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Although previous studies in the education field have investigated how teachers’ beliefs and practices converge or diverge, native English teachers’ (NETs) beliefs and practices remain underrepresented and underexplored, particularly with respect to university-level English speaking instruction in the Chinese context. This qualitative study used interviews and classroom observations over one semester to examine the pedagogical beliefs and actual classroom practices of three NETs instructing a course in oral communication with English as a foreign language (EFL). Based on the data analysis, this multiple case study found that the three native EFL teachers’ practices converged with their beliefs related to language, teaching, and teachers’ roles. However, divergences existed in terms of teaching and student learning. Teachers’ personal, learner-related, and contextual factors modified teachers’ practices and affected their decisions in putting their beliefs into practice. The results imply that it is essential for NETs to engage in critical reflection and enhance their professional agency, which helps them make appropriate classroom decisions to achieve resonance between their beliefs and practices. University administrators in the Chinese context may consider creating a more conducive environment for teacher training, increasing NETs’ sense of belonging, and further facilitating teachers’ professional development.

BackgroundAbout a quarter of the world’s population with latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) are the main source of active tuberculosis. Bacillus Calmette Guerin (BCG) cannot effectively control LTBI individuals from developing diseases. Latency-related antigens can induce T lymphocytes of LTBI individuals to produce higher IFN-γ levels than tuberculosis patients and normal subjects. Herein, we firstly compared the effects of M. tuberculosis (MTB) ag85ab and 7 latent DNA vaccines on clearing latent MTB and preventing its activation in the mouse LTBI model.MethodsA mouse LTBI model was established, and then immunized respectively with PBS, pVAX1 vector, Vaccae vaccine, ag85ab DNA and 7 kinds of latent DNAs (including rv1733c, rv2660c, rv1813c, rv2029c, rv2628, rv2659c and rv3407) for three times. The mice with LTBI were injected with hydroprednisone to activate the latent MTB. Then, the mice were sacrificed for the bacterial count, histopathological examination, and immunological evaluation.ResultsUsing chemotherapy made the MTB latent in the infected mice, and then using hormone treatment reactivated the latent MTB, indicating that the mouse LTBI model was successfully established. After the mouse LTBI model was immunized with the vaccines, the lung colony-forming units (CFUs) and lesion degree of mice in all vaccines group were significantly decreased than those in the PBS group and vector group (PPag85ab DNA group was significantly increased than those in the control groups (Pag85ab, rv2029c, and rv2659c DNA groups significantly increased (Pag85ab and rv2659c DNA groups also significantly increased (P+CD25+FOXP3+ regulatory T cells in spleen lymphocytes of ag85ab, rv2660c, rv2029c, and rv3407 DNA groups were significantly reduced (PConclusionsMTB ag85ab and 7 kinds of latent DNA vaccines showed immune preventive efficacies on a mouse model of LTBI, especially the rv2659c, and rv1733c DNA. Our findings will provide candidates for the development of new multi-stage vaccines against TB.

Objective This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of simultaneous integrated boost intensity-modulated radiotherapy (SIB-IMRT) versus standard-dose intensity-modulated radiotherapy (SD-IMRT) in the treatment of locally advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Methods From July 2003 to March 2014, 1748 patients in a single center who received definitive chemoradiotherapy were included in the analysis. A total of 109 patients who underwent SIB-IMRT and fulfilled all inclusion and exclusion criteria were identified as the study group. A total of 266 patients who underwent SD-IMRT (60 Gy/30 fractions, 2 Gy/fraction, 1 time/day, 5 times/week) during the same period were selected as the control group. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to balance the baseline characteristics. Survival status, treatment failure mode, and the occurrence of adverse events were compared between the two groups. Results There were more women and more cervical and upper thoracic cancers (P = 0.038, 2 = 0.244 and P = 0.621. After PSM of 1:1, 138 patients entered the final analysis (69 cases from each group). The median PFS of the SD-IMRT group and the SIB-IMRT group was 13 and 18 months, respectively, with χ2 = 8.776 and P = 0.003. The 1‑, 3‑, and 5‑year overall survival rates were 66.7, 21.7, and 8.7% and 65.2, 36.2, and 27.3%, respectively, and the median overall survival duration was 16 and 22 months, respectively, with χ2 = 5.362 and P = 0.021. Treatment failure mode: 5‑year local regional recurrence rates of SD-IMRT and SIB-IMRT were 50.7 and 36.2%, respectively, with χ2 = 2.949 and P = 0.086. The 5‑year distant metastasis rates of the two groups were 36.2 and 24.6%, respectively, with χ2 = 2.190 and P = 0.139. Adverse events: 3 patients experienced grade 4–5 toxicity (2.2%), including one case of grade 4 radiation esophagitis and two cases of grade 5 radiation pneumonitis, all in the SD-IMRT group; 14 patients experienced grade 3 adverse events (10.1%), primarily including radiation esophagitis, radiation pneumonitis, and hematological toxicity. Conclusion The technique of SIB-IMRT was safe and reliable compared with SD-IMRT. In addition, SIB-IMRT had locoregional control advantages and potential survival benefits.

