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Sameer Timilsina,1 Sirisa Karki,2 Jaya Prasad Singh3 1Department of Physiology, Chitwan Medical College, Chitwan, Nepal; 2Department of Pharmacology, Chitwan Medical College, Chitwan, Nepal; 3School of Public Health, Chitwan Medical College, Chitwan, NepalCorrespondence: Sameer TimilsinaDepartment of Physiology, Chitwan Medical College, Bharatpur 5, Chitwan, NepalTel +977-9841346624Fax +977-56-532964Email sawmer@gmail.comBackground and purpose: The success story of a modern-day physician centers substantially on the knowledge of proper communication-skills with patients and their bedside relatives. Therefore, it has become extremely important to start a communication-skills course early on in undergraduate medical study, but to date, this has been given relatively little or no emphasis. In the present study, an attempt was made to assess the attitude of undergraduate medical newbies towards learning communication-skills, and the association between attitude and various student characteristics.Patients and methods: A total of 99 recently admitted undergraduate medical students at Chitwan Medical College were included in the study, and their attitude towards communication-skills training was measured using the Communication Skills Attitude Scale (CSAS).Results: A positive learning attitude was found in over 50% of participants. The idea of a requirement of communication-skills curriculum was associated with a positive learning attitude. Gender, age, and past educational institute were not associated with communication skills learning attitude.Conclusion: This study provides perceptions of newly admitted undergraduate medical students towards communication-skills learning. We suggest the integration of communication-skills curriculum into the undergraduate medical syllabus, with an acceptable, focused, and interesting teaching module.Keywords: communication-skills, medical education, medical students, student’s attitude, undergraduate

This work presents the design and implementation of an Open Storage System plugin for XRootD, utilizing Named Data Networking (NDN). This represents a significant step in integrating NDN, a prominent future Internet architecture, with the established data management systems within CMS. We show that this integration enables XRootD to access data in a location transparent manner, reducing the complexity of data management and retrieval. Our approach includes the creation of the NDNc software library, which bridges the existing NDN C++ library with the high-performance NDN-DPDK data-forwarding system. This paper outlines the design of the plugin and preliminary results of data transfer tests using both internal and external 100 Gbps testbed.

The detection of antimitochondrial antibodies (AMA) is the specific diagnostic marker for primary biliary cholangitis. Indeed, it is the most specific autoantibody in clinical autoimmunity, with a high titer directed response to the inner lipoyl domain of PDC-E2. The current international reference for AMA detection is based upon sera samples of PBC patients. In rheumatic diseases, i.e. rheumatoid arthritis, great efforts are placed at development of international standards. In this study, we report the development of a monoclonal chimeric IgG1 antibody as a reference for AMA testing. A monoclonal 4G6 antibody was constructed from a murine monoclonal antibody specific for the inner lipoyl domain (ILD) of PDC-E2, by combining the variable region with the constant region of human IgG1. The 4G6 antibody recognizes all AMA epitopes containing the ILD of PDC-E2, including the classical BPO recombinant antigen in all currently available diagnostic methods. The binding affinity of the 4G6 antibody to PDC-E2 and BPO antigen reaches K D value of 7.22 × 10 -11  M and 4.55 × 10 -11  M, which is sufficient to use as a quantitative reference for all AMA tests. The unlimited availability of the 4G6 antibody makes it a promising candidate for use as an AMA reference or assay calibrator for the international community., Competing Interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests:Xiangdong Liu reports financial support was provided by The National 10.13039/501100001809Natural Science Foundation of China. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2024 The Authors.)

Assessment of soil organic carbon (SOC) stock and soil quality for informed forest management is hindered by inadequate data across different forest stand types and management regimes. Therefore, this study was conducted to assess SOC stock and soil quality in two forest stand types, i.e., Shorea robusta (Sal) forest and Terai mixed hardwood (TMH) forest, and selected forest management regimes (leasehold forest, community forest, government-managed forest, and forest area under protected area) in Terai region of Nepal. Stratified random sampling method was adopted for soil sample collection across terai region following Forest Resource Assessment, Nepal. Altogether, 62 composite soil samples from 30 cm depth were taken from the entire Terai region which included these two forest stand types and four management regimes. Different physical (soil texture and bulk density) and chemical (pH, SOC (%), total nitrogen, available phosphorus, and available potassium) properties were analyzed to calculate SOC stock and soil quality. Our result found no significant differences in SOC stock among two forest stand types ( p > 0.05). Unexpectedly, leasehold forest had significantly ( p < 0.05) higher SOC stock than other forest management regimes. In terms of soil quality, among two forest stand types, Sal forest (0.50) was found to be superior compared with TMH forest (0.46). Similarly, community forest had superior soil quality (0.50) than government-managed forest (0.47), protected area (0.47), and leasehold forest (0.45). A longitudinal study approach is recommended to observe changes in soil properties over time due to climate change and human activities, offering valuable insights into their dynamics., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Durga Kandel et al.)

Many phytopathogenic bacteria require a type III secretion system (TTSS) to activate effector-triggered immunity (ETI). We identified a calcium-binding protein, EfhX Xfa , in the citrus pathogen Xanthomonas citri subsp. aurantifolii that does not require a TTSS to activate reactive oxygen species (ROS) and elicit a hypersensitive reaction (HR) in tomato leaves following infection. Purified, recombinant EfhX Xfa was shown to bind two moles of calcium per mole of protein, whereas mutation of the first of two EF-hands did not bind calcium. EfhX Xfa expression was determined to be inducible in hrp-inducing medium. Additionally, growth of X. perforans transconjugants with and without the efhX Xfa gene in hrp-inducing medium differed in intracellular calcium concentration; the transconjugant without efhX Xfa yielded higher cell pellet masses and higher increased intracellular calcium concentrations relative to cells expressing EfhX Xfa . An EfhX Xfa homolog, EfhX Xe , present in the pepper pathogen X. euvesicatoria , triggered ROS production and an HR in tomato leaves when expressed in the tomato pathogen X. perforans and is a host-limiting factor. Interestingly, all tested X. perforans and X. euvesicatoria strains pathogenic on pepper do not. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.efhX Xe gene, whereas most X. euvesicatoria strains pathogenic on pepper do not. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license., Competing Interests: The author(s) declare no conflict of interest.