bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Association of intimate partner violence and other risk factors with HIV infection among married women in India: evidence from National Family Health Survey 2015–16
Authors: Shri Neha , Muhammad T.
Published: November 2021

Background

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection remains an important public health concern in many countries. It is fuelled by gender inequality and disparity, which has resulted in a fundamental violation of women’s human rights. This study aims to find out the association of intimate partner violence (IPV) and other risk factors with the prevalence of HIV infection among married women in India.

Methods

This study is based on data from the India National Family Health Survey (2015–16). Bivariate analysis has been performed to estimate the prevalence of HIV. Logistic regression analysis is conducted to find out the association between IPV, factors such as having alcoholic husband and lifetime partner, and HIV infection among currently married women.

Results

Married women who had faced physical, sexual, and emotional violence from their husbands/partners were almost twice more likely to have tested HIV positive compared to married women who did not face violence [OR: 2.14, CI: 1.08–4.50]. The odds of testing for HIV positive was significantly higher among the married women experiencing IPV and having alcoholic husband [OR: 4.48, CI: 1.87–10.70] than those who did not experience IPV and had non-alcoholic husband. The use of condom did not show any significant association with HIV infection. Again, having more than one lifetime partner had a positive association with HIV infection compared to those with one partner [OR: 2.45, CI: 1.21–4.16].

Conclusions

The study revealed that factors such as experiencing all types of IPV, having an alcoholic husband, increased number of lifetime partners, being sexually inactive, belonging to vulnerable social groups, and urban place of residence are important risk factors of HIV infection among married women in India. The results also suggest that gender-based violence and an alcoholic husband may represent a significant factor of HIV infection among married women and interventions should on focus such vulnerable populations.
Educational differences in diabetes and diabetes self-management behaviours in WHO SAGE countries
Authors: Lamb Karen E. , Crawford David , Thornton Lukar E. , Shariful Islam Sheikh M. , Maddison Ralph , Ball Kylie
Published: November 2021

Background

Diabetes mellitus represents a substantial global health challenge, with prevalence rising in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Although diabetes is known to follow a socioeconomic gradient, patterns in LMICs are unclear. This study examined associations between education and diabetes, and diabetes self-management behaviours, in six LMICs.

Methods

Cross-sectional data for 31,780 participants from China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa from the World Health Organization Study on Global AGEing and adult health (SAGE) study were used. Participants aged ≥50 years completed face-to-face interviews between 2007 and 2010. Participants self-reported diabetes diagnosis, physical activity, sedentary time, fruit and vegetable consumption, any special diet/program for diabetes, whether they were taking insulin for diabetes and number of years of education. Height, weight, waist, and hip circumference were measured. Country-specific survey-weighted log-binomial regression models were fitted to examine associations between the number of years of education and self-reported diabetes diagnosis (primary analysis). In secondary analyses, among those with a self-reported diabetes diagnosis, generalised linear regression models were fitted to examine associations between education and i) physical activity, ii) sedentary time, iii) fruit and vegetable consumption, iv) special diet for diabetes, v) taking insulin, vi) BMI, vii) waist circumference and viii) hip circumference.

Results

There was strong evidence of an association between years of education and diabetes diagnosis in Ghana (RR = 1.09, 95% CI: 1.06–1.13) and India (RR = 1.09, 95% CI: 1.07–1.12) only. In India, greater years of education was associated with higher leisure physical activity, fruit and vegetable intake, rates following a special diet or taking insulin, but also higher mean BMI, waist and hip circumference. Relationships between education and self-management behaviours were rarely seen in the other countries.

Conclusions

Associations between education and diabetes, and behavioural self-management (India only) was more evident in the two least developed (Ghana and India) of the WHO SAGE countries, indicating increasing diabetes diagnosis with greater numbers of years of education. The lack of gradients elsewhere may reflect shifting risk from higher to lower educated populations. While there was some suggestion that self-management behaviours were greater with increased education in India, this was not observed in the other countries.
The impact of behavioural risk factors on communicable diseases: a systematic review of reviews
Authors: Wood Sara , Harrison Sophie E. , Judd Natasha , Bellis Mark A. , Hughes Karen , Jones Andrew
Published: November 2021

Background

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted that individuals with behavioural risk factors commonly associated with non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as smoking, harmful alcohol use, obesity, and physical inactivity, are more likely to experience severe symptoms from COVID-19. These risk factors have been shown to increase the risk of NCDs, but less is known about their broader influence on communicable diseases. Taking a wide focus on a range of common communicable diseases, this review aimed to synthesise research examining the impact of behavioural risk factors commonly associated with NCDs on risks of contracting, or having more severe outcomes from, communicable diseases.

Methods

Literature searches identified systematic reviews and meta-analyses that examined the association between behavioural risk factors (alcohol, smoking, illicit drug use, physical inactivity, obesity and poor diet) and the contraction/severity of common communicable diseases, including infection or associated pathogens. An a priori, prospectively registered protocol was followed (PROSPERO; registration number CRD42020223890).

