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Hoa H Le,1 Mark P Connolly,1,2 Luis Bahamondes,3 Jose G Cecatti,3 Jingbo Yu,4 Henry X Hu4 1Department of Pharmacoeconomics and Pharmacoepidemiology, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands; 2Global Market Access Solutions, Saint-Prex, Switzerland; 3Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medical Sciences, University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil; 4Merck & Co, Whitehouse Station, NJ, USA Background: Unintended pregnancy (UP) is an unmet medical need with consequences worldwide. We evaluate the costs of UP based on pregnancies in Brazil from for the year 2010. Methods: The consequences of UP were evaluated using decision analysis based on pregnancy rates and outcomes as miscarriage, induced abortion, and live birth, which were factored into the analysis. The model discriminated between maternal and child outcomes and accounted for costs (in Brazilian currency [Real$, R$]) within the Brazilian public health service attributed to preterm birth, neonatal admission, cerebral palsy, and neonatal and maternal mortality. Event probabilities were obtained from local resources. Results: We estimate that 1.8 million UPs resulted in 159,151 miscarriages, 48,769 induced abortions, 1.58 million live births, and 312 maternal deaths, including ten (3%) attributed to unsafe abortions. The total estimated costs attributed to UP are R$4.1 billion annually, including R$32 million (0.8%) and R$4.07 billion (99.2%) attributed to miscarriages and births and complications, respectively. Direct birth costs accounted for approximately R$1.22 billion (30.0%), with labor and delivery responsible for most costs (R$988 million; 24.3%) for the year 2010. The remainder of costs were for infant complications (R$2.84 billion; 72.3%) with hospital readmission during the first year accounting for approximately R$2.15 billion (52.9%). Based on the national cost, we estimate the cost per UP to be R$2,293. Conclusion: Despite weaknesses in precise estimates in annual pregnancies and induced abortions, our estimates reflect the costs of UP for different pregnancy outcomes. The main costs associated with UP are in those carried to parturition. The health cost of abortion represents a small proportion of total costs as these are paid for outside of the public health system. Consequently, reductions in UP will generate not only cost savings, but reductions in woman and child morbidity and mortality. Keywords: unintended pregnancy, public health, Brazil, abortion

To study the dynamic compression and tensile mechanical behaviors of a bicomponent epoxy resin matrix composites, which were filled with a semi-crystalline thermoplastic Polyether-ether ketone (PAEK-C) resin, at high strain rate, the dynamic compression and tensile experiments were carried out on a modified split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) and high speed material apparatus, respectively. Stress-strain curves of the epoxy resin matrix composites were obtained and analyzed. Damage mechanism under high strain rate was characterized through the scanning electron microscope (SEM) observation. Results of the dynamic compression tests indicated that, although the effects of strain rate remarkably influenced the variations in stress, the behaviors of the epoxy resin matrix played a more significant role than strain rate in the determination of the high strain rate. It was reflected through increased ductility of the samples and reduced slope of the stress-strain curves. The dynamic impact tensile tests results show that, PAEK-C fillers exhibited dramatic toughening effect. The increase of the volume fraction of PAEK-C rich phase inevitably forces the crack to overcome more tearing deformation of PAEK-C rich phase. At the same time, the enhancement of plastic capacity may also induce a larger range of cooperative deformation at the crack tip. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To assess the impact of a comprehensive migraine disease management program, as measured by humanistic outcomes measures, conducted in a managed care setting.Design: A prospective comparative study comprised of an intervention and a control group to evaluate the impact of the disease management initiative.Setting: Independent Practice Association (IPA)-type managed care organization.Study participants and main outcomes measures: Study participants resided in adjacent regions (intervention region included Minneapolis, MN, USA and the usual care region included St Paul, MN, USA and adjacent areas in MN, USA) separated by natural geographic barriers. Eligible patients were identified through a review of the Medica plan's administrative claims database and were asked to complete the Migraine Therapy Assessment Questionnaire (MTAQ), a tool to assess the presence of migraine management issues. Responders (patients completing the MTAQ) who reported >/= 2 migraine care risk indicators in the intervention region received the disease management intervention, while all responders in the control region received usual care. Responders in both regions with >/= 2 migraine care risk indicators were also asked to complete the Migraine Disability Assessment (MIDAS) questionnaire and the 12-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-12) at baseline. All participants were asked to complete the same instruments at the end of the program as they did at baseline.Interventions: Disease management intervention activities included patient and physician education, as well as a patient feedback report containing migraine care risk indicators, which was sent to the treating physicians. All patients were encouraged to contact their physicians if they reported two or more migraine management issues.Results: A total of 2232 patients with migraine were enrolled in the study (1373 from the intervention region and 859 in the control region). Compared with patients in the control region, patients in the intervention region reported, as measured by MTAQ, significant improvement in migraine symptom relief, more knowledge about potential migraine triggers, a decrease in economic burden, and more satisfaction with migraine treatment. In addition, the change in MIDAS scores from baseline showed a greater shift towards decreasing disability in the intervention group compared with the control group. However, no statistically significant improvement was detected in terms of health status as measured by SF-12. Of the participants in the intervention region who completed the program evaluation survey, 40% indicated that they called or visited their physicians regarding their migraine survey results if it was recommended. For those contacting their physicians, 76% had their medications changed and 75% noted an improvement in relief due to a change in medication.Conclusions: Considering the significant toll of migraine on patients, employers, and the healthcare system, healthcare plans should consider implementing migraine disease management programs to improve migraine care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anhedonia is believed to be transdiagnostic symptom exist in various disorders including schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, and autism spectrum disorder. However, very few studies attempted to profile subclinical samples with schizophrenia, depressive, and autistic symptoms using measures of anhedonia scales. This study adopted a cluster analytical approach to examine the anhedonia profile in 46 individuals with schizotypal trait (ST), 43 subthreshold depression (SD), 27 autistic trait (AT), and 41 healthy controls. They completed a set of checklists capturing different dimensions of anhedonia including the anticipatory and consummatory interpersonal pleasure scale, the temporal experience of pleasure scale, the motivation and pleasure scale and the belief about pleasure scale. Cluster analysis was conducted on these measures among the merged sample of ST, SD, and AT. To validate the clusters, we administered measures on nonsocial reward processing, self-reported empathy, and social functioning. A three-cluster solution was found to be the best fit. Cluster 1 (n = 48) showed high pleasure experience, motivation, and belief about pleasure and spread evenly across three groups. Cluster 2 (n = 31) was characterized by low levels of anticipatory and consummatory pleasure specifically for the social domain, largely comprised of individuals with ST. Cluster 3 (n = 37) showed low levels of consummatory pleasure, motivation, and belief about pleasure, largely comprised of individuals with SD. The resultant clusters differed in social process and functioning. The current findings suggested distinct anhedonia subtypes within different subclinical populations. These findings may have implications for early detection and prevention for anhedonia., (© 2025 The Author(s). PsyCh Journal published by Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