Pregnant women infected with HCV should be given attention due to their special physiological stage and the effect on offspring health. To examine the prevalence of HCV infection among pregnant women in part of China and explore relevant factors during pregnancy, a cross-sectional study was conducted in four maternal and children health care institutions (MCHC) in Guangdong, Hunan and Chongqing. Pregnant women who were delivered, induced or spontaneous abortion were included and relevant information was collected through the Hospital Information System. Results showed that the prevalence of HCV among pregnant women in four MCHCs was 0.11% (95% CI 0.09–0.13%). Age, occupations, regions, syphilis-infection, intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP), and placenta previa were significant factors (all P Z = 3.41, P = 0.0006; OR = 18.16, 95% CI 9.34–35.29). HCV and HBV infection were risk factors of ICP (OR = 4.18, 95% CI 2.18–8.04; OR = 2.59, 95% CI 2.31–2.89). Our study indicates that the prevalence of HCV among pregnant women in the three provinces(city) was low compared with the general population in China. Older age and syphilis-infection increased the risk of HCV infection during pregnancy. HCV infection was a risk factor of ICP. Generally, we need keep a watchful eye on HCV infection and relevant factors mentioned above during pregnancy in clinic, especially those also infected with syphilis. HCV testing based on risk factors is recommended in antenatal care and obstetrics.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-onc-10.1177_11795549231168073 for Correlation of NNMT and DKK1 Protein Expression With Clinicopathological Characteristics and Prognosis of Breast Cancer by Tairong Liang, Xiuqian Wu, Lan Wang, Tiantian Song, Peishan Wu, Yongdong Niu and Haihua Huang in Clinical Medicine Insights: Oncology

Additional file 1: Supplementary Figure 1. Trends in the monthly incidence, mortality rates, and CFRs for HIV in China in 2015–2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. Supplementary Figure 2. Scatter plot of the number of monthly reported HIV cases and the number of monthly reported COVID-19 cases in 2020–2022, China.

This work aims to study off-policy evaluation (OPE) under scenarios where two key reinforcement learning (RL) assumptions -- temporal stationarity and individual homogeneity are both violated. To handle the ``double inhomogeneities", we propose a class of latent factor models for the reward and observation transition functions, under which we develop a general OPE framework that consists of both model-based and model-free approaches. To our knowledge, this is the first paper that develops statistically sound OPE methods in offline RL with double inhomogeneities. It contributes to a deeper understanding of OPE in environments, where standard RL assumptions are not met, and provides several practical approaches in these settings. We establish the theoretical properties of the proposed value estimators and empirically show that our approach outperforms competing methods that ignore either temporal nonstationarity or individual heterogeneity. Finally, we illustrate our method on a data set from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care.

To examine the production time, type, and MFI of post-transplantation de novo HLA antibodies, and their effects on haplo-HSCT outcomes, we retrospectively included 116 patients who were negative for pre-existing HLA antibodies. In total, 322 serum samples from pre-transplantation to post-transplantation were dynamically tested by Luminex and single-antigen bead reagents. Patients were divided into: HLA antibody persistently negative group (group 1), the de novo HLA antibody transiently positive group (group 2), the de novo HLA antibody non-persistently positive group (group 3), and the de novo HLA antibody persistently positive group (group 4). Group 4 included DSA+non-DSA (NDSA) (group 4a) and NDSA (group 4b) groups. The detection rate of de novo HLA antibodies was 75.9% (88/116). The median MFI for de novo HLA antibodies was 2439 (1033-20162). The incidence of II–IV aGvHD was higher in group 2 than in group 1 (52.6% vs 17.9%, P < 0.01); in group 4a than in group 1 (87.5% vs 17.9%, P < 0.001); and in group 4a than in group 4b (87.5% vs 40.0%, P = 0.001). The DFS (37.5% vs 85.7%, P < 0.01) and OS (37.5% vs 85.7%, P < 0.01) of group 4a were lower than those of group 1. The DFS (48.0% vs 85.7%, P < 0.01) and OS (56.0% vs 85.7%, P = 0.03) of group 4b were lower than those of group 1. Multivariate analysis showed that de novo HLA antibody being transiently positive (HR: 5.30; 95% CI: 1.71–16.42, P = 0.01) and persistently positive (HR: 5.67; 95% CI: 2.00–16.08, P < 0.01) were both associated with a higher incidence of II–IV aGvHD. Persistently positive de novo HLA antibodies were a risk factor for reduced DFS (HR: 6.57; 95% CI: 2.08–20.70, P < 0.01) and OS (HR: 5.51; 95% CI: 1.73–17.53, P < 0.01). DSA and NDSA can be detected since 15 days after haplo-HSCT in patients without pre-existing HLA antibodies, and affect aGvHD, DFS, and OS. Haplo-HSCT patients must be monitored for HLA antibodies changes for appropriate preventive clinical management, and we recommend that 1-month post-transplantation is the best test time point.

