bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Mycotoxins Present in the Indoor Air of a Music School Repurposed from an Atomic Shelter
Authors: Majić Ivona , Krivohlavek Adela , Andrić Elvira Kovač , Godec Ranka 
Published: December 2024

Abstract

Clean air is essential for human well-being, especially indoors. Indoor air quality has a significant impact on human health and there is concern about the health effects of exposure to airborne bacteria and fungi. The World Health Organization has warned of adverse health effects associated with building moisture and biological agents. Mold growth due to indoor moisture affects a significant percentage of buildings worldwide, leading to increased health risks, especially for children. It is crucial to work on implementing effective solutions to create healthier indoor environments for children worldwide.
This study investigates the adverse health effects of total indoor air bacteria and molds and potential exposure to mycotoxins, which are products of airborne molds, on school-aged children. The study was conducted in the Music School in Zagreb, where children spend a few hours a day in a space originally designed as a nuclear shelter, without external openings, and the findings strongly suggest that the airborne mold levels in the music classroom are consistently distributed due to the shared air conditioning and ventilation system shared with the outdoor environment.The presence of a few isolated molds, with lower concentrations than outdoors, may be attributable to the regular use of air dehumidifiers. Low concentrations of airborne mold may pose a health risk for atopic children who are particularly susceptible to fungal spores, especially in environments contaminated with mycotoxin-producing fungi, further contribute to indoor air pollution.
Torsional behavior due to infill walls: A Comparative Analysis of Seismic Codes in Nepal, India, China, and Pakistan
Authors: Paudel Ganesh , Paudel Bijay , Adhikari Abhishek , Paudel Achyut 
Published: December 2024

Abstract

The seismic performance of buildings in the Himalayan region is of critical importance due to the high seismicity in the area. Infill walls play a significant role in the overall behavior of structures, particularly in terms of torsional response during earthquakes. This study presents a comprehensive comparative analysis of seismic codes commonly employed in the Himalayan region, focusing on their provisions for addressing the torsional behavior induced by infill walls. By employing analytical techniques and numerical simulations, the study compares seismic codes of Nepal, India, China, and Pakistan, region lying in Trans-Himalaya region. Infill walls were modelled as struts using ETABS software. The position of infill walls was changed to vary the eccentricity of the building. Eight different models were modelled in ETABS for each seismic code. Altogether 32 models were modelled altogether. Various parameters influenced by seismic action were compared for these countries. Base Shear, Displacement and Inter-storey drift were calculated for each seismic code and compared. Base shear obtained from NBC 105: 2020 (Nepal) (2929 kN – 3365 kN) was maximum followed by GB 50011 − 2010 (China)(2777 kN – 3171 kN), BCP-2021 (Pakistan)(2651 kN – 3069 kN) and IS 1893:2016 (India)(2507 kN – 2883 kN). Similarly, displacement was maximum for NBC 105: 2020 (Nepal) followed by BCP 2021 (Pakistan), GB 50011 − 2010 (China), and IS 1893:2016 (India). Drift was in a similar pattern as in displacement.
Study on the Application of Microvolume Swim-Up Technique in In Vitro Fertilization
Authors: Su Xing , Yu Wanying , Cui Jing , Peng Yang , Zhao Tianqi , Li Yunqi , Zhao Mingjia 
Published: December 2024

