Dermal Delivery of a SARS-CoV-2 Subunit Vaccine Induces Immunogenicity against Variants of Concern.

The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to disrupt essential health services in 90 percent of countries today. The spike (S) protein found on the surface of the causative agent, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has been the prime target for current vaccine research since antibodies directed against the S protein were found to neutralize the virus. However, as new variants emerge, mutations within the spike protein have given rise to potential immune evasion of the response generated by the current generation of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

The Acceptability and Usefulness of Positive Behaviour Support Education for Family Carers of People With Frontotemporal Dementia: A Pilot Study.

Aim: This pilot study investigated the acceptability and usefulness of 4 weekly Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) education sessions (delivered face-to-face and online) for family carers of individuals diagnosed with behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). These sessions were adapted from the Family-directed Approach to Brain injury (FAB)-PBS program to the FTD population.

Methods: A pre-test post-test mixed-methods design was utilized.

Joint Semi-supervised and Active Learning for Segmentation of Gigapixel Pathology Images with Cost-Effective Labeling.

The need for manual and detailed annotations limits the applicability of supervised deep learning algorithms in medical image analyses, specifically in the field of pathology. Semi-supervised learning (SSL) provides an effective way for leveraging unlabeled data to relieve the heavy reliance on the amount of labeled samples when training a model. Although SSL has shown good performance, the performance of recent state-of-the-art SSL methods on pathology images is still under study.

Job Demands and Resources, Mindfulness, and Burnout Among Delivery Drivers in China.

The food and package delivery workforce in China has grown substantially in the past decade. However, delivery drivers face volatile and stressful work conditions, which can give rise to high turnover and burnout. Past research has indicated that job demands and resources (JD-R) significantly predict burnout.

Manual and software-based measurements of treatment zone parameters and characteristics in children with slow and fast axial elongation in orthokeratology.

Purpose: To compare the treatment zone (TZ) measurements obtained using manual and software-based methods in orthokeratology (ortho-k) subjects and explore the TZ characteristics of children with slow and fast axial elongation after ortho-k.

Methods: Data from 69 subjects (aged 7 to <13 years old), who participated in three 24-month longitudinal orthokeratology studies, showing fast (>0.27 mm, n = 38) and slow (<0.

Temporal specificity of abnormal neural oscillations during phonatory events in laryngeal dystonia.

Laryngeal dystonia is a debilitating disorder of voicing in which the laryngeal muscles are intermittently in spasm resulting in involuntary interruptions during speech. The central pathophysiology of laryngeal dystonia, underlying computational impairments in vocal motor control, remains poorly understood. Although prior imaging studies have found aberrant activity in the CNS during phonation in patients with laryngeal dystonia, it is not known at what timepoints during phonation these abnormalities emerge and what function may be impaired.

Posttraumatic Stress, Anxiety, and Depression in COVID-19 Survivors.

Objectives: This study aims to examine the rates of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after hospital discharge among COVID-19 survivors and to determine the associated risk factors.

Methods: Adult COVID-19 survivors discharged from hospitals between March 2020 and March 2021 were asked to complete a questionnaire at 4 weeks after discharge. The Chinese version of the 22-item Impact of Event Scale - Revised (IES-R) was used to measure symptoms of PTSD.

Peri-tumoural spatial distribution of lipid composition and tubule formation in breast cancer.

Background: Response guided treatment in breast cancer is highly desirable, but the effectiveness is only established based on residual cellularity from histopathological analysis after surgery. Tubule formation, a key component of grading score, is directly associated with cellularity, with significant implications on prognosis. Peri-tumoural lipid composition, a potential marker, can be rapidly mapped across the entire breast using novel method of chemical shift-encoded imaging, enabling the quantification of spatial distribution.

Filial Piety and Mental Health Among Older Chinese Immigrants in the Netherlands.

Filial piety is important to Chinese adults and is associated with mental health among older Chinese immigrants in the United States. However, it is unclear whether filial piety is linked to the mental health of Chinese immigrants in European countries. Therefore, this study aims to gain insights into the association between mental health and filial piety of first-generation Chinese immigrants in the Netherlands.

DIY bootstrapping: Getting the nonparametric bootstrap confidence interval in SPSS for any statistics or function of statistics (when this bootstrapping is appropriate).

Researchers can generate bootstrap confidence intervals for some statistics in SPSS using the BOOTSTRAP command. However, this command can only be applied to selected procedures, and only to selected statistics in these procedures. We developed an extension command and prepared some sample syntax files based on existing approaches from the Internet to illustrate how researchers can (a) generate a large number of nonparametric bootstrap samples, (b) do desired analysis on all these samples, and (c) form the bootstrap confidence intervals for selected statistics using the OMS commands.

Analyzing cachectic phenotypes in the muscle and fat body of larvae.

has become a popular model for examining the metabolic wasting syndrome, cachexia, characterized by degradation of muscles and fat. Here we present a protocol for quick and consistent scoring of muscle detachment, fat body lipid droplet size, and extracellular matrix (ECM) quantifications in larvae. We detail the procedures for dissecting, staining, and imaging third instar larval muscle fillets and fat body, and how to utilize FIJI macros for robust quantification of cachectic phenotypes in these dissected tissues.

