Tick Diversity and Pathogen Transmission in Daejeon, Korea: Implications from Companion Animals and Walking Trails.

With the ongoing global warming-induced climate change, there has been a surge in vector-borne diseases, particularly tick-borne diseases (TBDs). As the population of companion animals grows, there is growing concern from a One Health perspective about the potential for these animals to spread TBDs. In this study, ticks were collected from companion animals and the surrounding environment in Daejeon Metropolitan City, Korea, using flagging and dragging, and CO2 trap methods. These ticks were then subjected to conventional (nested) PCR for severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus (SFTSV), Anaplasma spp., Ehrlichia spp., and Borrelia spp. We identified a total of 29,176 ticks, consisting of three genera and four species: H. longicornis, H. flava, I. nipponensis, and A. testudinarium. Notably, H. longicornis was the predominant species. The presence of A. testudinarium suggested that the species traditionally found in southern regions are migrating northward, likely as a result of climate change. Our PCR results confirmed the presence of all four pathogens in both companion animals and the surrounding environment, underscoring the potential for the indirect transmission of tick-borne pathogens to humans through companion animals. These findings emphasize the importance of the ongoing surveillance of companion animals in the management and control of TBDs.

Performance evaluation of a wrist-worn reflectance pulse oximeter during sleep.

OBJECTIVES: To characterize and evaluate the estimation of oxygen saturation measured by a wrist-worn reflectance pulse oximeter during sleep. METHODS: Ninety-seven adults with sleep disturbances were enrolled. Oxygen saturation was simultaneously measured using a reflectance pulse oximeter (Galaxy Watch 4 [GW4], Samsung, South Korea) and a transmittance pulse oximeter (polysomnography) as a reference. The performance of the device was evaluated using the root mean squared error (RMSE) and coverage rate. Additionally, GW4-derived oxygen desaturation index (ODI) was compared with the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) derived from polysomnography. RESULTS: The GW4 had an overall RMSE of 2.3% and negligible bias of -0.2%. A Bland-Altman density plot showed good agreement between the GW4 and the reference pulse oximeter. RMSEs were 1.65 ± 0.57%, 1.76 ± 0.65%, 1.93 ± 0.54%, and 2.93 ± 1.71% for normal (n = 18), mild (n = 21), moderate (n = 23), and severe obstructive sleep apnea (n = 35), respectively. The data rejection rate was 26.5%, which was caused by fluctuations in contact pressure and the discarding of data less than 70% of saturation. A GW4-ODI ≥5/h had the highest ability to predict AHI ≥15/h with sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and area under the curve of 89.7%, 64.1%, 79.4%, and 0.908, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: This study evaluated the estimation of oxygen saturation by the GW4 during sleep. This device complies with both Food and Drug Administration and International Organization for Standardization standards. Further improvements in the algorithms of wearable devices are required to obtain more accurate and reliable information about oxygen saturation measurements.

Association between Elevated Plasma Homocysteine and Low Skeletal Muscle Mass in Asymptomatic Adults.

BACKGROUND: Homocysteine has been drawing attention with a closed linkage with skeletal muscle. However, the association of hyperhomocysteinemia with decreased skeletal muscle mass remains unclear. We aimed to investigate the association of hyperhomocysteinemia with low skeletal muscle mass (LMM) in asymptomatic adults. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study of 114,583 community-dwelling adults without cancer, stroke, or cardiovascular diseases who underwent measurements of plasma homocysteine and body composition analysis from 2012 to 2018. Hyperhomocysteinemia was defined as >15 µmol/L. Skeletal muscle mass index (SMI) was calculated based on appendicular muscle mass (kg)/height (m)2. Participants were classified into three groups based on SMI: "normal," "mildly low," and "severely low." RESULTS: The prevalence of hyperhomocysteinemia was the highest in subjects with severely LMM (12.9%), followed by those with mildly LMM (9.8%), and those with normal muscle mass (8.5%) (P for trend <0.001). In a multivariable logistic regression model, hyperhomocysteinemia was significantly associated with having a mildly LMM (odds ratio [OR], 1.305; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.224 to 1.392) and severely LMM (OR, 1.958; 95% CI, 1.667 to 2.286), respectively. One unit increment of log-transformed homocysteine was associated with 1.360 and 2.169 times higher risk of having mildly LMM and severely LMM, respectively. CONCLUSION: We demonstrated that elevated homocysteine has an independent association with LMM in asymptomatic adults, supporting that hyperhomocysteinemia itself can be a risk for decline in skeletal musculature.

