bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Age-Specific Cancer Mortality in the US During the COVID-19 Pandemic, March to December 2020
Authors: Shiels Meredith S. , Haque Anika T. , Freedman Neal D. , Kim Hae-Rin , Berrington de González Amy , Albert Paul S. 
Published: June 2024

Abstract

Background:
It is important to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer death rates in 2020 in the US. We estimated whether there were larger-than-expected changes in cancer mortality rates from March to December 2020 after accounting for temporal and seasonal patterns using data from January 2011 to February 2020 by cancer type and age.

Methods:
We obtained death counts and underlying causes of death by cancer type, month/year (2011–2020), and age group from the National Center for Health Statistics and population estimates from the US Census Bureau. Poisson regression was used to test for significant changes in cancer death rates from March to December 2020 compared with prior years.

Results:
After accounting for temporal trends and seasonal patterns, total cancer death rates were significantly lower than expected during March to December 2020 among 55- to 64-year-olds and ≥75-year-olds, but not in other age groups. Cancer death rates were 2% lower than expected from March to June among 55- to 64-year-olds and 2% to 3% lower from March to July and December among ≥75-year-olds. Among ≥75-year-olds, colorectal cancer death rates were lower from March to June [rate ratios (RR) = 0.94–0.96; P &lt; 0.05]; however, lung cancer death rates were 5% lower across each month (all RRs = 0.95; P &lt; 0.05).

Conclusions:
In the US, cancer death rates based on the underlying cause of death were broadly similar to expected rates from March to December 2020. However, cancer death rates were lower than expected among 55- to 64-year-olds and ≥75-year-olds, likely due to COVID-19 as a competing cause of death.

Impact:
Cancer mortality rates from 2020 should be interpreted with caution.
Inhibition of Aberrantly Overexpressed Polo-like Kinase 4 Is a Potential Effective Treatment for DNA Damage Repair–Deficient Uterine Leiomyosarcoma
Authors: Lee Horace H.Y. , Chow Kin Long , Wong Ho Shing , Chong Tsz Yan , Wong Alice S.T. , Cheng Grace H.W. , Ko Jasmine M.K. , Siu Hoi Cheong , Yeung Maximus C.F. , Huen Michael S.Y. , Tse Ka Yu , Bray Mark R. , Mak Tak Wah , Leung Suet Yi , Ip Philip P.C. 
Published: June 2024

Abstract

Purpose:
Uterine leiomyosarcoma (LMS) is an aggressive sarcoma and a subset of which exhibits DNA repair defects. Polo-like kinase 4 (PLK4) precisely modulates mitosis, and its inhibition causes chromosome missegregation and increased DNA damage. We hypothesize that PLK4 inhibition is an effective LMS treatment.

Experimental Design:
Genomic profiling of clinical uterine LMS samples was performed, and homologous recombination (HR) deficiency scores were calculated. A PLK4 inhibitor (CFI-400945) with and without an ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) inhibitor (AZD0156) was tested in vitro on gynecologic sarcoma cell lines SK-UT-1, SKN, and SK-LMS-1. Findings were validated in vivo using the SK-UT-1 xenograft model in the Balb/c nude mouse model. The effects of CFI-400945 were also evaluated in a BRCA2-knockout SK-UT-1 cell line. The mechanisms of DNA repair were analyzed using a DNA damage reporter assay.

Results:
Uterine LMS had a high HR deficiency score, overexpressed PLK4 mRNA, and displayed mutations in genes responsible for DNA repair. CFI-400945 demonstrated effective antitumor activity in vitro and in vivo. The addition of AZD0156 resulted in drug synergism, largely due to a preference for nonhomologous end-joining DNA repair. Compared with wild-type cells, BRCA2 knockouts were more sensitive to PLK4 inhibition when both HR and nonhomologous end-joining repairs were impaired.