Results

Fifty-three systematic reviews were included, of which 36 were also meta-analyses. Reviews focused on: tuberculosis, human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis C virus, hepatitis B virus, invasive bacterial diseases, pneumonia, influenza, and COVID-19. Twenty-one reviews examined the association between behavioural risk factors and communicable disease contraction and 35 examined their association with communicable disease outcomes (three examined their association with both contraction and outcomes). Fifty out of 53 reviews (94%) concluded that at least one of the behavioural risk factors studied increased the risk of contracting or experiencing worse health outcomes from a communicable disease. Across all reviews, effect sizes, where calculated, ranged from 0.83 to 8.22.

Conclusions

Behavioural risk factors play a significant role in the risk of contracting and experiencing more severe outcomes from communicable diseases. Prevention of communicable diseases is likely to be most successful if it involves the prevention of behavioural risk factors commonly associated with NCDs. These findings are important for understanding risks associated with communicable disease, and timely, given the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for improvements in future pandemic preparedness. Addressing behavioural risk factors should be an important part of work to build resilience against any emerging and future epidemics and pandemics.
PAX7 gene polymorphism in muscular temporomandibular disorders as potentially related to muscle stem cells
Authors: Quinelato Valquiria , Bonato Letícia Ladeira , Vieira Alexandre Rezende , Granjeiro José Mauro , Menezes Karla , Borojevic Radovan , Casado Priscila Ladeira , Calasans-Maia Jose Albuquerque , Tesch Ricardo
Published: November 2021

Background

Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) are a group of painful and debilitating disorders, involving the masticatory muscles and/or the temporomandibular joint (TMJ). Chronic TMD pain can be associated with genetic changes in the key muscle development genes.

Objective

To evaluate the association between polymorphisms in the PAX7 (paired box 7) gene and masticatory myalgia in patients with temporomandibular disorders (TMD).

Materials and methods

This is a case-control study. Patients with TMD were divided into two groups: (a) presence of muscular TMD (n = 122) and (b) absence of muscular TMD (n = 49). Genomic DNA was obtained from saliva samples from all participants to allow for genotyping single nucleotide polymorphisms in PAX7 (rs766325 and rs6659735). Over-representation of alleles was tested using chi-square or Fisher’s exact tests. Values of p < 0.05 were considered to be statistically significant.

Results

Individuals without muscular TMD were less likely to have the PAX7 rs6659735 GG genotype (p = 0.03). No associations were found for PAX7 rs766325.

Conclusions

Alterations in PAX7 may influence muscular pathophysiology and individuals with TMD and the rs6659735 homozygous genotype (GG) are seemingly associated with muscular involvement of the disorder. No associations were found in the region rs766325.
Drug knowledge discovery via multi-task learning and pre-trained models
Authors: Li Dongfang , Xiong Ying , Hu Baotian , Tang Buzhou , Peng Weihua , Chen Qingcai
Published: November 2021

Background

Drug repurposing is to find new indications of approved drugs, which is essential for investigating new uses for approved or investigational drug efficiency. The active gene annotation corpus (named AGAC) is annotated by human experts, which was developed to support knowledge discovery for drug repurposing. The AGAC track of the BioNLP Open Shared Tasks using this corpus is organized by EMNLP-BioNLP 2019, where the “Selective annotation” attribution makes AGAC track more challenging than other traditional sequence labeling tasks. In this work, we show our methods for trigger word detection (Task 1) and its thematic role identification (Task 2) in the AGAC track. As a step forward to drug repurposing research, our work can also be applied to large-scale automatic extraction of medical text knowledge.

Methods

To meet the challenges of the two tasks, we consider Task 1 as the medical name entity recognition (NER), which cultivates molecular phenomena related to gene mutation. And we regard Task 2 as a relation extraction task, which captures the thematic roles between entities. In this work, we exploit pre-trained biomedical language representation models (e.g., BioBERT) in the information extraction pipeline for mutation-disease knowledge collection from PubMed. Moreover, we design the fine-tuning framework by using a multi-task learning technique and extra features. We further investigate different approaches to consolidate and transfer the knowledge from varying sources and illustrate the performance of our model on the AGAC corpus. Our approach is based on fine-tuned BERT, BioBERT, NCBI BERT, and ClinicalBERT using multi-task learning. Further experiments show the effectiveness of knowledge transformation and the ensemble integration of models of two tasks. We conduct a performance comparison of various algorithms. We also do an ablation study on the development set of Task 1 to examine the effectiveness of each component of our method.

Results

Compared with competitor methods, our model obtained the highest Precision (0.63), Recall (0.56), and F-score value (0.60) in Task 1, which ranks first place. It outperformed the baseline method provided by the organizers by 0.10 in F-score. The model shared the same encoding layers for the named entity recognition and relation extraction parts. And we obtained a second high F-score (0.25) in Task 2 with a simple but effective framework.

Conclusions

Experimental results on the benchmark annotation of genes with active mutation-centric function changes corpus show that integrating pre-trained biomedical language representation models (i.e., BERT, NCBI BERT, ClinicalBERT, BioBERT) into a pipe of information extraction methods with multi-task learning can improve the ability to collect mutation-disease knowledge from PubMed.
Automatic diagnosis of COVID-19 infection based on ontology reasoning
Authors: Wu Huanhuan , Zhong Yichen , Tian Yingjie , Jiang Shan , Luo Lingyun
Published: November 2021

Background

2019-nCoV has been spreading around the world and becoming a global concern. To prevent further widespread of 2019-nCoV, confirmed and suspected cases of COVID-19 infection are suggested to be kept in quarantine. However, the diagnose of COVID-19 infection is quite time-consuming and labor-intensive. To alleviate the burden on the medical staff, we have done some research on the intelligent diagnosis of COVID-19.