Recent empirical findings suggest that negative symptoms are not limited to schizophrenia (SCZ) but also present in major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD) patients. Although SCZ patients generally showed a latent structure comprising the motivation and pleasure (MAP) and expression (EXP) factors, it remains unclear whether the same latent structure exists in MDD and BD patients. We administered the Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms (CAINS) and the Brief Negative Symptom Scale (BNSS) to 179 MDD patients and 152 BD patients. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted to examine the one-factor model, the two-factor model of the MAP and the EXP domain, the five-factor model of anhedonia, avolition, asociality, alogia, and blunted affect, and the hierarchical model comprising the first-order five-factor, and the second-order two-factor (MAP and EXP factors). We further examined the correlations between demographics and the negative symptom dimensions found in the best factor model. The CFA showed that, when the CAINS and the BNSS were combined together, the two-factor model of MAP and EXP provided the best model fit than other competing models, in the MDD alone sample, BD alone sample, and the combined clinical sample. The two-factor model of the MAP and EXP appears to be a stable, transdiagnostic latent structure of negative symptoms across BD and MDD. Clarifying negative symptoms in MDD and BD can facilitate future research on the underlying neural mechanisms of the MAP and EXP dimensions., (© 2024. Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The objective of this study was to investigate the protective effect and potential mechanism of action of hemin on bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis in mice. Male C57BL/6 mice were randomly divided into control, bleomycin and bleomycin + hemin groups. Mice in the bleomycin and bleomycin + hemin groups were injected intratracheally with bleomycin to establish the pulmonary fibrosis model. The bleomycin + hemin group mice were injected intraperitoneally with hemin starting 7 days before modeling until the end of Day 21 after modeling. Pathological changes in lung tissue were assessed by HE and Masson staining. Malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) levels were determined in lung tissue. Immunohistochemistry was performed to assess the expression of α-SMA and collagen I. The serum levels of IL-6 and TNF-α were measured via ELISA. Western blotting was used to determine the expression of TGF-β1, SIRT1, PGC-1α and HO-1 and the phosphorylation levels of p38, ERK1/2, JNK, AMPK and NF-κB p65 in lung tissue. Hemin significantly reduced lung indices, increased terminal body weight. It also significantly increased SOD and CAT activities; decreased MDA, IL-6 and TNF-α levels; reduced the levels of α-SMA and collagen I-positive cells; upregulated SIRT1, PGC-1α and HO-1 expression; promoted AMPK phosphorylation; and downregulated TGF-β1 expression and p38, ERK1/2, JNK and NF-κB p65 phosphorylation. Hemin might attenuate oxidative damage and inflammatory responses and reduces extracellular matrix deposition by regulating the expression and phosphorylation of proteins associated with the TGF-β1/MAPK and AMPK/SIRT1/PGC-1α/HO-1/NF-κB pathways, thereby alleviating bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis.