Anti-erythropoietin (anti-EPO) antibody-mediated pure red cell aplasia (PRCA) is a rarely seen disease. Anti-EPO antibodies were mostly found in patients with chronic kidney disease who received recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEPO) injections subcutaneously. The treatment against anti-EPO antibody-mediated PRCA included discontinuation of rHuEPO, immunosuppressive agents, intravenous immunoglobulin, plasmapheresis, or kidney transplantation. We reported a case of kidney transplant recipient with anti-EPO antibody-mediated PRCA, who had no trend of recovery after stopping rHuEPO, receiving regular induction and maintenance immunosuppressive regimens. He was further given 6 consecutive plasmapheresis sessions, cyclophosphamide, and adjusted maintenance immunosuppressive regimen into cyclosporine, sirolimus and prednisone. We monitored his anti-EPO antibody levels with a self-created simple mixing test. At 10 months post kidney transplant, his anti-EPO antibody finally turned negative, and his reticulocyte count dramatically increased. Cyclosporine, sirolimus and prednisone combined with roxadustat eventually alleviated the patient’s anti-EPO antibody-mediated PRCA. Our self-created simple mixing test for anti-EPO antibody titer was very helpful in disease monitoring and therapeutic guidance.

Service discovery is a crucial component in today's massively distributed applications. In this paper, we propose NDNSD -- a fully distributed and general-purpose service discovery protocol for Named Data Networking (NDN). By leveraging NDN's data synchronization capability, NDNSD offers a high-level API for service publishing and discovery. We present NDNSD's main design features including hierarchical naming, service information specification, and service accessibility. %and illustrate the design with a use case. We also implemented two other discovery schemes, one reactive and one proactive, and compared them with NDNSD. Our evaluation shows that NDNSD achieves (a) lower latency, lower overhead, and same reliability compared to the reactive scheme, and (b) comparable latency, lower overhead at larger scale, and higher reliability compared to the proactive scheme., Comment: MILCOM-2022

IntroductionLelliottia amnigena, a bacterium usually isolated from natural environments, may cause human infections and has been suggested to be naturally resistant to second- and third-generation cephalosporins.MethodsIn this study, we determined the whole-genome sequence of an isolate, L. Amnigena P13, isolated from animal farm sewage. On the basis of genome sequence analysis, susceptibility testing, molecular cloning, and enzyme kinetic parameter analysis, we identified a novel chromosome-encoded AmpC β-lactamase, LAQ-1.Results and DiscussionblaLAQ-1 is resistant to penicillin G, ampicillin, and several first- to fourth-generation cephalosporins, such as cefazolin, cefoxitin and cefepime. The MIC levels of some β-lactams, such as cefoxitin, cefepime, aztreonam and cefazolin, for the recombinant clone (pUCP24-blaLAQ-1/DH5α) increased by approximately 4- to 64-fold compared with those of the control strain (pUCP24/DH5α). The kinetic properties of LAQ-1, with the highest catalytic activity observed toward piperacillin, were basically the same as those of typical class C β-lactamases, and avibactam had a strong inhibitory effect on its hydrolytic activity. The genetic background of blaLAQ-1 was relatively conserved, and no mobile genetic element (MGE) was found around it. The plasmid pP13-67 of L. amnigena P13 harbored 12 resistance genes [qnrS1, aph(6)-Id, aadA2, sul1, sul2,blaTEM-1, qacEΔ1, dfrA12, tetA and floR] related to different mobile genetic elements within an ~22 kb multidrug resistance region. The multidrug resistance region shared the highest nucleotide sequence similarities with those of the chromosomes or plasmids of different bacterial species, indicating the possibility of horizontal transfer of these resistance genes among different bacterial species.

