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This study aimed to develop and establish psychometric properties of the End-of-Life Nursing Competency Scale for Clinical Nurses. The initial items were derived from an in-depth literature review and field interviews. The content validation of these items was assessed over three rounds by experts in end-of-life nursing care. The study included 437 clinical nurses from four hospitals in S, E, and D cities in South Korea. The final exploratory factor analysis resulted in a scale consisting of 21 items with the following five factors that explained 68.44% of the total variance: Physical care—imminent end-of-life, legal and administrative processes, psychological care—patient and family, psychological care—nurses' self, and ethical nursing. The final model with these five subscales was validated through confirmatory factor analysis. Both item convergent-discriminant validity and known-group validity, which compared two groups based on clinical experience (p < 0.008) and working department (p < 0.008), were satisfactory. The internal consistency, as measured by Cronbach's α, ranged from 0.62 to 0.89 for the subscales and was 0.91 for the total scale. This scale has been validated as a reliable and effective instrument for clinical nurses to self-assess their end-of-life nursing competencies in a clinical setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Femoral fractures often lead to complications such as altered pulmonary hemodynamics. Right ventricular global longitudinal strain (RV GLS), which correlates with pulmonary hemodynamics, indicates the subclinical function of the right ventricle (RV). This study aimed to investigate the predictive value of RV GLS for the risk of adverse clinical composite outcomes in patients with femoral fractures. Methods: Data were obtained from a prospective single-center cohort of patients hospitalized for femoral fractures and followed up for at least 1 year between March 2021 and October 2022. The primary outcome was the development of an adverse composite clinical event, which included pneumonia, pulmonary oedema or effusion, pulmonary thromboembolism, and all-cause mortality within the 1-year period following surgery. Results: Among the 163 patients, 36 (22.09%) experienced adverse composite clinical events during 1-year follow-up. The adverse outcome group demonstrated poorer RV GLS and RV free wall strain values than the non-adverse outcome group. The optimal cut-off value of RV GLS for predicting composite adverse clinical events was −12.55%. The cumulative composite event-free survival rate was significantly lower in the RV GLS ≥ −12.55% group (log-rank p-value = 0.003). After adjusting for confounding factors, multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analyses showed that RV GLS ≥ −12.55% independently increased the risk of composite adverse clinical events by 2.65-fold. Conclusions: Poor RV GLS is a significant predictor of adverse clinical outcomes in patients with femoral fractures. Specifically, an RV GLS value of ≥ −12.55% indicated a substantially increased risk of adverse events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease characterized by epidermal hyperproliferation, aberrant differentiation of keratinocytes, and dysregulated immune responses. WW domain-containing oxidoreductase (WWOX) is a non-classical tumor suppressor gene that regulates multiple cellular processes, including proliferation, apoptosis, and migration. This study aimed to explore the possible role of WWOX in the pathogenesis of psoriasis. Immunohistochemical analysis showed that the expression of WWOX was increased in epidermal keratinocytes of both human psoriatic lesions and imiquimod-induced mice psoriatic model. Immortalized human epidermal keratinocytes were transduced with a recombinant adenovirus expressing microRNA specific for WWOX to downregulate its expression. Inflammatory responses were detected using Western blotting, real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. In human epidermal keratinocytes, WWOX knockdown reduced nuclear factor-kappa B signaling and levels of proinflammatory cytokines induced by polyinosinic: polycytidylic acid [(poly(I:C)] in vitro. Furthermore, calcium chelator and protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitors significantly reduced poly(I:C)-induced inflammatory reactions. WWOX plays a role in the inflammatory reaction of epidermal keratinocytes by regulating calcium and PKC signaling. Targeting WWOX could be a novel therapeutic approach for psoriasis in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One hundred ninety-five chemically speciated samples were collected from March 2003 to February 2005 in the