Interoception, the sense of the physiological condition of our body, is impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Evidence suggests that subclinical autistic traits are mild manifestations of autistic symptoms, present in the general population. We examined the resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) associating with interoception and autistic traits in 62 healthy young adults. Autistic traits correlated negatively with the rsFC between the lateral ventral anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex. Interoceptive accuracy and sensibility correlated positively with the rsFC between interoceptive brain networks and the cerebellum, supplementary motor area, and visual regions. The results suggest that a negative relationship between interoception and autistic traits is largely accounted for by both self-report measures and decreased rsFC amongst the interoceptive brain network., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Background and Hypothesis: Psychiatric comorbidities suggest that symptoms overlap across different diagnoses; the transdiagnostic network approach is valuable for studying psychopathology. Childhood trauma is a common transdiagnostic risk factor for psychiatric disorders, but the complex relationship between childhood trauma and psychopathology has seldom been investigated using a large cross-sectional transdiagnostic sample., Study Design: This study recruited 869 patients with different diagnoses, including 418 schizophrenia, 215 bipolar disorder, and 236 major depressive disorder. Participants completed psychiatric interviews and self-report questionnaires. We constructed dimension- and item-level Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator-based (LASSO) networks to explore the relationship between childhood trauma, psychopathology, and duration of illness. Moreover, we constructed directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) to tentatively clarify the potential directions of associations among these variables. Network Comparison Tests (NCTs) were conducted for different diagnostic groups and gender-stratified groups., Study Results: The transdiagnostic LASSO networks showed that different types of childhood trauma exerted distinct impacts on various psychopathological dimensions. Emotional abuse was linked to depressive symptoms, physical abuse to excited symptoms, sexual abuse to positive and disorganized symptoms, emotional neglect to depressive symptoms and motivation and pleasure (MAP) deficits factor of negative symptoms, and physical neglect to MAP factor. The DAG findings generally concurred with the LASSO network. The NCT showed comparable networks., Conclusions: Our findings suggest that childhood trauma is significantly associated with the development of psychopathology across different diagnostic groups. The affective pathway model suggests that early identification and tailored interventions would be needed for people with a history of childhood trauma., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Due to persistent inflammation and oxidative stress reactions, achieving drug absorption in diabetic wounds is challenging. To overcome this problem, our article presents a composite hydrogel, GelMA-GA/DMOG@GDNP, which consists of gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) treated with gallic acid (GA) and encapsulating ginseng-derived nanoparticles (GDNPs) loaded with dimethyloxallyl glycine (DMOG). The composite hydrogel demonstrates excellent biocompatibility. In laboratory settings, the hydrogel inhibits the production of nitric oxide synthase 2 (iNOS) in mouse immune cells (RAW264.7 cells), enhances the growth and migration of mouse connective tissue cells (L929 cells) and human endothelial cells (HUVECs), and promotes tube formation in HUVECs. In a rat model of type 1 diabetes-induced wounds, the composite hydrogel attenuates inflammatory reactions, facilitates the formation of fibres and blood vessels, accelerates wound healing, and elucidates specific pathway mechanisms through transcriptome sequencing. Therefore, the GelMA-GA/DMOG@GDNP hydrogel can serve as a safe and efficient wound dressing to regulate the inflammatory response, promote collagen fiber and blood vessel formation, and accelerate wound healing. These findings suggest that utilizing this multifunctional engineered nanoparticle-loaded hydrogel in a clinical setting may be a promising strategy for diabetic wound healing., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The importance of sulfonyl-group-containing compounds, such as sulfonamides, sulfones, sulfinate esters, and sulfonyl fluorides, in pharmaceuticals, bioactive molecules, and natural products cannot be overstated. The new development of palladium-catalyzed sulfonylation via SO 2 insertion represents a crucial advancement in organic synthesis, enabling the direct α,α-difunctionalization of SO 2 and providing efficient access to an array of structure-diverse sulfonyl-containing compounds. Although there have been numerous reviews about SO 2 insertion, many of them only cover specific aspects of palladium-catalyzed reactions, leading to an oversight of some important works. Besides, these reviews often lack detailed discussions and systematic conclusion on reaction mechanisms, and fail to comprehensively summarize the significant research achievements in palladium-catalyzed reactions over the past few years. Herein, we aim to systematically consolidate the recent advances in palladium-catalyzed sulfonylation via SO 2 insertion, elucidate the underlying reaction mechanism, and highlight some unsolved challenges in this segment. This review seeks to serve as a valuable resource for researchers, assisting in the continued development of palladium-catalyzed sulfonylation methodologies.

Reward motivation in individuals with high levels of negative schizotypal traits (NS) has been found to be lower than that in their counterparts. But it is unclear that whether their reward motivation adaptively changes with external effort-reward ratio, and what resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) is associated with this change. Thirty-five individuals with high levels of NS and 44 individuals with low levels of NS were recruited. A 3T resting-state functional brain scan and a novel reward motivation adaptation behavioural task were administrated in all participants. The behavioural task was manipulated with three conditions (effort > reward condition vs. effort < reward condition vs. effort = reward condition). Under each condition were rated 'wanting' and 'liking' for rewards. The seed-based voxel-wise rsFC analysis was conducted to explore the rsFCs associated with the 'wanting' and 'liking' ratings in individuals with high levels of NS. 'Wanting' and 'liking' ratings of individuals with high levels of NS significantly declined in the effort > reward condition but did not rebound as high as their counterparts in the effort < reward condition. The rsFCs in NS group associated with these ratings were altered. The altered rsFCs in NS group involved regions in the prefrontal lobe, dopaminergic brain regions (ventral tegmental area, substantia nigra), hippocampus, thalamus and cerebellum. Individuals with high levels of NS manifested their reward motivation adaptation impairment as a failure of adjustment adaptively during effort-reward imbalance condition and altered rsFCs in prefrontal, dopaminergic and other brain regions., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany.)