Purpose: Due to the existing methodologies on two-sided matching seldom consider the asymmetry, uncertainty and fuzziness of the preference information, this paper aims to develop a methodology for solving the selection process between green suppliers and manufacturers with intuitionistic linguistic numbers. Methods: This paper first constructs the evaluation indicators for both sides, which are depicted as intuitionistic linguistic numbers. Subsequently, the authors redefine the intuitionistic linguistic numbers’ expected function based on regret theory. By considering the psychological behaviour of the regret aversion of decision makers, the paper constructs the comprehensive perceived values of decision makers. Furthermore, by maximizing the comprehensive perceived values for the two sides, the multi-objectives matching model is established. In addition, this paper adopts a min-max method to transform the multi-objective optimal model into the single-objective model. Conclusions: This paper considers fuzziness and hesitancy of the preference information, and also considering the psychological behaviour of the regret aversion of decision makers, the two-sided matching method proposed by this paper is more validity and effectiveness than existing methods.

Patient response to doctors’ inquiry durations depends to a large extent on patients’ psychological traits. The present research examined whether and why power distance belief, which is considered as one of the key psychological traits, influences patient response to doctors’ inquiry durations. We proposed that power distance belief and inquiry duration interact to affect patients’ evaluations for, and propensity to support, a doctor who finishes an inquiry. Specifically, patients low (vs. high) in power distance belief respond more negatively to a doctor with a short inquiry. In contrast, a long inquiry generally elicit a less positive response for patients high (vs. low) in power distance belief. The reason for the effect of power distance belief is that compared with patients low in power distance belief, those high in power distance belief pay more attention to doctors’ competence and less attention to doctors’ morality. Our research provided empirical support for these hypotheses and ruled out relational closeness as an alternative mediator. In Study 1, to establish the external validity of the effect of power distance belief, we collected and analyzed Chinese and American user-generated online comments in response to news articles and opinion pieces regarding doctors’ inquiry durations. Three coders were recruited to independently classify doctors’ inquiry durations and rate patients’ responses to doctors included in each comment. The results showed that power distance belief significantly predicted patients’ responses to doctors’ inquiry durations, which initially verified H1. In Study 2, participants were randomly assigned to a condition in a 2 (inquiry duration: long or short) × 2 (power distance belief: high or low) between-subjects design. Power distance belief was manipulated through the opinion defending task. They then reported their satisfaction with doctors, the global evaluation of doctors, and relational closeness with doctors. We verified the effect of power distance belief and ruled out relational closeness as a possible rival explanation. In Study 3, participants were randomly assigned to a condition in a 2 (inquiry duration: long or short) × 2 (power distance belief: high or low) between-subjects design. Power distance belief was also manipulated through the opinion defending task. They then completed the measurement of evaluations of doctors’ morality and competence, the willingness to come for a follow-up visit, and the willingness to recommend doctors to others. We found that the relationship between power distance belief and patients’ responses to doctors’ inquiry durations is mediated by evaluations of doctors’ morality and competence. In other words, patients high (vs. low) in power distance belief focused more on doctors’ competence and less on doctors’ morality. Such difference accounted for the effect of power distance belief, which verified H2. In Study 4, participants were randomly assigned to a condition in a 2 (inquiry duration: long or short) × 2 (power distance belief: high or low) between-subjects design. Power distance belief was primed via a sentence completion task. They then evaluated doctors’ morality and competence, and reported the willingness to select this doctor as top ten doctors. We confirmed the mediation role of evaluations of doctors’ morality and competence again. In Study 5, to test doctor gender as an important boundary condition of the effect of power distance belief, participants were randomly assigned to a condition in a 2 (inquiry duration: long or short) × 2 (power distance belief: high or low) × 2 (doctor gender: female or male) between-subjects design. Power distance belief was also primed via a sentence completion task. They then estimated the price of inquiring service. The results revealed a significant interaction between doctor gender and power distance belief on patients’ price estimation relying on inquiry durations. Specifically, the effect of power distance belief disappeared when focus between power distance belief and doctor gender was incongruent rather than congruent. Together, these results provided support for our theoretical model. We conducted five studies aimed at providing insight into the processes and boundary conditions that underlie the effects of power distance belief on how patients respond to doctors’ inquiry durations. Specifically, we demonstrated that patients high (vs. low) in power distance belief respond more positively to a doctor with a short inquiry and more negatively to a doctor with a long inquiry. We also revealed the underlying mechanism of this effect that patients high (vs. low) in power distance belief pay more attention to doctors’ competence and less attention to doctors’ morality. From a practical perspective, these results offer guidance on how to understand and cope with conflicts between doctors and patients caused by inquiry durations.

