Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The relationship between older adults’ technology use, in-person engagement, and pandemic-related mental health

Abstract Objective The objectives of this study are to 1) describe changes in in-person communication/activity and changes in older adult technology use during the COVID-19 pandemic and 2) examine whether less in-person communication/activity mediates the relationship between pandemic-related mental health and technology use. Method Linear regressions (stratified by age and financial strain) and structural equation modeling were employed using a nationally representative, cross-sectional survey of 3,188 older adults from the 2020 National Health and Aging Trends Study’s COVID-19 Questionairre. Results Older adults engaged in more technology-based activity (b = 0.24; p<.001), more technology-based health care communication (b = 0.22; p<.001), and more technology-based food acquisition (b = 0.21; p<.001) during the COVID-19 pandemic, as compared to before the pandemic. Results indicate that adults <80 years old demonstrated greater increases in technology-based activity, technology-based health communication, and technology-based food acquisition, compared to adults ≥80 years old. Change in in-person communication significantly mediated the relationship between pandemic-related mental health and technology-based communication (standardized coefficient= −0.012; p=.005), and change in in-person activity significantly mediated the relationship between pandemic-related mental health and technology-based activity (standardized coefficient= −0.017; p=.020). Conclusions This study suggests that older adults are utilizing technology more, and therefore should be considered in technology design and dissemination. Technology use could be an important positive response to help those with pandemic related worries stay safely engaged with friends and family. Technologies should be produced that are modifiable for older adults with disabilities and affordable for older adults with fixed incomes.
Application of ITO Method in Determination of Special Half-Sibling Relationship.

OBJECTIVES To identify whether the relationship between Zhang A, Zhang B, Zhang C and Zhang X is the half-sibling relationship whose mother is sister (hereinafter referred to as the special half-sibling relationship) or the common first cousin relationship and discuss the application of ITO method in discriminating the special kinship. METHODS DNA was extracted from blood stain of four identified individuals, PowerPlex® 21 System and AGCU 21+1 STR kit were used to detect autosomal STR genetic markers. Investigator® Argus X-12 QS kit was used to detect the X chromosome STR genetic markers, the special half-sibling index (SHSI) and first cousin index (FCI) and their likelihood ratio (LR) were calculated by ITO method. RESULTS The LR results of SHSI to FCI, which were calculated based on autosomal STR genotyping and the analysis of X-STR genotyping results suggested that the relationship between Zhang A, Zhang B, Zhang C and Zhang X was inclined to be a special half-sibling relationship. CONCLUSIONS For the identification of special kinship, it is necessary to comprehensively apply various genetic markers according to the case. After the conclusion that shared alleles cannot be excluded from the analysis, ITO method can be further used to establish discriminant assumptions according to the specific case to obtain objective and reliable identification opinions.
From the archives: PM nano-domains, evolution of BBIs, and the interplay of cold signals and the circadian clock.

Numerous membrane-associated protein complexes localize to nanodomain clusters < 1 μm in diameter that can be visualized and their function studied using various super resolution microscopy approaches. Fratini et al. (2021) used spinning disc microscopy to show that the regulatory phospholipid phosphatidylinositol 4,5bisphosphate PtdIns(4,5)P2 is localized to dynamic plasma membrane nanodomains in growing tobacc0 (Nicotiana tabacum) pollen tubes (see Figure). PtdIns(4,5)P2 is enriched in pollen tube subapical membranes and regulates actin dynamics and secretion. A series of experiments with chimeric reporter proteins combined with live cell imaging and protein-protein interaction assays suggested that the nanodomain organization of phosphoinositides such as PI(4,5)P2 may be critical for the coordination of cytoskeletal dynamics and secretion during pollen tube growth.
Long non-coding RNA LINC00472 inhibits oral squamous cell carcinoma via miR-4311/GNG7 axis