Seoul Metropolitan area to investigate the characteristics of the major components in PM2.5 and to characterize the chemical variations between smog and non-smog events. The annual average PM2.5 concentration was 43μgm−3 that is almost three times higher than the US NAAQS annual PM2.5 standard of 15μgm−3. During this sampling period, smog and yellow sand events were observed on 27 and 10 days, respectively. The PM2.5 concentrations and its constituents during smog events were about two–three times higher than those during non-smog and yellow sand events. In particular, the mass fractions of secondary aerosols such as sulfate, nitrate, and ammonium during the smog events were higher than those of the other constituents. The mean concentration and mass fraction of secondary organic carbon (SOC) were highest during the winter smog events. Sulfate, nitrate and SOC that can have long residence times were important species during the smog events suggesting that regional scale sources rather than local sources were important. Five-day backward air trajectory analysis showed that the air parcels during smog events passed through the major industrial areas in China more often than those during non-smog events. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Spuriopimpinella brachycarpa Nakai (Common name, Chamnamul; family Apiaceae) is a plant whose leaves are consumed as a vegetable and used as a folk medicine in Korea (Kim et al., 2020). In February 2020, seven samples of S. brachycarpa leaf showing virus symptoms including yellowing, vein chlorosis, chlorotic lesions, and severe mottling were collected from a greenhouse in Busan, South Korea, to diagnose the potential disease (Fig. S1a, b). The disease incidence rate in the greenhouse was >10% (2,970 m2). To identify the causal virus, we analyzed leaf dip preparation and thin sections of the symptomatic leaves by transmission electron microscopy. Filamentous virus particles and pinwheel structures were observed, indicating the presence of a potyvirus (Fig. S1c, d). To confirm these results, the symptomatic leaf samples were further analyzed by reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) using potyvirus universal primers (Table S2) and direct sequencing of the PCR products. All samples were positive for konjac mosaic virus (KoMV). To exclude the possibility of infection by multiple viruses, we performed high-throughput sequencing (HTS) on an Illumina NovaSeq 6000 system (Macrogen Inc., Seoul, South Korea). There were two contigs (9,267 and 2,851 nt) mapping to KoMV sequences. A large contig (9,267 nt; 705,967 mapped reads; mean read coverage of 11,351.4x) showed about 80% identity (93% coverage) with KoMV-F (GenBank accession no. NC&#95;007913) isolated from Amorphophallus konjac in Japan (Nishiguchi et al., 2006). To isolate KoMV from S. brachycarpa , we mechanically inoculated leaf extracts from symptomatic samples onto Chenopodium quinoa as an assay host via three single-lesion passages, followed by propagation in Nicotiana benthamiana . In a bioassay of the KoMV isolate (KoMV-BS), we mechanically inoculated sap from infected N. benthamiana onto 31 indicator plants including Cryptotaenia japonica (Apiaceae), which is similar to S. brachycarpa (Table S3). KoMV-BS systemically induced vein chlorosis and/or leaf mottling in four Nicotiana species and C. japonica , and chlorotic local lesions in upper leaves of C. quinoa ; no symptoms were observed in 25 other indicator plants. These results were confirmed by RT-PCR. Next, we obtained the complete genome sequence of KoMV-BS using HTS and 5' and 3' rapid amplification of cDNA ends, with newly designed primers (Table S2). The assembled full-length KoMV-BS genome sequence was 9,392 nt in length, excluding the poly(A) tail, and encoded a polyprotein composed of 3,060 amino acids. The sequence was deposited in GenBank (accession no. OR001914). BLAST analysis showed 84~88% and 90~98% identities at CP nucleotide and amino acid levels, respectively with the reported KoMV isolates, confirming the virus to be an isolate of KoMV (synonym; Japanese hornwort mosaic virus, zantedeschia mosaic virus) (Adams et al., 2005; Nishiguchi et al., 2006). KoMV infection was first reported in A. konjac from Japan (Shimoyama et al. 1992) and has been spread worldwide as one of the major causal agents of viral diseases in calla lily (Liao et al., 2020). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of KoMV infection in S. brachycarpa . To date, cucumber mosaic virus and tobacco mosaic virus have been reported to infect S. brachycarpa in Korea (Yoon et al., 2016; 2017). Our findings will be helpful for developing virus-management strategies to prevent yield and quality loss in S. brachycarpa .