Analysis of Changes in Viral Load and Inflammatory Cytokines, as Well as the Occurrence of Secondary Infections, in SFTS Patients Treated with Specific Treatments: A Prospective Multicenter Cohort Study.

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is an acute febrile illness caused by the SFTS virus (SFTSV). We conducted this study to propose a scientific evidence-based treatment that can improve prognosis through changes in viral load and inflammatory cytokines according to the specific treatment of SFTS patients. This prospective and observational study was conducted at 14 tertiary referral hospitals, which are located in SFTS endemic areas in Korea, from 1 May 2018 to 31 October 2020.

Longitudinal Comparison of Three T-Cell Assays and Three Antibody Assays Against SARS-CoV-2 Following Homologous mRNA-1273/mRNA-1273/mRNA-1273 and Heterologous ChAdOx1/ChAdOx1/BNT162b2 Vaccination: A Prospective Cohort in Naïve Healthcare Workers.

: Cellular and humoral immunity are key to the immune response against SARS-CoV-2, but the comparability and correlation across different assays remain underexplored. This study compares three T-cell and three antibody assays in two vaccine groups. : This prospective longitudinal cohort study involved 46 naïve healthcare workers: a total of 11 in the homologous mRNA-1273 group (three doses) and 35 in the heterologous ChAd group (two ChAd doses followed by a BNT booster).

Performance Analysis and Design Principles of Wireless Mutual Broadcast Using Heterogeneous Transmit Power for Proximity-Aware Services.

As proximity-aware services among devices such as sensors, IoT devices, and user equipment are expected to facilitate a wide range of new applications in the beyond 5G and 6G era, managing heterogeneous environments with diverse node capabilities becomes essential. This paper analytically models and characterizes the performance of heterogeneous random access-based wireless mutual broadcast (RA-WMB) with distinct transmit (Tx) power levels, leveraging a marked Poisson point process to account for nodes' various Tx power. In particular, this study enables the performance of RA-WMB with heterogeneous Tx power to be represented in terms of the performance of RA-WMB with a common Tx power by deriving an equivalent Tx power based on the probability distribution of heterogeneous Tx power and the path loss exponent.

Child-Centric Robot Dialogue Systems: Fine-Tuning Large Language Models for Better Utterance Understanding and Interaction.

Dialogue systems must understand children's utterance intentions by considering their unique linguistic characteristics, such as syntactic incompleteness, pronunciation inaccuracies, and creative expressions, to enable natural conversational engagement in child-robot interactions. Even state-of-the-art large language models (LLMs) for language understanding and contextual awareness cannot comprehend children's intent as accurately as humans because of their distinctive features. An LLM-based dialogue system should acquire the manner by which humans understand children's speech to enhance its intention reasoning performance in verbal interactions with children.

Benzo(a)pyrene and Gut Microbiome Crosstalk: Health Risk Implications.

This review delves into the impact of benzo(a)pyrene (B(a)P), which is a toxic and pervasive polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) and known carcinogen, on the human health risk from a gut microbiome perspective. We retrieved the relevant articles on each PAH and summarized the reporting to date, with a particular focus on benzo(a)pyrene, which has been reported to have a high risk of gut microbiome-related harm. B(a)P exposure can compromise the homeostasis of the gut microbiota, leading to dysbiosis, a state of microbial imbalance.