Category: Statistics

Work. 2025 Mar;80(3):1415-1424. doi: 10.1177/10519815241290331. Epub 2024 Dec 14.

ABSTRACT

BackgroundThe Minnesota Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury and Illness Network (MN RETAIN) is a randomized controlled study designed to evaluate early interventions promoting workforce retention among workers in Minnesota. The study compares a cohort receiving increased support for stay at work and return to work (SAW/RTW) services from healthcare organizations and resources through workforce development to a control cohort provided solely a list of SAW/RTW resources within the state they can access on their own.ObjectiveThis manuscript aims to describe the design of the MN RETAIN Phase 2 study and experience to date including enrollment. Target enrollment for Phase 2 of MN RETAIN is 3200 workers with approximately half receiving SAW/RTW services from a Return-to-Work Case Manager (RWTCM) who is embedded within the healthcare team. MN RETAIN is structured to be accessible to all workers within the state, with a focus on equity and reaching historically underserved populations.MethodsPhase 2 of the RETAIN model expanded the focus from the southeast region of MN to state-wide coverage. Enrollment and services were designed to acquire a large enough cohort to reach adequate statistical power to detect differences in disability costs and rates of SAW/RTW in participating study subjects. Impact analysis of RETAIN will be performed by the federal evaluator at a future date.ResultsCharacteristics of enrolled participants to date are summarized as well as considerations for sustainability of the program upon study completion.ConclusionsTo date, the study has reached diverse workers from throughout the state of MN to provide assistance with SAW/RTW.

PMID:40297873 | DOI:10.1177/10519815241290331

Work. 2025 Mar;80(3):1380-1386. doi: 10.1177/10519815241291668. Epub 2024 Nov 29.

ABSTRACT

BackgroundArtificial intelligence (AI) is transforming medical practices with rapidly developing technologies and the innovative solutions it provides. In order for this transformation to be successfully integrated into healthcare services, healthcare professionals must have positive attitudes towards this technology.ObjectiveThe present study was conducted with the aim of comparing the attitudes of nurses working in different provinces towards artificial intelligence.MethodsThe study was planned in a descriptive cross-sectional design. The study population consisted of 1453 nurses working in 3 state hospitals (inpatient hospitals providing secondary health care services) located in the city centers of Muş, Bingöl and Adıyaman provinces in eastern Turkey. While the sample size was 698 nurses in total, the study was completed with 737 nurses. The data were collected through the Introductory Information Form and the General Attitudes toward Artificial Intelligence Scale (GAAIS). ANOVA test and multiple regression were used to analyse the data.ResultsIt was found that the nurses had highly positive attitudes towards artificial intelligence. When the nurses’ scores from the Positive GAAIS sub-dimension were compared, it was determined that there was a significant difference (p < 0.05) between the provinces. A statistically significant difference (p < 0.01) was found between the provinces in the Negative GAAIS sub-dimension, as well. Demographic characteristics were found to be effective on both Positive GAAIS and Negative GAAIS.ConclusionsAlthough there were differences between the provinces, the nurses generally had positive attitudes towards artificial intelligence technologies. The majority of the participants continue to use artificial intelligence technologies although they state that artificial intelligence will replace humans in the future. Longitudinal studies on the factors affecting attitudes towards artificial intelligence are recommended.

PMID:40297872 | DOI:10.1177/10519815241291668

Work. 2025 Mar;80(3):1319-1330. doi: 10.1177/10519815241290294. Epub 2024 Nov 29.

ABSTRACT

Background: Increased cell phone use causes individuals to divide their attentional resources between dual tasks in daily life. It is emphasized that this divided attention negatively affects task performance and makes pedestrian cell phone use an increasing safety concern. There is a lack of research on how dual tasks involving cell phone use affect pedestrian movements in laboratory and real-world settings and the time saved by text messaging while walking. Objectıve: The main purpose of this study is to investigate how dual-tasking affects pedestrians by analyzing task completion time and texting performance, as well as investigating potential gender differences. Methods: 119 students were included in the study. Expanded-Timed Up and Go Test was applied as a single task 1. As a single task 2; text messaging was used on a mobile phone. Dual-task was defined as performing both tasks simultaneously. All evaluations were recorded both in the laboratory and outdoor environment. Results: Between all parameters, task completion times showed a significant difference in favor of dual-task in both environments (p ≤ 0.05). There was no significant difference in texting performance when comparing the results of two environments (p ≥ 0.05). Performing texting and walking tasks simultaneously resulted in approximately 43-45% time savings. Conclusıons: However, dual-task increases events such as falling or hitting other pedestrians. We recommend that pedestrians do not endanger their health and the health of other pedestrians to save more or less time.