Methods

In this paper, we constructed a COVID-19 Diagnosis Ontology (CDO) by utilizing Protégé, which includes the basic knowledge graph of COVID-19 as well as diagnostic rules translated from Chinese government documents. Besides, SWRL rules were added into the ontology to infer intimate relationships between people, thus facilitating the efficient diagnosis of the suspected cases of COVID-19 infection. We downloaded real-case data and extracted patients’ syndromes from the descriptive text, so as to verify the accuracy of this experiment.

Results

After importing those real instances into Protégé, we demonstrated that the COVID-19 Diagnosis Ontology showed good performances to diagnose cases of COVID-19 infection automatically.

Conclusions

In conclusion, the COVID-19 Diagnosis Ontology will not only significantly reduce the manual input in the diagnosis process of COVID-19, but also uncover hidden cases and help prevent the widespread of this epidemic.
Enhancing unsupervised medical entity linking with multi-instance learning
Authors: Yan Cheng , Zhang Yuanzhe , Liu Kang , Zhao Jun , Shi Yafei , Liu Shengping
Published: November 2021

Background

A lot of medical mentions can be extracted from a huge amount of medical texts. In order to make use of these medical mentions, a prerequisite step is to link those medical mentions to a medical domain knowledge base (KB). This linkage of mention to a well-defined, unambiguous KB is a necessary part of the downstream application such as disease diagnosis and prescription of drugs. Such demand becomes more urgent in colloquial and informal situations like online medical consultation, where the medical language is more casual and vaguer. In this article, we propose an unsupervised method to link the Chinese medical symptom mentions to the ICD10 classification in a colloquial background.

Methods

We propose an unsupervised entity linking model using multi-instance learning (MIL). Our approach builds on a basic unsupervised entity linking method (named BEL), which is an embedding similarity-based EL model in this paper, and uses MIL training paradigm to boost the performance of BEL. First, we construct a dataset from an unlabeled large-scale Chinese medical consultation corpus with the help of BEL. Subsequently, we use a variety of encoders to obtain the representations of mention-context and the ICD10 entities. Then the representations are fed into a ranking network to score candidate entities.

Results

We evaluate the proposed model on the test dataset annotated by professional doctors. The evaluation results show that our method achieves 60.34% accuracy, exceeding the fundamental BEL by 1.72%.

Conclusions

We propose an unsupervised entity linking method to the entity linking in the medical domain, using MIL training manner. We annotate a test set for evaluation. The experimental results show that our model behaves better than the fundamental model BEL, and provides an insight for future research.
Enriching limited information on rare diseases from heterogeneous networks for drug repositioning
Authors: Cao Hongkui , Zhang Liang , Jin Bo , Cheng Shicheng , Wei Xiaopeng , Che Chao
Published: November 2021

Background

The historical data of rare disease is very scarce in reality, so how to perform drug repositioning for the rare disease is a great challenge. Most existing methods of drug repositioning for the rare disease usually neglect father–son information, so it is extremely difficult to predict drugs for the rare disease.

Method

In this paper, we focus on father–son information mining for the rare disease. We propose GRU-Cooperation-Attention-Network (GCAN) to predict drugs for the rare disease. We construct two heterogeneous networks for information enhancement, one network contains the father-nodes of the rare disease and the other network contains the son-nodes information. To bridge two heterogeneous networks, we set a mapping to connect them. What’s more, we use the biased random walk mechanism to collect the information smoothly from two heterogeneous networks, and employ a cooperation attention mechanism to enhance repositioning ability of the network.

Result

Comparing with traditional methods, GCAN makes full use of father–son information. The experimental results on real drug data from hospitals show that GCAN outperforms state-of-the-art machine learning methods for drug repositioning.

Conclusion

The performance of GCAN for drug repositioning is mainly limited by the insufficient scale and poor quality of the data. In future research work, we will focus on how to utilize more data such as drug molecule information and protein molecule information for the drug repositioning of the rare disease.
A protocol for the Development of Core Outcome Sets for Endodontic Treatment modalities (COSET): an international consensus process
Authors: El Karim I. A. , Duncan H. F. , Cushley S. , Nagendrababu V. , Kirkevang L. L. , Kruse C. , Chong B. S. , Shah P. K. , Lappin M. , McLister C. , Lundy F. T. , Clarke M.
Published: November 2021

Background

The outcome of endodontic treatment is generally assessed using a range of patient and clinician-centred, non-standardised clinical and radiographic outcome measures. This makes it difficult to synthesise evidence for systematic analysis of the literature and the development of clinical guidelines. Core outcome sets (COS) represent a standardised list of outcomes that should be measured and reported in all clinical studies in a particular field. Recently, clinical researchers and guideline developers have focussed on the need for the integration of a patient-reported COS with clinician-centred measures. This study aims to develop a COS that includes both patient-reported outcomes and clinician-centred measures for various endodontic treatment modalities to be used in clinical research and practice.