Conclusions:
Uterine LMS with DNA repair defects is sensitive to PLK4 inhibition because of the effects of chromosome missegregation and increased DNA damage. Loss-of-function BRCA2 alterations or pharmacologic inhibition of ATM enhanced the efficacy of the PLK4 inhibitor. Genomic profiling of an advanced-stage or recurrent uterine LMS may guide therapy.
Equity in the Setting of Heart Failure Diagnosis: An Analysis of Differences Between and Within Clinician Practices
Authors: Gupta Anshal , Tisdale Rebecca L. , Calma Jamie , Stafford Randall S. , Maron David J. , Hernandez-Boussard Tina , Ambrosy Andrew P. , Heidenreich Paul A. , Sandhu Alexander T. 
Published: June 2024

BACKGROUND:
Timely heart failure (HF) diagnosis can lead to earlier intervention and reduced morbidity. Among historically marginalized patients, new-onset HF diagnosis is more likely to occur in acute care settings (emergency department or inpatient hospitalization) than outpatient settings. Whether inequity within outpatient clinician practices affects diagnosis settings is unknown.

METHODS:
We determined the setting of incident HF diagnosis among Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries between 2013 and 2017. We identified sociodemographic and medical characteristics associated with HF diagnosis in the acute care setting. Within each outpatient clinician practice, we compared acute care diagnosis rates across sociodemographic characteristics: female versus male sex, non-Hispanic White versus other racial and ethnic groups, and dual Medicare-Medicaid eligible (a surrogate for low income) versus nondual-eligible patients. Based on within-practice differences in acute diagnosis rates, we stratified clinician practices by equity (high, intermediate, and low) and compared clinician practice characteristics.

RESULTS:
Among 315 439 Medicare patients with incident HF, 173 121 (54.9%) were first diagnosed in acute care settings. Higher adjusted acute care diagnosis rates were associated with female sex (6.4% [95% CI, 6.1%–6.8%]), American Indian (3.6% [95% CI, 1.1%–6.1%]) race, and dual eligibility (4.1% [95% CI, 3.7%–4.5%]). These differences persisted within clinician practices. With clinician practice adjustment, dual-eligible patients had a 4.9% (95% CI, 4.5%–5.4%) greater acute care diagnosis rate than nondual-eligible patients. Clinician practices with greater equity across dual eligibility also had greater equity across sex and race and ethnicity and were more likely to be composed of predominantly primary care clinicians.

CONCLUSIONS:
Differences in HF diagnosis rates in the acute care setting between and within clinician practices highlight an opportunity to improve equity in diagnosing historically marginalized patients.
Source-Free Domain Adaptation for Question Answering with Masked Self-training
Authors: Yin Maxwell J. , Wang Boyu , Dong Yue , Ling Charles 
Published: June 2024

Abstract
Previous unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) methods for question answering (QA) require access to source domain data while fine-tuning the model for the target domain. Source domain data may, however, contain sensitive information and should be protected. In this study, we investigate a more challenging setting, source-free UDA, in which we have only the pretrained source model and target domain data, without access to source domain data. We propose a novel self-training approach to QA models that integrates a specially designed mask module for domain adaptation. The mask is auto-adjusted to extract key domain knowledge when trained on the source domain. To maintain previously learned domain knowledge, certain mask weights are frozen during adaptation, while other weights are adjusted to mitigate domain shifts with pseudo-labeled samples generated in the target domain. Our empirical results on four benchmark datasets suggest that our approach significantly enhances the performance of pretrained QA models on the target domain, and even outperforms models that have access to the source data during adaptation.
Visually Grounded Speech Models Have a Mutual Exclusivity Bias
Authors: Nortje Leanne , Oneaţă Dan , Matusevych Yevgen , Kamper Herman 
Published: June 2024

