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PeerJ. Computer Science 2024The availability of drugs across the country is a direct measure for fairer public health. Several issues have been reported drastically related to various organizations...
The availability of drugs across the country is a direct measure for fairer public health. Several issues have been reported drastically related to various organizations that fail to provide quality medicines on time. There has been a consistent increase in cases where the treatment, as well as exempted drugs, were supplied due to the unavailability of proper traceability of the supply chain. Several parties are involved in the supply and have similar interests that may defer the adequate shareability of the drugs. The existing system for managing the drug supply chain suffers from several backlogs. The loss of information, unavailability of resources to track the proper medicinal storage, transparency of information sharing between various stakeholders and sequential access. The applicability of the decentralized model emerging from the blockchain can apply to one of the perfect solutions in this case. The drug traceability chain can be deployed to a Ledger-based blockchain that may result in decentralized information. Continuous supply from the Internet of Things (IoT) based devices might be handy as the middleware for providing a trustworthy, safe, and proper transaction-oriented system. The data integrity, along with the provenance resulting from the IoT-connected devices, is an effective solution towards managing the supply chain and drug traceability. This study presents a model that can provide a token-based blockchain that will help provide a cost-efficient and secure system for a reliable drug supply chain.
PubMed: 38855238
DOI: 10.7717/peerj-cs.2072 -
European Journal of Cancer (Oxford,... May 2024Providing patient access to precision oncology (PO) is a major challenge of clinical oncologists. Here, we provide an easily transferable model from strategic management...
PURPOSE
Providing patient access to precision oncology (PO) is a major challenge of clinical oncologists. Here, we provide an easily transferable model from strategic management science to assess the outreach of a cancer center.
METHODS
As members of the German WERA alliance, the cancer centers in Würzburg, Erlangen, Regensburg and Augsburg merged care data regarding their geographical impact. Specifically, we examined the provenance of patients from WERA´s molecular tumor boards (MTBs) between 2020 and 2022 (n = 2243). As second dimension, we added the provenance of patients receiving general cancer care by WERA. Clustering our catchment area along these two dimensions set up a four-quadrant matrix consisting of postal code areas with referrals towards WERA. These areas were re-identified on a map of the Federal State of Bavaria.
RESULTS
The WERA matrix overlooked an active screening area of 821 postal code areas - representing about 50 % of Bavaria´s spatial expansion and more than six million inhabitants. The WERA matrix identified regions successfully connected to our outreach structures in terms of subsidiarity - with general cancer care mainly performed locally but PO performed in collaboration with WERA. We also detected postal code areas with a potential PO backlog - characterized by high levels of cancer care performed by WERA and low levels or no MTB representation.
CONCLUSIONS
The WERA matrix provided a transparent portfolio of postal code areas, which helped assessing the geographical impact of our PO program. We believe that its intuitive principle can easily be transferred to other cancer centers.
PubMed: 38852290
DOI: 10.1016/j.ejca.2024.114144 -
Marine Pollution Bulletin Jul 2024Marinas are central hubs of global maritime leisure and transport, yet their operations can deteriorate the environmental quality of sediments. In response, this study...
Marinas are central hubs of global maritime leisure and transport, yet their operations can deteriorate the environmental quality of sediments. In response, this study investigated the metal contamination history associated with antifouling paint uses in a sediment core collected from Bracuhy marina (Southeast Brazil). Analysis target major and trace elements (Cu, Zn, Pb, Cd and Sn), rare earth elements (REEs), and Pb isotopes. The modification in Pb isotopic ratios and REEs pattern unequivocally revealed sediment provenance disruption following the marina construction. Metal distribution in the sediment core demonstrates that concentrations of Cu and Zn increased by up to 15 and 5 times, respectively, compared to the local background. This severe Cu and Zn contamination coincides with the onset of marina operations and can be attributed to the use of antifouling paints.
Topics: Geologic Sediments; Paint; Water Pollutants, Chemical; Copper; Environmental Monitoring; Brazil; Ships
PubMed: 38850759
DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2024.116534 -
BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.) Jun 2024
Topics: Humans; Influenza, Human; Influenza in Birds; Animals; Birds; Influenza A Virus, H5N1 Subtype
PubMed: 38834195
DOI: 10.1136/bmj.q1199 -
Acta Crystallographica. Section D,... Jun 2024The expansive scientific software ecosystem, characterized by millions of titles across various platforms and formats, poses significant challenges in maintaining...