Selective effects of focusing on spatial details in episodic future thinking for self-relevant positive events.

Mental simulations of positive future events increase their detail/vividness and plausibility, with effects on cognitive-affective processes such as anticipated and anticipatory pleasure. More recently, spatial details have been distinguished as important in increasing detail and elaborating mental scene construction. Building on this research, this study (N = 54; M age = 26.

Genetic and Ecological Diversity of and Cryptic Clades in Subtropical Aquatic Environments.

not only inhabit the large intestines of human and warm-blooded animals but could also persist in the external environment. However, current knowledge was largely based on host-associated strains. Moreover, cryptic clades that were often misidentified as by conventional diagnostic methods were discovered.

Use of a modular hip dual-mobility articulation in patients with high risk of dislocation: a relatively small-sized acetabulum in Asian patients may limit its use.

Background: Dual-mobility hip component is widely used in Europe and North America, because it effectively reduces hip dislocation in primary and revision total hip arthroplasties. However, reports were limited on the use of dual-mobility articulation in Asian populations.

Purpose: The aim of this retrospective study was to review the use of modular dual-mobility hip articulation in Asian patients with the high risk factor for hip dislocation.

Short-Term Supplementation With Fermented Red Clover Extract Reduces Vascular Inflammation in Early Post-menopausal Women.

The decline in estrogen at menopause poses a critical challenge to cardiovascular and metabolic health. Recently, a growing interest in the role of phytoestrogens, with a particular focus on isoflavones, has emerged as they can bind to estrogen receptors and may mimic the roles of endogenous estrogen. Fermented red clover extract (RC) contains isoflavones with superior bioavailability compared to non-fermented isoflavones, however little is known regarding the impact of isoflavones on cardiovascular and metabolic health.

Macroalgal morphology mediates microplastic accumulation on thallus and in sediments.

The accumulation process of microplastics (MPs) is a key to understanding their fate in the environment. However, there is limited information about the short-term accumulation of MPs on macrophytes. The ability of macrophyte to attenuate wave and reduce current velocity is potentially facilitating MPs deposition.

The effect of transcranial direct current stimulation on cognitive performance in youth with persistent cognitive symptoms following concussion: a controlled pilot study.

Objective: Explore the feasibility, tolerability, and early efficacy of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) as a therapeutic intervention for youth with cognitive persistent post-concussion symptoms (PPCS).

Hypothesis: tDCS improves performance on a dual task working memory (WM) paradigm in youth with cognitive PPCS.

Participants: Twelve youth experiencing cognitive PPCS.

Job Demands and Resources, Positive and Negative Affect, and Psychological Distress of Social Workers in China.

Globally, human service professionals, like social workers, experience significant job demands (JD) which can lead to outcomes like psychological distress, burnout, and high turnover rates. This is especially true in China, where the social work profession has grown substantially in recent decades. Because social workers play a crucial role in supporting vulnerable communities, there is a need to understand how their work conditions affect outcomes like psychological distress.

Disentangling the Ecological Processes Shaping the Latitudinal Pattern of Phytoplankton Communities in the Pacific Ocean.

Phytoplankton diversity and community compositions vary across spaces and are fundamentally affected by several deterministic (e.g., environmental selection) and stochastic (e.

Fate and Effects of Macro- and Microplastics in Coastal Wetlands.

Coastal wetlands trap plastics from terrestrial and marine sources, but the stocks of plastics and their impacts on coastal wetlands are poorly known. We evaluated the stocks, fate, and biological and biogeochemical effects of plastics in coastal wetlands with plastic abundance data from 112 studies. The representative abundance of plastics that occurs in coastal wetland sediments and is ingested by marine animals reaches 156.

Multi-Constraint Adversarial Networks for Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation.

Unsupervised image-to-image translation aims to learn the mapping from an input image in a source domain to an output image in a target domain without paired training dataset. Recently, remarkable progress has been made in translation due to the development of generative adversarial networks (GANs). However, existing methods suffer from the training instability as gradients passing from discriminator to generator become less informative when the source and target domains exhibit sufficiently large discrepancies in appearance or shape.

The significance of trophic transfer in the uptake of microplastics by carnivorous gastropod Reishia clavigera.

The present study compared the relative significance of prey consumption and respiration as routes of microplastic (MP) intake in a carnivorous muricid gastropod, Reishia clavigera. The time-dependent accumulation of MPs within 14-day exposure and their removal through depuration were also investigated for two forms of MPs (fibre, fragment) at an environmentally relevant concentration (10 items L) and two higher concentrations (100 and 1000 items L). At 1000 items L, the number of MPs in R.

Investigation of effects of orthokeratology and povidone iodine disinfecting solution on the conjunctival microbiome using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry.

Purpose: To determine organisms present in the conjunctiva of children before and after orthokeratology lens wear, using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry.

Methods: Conjunctival samples were collected from children aged 8-12 years (inclusive) at baseline and on three occasions over the first six months of orthokeratology treatment. All lenses were disinfected using the povidone iodine-based solution every day after use.