PMID:40297868 | DOI:10.1177/10519815241290294

Eur Ann Allergy Clin Immunol. 2025 Apr 29. doi: 10.23822/EurAnnACI.1764-1489.393. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Background. Understanding the reason for the decrease in atopic dermatitis risk in preterm patients may be crucial for the development of prophylaxis and therapeutic measures. The hypotheses include a change in T-helper1/T-helper2/T-helper17 balance, thymus development, and intestinal colonization. This study was designed to compare these parameters between preterm and term patients. Methods. The investigated population comprised 28 preterm and 19 term-born patients. On the 7^th day of life, T-helper1/T-helper2/T-helper17 cytokine concentrations were assessed, thymus ultrasonographic examination was performed, and the stool was examined for the presence of pathogenic bacteria. The last two procedures were repeated at 37 weeks of post-menstrual age in the preterm group. Results. There were no significant differences in the concentrations of interferon-γ, tumour necrosis factor-a (TNFa), interleukin (IL)-2, IL-6, or IL-10 after mitogen stimulation between the preterm and term groups. A negative correlation was found between IL-2 and the week of gestation at birth (r_s= -0.466, p=0.038) and thymus/weight ratio and week of gestation at birth (r_s= -0.592, p=0.006). IL-6 was negatively correlated with birth weight in preterm group (r_s -0.694, p=0.008), whereas IL-10 positively with birth weight in term group (r_s 0.775, p=0.041). Correlations of other investigated cytokines were statistically insignificant. The levels of IL-2 and interferon-γ after phytohemagglutinin stimulation were greater in the subgroup with pathogenic bacteria in the stool at birth (381.38 (148.7-727.4) vs. 13.23 (7.98-197.8) pg/ml; p=0.049; 17.49 (6.53-30.54) vs. 3.37 (1.03-9.82) pg/ml; p=0.037), whereas no significant differences were found between the levels of IL-6, IL-10 or TNFa. Conclusions. The observed associations may indicate an altered pattern of immunological development in preterm and term children.

PMID:40297862 | DOI:10.23822/EurAnnACI.1764-1489.393

Front Neurol. 2025 Apr 14;16:1527434. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1527434. eCollection 2025.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Understanding how the brain processes color information from both the left and right eyes is a significant topic in neuroscience. Binocular color fusion and rivalry, which involve advanced cognitive functions in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), provide a unique perspective for exploring brain activity.

METHODS: This study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine PFC activity during binocular color fusion and rivalry conditions. The study included two fNIRS experiments: Experiment 1 employed long-duration (90 s) stimulation to assess brain functional connectivity, while Experiment 2 used short-duration (10 s) repeated stimulation (eight trials), analyzed with a generalized linear model to evaluate brain activation levels. Statistical tests were then conducted to compare the differences in brain functional connectivity strength and activation levels.

RESULTS: The results indicated that functional connectivity strength was significantly higher during the color fusion condition than the color rivalry condition, and the color rivalry condition was stronger than the Mid-Gray field condition. Additionally, brain activation levels during binocular color fusion were significantly greater, with significant differences concentrated in channel (CH) 12, CH13, and CH14. CH12 is located in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, while CH13 and CH14 are in the frontal eye fields, areas associated with higher cognitive functions and visual attention.

DISCUSSION: These findings suggest that binocular color fusion requires stronger brain integration and higher brain activation levels. Overall, this study demonstrates that color fusion is more cognitively challenging than color rivalry, engaging more attention and executive functions. These results provide theoretical support for the development of color-based brain-computer interfaces and offer new insights into future research on the brain’s color-visual information processing mechanisms.

PMID:40297854 | PMC:PMC12034530 | DOI:10.3389/fneur.2025.1527434

Med Phys. 2025 Apr 28. doi: 10.1002/mp.17845. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The main task of deep learning (DL) based brain tumor segmentation is to get accurate projection from learned image features to their corresponding semantic labels (i.e., brain tumor sub-regions). To achieve this goal, segmentation networks are required to learn image features with high intra-class consistency. However, brain tumor are known to be heterogeneous, and it often causes high diversity in image gray values which further influences the learned image features. Therefore, projecting such diverse image features (i.e., low intra-class consistency) to the same semantic label is often difficult and inefficient.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to address the issue of low intra-class consistency of image features learned from heterogeneous brain tumor regions and ease the projection of image features to their corresponding semantic labels. In this way, accurate segmentation of brain tumor can be achieved.