ABSTRACT Emerging studies indicate that long non-coding RNAs play important roles in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). However, the function of the majority of long non-coding RNAs is still unclear. Recently, LINC00472 has been reported to play crucial roles in multiple cancers. However, the role of LINC00472 in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is still not clear. This study found that LncRNA LINC00472 was significantly down-regulated in several squamous cell carcinoma cancer tissues and OSCC cell lines. Over-expression of LINC00472 in OSCC cells inhibited OSCC progression and alleviated OSCC immune responses. Additionally, we confirmed that LINC00472 functioned as an hsa-miR-4311 sponge and regulated the expression of GNG7 (guanine nucleotide-binding protein, gamma 7). Also, we found that LINC00472 over-expression could suppress xenograft tumor growth in vivo. Our study provides evidence that LINC00472 plays an essential role in inhibiting oral squamous cell carcinoma progression and affecting immune responses by directly binding to hsa-miR-4311 to regulate the expression of GNG7 positively. Graphical Abstract
From synapses to circuits and back: Bridging levels of understanding in animal models of Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by behavioural changes that include memory loss and cognitive decline and is associated with the appearance of amyloid‐β plaques and neurofibrillary tangles throughout the brain. Although aspects of the disease percolate across multiple levels of neuronal organization, from the cellular to the behavioural, it is increasingly clear that circuits are a critical junction between the cellular pathology and the behavioural phenotypes that bookend these levels of analyses. In this review, we discuss critical aspects of neural circuit research, beginning with synapses and progressing to network activity and how they influence our understanding of disease processed in AD.
ADHD Symptoms and Obesity in Chinese Children and Adolescents: A Longitudinal Study With Abnormal Eating Behaviors as Moderating Factors

Background: Emerging studies have explored the possibility of ADHD and associated abnormal eating behaviors as catalysts for obesity in children and adolescents. However, results were largely inconsistent. This study aims to explore the effects of ADHD and abnormal eating behaviors (including eating disorders, emotional eating, and bedtime eating) on obesity, and to assess the moderating role of abnormal eating behaviors between ADHD symptoms and BMI in Chinese children and adolescents. Methods: We recruited 546 grade 3 to 11 students and their parents by stratified random sampling from three primary schools and four middle schools in Shanghai, China. This study used parent-reported versions of the ADHD Rating Scale-IV to assess ADHD symptoms, the Eating Attitudes Test and the Children’s Eating Attitude Test to assess eating disorder (ED) symptoms, and the Child Eating Behavior Questionnaire to collect information about other abnormal eating behaviors at baseline and at a follow-up survey 1 year later. Results: Hierarchical linear regression analysis revealed that ED played a moderating role in the relationship between ADHD symptoms and BMI in addition to age (β = .003, p = .008). The simple slope test showed that ADHD symptoms positively correlated with BMI ofs in the older age group with a high level of ED symptoms (β = .16, p < .001). Moreover, the baseline ED symptoms (β = .03, p = .032) and ADHD symptoms (β = .12, p = .015) increased the students’ BMI one year later after controlling for confounding factors. Conclusion: Findings of this study suggest that ADHD and ED symptoms raised the students’ BMI separately. Moreover, ADHD and ED symptoms raised the students’ BMI separately. Moreover, a combined high level of ADHD and ED symptoms is correlated with students’ high BMI in the older age group.
Do Diacritics Entail an Early Processing Cost in the Absence of Abstract Representations? Evidence from Masked Priming in English

Using the masked priming technique, word recognition experiments in various languages have shown slower response times for a target word like NEVEU (nephew, in French) when preceded by a diacritical prime like néveu than by the identity prime neveu. The most common account of this effect is linguistic: diacritical and non-diacritical vowels (e.g., é and e) activate different letter representations (e.g., compare neveu /nə.vø/ vs. néveu /ne.vø/). However, another explanation is that the reduced effectiveness of the diacritical primes is merely due to the perceptual salience of accent marks in the first moments of word processing. Here, we designed a masked priming experiment that tested this perceptual salience account by comparing the effectiveness of diacritical versus non-diacritical primes in a language where diacritics have no linguistic value, namely, English (e.g., nórth-NORTH vs. north-NORTH). We found a small but reliable cost due to the diacritical primes, thus revealing that perceptual salience reduced the effectiveness of the primes. However, the effect sizes were substantially smaller than in the experiments in languages with diacritical marks, thus suggesting that the néveu-NEVEU versus neveu-NEVEU difference relies on both linguistic and perceptual sources.
Evidence-based practice dynamic capabilities: a concept derivation and analysis

