Wound healing is a multistep process with four overlapping but distinct stages: hemostasis, inflammation, proliferation, and remodeling. An alteration at any stage may lead to the development of chronic non-healing wounds or excessive scar formation. Impaired wound healing presents a significant health and economic burden to millions of individuals worldwide, with diabetes mellitus and aging being major risk factors. Ongoing understanding of the mechanisms that underly wound healing is required for the development of new and improved therapies that increase repair. Chemokines are key regulators of the wound healing process. They are involved in the promotion and inhibition of angiogenesis and the recruitment of inflammatory cells, which release growth factors and cytokines to facilitate the wound healing process. Preclinical research studies in mice show that the administration of CCL2, CCL21, CXCL12, and a CXCR4 antagonist as well as broad-spectrum inhibition of the CC-chemokine class improve the wound healing process. The focus of this review is to highlight the contributions of chemokines during each stage of wound healing and to discuss the related molecular pathologies in complex and chronic non-healing wounds. We explore the therapeutic potential of targeting chemokines as a novel approach to overcome the debilitating effects of impaired wound healing.

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To assess the relationship between baseline dietary fatty acids and 10-year incident age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Methods: In an elderly Australian cohort, 3654 participants were examined at baseline and 2454 were examined 5 and/or 10 years later. We assessed AMD from retinal photographs. Participants completed a semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire. Results: After adjusting for age, sex, and smoking, 1 serving of fish per week was associated with reduced risk of incident early AMD (relative risk, 0.69 [95% confidence interval, 0.49-0.98]), primarily among participants with less than the median linoleic acid consumption (0.57 [0.36-0.89]). Findings were similar for intake of longchain-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. One to 2 servings

Consider a generic data unit of random size L that needs to be transmitted over a channel of unit capacity. The channel dynamics is modeled as an on-off process {(Ai, Ui)} i≥1 with alternating independent periods when channel is available Ai and unavailable Ui, respectively. During each period of time that the channel becomes available, say Ai, we attempt to transmit the data unit. If L ≤ Ai, the transmission was considered successful; otherwise, we wait for the next period Ai+1 when the channel is available and attempt to retransmit the data from the beginning. We study the asymptotic properties of the total transmission time T and number of retransmissions N until the data is successfully transmitted.In recent studies [1], [2], it was proved that the waiting time T follows a power law when the distributions of L and A 1 are of an exponential type, e.g., Gamma distribution. In this paper, we show that the distributions of N and T follow power laws with exponent α as long as log P[L > x] ≈ α log P[A 1 > x] for large x. Hence, it may appear surprising that we obtain power law distributions irrespective of how heavy or light the distributions of L and A1 may be. In particular, both L and A1 can decay faster than any exponential, which we term superexponential. For example, if L and A1 are Gaussian with variances σ 2 L and σ 2 A , respectively, then N and T have power law distributions with exponent α = σ 2 A /σ 2 L ; note that, if σ 2 A < σ 2 L , the transmission time has an infinite mean and, thus, the system is unstable.The preceding model, as recognized in [1], describes a variety of situations where failures require jobs to restart from the beginning. Here, we identify that this model also provides a new mechanism for explaining the frequently observed power law phenomenon in data networks. Specifically, we argue that it may imply the power laws on both the application as well as the data link layer, where variable-sized documents and (IP) packets are transmitted, respectively. We discuss the engineering ramifications of our observations, especially in the context of wireless ad hoc and sensor networks where channel failures are frequent. Furthermore, our results provide an easily computable benchmark for measuring the matching between the data and channel characteristics that permits/prevents satisfactory transmission.

We confirmed diabetes as a risk factor for age-related cataract and IFG as a possible risk factor for cortical cataract. BMI and hypertension were also related to incident cataract. Overall, few associations were found between cardiovascular risk factors and long-term incident cataract. A cluster of metabolic abnormalities attributable to insulin resistance appears more likely to contribute to cataract formation than any individual cardiovascular risk factor alone.

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To assess the association between smoking and long-term incident age-related macular degeneration (AMD).