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Study protocol for a systematic review with meta-analysis to compare digital stress tests regarding their psychological and physiological stress responses
Background and aim Stress is a phenomenon of everyday life that all humans are exposed to, and that can have negative effects on health. Exposure to chronic stress has been associated with development of several diseases, but also acute stress can have detrimental health effects. To understand acute stress, standardized laboratory protocols are frequently employed. However, these protocols require considerable personal and financial resources, and are therefore usually uneconomical. More and more digitized, automated protocols are currently being developed, which may enable a more cost-effective and less time-consuming implementation, but these have not been systematically examined and compared. The aim of the proposed systematic review is therefore to provide a comprehensive overview of different digital stress tests and to compare them in terms of the elicited stress responses. Methods This study protocol was registered with PROSPERO, and PRISMA-P guidelines were followed. We will screen several online databases for eligible studies in English or German without any restrictions on the publication date using an a priori defined search strategy. Additionally, we will search those papers for other eligible studies. The primary outcome will be stress and/or similar psychological states. The search, selection and data extraction processes will be conducted by two independent reviewers. In case of discrepancy a third reviewer will be consulted. If possible, we will perform meta-analyses. To determine confidence in results we will assess risk of bias and overall quality of evidence. Additionally, results will be critically examined to avoid meta-biases. Discussion To the best of our knowledge, no systematic reviews or meta-analyses are published comparing digital stress tests - designed to elicit stress and/or similar psychological states. In this study protocol, we propose a systematic review analyzing existing digital stress tests, and examining their effectiveness by measuring acute stress responses.
Colossal and tunable dielectric tunability in domain-engineered barium strontium titanate
Introduction of FixFRM package for gene-based association test and its innovative application to mixture exposure analysis
Prediction of cutting parameters and reduction of output parameters using machine learning in milling of Inconel 718 alloy
Correction: Lack of variations in the salamander chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, at its alleged origin: Updating its Japanese distribution with new evidence
Quantifying the impact of a broadly protective sarbecovirus vaccine in a future SARS-X pandemic
Abstract COVID-19 has underscored the need for more timely access to vaccines during future pandemics. This has motivated development of broad-spectrum vaccines providing protection against entire viral families, which could be stockpiled and deployed rapidly following detection. Using mathematical modelling, we assess the utility of a broadly protective sarbecovirus vaccine during a hypothetical SARS-X outbreak, for a range of implementation strategies including ring-vaccination, spatial-targeting and mass vaccination of high-risk groups. Broadly protective sarbecovirus vaccine ring- or spatial strategies alone are insufficient to contain epidemics driven by a SARS-CoV-2-like virus, but when paired with rapid isolation and quarantine, can achieve containment of a SARS-CoV-1-like virus. Where suppression fails, broadly protective sarbecovirus vaccine utilisation still reduces the effective reproduction number and slows epidemic growth - buying valuable time for health-system response and virus-specific vaccine development. Vaccination of high-risk populations with the broadly protective sarbecovirus vaccine ahead of virus-specific vaccine availability could reduce mortality and enable shorter and less stringent non-pharmaceutical interventions to be imposed; results are sensitive to vaccine properties (e.g., efficacy), health system capabilities (e.g. rollout speed) and timeline to virus-specific vaccine availability. Our modelling suggests that broadly protective sarbecovirus vaccine delivery to those aged 60+ years could have averted 21-78 % of COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic’s first year, depending on the size of the stockpile. Realising this potential impact will require investment in manufacturing, delivery capacity and equitable access ahead of future pandemics.
LY6H is a marker of human pancreatic delta cells
Abstract The identification of cell surface markers specific to pancreatic islet cell subsets is important for both the study of islet biology and for investigating the pathophysiology of diseases in which these cell types are lost or damaged. Analysis of publicly available single-cell RNAseq data showed that LY6H transcripts are highly enriched in the delta cells of the pancreas. This finding was confirmed using immunofluorescence analysis of histological sections of human pancreas, and flow cytometric analysis of human islet preparations. We found that expression of LY6H was robustly associated with pancreatic delta cells in samples derived from both control and diabetic donors. Furthermore, we demonstrate that antibodies against LY6H can be used to substantially enrich for live delta cells from preparations of human islets. This study identified LY6H as a novel cell surface marker of human pancreatic delta cells—a finding that will aid in the identification and characterisation of this important cell type.
Comprehensive characterization of lysosome-dependent cell death reveals prognostic significance and immune landscape in colon adenocarcinoma
Perceived cancer-related stigma among Arab patients: A cross-sectional study
Purpose The primary objective of this study was to examine the perceived stigma experienced by patients with cancer within the context of Arabic and Islamic culture. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted with 190 Arab Muslim patients with cancer from two government-designated hospitals. Participants completed the Social Impact Scale, and descriptive statistics were calculated for the four subdomains associated with perceived stigma. Results The average stigma score was 82.36, indicating a high level of perceived stigma. The dimensions of stigma, ranked in descending order, were as follows: social rejection (M = 3.69), financial security (M = 3.35), isolation (M = 3.34), and internalized shame (M = 3.16). Conclusion The study findings indicate that Muslim Arab patients with cancer experience significant stigmatization. Social rejection was the most significant dimension of stigma, followed by concerns regarding financial security, feelings of isolation, and internalized shame. Culture and religion can play a vital role in influencing perceptions and experiences of cancer, leading to varying levels of stigma associated with the disease across diverse cultural backgrounds.
