This comprehensive review of the relationship between uncontrolled inflammation in upper respiratory tract viral infections and the development of neurodegenerative diseases reveals the importance and possibility of the JAK-STAT-ROCK2 signaling pathway in the treatment of both.
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Frequency and Causes of Hospital ReAdmissions among PostKidney Transplant Recipients at Specialized Centers in Khartoum, Sudan A CrossSectional Study
Background: Hospital readmissions after kidney transplantation are common and may predict future adverse outcomes. Previous studies using claims data have been limited. A better understanding of the risk factors associated with readmissions is necessary to develop accurate predictive models. Objective and Rationale: To determine the frequency, causes, and duration of hospital readmissions among post-kidney transplant recipients in specialized centers in Khartoum State, Sudan. Study Design: A descriptive, cross-sectional study. Setting and Participants: Three hundred post-kidney transplant recipients at Ahmed Gasim and Ibn Sina centers were enrolled in this study. Data on recipient, donor, and transplantation characteristics were collected. Readmission frequency, duration, causes, sites, and length of hospital stay were recorded using structured questionnaires and medical record reviews. Results: The hospital readmission rate was 39% (n = 117). Of these, 72.6% (n = 85) were readmitted only once, and infection was the leading cause of readmissions. Recipient male gender (P-value = 0.031), high body mass index (P-value = 0.014), chronic lung diseases and diabetes mellitus among comorbidities (P-value = 0.000), prior dialysis before kidney transplantation, especially peritoneal dialysis and peritoneal combined hemodialysis (P-value = 0.003), missed post-transplantation follow-up (P-value = 0.000), older-aged donor above 60 years (P-value = 0.003), kidney transplantation from second-degree related donors (P-value = 0.034), and intermediate & high immunological risks (P-value = 0.000) were major predisposing factors for hospital readmission post kidney transplantation. Conclusion: The hospital readmission rate after kidney transplantation among Sudanese recipients was high and mainly due to infection; a specific preventive program based on infection prevention and graft function monitoring should be established.
Post-Kidney Transplant Recipients, Hospital Readmission, Sudan
Discovery reveals aging human brains receive immune cell reinforcements from blood
The brain’s immune system has long been thought to exist independently from the rest of the body, complete with its own specialized immune cells and a blood-brain barrier that limits what can travel into the brain.
Now, Stanford researchers have found that aging brings with it a large influx of immune cells into the brain, a discovery that not only upends current thinking but could also open new avenues for treating neurological disease. The researchers describe their results in the journal Nature.
“We usually think of the brain as a closed system,” said Julia Belk, a postdoctoral scholar in pathology at Stanford Medicine and first author on the new study. “What we found is that actually a lot of immune cells enter the human brain during aging.”
Electric field reverses phonon chirality and spin direction in ferroelectric crystal
Chiral phonons are groups of atoms that move in a circular direction when excited by an energy source, such as heat. As the phonons move through a material, they propagate that circular motion, or angular momentum, through the material. The angular momentum serves as the source of spin, and the chirality dictates the direction of the spin, enabling spin control in spintronics.
Chirality, in simple terms, means that a molecule or material cannot be superimposed on its mirror image—think of your left and right hands, for example. A left-handed glove does not fit on your right hand, and vice versa.
In a new study, researchers used an electric field to switch the chirality of phonons within a ferroelectric crystal. The work could lead to the creation of faster and more energy-efficient spintronic devices.
Miniaturized laser technology paves the way for fundamental physics experiments in space
An international team of researchers has succeeded in producing atomic quantum gas mixtures with an unprecedented particle flux. In the journal Nature Communications, the scientists report on experiments conducted with the MAIUS-B apparatus, in which Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) consisting of two different atomic species—rubidium and potassium—were generated and studied under microgravity conditions in the Einstein Elevator at Leibniz University Hannover in Germany.
A key contribution to this achievement came from a technological development at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU): the highly sophisticated and compact optical system used to control the atoms.
Air-stable, ultrathin superconductors developed for more scalable quantum devices
Super-thin superconducting materials, which are only one or a few atoms thick, have unique properties scientists can leverage to produce more compact, scalable, and efficient quantum devices. But these fragile materials degrade so rapidly in air that they are difficult to study or manufacture.
Now, researchers from MIT and elsewhere have discovered and harnessed a method to generate a large, uniform area of ultrathin superconducting material that remains stable in air.
They “grow” the superconducting material, called niobium diselenide, underneath another atomically thin material, carbon-based graphene. The graphene layer protects the fragile superconductor from oxidation, while guiding it to grow in a smooth layer over a large wafer-scale area.
Using the Earth’s magnetic field to hunt for axions and dark photons
Dark matter’s existence is all but certain—astronomers believe it makes up about a quarter of the universe’s total energy content—yet its true identity has eluded us for decades. Two of the leading candidates for dark matter are the hypothetical particles ultralight axions and dark photons, which in the range studied here would be some 19 to 21 orders of magnitude lighter than the electron.
Conventional axion searches tend to involve converting them into photons with the help of strong laboratory magnets. However, research in a laboratory inherently limits the space over which such a field can be applied.
A collaborative team of researchers from Kyoto University, Hiroshima University and Nihon University realized that, by contrast, Earth’s own magnetic field spans a scale no laboratory could match. Their paper is published in the journal Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics.
Attosecond X-ray method maps early electron motions that trigger chemical reactions
All chemistry starts with a push from electrons. In the early moments of a chemical reaction, it’s the movement of electrons that initiates the breaking of old chemical bonds and forging of new ones, transforming one molecule into another.
When an electron is removed from a molecule faster than the molecule can react—called “impulsive ionization”—the other electrons in the molecule enter excited quantum states that evolve on ultrafast timescales. Scientists have long sought to map the ultrasmall, ultrafast electronic motions behind chemical reactions on their natural timescales.
Now, researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have created a movie of early electron motion in an impulsively excited molecule. Each frame captures changes happening in mere attoseconds, just billionths of a billionth of a second.