bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Change in cardiometabolic risk factors among Asian Indian adults recruited in a mHealth-based diabetes prevention trial
Authors: Muralidharan Shruti , Ranjani Harish , Anjana Ranjit Mohan , Gupta Yashdeep , Ambekar Samita , Koppikar Varsha , Jagannathan N , Jena Sidhant , Tandon Nikhil , Allender Steven , Mohan Viswanathan 
Published: September 2021

Objective India is experiencing an increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Mobile health technology may be a strategy to reduce the risk of cardiometabolic disorders. This paper reports on the effect of a mobile health intervention on cardiometabolic risk factors. Methods The mobile health and diabetes intervention was a 12-week reality television-based mobile health program application delivered via videos, short message service and infographics through a smartphone application followed-up weekly by health coach calls. mobile health and diabetes was conducted in a randomized control trial mode randomized controlled trial methodology in three Indian cities (Chennai, Bengaluru and New Delhi) with participants recruited via community screening events. This paper looks at the pre–post changes in cardiometabolic risks among the participants and the place of demography in influencing these. Results The mobile health and diabetes intervention group experienced a small reduction in waist circumference (1.8 cm) compared to the control group (0.5 cm, p < 0.05) and a greater decrease in systolic blood pressure (2.7 mmHg) compared to the control group ( p < 0.05). The improvements in cardiometabolic risk factors were more pronounced in individuals with obesity, although overall effects were very modest Conclusions Cardiometabolic risk factors can be reduced with a mobile health application using human coaching, especially in obese individuals, but the improvements are small. To be more effective and clinically meaningful, intensive engagement with the participants is probably required.
Medical Advisability of Youth Pitching Recommendations on the Internet
Authors: Painter David F. , Dove James H. , Monteiro Kristina , Kriz Peter K. , Owens Brett D. 
Published: September 2021

Background: As the incidence of youth pitching injuries and surgical procedures attributed to overuse has drastically increased, there are quality concerns about popular internet resources regarding arm care for youth pitchers. Purpose/Hypothesis: To assess the medical advisability of online arm care recommendations for youth pitchers. It was hypothesized that websites contain misleading arm-care information that is discordant with medical advice. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Methods: We reviewed the first 100 websites populated after a Google search for youth pitching recommendations. Websites were categorized by type (athletic organization, commercial, or educational) and content quality (medically advisable, discordant, or neutral), the latter with respect to the Pitch Smart guidelines used by Major League Baseball. Chi-square tests of independence and z tests of independent proportions were used to compare column proportions among categories of website content quality for each type of website source. Given the small sample sizes in some instances, the Fisher-Freeman-Halton exact test was performed to assess the relationship between website source type and quality of information. Results Of the 99 qualifying websites, 76 were categorized as medically advisable, 16 as discordant, and 7 as neutral. In addition, 92% of educational websites and 94.7% of athletic organization websites featured exclusively advisable content, whereas only 54.8% of commercial websites were advisable. Of the 16 discordant websites, 15 were commercial sites. Educational websites were significantly more advisable and neutral in content when compared with discordant information, while commercial websites were significantly predictive of discordant content. Among the first 50 websites populated according to Google, 42 (84%) were advisable, 6 (12%) discordant, and 2 (4%) neutral. The remaining websites (n = 49) featured 34 (69.4%) that were advisable, 10 (20.4%) discordant, and 5 (10.2%) neutral. Conclusion: Study findings indicated that websites of an educational nature are predictive of medically advisable content, while commercial websites (eg, blogs) are associated with discordant information. The abundance and availability of inaccurate internet information should be appreciated by medical professionals and parents/coaches of youth baseball players.
Inferential narrative comprehension ability of young school-age children on the autism spectrum
Authors: Westerveld Marleen F , Filiatrault-Veilleux Pamela , Paynter Jessica 
Published: September 2021

