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Over the past few decades, emojis have emerged as a popular form of non-linguistic expression in computer-mediated communication. Various factors have been known to affect emoji usage patterns (such as age, gender, platform diversity etc.). The aim of the current study is to explore if the onset of the coronavirus pandemic (2019–20) has affected emoji usage patterns across various countries. The present study was conducted on two sets of tweets, collected before (July, 2019) and during the pandemic (March, 2020). The results suggest that although the usage of specific emojis has not changed noticeably (that is, the popular emojis mostly remained the same), the emoji density (average number of emojis per tweet) and the relative popularity of specific emojis have changed. This could potentially point toward a sense of insufficiency of emojis to express the sentiments associated with the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questioning Spivak's argument that the subaltern cannot speak (in her celebrated essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?"), Tabish Khair gives importance to the body, and writes: "One has to leave space for the body to 'speak' in action and noise--shouting, smashing--and in order to do that one has to leave space for the body to exist outside grammatical language" ("Can the Subaltern Shout (and Smash?)" 14). In this article I want to show how the Nigerian novelist Festus Iyayi in his novel Violence, emphasizes the importance of the body, and highlights the actions of resistance of the working class, who are exploited by corrupt political leaders and upper class people, in post-independent Nigeria. He makes excellent use of the technique of introducing a play-act session to re-define his notion of violence. There is a questioning of the denial of these basic rights to people. This article also directs one's attention to a few essays and two short stories by Chinua Achebe, where he questions the corrupted state of post-independent Nigeria, and highlights the voices of resistance of the common mass. Taking into consideration Iyayi's notion of violence, the article aims to highlight how common men become victims of violence, in the two short stories of Achebe taken up here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a study towards Genome-Wide Association Mapping in apple, along with information on the accessions of wild apple species provide a fundamental resource for genetic research and fruit breeding. It mentions the Genome-Wide Association Mapping studies to compare the DNA of the plants having varying phenotypes for essential traits like very early and late bud burst.

Summary: Distributed key‐value stores have become indispensable for large‐scale cluster applications. Many cloud services have deployed in‐memory data grids for their enterprise infrastructures and support multi‐tenancy services. However, most services do not offer fine‐grained multi‐tenant resource sharing. To this front, we present KeyValueServe, a low overhead cloud service with features aiding resource management. Results based on Hazelcast, a popular open source data grid, indicate that KeyValueServe can efficiently provide services to tenants without degrading performance. Providing consistent performance to all tenants for fluctuating workloads is still difficult. Performance problems occur at scale with diverse tenant requirements. To address this, the paper provides insights to contention and performance bottlenecks. Through experimental analysis, we uncover scenarios of performance degradation and demonstrate optimized performance via coalescing multiple clients' requests. Our work indicates that a Hazelcast cluster can get congested with multiple concurrent connections when processing client requests, resulting in poor performance. KeyValueServe can reduce the number of parallel connections maintained for client requests, resulting in improved performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is a prevalent and aggressive malignancy, with the von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) gene playing a critical role in its pathogenesis. However, the association between VHL gene variants and sporadic ccRCC risk remains unexplored in the Indian population. This study aimed to investigate the somatic and germline variants of the VHL gene in sporadic ccRCC patients from West Bengal, India, and their association with disease risk and clinicopathological parameters., Methods: A total of 210 ccRCC patients and 255 ethnicity-matched healthy controls were enrolled. Genomic DNA from blood and tissue samples was analyzed using PCR-based Sanger sequencing. The association of VHL variants with ccRCC risk was assessed using Chi-square tests. The impact of genetic variants on patient clinicopathological features and overall survival was evaluated using Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox proportional hazards models., Results: We identified twenty-three single nucleotide variants (SNVs) in the VHL gene, including 3 novel variants, OR250433 T > G, OR125589 C > T and OQ627404 G > C. The intronic variant rs61758376 G > C and 3'UTR variant rs1642742 A > G were significantly associated with an increased risk of ccRCC (OR = 1.676, P = 0.0074; OR = 1.735, P = 0.0171, respectively). The rs1642742 GG genotype was also significantly associated with larger tumor size (P < 0.05) and advanced tumor stage (pT4). Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated poorer overall survival for patients with the rs1642742 GG genotype (log-rank P = 0.029)., Conclusion: Our study is the first to document the association of VHL gene variants with sporadic ccRCC risk and clinical outcomes in the Indian population. The identified variants, particularly rs61758376 and rs1642742, could serve as potential biomarkers for ccRCC susceptibility and prognosis., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Neural tube defects (NTDs) are defined as an incomplete closure of the neural tube (NT), with a prevalence of 1.2 per 1000 live births around the world. Methylation of the maternally imprinted gene Insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) is one of the epigenetic mechanisms that contribute significantly to the development of NTDs. Its important functions are the fetal growth and metabolism, as well as cell division and differentiation., Objectives: In a couple of studies, individual changes in IGF2 with single nucleotide variants (SNVs) have been found to be linked with NTDs as well as with other diseases. However, there is more need of studying so that we can better understand precisely this mechanism at the molecular level. In this study we tried to investigate the relationship between genetic variants of IGF2 and NT closure by screening all SNVs of IGF2 using both in silico methods and clinical experiments on human samples., Methods: We enrolled 98 consecutive mothers carrying fetuses with NTDs as cases and 76 age-matched mothers with healthy babies as controls. Following an in silico analysis of the IGF2 gene, we designed three primers targeting a total of 180 exonic, 579 intronic, and 46 variants in the 3' untranslated region (3' UTR) for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and subsequent sequencing. Statistical analyses were performed to assess associations between these genetic variants and NTDs. Additionally, quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) was conducted to analyze the mRNA expression levels of the target gene., Results: This is the first study to enlist 11 non-synonymous variants [rs750845881(D93N), rs1290256492(P87H), rs755066389(P87T), rs150610908(G65D), rs762200142(R64C), rs868067982(G49C), rs778465733(R48L), rs1018841144(R48C), rs1057518115(C33R), rs112276039(C22R), rs1240151267(L16W)] in the regulation of IGF2 gene functions through in silico analysis. Further clinical validation in maternal samples showed a significant association between rs3213225 (C > T) (OR-2.076; CI-1.123-3.840; p-0.0209) and rs734351 (C > T) (OR-2.148; CI-1.167-3.956; p-0.0148) with increased disease risk. RNA expression study validated and supported all of these SNVs, indicating a strong correlation with NTD., Conclusions: Our research strongly suggests that genetic variations in IGF2 may help explain the risk association with NTDs and could be valuable for diagnostic and therapeutic applications., (© 2025 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

