Prolonged Tele-Critical Care Utilization Is Associated With Improved ICU Outcomes: Evidence From Veterans Affairs Hospitals.

Objectives: To determine the impact of critical care telemedicine (tele-critical care [TCC]) implementation duration on clinical outcomes: ICU mortality, ICU length of stay (LOS), and mechanical ventilation utilization.

Design: Retrospective cohort study.

Setting: Thirty-five U.

Organization of Resilin-like Peptides in Three Dimensions Using Au Nanoparticles.

Nature provides a palette of materials with properties ranging from strong and tough to flexible and elastomeric. Resilin, a protein in insects, can generate resilient elastomers cross-linked at tyrosine residues. These elastomers rival or exceed the properties of synthetic materials, making it desirable to mimic the natural system.

'The new geriatric giants': how do loneliness and social isolation contribute to probable depression in older adults?

Social isolation and loneliness have been linked to adverse health outcomes such as depression in old age. However, limited data exist on the association of loneliness and social isolation with probable depression (PD) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), while psychosocial mediators are largely unknown. This study investigates the individual and joint associations of social isolation and loneliness with PD among older adults in Ghana.

Synthesis of Azuleno[1,2,3-]phenalene and Its π-Extended Buckybowl Derivative.

Azulene-fused molecular carbons have sparked intense research interest in recent years. Herein, we report a facile three-step synthesis of azuleno[1,2,3-]phenalene (AzPn), a fused system combining azulene and phenalene units, achieving an overall yield of 39.7%.

Mechanistic investigations of photochemical generation of quinone methides.

Quinone methides are important intermediates in many chemical reactions that find application in synthetic chemistry and chemical biology. They are usually formed from substituted phenol derivatives. Synthetic organic chemists have developed a variety of ways to generate quinone methides, including photochemical generation, which is usually seen as a promising way of generating desired chemical products under mild conditions and with spatial and temporal control.

Building bridges through dynamic coupling for organic phosphorescence.

Achieving long-lived room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) in organic materials has garnered significant attention in the field of optoelectronics. Although many host-guest systems with versatile performances have been developed, their photophysical mechanisms remain unclear due to the complicated intermolecular interactions and multiple energy transfer pathways, leading to unavoidable trial-and-error in molecular designs. Here we reveal that the dynamic coupling process in the excited state is crucial for inducing phosphorescence, where host and guest molecules firstly couple to enhance the intersystem crossing efficiency, and then decouple to transfer excitons to the triplet state of guest.

Enhanced hydrogen peroxide photosynthesis via charge-complementary π-electron sites.

Organic photocatalysts with porphyrin conjugated chromophore core are promising for artificial hydrogen peroxide (HO) photosynthesis, but the lack of bottom-up paradigm for oxygen (O) adsorption sites hinders their activity. Here, we introduce imidazole groups as π-electron sites with charge-complementarity to the O molecules, enhancing O binding via sub-atomically mirrored electrostatic cooperative π-π dispersion forces. In situ spectroscopy and theory reveal that the ~2 Å linear δ-δ-δ domain of the imidazole substituent exhibits 2.

Voluntary contractions underestimate peak muscle activity in drop jumps.

Maximal voluntary isometric contractions (MVIC) are a common method to normalize electromyographic amplitude into standardized units of %MVIC. However, in 60% of drop jump research using an MVIC in 2018-2023, supramaximal activation or activation greater than 100% MVIC occurred. Therefore, MVICs may not be representative of peak muscle activation, leading to erroneous interpretation of muscle activation.

Symmetries and synchronization from whole-neural activity in the connectome: Integration of functional and structural networks.

Understanding the dynamical behavior of complex systems from their underlying network architectures is a long-standing question in complexity theory. Therefore, many metrics have been devised to extract network features like motifs, centrality, and modularity measures. It has previously been proposed that network symmetries are of particular importance since they are expected to underlie the synchronization of a system's units, which is ubiquitously observed in nervous system activity patterns.

Hyperspectral imaging of microwave metasurfaces with deeply subwavelength resolution.

Electromagnetic metasurfaces offer a route to exotic, customised material properties that are not found in nature. However, in practice these artificial materials often do not live up to the promise of their design, limited by a myriad of fabrication challenges and defects. Global responses, such as transmission or reflection spectra, cannot distinguish different defect types, while scanning point measurements are impractical for materials which can contain thousands of individual meta-atoms.

Rational Design and Reaction Mechanism Study of the Photochemical Rearrangement of Fulvene Derivatives.

Photochemistry is considered one of the most efficient and reproducible techniques in organic synthesis. Recently, List and co-workers reported an efficient UV light triggered photochemical synthesis of spiro[2,4]heptadiene from fulvenes with different substituents ( 2023, 62, e202303119); however, the mechanistic details remain unclear, and the intermediates have not been characterized. To facilitate the applications of this novel photochemical reaction, we theoretically designed a series of fulvene derivatives with different parent molecular skeletons for analyzing the substitution effects, and two of the representative fulvenes were synthesized for investigating the reaction mechanisms by employing time-resolved transient absorption spectroscopy (TA) experiments.

Symmetry-breaking photoinduced charge transfer state in a near-IR absorbing -linked BODIPY dimer.

The synthesis and characterization of a conformationally restrained near-IR absorbing homoleptic -linked BODIPY dye is reported. The photophysical properties have been investigated using steady-state and time-resolved femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy. A combination of spectroscopies (steady-state absorption/emission, ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy measurements), singlet oxygen generation quantum yields, and computational studies were conducted to evaluate the nature of the excited state of the dimer 3D compared to its monomer 3M as a control.