Background and aims The purpose of the current exploratory study was to describe the inferential narrative comprehension skills of young school-age children on the autism spectrum who, as a group, are at high risk of significant and persistent reading comprehension difficulties. Our aim was to investigate whether the anticipated difficulties in inferential narrative comprehension in the group of children with autism could be explained by the children’s structural language ability as measured using a broad-spectrum standardized language test. Methods The participants were 35 children with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), aged between 5;7 and 6;11, who attended their first year of formal schooling, and 32 typically developing (TD) children, matched to the ASD group for age and year of schooling. Children on the autism spectrum were divided into below normal limits (ASD_BNL, standard score ≤80; n = 21) or within normal limits (ASD_WNL, standard score >80; n = 14) on a standardized language test. All children participated in a narrative comprehension task, which involved listening to a novel story, while looking at pictures, and answering eight comprehension questions immediately afterwards. Comprehension questions were categorized into factual and inferential questions, with further categorization of the inferential questions into those tapping into the story characters’ internal responses (mental states) or not. Children’s responses were scored on a quality continuum (from 0: inadequate/off topic to 3: expected/correct). Results Our results showed significantly lower scores across factual and inferential narrative comprehension in the ASD_BNL group, compared to the ASD_WNL and TD groups, supporting the importance of structural language skills for narrative comprehension. Furthermore, the TD group significantly outperformed the children in the ASD_WNL group on inferential comprehension. Finally, the children in the ASD_WNL group showed specific difficulties in answering the internal response inferential questions compared to their TD peers. Conclusions Results from this exploratory study highlight the difficulties children on the autism spectrum may have in inferential narrative comprehension skills, regardless of sufficient structural language skills at word and sentence level. These findings support the importance of routinely assessing these narrative comprehension skills in children on the spectrum, who as a group are at high risk of persistent reading comprehension difficulties. Implications In this study, we demonstrate how narrative comprehension can be assessed in young school-age children on the autism spectrum. The scoring system used to categorize children’s responses may further assist in understanding children’s performance, across a quality continuum, which can guide detailed goal setting and assist in early targeted intervention planning.
Adsorption of cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide surfactant for organophilization of palygorskite clay
Authors: Silva Rhaul P. , Gois Alisson G.B. , Ramme Michele O. , Castro Dantas Tereza N. , Barillas Jennys L.M. , Santanna Vanessa C. 
Published: September 2021

AbstractThis work determines the optimal palygorskite (Plg) content (maximum surfactant adsorption point) to achieve organophilization using the cationic surfactant cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) at various concentrations. Adsorption assays were carried out in a finite bath after varying the content of Plg and CTAB in solution. In those assays, the effects of time, temperature, pH and thermodynamic characteristics were studied. The results were analysed using the Langmuir, Freundlich, Dubinin–Radushkevich and Tempkin adsorption models. The increase in clay content in the dispersion leads to a decrease in adsorption of surfactant on the clay. It was possible to obtain the optimal Plg content to achieve organophilization at various concentrations of CTAB surfactant. The experimental data fitted well to the Freundlich model. The Dubinin–Radushkevich and Tempkin isotherms confirmed the chemical adsorption of CTAB on Plg clay.
The ‘un-shrunk’ partial correlation in Gaussian graphical models
Authors: Bernal Victor , Bischoff Rainer , Horvatovich Peter , Guryev Victor , Grzegorczyk Marco 
Published: September 2021

Abstract
Background
In systems biology, it is important to reconstruct regulatory networks from quantitative molecular profiles. Gaussian graphical models (GGMs) are one of the most popular methods to this end. A GGM consists of nodes (representing the transcripts, metabolites or proteins) inter-connected by edges (reflecting their partial correlations). Learning the edges from quantitative molecular profiles is statistically challenging, as there are usually fewer samples than nodes (‘high dimensional problem’). Shrinkage methods address this issue by learning a regularized GGM. However, it remains open to study how the shrinkage affects the final result and its interpretation.