Background The environment of healthcare is complex and changeable, and the process of evidence-based practice is “dynamic”. Nurses are required to have dynamic capabilities that adjust to changes. However, there is no clear concept of dynamic capabilities in the field of evidence-based practice. The concept of dynamic capabilities needs to be derived from the management field and defined in evidence-based practice. Methods A Boolean search of the Web of Science, ProQuest, CINAHL, PubMed, and Emerald databases was conducted, and 35 articles met the inclusion criteria. The concept derivation and analysis strategy of Walker and Avant was used to form and define the concept of evidence-based practice dynamic capabilities. This method includes: selecting a concept, determining the aims of the analysis, identifying usages of the concept, determining the defining attributes, identifying antecedents, consequences, and allied concepts. Results Sensing capability, learning capability, integration capability, and coordination capability are attributes of the concept. The antecedents include personal and infrastructure related factors. The consequences include improved patient outcomes, reduced medical costs, and increased nurse job satisfaction. The allied concept is evidence-based practice competence. Conclusions An operational definition of the concept was developed. The concept compensates for the shortcomings of the existing “evidence-based practice competence” concept and helps nursing managers establish a new perspective on the effective implementation of evidence-based practice.
A New Approach with Wigner-Ville Distribution Based On LFM Signal Detection in the Ocean

Generally speaking, the spectrum of feeble signal folds the spectrum of sea clutter, and the location discrepancy between the target and its surroundings is small. So it is difficult for the classical processing in the frequency domain or space domain to detect the feeble signal in the ocean. This paper presents a new approach with Wigner Ville distribution based on the linear frequency modulation signal detection in the ocean whereas WVD has the time frequency local characteristic for LFM signal. It studies the difference between the new approach and the classical frequency approach for signal detection using the real data of the sea clutter collected by the radar in the condition of the several signal clutter ratios. The results show that the new approach has evident advantages compared with the classical approach. When the signal clutter ration is -14.3dB, it still detects the target effectively.
Similar effectiveness of the inactivated vaccine BBIBP-CorV (Sinopharm) and the mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) against COVID-19 related hospitalizations during the Delta outbreak in the United Arab Emirates

Inactivated vaccine BBIBP-CorV (Sinopharm; 95% (95%CI: 94%,97%)) and the mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech; 98% (95%CI: 86%,99%)) demonstrated protection against COVID-19 related hospitalizations from the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant. Ongoing efforts are necessary to target vaccine hesitancy and promote booster shots for protection against severe COVID-19 disease and arising variants of concern.
Comparing metrics for quantification of children’s tongue shape complexity using ultrasound imaging

ABSTRACT Speech sound disorders can pose a challenge to communication in children that may persist into adulthood. As some speech sounds are known to require differential control of anterior versus posterior regions of the tongue body, valid measurement of the degree of differentiation of a given tongue shape has the potential to shed light on development of motor skill in typical and disordered speakers. The current study sought to compare the success of multiple techniques in quantifying tongue shape complexity as an index of degree of lingual differentiation in child and adult speakers. Using a pre-existing data set of ultrasound images of tongue shapes from adult speakers producing a variety of phonemes, we compared the extent to which three metrics of tongue shape complexity differed across phonemes/phoneme classes that were expected to differ in articulatory complexity. We then repeated this process with ultrasound tongue shapes produced by a sample of young children. The results of these comparisons suggested that a modified curvature index and a metric representing the number of inflection points best reflected small changes in tongue shapes across individuals differing in vocal tract size. Ultimately, these metrics have the potential to reveal delays in motor skill in young children, which could inform assessment procedures and treatment decisions for children with speech delays and disorders.
Diversity of Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) in An Atlantic Forest Urban Park, Salvador, Brazil