Theory of mind (ToM) and empathy are considered key components of social cognition that are often impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it remains unclear whether individuals with high levels of autistic traits exhibit similar impairments in these two functions. This study examined the affective and cognitive domains of ToM and empathy in individuals with high levels of autistic traits. We recruited 84 participants with high levels and 78 participants with low levels of autistic traits to complete a set of self-reported checklists and performance-based tasks capturing affective and cognitive components of ToM and empathy. The results showed that participants with high levels of autistic traits exhibited significant impairments in cognitive but not in affective ToM and empathy compared with their counterparts with low levels of autistic traits. We also found that empathy impairments in people with high levels of autistic traits were confounded by alexithymia and depressive traits., (© 2024 The Authors. PsyCh Journal published by Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

The translocation of polymers through nanopores is a complex process influenced by various factors. In this study, the translocation behavior of a two-dimensional active polymer chain, comprised of a head active Brownian particle (ABP) and a tail passive polymer chain, through a nanopore is studied using Langevin dynamics simulations. Results show that the effect of the self-propulsion force of the ABP on the translocation differs significantly from the driving force inside the pore for traditional polymer translocations. Specifically, the translocation time τ initially increases with increasing the magnitude fs of the self-propulsion force and then decreases with a further increase in fs. A small fs lowers the potential barrier for the translocation and thus promotes slow translocations, whereas a large fs directly pulls the polymer chain through the nanopore following the scaling relation τ ∝ fs-1. Moreover, two asymptotic scaling relations between τ and polymer length N, τ ∝ Nα, are found, with the exponent α of about 2.5 for small fs or long N and the exponent α of about 1.4 for short active polymers with large fs. We discover that the slow rotation of the ABP accelerates the translocation process., (© 2024 Author(s). Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.)

Novel coronavirus pneumonia, also known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is caused by sub-severe acute respiratory syndrome type 2 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection. The spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2 binds to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors widely expressed on the surface of human cells leading to life-threatening respiratory infections. A serious hazard to human health is posed by the lack of particular treatment medications for this virus infection. We advocate the creation of high-affinity antibodies using the receptor binding domain (RBD) of S protein as a specific antigenic epitope to develop a drug that can precisely target therapy COVID-19 because SARS-CoV-2 infection of the host cells is dependent on S protein binding to ACE2. Finally, we obtained high-affinity antibodies 14F4HL and 14E3HL that have high affinity with RBD and well-drug-forming properties, suitable for further humanization studies. Thus, monoclonal antibodies that neutralize the S protein were identified in our study, which may provide new insights for the development of COVID-19 therapeutic drugs., Competing Interests: None., (AJTR Copyright © 2024.)

This study applied two incentive delay tasks involving social and non-social incentive types to 76 pairs of participants with high and low depressive symptoms. The results suggest that higher levels of depressive symptoms are correlated with abnormalities in social and non-social reward processing even in the healthy populations., (© 2023 The Authors. PsyCh Journal published by Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

Anhedonia and amotivation are core symptoms of schizophrenia (SCZ) and major depressive disorder (MDD). Reward processing involves constructing and contrasting the representations for expected value (EV) and outcome value (OV) of a given stimulus, a phenomenon termed range adaptation. Impaired range adaptation can lead to anhedonia and amotivation. This study aimed to examine range adaptation in SCZ patients and MDD patients. Fifty SCZ, 46 MDD patients and 56 controls completed the Effort-based Pleasure Experience Task to measure EV and OV adaptation. SCZ and MDD patients showed altered range adaptation, albeit in different patterns. SCZ patients exhibited over-adaptation to OV and reduced adaptation to EV. By contrast, MDD patients exhibited diminished OV adaptation but intact EV adaptation. Both OV and EV adaptation were correlated with anhedonia and amotivation in SCZ and MDD. Taken together, our findings suggest that range adaptation is altered in both SCZ and MDD patients. Associations of OV and EV adaptation with anhedonia and amotivation were consistently found in SCZ and MDD patients. Impaired range adaptation in SCZ and MDD patients may be putative neural mechanisms and potential intervention targets for anhedonia and amotivation., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The adsorption of active polymers on an attractive nanoparticle (NP) is studied using Langevin dynamics simulations. The active polymers consist of an active Brownian particle (ABP) at the head and a subsequent passive polymer chain. The ABP experiences an active force of magnitude F a . The interactions between the active polymer and NP are modeled as Lennard-Jones potential with a strength ε pn . We find the critical adsorption point ε pn * increases with increasing the active force F a . The increment of ε pn *, denoted as Δ ε pn *, due to F a can be expressed approximately as Δ ε pn * ∝ F a 2.5 for the restricted rotating active polymer (RRAP) where the rotation of the head ABP is restricted and Δ ε pn * ∝ F a 1.7 for the freely rotating active polymer (FRAP) where the ABP rotates freely. Meanwhile, the conformation of the adsorbed polymer, such as adsorbed trains on NP and the tail near the ABP, are also dependent on F a . When the tail near the ABP is short, the adsorption is significantly affected by the active force. However, when the tail is long, the whole polymer can be viewed as a long tail stretched by the active force and unperturbed adsorption monomers. Simulation results show that the active force has a direct and significant effect on ε pn * and the structure of the adsorbed active polymers.

