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Porokeratotic eccrine ostial and dermal duct nevus (PEODDN) is a rare type of epidermal nevus involving the eccrine acrosyringia. It typically presents as asymptomatic linear keratotic papules and plaques along the lines of Blaschko and predominantly affects the extremities. This disease has recently been linked to somatic mutations within the GJB2 locus. Only four GJB2 mutations have been previously documented for PEODDN, and the underlying genetic basis remains inconclusive. Herein, we report an 18-year-old female with a hyperkeratotic plaque on the dorsa of the proximal interphalangeal joint of her right ring finger, as well as multiple small hyperkeratotic papules linearly distributed on the lateral sides of her fingers occurring since birth. Histopathological results revealed prominent parakeratotic cornoid lamella-like tiers at the opening of the eccrine secretory ducts. Whole-exome sequencing of the affected skin tissue revealed a heterozygous germline mutation and a postzygotic somatic mutation in GJB2. In summary, this study presents a case of PEODDN with compound heterozygous mutations in GJB2, which broadens the genetic spectrum of this disease entity and implies a possible role for second-hit mutations in the pathogenesis of PEODDN.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to infect people worldwide. While the vaccinated population has been increasing, the rising breakthrough infection persists in the vaccinated population. For living with the virus, the dietary guidelines to prevent virus infection are worthy of and timely to develop further. Tannic acid has been demonstrated to be an effective inhibitor of coronavirus and is under clinical trial. Here we found that two other members of the tannins family, oligomeric proanthocyanidins (OPCs) and punicalagin, are also potent inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2 infection with different mechanisms. OPCs and punicalagin showed inhibitory activity against omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The water extractant of the grape seed was rich in OPCs and also exhibited the strongest inhibitory activities for viral entry of wild-type and other variants in vitro. Moreover, we evaluated the inhibitory activity of grape seed extractants (GSE) supplementation against SARS-CoV-2 viral entry in vivo and observed that serum samples from the healthy human subjects had suppressive activity against different variants of SARS-CoV-2 vpp infection after taking GSE capsules. Our results suggest that natural tannins acted as potent inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2 infection, and GSE supplementation could serve as healthy food for infection prevention.HighlightsOPCs and Punicalagin had inhibitory activity against omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 infection.OPCs serve as a dual inhibitor of the viral Mpro and the cellular TMPRSS2 protease.Punicalagin possesses the most potent activity to suppress the Mpro and block the interaction of the viral spike protein and human ACE2.OPCs-enriched grape seed extractant exhibited inhibitory activities for viral entry of wild-type and other variants of SARS-CoV-2.The daily intake of grape seed extractants may be able to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection.

This research migrates a monolithic smart intercom system to a microservice architecture, making the system more secure, stable, and scalable. The security mechanisms of the instant messaging platform are combined with microservices to improve the security of the system. The stability and performance of microservices are shown to be better than those of monolithic services through experimental tests. Residents can use different instant messaging software instead of the handset to improve the convenience of using this system. This system also implements community broadcasts, platform broadcasts, unit broadcasts, and family broadcasts to exchange messages across different instant messaging platforms. This paper proposes OpenAPI for other smart intercoms to integrate this system’s services and resources. In addition, this study deploys two microservice architectures using a native load balancer with a kube proxy and a service mesh load balancer with an istio proxy. Experiments were conducted during which residents tested the kube proxy and the istio proxy using stress testing tools on two microservice architectures, and the results showed that the kube proxy was slightly better than the istio proxy.

We aimed to determine whether dexmedetomidine administration with or without atropine increases cardiac troponin I (cTnI) level in healthy dogs. We hypothesized that 10 µg/kg dexmedetomidine + atropine increases the cTnI level, whereas 5 µg/kg dexmedetomidine + atropine does not. Eighteen healthy, pet dogs that underwent an orthopedic surgery or ovariohysterectomy were included in this study. The dogs were randomly assigned to atropine (0.02 mg/kg)–dexmedetomidine (10 µg/kg), saline–dexmedetomidine (10 µg/kg), and atropine (0.02 mg/kg)–dexmedetomidine (5 µg/kg) groups. Each dog was premedicated with atropine or saline intramuscularly (IM). After 10 min, they were IM injected with dexmedetomidine (10 or 5 µg/kg)–morphine (0.5 mg/kg)–midazolam (0.2 mg/kg). Following this, anesthesia was induced after 10 min with propofol and maintained with isoflurane in 100% oxygen. The median plasma cTnI level at 6, 12 and 24 hr after premedication was significantly higher than that at baseline. The cTnI level in the atropine–dexmedetomidine (10 µg/kg) group was significantly higher than that in the saline–dexmedetomidine (10 µg/kg) and atropine–dexmedetomidine (5 µg/kg) groups at 6 and 12 hr after premedication. The cTnI level returned to normal within 72 hr after premedication in all groups. The administration of atropine in combination with 10 µg/kg dexmedetomidine increased the cTnI level, indicating subclinical myocardial damage.

