pain thresholds (p>0.1). SCL-90 scores were higher in the whiplash group but did not impact on any of the sensory measures. A combination of pain threshold and detection measures best predicted the whiplash group. Sensory hypoaesthesia and hypersensitivity co-exist in the chronic whiplash condition. These findings may indicate peripheral afferent nerve fibre involvement but could be a further manifestation of disordered central pain processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transition energies of the superheavy element lawrencium, including the ionization potential, excitation energies and electron affinities, are calculated by the intermediate Hamiltonian coupled cluster method. A large basis set (37s31p26d21f16g11h6i) is used, as well as an extensive P space (6s5p4d2f1g). The outer 43 electrons are correlated. Accuracy is monitored by applying the same approach to lutetium, the lighter homologue of Lr, and comparing with experimentally known energies. QED corrections are included. The main goal is to predict excitation energies, in anticipation of planned spectroscopy of Lr. The ground state of Lr is $7s^27p\ ^2{\rm P}_{1/2}$ , unlike the $5d6s^2\ ^2{\rm D}_{3/2}$ of Lu. Predicted Lr excitations with large transition moments in the prime range for the planned experiment, 20 000–30 000 cm-1, are 7p→8s at 20 100 cm-1 and 7p→7d at 28 100 cm-1. The average absolute error of 20 excitation energies of Lu is 423 cm -1, and the error limits for Lr are put at 700 cm-1. The two electron affinities measured recently for Lu are reproduced within 55 cm-1, and a third bound state of Lu- is predicted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic orofacial pain includes musculoskeletal, neuropathic, and vascular disorders. Unlike dental or other acute pains, chronic orofacial pain can in many cases stand alone as a separate pathological condition and is not a symptom accompanying other diseases. The article describes orofacial pain symptoms and mechanisms, and a relevant treatment approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stress is a process that activates neuronal, metabolic, and neuroendocrine mechanisms. The individual's response may be determined by variables such as genetic factors, environmental conditions, sex, and age, among others. These responses are critical for survival, and the involvement of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is necessary for adaptation, which through counter-regulatory mechanisms seeks to restore homeostasis. Dentists are aware that there are variations in people's response to treatment, and there are many patients in whom dental treatment generates an important source of stress, which in many cases leads to treatment avoidance behavior., Competing Interests: Disclosures V. Iturriaga and N. Velasquez contributed to the conception and design and wrote the initial draft and figure preparation. D.C. Thomas and E. Eliav contributed to the manuscript by critically revising important intellectual content. All authors gave final approval and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of this work. The study was financed by Project DI20-0018 and the Temporomandibular Disorder and Orofacial Pain Program, Universidad de La Frontera, Chile. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

In recent years, extensive research has focused on cannabidiol (CBD), a well-studied non-psychoactive component of the plant-derived cannabinoids. CBD has shown significant therapeutic potential for treating various diseases and disorders, including antioxidants and anti-inflammatory effects. Due to the promising therapeutic effect of CBD in a wide variety of diseases, synthetic derivatization of this compound has attracted the attention of drug discovery in both industry and academia. In the current research, we focused on the derivatization of CBD by introducing Schiff base moieties, particularly (thio)-semicarbazide and aminoguanidine motifs, at the 3-position of the olivetolic ring. We have designed, synthesized, and characterized new derivatives based on CBD's framework, specifically aminoguanylhydrazone- and (thio)-semicarbazones-CBD-aldehyde compounds. Their antioxidant potential was assessed using FRAP and DPPH assays, alongside an evaluation of their effect on LDL oxidation induced by Cu 2+ and AAPH. Our findings suggest that incorporating the thiosemicarbazide motif into the CBD framework produces a potent antioxidant, warranting further investigation.

Background: Implementing the Age-Friendly Health System (AFHS) framework into dental care provides a significant opportunity to link oral health to healthy aging. This project aimed to implement the AFHS 4Ms (what matters, medications, mentation, and mobility) in the provision of oral health care. This article describes the planning, integration, training development, and outcome measurements supporting a 4Ms approach at an academic dental clinic., Methods: The Eastman Institute for Oral Health (EIOH) implemented screening instruments based on the 4Ms framework recommended for ambulatory care clinics by the Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI). These ambulatory instruments were integrated into the workflows of a Specialty Care Clinic through the development of a plan-do-study-act cycle, utilization of available clinic resources, and creation of interdisciplinary collaborations., Results: This project demonstrated the feasibility of implementing an AFHS checklist and tracking forms in dental practice by integrating available resources and prioritizing the 4Ms elements. This effort necessitated interdisciplinary collaborations between dental, medical, and social service professionals. It also created a new age-friendly focused education and training curriculum for dental residents and faculty., Conclusions: This pilot project is the first to establish dental standards for AFHS implementation, adapting the 4Ms assessment and metrics to oral health. This AFHS underscores key oral health processes, including assessment, planning, and personalized oral health care, adapted to the unique needs of the older adult population, especially those with cognitive impairment., (© 2024 The American Geriatrics Society.)