Results
We show that the shrinkage biases the partial correlation in a non-linear way. This bias does not only change the magnitudes of the partial correlations but also affects their order. Furthermore, it makes networks obtained from different experiments incomparable and hinders their biological interpretation. We propose a method, referred to as ‘un-shrinking’ the partial correlation, which corrects for this non-linear bias. Unlike traditional methods, which use a fixed shrinkage value, the new approach provides partial correlations that are closer to the actual (population) values and that are easier to interpret. This is demonstrated on two gene expression datasets from Escherichia coli and Mus musculus.

Conclusions
GGMs are popular undirected graphical models based on partial correlations. The application of GGMs to reconstruct regulatory networks is commonly performed using shrinkage to overcome the ‘high-dimensional problem’. Besides it advantages, we have identified that the shrinkage introduces a non-linear bias in the partial correlations. Ignoring this type of effects caused by the shrinkage can obscure the interpretation of the network, and impede the validation of earlier reported results.
SNPxE: SNP-environment interaction pattern identifier
Authors: Lin Hui-Yi , Huang Po-Yu , Tseng Tung-Sung , Park Jong Y. 
Published: September 2021

AbstractBackgroundInteractions of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and environmental factors play an important role in understanding complex diseases' pathogenesis. A growing number of SNP-environment studies have been conducted in the past decade; however, the statistical methods for evaluating SNP-environment interactions are still underdeveloped. The conventional statistical approach with a full interaction model with an additive SNP mode tests one specific interaction type, so the full interaction model approach tends to lead to false-negative findings. To increase detection accuracy, developing a statistical tool to effectively detect various SNP-environment interaction patterns is necessary.ResultsSNPxE, a SNP-environment interaction pattern identifier, tests multiple interaction patterns associated with a phenotype for each SNP-environment pair. SNPxE evaluates 27 interaction patterns for an ordinal environment factor and 18 patterns for a categorical environment factor. For detecting SNP-environment interactions, SNPxE considers three major components: (1) model structure, (2) SNP’s inheritance mode, and (3) risk direction. Among the multiple testing patterns, the best interaction pattern will be identified based on the Bayesian information criterion or the smallest p-value of the interaction. Furthermore, the risk sub-groups based on the SNPs and environmental factors can be identified. SNPxE can be applied to both numeric and binary phenotypes. For better results interpretation, a heat-table of the outcome proportions can be generated for the sub-groups of a SNP-environment pair.ConclusionsSNPxE is a valuable tool for intensively evaluate SNP-environment interactions, and the SNPxE findings can provide insights for solving the missing heritability issue. The R function of SNPxE is freely available for download at GitHub (https://github.com/LinHuiyi/SIPI).
LncRNA TCONS_00021861 is functionally associated with drought tolerance in rice (Oryza sativa L.) via competing endogenous RNA regulation
Authors: Chen Jiajia , Zhong Yuqing , Qi Xin 
Published: September 2021

Abstract
Background
Water deficit is an abiotic stress that retards plant growth and destabilizes crop production. Long non coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are a class of non-coding endogenous RNAs that participate in diverse cellular processes and stress responses in plants. lncRNAs could function as competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNA) and represent a novel layer of gene regulation. However, the regulatory mechanism of lncRNAs as ceRNA in drought stress response is yet unclear.

Results
In this study, we performed transcriptome-wide identification of drought-responsive lncRNAs in rice. Thereafter, we constructed a lncRNA-mediated ceRNA network by analyzing competing relationships between mRNAs and lncRNAs based on ceRNA hypothesis. A drought responsive ceRNA network with 40 lncRNAs, 23 miRNAs and 103 mRNAs was obtained. Network analysis revealed TCONS_00021861/miR528-3p/YUCCA7 regulatory axis as a hub involved in drought response. The miRNA-target expression and interaction were validated by RT-qPCR and RLM-5’RACE. TCONS_00021861 showed significant positive correlation (r = 0.7102) with YUCCA7 and negative correlation with miR528-3p (r = -0.7483). Overexpression of TCONS_00021861 attenuated the repression of miR528-3p on YUCCA7, leading to increased IAA (Indole-3-acetic acid) content and auxin overproduction phenotypes.