Abstract
When children learn new words, they employ constraints such as the mutual exclusivity (ME) bias: A novel word is mapped to a novel object rather than a familiar one. This bias has been studied computationally, but only in models that use discrete word representations as input, ignoring the high variability of spoken words. We investigate the ME bias in the context of visually grounded speech models that learn from natural images and continuous speech audio. Concretely, we train a model on familiar words and test its ME bias by asking it to select between a novel and a familiar object when queried with a novel word. To simulate prior acoustic and visual knowledge, we experiment with several initialization strategies using pretrained speech and vision networks. Our findings reveal the ME bias across the different initialization approaches, with a stronger bias in models with more prior (in particular, visual) knowledge. Additional tests confirm the robustness of our results, even when different loss functions are considered. Based on detailed analyses to piece out the model’s representation space, we attribute the ME bias to how familiar and novel classes are distinctly separated in the resulting space.
Markers of predicting discharge from forensic psychiatric hospitals in Czechia
Authors: Sebalo Ivan , Sebalo Vňuková Martina , Anders Martin , Ptáček Radek , Páv Marek 
Published: June 2024

Background: Secure forensic hospital treatments are resource-intensive, aiming to rehabilitate offenders and enhance public safety. While these treatments consume significant portions of mental health budgets and show efficacy in some countries, their effectiveness in Czechia remains underexplored. Previous research has highlighted various factors influencing the likelihood of discharge from these institutions. Notably, the role of sociodemographic variables and the length of stay (LoS) in the context of forensic treatments has presented inconsistent findings across studies. Methods: The study, part of the ‘Deinstitutionalization project’ in Czechia, collected data from all inpatient forensic care hospitals. A total of 793 patients (711 male, 79 female and 3 unknown) were included. Data collection spanned 6 months, with tools like HoNOS, HoNOS-Secure, MOAS, HCR-20V3 and AQoL-8D employed to assess various aspects of patient health, behaviour, risk and quality of life. Results: The study revealed several determinants influencing patient discharge from forensic hospitals. Key assessment tools, such as HoNOS secure scores and the HCR-20 clinical subscale, showed that higher scores equated to lower chances of release. Furthermore, specific diagnoses like substance use disorder increased discharge odds, while a mental retardation diagnosis significantly reduced it. The type of index offense showed no influence on discharge decisions. Conclusion: Factors like reduced risk behaviours, absence of mental retardation diagnosis, social support and secure post-release housing plans played significant roles. The results underscored the importance of using standardized assessment tools over clinical judgement. A standout insight was the unique challenges faced by patients diagnosed with mental retardation, emphasizing a need for specialized care units or tailored programmes.
Association of the intergenerational structure with the onset of depressive symptoms among middle-aged and older adults in China
Authors: Ma Jun , Liu Wenwen , Chai Yangfan , Wang Jiayu , Kong Guilan 
Published: June 2024

Background: Chinese family structure has undergone tremendous changes over the past few decades. Moreover, the association of the intergenerational structure with depression remains controversial. Aims: This study aimed to find out the association of the intergenerational structure and the onset of depressive symptoms among Chinese middle-aged and older adults. Methods: This study included 4,868 participants of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), who were enrolled in 2011 without depressive symptoms and followed up at least once later in 2013, 2015, 2018, and 2020. Taking the time-varying confounding effect into account, the time-dependent Cox regression models were used to estimate the association of the intergenerational structure and the onset of depressive symptoms. Results: Among the studied middle-aged and older adults, compared to one-generation households, higher hazard ratios (HR) of developing depressive symptoms were found in three-generation households in the study population (HR = 1.21, 95% CI [1.08, 1.36]). Further, for female participants, skipping-generation households (HR = 1.38, 95% CI [1.05, 1.83]) and three-generation lineal households (HR = 1.21, 95% CI [1.02, 1.43]) were found to be significantly associated with new-onset depressive symptoms compared to empty-nest couples. For male participants, living alone (HR = 1.65, 95% CI [1.30, 2.11]), living in standardized nuclear households (HR = 1.27, 95% CI [1.06, 1.54]), impaired nuclear households (HR = 1.80, 95% CI [1.18, 2.76]), or three-generation lineal households (HR = 1.34, 95% CI [1.12, 1.60]) were found to have a significant association with the onset of depressive symptoms. Conclusions: This study found that males living alone, with unmarried children, or in three-generation lineal households, and females living with grandchildren were more likely to suffer from depressive symptoms. Therefore, special attention should be paid to people in these intergenerational structure subtypes.
Genetic and early life factors influence on time-to-multiple sclerosis diagnosis: A UK Biobank study
Authors: Nova Andrea , Di Caprio Giovanni , Bernardinelli Luisa , Fazia Teresa 
Published: June 2024