Molecules containing short-lived, radioactive nuclei are uniquely positioned to enable a wide range of scientific discoveries in the areas of fundamental symmetries, astrophysics, nuclear structure, and chemistry. Recent advances in the ability to create, cool, and control complex molecules down to the quantum level, along with recent and upcoming advances in radioactive species production at several facilities around the world, create a compelling opportunity to coordinate and combine these efforts to bring precision measurement and control to molecules containing extreme nuclei. In this manuscript, we review the scientific case for studying radioactive molecules, discuss recent atomic, molecular, nuclear, astrophysical, and chemical advances which provide the foundation for their study, describe the facilities where these species are and will be produced, and provide an outlook for the future of this nascent field., (© 2024 IOP Publishing Ltd.)

The nuclear charge radius of ^{32}Si was determined using collinear laser spectroscopy. The experimental result was confronted with ab initio nuclear lattice effective field theory, valence-space in-medium similarity renormalization group, and mean field calculations, highlighting important achievements and challenges of modern many-body methods. The charge radius of ^{32}Si completes the radii of the mirror pair ^{32}Ar-^{32}Si, whose difference was correlated to the slope L of the symmetry energy in the nuclear equation of state. Our result suggests L≤60  MeV, which agrees with complementary observables.

Contextual embeddings, derived from deep language models (DLMs), provide a continuous vectorial representation of language. This embedding space differs fundamentally from the symbolic representations posited by traditional psycholinguistics. We hypothesize that language areas in the human brain, similar to DLMs, rely on a continuous embedding space to represent language. To test this hypothesis, we densely record the neural activity patterns in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) of three participants using dense intracranial arrays while they listened to a 30-minute podcast. From these fine-grained spatiotemporal neural recordings, we derive a continuous vectorial representation for each word (i.e., a brain embedding) in each patient. Using stringent zero-shot mapping we demonstrate that brain embeddings in the IFG and the DLM contextual embedding space have common geometric patterns. The common geometric patterns allow us to predict the brain embedding in IFG of a given left-out word based solely on its geometrical relationship to other non-overlapping words in the podcast. Furthermore, we show that contextual embeddings capture the geometry of IFG embeddings better than static word embeddings. The continuous brain embedding space exposes a vector-based neural code for natural language processing in the human brain., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Purpose: This study explored the relationship between central sensitization symptoms, assessed using the Central Sensitization Inventory (CSI), and psychophysical factors in patients with chronic masticatory myofascial pain (MMP) transitioning from the acute to chronic stages., Methods: In this study, 23 patients with MMP and 22 healthy volunteers were assessed using psychophysical tests, including measurements of pressure pain threshold (PPT) and temporal summation of pain (TSP). Additionally, CSI scores were recorded to evaluate central sensitization symptoms., Results: Patients with chronic MMP showed significantly lower PPT in all masticatory muscles and extratrigeminal areas compared with controls. However, there was no significant correlation between CSI scores and psychophysical test results in patients with MMP., Conclusion: The significant enhancement of TSP in patients with subchronic MMP suggests a potential role in the onset of myofascial pain. The main finding suggests that sub-chronic symptom patients show higher CSI scores despite no sensory testing changes, indicating that central sensitization possibly precedes observable symptoms.

Mechanisms underlying neuropathic pain (NP) are complex with multiple genes, their interactions, environmental and epigenetic factors being implicated. Transcriptional changes in the trigeminal (TG) and dorsal root (DRG) ganglia have been implicated in the development and maintenance of NP. Despite efforts to unravel molecular mechanisms of NP, many remain unknown. Also, most of the studies focused on the spinal system. Although the spinal and trigeminal systems share some of the molecular mechanisms, differences exist. We used RNA-sequencing technology to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the TG and DRG at baseline and 3 time points following the infraorbital or sciatic nerve injuries, respectively. Pathway analysis and comparison analysis were performed to identify differentially expressed pathways. Additionally, upstream regulator effects were investigated in the two systems. DEG (differentially expressed genes) analyses identified 3,225 genes to be differentially expressed between TG and DRG in naïve animals, 1,828 genes 4 days post injury, 5,644 at day 8 and 9,777 DEGs at 21 days postinjury. A comparison of top enriched canonical pathways revealed that a number of signaling pathway was significantly inhibited in the TG and activated in the DRG at 21 days postinjury. Finally, CORT upstream regulator was predicted to be inhibited in the TG while expression levels of the CSF1 upstream regulator were significantly elevated in the DRG at 21 days postinjury. This study provides a basis for further in-depth studies investigating transcriptional changes, pathways, and upstream regulation in TG and DRG in rats exposed to peripheral nerve injuries. PERSPECTIVE: Although trigeminal and dorsal root ganglia are homologs of each other, they respond differently to nerve injury and therefore treatment. Activation/inhibition of number of biological pathways appear to be ganglion/system specific suggesting that different approaches might be required to successfully treat neuropathies induced by injuries in spinal and trigeminal systems., (Copyright © 2023 United States Association for the Study of Pain, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

