Category: Nevin Manimala

Adv Physiol Educ. 2023 Jun 8. doi: 10.1152/advan.00060.2022. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Online Flipped Classroom (OFC) differs from the traditional flipped classroom as it does not involve face-to-face interaction between teachers and students. Instead, the class meeting is conducted online, and it is focused on active and collaborative learning (e.g., discussion，rather than lecturing). To evaluate the effectiveness of the Physiology OFC, we compared it with online live teaching (OLT) offered in the same school and semester. We analyzed the exam scores of the Physiology course as well as the scores for other courses offered in the same semester and after the Physiology course. Our analysis found no statistically significant difference between OFC and OLT in terms of overall exam scores for all students. However, high-achieving students in OFC scored higher on the total exam score and short answer questions (SAQs) but the score of case study questions (CSQs) of low-achieving students was lower. Furthermore, students in OFC scored higher in Medical Immunology and courses dominated by logical thinking such as Pharmacology and Diagnostics than students in OLT. In conclusion, our findings suggest that OFC can achieve the same teaching effectiveness as OLT, with a more positive impact on high-achieving students. The positive impact extends beyond the Physiology course to other courses where logical thinking is critical. However, the lower performance of low-achieving students in CSQs highlights the need for further research to determine the reasons for their lower performance and potential strategies to improve their learning outcomes.

PMID:37289950 | DOI:10.1152/advan.00060.2022

J Cosmet Laser Ther. 2023 Jun 8:1-5. doi: 10.1080/14764172.2023.2222946. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Port-wine stains (PWS) are frequently refractory to laser treatments. The aim of this study is to evaluate the role of treatment interval time. From 1990, 216 patients underwent Pulsed Dye Laser sessions. The laser sessions were scheduled at a minimum interval of 4 weeks to a maximum of 48 weeks. Clinical outcomes were assessed 8 weeks after the last laser session. Better results were obtained with 8 weeks interval time between therapy session, and high efficacies were also found for intervals of 4, 6 and 10 weeks. For greater interval instead, the effectiveness is significantly lower.

PMID:37289942 | DOI:10.1080/14764172.2023.2222946

Lab Med. 2023 Jun 8:lmad046. doi: 10.1093/labmed/lmad046. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) can be used to detect pathogens in clinical infectious diseases through the sequencing analysis of microbial and host nucleic acids in clinical samples. This study aimed to assess the diagnostic performance of mNGS in patients with infections.

METHODS: In this study, 641 patients with infectious diseases were enrolled. These patients simultaneously underwent pathogen detection by both mNGS and microbial culture. Through statistical analysis, we judged the diagnostic performance of mNGS and microbial culture on different pathogens.

RESULTS: Among 641 patients, 276 cases of bacteria and 95 cases of fungi were detected by mNGS, whereas 108 cases of bacteria and 41 cases of fungi were detected by traditional cultures. Among all mixed infections, combined bacterial and viral infections were the highest (51%, 87/169), followed by combined bacterial with fungal infections (16.57%, 28/169) and mixed bacterial, fungal, and viral infections (13.61%, 23/169). Among all sample types, bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) samples had the highest positive rate (87.8%, 144/164), followed by sputum (85.4%, 76/89) and blood samples (61.2%, 158/258). For the culture method, sputum samples had the highest positive rate (47.2%, 42/89), followed by BALF (37.2%, 61/164). The positive rate of mNGS was 69.89% (448/641), which was significantly higher than that of traditional cultures (22.31% [143/641]) (P < .05).

CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that mNGS is an effective tool for the rapid diagnosis of infectious diseases. Compared with traditional detection methods, mNGS also showed obvious advantages in mixed infections and infections with uncommon pathogens.

PMID:37289931 | DOI:10.1093/labmed/lmad046

Science. 2023 Jun 9;380(6649):1038-1042. doi: 10.1126/science.add5190. Epub 2023 Jun 8.

ABSTRACT

One of the foundational premises of ecology is that climate determines ecosystems. This has been challenged by alternative ecosystem state models, which illustrate that internal ecosystem dynamics acting on the initial ecosystem state can overwhelm the influence of climate, and by observations suggesting that climate cannot reliably discriminate forest and savanna ecosystem types. Using a novel phytoclimatic transform, which estimates the ability of climate to support different types of plants, we show that climatic suitability for evergreen trees and C4 grasses are sufficient to discriminate between forest and savanna in Africa. Our findings reassert the dominant influence of climate on ecosystems and suggest that the role of feedbacks causing alternative ecosystem states is less prevalent than has been suggested.