Survey on tick distribution and tick-borne pathogens in Daejeon and adjacent areas in South Korea.

Ticks (Ixodidae, also known as hard ticks) as principal vectors of zoonotic diseases such as severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS), Lyme borreliosis, relapsing fever, anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, babesiosis, coxiellosis (Q fever), and tularemia pose a major public health threat. This study was conducted to identify the distribution profile of ticks and tick-borne pathogens in Daejeon and the adjacent areas in South Korea, where no such epidemiological study has been conducted. From April to October 2019, 16,765 ticks were collected from three genera and four species: Haemaphysalis longicornis (n = 14,949; 89.2 %), Haemaphysalis flava (n = 987; 5.9 %), Ixodes nipponensis (n = 828; 5.0 %), and Amblyomma testudinarium (n = 1; 0.01 %). Homogenized samples of ticks were screened by real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (PCR), real-time PCR, and PCR for the presence of the following tick-borne pathogens: SFTS virus (SFTSV), Borrelia spp., Babesia microti, Coxiella burnetii, Francisella tularensis, Anaplasma phagocytophilum, and Ehrlichia spp. As a result, SFTSV (2 cases), Borrelia spp. (32 cases), and Babesia microti (7 cases) were detected. The findings of this study will contribute to the prevention and management of tick-borne zoonoses.

Self-augmentation: Generalizing deep networks to unseen classes for few-shot learning.

Few-shot learning aims to classify unseen classes with a few training examples. While recent works have shown that standard mini-batch training with carefully designed training strategies can improve generalization ability for unseen classes, well-known problems in deep networks such as memorizing training statistics have been less explored for few-shot learning. To tackle this issue, we propose self-augmentation that consolidates self-mix and self-distillation. Specifically, we propose a regional dropout technique called self-mix, in which a patch of an image is substituted into other values in the same image. With this dropout effect, we show that the generalization ability of deep networks can be improved as it prevents us from learning specific structures of a dataset. Then, we employ a backbone network that has auxiliary branches with its own classifier to enforce knowledge sharing. This sharing of knowledge forces each branch to learn diverse optimal points during training. Additionally, we present a local representation learner to further exploit a few training examples of unseen classes by generating fake queries and novel weights. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods for prevalent few-shot benchmarks and improves the generalization ability.

Selection and characterization of toxic Aspergillus spore-specific DNA aptamer using spore-SELEX.

As airborne spores of toxic Aspergillus species cause mild symptoms to invasive fungal infections, their indoor concentration should be controlled through real-time management. Aptamer-based biosensors could provide economical and simple solutions for point-of-care. In this study, we isolated aptamers binding to the spores of three representative toxic Aspergillus species (A. fumigatus, A. flavus, and A. niger) for the first time, using cell-SELEX (systematic evolution of ligands through exponential enrichment). Among the aptamer candidates, Asp-3 showed a broad and high binding affinity for the Aspergillus spores. Considering the low binding affinity with proteinase-treated spores, we speculated that the Asp-3 binding sites could be possibly associated with cell surface proteins. The high Asp-3 specificity was confirmed by comparing the binding affinity between the Aspergillus target species and other common indoor fungal species. Moreover, we also established quantitative linear relationships between Asp-3 and the spore concentration of each Aspergillus species. Therefore, the selected Asp-3 aptamer, conjugated with detection sensors, could be an effective biorecognition element for the spores of three toxic Aspergillus species.

Fungal melanin as a biocompatible broad-spectrum sunscreen with high antioxidant activity.