Conclusions
TCONS_00021861 could regulate YUCCA7 by sponging miR528-3p, which in turn activates IAA biosynthetic pathway and confer resistance to drought stress. Our findings provide a new perspective of the regulatory roles of lncRNAs as ceRNAs in drought resistance of rice.
Accuracy of neutrophil to lymphocyte and monocyte to lymphocyte ratios as new inflammatory markers in acute coronary syndrome
Authors: Shumilah Ahmed Mohammed , Othman Arwa Mohammed , Al-Madhagi Anwar Kasim 
Published: September 2021

Abstract
Background
Inflammation plays a key role in the development of atherosclerosis and in the pathogenesis of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Leukocytes and leukocytes ratios were recognized as inflammatory markers in predicting the presence and severity of ACS.

Methods
This study aimed to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and monocyte to lymphocyte ratio (MLR) with ACS. One hundred patients admitted to the Cardiac Center who were confirmed to have ACS and 100 healthy controls confirmed not to have ACS were enrolled in this study. ECG and troponin I test were used as gold standards to make sure that the participants with or without ACS. Total white blood cells (WBCs) count, NLR, and MLR values were estimated.

Results
Total WBCs, neutrophil, and monocyte counts were significantly higher while lymphocyte counts were significantly lower in ACS patients than in the healthy controls (p < 0.001). NLR and MLR were significantly higher in ACS patients than in the healthy controls (p < 0.001). Among all the studied markers, NLR was found to be the strongest predictive marker of ACS (OR: 3.3, p < 0.001), whereas MLR was non-significant (p > 0.05). A cut-off value of 2.9 of NLR had 90% sensitivity and 88% specificity while 0.375 cut-off value of MLR had 79% sensitivity, 91% specificity for predicting ACS presence.

Conclusions
NLR is a simple, widely available, and inexpensive inflammatory marker which can be an auxiliary biomarker in the diagnosis of ACS with a cut-off value of 2.9 in our population.
Experiences of renal healthcare practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic: a multi-methods approach
Authors: Mc Keaveney Clare , Reid Joanne , Carswell Claire , Bonner Ann , de Barbieri Ilaria , Johnston William , Maxwell Alexander P. , O’Riordan Julien , Strini Veronica , Walsh Ian , Noble Helen 
Published: September 2021

Abstract
Background
Globally, renal healthcare practitioners provide intensive and protracted support to a highly complex multi-morbid patient population however knowledge about the impact of COVID-19 on these practitioners is extremely limited.

Objective
This study aimed to explore the experiences of COVID-19 with renal healthcare practitioners during the first global lockdown between June 2020 and September 2020.

Methods
A multi-methods approach was carried out including a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews. This was a multinational study of renal healthcare practitioners from 29 countries. Quantitative: A self-designed survey on COVID-19 experiences and standardised questionnaires (General Health Questionnaire-12; Maslach Burnout Inventory). Descriptive statistics were generated for numerical data. Qualitative: Online semi-structured interviews were conducted. Data was subjected to thematic analysis. Renal healthcare practitioners (n = 251) completed an online survey. Thirteen renal healthcare practitioners took part in semi-structured interviews (12 nurses and 1 dietician).

Results
The majority of participants surveyed were female (86.9 %; n = 218), nurses (86.9 %; n = 218) with an average 21.5 (SD = 11.1) years’ experience since professional qualification, and 16.3 years (SD = 9.3) working in renal healthcare. Survey responses indicated a level of preparedness, training and satisfactory personal protective equipment during the pandemic however approximately 40.3 % experienced fear about attending work, and 49.8 % experienced mental health distress. The highest prevalence of burnout was emotional exhaustion (35.9 %). Three themes emerged from the qualitative analysis highlighting the holistic complexities in managing renal healthcare, a neglected specialist workforce, and the need for appropriate support at work during a pandemic.