In our preliminary in vitro studies, the Enhydra fluctuans extract demonstrated inhibition of calcium phosphate (brushite) crystals. Human serum albumin (HSA) is known to act as a promoter of brushite crystal growth. Therefore, the present study aims to explore the molecular mechanisms involved in brushite crystal nephrolithiasis by conducting molecular docking of phytoconstituents from E. fluctuans with HSA. Molecular docking is conducted on 35 phytoconstituents of E. fluctuans against HSA, and the top five compounds are further analyzed using Induced Fit Docking (IFD) and Molecular Mechanics-Generalized Born Surface Area (MM-GBSA) methods. Molecular dynamics simulations for 50 ns are performed to assess the stability of the protein-ligand complexes. Additionally, in silico physicochemical; absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity (ADME/T); and pharmacophore modeling studies are conducted. The binding pocket analysis identifies potential binding sites on HSA, and molecular docking reveals Baicalein-7-o-glucoside as the top-performing compound with a strong binding affinity. IFD and MM-GBSA support the stability of the complex. Molecular dynamics simulations indicate stable interactions over the 50 ns period. In silico ADME/T studies suggest that the top five phytoconstituents exhibit drug-like properties with satisfactory pharmacokinetic profiles. Pharmacophore modeling generates a three-point hypothesis, and its validation indicates suitability for the HSA-Baicalein-7-O-glucoside complex. The findings from the current computational investigations indicate that polyphenolic phytoconstituents of E. fluctuans containing the 5,6-dihydroxy chromone ring, such as Baicalein-7-O-diglucoside, may modulate the activity of HSA (PDB ID: 1E7H), potentially inhibiting the process of crystallization.

Clinicians should be well-versed in the anatomy, variations, and teeth anomalies. Developmental disturbances of the teeth can lead to alterations in size, shape, number, structure, and eruption of the teeth. Developmental disturbances can lead to germination, fusion, concrescence, dilaceration, talons, cusps, dens in dente, etc. Protostylid, an additional cusp on the buccal aspect of the maxillary molar, which is a rare clinical finding, can lead to plaque accumulation, making oral hygiene maintenance difficult. This leads to clinical attachment loss and bone loss. This condition may often go undiagnosed. It should be diagnosed to prevent further complications. This case has been reported to make clinicians aware of the importance of diagnosing the case at the earliest possible time so that complications can be prevented and management is easier. From the perspective of forensic dentistry, this morphological feature, though uncommon, may be useful for the classification and identification of victims in mass causalities and bite marks on bodies or inanimate objects. This is one of the rarest cases of protostylids reported to date. This may not only pose a significant problem in endodontic therapy due to morphological alterations in root canals and periodontal therapy due to grove formation leading to an inability to maintain a plaque-free area (bone loss) but also be of very significant interest from the perspective of forensic dentistry., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright © 2024, Shinde et al.)

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was reported to be transmitted from bats to humans and, became a pandemic in 2020. COVID-19 is responsible for millions of deaths worldwide and still, the numbers are increasing. Further, despite the availability of vaccines, mutation in the virus continuously poses a threat of re-emergence of the more lethal form of the virus. So far, the repurposing of drugs has been exercised heavily for the identification of therapeutic agents against COVID-19, which led FDA to approve many drugs for the same e.g., remdesivir, favipiravir, ribavirin, etc. The anti-COVID drugs explored via other approaches include nirmatrelvir (used in combination with ritonavir as Paxlovid), tixagevimab and cilgavimab (both used in combination with each other) and others. However, these approved drugs failed to achieve a significant clinical outcome. Globally, natural bioactive have also been explored for anti-COVID-19 effects, based on their traditional medicinal values. Although the clinical findings suggest that FDA-approved drugs and natural bioactives can help reducing the overall mortality rate but the significant clinical outcome was not achieved. Therefore, the focus has been shifted towards new drug development. In line with that, a lot of work has been done and still going on to explore heterocyclic compounds as potent anti- COVID-19 drugs. Several heterocyclic scaffolds have been previously reported with potent antiinflammatory, anticancer, anti-viral, antimicrobial and anti-tubercular effects. Few of them are under consideration for clinical trials whereas others are under preclinical investigation. Hence, this review discusses the evidence of rationally designed and tested heterocyclic compounds acting on different targets against COVID-19. The present article will help the researches and will serve as a pivotal resource in the design and development of novel anti-COVID-19 drugs., (Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.net.)