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the impact of microvolume swim-up (MSU) as an enhanced semen processing approach in conventional in vitro fertilization (c-IVF) cycles, particularly in cases with low total progressively motile sperm cell count (TPMC).
Design: A retrospective cohort study comparing the outcomes of MSU-processed semen (M-IVF group) with those of traditional swim-up (TSU)-processed semen (T-IVF group) in c-IVF cycles, and an ICSI reference group with similar TPMC range of M-IVF group.
Subjects: Patients undergoing c-IVF from July 2020 to June 2023 were classified into the M-IVF (TPMC 0.5×106 to <2×106) and T-IVF (TPMC ≥ 2×106) groups. An ICSI group (January 2017 to December 2019, TPMC 0.5×106 to <2×106) served as a comparator.
Intervention: MSU was implemented as an alternative semen processing method for c-IVF in cases with suboptimal TPMC, aiming to avoid intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).
Main Outcome Measures: Assessed outcomes included normal fertilization rate, early rescue ICSI (E-RICSI) rate, high-quality embryo rate, blastocyst formation rate, transferable embryo rate, oocyte utilization rate, clinical pregnancy rate, miscarriage rate, and live birth rate.
Results: Comparable results were observed between M-IVF and T-IVF groups in all measured outcomes, demonstrating non-significant differences. In contrast, the ICSI group exhibited significantly lower transferable embryo and oocyte utilization rates (P < 0.05). M-IVF and T-IVF groups displayed non-significant trends towards improved clinical pregnancy and live birth rates compared to ICSI (P > 0.05).
Conclusion: Microvolume swim-up effectively mitigates the need for ICSI in selected c-IVF cases with low TPMC, maintaining equivalent fertilization efficiency, embryo quality, and clinical outcomes, thereby suggesting its suitability as an optimized semen processing strategy.
To Develop and Validate a Nomogram Model for Predicting High Volume (＞5) Central Lymph Node Metastasis in Papillary Thyroid Microcarcinoma
Authors: Guo Xuan , Zhang Fenghua 
Published: December 2024

Abstract

Objectives
To develop a nomogram model for predicting the risk of high volume (>5) of central lymph node metastasis (CLNM) in patients with papillary thyroid microcarcinoma and to evaluate the effectiveness of the model in clinical application, in order to achieve the goal of initial risk stratification of patients with PTMC, individualized design of the scope of surgery, and reduction the incidence of secondary surgery in patients with PTMC by the clinicians.
Methods
Retrospective analysis of clinical characteristics of patients with PTMC in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database between January 2016 and December 2020 and the clinical case data of patients who presented to the Gland Surgery, Hebei General Hospital, underwent surgical treatment, and were ultimately pathologically diagnosed with PTMC between January 2021 and December 2023.The clinicopathological characteristics included in the training group were screened using univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses, to determine the independent risk factors for high volume CLNM in patients with PTMC, and to construct a nomogram model for predicting high volume CLNM.
Results
The male gender, lager tumor size(>5mm), multifocality, and extra-thyroidal invasion were independent risk factors for high volume CLNM in patients with papillary thyroid microcarcinoma. In contrast, elderly age(≥ 55years) at diagnosis was identified as a protective factor.Based on these independent risk factors, a nomogram model was further constructed to predict high volume CLNM.
Conclusions
1 Male, large tumor diameter (>5mm), multifocal, and extra-thyroidal invasion were independent risk factors for high volume CLNM of patients with papillary thyroid microcarcinoma. In contrast, age ≥ 55 at the time of diagnosis was identified as a protective factor.2 The clinical prediction model based on the above mentioned factors has good predictive value, and provides a better individualized clinical decision for the management of PTMC patients by surgeons.
Modelling the impact of healthcare worker masking to reduce nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 transmission under varying adherence, prevalence, and transmission settings.
Authors: Whiteley Timothy , Stimson James , Brown Colin , Robotham Julie , Evans Stephanie 
Published: December 2024