Conclusions
Results have highlighted the psychological impact, in terms of emotional exhaustion and mental health distress in our sample of renal healthcare practitioners. As the pandemic has continued, it is important to consider the long-term impact on an already stretched workforce including the risk of developing mental health disorders. Future research and interventions are required to understand and improve the provision of psychological support for specialist medical and nursing personnel.
Dysfunctional labor and hemoperitoneum secondary to an incidentally discovered dysgerminoma: a case report
Authors: Thannickal Aneesa , Maddy Brandon , DeWitt Marla , Cliby William , Dow Margaret 
Published: September 2021

Abstract
Background
Ovarian dysgerminoma, a subtype of malignant germ cell tumor (GCT), is a rare ovarian neoplasm that is infrequently found in the gravid patient. When dysgerminomas do occur in pregnancy, the rapidly growing tumors can have a heterogeneous presentation and lead to peripartum complications and morbidity. Due to the rarity of this condition, diagnostic and therapeutic strategies are not well described in the literature.

Case presentation
A healthy multigravida with an uncomplicated antenatal history presented for elective induction of labor. She had a protracted labor course, persistently abnormal cervical examinations, and eventually developed a worsening Category II tracing that prompted cesarean birth. Intraoperatively, a 26 cm pelvic mass later identified as a Stage IA dysgerminoma was discovered along with a massive hemoperitoneum. The mass was successfully resected, and the patient remains without recurrence 6 months postoperatively.

Conclusion
Although rare and generally indolent, dysgerminomas can grow rapidly and cause mechanical obstruction of labor and other complications in pregnancy. Pelvic masses, including malignant neoplasms, should be included in as part of a broad differential diagnosis when evaluating even routine intrapartum complications such as abnormal labor progression. Additionally, we demonstrate that adnexal masses can be a source of life-threatening intraabdominal hemorrhage.
Impact of childbirth policy changes on obstetric workload over a 13-year period in a regional referral center in China – implications on service provision planning
Authors: Xie Min , Lao Terence T , Ma Junnan , Zhu Tianying , Liu Dajin , Yu Shengnan , Du Mingyu , Sun Qian , Ma Runmei 
Published: September 2021

Abstract
Background
We aimed to appraise the impact of the changing national childbirth policy since 2002, currently allowing two children per family, on obstetric workload in a regional referral center in China.

Methods
In a retrospective cohort study, temporal changes were examined in relation with maternal demographics, incidence of women with high risk pregnancies and resource statistics in our hospital in managing singleton viable pregnancies (birth from 28 weeks gestational age onwards) for the period 2005–2017.

Results
During this 13-year period, the number of singleton livebirths from 28 weeks gestational age onwards was 49,479. Annual numbers of births increased from 1,941 to 2005 to 5,777 in 2017. There were concomitant and significant increases in the incidence of multiparous women (10.6–50.8 %), of age ≥35 years (6.5–24.3 %), with prior caesarean Sec. (2.6–23.6 %), with ≥3 previous pregnancy terminations (1.0–4.9 %), with pre-gestational diabetes (0.2–0.9 %), and with chronic hypertension (0.2–1.2 %). There were associated increases in beds and staff complement and reduced average hospital stay. Nevertheless, while the workload of medical staff remained stable with increasing staff complement, that of midwives increased significantly as reflected by the total births: midwife ratio which increased from 194.1:1 to 320.9:1 (p < 0.001).

Conclusions
In our hospital, progressively increasing numbers of annual births in combination with an increased incidence of women with high risk pregnancies took place following the revised national childbirth policy. Only the increase in medical and nursing, but not midwifery, staff was commensurate with workload. Remedial measures are urgently required before the anticipated progressive increase in care demand would overwhelm maternity care with potentially disastrous consequences.