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Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness of non‐pharmacological interventions for eating difficulties in people with dementia (PWD). Background: Eat difficulties are common problems in PWD. Prolonged eating difficulties may lead to inadequate/excessive food and drink intake and other adverse outcomes. Design: Overview of systematic reviews. Data sources: Cochrane Library, JBI Library, PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, CNKI, WANFANG, from inception up until 23 September 2019. Review methods: This overview was conducted in accordance with methodological recommendations of Cochrane. Two researchers independently selected studies based on inclusion criteria, extracted data, assessed eligible studies using AMSTAR 2 and GRADE system, and summarized the conclusions. Results: Eighteen systematic reviews were included. Some evidence showed that environmental modifications, education/training, and Oral nutrition supplements (ONS) were beneficial to improving eating difficulties. But the current evidence failed to support the effectiveness of other interventions. Conclusion: The overall confidence of systematic reviews is relatively low. High‐quality studies are needed to further validate the effectiveness of non‐pharmacological interventions for eating difficulties in PWD. Impact: This overview provides evidence on the effectiveness of non‐pharmacological interventions for eating difficulties in PWD. It will guide caregivers to choose more effective interventions to cope with eating difficulties and reduce the risk of adverse outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Home environment is a core domain in the care of community-dwelling older adults with dementia, but there is no suitable instrument to measure it in China.Objective: To develop and psychometrically test the home environment assessment checklist for community-dwelling older adults with dementia.Methods: A three-step process was performed to develop and test this instrument: 1) based on the evidence-based theory, the checklist was summarized as the main points of evidence from living environment settings among older adults with dementia, 2) the draft tool was assigned to an iterative process of evaluation by a panel of examiners consisting of experts from treatment, nursing and caring, people with dementia and their caregivers, 3) inter-rater reliability and internal consistency were calculated with a sample of 348 caregivers of the older adults with dementia.Results: The HEAC consisted of 71 items in domains addressing safety, stability and familiarity, visual cues, and sensory stimulation. Psychometric evaluation showed that this tool demonstrated sound reliability and validity. Content validity was 0.969 which was established by a panel of experts (n = 10). Inter-rater reliability of two researchers was 0.978, and 0.848 for researchers and caregivers. Test-retest reliability was excellent (ICC = 0.757-0.877) in community-dwelling older adults with dementia 2 week apart.Conclusion: The HEAC is a new tool to help collect the reliable information on the barriers and facilitators of home environment for community-dwelling older adults with dementia and to precipitate the home modification process to improve the quality of care for people with dementia and their caregivers in daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objective. This study investigated the effects and underlying mechanisms of azithromycin (AZM) treatment on the osteogenic differentiation of human periodontal ligament stem cells (PDLSCs) after their stimulation with TNF-α in vitro. Methods. PDLSCs were isolated from periodontal ligaments from extracted teeth, and MTS assay was used to evaluate whether AZM and TNF-α had toxic effects on PDLSCs viability and proliferation. After stimulating PDLSCs with TNF-α and AZM, we analyzed alkaline phosphatase staining, alkaline phosphatase activity, and alizarin red staining to detect osteogenic differentiation. Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) analysis was performed to detect the mRNA expression of osteogenic-related genes, including RUNX2, OCN, and BSP. Western blotting was used to measure the NF-κB signaling pathway proteins p65, phosphorylated p65, IκB-α, phosphorylated IκB-α, and β-catenin as well as the apoptosis-related proteins caspase-8 and caspase-3. Annexin V assay was used to detect PDLSCs apoptosis. Results. TNF-α stimulation of PDLSCs decreased alkaline phosphatase and alizarin red staining, alkaline phosphatase activity, and mRNA expression of RUNX2, OCN, and BSP in osteogenic-conditioned medium. AZM enhanced the osteogenic differentiation of PDLSCs that were stimulated with TNF-α. Western blot analysis showed that β-catenin, phosphorated p65, and phosphorylated IκB-α protein expression decreased in PDLSCs treated with AZM. In addition, pretreatment of PDLSCs with AZM (10 μg/ml, 20 μg/ml) prevented TNF-α-induced apoptosis by decreasing caspase-8 and caspase-3 expression. Conclusions. Our results showed that AZM promotes PDLSCs osteogenic differentiation in an inflammatory microenvironment by inhibiting the WNT and NF-κB signaling pathways and by suppressing TNF-α-induced apoptosis. This suggests that AZM has potential as a clinical therapeutic for periodontitis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute hypotensive episodes (AHEs) are one of the hemodynamic instabilities with high mortality rate that is frequent among many groups of patients. This study presents a methodology to predict AHE for ICU patients based on big data time series. The experimental data we used is mean arterial pressure (MAP), which is transformed from arterial blood pressure (ABP) data. Then, the Hilbert-Huang transform method was used to calculate patient’s MAP time series and some features, which are the bandwidth of the amplitude modulation, the frequency modulation, and the power of intrinsic mode function (IMF), were extracted. Finally, the multiple genetic programming (Multi-GP) is used to build the classification models for detection of AHE. The methodology is applied in the datasets of the 10th PhysioNet and Computers Cardiology Challenge in 2009 and Multiparameter Intelligent Monitoring for Intensive Care (MIMIC-II). We achieve the accuracy of 83.33% in the training set and 91.89% in the testing set of the 2009 challenge’s dataset and the 84.13% in the training set and 82.41% in the testing set of the MIMIC-II dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale electrical energy storage has become more important than ever for reducing fossil energy consumption in transportation and for the widespread deployment of intermittent renewable energy in electric grid. However, significant challenges exist for its applications. Here, the status and challenges are reviewed from the perspective of materials science and materials chemistry in electrochemical energy storage technologies, such as Li-ion batteries, sodium (sulfur and metal halide) batteries, Pb-acid battery, redox flow batteries, and supercapacitors. Perspectives and approaches are introduced for emerging battery designs and new chemistry combinations to reduce the cost of energy storage devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]