Methods

To identify reported outcomes (including when and how they are measured), systematic reviews and their included clinical studies, which focus on the outcome of endodontic treatment and were published between 1990 and 2020 will be screened. The COSs will be defined by a consensus process involving key stakeholders using semi-structured interviews and an online Delphi methodology followed by an interactive virtual consensus meeting. A heterogeneous group of key ‘stakeholders’ including patients, general dental practitioners, endodontists, endodontic teachers, clinical researchers, students and policy-makers will be invited to participate. Patients will establish, via interactive interviews, which outcomes they value and feel should be included in a COS. In the Delphi process, other stakeholders will be asked to prioritise outcomes identified from the literature and patient interviews and will have the opportunity at the end of the first round to add outcomes that are not included, but which they consider relevant. Feedback will be provided in the second round, when participants will be asked to prioritise the list again. If consensus is reached, the remaining outcomes will be discussed at an online meeting and agreement established via defined consensus rules of outcome inclusion. If consensus is not reached after the second round, a third round will be conducted with feedback, followed by the online meeting. Following the identification of a COS, we will proceed to identify how and when these outcomes are measured.

Discussion

Using a rigorous methodology, the proposed consensus process aims to develop a COS for endodontic treatment that will be relevant to stakeholders. The results of the study will be shared with participants and COS users. To increase COS uptake, it will also be actively shared with clinical guideline developers, research funders and the editors of general dental and endodontology journals.

Trial registration

COMET 1879. 21 May 2021.
Επίδραση των ορμονών του γαστρεντερικού συστήματος στην επανάκτηση βάρους μετά από βαριατρικές χειρουργικές επεμβάσεις
Authors: Λαμπρόπουλος Χαράλαμπος
Published: November 2021

Η γκρελίνη, το παρόμοιο με το γλουκαγόνο πεπτίδιο-1 (GLP-1) και το πεπτίδιο YY (PYY) εμπλέκονται στη ρύθμιση του ενεργειακού ισοζυγίου και στην ομοιοστασία της γλυκόζης. Η παχυσαρκία χαρακτηρίζεται από χαμηλότερα επίπεδα νηστείας και άμβλυνση της μεταγευματικής έκκρισης της γκρελίνης, του GLP-1 και του πιθανώς του PYY. Τόσο η γαστρική παράκαμψη κατά Roux-en-Y (Roux-en-Y gastric bypass - RYGB) όσο και η επιμήκης γαστρεκτομή (sleeve gastrectomy - SG) έχουν αποδειχθεί ότι αυξάνουν τα μεταγευματικά επίπεδα του GLP-1 και του PYY. Μελέτες σε ανθρώπους έχουν δείξει ότι η αυξημένη μεταγευματική απελευθέρωση του GLP-1 και του PYY σχετίζονται με ευνοϊκά αποτελέσματα όσον αφορά την απώλεια βάρους μετά από RYGB. Ωστόσο, μελέτες σε νοκ-άουτ ποντίκια έχουν δείξει ότι οι ορμόνες του γαστρεντερικού συστήματος (ΓΕΣ) δεν είναι απαραίτητες για τις κύριες μεταβολικές επιδράσεις της βαριατρικής χειρουργικής. Εδώ, συνοψίζουμε τη σύνθετη αλληλεπίδραση μεταξύ παχυσαρκίας, βαριατρικής χειρουργικής και ορμονών του ΓΕΣ, προκειμένου να καθορίσουμε τον ακριβή ρόλο των ορμονών του ΓΕΣ στην επιτυχία της βαριατρικής χειρουργικής.
Engineering Education of Students in the Process of Outstanding Activities
Authors: Smirnov D. , Smirnova A.
Published: November 2021

The article discusses an urgent problem for the innovative development of Russia - the orientation of schoolchildren to the choice of engineering professions through the organization of engineering education in the classroom for extracurricular activities. The authors of the article introduced and disclosed the concept of "engineering education" through the formation of cognitive interest in engineering activities. The essence of engineering education at the school stage of education and the main directions of its implementation are revealed. An important area of engineering education of students is the use of business games in the educational process of extracurricular activities. The article presents a game technology developed and implemented by the authors, which combines elements of a business game, a sports relay race and professional (engineering) tests. The structure, content and criteria for evaluating the business game-relay "Professional tests" with the aim of immersing students in specific types of educational activities, close to engineering.
Techniques and Technologies to Improve Peripheral Intravenous Catheter Outcomes in Pediatric Patients: Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis
Authors: Kleidon Tricia M , Schults Jessica , Rickard Claire M , Ullman Amanda J
Published: November 2021

OBJECTIVE

Insertion and function of pediatric peripheral intravenous catheters (PIVCs) present challenges. We systematically reviewed techniques and technologies to improve PIVC outcomes (first‐time insertion success, overall insertion success, time to insertion, dwell time, failure, and complications).

DATA SOURCES

Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CONTROL), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL), US National Library of Medicine, and Embase.

STUDY SELECTION

English‐language pediatric trials published post 2010 reporting PIVC outcomes.

DATA EXTRACTION

Following Cochrane standards, two authors screened, extracted, and critiqued study quality (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach) data, random effects analysis, results expressed as risk ratios (RR), mean differences (MD) and 95% CIs.

