Nevin Manimala

PLoS One. 2022 May 2;17(5):e0266600. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266600. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

We take the stock prices as a dynamic system and characterize its movements by a newly derived dynamic model, called the new Price Reversion Model (nPRM), for which the solution is derived and carefully analyzed under different circumstances. We also develop a procedure of applying the nPRM to real daily closing prices of a stock index. This proposed procedure brings a different perspective to the study of stock prices based on thermodynamics, and the time varying coefficients in the nPRM offer economic meanings of the stock movements. More specifically, the average of smoothed historical data A in the nPRM, analogous to the environment temperature in the Newton’s law of cooling, represent an implied equilibrium price. The heat transfer coefficient κ is adapted to be either negative or positive, which illustrates the speed of convergence or divergence of stock prices, respectively. The empirical study of ten Asian stock indexes shows that the nPRM accurately characterizes and forecasts the market values.

PMID:35499989 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0266600

Psychophysiology. 2022 May 2:e14081. doi: 10.1111/psyp.14081. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Tobacco smoking has been associated with lower cardiovascular reactivity to psychological stress in middle-aged samples, but its impact on cardiovascular reactivity to stress in young adults remains unclear. The present study examined whether young healthy adults showed differing cardiovascular stress reaction profiles depending on their smoking status. Across two laboratory studies (N = 64 and N = 114), we asked participants to complete cognitive stress-tasks while undergoing continuous hemodynamic monitoring. In both studies, there was not a statistically signification association between systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, or heart rate reactivity to stress (all ps > .05). However, examination of the underlying hemodynamic profile of the stress response suggested differences between non-smokers and smokers in both studies. In Study 1, non-smokers exhibited the expected myocardial response to the active stress-task; however, smokers exhibited a mixed hemodynamic profile. In Study 2, smokers evidenced a weaker myocardial profile to the active stress-tasks compared to non-smokers. However, the examination of the continuous hemodynamic profile score (HP) did not identify statistical differences. These results highlight that any level of the smoking habit is associated with an altered hemodynamic profile in response to stress in smokers, which may have important implications for long-term cardiovascular health. The findings also suggest that controlling for smoking behavior in reactivity research examining blood pressure and heart rate responses to stress in young adults is not necessary.

PMID:35499979 | DOI:10.1111/psyp.14081

J Chem Inf Model. 2022 May 2. doi: 10.1021/acs.jcim.1c01311. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Despite recent interest in deep generative models for scaffold elaboration, their applicability to fragment-to-lead campaigns has so far been limited. This is primarily due to their inability to account for local protein structure or a user’s design hypothesis. We propose a novel method for fragment elaboration, STRIFE, that overcomes these issues. STRIFE takes as input fragment hotspot maps (FHMs) extracted from a protein target and processes them to provide meaningful and interpretable structural information to its generative model, which in turn is able to rapidly generate elaborations with complementary pharmacophores to the protein. In a large-scale evaluation, STRIFE outperforms existing, structure-unaware, fragment elaboration methods in proposing highly ligand-efficient elaborations. In addition to automatically extracting pharmacophoric information from a protein target’s FHM, STRIFE optionally allows the user to specify their own design hypotheses.

PMID:35499971 | DOI:10.1021/acs.jcim.1c01311

J Clin Hypertens (Greenwich). 2022 May 2. doi: 10.1111/jch.14491. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Frequent fruit consumption has been associated with lower office blood pressure. Less is known about associations between fruit consumption and home blood pressure. Our aim was to study the correlation between consumption of specific fruits and home blood pressure in a large randomly selected study population. The main outcome was systolic home blood pressure. Home blood pressure measurements were performed with calibrated oscillometric meters during seven consecutive days. Means for all available measurements were used. Validated food frequency questionnaires were used for estimating frequency of fruit consumption. The specified fruits were bananas, apples/pears and oranges/citrus fruit. Complete case analysis regarding fruit consumption, office- and home blood pressure measurements and other relevant variables was performed in 2283 study participants out of 2603 available. Multivariable linear regression analysis was performed. There were statistically significant associations between consumption of all fruit types and lower systolic home blood pressure unadjusted (p for trend; bananas, apples/pears and oranges/citrus fruit p < .001). The numerical differences between most and least frequent consumption of fruit were for bananas -2.7 mm Hg, apples/pears -3.9 mm Hg and for oranges/citrus fruit -3.4 mm Hg. When adjusted for covariates, both consumption of apples/pears and oranges/citrus fruit had an independent statistically significant association with lower blood pressure (p = .048 resp. p = .009). Future controlled interventional studies are needed to evaluate the effect of specific fruit on home blood pressure.