Range adaptation refers to the representation of a stimulus value based on its relative position in the range of pre-experienced values. Altered range adaptation in value representation may be related to motivation and pleasure (MAP) deficit in schizophrenia (SCZ). This follow-up study examined the relationship between range adaptation performance and MAP symptoms in SCZ patients. We recruited 26 schizophrenia patients and followed them for 1 year. They completed an experimental task for estimating their range adaptation to outcome value (OV) and expected value (EV) at baseline and after 1 year. At baseline, we found a marginally significant and negative correlation between OV adaptation and avolition symptoms in SCZ patients. Moreover, the 1-year change of EV adaptation was significantly and negatively correlated with the change of self-report pleasure experience. Our results suggest that range adaptation may track the variations of MAP symptoms in SCZ., Competing Interests: None to be declared., (© 2023 The Authors.)

This article addresses the fault detectability problem of asynchronous switched Boolean networks, which is focused on whether occurrence of the faults would have an impact on the outputs of the considered network. By applying the semi-tensor product method, the asynchronous switching scheme of the considered system is converted into multiple switching signals. Based on them, an augmented system is established to transform the fault detectability issue of the original system into a set reachability problem. Moreover, some criteria for the fault detectability of the asynchronous switched Boolean control networks are also proposed. Additionally, two algorithms are given to design feasible control sequences after explicitly analyzing the considered augmented system. Finally, an example is provided to illustrate the significance of the obtained theoretical results.

This sequential mediation analysis study examined how the baseline effort-reward imbalance (ERI) would predict reward motivation 1 year later in 435 college students. We found that negative/disorganized schizotypal traits and anticipatory pleasure experience together mediate the prediction of ERI for reward motivation., (© 2023 Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

The anterior insula (AI) has the central role in coordinating attention and integrating information from multiple sensory modalities. AI dysfunction may contribute to both sensory and social impairments in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Little is known regarding the brain mechanisms that guide multisensory integration, and how such neural activity might be affected by autistic-like symptoms in the general population. In this study, 72 healthy young adults performed an audiovisual speech synchrony judgment (SJ) task during fMRI scanning. We aimed to investigate the SJ-related brain activations and connectivity, with a focus on the AI. Compared with synchronous speech, asynchrony perception triggered stronger activations in the bilateral AI, and other frontal-cingulate-parietal regions. In contrast, synchronous perception resulted in greater involvement of the primary auditory and visual areas, indicating multisensory validation and fusion. Moreover, the AI demonstrated a stronger connection with the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC) in the audiovisual asynchronous (vs. synchronous) condition. To facilitate asynchrony detection, the AI may integrate auditory and visual speech stimuli, and generate a control signal to the ACC that further supports conflict-resolving and response selection. Correlation analysis, however, suggested that audiovisual synchrony perception and its related AI activation and connectivity did not significantly vary with different levels of autistic traits. These findings provide novel evidence for the neural mechanisms underlying multisensory temporal processing in healthy people. Future research should examine whether such findings would be extended to ASD patients., (© 2022 Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

Altered social reward anticipation could be found in schizophrenia (SCZ) patients and individuals with high levels of social anhedonia (SA). However, few research investigated the putative neural processing for altered social reward anticipation in these populations on the SCZ spectrum. This study aimed to examine the underlying neural mechanisms of social reward anticipation in these populations. Twenty-three SCZ patients and 17 healthy controls (HC), 37 SA individuals and 50 respective HCs completed the Social Incentive Delay (SID) imaging task while they were undertaking MRI brain scans. We used the group contrast to examine the alterations of BOLD activation and functional connectivity (FC, psychophysiological interactions analysis). We then characterized the beta-series social brain network (SBN) based on the meta-analysis results from NeuroSynth and examined their prediction effects on real-life social network (SN) characteristics using the partial least squared regression analysis. The results showed that SCZ patients exhibited hypo-activation of the left medial frontal gyrus and the negative FCs with the left parietal regions, while individuals with SA showed the hyper-activation of the left middle frontal gyrus when anticipating social reward. For the beta-series SBNs, SCZ patients had strengthened cerebellum-temporal FCs, while SA individuals had strengthened left frontal regions FCs. However, such FCs of the SBN failed to predict the real-life SN characteristics. These preliminary findings suggested that SCZ patients and SA individuals appear to exhibit altered neural processing for social reward anticipation, and such neural activities showed a weakened association with real-life SN characteristics., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany.)