RESULTS

Twenty‐one studies (3237 children; 3098 PIVCs) were included. First‐time insertion success significantly increased with ultrasound guidance (compared with landmark insertion; RR, 1.60; 95% CI, 1.02‐2.50). Use of ultrasound guidance (compared with landmark insertion) did not improve overall PIVC insertion success (RR, 1.10; 95% CI, 0.94‐1.28). There was no evidence of an effect of near‐infrared (compared with landmark) on first‐time insertion success (RR, 1.21; 95% CI, 0.91‐1.59) or number of attempts (MD, –0.65; 95% CI, –1.59 to 0.29); however, it significantly reduced PIVC insertion time (MD, –132.47; 95% CI, –166.68 to –98.26) and increased first‐time insertion success in subgroup analysis of patients with difficult intravenous access (RR, 2.72; 95% CI, 1.02‐7.24).

LIMITATIONS

Few studies per intervention, small sample sizes, and inconsistent outcome measures precluded definitive conclusions.

CONCLUSIONS

Ultrasound and near‐infrared appear to improve pediatric PIVC insertion. High‐quality studies examining the full extent of techniques and technologies are needed.
Visualization in Operations Management Research
Authors: Basole Rahul , Bendoly Elliot , Chandrasekaran Aravind , Linderman Kevin
Published: November 2021

The unprecedented availability of data, along with the growing variety of software packages to visualize it, presents both opportunities and challenges for operations management (OM) research. OM researchers typically use data to describe conditions, predict phenomena, or make prescriptions depending on whether they are building, testing, or translating theories to practice. Visualization, when used appropriately, can complement, aid, and augment the researcher’s understanding in the different stages of research (theory building, testing, or translating and conveying results). On the other hand, if used incorrectly or without sufficient consideration, visualization can yield misleading and erroneous claims. This article formally examines the benefits of visualization as a complementary method enhancing each stage of a broader OM research strategy by examining frameworks and cases from extant research in different OM contexts. Our discussion offers guidance with regard to researchers’ use of visual data renderings, particularly toward avoiding misrepresentation, which can arise with the incorrect use of visualization. We close with a consideration of emerging trends and their implications for researchers and practitioners as well as recommendations for both authors and reviewers, regardless of domain, in evaluating the effectiveness of visuals at each stage of research.

History: Rema Padman and Kwok Tsui served as senior editors for this article.
Routing Optimization with Generalized Consistency Requirements
Authors: Wang Kai , Zhen Lu , Xia Jun , Baldacci Roberto , Wang Shuaian
Published: November 2021

The consistent vehicle routing problem (ConVRP) aims to design synchronized routes on multiple days to serve a group of customers while minimizing the total travel cost. It stipulates that customers should be visited at roughly the same time (time consistency) by several familiar drivers (driver consistency). This paper generalizes the ConVRP for any level of driver consistency and additionally addresses route consistency, which means that each driver can traverse at most a certain proportion of different arcs of routes on planning days, which guarantees route familiarity. To solve this problem, we develop two set partitioning-based formulations, one based on routes and the other based on schedules. We investigate valid lower bounds on the linear relaxations of both of the formulations that are used to derive a subset of columns (routes and schedules); within the subset are columns of an optimal solution for each formulation. We then solve the reduced problem of either one of the formulations to achieve an optimal solution. Numerical results show that our exact method can effectively solve most of the medium-sized ConVRP instances in the literature and can also solve some newly generated instances involving up to 50 customers. Our exact solutions explore some managerial findings with respect to the adoption of consistency measures in practice. First, maintaining reasonably high levels of consistency requirements does not necessarily always lead to a substantial increase in cost. Second, a high level of time consistency can potentially be guaranteed by adopting a high level of driver consistency. Third, maintaining high levels of time consistency and driver consistency may lead to lower levels of route consistency.
Design of Four-Core Uncoupled Multicore Fiber for Next-Generation Inter-Data Center Networks
Authors: Ponchua Jirasak , Sitjongsataporn Suchada
Published: November 2021

The increasing demands within and between the data centers used for data traffic has required. Efficient links are important to data center applications for supporting the unlimited demand. Transmission capacity of single-mode fiber (SMF) is limited by fiber nonlinearity which prevents the increasing transmission power and finite amplifier bandwidth. Single-mode multi-core fibers (SM-MCFs) that are expected to overcome the current limitation of optical communication capacity. However, the inter-core crosstalk still has an effect on SM-MCF, which can limit the transmission of the inter-data center. In this paper, the design of four-core uncoupled multicore fiber is discussed for next generation inter-data center networks in order to support the unlimited use of data traffic in the future. The objective of this paper is to determine the appropriate range of core radius and core pitch, which are taken into consideration to reduce the inter-core crosstalk inside the optical fiber. These parameters can be able to improve various constraints to achieve the best multi-core fibers design. From the simulation concerned with the inter-core crosstalk, the experiment results show that the range of core pitch is at 47.5 μm to 50 μm and the range of core radius starts from 4.5 μm to 5.5 μm, that can achieve with crosstalk lower than – 30 dB/100 km for the future inter-data center networks.
Impact of acute kidney injury on graft outcomes of deceased donor kidney transplantation: A nationwide registry-based matched cohort study in Korea
Authors: Ha Jane , Jung Cheol Woong , Choi Sunkyu , Kim Myung-Gyu , Gwon Jun Gyo , Kim Joong Kyung , Kim Chan-Duck , Min Ji Won , Yang Jaeseok , Ahn Curie ,   on behalf of the Korean Organ Transplantation Registry Study group
Published: November 2021

Background

Favorable long-term and short-term graft survival and patient survival after kidney transplantation (KT) from deceased donors with acute kidney injury (AKI) have been reported. However, few studies have evaluated effects of donor AKI status on graft outcomes after KT in Asian population. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate graft function after KTs from donors with AKI compared to matched KTs from donors without AKI using a multicenter cohort in Korea.