PMID:35499960 | DOI:10.1111/jch.14491

Comput Methods Biomech Biomed Engin. 2022 May 2:1-14. doi: 10.1080/10255842.2022.2065631. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

We formulated a Coronavirus (COVID-19) delay epidemic model with random perturbations, consisting of three different classes, namely the susceptible population, the infectious population, and the quarantine population. We studied the proposed problem to derive at least one unique solution in the positive feasweible region of the non-local solution. Sufficient conditions for the extinction and persistence of the proposed model are established. Our results show that the influence of Brownian motion and noise on the transmission of the epidemic is very large. We use the first-order stochastic Milstein scheme, taking into account the required delay of infected individuals.

PMID:35499952 | DOI:10.1080/10255842.2022.2065631

Nurs Educ Perspect. 2022 Apr 23. doi: 10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000000975. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Peer mentoring encourages relationships among novice and senior nursing students, provides emotional support, and develops leadership skills. The research design was a pretest/posttest, interventional study to evaluate a supervised peer-mentoring program among nursing students to determine socialization of mentees into the nursing discipline. The second purpose was to evaluate if financial reimbursement was an incentive for participation by mentors. The pretest mean was significantly lower than the posttest mean; the difference was statistically significant. Success was achieved for both mentors and mentees. A paid peer-mentoring program allows students to relinquish time that would otherwise be spent in outside employment.

PMID:35499949 | DOI:10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000000975

Phys Rev Lett. 2022 Apr 15;128(15):151101. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.151101.

ABSTRACT

Perturbations of Kerr spacetime are typically studied with the Teukolsky formalism, in which a pair of gauge invariant components of the perturbed Weyl tensor are expressed in terms of separable modes that satisfy ordinary differential equations. However, for certain applications it is desirable to construct the full metric perturbation in the Lorenz gauge, in which the linearized Einstein field equations take a manifestly hyperbolic form. Here we obtain a set of Lorenz-gauge solutions to the linearized vacuum field equations on Kerr-Newman-Unti-Tamburino spacetimes in terms of homogeneous solutions to the spin-2, spin-1, and spin-0 Teukolsky equations. We also derive Lorenz-gauge completion pieces representing mass and angular momentum perturbations of Kerr spacetime.

PMID:35499892 | DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.151101

Phys Rev Lett. 2022 Apr 15;128(15):150603. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.150603.

ABSTRACT

Thermodynamics as limiting behaviors of statistics is generalized to arbitrary systems with probability a priori where the thermodynamic infinite-size limit is replaced by a multiple-measurement limit. A duality symmetry between Massieu’s and Gibbs’s entropy arises in the limit of infinitely repeated observations, yielding the Gibbs equation and Hill-Gibbs-Duhem equation (HGDE) as a dual pair. If a system has a thermodynamic limit satisfying Callen’s postulate, entropy being an Eulerian function, the symmetry is lost: the HGDE reduces to the Gibbs-Duhem equation. This theory provides a de-mechanized foundation for classical and nanothermodynamics and offers a framework for distilling emergence from large data, free from underlying details.

PMID:35499877 | DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.150603

JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2022 May 2;8(5):e31847. doi: 10.2196/31847.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: As a young subgroup, college students have become the main users of mobile social networks. Considering that people can indiscriminately access explicit sexual content on the internet, coupled with the increase of HIV infections in male college students, the role of the internet in meeting sexual partners and its correlation to risky sexual behavior has become an important topic.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to explore the effects of internet exposure on sexual partners and sexual risk behavior among sexually experienced male college students.

METHODS: An institution-based cross-sectional study design was used to collect data through a paper-based questionnaire administered to male college students recruited from colleges and gay organizations in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. A total of 1045 sexually experienced male students were incorporated in our analysis, with the following information collected: sociodemographic characteristics, sexual intercourse-related behaviors, and sexually transmitted disease (STD) knowledge. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to examine differences regarding basic characteristics and sexual risk behaviors between male college students who meet sexual partners via the internet and those who do not. Sequential logistic regression models were employed to examine the influence of meeting sexual partners via the internet on risky sexual behaviors after controlling for other factors.