An autosomal recessive disease is caused by biallelic loss-of-function mutations. However, when more than two disease-causing variants are found in a patient's gene, it is challenging to determine which two of the variants are responsible for the disease phenotype. Here, to decipher the pathogenic variants by precise haplotyping, we applied nanopore Cas9-targeted sequencing (nCATS) to three truncation COL7A1 variants detected in a patient with recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (EB). The distance between the most 5 ' and 3 ' variants was approximately 19 kb at the level of genomic DNA. nCATS successfully demonstrated that the most 5 ' and 3 ' variants were located in one allele while the variant in between was located in the other allele. Interestingly, the proband's mother, who was phenotypically intact, was heterozygous for the allele that harbored the two truncation variants, which could otherwise be misinterpreted as those of typical recessive dystrophic EB. Our study highlights the usefulness of nCATS as a tool to determine haplotypes of complicated genetic cases. Haplotyping of multiple variants in a gene can determine which variant should be therapeutically targeted when nucleotide-specific gene therapy is applied.

BACKGROUND The aim of this study is to investigate the application of two lactic acid bacteria and dry condensed molasses fermentation solubles (CMS) in the making and preservation of corn silage. Forage corn materials are divided into eight treatment groups as follows: (i) control, (ii) B2 (Lactobacillus plantarum B2, 1 × 109 cfu kg-1 ), (iii) LAS (Lactobacillus buchneri 40788, 3 × 108 cfu kg-1 ), (iv) B2 + LAS, (v) CMS (35 g kg-1 , fresh weight), (vi) B2 + CMS, (vii) LAS + CMS and (viii) B2 + LAS + CMS. The silage composition and aerobic stability are determined after ensiling for 90 days. Furthermore, the digestibility of the silage product and gas production are evaluated using a trotro digestion procedure. RESULTS The assay results indicate that the CMS supplementation and B2 inoculation significantly increased lactic acid concentration (P

Optical illusions have been brought into recent video games to enhance gaming experiences. However, a large corpus of optical illusions remains unused, while few games incorporate illusions seamlessly. To mitigate the gap, we propose a workflow to guide game designers in applying optical illusions to their video games, i.e., in making more illusion games. In particular, our workflow consists of 5 stages: (1) choosing a game object, (2) searching for a matching illusion, (3) selecting an illusion mechanic, (4) integrating the selected illusion into the game, and (5) optionally revealing the illusion. To facilitate our workflow, we provide a tag database with 163 illusions that are labeled by their in-game visual elements and desired effects. We also provide example editing interfaces of 6 illusions for game designers. We walk through our workflow and showcase 6 resulting illusion games. We implemented these 6 games (with and without illusion) and conducted a 12-participant study to gain a preliminary understanding of how illusions enhance gaming experiences. To evaluate our workflow, we invited 6 game designers and 6 experienced players to follow our workflow and design their own illusion games, where 3 experienced game designers completed 2-week in-depth developments. We report their games, qualitative feedback and discuss reflection on our workflow, database and editing interfaces.

Covalently circularized nanodiscs using circular membrane scaffold protein (MSP) serve as a suitable membrane mimetic for transmembrane proteins by providing stability and tunability in lipid compositions, providing controllable biological environments for targeted proteins. In this work, monomeric bacteriorhodopsin (mbR) was embedded in lipid nanodiscs of different lipid compositions using negatively charged lipid dioleoyl phosphatidylglycerol (DOPG) and the zwitterion lipid dioleoyl phosphatidylcholine (DOPC), and the events associated with the retinal Schiff base, including the thermal isomerization during the dark adaptation, photoisomerization, and deprotonation, were investigated. The retinal thermal isomerization from all

Since intercom is an important communication tool for both residents and visitors, which must provide more convenient functions for users. In this paper, we use chatbot can generate a standardized response to realize the function of smart intercom system. Because the system includes an instant messaging chatbot to both visitors and residents, they don’t need to install other application and hardware at home to communicate.

Most fitting systems have to rebuild the 2D or 3D clothes or human body models, but only few manufacturers spend time and cost to re-draw these virtual models. And most fitting systems also deployed base on PC. This study proposes to implement simple fitting system for portable device that deployed in an embedded system with a touch panel, light and a build-in camera. Users can search to their favorite websites to select the desired clothes, and use the built-in camera to take portrait photo or to select the preset user image that has been stored inside the system. In the system processes images without need for an external processing unit based on embedded system. The requirements of image capturing, target detection, allocate target position, and implementing based as embedded system on the programming language with image recognition library. User can immediately see the image of the selected clothes worn on them. This makes it easily to view the dressing photo of favorite the clothes from the website, so that users can choose clothes quickly and easily.

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