Effective condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of bearings can not only maximize the life of rolling bearings and prevent unexpected shutdowns caused by equipment failures but also eliminate unnecessary costs and waste caused by excessive maintenance. However, the existing deep-learning-based bearing fault diagnosis models have the following defects. First of all, these models have a large demand for fault data. Second, the previous models only consider that single-scale features are generally less effective in diagnosing bearing faults. Therefore, we designed a bearing fault data collection platform based on the Industrial Internet of Things, which is used to collect bearing status data from sensors in real time and feed it back into the diagnostic model. On the basis of this platform, we propose a bearing fault diagnosis model based on deep generative models with multiscale features (DGMMFs) to solve the above problems. The DGMMF model is a multiclassification model, which can directly output the abnormal type of the bearing. Specifically, the DGMMF model uses 4 different variational autoencoder models to augment the bearing data and integrates features of different scales. Compared with single-scale features, these multiscale features contain more information and can perform better. Finally, we conducted a large number of related experiments on the real bearing fault datasets and verified the effectiveness of the DGMMF model using multiple evaluation metrics. The DGMMF model has achieved the highest value under all metrics, among which the value of precision is 0.926, the value of recall is 0.924, the value of accuracy is 0.926, and the value of F1 score is 0.925., (Copyright © 2023 He-xuan Hu et al.)

Objectives: Childhood trauma (CT) has been found to increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. Little is known regarding the complex interplay between CT, subclinical psychotic, and affective symptoms in the general population. This cross-sectional study adopted network analysis to examine such a complex relationship. We hypothesized that CT would show strong connections with schizotypy dimensions, and the high schizotypy subgroup would show a network with higher global strength compared with the low schizotypy subgroup., Methods: A total of 1813 college students completed a set of self-report questionnaires measuring CT, schizotypal features, bipolar traits, and depressive symptoms. The subscales of these questionnaires were used as nodes, and the partial correlations between nodes were used as edges to construct a network. Network Comparison Tests were used to investigate the differences between participants with high schizotypy and low schizotypy. An independent sample (n = 427) was used to examine the replicability of the results., Results: Findings from the main dataset showed that CT was closely connected with schizotypy and motivation, after controlling for the inter-relationships between all nodes in the network. Relative to the low schizotypy subgroup, the network of the high schizotypy subgroup showed higher global strength. The two subgroups did not differ in network structure. Network analysis using the replication dataset showed comparable global strength and network structure., Conclusions: Our findings support specific links between CT and schizotypy dimensions in healthy youth populations, and such links appear to become stronger in those with high schizotypy., Competing Interests: Conflicts of interest None to declare., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with deficits in emotion experience, expression and regulation. Whilst emotion regulation deficits prolong MDD, emotion expression influences symptomatic presentations, and anticipatory pleasure deficits predict recurrence risk. Profiling MDD patients from an emotion componential perspective can characterize subtypes with different clinical and functional outcomes. This study aimed to investigate emotional subtypes of MDD. A two-stage cluster analysis applied to 150 MDD patients. Clustering variables included emotion experience measured by Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale, emotion expression measured by Toronto Alexithymia Scale, and emotion regulation measured by Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. We validated the resultant clusters by comparing their symptoms and functioning with that of 50 controls. Cluster 1 (n = 50) exhibited intact emotion experience and expression yet adopted reappraisal rather than suppression strategy, whereas Cluster 2 (n = 66) exhibited generalized emotional deficits. Cluster 3 (n = 34) exhibited emotion expression deficits and adopted both reappraisal and suppression strategies. On validation, Cluster 2 exhibited the worst, but Cluster 1 exhibited the least symptoms and social functioning impairments. Cluster 3 was intermediate among the two other subtypes. Our findings support the existence of different emotional subtypes in MDD patients, and have clinical and theoretical implications for developing future specific treatments for MDD., (© 2023 Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

Chemotherapy is one of the common treatment methods for breast cancer, but chemoresistance is a severe challenge. Caffeic acid phenethyl ester (CAPE) is an active ingredient of propolis extract and has been shown to have a variety of beneficial effects, and its potential as a treatment for breast cancer is worth exploring. The effects of CAPE on doxorubicin (DOX) resistance were determined by cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay, colony-formation assay, and flow cytometry. Oil Red O staining and the detection of free fatty acids, triglycerides, phospholipids, and cholesterol were performed to assess the status of lipid metabolism. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and western blotting were applied to investigate the molecules involved in lipid metabolism and the protein kinase B (Akt)/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR)/sterol regulatory element binding protein 1 (SREBP1) pathway. CAPE treatment reversed DOX resistance in breast cancer cells and suppressed their lipid metabolism. In addition, CAPE combined with DOX remarkably suppressed SREBP1 expression in part by inhibiting Akt/mTOR pathway activation. Furthermore, by inhibiting lipid metabolism, partly via the Akt/mTOR/SREBP1 pathway, CAPE ultimately reversed DOX resistance in breast cancer. Our results suggest that CAPE treatment reversed DOX resistance in breast cancer cells, at least in part by inhibiting Akt/mTOR/SREBP1 pathway-mediated lipid metabolism, indicating that CAPE may be an effective substance to assist in the treatment of breast cancer., (© 2023 The Authors. The Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Sciences published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Kaohsiung Medical University.)