CRISPR/Cas9 technology is revolutionizing the field of gene editing. While this technology enables the targeting of any gene, it may also target unplanned loci, termed off-target sites (OTS), which are a few mismatches, insertions, and deletions from the target. While existing methods for finding OTS up to a given mismatch threshold are efficient, other methods considering insertions and deletions are limited by long runtimes, incomplete OTS lists, and partial support of versatile thresholds. Here, we developed SWOffinder, an efficient method based on Smith-Waterman alignment to find all OTS up to some edit distance. We implemented an original trace-back approach to find OTS under versatile criteria, such as separate limits on the number of insertions, deletions, and mismatches. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, only SWOffinder finds all OTS in the genome in just a few minutes. SWOffinder enables accurate and efficient genomic search of OTS, which will lead to safer gene editing., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (© 2023 The Author(s).)

Objective: Postdoctoral dental education in caring for older adults lacks didactic and clinical training in mentation topics, one of the core elements of the Age-Friendly Health Systems (AFHS) framework. Our primary goal was to launch a pilot project in clinical geriatrics focusing on older adults' mentation concerns, with a secondary goal to improve dental residents' confidence and competence in dental care and oral health., Background: Age-friendly care elements are not routinely incorporated into the dental education of residents caring for older adults with cognitive impairment or dementia. Therefore, we implemented a pilot educational project, providing the missing educational opportunity for residents in geriatric training covering cognitive impairment and focusing on Alzheimer's disease and related dementias., Materials and Methods: We designed educational sessions through a needs assessment, focus group discussions, and expert validation. We developed three e-Learning modules covering mentation concerns and dementia screening. We tested the modules in a pilot study of 15 dental postdoctoral residents as an essential part of their clinical practice., Results: The dementia dental learning module increased the residents' satisfaction with didactic preparedness (4.45  ± $ \pm \ $ 0.97) and knowledge acquisition (4.36  ± $ \pm \ $ 0.84). Residents strongly believed that learning about the AFHS-mentation topic would improve patient care., Conclusion: Our pilot study is a pioneer project in support of a new AFHS-themed dental curriculum for clinical education. Further expansion of the age-friendly principles to include mobility, medications, and what matters to older adults will establish a model framework of redesigned geriatric dental education for academic centers., (© 2023 Special Care Dentistry Association and Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Scarcity of freshwater for agriculture has led to increased utilization of treated wastewater (TWW), establishing it as a significant and reliable source of irrigation water. However, years of research indicate that if not managed adequately, TWW may deleteriously affect soil functioning and plant productivity, and pose a hazard to human and environmental health. This review leverages the experience of researchers, stakeholders, and policymakers from Israel, the United-States, and Europe to present a holistic, multidisciplinary perspective on maximizing the benefits from municipal TWW use for irrigation. We specifically draw on the extensive knowledge gained in Israel, a world leader in agricultural TWW implementation. The first two sections of the work set the foundation for understanding current challenges involved with the use of TWW, detailing known and emerging agronomic and environmental issues (such as salinity and phytotoxicity) and public health risks (such as contaminants of emerging concern and pathogens). The work then presents solutions to address these challenges, including technological and agronomic management-based solutions as well as source control policies. The concluding section presents suggestions for the path forward, emphasizing the importance of improving links between research and policy, and better outreach to the public and agricultural practitioners. We use this platform as a call for action, to form a global harmonized data system that will centralize scientific findings on agronomic, environmental and public health effects of TWW irrigation. Insights from such global collaboration will help to mitigate risks, and facilitate more sustainable use of TWW for food production in the future., Competing Interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Hila Korach-Rechtman reports a relationship with Kando Environmental Services LTD that includes: employment., (© 2023 The Author(s).)