Abstract We identified mosquito species (Diptera: Culicidae) in an Atlantic Forest fragment located in a large urban park in Salvador, Brazil, one year after a citywide epizootic of yellow fever virus (YFV). Between May 2 and August 2, 2018, adult mosquitoes were collected using the human attraction method, followed by trapping with hand-nets, and CO2-baited light traps placed at ground level and in the canopy. We collected a total of 11,914 mosquitoes, which belonged to three tribes, five genera, and at least seven species. The most abundant taxa captured by CO2-baited light traps were Culex quinquefasciatus (Say, Diptera: Culicidae) Limatus spp. (Diptera: Culicidae), and Wyeomyia spp. (Diptera: Culicidae), while by human attraction, Cx. quinquefasciatus, Wyeomyia spp. , and Aedes albopictus (Skuse, Diptera: Culicidae) were captured most often. The diversity of mosquitoes by species was greater in the park area with restinga vegetation compared to the area with dense rainforest. Although vectors commonly associated with sylvatic YFV transmission were not captured, we collected several species capable of transmission of other arboviruses. Given the high likelihood of encounters between mosquitoes and human visitors in environments, such as the one studied, periodic entomological surveys to determine the risk of arbovirus transmission in these settings are warranted.
Stability and Admissibility Analysis for Zero-Sum Games Under General Value Iteration Formulation

In this article, the general value iteration (GVI) algorithm for discrete-time zero-sum games is investigated. The theoretical analysis focuses on stability properties of the systems and also the admissibility properties of the iterative policy pair. A new criterion is established to determine the admissibility of the current policy pair. Besides, based on the admissibility criterion, the improved GVI algorithm toward zero-sum games is developed to guarantee that all iterative policy pairs are admissible if the current policy pair satisfies the criterion. On the basis of the attraction domain, we demonstrate that the state trajectory will stay in the region using the fixed or the evolving policy pair if the initial state belongs to the domain. It is emphasized that the evolving policy pair can stabilize the controlled system. These theoretical results are applied to linear and nonlinear systems via offline and online critic control design.
Long-Term Impact of Grandchild Caregiving Trajectories on Depression in Middle-Aged and Older Chinese People: A Longitudinal Study

There has been little research investigating the effects of caregiving for grandchildren on grandparents’ mental health from a dynamic perspective. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects on caregivers’ depression of changes in grandparenting intensity. The study population included 8,157 respondents obtained from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Latent growth mixture modeling was used to group respondents into five classes of trajectory of caregiving intensity as follows: “sharply decreasing”, “never or rarely”, “slowly decreasing”, “increasing”, and “continuously high”. A generalized additive mixed model (GAMM) and a marginal structural model (MSM) both associated the “continuously high” and “sharply decreasing” intensities with depression. “Continuously high” intensity significantly increased the risk of depression in the male group only. Further research should be conducted to analyze the deep-seated mechanisms of association between grandparenting and mental health, in different cultural contexts and among subgroups with different characteristics.
Macrophage compartmentalization in the brain and cerebrospinal fluid system

Macrophages reside within the diverse anatomical compartments of the central nervous system (CNS). Within each compartment, these phagocytes are exposed to unique combinations of niche signals and mechanical stimuli that instruct their tissue-specific identities. Whereas most CNS macrophages are tissue-embedded, the macrophages of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) system are bathed in an oscillating liquid. Studies using multiomics technologies have recently uncovered the transcriptomic and proteomic profiles of CSF macrophages, enhancing our understanding of their cellular characteristics in both rodents and humans. Here, we review the relationships between CNS macrophage populations, with a focus on the origins, phenotypes, and functions of CSF macrophages in health and disease. Description We review the compartment-specific identities of the various types of tissue-embedded and fluid-immersed CNS macrophages.
When Consumers Tune Out Advertising Messages