Methods

We analyzed a total of 1,466 KTs collected in Korean Organ Transplant Registry between April 2014 and December 2017. KTs from AKI donors (defined as donors with serum creatinine level ≥ 2 mg/dL) and non-AKI donors (275 cases for each group) were enrolled using a 1:1 propensity score matching. Graft outcomes including graft and patient survival, delayed graft function (DGF), rejection rate, and serially measured estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) were evaluated.

Results

After propensity matching, KTs from AKI donors showed higher rate of DGF (44.7% vs. 24.0%, p < 0.001). However, the rejection rate was not significantly different between the two groups (KTs from AKI donors vs. KTs from non-AKI donors). eGFRs measured after 6 months, 1 year, 2 years and 3 years were not significantly different by donor AKI status. With median follow-up duration of 3.52 years, cox proportional hazards models revealed hazard ratio of 0.973 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.584 to 1.621), 1.004 (95% CI, 0.491 to 2.054) and 0.808 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.426 to 1.532) for overall graft failure, death-censored graft failure and patient mortality, respectively, in KTs from AKI donors compared to KTs from non-AKI donors as a reference.

Conclusions

KTs from AKI donors showed comparable outcomes to KTs from non-AKI donors, despite a higher incidence of DGF. Results of this study supports the validity of using kidneys from deceased AKI donors in Asian population.
‘Europudding’ or European co-production? The archaeology of the television series Eurocops (1988–94)
Authors: Jacquelin Alice
Published: November 2021

This chapter examines the case of Eurocops, a crime TV show produced by the European Coproduction Association – composed by one private and six public service broadcasting (PSB) channels of seven European countries – from 1988 to 1994 (71 episodes). Although it is one of the first European co-productions of its kind, Eurocops was a critical and commercial fiasco: what were its faults? Following Ib Bondebjerg’s methodology, this article aims at exploring the failure of this ‘Europudding’. The first section places Eurocops in the media landscape of the late 1980s and explains why this series can be considered as a ‘Europudding’ trying to enforce Europe’s cultural sovereignty against the North American hegemony. The second section analyses how the decentralized PSB production of Eurocops implied the use of an inconsistent narrative structure making the single episodes appear as part of a loose ‘collection’ of crime fiction. This partly explains the lukewarm critical reception of this television programme. The third section examines the cultural meaning of the series and is based on the analysis of the 48 episodes we had access to (through the INA French archives). The lack of transnational ‘encounters’ or dialogues – compared to other more recent cop shows such as The Team, The Killing and The Bridge – reveals the absence of a strong European identity at the time of production.
Os “álbuns despenteados” em Esse cabelo de Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida
Authors: Girotto Alice
Published: November 2021

Neste artigo, analiso a relação entre texto e fotografia na obra Esse cabelo de Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida a partir da interdependência entre a forma literária híbrida em que a obra se apresenta, a procura identitária da voz narradora e protagonista, e o procedimento de representação que chama em causa a fotografia. Se, por um lado, é verdade que o género da escrita autobiográfica desde cedo se tem acompanhado às referências fotográficas, mais ou menos materiais, e por outro que tal género adquire particular relevância no contexto da chamada ‘literatura diaspórica’, na obra da escritora afro-portuguesa as três dimensões entrecruzam-se de uma forma não previsível, o que a resgata de fáceis categorizações e permite lê-la sob a luz dos estudos interartes.
Duarte Belo e a génese do arquivo
Authors: Athayde Manaíra Aires
Published: November 2021

Percorrendo toda a obra de Duarte Belo, esta entrevista centra-se nos seus múltiplos percursos fotográficos pelo território português, na relação da imagem com a escrita e no processo de organização das fotografias sob a forma de um imenso arquivo digital.
Os Sertões de Euclides da Cunha: a intervenção de uma "tecnografia" intermidiática e multimodal
Authors: Fernandes Ana Luiza , Queiroz João
Published: November 2021

Os Sertões de Euclides da Cunha são um projeto intermidiático e multimodal. Sua "tecnografia própria", como Euclides a projeta em carta a José Veríssimo, "corporifica-se" numa "transgressão de gêneros" (cf. Haroldo de Campos), e requer o uso de mapas e fotografias. Como fotolivro de literatura brasileira, trata-se de nosso mais notável experimento de "literatura expandida", híbrida. Há, em Os Sertões, ao menos dois níveis de descrição que não devem ser confundidos nas análises. Sua macroestrutura, concebida como um projeto intermidiático, que intercala, ao longo de mais de 600 páginas, imagens de cartógrafos-engenheiros, e fotos do acervo de Flávio de Barros. Essa arquitetura depende da microestrutura de interação local texto-imagem, uma propriedade que chamamos de co-localização. Nosso foco, neste artigo, concentra-se na macroestrutura da obra. Cinco edições foram diretamente comparadas (1902, 1903, 1905, 1933, 2016).
Measurement of Plasma Parameters of Fe-Lines in Lipstick Using Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy
Authors: Asmaa M.H. , Habana Sami A.
Published: November 2021