PMID:37289873 | DOI:10.1126/science.add5190

Gastroenterol Nurs. 2023 Jun 8. doi: 10.1097/SGA.0000000000000754. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of lavender oil inhalation on the anxiety and comfort levels of patients scheduled for colonoscopy. Seventy-three experimental group patients scheduled for colonoscopy at a training and research hospital in the west of Turkey in June to September 2022 and 72 control group patients were included in this randomized, controlled, prospective study. Minimal sedation (propofol 2-3 mg/kg) was applied in both groups. Lavender inhalation was applied to the experimental group, whereas the control group patients received nursing care (vital sign monitoring, prevention of complications, and rest). The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Shortened General Comfort Questionnaire were used for pre- and postprocedural data collection. Median ages were 53.00 years (47.25-59.00) in the experimental group patients and 51.00 (44.00-59.5) in the control group. Although postprocedural state anxiety scores were lower in the experimental group compared with the control group, the difference was not statistically significant (p = .069). The general postcolonoscopy comfort score was significantly higher in the experimental group compared with the control group (p < .001). Trait anxiety scores also increased as the number of colonoscopies increased in both groups. We conclude that lavender oil inhalation, a simple and inexpensive intervention, increases patient comfort while exhibiting a positive, albeit statistically insignificant, effect on anxiety.

PMID:37289849 | DOI:10.1097/SGA.0000000000000754

PLoS Comput Biol. 2023 Jun 8;19(6):e1011075. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011075. eCollection 2023 Jun.

ABSTRACT

Interactions between stressed organisms and their microbiome environments may provide new routes for understanding and controlling biological systems. However, microbiomes are a form of high-dimensional data, with thousands of taxa present in any given sample, which makes untangling the interaction between an organism and its microbial environment a challenge. Here we apply Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a technique for language modeling, which decomposes the microbial communities into a set of topics (non-mutually-exclusive sub-communities) that compactly represent the distribution of full communities. LDA provides a lens into the microbiome at broad and fine-grained taxonomic levels, which we show on two datasets. In the first dataset, from the literature, we show how LDA topics succinctly recapitulate many results from a previous study on diseased coral species. We then apply LDA to a new dataset of maize soil microbiomes under drought, and find a large number of significant associations between the microbiome topics and plant traits as well as associations between the microbiome and the experimental factors, e.g. watering level. This yields new information on the plant-microbial interactions in maize and shows that LDA technique is useful for studying the coupling between microbiomes and stressed organisms.

PMID:37289841 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011075

PLoS One. 2023 Jun 8;18(6):e0286850. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0286850. eCollection 2023.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Transactional sex is casual sex between two people to receive material incentives in exchange for sexual favors. Transactional sex is associated with negative consequences, which increase the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion, and physiological trauma. In Sub-Saharan Africa, several primary studies have been conducted in various countries to examine the prevalence and associated factors of transactional sex among women. These studies had great discrepancies and inconsistent results. Hence, this systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to synthesize the pooled prevalence of the practice of transactional sex among women and its associated factors in Sub-Saharan Africa.

METHOD: Data source: PubMed, Google Scholar, HINARI, the Cochrane Library, and grey literature were searched from March 6 to April 24, 2022, and included studies conducted from 2000 to 2022. The pooled prevalence of transactional sex and associated factors was estimated using Random Effect Model. Stata (version 16.0) was used to analyze the data. The I-squared statistic, a funnel plot, and Egger’s test were used to check for heterogeneity and publication bias, respectively. A subgroup analysis was done based on the study years, source of data, sample sizes, and geographical location.

RESULTS: The pooled prevalence of transactional sex among women in Sub-Saharan Africa was 12.55% (9.59%-15.52%). Early sexual debut (OR = 2.58, 95% CI: 1.56, 4.27), substance abuse (OR = 4.62, 95% CI: 2.62, 8.08), history of sexual experience (OR = 4.87, 95% CI: 2.37, 10.02), physical violence abuse (OR = 6.70, 95% CI: 3.32, 13.53), orphanhood (OR = 2.10, 95% CI: 1.27, 3.47), and sexual violence abuse (OR = 3.76, 95% CI: 1.08, 13.05) were significantly associated with transactional sex.

CONCLUSION: The prevalence of transactional sex among women in sub-Saharan Africa was high. Alcohol consumption, substance abuse, early sex debuts, having a history of sexual experiences, physical violence, and sexual violence increased the practice of transactional sex.