Agrobacterium salinitolerans DG3-1 is an endophytic bacterium isolated from cotton root tissue. Our previous work has shown that it can inhibit the growth of Fusarium and Verticillium wilt pathogens as well as increase the chlorophyll content of cotton leaves. Here, we reported the complete genome sequence of strain DG3-1, which was analyzed by sequence reads generated from Nanopore PromethION and Illumina NovaSeq PE150 platforms. This genome sequence could be used to clarify the possible mechanism of DG3-1 at the gene level. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .

BackgroundThe impact of dietary trace elements intake on ovarian cancer (OC) severity is unknown.ObjectiveWe firstly explore the relationship between dietary copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), and copper-to-zinc (Cu/Zn) ratio and severity of OC.MethodsThis cross-sectional study included 701 women from the OC follow-up study between 2015 and 2020. Dietary information was collected by a validated food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). The severity information of OC including age at diagnosis, histological type, International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage, and histopathologic grade was ascertained from medical records. Logistic regression model was used to estimate the odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of aforementioned associations.ResultsAmong 701 participants, the number of patients age at diagnosis older than 50 were 443 (63.2%). The number of patients diagnosed as serous, III–IV stage, and poorly differentiation OC were 477 (68.05%), 336 (47.93%), and 597 (85.16%), respectively. In addition, compared with the lowest tertile intake, higher possibility of non-serous OC was associated with the pre-diagnosis dietary Cu (OR = 2.39, 95% CI = 1.28–4.47, p trend < 0.05) and Cu/Zn ratio (OR = 2.06, 95% CI = 1.26–3.39, P trend < 0.05) in the highest tertile intake. The risk of poorly differentiation OC at diagnosis was significant inversely related to dietary Cu intake (OR = 0.40, 95% CI = 0.18–0.88, P trend < 0.05). Besides, the results of subgroup analyses were consistent with the main findings but not all of them showed statistical significance.ConclusionPre-diagnostic dietary Cu and Cu/Zn ratio were contributed to reducing the severity of OC at diagnosis, especially for the risk of serous OC and poorly differentiation OC.

ObjectiveThe aim of the study was to evaluate the computed diffusion-weighted images (DWI) in image quality and diagnostic performance of rectal cancer by comparing with the acquired DWI.MethodsA total of 103 consecutive patients with primary rectal cancer were enrolled in this study. All patients underwent two DWI sequences, namely, conventional acquisition with b = 0 and 1,000 s/mm2 (aDWIb1,000) and another with b = 0 and 700 s/mm2 on a 3.0T MR scanner (MAGNETOM Prisma; Siemens Healthcare, Germany). The images (b = 0 and 700 s/mm2) were used to compute the diffusion images with b value of 1,000 s/mm2 (cDWIb1,000). Qualitative and quantitative analysis of both computed and acquired DWI images was performed, namely, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), and signal intensity ratio (SIR), and also diagnostic staging performance. Interclass correlation coefficients, weighted κ coefficient, Friedman test, Wilcoxon paired test, and McNemar or Fisher test were used for repeatability and comparison assessment.ResultsCompared with the aDWIb1,000 images, the cDWIb1,000 ones exhibited significant higher scores of subjective image quality (all P b1,000 images were superior to those of the aDWIb1,000 ones (P b1,000 images in T stage (P ConclusioncDWIb1,000 images from lower b values might be a useful alternative option and comparable to the acquired DWI, providing better image quality and diagnostic performance in preoperative rectal cancer staging.

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is one of the most devastating complications of diabetes mellitus. Although cadmium (Cd) exposure might be involved in the pathogenesis of DN, the underlying mechanism is still unclear. In this study, we explored the protective effects and possible mechanism of proanthocyanidins (OPC) from grape seed using a mouse model of Cd-induced DN. The successful establishment of this model was verified by analyzing the physiological and biochemical indices of mice, including their body weight and tissue ratio; levels of blood glucose, creatinine, microalbumin, total cholesterol, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol; and was based on histopathological examination. Oxidative-antioxidative status, elemental analysis, and key signaling pathway analysis were performed to explore the possible protective mechanism of OPC. The protective effects of OPC and its possible mechanism in preventing the progression of DN were investigated using a multidimensional approach, including its ability in regulating oxidative-antioxidative status (lipid peroxidation, protein carbonyl, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione GST, GSH-Px), metal-binding ability (Cd levels in the kidneys and urine and MT content) and mediation of essential elements (Zn, Ca, Cu, and Fe levels in the kidneys), and activation of the p38 MAPK and Keap1/Nrf2 signaling pathways. OPC exhibited a significant renoprotective effect, attributed to the metal-chelating ability, anti-oxidative effect, and mediation of oxidative stress-related signaling pathway. These results highlight the potential of OPC in preventing or treating DN in humans and suggest the dietary intake of grapes, which are rich in polyphenols, for the prevention of type 2 diabetes mellitus and its complications.