METHODS: We propose a new DL-based method for brain tumor segmentation, where a semantic feature module (SFM) is introduced to consolidate image features with meaningful semantic information and enhance their intra-class consistency. Specifically, in the SFM, deep semantic vectors are derived and used as prototypes to re-encode image features learned in the segmentation network. Since the relatively consistent deep semantic vectors, diversity of the resulting image features can be reduced; moreover, semantic information in the resulting image features can also be enriched, both facilitating accurate projection to the final semantic labels.

RESULTS: In the experiment, a public brain tumor dataset, BraTS2022 containing, multi-sequence MR images of 1251 patients is used to evaluate our method in the task of brain tumor sub-region segmentation, and the experimental results demonstrate that, benefiting from the SFM, our method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods with statistical significance ( using the Wilcoxon signed rank test). Further ablation study shows that the proposed SFM can yield an improvement in segmentation accuracy (Dice index) of up to 11% comparing with that without the SFM.

CONCLUSIONS: In DL-based segmentation, low intra-class consistency of learned image features degrades segmentation performance. The proposed SFM can effectively enhance the intra-class consistency with high-level semantic information, making the projection of image features to their corresponding semantic labels more accurate.

PMID:40296197 | DOI:10.1002/mp.17845

J Health Popul Nutr. 2025 Apr 28;44(1):139. doi: 10.1186/s41043-025-00857-8.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Several studies in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere have affirmed the importance of community-level factors in influencing maternal health seeking behaviour. However, literature shows no uniform pattern in terms of how contextual-level factors influence delay in seeking antenatal care service in different parts of the region. The association of contextual factors and timing of antenatal care is not well documented at regional level. Thus, this study was conducted to examine how community-level characteristics influence decision not to initiate antenatal care in the first trimester. Regional-level analyses of antenatal care utilisation in sub-Saharan Africa are important because they help identify geographic disparities in access and utilisation of the service. Thus, allowing for targeted interventions to improve maternal health outcomes.

METHODS: Data from the most recent Demographic and Health Surveys conducted between January 2010 and December 2021 were used in this study. A sample of 222,436 women aged 15-49 who gave birth in the last five years preceding each of the 33 country surveys in the region was used in the analysis. The association between individual and contextual-level factors and timing of antenatal care was assessed using multilevel binary logistic regression models. Stata software version 17 was used to perform statistical analysis taking into account the complex survey design. Multivariable results were presented using adjusted odds ratios at 95% confidence interval.

RESULTS: The prevalence of delay in utilisation of first antenatal care service in sub-Saharan Africa was 61.1% [95% CI, 60.6, 61.5]. Mozambique had the highest prevalence of 85.5% [95% CI, [84.2, 86.7] while Liberia had the lowest prevalence at 27.8% [95% CI, [25.6, 30.1]. Women in the age groups 25-34 [aOR = 0.79, 95%CI = 0.76-0.82] or 35-49 [aOR = 0.66, 95%CI = 0.63-0.69], those with secondary or tertiary education [aOR = 0.97, 95%CI = 0.93-1.01] and [aOR = 0.71, 95%CI = 0.66-0.77], belonging to rich households [aOR = 0.91, 95%CI = 0.88-0.95], and those who experienced a pregnancy loss [aOR = 0.84, 95%CI = 0.81-0.87] were less likely to delay first ANC utilisation. Conversely, women living in rural areas [aOR = 1.18, 95%CI = 1.13-1.23], communities with a high proportion of women who experienced unwanted births [aOR = 1.08, 95%CI = 1.02-1.14] were more likely to delay first antenatal care visit.

CONCLUSION: Both individual and community-level factors influenced women’s delay in seeking antenatal care service in sub-Saharan Africa. Integrating community level factors when designing maternal health promotion interventions would be key to improve early utilisation of antenatal care services. There is need to strengthen maternal health promotion initiatives such as Community Health Worker Outreach, Mobile Messaging Campaigns, Male Involvement Initiatives and, School and Youth Friendly Health Programmes targeting women in marginalised communities such as rural settings.

PMID:40296180 | DOI:10.1186/s41043-025-00857-8

Microbiome. 2025 Apr 28;13(1):106. doi: 10.1186/s40168-025-02105-x.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Microbial taxonomic diversity declines with increased environmental stress. Yet, few studies have explored whether phylogenetic and functional diversities track taxonomic diversity along the stress gradient. Here, we investigated microbial communities within an aquifer in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA, which is characterized by a broad spectrum of stressors, including extremely high levels of nitrate, heavy metals like cadmium and chromium, radionuclides such as uranium, and extremely low pH (< 3).