PMID:37289839 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0286850

PLoS Biol. 2023 Jun 8;21(6):e3002129. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002129. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

In recent years, there has been a strong drive to improve the inclusion of animals of both sexes in the design of in vivo research studies, driven by a need to increase sex representation in fundamental biology and drug development. This has resulted in inclusion mandates by funding bodies and journals, alongside numerous published manuscripts highlighting the issue and providing guidance to scientists. However, progress is slow and barriers to the routine use of both sexes remain. A frequent, major concern is the perceived need for a higher overall sample size to achieve an equivalent level of statistical power, which would result in an increased ethical and resource burden. This perception arises from either the belief that sex inclusion will increase variability in the data (either through a baseline difference or a treatment effect that depends on sex), thus reducing the sensitivity of statistical tests, or from misapprehensions about the correct way to analyse the data, including disaggregation or pooling by sex. Here, we conduct an in-depth examination of the consequences of including both sexes on statistical power. We performed simulations by constructing artificial datasets that encompass a range of outcomes that may occur in studies studying a treatment effect in the context of both sexes. This includes both baseline sex differences and situations in which the size of the treatment effect depends on sex in both the same and opposite directions. The data were then analysed using either a factorial analysis approach, which is appropriate for the design, or a t test approach following pooling or disaggregation of the data, which are common but erroneous strategies. The results demonstrate that there is no loss of power to detect treatment effects when splitting the sample size across sexes in most scenarios, providing that the data are analysed using an appropriate factorial analysis method (e.g., two-way ANOVA). In the rare situations where power is lost, the benefit of understanding the role of sex outweighs the power considerations. Additionally, use of the inappropriate analysis pipelines results in a loss of statistical power. Therefore, we recommend analysing data collected from both sexes using factorial analysis and splitting the sample size across male and female mice as a standard strategy.

PMID:37289836 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.3002129

Zhongguo Yi Liao Qi Xie Za Zhi. 2023 May 30;47(3):346-350. doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1671-7104.2023.03.024.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: In order to improve the compatibility of the hospital resource planning (HRP) system for the whole life cycle of medical consumables, and to improve the management and control capabilities of hospital institutions on medical consumables.

METHODS: Based on the traditional HRP system, a secondary development and design of a medical consumables whole life-cycle artificial intelligence module was conducted, and a neural network machine learning algorithm module was introduced to enhance its big data integration and analysis capabilities.

RESULTS: The simulation analysis found that after adding this module, the proportion of minimum inventory, the proportion of procurement cost difference and the expiration rate of consumables all decreased significantly, and the differences were statistically significant (P<0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: The whole life cycle module of medical consumables based on HRP system can effectively improve the management efficiency of hospital medical consumables, adjust the warehouse inventory management ability, and improve the overall management level of medical consumables.

PMID:37288643 | DOI:10.3969/j.issn.1671-7104.2023.03.024

J Adhes Dent. 2023 Jun 8;25(1):125-132. doi: 10.3290/j.jad.b4145161.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: To investigate the effects of different surface treatments and thermocycling on shear bond strength (SBS) be-tween resin cement and zirconia-reinforced lithium-silicate (ZLS) ceramic.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: 96 ZLS ceramic specimens were randomly allocated to four different surface treatment groups: etch and silane (ES), etch and universal primer (EUP), self-etching primer (SEP), and sandblasting and silane (SS). Stan-dardized composite cylinders were bonded to surface-treated ZLS ceramic, after which SBS was obtained either after 24-h water storage only or with an additional 5000 thermal cycles (TC), resulting in eight subgroups (n = 12). After evaluation of failure mode under a stereomicroscope, representative SEM images were acquired. To examine areal average surface roughness (Sa), additional ZLS specimens were prepared and randomly allocated to 3 groups: hydrofluoric acid etching, self-etching primer, and sandblasting (n = 10). Supplementary specimens were examined using field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) (n = 2) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) (n = 2) to investigate their surface topographies.

RESULTS: ANOVA showed a statistically significant difference in SBS following different surface treatment protocols after 24-h water storage (p < 0.001). However, TC groups revealed no statistically significant difference in their SBS (p = 0.394). All surface treated groups were significantly affected by TC (p < 0.001), except for the SS group (p = 0.48). Sa was signifi-cantly influenced by the different surface treatment protocols (p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION: The ability of self-etching primer to achieve comparable bond strength with a less technique-sensitive ap-proach makes it a favorable alternative to ES for the surface treatment of ZLS ceramics.

PMID:37288593 | DOI:10.3290/j.jad.b4145161