Additional file 2.

Additional file 1: Table S1. Dates of provinces implementing response to public health emergency. Table S2. List of five vector-borne diseases, insect vectors, and pathogens. Table S3. Changes in the average yearly incidence of vaccine-preventable, non-vaccine-preventable, viral, and non-viral diseases among five vector-borne diseases in 2020 were compared with the previous five years in China. Table S4. Pairwise comparisons of the average monthly incidence of five vector-borne diseases for January to April in 2015���2019, 2020 and 2021. Table S5. Changes in the average yearly mortality rates of the vaccine-preventable, non-vaccine-preventable, viral, and non-viral diseases among five vector-borne diseases in 2020 compared with the previous five years in China. Table S6. Pairwise comparisons of the average monthly mortality rates of five vector-borne diseases for January to April in 2015���2019, 2020 and 2021. Table S7. Changes in the yearly incidence of five vector-borne diseases in 2020 between observed and predicted values. Table S8. Changes in the average monthly incidence of five vector-borne diseases in the emergency response stage (January to April 2020) and the routine response stage (May to December 2020) between observed and predicted values. Table S9. Changes in the yearly mortality rates of five vector-borne diseases in 2020 between observed and predicted values. Table S10. Changes in the average monthly mortality rates of five vector-borne diseases in the emergency response stage (January to April 2020) and the routine response stage (May to December 2020) between observed and predicted values.

Electrical gate-manipulated exchange bias (EB) effect is a long-term goal for spintronics applications. Meanwhile, the emergence of van der Waals (vdW) magnetic heterostructures provides ideal platforms for the study of interlayer magnetic coupling. However, to date, the electrical gate-controlled EB effect has yet to be realized in vdW heterostructures. Here, for the first time, we realized electrically-controllable EB effects in a vdW antiferromagnetic (AFM)-ferromagnetic (FM) heterostructure, FePS3-Fe5GeTe2. For pristine FePS3-Fe5GeTe2 heterostructures, sizable EB effects can be generated due to the strong interface coupling, which also depend on the thickness of the ferromagnetic layers. By applying a solid protonic gate, the EB effects can be electrically tuned largely by proton intercalations and deintercalations. The EB field reaches up to 23% of the coercive field and the blocking temperature exceeds 50 K at Vg= -3.15 V. The proton intercalations not only tune the average magnetic exchange coupling, but also change the AFM configurations and transform the heterointerface between an uncompensated AFM-FM interface and a compensated AFM-FM interface. These alterations result in a dramatic modulation of the total interface exchange coupling and the resultant EB effects. The study is a significant step towards vdW heterostructure-based magnetic logic for future low-energy electronics., Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures

supplementary document revised

Off-Policy evaluation (OPE) is concerned with evaluating a new target policy using offline data generated by a potentially different behavior policy. It is critical in a number of sequential decision making problems ranging from healthcare to technology industries. Most of the work in existing literature is focused on evaluating the mean outcome of a given policy, and ignores the variability of the outcome. However, in a variety of applications, criteria other than the mean may be more sensible. For example, when the reward distribution is skewed and asymmetric, quantile-based metrics are often preferred for their robustness. In this paper, we propose a doubly-robust inference procedure for quantile OPE in sequential decision making and study its asymptotic properties. In particular, we propose utilizing state-of-the-art deep conditional generative learning methods to handle parameter-dependent nuisance function estimation. We demonstrate the advantages of this proposed estimator through both simulations and a real-world dataset from a short-video platform. In particular, we find that our proposed estimator outperforms classical OPE estimators for the mean in settings with heavy-tailed reward distributions.

Additional file 3: Table S1. Selected miRNAs for RT-qPCR.