Abstract

Objectives
To understand the scenarios where health care worker (HCW) masking is most impactful for preventing nosocomial transmission.
Methods
A mathematical agent-based model of nosocomial spread with masking interventions was used. Masking adherence, community prevalence, disease transmissibility and proportion of breakroom (unmasked) interactions were varied. The effectiveness of masks for reducing transmission to and from the wearer was also varied. The main outcome measure is the total number of nosocomial infections in patients and health care worker populations over a simulated three-month period.
Results
HCW masking around patients and universal HCW masking reduces median patient nosocomial infections by 15% and 18% respectively. HCW-HCW interactions are the dominant source of HCW infections and universal HCW masking reduces HCW nosocomial infections by 55%. Increasing adherence shows a roughly linear reduction in infections. Even in scenarios where a high proportion of interactions are unmasked ‘breakroom’ interactions, masking is still an effective tool assuming adherence is high outside of these areas. The optimal scenarios where masking is most impactful are those where community prevalence is at a medium level (around 2%) and transmissibility is high.
Conclusions
Masking by HCWs is an effective way to reduce nosocomial transmission to both patients and, especially, HCWs at all levels of mask effectiveness and adherence. Increases in adherence to a masking policy can provide a small but important impact. HCW-HCW transmission is the dominant source of HCW infections so universal HCW masking policies are most impactful should policy makers wish to target HCW infections. The more transmissible a virus/ variant in circulation is the more impactful masking by HCWs is for reducing nosocomial infections. Policy makers should consider implementing masking at the point when community prevalence is optimum for maximum impact.
Sparse Full-Dimensional Self-attention: Used for Long-Term Human Posture Prediction
Authors: Li Xianhua , liu zhen , Tian ShuoYu 
Published: December 2024

Abstract

Researchers have conducted extensive investigations into transformers, which exhibit strong performance in time series prediction problems. Nevertheless, existing methodologies still encounter challenges when it comes to capturing long-range dependencies. In this study, we introduce a novel sparse full-dimensional attention mechanism known as the "Amformer" to address this issue and enable accurate long-term human movement prediction. The core of the Amformer lies in establishing relationships between feature vectors at the current time and those at different time points, facilitating the efficient fusion of spatiotemporal features. This approach excels at capturing dependencies over extended distances, resulting in more precise predictive outcomes. We propose an uncorrelated initialization strategy for the network to reduce convolutional ambiguity concerning time features effectively. Furthermore, we introduce a time enhancement method to prevent prediction results from converging to a specific intermediate attitude. This method proves beneficial in mitigating the issue of the network gravitating towards an intermediate stance during the prediction process, thereby enhancing the stability and accuracy of prediction results. Our proposed approach outperformed benchmark methods in long-term prediction tasks, as validated through experiments on the Human3.6M dataset.
Unveiling the Spatial Distribution and Temporal Trends of Total Phosphorus in the Yangtze River: Towards a Predictive Time-Series Modeling for Environmental Management
Authors: Ma Tianqi , Chen Xing , Xie Fazhi , Zhao Jiyang , Zhang Zihan , Fu Xinyi , Dong Xiang , Chen Jiawen , Irfan Muhammad , Zheng Liugen 
Published: December 2024

Abstract

The accurate prediction of total phosphorus in water quality is crucial for monitoring ecosystem stability and eutrophication status. However, the distribution of natural environmental data such as water quality total phosphorus (TP) often undergoes complex changes over time. Stable and reliable predictive outcomes not only necessitate a degree of stability and periodicity within the natural data, but also require that TP prediction models exhibit strong adaptability to the random fluctuations and distribution drifts of environmental data. Therefore, adapting predictive models to accommodate distribution drifts in natural environmental data presents a challenge. This study provides a detailed description of the spatiotemporal variations of TP in the Yangtze River from 2019 to 2023. Utilizing data cleaning and data mining techniques, time series data were analyzed to generate a predictive dataset, with a particular emphasis on investigating the stability and periodicity of TP fluctuations. By comparing various time series forecasting models, the MTS-Mixers was ultimately selected as the experimental baseline model, and different modes were employed for time series prediction. The results demonstrate that the model maintains relatively high prediction accuracy within 20 time steps. The research findings not only offer a comprehensive description and reliable prediction of TP variations in the Yangtze River, but also provide effective methods and tools for water quality monitoring and management. They serve as a scientific basis for environmental protection and water quality improvement in the Yangtze River Basin, facilitating the formulation and implementation of relevant policies and advancing the sustainable development of the Yangtze River water environment. Furthermore, the study also confirms the applicability of machine learning in hydrological forecasting, which can be utilized for addressing environmental changes. Future research directions include ensuring the stability of critical monitoring data and exploring time-domain sub-band reconstruction methods to better understand the frequency characteristics of time series data, revealing hidden information and features.
The role of cetuximab in treatment of squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck
Authors: Koroleva I. A. , Kopp M. V. 
Published: December 2024

Squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) is one of the causes of cancer mortality. The mortality rate of patients within a year from the moment of diagnosis reaches 27% in patients with tumors of the oral cavity and 35.2% in patients with tumors of the pharynx. Despite the visual localization of SCCHN more than 50% of patients at the time of diagnosis are not subject to radical surgical treatment. More than half of the patients develop relapses of SCCHN within 3 years after the end of radical treatment. Most patients with SCCHN receive antitumor drug therapy either when an unresectable/metastatic tumor is detected or when a relapse develops after previously performed radical treatment. Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is expressed in almost 100% SCCHN and its expression is generally associated with decreased overall survival and progression-free survival. EGFR is a target receptor for targeted drugs. Cetuximab is a monoclonal antibody that blocks EGFR. The review examines the role of cetuximab in the treatment of recurrent and/or metastatic SCCHN in combination with chemotherapy and radiation therapy. The main undesirable phenomenon of cetuximab is dermatological toxicity: acne-like rash, dry skin, paronychia. Preventive therapy, including the antibiotic doxycycline, avoids the development of dermatological toxicity of 2–3 degrees. One of the most important biological processes involved in the progression of SCCHN is tumor escape from immune response associated with the expression of programmed death receptor 1 (PD-1), which inhibits the anti-tu mor immune response. Immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors pembrolizumab and nivolumab has shown a significant improvement in the survival of patients with progressing SCCHN after previously performed chemotherapy with the inclusion of cisplatin. Pembrolizumab in combination with cytostatics is an effective first-line therapy regimen for SCCHN in the presence of PD-L1 expression (CPS ≥ 1). In approximately 10–20% of patients, effective therapy changes due to poor tolerability. Timely prevention and relief of adverse events, control of disease manifestations, and a multidisciplinary approach to the patient make it possible to achieve optimal treatment results.
The experience of using chemoradiotherapy for esophageal cancer with the FOLFOX chemotherapy regimen
Authors: Toneev E. A. , Dengina N. V. , Shagdaleev R. F. , Prokhorov D. D. , Martynov A. A. , Anokhina E. P. 
Published: December 2024

Introduction. For an extended period, numerous studies have been conducted to find the optimal treatment regimen for esophageal cancer. Chemoradiotherapy has demonstrated satisfactory results in the treatment of localized and locally advanced forms of this disease. However, the search for the best chemotherapy regimen in combination with radiotherapy remains a current focus of many researchers.Aim. To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of chemoradiotherapy (CRT) using the FOLFOX regimen in patients with esophageal cancer.Materials and methods. A prospective study was conducted at the Ulyanovsk Regional Clinical Oncology Dispensary. The analysis included patients who received chemoradiotherapy with the FOLFOX regimen from December 1, 2022, to March 1, 2024. A total of 19 cases of esophageal cancer treatment at stages I–III were analyzed. Radical surgical treatment was subsequently performed on 5 patients (26.3%). The characteristics of the studied patients were evaluated according to a standardized protocol.Results. In the study group, 18 patients (94.7%) completed the planned course of treatment. One patient received an incomplete course of radiotherapy but completed the entire planned chemotherapy. The most common hematologic complication was leukopenia, observed in 9 patients (47.3%) after the full course of chemoradiotherapy. No cases of febrile neutropenia were reported. The hematologic complications were manageable and did not lead to the discontinuation of treatment. Among non-hematologic complications, the most frequently reported were grade 1–2 nausea in 11 patients (58%) and grade 1–2 vomiting in only 2 cases (10%), which was effectively controlled with antiemetic therapy. Overall and relapse-free survival were assessed. The reason for discontinuing radiotherapy in 1 patient (5.3%) was ulcerative stomatitis. Surgery was performed on 5 patients, with tumor regression (TRG) grades 1–2 according to the Mandard scale observed in 4 of them (80%). One patient (20%) had a TRG 3 response.Conclusions. After chemoradiotherapy with the FOLFOX regime in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus, the rate of therapeutic tumor regression (TRG1–2) in operated patients reached 80%. One-year relapse-free survival was 58%, one-year overall survival was 73%, indicating the effectiveness and safety of this chemotherapy regimen as part of the comprehensive treatment of esophageal cancer.
The possibilities of assessing regional risk factors for lung cancer
Authors: Kapralov S. V. , Kustodov S. V. , Konopatskova O. M. 
Published: December 2024