Muscle length influences active joint position sense at the shoulder, but conditioning contractions do not.

Active shoulder joint position sense (JPS) is more accurate at higher angles of humerothoracic elevation. During active JPS testing, the extensor/antagonist muscles of the shoulder undergo repeated passive lengthening and do not contract to bring about shoulder extension. This may alter muscle spindle sensitivity at different angles of humeral elevation leading to angle related reduction in repositioning error.

Bright and Ultralong Organic Phosphorescence via Sulfonic Acid Functionalization for High-Contrast Real-Time Light-Writing Display.

It is challenging to achieve room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) in pure organics with both high efficiency and long lifetime. While much effort has been placed on discovering efficient phosphor skeletons, the importance of phosphor functionalization in enhancing the RTP performance has not received adequate attention. Herein, we demonstrate that functionalization of phosphors with sulfonic acid can ensure both bright and ultralong RTP, outperforming other substituents.

Threading light through dynamic complex media.

The dynamic scattering of light impacts sensing and communication technologies throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. Here we introduce a new way to control the propagation of light through time-varying complex media. Our strategy is based on the observation that in many dynamic scattering systems, some parts of the medium will change configuration more slowly than others.

Dual-site Langmuir-Hinshelwood mechanism in ZnCr-LDH/NH-UIO66 heterojunction for efficient photocatalytic NO oxidation.

In this study, we developed a ZnCr-LDH/NH-UIO66 heterojunction to enhance photocatalytic NO oxidation through a dual-site Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) mechanism. Nitrogen oxides (NOₓ), including NO, are hazardous environmental contaminants linked to severe air pollution issues such as haze, acid rain, and photochemical smog. The composite catalyst addresses these challenges by synergistically activating NO and O under environmentally relevant conditions, including simulated solar light, ambient temperature, and NO concentrations of 1000 ppb typical of polluted urban areas.

Bodily pain severity and emotional pain experience in old age: Analyses of potential mediators from representative Ghanaian aging survey.

Objectives: Data on the association between pain and emotional health outcomes in old age primarily come from high-income samples. This study examines the cross-sectional association of bodily pain with emotional pain in a representative sample from Ghana, a lower-middle-income sub-Saharan African country. The study also investigates the potential mediators in the association.

IARC Workshop on the Key Characteristics of Carcinogens: Assessment of End Points for Evaluating Mechanistic Evidence of Carcinogenic Hazards.

Background: The 10 key characteristics (KCs) of carcinogens form the basis of a framework to identify, organize, and evaluate mechanistic evidence relevant to carcinogenic hazard identification. The 10 KCs are related to mechanisms by which carcinogens cause cancer. The () programme has successfully applied the KCs framework for the mechanistic evaluation of different types of exposures, including chemicals, metals, and complex exposures, such as environmental, occupational, or dietary exposures.

A dual-phase biologic augmentation of rotator cuff healing in a preclinical rat model using interleukin-17F and low-dose lithium.

Background: Rotator cuff tendon tears are a common cause of shoulder dysfunction in adults. Yet, impaired healing continues to result in higher failure rates after surgical repair resulting in patient dysfunction and prolonged recovery. This has spurred increased investigation of biologic augmentation to improve tendon healing.

Implementing Mutational Epidemiology on a Global Scale: Lessons from Mutographs.

The Mutographs Cancer Grand Challenge team aimed to discover unknown causes of cancer through mutational epidemiology, an alliance of cancer epidemiology and somatic genomics. By generating whole-genome sequences from thousands of cancers and normal tissues from more than 30 countries on five continents, it discovered unsuspected mutagenic exposures affecting millions of people, raised the possibility that some carcinogens act by altering forces of selection in tissue microenvironments rather than by mutagenesis, and demonstrated changes to the direction of somatic evolution in normal cells of the human body in response to exogenous exposures and noncancer diseases. See related article by Bressan et al.

Revealing the excited-state mechanisms of the polymorphs of a hot exciton material.

As the investigation of high efficiency thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials become more mature, regulating the emission properties for single organic luminescence molecules has gained increasing interest recently. Herein, the donor-acceptor compounds F-AQ comprised of fluorene and anthraquinone is reported, and it exhibits a polymorphism with muti-color emission and TADF from high-level intersystem crossing (hRISC). The photodynamics and excited-state transient species were studied by femtosecond transient absorption (fs-TA) spectroscopy.

Ultrafast Spectroscopic Investigation of the Aggregation Induced TADF from High-Level Reversed Intersystem Crossing.

The thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) originating from high-level intersystem crossing (hRISC) presents great potential in realizing a more full utilization of triplet excitons. In this study, DPA-FBP and TPA-FBP were doped in a PMMA film with different weight fractions to study the effect of aggregation on the luminescence properties. As a result, the TADF feature from hRISC was only found in the 50 wt % doped film, whereas the 1 wt % doped film only shows prompt fluorescence.

Synthesis, Structures, and Chiroptical Properties of NBN-Doped Helicenes with Boron Atoms in the Inner Rims.

The precise synthesis of helicenes with topologically defined length and specific heteroatomic perturbation in the screw-like conjugated skeletons plays an emerging role in the manipulation of chiral materials. Facile, selective, and programmable routes to helicenes or heterohelicenes are highly desirable yet challenging for structure-chiroptical property relationship studies. Herein, we report the synthesis and characterization of NBN-doped helicenes with boron atoms in the inner rims, enabled by the highly regioselective one-pot borylation of rationally designed precursors with, namely, fold-in or pan-out manner.