Melanin is considered a bio-inspired dermo-cosmetic component due to its high UV absorption and antioxidant activity. Among various melanin sources, fungal melanin is a promising candidate for sunscreen because of its sustainability and scalability; however, quantitative assessment of its function has not yet been sufficiently explored. In this study, melanin samples derived from Amorphotheca resinae were prepared, followed by the evaluation of their sunscreen performance, antioxidant activity, and cytotoxicity. Melanin-blended cream was prepared by blending a melanin suspension and a pure cream. The cream showed an in vitro sun protection factor value of 2.5 when the pigment content was 5%. The cream showed a critical wavelength of approximately 388 nm and a UVA/UVB ratio of more than 0.81, satisfying the broad-spectrum sunscreen requirement. Oxygen radical absorbance capacity assays indicated that fungal melanin had antioxidant activity similar to ascorbic acid but higher than reduced glutathione. Fungal melanin had no statistically significant cytotoxicity to human keratinocyte cell lines until 72 h of exposure, even at a concentration of 4 mg mL-1. Consequently, melanin pigment can be used as a biocompatible broad-spectrum sunscreen with high antioxidant activity and as a practical alternative in dermo-cosmetic formulations.

Topologies of metal-organic frameworks based on pyrimidine-5-carboxylate and unexpected gas-sorption selectivity for CO(2).

A simple and multitopic ligand, pyrimidine-5-carboxylate (pmc), has been used to obtain a series of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) based on Co(2+), Cd(2+), and Cu(2+). The networks possess well-defined topologies of body-centered-cubic, rutile, and interpenetrated NbO structures, respectively. Among those, [Cu(pmc)(2)] possesses a permanent porosity resulting from straight one-dimensional channels of 5.5 Å free passages. Unexpectedly, this porous MOF displays a highly selective sorption behavior for CO(2), and the sorptions of N(2), Ar, O(2), H(2), and CH(4) at two different temperatures are found to be negligible. The results of diffraction and spectroscopic analyses exclude framework dynamics or incomplete evacuation as the origin of the gas-sorption selectivity.

Discrimination of small gas molecules through adsorption: reverse selectivity for hydrogen in a flexible metal-organic framework.

Zn(2+) ions react with 3,5-pyridinedicarboxylate (pydc) to form a new metal-organic framework (MOF), [Zn(pydc)(dma)] (dma = N,N'-dimethylacetamide), based on a noninterpenetrating (10,3)-a topology. The framework possessing narrow one-dimensional channels is highly flexible, and as a result, guest-dependent breakthrough-like adsorptions occur under atmospheric pressure. This "gate opening" requires strong interactions between gas molecules and the adsorbent, and therefore [Zn(pydc)(dma)] shows a reverse selectivity for H(2) at 77 K, which is very unusual in MOFs. At 195 K, only CO(2) is selectively adsorbed by this material because of the temperature dependence of the gated adsorption.

Isoreticular metal-organic polyhedral networks based on 5-connecting paddlewheel motifs.

A metal-organic polyhedral network with a unique 5-connected topology is expanded into a series using different metal ions or dicarboxylate ligands. The prototype material (ZmID), [Zn(4)(mip)(4)(dabco)(OH(2))(2)] (mip = 5-methylisophthalate, dabco = diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane), is based on 5-connecting paddlewheel motifs and possesses large cage-like pores (8-20 A diameter). The metal ion is replaced by Co(2+) and/or the dicarboxylate by isophthalate (ip) or 2,7-naphthalenedicarboxylate (2,7-ndc) to give isoreticular frameworks [Zn(4)(ip)(4)(dabco)(OH(2))(2)] (ZID), [Co(4)(ip)(4)(dabco)(OH(2))(2)] (CID), and [Zn(4)(2,7-ndc)(4)(dabco)(OH(2))(2)] (ZND). X-ray powder diffraction and gas sorption studies reveal that ZID and CID have sustainable pore structures and show higher N(2) uptakes than ZmID. ZND is found unstable with respect to the removal of guest solvents. ZmID, ZID, and CID are all similar in terms of the H(2) sorption capacities (1.4-1.5 wt % at 77 K and 1 bar) and isosteric heat of H(2) adsorption (6-7 kJ/mol at low coverage).

The development of a nonintrusive home-based physiologic signal measurement system.

This paper describes the development of a nonintrusive health-monitoring house system that has been developed for monitoring patients' health status. The system functions unobtrusively and leaves patients free to conduct daily activities. Installed sensors and devices in the house monitor biosignals such as bedside electrocardiogram (ECG), snoring, weight, and movement pattern. The network in the house was constructed using asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) and Bluetooth technologies and it is capable of transmitting monitored signals to the remote hospital server through the home server. The system is found to be effective in monitoring patients' daily activity and health status in a nonconstraining manner.