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Introduction Sarcoidosis remains a debilitating, and sometimes fatal, multiorgan inflammatory granulomatous disease that predominately affects the lung and skin. Patients struggle with fatigue, difficulty breathing, and pain in their joints, [...], Sarcoidosis is a multiorgan granulomatous disease that lacks diagnostic biomarkers and targeted treatments. Using blood and skin from patients with sarcoid and non-sarcoid skin granulomas, we discovered that skin granulomas from different diseases exhibit unique immune cell recruitment and molecular signatures. Sarcoid skin granulomas were specifically enriched for type 1 innate lymphoid cells (ILC1s) and B cells and exhibited molecular programs associated with formation of mature tertiary lymphoid structures (TLSs), including increased CXCL12/CXCR4 signaling. Lung sarcoidosis granulomas also displayed similar immune cell recruitment. Thus, granuloma formation was not a generic molecular response. In addition to tissue-specific effects, patients with sarcoidosis exhibited an 8-fold increase in circulating ILC1s, which correlated with treatment status. Multiple immune cell types induced CXCL12/CXCR4 signaling in sarcoidosis, including Th1 T cells, macrophages, and ILCs. Mechanistically, CXCR4 inhibition reduced sarcoidosis-activated immune cell migration, and targeting CXCR4 or total ILCs attenuated granuloma formation in a noninfectious mouse model. Taken together, our results show that ILC1s are a tissue and circulating biomarker that distinguishes sarcoidosis from other skin granulomatous diseases. Repurposing existing CXCR4 inhibitors may offer a new targeted treatment for this devastating disease.

The colonization of dental implants by oral biofilms causes inflammatory reactions that can ultimately lead to implant loss. Therefore, safety-integrated implant surfaces are under development that aim to detect bacterial attachment at an early stage and subsequently release antibacterial compounds to prevent their accumulation. Since primary oral colonizers ferment carbohydrates leading to local acidification, pH is considered a promising trigger for these surfaces. As a prerequisite for such systems, the present study aimed at specifically analyzing the pH at the interface between implant material and oral biofilms. For this purpose, in vitro–grown Streptococcus oralis monospecies biofilms and an established multispecies biofilm on titanium discs as well as in situ–grown biofilms from orally exposed titanium-equipped splints were used. Mature biofilm morphology was characterized by live/dead fluorescence staining, revealing improved growth from in vitro to in situ biofilms as well as a general decreasing membrane permeability over time due to the static incubation conditions. For pH analysis, the pH-sensitive dye C-SNARF-4 combined with 3-dimensional imaging by confocal laser-scanning microscopy and digital image analysis were used to detect extracellular pH values in different biofilm layers. All mature biofilms showed a pH gradient, with the lowest values at the material interface. Interestingly, the exact values depicted a time- and nutrient-dependent gradual acidification independently of the biofilm source and for in situ biofilms also independently of the sample donor. After short incubation times, a mild acidification to approximately pH 6.3 could be observed. But when sufficient nutrients were processed for a longer period of time, acidification intensified, leading to approximately pH 5.0. This not only defines the required turning point of pH-triggered implant release systems but also reveals the opportunity for a tailored release at different stages of biofilm formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protists, ciliates in particular, play a role in ecosystem functioning by recycling microbial biomass, and thus, nutrients and energy. Studies on their secondary production in aquatic ecosystems suggest that their overall contribution to annual secondary production is relatively minor, only becoming significant during bloom episodes. It remains unclear if the ecological role of soil ciliates, as estimated by their secondary production, is similarly minor. Temporal data on ciliate abundance and biovolume among the rhizosphere of three flowering plant species were used to estimate biomass and potential secondary production of soil ciliates in a subtropical forest of Puerto Rico. Ciliate abundance, biomass, and secondary production were estimated in the top 5 cm of soil during both the dry and wet seasons. Mean ciliate abundances in these months were 5 ± 10.3 and 16 ± 16.1 (n = 93 soil samples) for nanociliates and microciliates, respectively. Mean ciliate biomass was 41,854 ± 37,055 pg C g-1 of dry weight soil. Mean nano- and microciliate biomass were 418 ± 704.4 pg C g-1 of dry weight soil and 45,315 ± 39,466.8 pg C g-1 of dry weight soil, respectively. The season in which the ciliates were collected significantly affected ciliate abundance and biomass, but this effect showed no predictable pattern, suggesting a lack of seasonality. Mean daily ciliate secondary production (the product of biomass and growth rate) was 1.74 x 104 ± 1.95 x 104 pg C g-1 of dry weigth soil d-1 (0.002 kJ m-2 d-1 or 0.047 kJ m-3 d-1), ranging from 0 to 107,804 pg C g-1 of dry weigth soil d-1. Based on monthly precipitation data, annual ciliate secondary production was estimated to be 40.0 x 105 pg C g-1 of dry weight soil yr-1, equivalent to 1.1 kJ m-2 yr-1 or 21.7 kJ m-3 yr-1. Reduced secondary production estimates, in addition to low mean consumption of microbial biomass (0.002%), indicates that ciliates have a relatively minor role in this subtropical soil ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practice and behaviour change in healthcare is complex, and requires a set of critical steps that would be needed to implement and sustain the change. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer is traditionally used for locally advanced disease and is primarily advantageous for surgical downstaging purposes. However, it does also offer patients with certain biologic subtypes such as the triple negative or Her2 positive breast cancers the opportunity to improve survival, even in early stage disease. During the height of the pandemic, an opportunity and motivation for the increased use of neoadjuvant therapy in breast cancer was identified. This paper describes the conditions that have supported this practice change at the provider and institutional levels. We also include our own institutional algorithm based on tumor biology and extent of disease that have guided our decisions on breast cancer management during the pandemic. Our processes can be adapted by other institutions and breast oncology practices in accordance with local conditions and resources, during and beyond the pandemic.

