background: occupational and environmental exposures mostly represent mixtures of genotoxic agents, whereas the specificity of biomarker measurements varies widely. exploration of correlations among biomarkers contributes to the further progress of molecular cancer epidemiology and to the selection of the optimal biomarkers for the investigation of human exposure to carcinogens. the aim of this...

A significant clinical need exists to differentiate human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) into cardiomyocytes, enabling tissue modeling for in vitro discovery of new drugs or cell-based therapies for heart repair in vivo. Chemical and mechanical microenvironmental factors are known to impact the efficiency of stem cell differentiation, but cardiac differentiation protocols in hPSCs are typically...

Despite prevention efforts, burn injuries among auto mechanics are described in the literature. Electrothermal ring burns from car batteries occur by short-circuiting through the ring when it touches the open terminal or metal housing. This article describes a 34-year-old male auto mechanic who was holding a wrench when his gold ring touched the positive terminal of a 12-volt car battery and th...

Mechanics are exposed to varied work stressors such as hot noisy environments, strenuous postures, improperly designed tools and machinery and poor psycho-social environments which may exert an influence on their health and safety. The study aimed to examine the occupational injury patterns and identify work stressors associated with injury amongst automobile mechanics. A descriptive ergonomic ...

Lung volume reduction surgery (LVRS) is an option for emphysematous patients who are awaiting lung transplantation. LVRS reduces nonfunctional portions of lung tissues and favors the compensatory lung growth (CLG) of the remaining lobes. This phenomenon diminishes dyspnea and improves both the respiratory mechanics and quality of life for the patients. An animal model of elastase-induced pulmon...

Electrospinning has recently gained much interest due to its ability to form scaffolds that mimic the nanofibrous nature of the extracellular matrix, such as the size and depth-dependent alignment of collagen fibers within hyaline cartilage. While much progress has been made in developing bulk, isotropic hydrogels for tissue engineering and understanding how the microenvironment of such scaffol...

Endonuclease IV belongs to a class of important apurinic/apyrimidinic endonucleases involved in DNA repair. Although a structure-based mechanistic hypothesis has been put forth for this enzyme, the detailed catalytic mechanism has remained unknown. Using thermodynamic integration in the context of ab initio quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics molecular dynamics, we examined certain aspects of...