Electron thickness and temperature of laser prompted Iron plasma boundaries, among different boundaries, were estimated. Plasma was delivered through the connection of high pinnacle power Nd: YAG laser at the key frequency of 1064 nm with a pellet target contains a limited quantity of lipstick from nearby business sectors. Lines from Fe II at 238.502 nm, Fe II at 254.904 nm, Fe II at 262.370 nm, Fe II at 286.545 nm and Fe I at 349.779 nm were utilized to assess the plasma boundaries. The current investigation was completed to assess electron temperature (Te), electron thickness (ne), plasma recurrence, Debye length and Debye number (ND). Laser-incited breakdown spectroscopy LIBS method was used for examining and deciding ghastly discharge lines. ID of change lines from all spectra was completed by contrasting ghostly lines and NIST nuclear data set.
Study of Some Nuclear Properties of 170-178W Isotopes by Using Interacting Bosons Model-1
Authors: Ibrahem Salar H. , Al-Janaby Mohsin K.
Published: November 2021

We looked into the structure of energy levels for some Tungsten isotopes W the (even-even) and electromagnetically probability transmission for it with the Model of Interacting Bosons type one (IBM-1) to evaluate the nuclear structure for Tungsten isotopes are investigated in this study (170-178W). The data was gathered using an IBM software written in the Fortran programming language The values of the parameters in this computation show that the characteristics of tungsten isotopes fall between the γ_ unstable limit O(6) and the rotational limit SU(3). The energy and branching ratios demonstrate this. The computed results are in very excellent agreement with experimental data for the isotopes under investigation.
Effect the Ratio and Particle Size of Glass Powder from Fluorescent Tubes Waste on Electrical Properties of PVA-Glass Composites
Authors: Hussien Hani M
Published: November 2021

The polymer composites used in the present study were made of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a matrix and glass powder as a filler. The glass powder was obtained from fluorescent tubes waste. The solution casting method was used to fabricate PVA/glass powder composite. Three groups of samples were prepared. The first was prepared by using PVA with the addition of glass powder (sieved less than 20 μm) in proportions 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 %. The second: the mixing ratios of PVA and glass powder were 80% and 20%, respectively. The third: The mixing ratios of PVA and glass powder were 60% and 40%, respectively. In Both previous groups, the added glass powder used was sieved with sizes less than 20, 45, 105, and 125 μm. For all samples, the following properties were measured at room temperature: DC electrical conductivity, dielectric constant, electrical conductivity, and dissipation factor. The last three properties were measured with a range of frequencies from 1kHz to 5MHz. DC conductivity increases with increasing of glass powder. It was found that the highest conductivity values are for samples composed of glass powder with a particle size of less than 45 μm for both ratios of glass 20% and 40%. It is also noticed that within most frequencies, the sample with 30% glass has the largest dissipation factor. At 20% filler of glass powder, it is noted that the highest values of the dielectric constant are for samples composed of glass powder with a particle size of less than 45 μm and 125 μm. Below 1 MHz, the effect of glass powder particle size on the AC conductivity is minimal. It is found that the samples containing glass powder (less than 125 μm and 105 μm), have similar and lowest dissipation factor. At 40% filler of glass powder, it is noted that the lowest values of the dielectric constant are for samples composed of glass powder with a particle size little than 105 μm.
Study of Influential Factors on the Dielectric Strength of [UPE/BaTiO3] Nanocomposites
Authors: Ahmed Barakat O.
Published: November 2021

Unsaturated polyester resin (UPE) was used as a base material and barium titanite nanoparticles (BaTiO3) (50-7-nm) as a support material, with different weight ratios (0.25,0.75,1.25,2 wt%), to prepare a nanocomposite material. The research models were prepared according to the standard specifications and with different thicknesses (≈ 1.1,1.8,2.2,2.7 mm) to show the effect of thickness, number of cycles, percentage of addition and voltage rise rate at (5 kv/s and 0.5 kv/s) on the dielectric strength (Ebr) of the prepared material. The results showed that Ebr decreased with increasing the thickness of the material, BaTiO3 additive rate and the number of cycles. Dielectric strength (Ebr) increases with increasing of voltage rise rate.
Manufacturing of a New Selective Membrane Electrode for Neomycin Sulfate and its Estimation by Potentiometric Method
Authors: Ahmed Seemma Hamed , Al-Samarrai Mumin Fareed Hamad , Hanoon Imad Tarek , Salih Afrah Saad
Published: November 2021