Observation of a non-reciprocal skyrmion Hall effect of hybrid chiral skyrmion tubes in synthetic antiferromagnetic multilayers
Abstract A hybrid chiral skyrmion tube is a well-known example of a 3D topological spin texture, exhibiting an intriguing chirality transition along the thickness direction. This transition progresses from left-handed to right-handed Néel-type chirality, passing through a Bloch-type intermediate state. Such an exotic spin configuration potentially exhibits distinctly different dynamics from that of the common skyrmion tube that exhibits a homogeneous chirality; yet these dynamics have not been ascertained so far. Here, we reveal the distinct features of current-induced dynamics that result from the hybrid chiral skyrmion tube structure in synthetic antiferromagnetic (SyAFM) multilayers. Strikingly, the SyAFM hybrid chiral skyrmion tubes exhibit a non-reciprocal skyrmion Hall effect in the flow regime. The non-reciprocity can even be tuned by the degree of magnetic compensation in the SyAFM systems. Our theoretical modeling qualitatively corroborates that the non-reciprocity stems from the dynamic oscillation of skyrmion helicity during its current-induced motion. The findings highlight the critical role of the internal degrees of freedom of these complex skyrmion tubes for their current-induced dynamics.
Long-term degradation of adsorbed natural gas storage in the MOF Basolite C300 due to Cn≥2 alkanes accumulation
Impact of hemodynamic doppler ultrasound parameters on patency and post-thrombotic syndrome in patients with iliofemoral venous stents
UMOT: A unified framework for long- and short-term association for multi-object tracking
Multi-object tracking (MOT) is an important research direction in the field of computer vision, but it often leads to problems such as trajectory breakage and identity switches in complex scenarios due to the similarity of target appearance and long-term occlusions. Although the existing Transformer-based end-to-end methods have made some breakthroughs in short-term motion modelling, they are still deficient in long-term dependent information modelling and target recovery. To this end, this paper proposes a unified framework for long-term and short-term association, UMOT, which fundamentally alleviates the contradiction between motion prediction between neighboring frames and long-term trajectory recovery across frames. UMOT constructs short-term correlation using pre-trained YOLOX detector and MOTR-ConvNext network, and through the dynamically updated track queries and detect queries jointly to build the motion and appearance feature models of targets between adjacent frames to optimize the short-term motion prediction. Meanwhile, it effectively stores and smoothly updates the historical trajectory information by designing the Track Query Memory Module (TQMM) and associates the unmatched detections across frames by the Historical backtracking Module, so as to realize the restoration of the long-term lost targets and the identity preservation. Extensive experiments on DanceTrack and MOT17 datasets show that UMOT achieves significant improvement in HOTA, IDF1 and other metrics compared to existing state-of-the-art methods, which verifies its robustness and effectiveness in complex occlusion and long-term dependency scenarios.
Long-term stable acidic electroreduction of CO2 to C2 products at industrial current density using passivated copper
Early prediction of suboptimal clinical response after bariatric surgery using total weight loss percentiles
Pattern diversify patch antenna for sub-6 GHz 5G communication applications
Research on the impact mechanism of digital technology on the new-quality productivity of port logistics
The development of port digital technology is an important way to promote the development of new-quality productivity in port logistics. This study takes Ningbo Port, Shanghai Port, and Tangshan Port as the research objects, and selects the data from 2013–2023 to explore the inner mechanism of the impact of digital technology on the new-quality productivity of port logistics. The results show that digital technology has a significant positive impact on the new quality productivity of port logistics, and the conclusions remain robust after the endogeneity test of the results using the instrumental variables method, eliminating the data of abnormal years, adding fixed effects, and adopting the instrumental variables method. The mechanism test shows that digital technology affects the level of the new quality productivity of port logistics by facilitating the development of new types of digital infrastructures. The digital economy also plays a mediating role between digital technology and the new-quality productivity of port logistics. The findings of the study not only provide key clues to accurately grasp the connotation and characteristics of new productivity in port logistics but also further expand and deepen the breadth and depth of theoretical and empirical studies on the development of digital technology and new-quality productivity in port logistics.
Secretins of type-two secretion systems are necessary for exopolymeric slime secretion in cyanobacteria and myxobacteria
Time-course observation of tear film dynamics during VR headset use
Abstract Dry eye disease is characterized by tear film instability, often linked to a reduced blink rate during prolonged visual display use. Although blink suppression during virtual reality (VR) headset use has been reported, its effect on tear film stability remains unclear. Accordingly, we developed a system using an ultra-compact camera for the time-course, noninvasive observation of tear film dynamics. Fourteen healthy participants played a 30-min VR game while tear film kinetics were analyzed. As gameplay progressed, a significant increase in the interference grade of the tear film lipid layer was observed (p < 0.05), along with elevated corneal and upper eyelid surface temperatures (p < 0.05). The increased interference grade suggests thickening of the lipid layer, possibly attributable to a periocular temperature elevation which may result in facilitation of the incorporation of polar lipids into the nonpolar lipid layer. These findings suggest that VR headset use may increase lipid layer thickness, potentially improving tear film stability under these conditions.