RESULTS: The mean age of the sexually experienced male students was 21.6 (SD 2.0) years. The likelihood of risky sexual behavior was varied, yet it was the highest for those who aim to meet paid sexual partners (145/192, 75.5% to 19/22, 86.4%), followed by those seeking partners for love or romance (258/435, 59.3%). Compared to non-internet partner seekers, internet partner seekers tended to have more casual intercourse (292/542, 53.9% versus 51/503, 10.1%), paid intercourse (32/542, 5.9% versus 12/503, 2.4%), and intercourse with same-sex partners (349/542, 64.4% versus 41/503, 8.2%); they were also more likely to use psychoactive drugs (125/349, 35.8% versus 5/41, 12.2%) and have more than 2 partners. With the increase of HIV and STD knowledge, the probability of having unprotected intercourse decreased for non-internet partner seekers. However, it increased for internet partner seekers with a rising HIV knowledge score. Sequential logistic regression showed that meeting sexual partners on the internet was statistically associated with sexual risk behaviors with multiple sexual partners (odds ratio 4.434; P<.001).

CONCLUSIONS: Meeting sexual partners via the internet is a common behavior among sexually experienced male college students, and those who meet partners on the internet exhibited higher levels of risky sexual behaviors although they had sufficient HIV and STD knowledge; this is especially true for students who aimed to find partners for sexual intercourse. Thus, more attention should be paid to young adults to address the risky sexual behaviors that may contribute to STD spread among this population.

PMID:35499864 | DOI:10.2196/31847

JMIR Med Inform. 2022 May 2;10(5):e33219. doi: 10.2196/33219.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Systematic reviews (SRs) are central to evaluating therapies but have high costs in terms of both time and money. Many software tools exist to assist with SRs, but most tools do not support the full process, and transparency and replicability of SR depend on performing and presenting evidence according to established best practices.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to provide a basis for comparing and selecting between web-based software tools that support SR, by conducting a feature-by-feature comparison of SR tools.

METHODS: We searched for SR tools by reviewing any such tool listed in the SR Toolbox, previous reviews of SR tools, and qualitative Google searching. We included all SR tools that were currently functional and required no coding, and excluded reference managers, desktop applications, and statistical software. The list of features to assess was populated by combining all features assessed in 4 previous reviews of SR tools; we also added 5 features (manual addition, screening automation, dual extraction, living review, and public outputs) that were independently noted as best practices or enhancements of transparency and replicability. Then, 2 reviewers assigned binary present or absent assessments to all SR tools with respect to all features, and a third reviewer adjudicated all disagreements.

RESULTS: Of the 53 SR tools found, 55% (29/53) were excluded, leaving 45% (24/53) for assessment. In total, 30 features were assessed across 6 classes, and the interobserver agreement was 86.46%. DistillerSR (Evidence Partners; 26/30, 87%), Nested Knowledge (Nested Knowledge; 25/30, 83%), and EPPI-Reviewer Web (EPPI-Centre; 24/30, 80%) support the most features followed by Giotto Compliance (Giotto Compliance; 23/30, 77%), LitStream (ICF), and SRDB.PRO (VTS Software). Fewer than half of all the features assessed are supported by 7 tools: RobotAnalyst (National Centre for Text Mining), SRDR (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality), SyRF (Systematic Review Facility), Data Abstraction Assistant (Center for Evidence Synthesis in Health), SR Accelerator (Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare), RobotReviewer (RobotReviewer), and COVID-NMA (COVID-NMA). Notably, of the 24 tools, only 10 (42%) support direct search, only 7 (29%) offer dual extraction, and only 13 (54%) offer living/updatable reviews.

CONCLUSIONS: DistillerSR, Nested Knowledge, and EPPI-Reviewer Web each offer a high density of SR-focused web-based tools. By transparent comparison and discussion regarding SR tool functionality, the medical community can both choose among existing software offerings and note the areas of growth needed, most notably in the support of living reviews.

PMID:35499859 | DOI:10.2196/33219