Publications by authors named "Baker S"

Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor (IMT) is a rare tumor type with a prognosis ranging from benign to locally aggressive. Initially described as a reactive lesion most commonly of the lungs, cases of IMT have now been reported in rare instances in the head and neck, which may be more aggressive than other tumor locations. IMT frequently afflicts children and adolescents, but pediatric cases of IMT in the head and neck region are rare.

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Background: Children with disabilities worldwide experience disparities in oral health. Parents and children encounter challenges in accessing quality dental care. Similar challenges are experienced in Saudi Arabia.

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Purpose: Lymphoma survivors who have received curative intent treatment are currently followed up at defined time points in medical and nurse-led clinics often indefinitely. The follow up protocol is often at the discretion of the treating physician. The aim of the study was to explore the clinical, biochemical and radiological presentation of patients with Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma (DLBCL) and Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL) treated with curative intent at the point of recurrence from first remission, and to understand if recurrence was detected at scheduled follow up.

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The incorporation of sequencing technologies in frontline and public health healthcare settings was vital in developing virus surveillance programs during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). However, increased data acquisition poses challenges for both rapid and accurate analyses. To overcome these hurdles, we developed the SARS-CoV-2 Illumina GeNome Assembly Line (SIGNAL) for quick bulk analyses of Illumina short-read sequencing data.

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Does precision in auditory perception predict precision in subsequent memory (i.e., mnemonic discrimination) in aging? This study examined if the mismatch negativity (MMN), an electrophysiological marker of change detection and encoding, relates to age differences in mnemonic discrimination.

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Examination of the host-associated microbiome in wildlife can provide critical insights into the eco-evolutionary factors driving species diversification and response to disease. This is particularly relevant for isolated populations lacking genomic variation, a phenomenon that is increasingly common as human activities create habitat 'islands' for wildlife. Here, we characterised the gut and otic microbial communities of one such species: Channel Island foxes (Urocyon littoralis).

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  • A retrospective cohort study aimed to compare three socioeconomic status (SES) indexes and their association with outcomes after anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) or lumbar fusion.
  • The study involved identifying adult patients who underwent these surgeries at a medical center from 2014 to 2020, analyzing their preoperative conditions and outcomes based on SES classifications derived from community-level indexes.
  • Results indicated that while patients from lower SES communities had worse preoperative outcomes, the community-wide SES indexes were ineffective in predicting surgical outcomes post-surgery.
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  • The study aimed to analyze the prevalence of in-person visits and virtual communication methods (like phone and video calls) in ICUs across Australia and New Zealand, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Findings revealed that 77% of ICUs had visiting restrictions, with a significantly reduced median visiting time of 9 hours per day, resulting in only 65% of patients receiving in-person visits.
  • The majority of in-person visits were for family interaction, while telephone calls were primarily for clinical updates, with visit patterns showing higher activity during daytime hours rather than the evening.
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Shigella sonnei is a major cause of diarrhoea globally and is increasing in prevalence relative to other Shigella because of multiple demographic and environmental influences. This single-serotype species has traditionally received less attention in comparison to Shigella flexneri and Shigella dysenteriae, which were more common in low-income countries and more tractable in the laboratory. In recent years, we have learned that Shigella are highly complex and highly susceptible to environmental change, as exemplified by epidemiological trends and increasing relevance of S.

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Over the last three decades, the receipt of formal sexuality education has declined, with half of adolescents nationwide receiving the minimum Healthy People standard of sexuality education from 2015 to 2019. Further, racial and geographic inequities in sexuality education remain, with Black women and girls more likely to receive abstinence-only-until-marriage instruction. We sought to describe Black women's sexual education in two southern states, North Carolina and Georgia.

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Multicancer detection (MCD) tests use blood specimens to detect preclinical cancers. A major concern is overdiagnosis, the detection of preclinical cancer on screening that would not have developed into symptomatic cancer in the absence of screening. Because overdiagnosis can lead to unnecessary and harmful treatments, its quantification is important.

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  • Research shows losing teeth can emotionally mimic grief, and there’s limited study on emotions in dental contexts, except for the 'treatment alliance.'
  • This paper examines how the treatment alliance affects dentist-patient interactions through data from interviews and observations of 34 participants discussing tooth loss experiences.
  • Findings highlight that the treatment alliance is crucial for positive health outcomes, emphasizing the dental team's emotional engagement with patients, while noting that not all successful outcomes require direct emotional management.
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Summary: Short tandem repeat (STR) profiling is commonly performed for authentication of biomedical models of human origin, yet no tools exist to easily compare sets of STR profiles to each other or an existing database in a high-throughput manner. Here, we present STRprofiler, a Python package, command line tool, and Shiny application providing methods for STR profile comparison and cross-contamination detection. STRprofiler can be run with custom databases or used to query against the Cellosaurus cell line database.

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The peristaltic reflex has been a central concept in gastrointestinal motility; however, evidence was published recently suggesting that post-stimulus responses that follow inhibitory neural responses provide the main propulsive force in colonic motility. This new concept was based on experiments on proximal colon where enteric inhibitory neural inputs are mainly nitrergic. However, the nature of inhibitory neural inputs changes from proximal to distal colon where purinergic inhibitory regulation dominates.

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Blood-brain barrier disruption (BBBd) occurs in aging, particularly in regions vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. However, its relationship to pathological protein accumulation, neurodegeneration, and cognitive impairment in normal aging is unclear. We used dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) imaging in cognitively normal older adults to explore how BBBd correlates with brain atrophy and cognitive function, and whether these relationships are influenced by Aβ or tau.

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Dental caries among long-term care (LTC) residents is a persistent and complex problem driven by social and structural factors. Systems thinking may be useful in considering novel approaches to reducing disease. This study aimed to develop a system dynamics model to simulate the progression of dentate older adults in LTC through caries severity states and estimate the effects of 3 intervention scenarios on the progression of caries: preventive topical fluoride (TF), arrest of caries with silver diamine fluoride (SDF), and a combination of TF and SDF.

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Introduction: A key goal of the Alzheimer's Disease NeuroImaging Initiative (ADNI) positron emission tomography (PET) Core is to harmonize quantification of β-amyloid (Aβ) and tau PET image data across multiple scanners and tracers.

Methods: We developed an analysis pipeline (Berkeley PET Imaging Pipeline, B-PIP) for ADNI Aβ and tau PET images and applied it to PET data from other multisite studies. Steps include image pre-processing, refacing, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)/PET co-registration, visual quality control (QC), quantification of tracer uptake, and standardization of Aβ and tau standardized uptake value ratios (SUVrs) across tracers.

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  • Klebsiella pneumoniae is a common pathogen in humans with high virulence and antimicrobial resistance, and this study explores its genetic variability across human, animal, and environmental sources.
  • Research involved analyzing K. pneumoniae samples from clinical settings, livestock, and hospital sewage, highlighting significant genetic differences and the abundance of resistance and virulence genes.
  • Findings suggest that the spread of highly resistant K. pneumoniae clones is primarily within human contexts, indicating that these strains likely evolved in hospitals rather than from animals or the environment, challenging current assumptions about AMR transmission.
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Dynamic Ca signaling is crucial for cell survival and death, and Ca imaging approaches are commonly used to study and measure cellular Ca patterns within cells. However, the presence of image noise from instrumentation and experimentation protocols can impede the accurate extraction of Ca signals. Removing noise from Ca Spatio-Temporal Maps (STMaps) is essential for precisely analyzing Ca datasets.

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