The expansive scientific software ecosystem, characterized by millions of titles across various platforms and formats, poses significant challenges in maintaining reproducibility and provenance in scientific research. The diversity of independently developed applications, evolving versions and heterogeneous components highlights the need for rigorous methodologies to navigate these complexities. In response to these challenges, the SBGrid team builds, installs and configures over 530 specialized software applications for use in the on-premises and cloud-based computing environments of SBGrid Consortium members. To address the intricacies of supporting this diverse application collection, the team has developed the Capsule Software Execution Environment, generally referred to as Capsules. Capsules rely on a collection of programmatically generated bash scripts that work together to isolate the runtime environment of one application from all other applications, thereby providing a transparent cross-platform solution without requiring specialized tools or elevated account privileges for researchers. Capsules facilitate modular, secure software distribution while maintaining a centralized, conflict-free environment. The SBGrid platform, which combines Capsules with the SBGrid collection of structural biology applications, aligns with FAIR goals by enhancing the findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability of scientific software, ensuring seamless functionality across diverse computing environments. Its adaptability enables application beyond structural biology into other scientific fields.
Topics: Software; Computational Biology
PubMed: 38832828
DOI: 10.1107/S2059798324004881 -
Politics and the Life Sciences : the... Jun 2024This preregistered study replicates and extends studies concerning emotional response to wartime rally speeches and applies it to U.S. President Donald Trump's first...
This preregistered study replicates and extends studies concerning emotional response to wartime rally speeches and applies it to U.S. President Donald Trump's first national address regarding the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020. We experimentally test the effect of a micro-expression (ME) by Trump associated with appraised threat on change in participant self-reported distress, sadness, anger, affinity, and reassurance while controlling for followership. We find that polarization is perpetuated in emotional response to the address which focused on portraying the COVID-19 threat as being of Chinese provenance. We also find a significant, albeit slight, effect by Trump's ME on self-reported sadness, suggesting that this facial behavior served did not diminish his speech, instead serving as a form of nonverbal punctuation. Further exploration of participant response using the Linguistic Inventory and Word Count software reinforces and extends these findings.
PubMed: 38832534
DOI: 10.1017/pls.2024.8 -
Heliyon Jun 2024The rise in the cost of essentials affects every nation around the world, but it has become a major concern for developing nations. It is getting increasingly difficult... (Review)
Review
The rise in the cost of essentials affects every nation around the world, but it has become a major concern for developing nations. It is getting increasingly difficult to keep up with rising prices for everyday items in these countries, where the majority of the population is from the middle class or lower middle class. Inflation, pandemics, wars, and other important variables all contribute to price increases. There may be another significant factor at play, which is supply-chain corruption. The supply chain's unreliable, chaotic, and opaque nature is to blame for this corruption. We are concentrating on the agri-food supply chain in our study. Because many of the current agri-food supply chains are intricate and challenging to monitor, dishonest parties can exploit the situation. Therefore, we suggested a thorough blockchain-based agri-food supply chain to identify the source of price increases. The private Ethereum blockchain was used in the suggested system. Since the private Ethereum blockchain is more efficient, safe, and fast, it was chosen. Smart contracts were created to describe the system and its underlying rules and laws. Furthermore, in order to showcase the usefulness of our smart contracts, we exhibited a sample decentralized application to support our hypothesis. We also gave the system a complete security and vulnerability assessment to make sure it is operating properly and is protected from threats and attacks. Due to the use of blockchain, the system is immutable, transparent, and simple to track and monitor. The proposed system has demonstrated greater transparency, traceability, reliability, speed, security, and cost-efficiency compared to conventional systems. It effectively traces the origin of corruption in the supply chain, providing a more straightforward means to tackle concerns related to price hikes.
PubMed: 38832272
DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e30972 -
Nature Communications May 2024Selection causes local adaptation across populations within species and simultaneously divergence between species. However, it is unclear if either the force of or the...