RESULTS: Both taxonomic and phylogenetic α-diversities were reduced in the most impacted wells, while the decline in functional α-diversity was modest and statistically insignificant, indicating a more robust buffering capacity to environmental stress. Differences in functional gene composition (i.e., functional β-diversity) were pronounced in highly contaminated wells, while convergent functional gene composition was observed in uncontaminated wells. The relative abundances of most carbon degradation genes were decreased in contaminated wells, but genes associated with denitrification, adenylylsulfate reduction, and sulfite reduction were increased. Compared to taxonomic and phylogenetic compositions, environmental variables played a more significant role in shaping functional gene composition, suggesting that niche selection could be more closely related to microbial functionality than taxonomy.

CONCLUSIONS: Overall, we demonstrated that despite a reduced taxonomic α-diversity, microbial communities under stress maintained functionality underpinned by environmental selection. Video Abstract.

PMID:40296156 | DOI:10.1186/s40168-025-02105-x

BMC Sports Sci Med Rehabil. 2025 Apr 28;17(1):103. doi: 10.1186/s13102-025-01114-5.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: By introducing the grey correlation theory to evaluate the implementation effect of various techniques and tactics of athletes, to conduct a substantial verification of the constructed “New Four-phase Index Statistical Method”, to explore the scientific nature of the division of each Phase index, and to provide theoretical support for subsequent systematic research and improvement of the theoretical research system of table tennis techniques and tactics.

METHODS: By employing research methods such as video analysis, mathematical statistics, and grey correlation, a model of the “New Four-phase Index Statistical Method” was constructed. According to the contribution rate and total contribution rate indicators of the set tactics in the attack-after-serve phase (serve and 3rd stroke), attack-after-receive phase (receive and 4th stroke), transition phase (5th and 6th stroke) and rally phase (I and II) within the statistical model, the quality characteristics of the eight technical and tactical contributions of player T when playing against the main and reserve players of China were evaluated and analyzed.

RESULTS: the contribution rate of the first four strokes is closely related to the total contribution rate, which is the main scoring method for T to win the match. T’s 5th and 6th strokes play an important role in the game of attack and defense transition, which is a key turning point of his attack-after-serve phase and attack-after-receive phase into the rally phase. The correlation between the contribution rate during T’s rally phase and the overall contribution rate is not very close; similarly, the correlation between T’s contribution rate and the total contribution rate is not very close either. With the multi-strokes confrontation, the advantage shown in the match began to decrease slowly.

CONCLUSION: By introducing grey relational analysis (GRA), the various technical and tactical effectiveness of the constructed “New Four-Phase Index” can be objectively, reasonably and accurately evaluated, which has certain practicality and feasibility.

PMID:40296145 | DOI:10.1186/s13102-025-01114-5

Head Face Med. 2025 Apr 28;21(1):34. doi: 10.1186/s13005-025-00512-x.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: This study utilized MRI-based texture analysis to quantify structural alterations in the lateral pterygoid muscle (LPM) among MR images with unilateral anterior disc displacement (uADD) of the temporomandibular joint. Retrospective analysis of anonymized MR images from 232 uADD patients and 123 healthy individuals (January 2022- December 2024), approved by the Ethics Committee of Wenzhou Medical University Affiliated School of Stomatology (Ethics Number: WYKQ 2024008) with waived informed consent due to the use of de-identified retrospective data, was conducted to identify diagnostic markers and possible related pathological changes of disc displacement. According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria four groups of MR images were included in this study: the healthy temporomandibular joints (H-TMJ) of individuals with uADD, joints with anterior disc displacement with reduction (ADDwR), joints with anterior disc displacement without reduction (ADDwoR), and MR images from normal volunteers as the healthy group (HG). Four texture parameters were used for analysis: the angular second moment (ASM), Contrast, inverse difference moment (IDM) and Entropy.

RESULTS: Statistically significant differences (P < 0.05) were found between groups for the ASM, Contrast, IDM, and Entropy variables, indicating their potential as diagnostic markers. Additionally, Entropy values differed significantly between the ADDwoR and ADDwR groups (P < 0.05), highlighting its diagnostic potential in distinguishing these two conditions. The severity of ADD disease showed varying degrees of correlation with specific texture parameters, with significant associations observed for ASM, Contrast, IDM, and Entropy (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: The texture parameters of the LPM exhibit significant changes in MR images with anterior disc displacement(ADD). Notably, the Entropy value of the LPM demonstrates high diagnostic utility in distinguishing ADDwoR from ADDwR, particularly in cases of complex disc displacement involving deformation or remodeling. Furthermore, the severity of ADD disease shows varying degrees of correlation with specific texture parameters. However, further research is required to validate the relationship between numerical texture changes in the LPM and their corresponding pathological alterations.

CLINICAL TRIAL NUMBER: Not applicable.

PMID:40296140 | DOI:10.1186/s13005-025-00512-x