Introduction. Lung cancer remains one of the main causes of death for a long period of time. The existing screening methods are ambiguous. The presence of patients with metastatic stage of lung cancer justifies the creation of an optimal program for more accurate formation of risk groups. It is of interest to determine the intensity of the impact on the incidence rate from the point of view of both clarifying the parameters of urban pollution, but also a detailed analysis of other factors at the regional level.Aim. To identify the main potential risk factors in Saratov patients diagnosed with lung cancer, taking into account the ecological and geographical features of their place of residence in order to further create a model of active disease search by risk groups.Materials and methods. The complex of factors influencing the development of lung cancer among the population of Saratov has been studied. A group of 1049 patients was analyzed. The distribution of patients across urban landscape areas of the city has been determined depending on the impact of certain adverse environmental factors. To detail the remaining factors, the main group included 200 patients with the specified diagnosis who underwent outpatient and inpatient treatment in oncological institutions. All data was collected using official statistical documents and a medical information system.Results. When conducting a subgroup analysis by parameters (gender, age, localization and clinical form of the cancer process, stage of the disease, the patient’s attitude to smoking, body mass index, occupational hazards, the presence of oncopathology in the history of the patient and his relatives, the presence of chronic lung disease), the main patterns and features were identified depending on the histological variant. Given the complexity of the interaction of risk factors in the development of lung cancer, it becomes necessary to conduct further research to form a model questionnaire for lung cancer risk based on multifactorial analysis.Conclusion. The formation of a more precise risk group will increase the percentage of detection of early stages of lung cancer.
NTRK translocation: from general to specific
Authors: Soloveva M. V. , Laktionov K. K. , Sarantseva K. A. , Gordiev M. G. 
Published: December 2024

The molecular-genetic profile of lung cancer is highly diverse, complicating the formation of a unified patient portrait and necessitating the incorporation of specific genetic testing into diagnosis. There are key mechanisms for the activation of oncogenes, including point mutations, copy number changes (amplifications), and fusions, which are observed in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Modern molecular-targeted therapy for patients with NSCLC increases the duration of disease control and, in some cases, can transform a once-fatal disease into a chronic condition. Currently, the standard testing panel includes the identification of mutations in the EGFR gene (exons 18–21), ALK translocations, ROS1 translocations, and BRAF V600E mutations. However, less common alterations such as RET and NTRK translocations also occur. The use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) allows for the identification of rarer genetic alterations. NTRK gene fusions are considered oncogenic factors for various solid tumors in both adults and children. The prevalence of NTRK gene alterations varies by tumor type. However, in lung cancer, this type of genetic alteration is rare, with an overall prevalence of less than 3%, and typically the occurrence rate is less than 1%. Currently, three drugs have been included in international clinical guidelines as potential treatment options for NTRK translocations, demonstrating their effectiveness. Several other drugs are at various stages of clinical trials. In this review, we will highlight the existing data for a better understanding of the patient profile with NTRK and present a clinical case.