Consumers can get disengaged from advertisements, but there is scarce research that examines advertising disengagement. Extant research lacks a clear, comprehensive definition of advertising disengagement or a scale that measures it. Accordingly, this study focused on developing the construct of advertising disengagement and developing a scale for measurement. The scale development process encompasses six steps, with a total sample size of 1,252. The outcome of this research is an 18-item unidimensional scale for advertising disengagement that measures the individual’s passivity and detachment from advertisements. The insights from this work indicate that consumer skepticism about advertisements increases advertising disengagement, which, in turn, reduces word of mouth about the advertisements.
Demonstration of High Interface Quality AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMT with Fully Wet Recess and MOCVD Grown AlN Dielectric

In this study, the results indicate that a method combining fully-recessed wet etching and regrown channel by MOCVD is capable of obtaining high quality interface in GaN MIS-HEMT. A low Vth hysterisis GaN MIS-HEMT of 0.3V is demonstrated in this work. The GaN MIS-HEMT has a Vth of-1.5 V, a high Id,max of 771mA/mm and a RON of 13.5 Ω·mm. The wet etching shows good uniformity while the MOCVD grown AlN enhances the maximum drain current. The concept provides new insights to gate recess fabrication and MOCVD grown high quality dielectrics.
How to Shape Consumer Reaction to Corporate Environmental Communications

Companies may inform consumers about their pro-environmental actions by using either positively or negatively framed messages that, respectively, highlight the possible benefits deriving from such actions versus the drawbacks deriving from inaction. It is still unclear, however, how these two communication tactics influence consumers’ intentions and behaviors. Three studies demonstrate that negatively framed messages have a positive effect on company trustworthiness, which, in turn, exerts a favorable influence on message receivers’ intentions and behaviors. Such an effect holds only when receivers are concerned about environmental problems and perceive the company as potentially harmful to the environment. The results highlight the importance of using an appropriate framing to foster trust in environmentally responsible companies.
Effects of Fabrication Techniques and Durability Performance on Resistance of Fibre-based PEDOT:PSS/GO pH Sweat Sensor

Most wearable electronics widely incorporate metal electrodes for parameter detection but these electrodes possess drawbacks due to corrosion and performance degradation. Therefore, in this work, pH sweat sensor is fabricated by using highly conductive, stable and non-toxic PEDOT:PSS/GO nanocomposite on flexible cotton fibre substrate. This work is aimed to determine the effects of fabrication techniques and durability performance on pH sensitivity of fibre-based PEDOT:PSS/GO sensor via resistance measurements. In this work, a wearable fibre-based sensor is developed by using Poly (3,4 ethylenedioxythiophene): poly (styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS), and Graphene Oxide (GO) nanocomposite. Sample characterisations are completed by analysing absorbance spectrums, FESEM images and XRD spectra. One layer PEDOT:PSS/GO of 4:2 ratio is fabricated on cotton fabric by using dip coating and screen-printing techniques. Lower resistance of 105 Ω and higher conductivity are achieved by using dip coating technique compared to screen printing, as better absorption of nanocomposite into fiber strands via this method, leads to excellent charge distribution on coated fabric. Resistance increases proportionally with pH values. Resistance of 1.547 kΩ, 3.791 kΩ and 9.18 kΩ are measured for pH 4.00, 6.86 and 9.18 respectively. Nanocomposite layer fabricated with dip coating is also stable, durable and remained intact on the coated fabric after soaking test in distilled (DI) water for 45 minutes. On the other hand, resistance values are 3.11 Ω, 4.81 Ω and 6.54 Ω when the sensor bends at 30°, 60° and 90° respectively. This is due to additional introduced strain and redistribution of charges on the fabric after repeated movements. Based on excellent chemiresistive response towards sweat pH detection, several health conditions such as hyperhidrosis, normal state and cystic fibrosis associated with sweat pH of 4.00, 6.86 and 9.18 respectively, could be possibly identified. These promising results open up possibilities for future studies in the development of nanocomposite-based health monitoring wearable devices.