Selection causes local adaptation across populations within species and simultaneously divergence between species. However, it is unclear if either the force of or the response to selection is similar across these scales. We show that natural selection drives divergence between closely related species in a pattern that is distinct from local adaptation within species. We use reciprocal transplant experiments across three species of Phlox wildflowers to characterize widespread adaptive divergence. Using provenance trials, we also find strong local adaptation between populations within a species. Comparing divergence and selection between these two scales of diversity we discover that one suite of traits predicts fitness differences between species and that an independent suite of traits predicts fitness variation within species. Selection drives divergence between species, contributing to speciation, while simultaneously favoring extensive diversity that is maintained across populations within a species. Our work demonstrates how the selection landscape is complex and multidimensional.
Topics: Selection, Genetic; Adaptation, Physiological; Species Specificity; Genetic Speciation; Genetic Fitness
PubMed: 38821972
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49075-6 -
BMC Ecology and Evolution May 2024Selection of climate-change adapted ecotypes of commercially valuable species to date relies on DNA-assisted screening followed by growth trials. For trees, such trials...
BACKGROUND
Selection of climate-change adapted ecotypes of commercially valuable species to date relies on DNA-assisted screening followed by growth trials. For trees, such trials can take decades, hence any approach that supports focussing on a likely set of candidates may save time and money. We use a non-stationary statistical analysis with spatially varying coefficients to identify ecotypes that indicate first regions of similarly adapted varieties of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirbel) Franco) in North America. For over 70,000 plot-level presence-absences, spatial differences in the survival response to climatic conditions are identified.
RESULTS
The spatially-variable coefficient model fits the data substantially better than a stationary, i.e. constant-effect analysis (as measured by AIC to account for differences in model complexity). Also, clustering the model terms identifies several potential ecotypes that could not be derived from clustering climatic conditions itself. Comparing these six identified ecotypes to known genetically diverging regions shows some congruence, as well as some mismatches. However, comparing ecotypes among each other, we find clear differences in their climate niches.
CONCLUSION
While our approach is data-demanding and computationally expensive, with the increasing availability of data on species distributions this may be a useful first screening step during the search for climate-change adapted varieties. With our unsupervised learning approach being explorative, finely resolved genotypic data would be helpful to improve its quantitative validation.
Topics: Climate Change; Pseudotsuga; Ecotype; Adaptation, Physiological; Models, Biological; North America
PubMed: 38807083
DOI: 10.1186/s12862-024-02260-z -
Scientific Reports May 2024Stress drop is an earthquake property indicative for the characteristic relation of slip to fault dimension. It is furthermore affected by fault strength, fault...
Stress drop is an earthquake property indicative for the characteristic relation of slip to fault dimension. It is furthermore affected by fault strength, fault topography, the presence of fluids, rupture size, slip, and velocity. In this article, the stress drop image of an entire subduction zone, namely for the seismically highly active northernmost part of Chile, is combined with mapped b-values and their corresponding magnitude distribution in order to better constrain the conditions under which earthquakes of different provenances may nucleate. The underlying recent earthquake catalog contains over 180,000 events, covering 15 years of seismicity, from which more than 50,000 stress drop estimates were computed. Their spatial average segments the subduction zone into different parts, i.e., average stress drop between seismotectonic areas is different, although this difference is small compared to the natural scatter of stress drop values. By considering stress drop variations, b-value map, magnitude distribution, and thermal models, candidate earthquake nucleation mechanisms are identified which can explain the observed distributions. This is done for two exemplary regions: (1) The plate interface, where principally lower stress drop events are found, while at the same time a high spatial heterogeneity of stress drop values is observed. This indicates relatively smooth or lubricated rupture surfaces, and locally it suggests the existence of alternating regions controlled by strong asperities, weaker material, or creep. (2) The highly active intermediate depth (ID) seismicity region, where the variation of stress drop and b-value point to a gradual change of nucleation mechanism from dehydration embrittlement at the top of the ID cloud, over dehydration driven stress transfer in its central part, to thermal runaway shear mechanisms at its bottom. In both cases, the combination of stress drop and b-value distribution helps to better understand the origin and the differences of the observed seismicity.
PubMed: 38806618
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-63015-w