The vast majority of literature on evaluating the significance of a treatment effect based on observational data has been confined to discrete treatments. These methods are not applicable to drawing inference for a continuous treatment, which arises in many important applications. To adjust for confounders when evaluating a continuous treatment, existing inference methods often rely on discretizing the treatment or using (possibly misspecified) parametric models for the effect curve. Recently, Kennedy et al. (2017) proposed nonparametric doubly robust estimation for a continuous treatment effect in observational studies. However, inference for the continuous treatment effect is a harder problem. To the best of our knowledge, a completely nonparametric doubly robust approach for inference in this setting is not yet available. We develop such a nonparametric doubly robust procedure in this paper for making inference on the continuous treatment effect curve. Using empirical process techniques for local U- and V-processes, we establish the test statistic's asymptotic distribution. Furthermore, we propose a wild bootstrap procedure for implementing the test in practice. We illustrate the new method via simulations and a study of a constructed dataset relating the effect of nurse staffing hours on hospital performance. We implement our doubly robust dose response test in the R package DRDRtest on CRAN., Comment: 93 pages; 13 figures

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-tam-10.1177_17588359221131526 for Progression-free survival as surrogate endpoint of overall survival in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: a real-world data and literature-based analysis by Weiming Han, Lan Wang, Chen Li, Junqiang Chen, Wencheng Zhang, Xin Wang, Qingsong Pang, Yidian Zhao, Xinchen Sun, Kaixian Zhang, Gaofeng Li, Ling Li, Xueying Qiao, Miaoling Liu, Yadi Wang, Lei Deng, Wenqing Wang, Nan Bi, Tao Zhang, Wei Deng, Wenjie Ni, Xiao Chang, Zongmei Zhou, Jun Liang, Qinfu Feng, Lvhua Wang, Dongfu Chen, Jima Lv, Shuchai Zhu, Chun Han and Zefen Xiao in Therapeutic Advances in Medical Oncology

Motivated by the human-machine interaction such as training chatbots for improving customer satisfaction, we study human-guided human-machine interaction involving private information. We model this interaction as a two-player turn-based game, where one player (Alice, a human) guides the other player (Bob, a machine) towards a common goal. Specifically, we focus on offline reinforcement learning (RL) in this game, where the goal is to find a policy pair for Alice and Bob that maximizes their expected total rewards based on an offline dataset collected a priori. The offline setting presents two challenges: (i) We cannot collect Bob's private information, leading to a confounding bias when using standard RL methods, and (ii) a distributional mismatch between the behavior policy used to collect data and the desired policy we aim to learn. To tackle the confounding bias, we treat Bob's previous action as an instrumental variable for Alice's current decision making so as to adjust for the unmeasured confounding. We develop a novel identification result and use it to propose a new off-policy evaluation (OPE) method for evaluating policy pairs in this two-player turn-based game. To tackle the distributional mismatch, we leverage the idea of pessimism and use our OPE method to develop an off-policy learning algorithm for finding a desirable policy pair for both Alice and Bob. Finally, we prove that under mild assumptions such as partial coverage of the offline data, the policy pair obtained through our method converges to the optimal one at a satisfactory rate.

Purpose: A fundamental feature of human speech is variation, including the manner of phonation, as exemplified in the case of whispered speech. In this study, we employed whispered speech to examine an unresolved issue about congenital amusia, a neurodevelopmental disorder of musical pitch processing, which also affects speech pitch processing such as lexical tone and intonation perception. The controversy concerns whether amusia is a pitch-processing disorder or can affect speech processing beyond pitch.Method: We examined lexical tone and intonation recognition in 19 Mandarin-speaking amusics and 19 matched controls in phonated and whispered speech, where fundamental frequency (fo) information is either present or absent.Results: The results revealed that the performance of congenital amusics was inferior to that of controls in lexical tone identification in both phonated and whispered speech. These impairments were also detected in identifying intonation (statements/questions) in phonated and whispered modes. Across the experiments, regression models revealed that fo and non-fo (duration, intensity, and formant frequency) acoustic cues predicted tone and intonation recognition in phonated speech, whereas non-fo cues predicted tone and intonation recognition in whispered speech. There were significant differences between amusics and controls in the use of both fo and non-fo cues.Conclusion: The results provided the first evidence that the impairments of amusics in lexical tone and intonation identification prevail into whispered speech and support the hypothesis that the deficits of amusia extend beyond pitch processing.Supplemental Material S1. A list of syllables and sentences for production and perception experiments.Supplemental Material S2. Acoustic characteristics of the four Mandarin tones produced in the phonated mode and results of one-way ANOVAs conducted to compare the four tones on each acoustic cue (the p-value was corrected for multiple comparisons: .05/6 = .008). Supplemental Material S3. Acoustic characteristics of the four Mandarin tones produced in the whispered mode and results of one-way ANOVAs conducted to compare the four tones on each acoustic cue (the p-value was corrected for multiple comparisons: .05/4 = .0125).Supplemental Material S4. Acoustic characteristics of statements and questions in the phonated mode and results of t-tests conducted to compare statement and question on each acoustic cue (the p-value was corrected for multiple comparisons: .05/9 = .005).Supplemental Material S5. Acoustic characteristics of statements and questions in the whispered mode and results of t-tests conducted to compare statement and question on each acoustic cue (the p-value was corrected for multiple comparisons: .05/4 = .0125).Supplemental Material S6. Results of correlations among the nine acoustic cues of the phonated sentences. Supplemental Material S7. Confusion matrix of tone identification in the phonated mode.Supplemental Material S8. Confusion matrix of tone identification in the whispered mode. Supplemental Material S9. Confusion matrix of intonation identification.Supplemental Material S10. Results of simultaneous linear regression models with the MBEA scores as predictors on tone and intonation identification. Supplemental Material S11. The relationship with the MBEA scores and tone and intonation identification in both phonation modes.Supplemental Material S12. The relationship between the acoustic cues and phonated tone identification.Supplemental Material S13. The relationship between the acoustic cues and phonated intonation identification.Supplemental Material S14. The relationship between the acoustic cues and whispered tone identification.Supplemental Material S15. The relationship between the acoustic cues and whispered intonation identification.Zhang, G., Shao, J., Zhang, C., & Wang, L. (2022). The perception of lexical tone and intonation in whispered speech by Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_JSLHR-21-00345