A simple and novel Pd-catalysed cross-coupling reaction of allenylic carbonates with different gem -diborylalkanes was developed. Under mild reaction conditions, synthetically useful and versatile isoprenylboronates could be obtained selectively in moderate to high yields. Furthermore, the utility of the novel isoprenylboronate is demonstrated through isoprenylboration and homologation.

Emotion processing and beliefs about pleasure can influence the development and severity of depressive symptoms. This cluster analysis study aimed to profile a large sample of college students using pleasure experience, emotion expression and regulation as well as beliefs about pleasure. We also aimed to validate the resultant clusters in terms of depressive symptoms. A set of checklists capturing beliefs about pleasure and the three facets of emotion processing was administered to 1028 college students. A two-stage cluster analysis was used to analyze the profile of these emotional aspects in these college students. Our results showed that a three-cluster solution best fit the data. Cluster 1 (n = 536) was characterized by moderate levels of beliefs about pleasure, pleasure experience, emotion expression, and regulation; Cluster 2 (n = 402) was characterized by generally high levels of beliefs about pleasure, pleasure experience, emotion expression, and regulation; Cluster 3 (n = 90) was characterized by relatively low levels of beliefs about pleasure, pleasure experience, emotion expression, and regulation. The three clusters differed significantly in the severity of depressive symptoms. Our findings suggest the existence of three emotional subtypes, which may be useful in early detection of youth at risk of developing depression., (© 2022 Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

Reservoir operation is an important part of basin water resources management. The rational use of reservoir operation scheme can not only enhance the capacity of flood control and disaster reduction in the basin, but also improve the efficiency of water use and give full play to the comprehensive role the reservoir. The conventional decision-making method of reservoir operation scheme is computationally large, subjectivity and difficult to capture the nonlinear relationship. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a reservoir operation scheme decision-making model IWGAN-IWOA-CNN based on artificial intelligence and deep learning technology. In view of the lack of data in the original reservoir operation scheme and the limited improvement of data characteristics by the traditional data augmentation algorithm, an improved generative adversarial network algorithm (IWGAN) is proposed. IWGAN uses the loss function which integrates Wasserstein distance, gradient penalty and difference item, and dynamically adds random noise in the process of model training. The whale optimization algorithm is improved by introducing Logistic chaotic mapping to initialize population, non-linear convergence factor and adaptive weights, and Levy flight perturbation strategy. The improved whale optimization algorithm (IWOA) is used to optimize hyperparameters of convolutional neural networks (CNN), so as to obtain the best parameters for model prediction. The experimental results show that the data generated by IWGAN has certain representation ability and high quality; IWOA has faster convergence speed, higher convergence accuracy and better stability; IWGAN-IWOA-CNN model has higher prediction accuracy and reliability of scheme selection., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Hu, Hu, Lin, Chen and Zhang.)

Background: Multiple myeloma (MM) is the second most common hematological malignancy, and the treatments markedly elevate the survival rate of the patients in recent years. However, the prevalence of cardiovascular adverse events (CVAEs) in MM had been increasing recently. CVAEs in MM patients are an important problem that we should focus on. Clinical tools for prognostication and risk-stratification are needed., Patients and Methods: This is a retrospective study that included patients who were newly diagnosed with multiple myeloma (NDMM) in Shanghai Changzheng Hospital and Affiliated Jinhua Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine from June 2018 to July 2020. A total of 253 patients from two medical centers were divided into training cohort and validation cohort randomly. Univariable analysis of the baseline factors was performed using CVAEs endpoints. Multivariable analysis identified three factors for a prognostic model that was validated in internal validation cohorts., Results: Factors independently associated with CVAEs in NDMM were as follows: age>61 years old, high level of baseline office blood pressure, and left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). Age contributed 2 points, and the other two factors contributed 1 point to a prognostic model. The model distinguished the patients into three groups: 3-4 points, high risk; 2 points, intermediate risk; 0-1 point, low risk. These groups had significant difference in CVAEs during follow-up days in both training cohort ( p <0.0001) and validation cohort ( p =0.0018). In addition, the model had good calibration. The C-indexes for the prediction of overall survival of CVAEs in the training and validation cohorts were 0.73 (95% CI, 0.67-0.79) and 0.66 (95% CI, 0.51-0.81), respectively. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROCs) of the 1-year CVAEs probability in the training and validation cohorts were 0.738 and 0.673, respectively. The AUROCs of the 2-year CVAE probability in the training and validation cohorts were 0.722 and 0.742, respectively. The decision-curve analysis indicated that the prediction model provided greater net benefit than the default strategies of providing assessment or not providing assessment for all patients., Conclusion: A prognostic risk prediction model for predicting CVAEs risk of NDMM patients was developed and internally validated. Patients at increased risk of CVAEs can be identified at treatment initiation and be more focused on cardiovascular protection in the treatment plan., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Yuan, Zhou, Yang, Xie, Zhu, Hu and Li.)