Background: Previous investigations into multiple sclerosis (MS) risk factors predominantly relied on retrospective studies, which do not consider different follow-up times and assume a constant risk effect throughout lifetime. Objective: We aimed to evaluate the impact of genetic and early life factors on MS diagnosis by employing a time-to-event analysis in a prospective cohort. Methods: We used the UK Biobank data, considering the observation period from birth up to 31 December 2022. We considered genetic risk, using a multiple sclerosis polygenic risk score (MS-PRS), and various early life factors. Tobacco smoking and infectious mononucleosis diagnosis were also considered as time-varying variables along the follow-up. Using a Cox proportional hazards model, we examined the associations between these factors and MS diagnosis instantaneous risk. Results: We analyzed 345,027 participants, of which 1669 had an MS diagnosis. Our analysis revealed age-dependent effects for sex (females vs males) and higher MS-PRS, with greater hazard ratios observed in young adults. Conclusion: The age-dependent effects suggest that retrospective studies could have underestimated sex and genetic variants’ risk roles during younger ages. Therefore, we emphasize the importance of a time-to-event approach using longitudinal data to better characterize age-dependent risk effects.
Improving 3D-spacer fabric composites with silica nano particles for buildings soundproofing
Authors: Ibrahim Aous , Kaddar Taher Rajab 
Published: June 2024

Modern science and technology constantly require new and novel materials with special properties. Over the past decade, Nanocomposites materials have received significant attention as active materials in components ranging from sensors to biomaterials, electronics devices to structural parts. These novel composites have applications in many areas, such as energy, insulation, manufacturing, and the modern building industry. However, not all applications have the same requirements in terms of acoustic insulation, so it is useful to adapt the kind of core materials and their product specifications, such as particle size and porosity, to the different applications. Furthermore, in some applications, cheaper core materials, like precipitated silica, would be a reasonable alternative to replace the time-consuming series of measurements. Because of many bad conditions that affect acoustic insulation properties in modern buildings. And to summarize recent applications of nanotechnology as they relate to textile fibers, yarns, and fabrics for improving acoustic insulation in modern buildings and civilian communities, this paper discusses the ability to apply 3D woven spacer fabric (3DWSF) composite materials reinforced with epoxy, rigid polyurethane foam, and silica nanoporous particles, which were prepared by the sol-gel technique. Four samples had been prepared, all of these samples were textile composite materials, and reinforced with two types of nano silica 99.8% SiO2; mesoporous Ns particles with porosity up to 83%, true density 0.08 g/cm³, and particle size between 100 and 2000 nm and pore size 70–150 nm, which had been prepared by Sol-gel technique, and nonporous Aerosil®200 particles with surface area 200–225 m2/g, true density 0.25 g/cm³, and particle size between 2 and 20 nm. We used rigid polyurethane foam as core material, and epoxy resin for laminating the fabric. 3D spacer E-glass fabrics, and chopped E-glass microfibers had been used. The weight percentage of silica nano particles which were used in this research was 5% by weight, which was better for economic reasons, and enough, to enhance the acoustic absorption coefficient up to [Formula: see text] = 99.79%. The best sound absorption could be achieved by using mesoporous silica nanoparticles, and soundproofing of an insulator using this porous structure is better than using a nonporous one. We found in this research that the thickness 45 mm and semi-porosity structure of the 3DWSF composite insulator material were enough to make a difference, with reference to the thermal and acoustic insulation guide of buildings.
Light-independent pathway of STN7 kinase activation under low temperature stress in runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus L.)
Authors: Krysiak Małgorzata , Węgrzyn Anna , Kowalewska Łucja , Kulik Anna , Ostaszewska-Bugajska Monika , Mazur Jan , Garstka Maciej , Mazur Radosław 
Published: June 2024

Abstract
Background
The phosphorylation of the Light-Harvesting Complex of photosystem II (LHCII) driven by STATE TRANSITION 7 (STN7) kinase is a part of one of the crucial regulatory mechanisms of photosynthetic light reactions operating in fluctuating environmental conditions, light in particular. There are evidenced that STN7 can also be activated without light as well as in dark-chilling conditions. However, the biochemical mechanism standing behind this complex metabolic pathway has not been deciphered yet.