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-tam-10.1177_17588359221131526 for Progression-free survival as surrogate endpoint of overall survival in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: a real-world data and literature-based analysis by Weiming Han, Lan Wang, Chen Li, Junqiang Chen, Wencheng Zhang, Xin Wang, Qingsong Pang, Yidian Zhao, Xinchen Sun, Kaixian Zhang, Gaofeng Li, Ling Li, Xueying Qiao, Miaoling Liu, Yadi Wang, Lei Deng, Wenqing Wang, Nan Bi, Tao Zhang, Wei Deng, Wenjie Ni, Xiao Chang, Zongmei Zhou, Jun Liang, Qinfu Feng, Lvhua Wang, Dongfu Chen, Jima Lv, Shuchai Zhu, Chun Han and Zefen Xiao in Therapeutic Advances in Medical Oncology

Additional file 3: Table S1. Selected miRNAs for RT-qPCR.

Additional file 1: Table S1. The sequences of primers, siRNA and mimics or inhibitor used in this study.

Additional file 1.

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-eji-10.1177_20587392211069258 for Dysregulation of let-7c-5p/Tyrosyl-DNA phosphodiesterase 1 axis indicates an unfavorable outcome in gastric cancer by Lan Wang, Jing Zou, and Jing Zhang in European Journal of Inflammation

Additional file 4: Table S2. Summary of miRNA and mRNA primers used in RT-qPCR.

Additional file 1.

Additional file 4: Table S2. Summary of miRNA and mRNA primers used in RT-qPCR.

Today's cyber-world is vastly multivariate. Metrics collected at extreme varieties demand multivariate algorithms to properly detect anomalies. However, forecast-based algorithms, as widely proven approaches, often perform sub-optimally or inconsistently across datasets. A key common issue is they strive to be one-size-fits-all but anomalies are distinctive in nature. We propose a method that tailors to such distinction. Presenting FMUAD - a Forecast-based, Multi-aspect, Unsupervised Anomaly Detection framework. FMUAD explicitly and separately captures the signature traits of anomaly types - spatial change, temporal change and correlation change - with independent modules. The modules then jointly learn an optimal feature representation, which is highly flexible and intuitive, unlike most other models in the category. Extensive experiments show our FMUAD framework consistently outperforms other state-of-the-art forecast-based anomaly detectors., Comment: Published at IEEE BigData 2021

Additional file 1: Comparison of CPET and hemodynamics stratified by sex and Cpc-PH or Ipc-PH.

Additional file 1: Figure S1. The expressions of claudin-5 in mouse brains. A, B Claudin-5 expression by endothelial cells of 12- month old wild type (A) and KO mice (B). Figure S2. The expressions of claudin-5 in cultured endothelial cells. A The expression of Claudin-5 in endothelial cells treated with or without 10 μM H2O2 for 6 h and supplemented with or without 1 mM NAC for an extended 6 h. B The expression of Claudin-5 in endothelial cells after Tet2 was knocked down by siRNA. Figure S3. The expression of claudin-5 in endothelial cells of human brains. A, B The number of claudin-5 positive cells/field in the adult group (A) and the aged group (B). C. Semi-quantitative analysis of claudin-5 staining. Scale bars: 50 μm. All data were shown as the mean ± SEM. The p values were determined by the two-tailed t-test. Values of p < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. * denoted p < 0.05; ns, not significant.