Muhammad Jawad

It's strange how the worst moments in our lives can become the foundation for something better.

Before I got sick, I thought I understood what it meant to live a healthy life. I exercised a few times a week, watched what I ate (more or less), and took pride in not missing a single workday in years.

When people talk about heartbreak, they often describe it as an explosion—loud, sudden, and devastating. But for me, it was more like a slow unraveling.

It's funny how life often throws unexpected gifts when you least expect them. For me, the gift came at the age of 40, a milestone that is supposed

It's funny how life sometimes throws moments at you that make you pause, reconsider your beliefs, and even change the way you view the world.

Accurate estimation of ambient PM2.5 concentrations is crucial for assessing air quality and health risks, particularly in regions with limited ground-based monitoring. Satellite-retrieved data products, such as top-of-atmosphere reflectance (TOAR) and aerosol optical depth (AOD), are widely used for PM2.5 estimation. However, complex atmospheric conditions cause retrieval gaps in TOAR and AOD products, limiting their reliability. This study introduced a spatiotemporal convolutional approach to fill sampling gaps in TOAR and AOD data from the Himawari-8 geostationary satellite over the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in 2016. Four machine-learning models (random forest, extreme gradient boosting, gradient boosting, and support vector regression) were used to estimate hourly PM2.5 concentrations by integrating gap-filled and original TOAR and AOD data with meteorological variables. The random forest model trained on gap-filled TOAR data yielded the highest predictive accuracy (R2 = 0.75, RMSE = 18.30 μg m−3). Significant seasonal variations in PM2.5 estimates were found, with TOAR-based models outperforming AOD-based models. Furthermore, we observed that a substantial portion of the YRD population in non-attainment areas is at risk of cardiovascular disease due to chronic PM2.5 exposure. This study suggests that TOAR-based models offer more reliable PM2.5 estimates, enhancing air-quality assessments and public health-risk evaluations.

The sheets are cold where you once lay, I reach, but you've drifted far away. Your pillow sits untouched, still round,

I still remember the night I decided I'd had enough. The jeans I wore in college wouldn't zip. The bathroom mirror felt cruel.

Antioxidants, such as stilbenes, anthocyanidins, coumarins, tannins and flavonoids, are often based on oxygen-containing redox systems and tend to feature several hydroxyl groups in their chemical structures. From a synthetic perspective, oxygen atoms are prone to bioisosteric replacement with sulfur and, notably, selenium. The main objective of this narrative literature review is to explore if and how bioisosteric substitution of oxygen with sulfur or selenium can enhance the biological activity of natural products. This replacement boosts the biological activity of the resulting molecules considerably as they now combine the redox and antioxidant properties of the original flavonoids and other natural products with the specific redox behavior of sulfur and selenium. Besides sequestering free radicals and peroxides, they may, for instance, also catalyze the removal of oxidative stressors, capture free metal ions and even provide scope for selenium supplementation. Since these molecules resemble their natural counterparts, they also exhibit considerable selectivity inside the body and a good pharmacokinetic profile. Still, the synthesis of such hybrid molecules integrating sulfur and selenium into flavonoids and other natural products is a challenge and requires innovative synthetic strategies and approaches.

The dramatic increase in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in recent decades has created an urgent need to develop new antimicrobial agents and compounds that can modify and/or block bacterial resistance mechanisms. An understanding of these resistance mechanisms and how to overcome them would substantially assist in the development of new antibiotic chemotherapies. Bacteria may develop AMR through multiple differing mechanisms, including modification of the antibiotic target site, limitation of antibiotic uptake, active efflux of the antibiotic, and via direct modification and inactivation of the antibiotic. Of these, efflux pumps and the production of β-lactamases are the most common resistance mechanisms that render antibiotics inactive. The development of resistance-modifying agents (particularly those targeting efflux pumps and β-lactamase enzymes) is an important consideration to counteract the spread of AMR. This strategy may repurpose existing antibiotics by blocking bacterial resistance mechanisms, thereby increasing the efficacy of the antibiotic compounds. This review focuses on known phytochemicals that possess efflux pump inhibitory and/or β-lactamase inhibitory activities. The interaction of phytochemicals possessing efflux pumps and/or β-lactamase inhibitory activities in combination with clinical antibiotics is also discussed. Additionally, the challenges associated with further development of these phytochemicals as potentiating agents is discussed to highlight their therapeutic potential, and to guide future research.