(1) Background: The research area of video surveillance anomaly detection aims to automatically detect the moment when a video surveillance camera captures something that does not fit the normal pattern. This is a difficult task, but it is important to automate, improve, and lower the cost of the detection of crimes and other accidents. The UCF–Crime dataset is currently the most realistic crime dataset, and it contains hundreds of videos distributed in several categories; it includes a robbery category, which contains videos of people stealing material goods using violence, but this category only includes a few videos. (2) Methods: This work focuses only on the robbery category, presenting a new weakly labelled dataset that contains 486 new real–world robbery surveillance videos acquired from public sources. (3) Results: We have modified and applied three state–of–the–art video surveillance anomaly detection methods to create a benchmark for future studies. We showed that in the best scenario, taking into account only the anomaly videos in our dataset, the best method achieved an AUC of 66.35%. When all anomaly and normal videos were taken into account, the best method achieved an AUC of 88.75%. (4) Conclusion: This result shows that there is a huge research opportunity to create new methods and approaches that can improve robbery detection in video surveillance.

Volcanic soils are important resources because of their unique mineralogical and physical characteristics, and allophanic Andosols represent some of the world's most fertile soils. However, their unique properties can be lost when cultivated. Most soils in the Central Valley, Mexico, are derived from volcanic materials. This valley encompasses one of the largest water supply systems in the world by volume, but is affected by soil degradation and deforestation. Sustainably managing volcanic soils requires understanding how land use affects their hydrodynamic properties. Gas adsorption and mercury intrusion porosimetry, water retention curves, tension infiltrometry and X-ray tomography were used to describe pore structure characteristics. Two volcanic soils (one Andosol and one derived from indurated tuff--Tepetates), three land uses (maize monoculture, maize-wheat rotation and fallow) and two horizons (Ap and A2 for maize monoculture and maize-wheat rotation) were studied. Tillage affected topsoil by increasing the sand fraction by 38% and decreasing total porosity and macroporosity by 23% and 40% respectively. Macropore size was reduced and the number of isolated macropores was higher in the tilled layer under maize, compared with untilled subsoil. The plot under maize-wheat rotation had lower allophane content, and saturated hydraulic conductivity was reduced by nearly an order of magnitude and water retention by half, compared with maize and fallow plots. Compared with Andosols, Tepetates showed differences in mineralogical composition with lower contents of amorphous compounds and in its porous network characteristics with twice the total and percolating macroporosity compared with the maize plot. Its high content of organic carbon (3.5%) seemed beneficial for its hydrodynamic properties. Sustainable agricultural management of these volcanic soils requires reducing mechanised tillage, avoiding periods when soil is bare, not applying maize-wheat rotation and applying maize-fallow rotation allowing natural vegetation growth. Additional keywords: Andosol, pore size distribution, X-ray tomography., Introduction Volcanic soils are important land resources for agriculture because of their unique properties which place them among the most productive soils in the world (Shoji et al. 1993). They [...]