The objective of this study was to establish and verify a digital PCR assay for the detection of CK19 gene expression, and to use it to detect circulating tumor cells (CTC) by taking advantages of its ultra-high sensitivity and absolute quantitation. Firstly, the primers and probes were designed according to the mRNA sequence of CK19 gene, and housekeeping gene ABL1 was used as the internal control. The best candidate was screened by human breast cancer MCF7 cells and healthy human leukocytes from 13 sets of primer and probes and verified by direct sequencing. Secondly, after the reaction conditions of the selected primers and probes were optimized, limit of blank (LOB) analysis were performed with different concentrations of cDNAs as templates from healthy human leukocytes. The results revealed the LOB of CK19 with ABL1 copy numbers of 20,000, 15,000, 10,000, 5000 and 2500 were 9.24, 8.93, 3.12, 3.17 and 2.53 copies, respectively. Thirdly, the different concentrations of cDNAs from MCF7 cells and healthy human leukocytes were premixed and used in the limit of detection (LOD) analysis, which showed that the CK19 gene could be effectively detected at the concentration ratio of 50%, 10%, 5%, 1%, 0.5% and 0.1%, and the linear R 2 value was 0.9998. Finally, the preliminary results of digital PCR in clinical samples indicated that CK19 copy numbers were higher in advanced breast cancer patients than healthy controls. The above results demonstrated the advantages of our CK19 digital PCR assay in sensitivity, specificity, and accurate quantification. If verified further, the assay is expected to play significant roles in the quantitative analysis of CTC in breast cancer with a good application prospect.

Objective: Transfusion of HLA-matched platelets can reduce the effect of alloimmune responses on platelet transfusion efficacy; however, finding HLA-matched platelets in the population is nearly impossible. Almost all HLA-matched platelets from related are half-matched, but the hemostatic efficacy of related donor platelets is unclear. Our goal was to compare the hemostatic effect of related donated platelets and unrelated donors platelets., Methods: In this retrospective cohort study, we included acute leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome patients with thrombocytopenia after chemotherapy. These patients were all transfused with platelets. This study excluded patients younger than 16 years and older than 65 years, or patients with abnormal coagulation parameters during platelet transfusion. We compared the hemostatic effect of related donated platelets and unrelated donors platelet. The primary outcome was transfusion efficacy after platelet transfusion, and the number of platelet counts and corrected count increments at 24 h after platelet transfusion., Result: We analyzed 31 patients who received platelet transfusions from related donors (Treatment group) and 35 patients who received platelet transfusions from unrelated donors (Comparator group). Except for the relatively small proportion of patients with myelodysplastic syndrome in the treatment group, baseline clinical and laboratory characteristics were similar between the two groups. Hemostasis and prevention of bleeding in the treatment group showed significant superiority; the number of platelets increased 24 h after platelet transfusion in the treatment group was significantly higher than that in the comparator group. After 24 h, the corrected count increments treatment group was also higher than the comparator group; in the treatment group, the transfusion effect was better when the three sites of HLA-A, B, and C were identical, and the different blood types of platelet donors and recipients did not affect the transfusion effect., Conclusion: Related donated platelets have better hemostasis and prevention effects, and no increase in adverse blood transfusion reactions. It may be a better transfusion strategy for platelet refractoriness patients in emergency situations., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Zhang, Ni, Tu and Hu.)

The schizotypy construct is useful for studying the effects of environmental stress on development of subclinical negative symptoms. The relationship among self-report motivation, effort-reward imbalance (ERI), and schizotypal features has seldom been studied. We aimed to examine the possible moderation effect of schizotypal traits on ERI and reward motivation. Eight-hundred-and-forty-three college students were recruited online to complete a set of self-reported measures capturing schizotypal traits, effort-reward imbalance and reward motivation, namely the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ), the Effort-Reward Imbalance-School Version Questionnaire (C-ERI-S) and the Motivation and Pleasure Scale-Self Report (MAP-SR). We conducted multiple linear regression to construct models to investigate the moderating effects of schizotypal traits on the relationship between ERI and reward motivation. Stressful ERI situation predicted the reduction of reward motivation. Negative schizotypal traits showed a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between ERI and reward motivation, while positive and disorganized schizotypal traits had significant positive moderating effects. Schizotypal traits subtypes differently moderate the relationship between ERI and reward motivation. Only negative schizotypal traits and stressful ERI situation together have negative impact on reward motivation., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany.)

The dynamics of a two-dimensional active polymer composed of an active Brownian particle (ABP) at the head and a passive polymer chain is investigated using Langevin dynamics simulation. The ABP experiences a self-propulsion force f s and a resistance torque M as the passive polymer chain is bonded to the edge of the ABP. M restricts the rotation of the ABP, and thus the dynamics of the ABP and that of the whole active polymer are influenced significantly. Due to this restriction, the persistence time τ r , which characterizes the random rotation of the ABP, is increased significantly and changes non-monotonically with the rotational friction coefficient η r . Our simulation results show that the effect of M on the dynamics of the active polymer can be characterized mainly by the change of τ r . Moreover, the propulsive diffusion coefficient D P of the whole polymer chain originated from the self-propulsion force can be described by a scaling relation D P ∝ f s 2 τ r / N 2 η t 2 with η t the translational friction coefficient and N the polymer length. Our results show that the diffusion is promoted by the resistance torque M and τ r is a key factor for the diffusion of active polymers.