The research aims to prepare a new ionic membrane selective electrode for NYM Neomycin based on tungstophosphoric acid (TPA), Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) and DPPH (Di-Butyl Phthalate). It was found that the electrode is sensitive to concentrations ranging between (1 x 10-1-1 x 10-5) mol/L, and it gave a Nernstian response of (29.7 mV/decade) and a correlation coefficient (r) of (0.9939). The factors affecting the response of the electrode were studied, as it was found that the best concentration of the internal filling solution was (1 x 10-3) mol/L, and that the best pH range in which the electrode worked was between (3.5-1.5) and the best Nernstian response at pH (pH = 2.5) The effect of temperature was also studied, as it was found that the best temperature was (25°C) and the response time of the electrode was between (20-40) seconds. It was also found that the chronological age of the electrode was (25) days. The selectivity coefficient (Ki,jpot) was calculated in the presence of negative and positively charged interfering ions.
Désignation et représentation des éléments topographiques dans les dialectes de France : synthèse générale (relief, cours d’eau, cavernes)
Authors: Giudice Philippe Del
Published: November 2021

As the second part of a general study about semantic determinism, this article continues to analyze the topographic lexicon of Gallo-Romance dialects. The new concepts (‘river’, ‘brook’, ‘valley’, ‘cave’) that I examine in this paper complete my previous survey about the designations of hills and mountains. Most of all, the new set of data allows me to go beyond isolated concepts and to present for the first time the motivational synthesis of a whole theme. The result is that, whatever the concept, words referring to topography are generally created according to four matrices of designation: such words originally allude to (1) level; (2) concavity/convexity; (3) physical composition; or stem from a (4) conceptual confusion due to adjacency. The method that reduces hundreds of lexical forms to a handful of creative patterns leads to a direct perception of how the lexicon is structured and has a strong heuristic potential.
Limit Theorems for a Strongly Supercritical Branching Process with Immigration in Random Environment
Authors: Afanasyev Valeriy Ivanovich
Published: November 2021

We consider a strongly supercritical branching process in random environment with immigration stopped at a distant time 𝑛.
The offspring reproduction law in each generation is assumed to be geometric.
The process is considered under the condition of its extinction after time 𝑛.
Two limit theorems for this process are proved: the first one is for the time interval from 0 till 𝑛, and the second one is for the time interval from 𝑛 till

+
∞

+\infty

.
In silico approach to understand epigenetics of POTEE in ovarian cancer
Authors: Qazi Sahar , Raza Khalid
Published: November 2021

Ovarian cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in India. Epigenetics mechanisms seemingly plays an important role in ovarian cancer. This paper highlights the crucial epigenetic changes that occur in POTEE that get hypomethylated in ovarian cancer. We utilized the POTEE paralog mRNA sequence to identify major motifs and also performed its enrichment analysis. We identified 6 motifs of varying lengths, out of which only three motifs, including CTTCCAGCAGATGTGGATCA, GGAACTGCC, and CGCCACATGCAGGC were most likely to be present in the nucleotide sequence of POTEE. By enrichment and occurrences identification analyses, we rectified the best match motif as CTTCCAGCAGATGT. Since there is no experimentally verified structure of POTEE paralog, thus, we predicted the POTEE structure using an automated workflow for template-based modeling using the power of a deep neural network. Additionally, to validate our predicted model we used AlphaFold predicted POTEE structure and observed that the residual stretch starting from 237-958 had a very high confidence per residue. Furthermore, POTEE predicted model stability was evaluated using replica exchange molecular dynamic simulation for 50 ns. Our network-based epigenetic analysis discerns only 10 highly significant, direct, and physical associators of POTEE. Our finding aims to provide new insights about the POTEE paralog.
Predictors of decreased bone mineral density in childhood systemic lupus erythematosus: possible role of osteoprotegerin gene polymorphisms
Authors: Eid Riham , Abdelsalam Maha , Fathy Aya A , Abd-El Ghaffar Dena M , Elmarghany Eman B , El-Hanafy Aya A , Mostafa Nora , Hamdy Nashwa , Niazy Nermeen A , Hammad Ayman , Abolenein Hadil M
Published: November 2021

Objectives

This study aims to explore effects of osteoprotegerin (OPG) gene polymorphisms and other possible factors on bone mineral density (BMD) in children with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

Methods

Osteoprotegerin gene rs2073617 and rs3134069 were evaluated in 74 SLE patients and 100 controls then genotypes, alleles and haplotypes’ frequencies were compared between cases and controls and between patients with BMD z-scores above and below −2 evaluated by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA). Disease activity was evaluated by SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI).

Results

The patients aged 14.01 ± 2.6 years and included 57 (77%) females and 27 (36%) patients with BMD z-score below −2. Genotypes, alleles, and haplotypes frequencies did not differ between patients and controls (p>0.05 for all). Rs3134069 GG genotype and G allele (p=0.001, 0.002) and rs2073617 TT genotype and T allele (p=0.01, 0.006) were significantly higher in patients with BMD below −2. Cumulative glucocorticoids dose, disease duration, and SLEDAI scores were higher in patients with BMD below −2 (p=0.01, 0.01, <0.001, respectively). Regression analysis showed T allele of rs2073617, duration of illness (above 36 months), and cumulative SLEDAI (above 10) as independent predictors of decreased BMD (p 0.02, 0.003, and 0.002, respectively).

Conclusions

This is the first study to demonstrate OPG gene influence on BMD in children with SLE. The studied SNPs are not risk for developing SLE but, rs2073617 T allele is a possible predictor for reduced BMD in SLE. Other predictors include long disease duration and high activity supporting that osteoporosis in SLE is multifactorial.