Results
In this work, we showed that dark-chilling induces light-independent LHCII phosphorylation in runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus L.). In dark-chilling conditions, we registered an increased reduction of the PQ pool which led to activation of STN7 kinase, subsequent LHCII phosphorylation, and possible LHCII relocation inside the thylakoid membrane. We also presented the formation of a complex composed of phosphorylated LHCII and photosystem I typically formed upon light-induced phosphorylation. Moreover, we indicated that the observed steps were preceded by the activation of the oxidative pentose phosphate pathway (OPPP) enzymes and starch accumulation.

Conclusions
Our results suggest a direct connection between photosynthetic complexes reorganization and dark-chilling-induced activation of the thioredoxin system. The proposed possible pathway starts from the activation of OPPP enzymes and further NADPH-dependent thioredoxin reductase C (NTRC) activation. In the next steps, NTRC simultaneously activates ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase and thylakoid membrane-located NAD(P)H dehydrogenase-like complex. These results in starch synthesis and electron transfer to the plastoquinone (PQ) pool, respectively. Reduced PQ pool activates STN7 kinase which phosphorylates LHCII. In this work, we present a new perspective on the mechanisms involving photosynthetic complexes while efficiently operating in the darkness. Although we describe the studied pathway in detail, taking into account also the time course of the following steps, the biological significance of this phenomenon remains puzzling.
Mitigation of drought stress in maize and sorghum by humic acid: differential growth and physiological responses
Authors: Abu-Ria Mohamed E. , Elghareeb Eman M. , Shukry Wafaa M. , Abo-Hamed Samy A. , Ibraheem Farag 
Published: June 2024

Abstract
Background
Drought is a major determinant for growth and productivity of all crops, including cereals, and the drought-induced detrimental effects are anticipated to jeopardize world food security under the ongoing global warming scenario. Biostimulants such as humic acid (HA) can improve drought tolerance in many cereals, including maize and sorghum. These two plant species are genetically related; however, maize is more susceptible to drought than sorghum. The physiological and biochemical mechanisms underlying such differential responses to water shortage in the absence and presence of HA, particularly under field conditions, are not fully understood.

Results
Herein, the effects of priming maize and sorghum seeds in 100 mg L−1 HA on their vegetative growth and physiological responses under increased levels of drought (100%, 80%, and 60% field capacity) were simultaneously monitored in the field. In the absence of HA, drought caused 37.0 and 58.7% reductions in biomass accumulation in maize compared to 21.2 and 32.3% in sorghum under low and high drought levels, respectively. These responses were associated with differential retardation in overall growth, relative water content (RWC), photosynthetic pigments and CO2 assimilation in both plants. In contrast, drought increased root traits as well as H2O2, malondialdehyde, and electrolyte leakage in both species. HA treatment significantly improved the growth of both plant species under well-watered and drought conditions, with maize being more responsive than sorghum. HA induced a 29.2% increase in the photosynthetic assimilation rate in maize compared to 15.0% in sorghum under high drought level. The HA-promotive effects were also associated with higher total chlorophyll, stomatal conductance, RWC, sucrose, total soluble sugars, total carbohydrates, proline, and total soluble proteins. HA also reduced the drought-induced oxidative stress via induction of non-enzymic and enzymic antioxidants at significantly different extents in maize and sorghum.

Conclusion
The current results identify significant quantitative differences in a set of critical physiological biomarkers underlying the differential responses of field-grown maize and sorghum plants against drought. They also reveal the potential of HA priming as a drought-alleviating biostimulant and as an effective approach for sustainable maize and sorghum production and possibly other crops in drought-affected lands.