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The potential novel bacteriophages against multidrug-resistant Edwardsiella tarda isolates from striped catfish Pangasianodon hypophthalmus
Spatiotemporal evolution of land use and habitat quality in the Three-River source region
Floral and pollination biology of dragon fruit reveals strategies for enhancing productivity through pollination management and reproductive window extension
Rethinking psychometrics through LLMs: how item semantics shape measurement and prediction in psychological questionnaires
Abstract Psychological questionnaires are typically designed to measure latent constructs by asking respondents a series of semantically related questions. But what if these semantic relationships, rather than reflecting only the underlying construct, also impose their own structure on the data we collect? In other words, to what extent is what we “measure” in questionnaires shaped a priori by item semantics rather than revealed solely a posteriori through empirical correlations? To examine this epistemological question, we propose LLMs Psychometrics, a novel paradigm that harness LLMs to investigate how the semantic structure of questionnaire items influences psychometric outcomes. We hypothesize that the correlations among items partly mirror their linguistic similarity, such that LLMs can predict these correlations-even in the absence of empirical data. To test this, we compared actual correlation matrices from established instruments—the Big 5 Personality (Big 5) and Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-42)—with the semantic similarity structures computed by LLMs. Among the top 3 semantically similar items, the empirically most correlated item was found in 95% of DASS cases and 82% of Big 5 cases. Building on this, we developed PsychoLLM, a neural proof-of-concept architecture, which uses item semantics to predict responses to new items–demonstrated with the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). PsychoLLM achieved 70% accuracy when predicting one scale’s responses from the other, enabling new analyses based on semantic relationships. This work underscores an important epistemological implication for psychometrics: item semantics may influence measurement outcomes to varying degrees, more extensively than previously assumed. By leveraging LLMs to expose this a priori semantic structure, researchers can refine questionnaire design, assess data quality, and expand interpretive possibilities, ultimately inviting a reexamination of “ what ” and “ how ” we truly measure in psychology.
Study on the performance of PU-SBS composite modified asphalt
HLA and pathogens in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and other post-infection conditions
Abstract Viral infections have been widely implicated in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) pathogenesis. Recent evidence has also identified certain Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) alleles that are significantly associated with ME/CFS risk/protection. Here we tested the hypothesis that ME/CFS risk or protection conferred from those HLA alleles is associated with binding affinity to antigens of HHV viruses, a critical step in initiating the adaptive immune system response to foreign antigens. Specifically, we determined in silico the predicted binding affinity of two susceptibility alleles (C*07:04, DQB1*03:03) and two protective alleles (B*08:01, DPB1*02:01) to > 10,000 antigens of the 9 Human Herpes Viruses (HHV1, HHV2, HHV3, HHV4, HHV5, HHV6A, HHV6B, HHV7, HHV8) which have been implicated in the etiology of ME/CFS. We found that the binding affinity of all HHV antigens to the susceptibility alleles was significantly weaker than the binding affinity to the protective alleles ( P < 0.001). In fact, none of the HHV antigens showed strong binding to the susceptibility alleles, in contrast to the strong bindings showed by the protective alleles. These findings are in keeping with the hypothesis that the effect of a putative HHV insult in contributing to ME/CFS is modulated by the host’s HLA immunogenetic makeup. We speculate that strong HLA-antigen binding likely protects against ME/CFS via elimination of virus antigens; conversely, weak HLA-antigen binding may permit persistence of foreign antigens, contributing to ME/CFS and other chronic conditions. Finally, with respect to the latter, we determined the binding affinities to the 4 HLA alleles above to pathogens causing two chronic diseases with very similar symptomatology to ME/CFS, namely Long COVID and post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS). We found that the 2 ME/CFS susceptibility HLA alleles above had very weak binding with SARS-CoV-2 virus glycoprotein (involved in Long COVID) and 5 proteins of Borrelia burgdorferi (involved in PTLDS), in contrast to the ME/CFS protective alleles that showed strong bindings. These findings support the hypothesis that ME/CFS, long COVID and PTLDS are caused by persistent pathogenic antigens that could not be eliminated due to inadequate protection by the patient’s HLA makeup.
Classroom indoor air quality and its association with sick Building syndrome (SBS) symptoms in a Malaysian university setting
Impact of obesity on myocardial function and survival after cardiac arrest and cardiopulmonary resuscitation in a rat model
Factors associated with primary cesarean section delivery among women who gave birth at Wolaita Sodo University comprehensive specialized hospital, Southern Ethiopia
Effect of prolonged brushing with different agents on surface characteristics of conventional and 3D-printed denture resins
Spatiotemporal evolution patterns of population aging, health resources for older adults, and new quality productivity in China
Household air pollution and health: rethinking indoor exposure in the places we call home
Privacy preservation in diabetic disease prediction using federated learning based on efficient cross stage recurrent model
Global minimum time trajectory planning considering curvature and distance for track racing
Smart defense based on explainable stacked machine learning architecture for securing internet of health things with K-means clustering
Dynamic synchronization and feature region fusion for real time girth weld tracking
Association of early cardiac rehabilitation on mortality in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy using national inpatient database
Abstract Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a complex disease characterized by cardiomyopathic hypokinesis and left ventricular interior hypertrophy. Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is an established treatment for some cardiovascular diseases; however, the outcomes of early CR for patients with DCM remain underexplored. This study aimed to investigate the association between early CR and 90-day mortality in patients with DCM and symptomatic heart failure, using a national inpatient database in Japan from July 1, 2010, to March 31, 2020. We applied multiple imputation to the missing data and propensity score matching analysis. Early CR was defined as that initiated within 3 days of admission. The study included 30,296 eligible patients, including those with early CR ( n = 3,130) and delayed or no CR ( n = 27,166). The early CR group showed significantly lower 90-day mortality compared to the delayed or no CR group (odds ratio, 0.70, 95% confidence interval, 0.53–0.93; P = 0.01). Compared to the delayed or no CR group, the early CR group exhibited a higher activities of daily living score at discharge, but there was no significant difference in length of stay between the groups.