Zero-Shot LLMs for Named Entity Recognition: Targeting Cardiac Function Indicators in German Clinical Texts.

Introduction: Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have become increasingly prevalent. In medicine, many potential areas arise where LLMs may offer added value. Our research focuses on the use of open-source LLM alternatives like Llama 3, Gemma, Mistral, and Mixtral to extract medical parameters from German clinical texts.

Patterns of gastrointestinal parasite infections in bighorn sheep, , with respect to host sex and seasonality.

Males and females in sexually dimorphic species show differences in their physiology and behaviour due to differences in energetic investment into reproduction and soma. This means that the two sexes may show different patterns of parasitism at different times of the year. In this study, we evaluate the abundance of fecal eggs and larvae of 5 parasite types (Strongyles, spp.

Europe's Largest Research Infrastructure for Curated Medical Data Models with Semantic Annotations.

Background: Structural metadata from the majority of clinical studies and routine health care systems is currently not yet available to the scientific community.

Objective: To provide an overview of available contents in the Portal of Medical Data Models (MDM Portal).

Methods: The MDM Portal is a registered European information infrastructure for research and health care, and its contents are curated and semantically annotated by medical experts.

Born with an advantage: early life and maternal effects on fitness in female ground squirrels.

Lifetime fitness and its determinants are an important topic in the study of behavioral ecology and life-history evolution. Early life conditions comprise some of these determinants, warranting further investigation into their impact. In some mammals, babies born lighter tend to have lower life expectancy than those born heavier, and some of these life-history traits are passed on to offspring, with lighter-born females giving birth to lighter offspring.

Assessment of different continence definitions in the context of the randomized multicenter prospective LAP-01 trial-Does the best definition change over time?

Background: A uniform definition of continence is urgently needed to allow the comparison of study results and to estimate patient outcomes after radical prostatectomy (RP). To identify a practical definition that includes both objective and subjective aspects in a tangible way, we assessed different continence definitions and evaluated which best reflects the patients' subjective perception of continence.

Methods: Our analyses included 718 patients that underwent either robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) or laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (LRP) in a multicenter randomized patient-blinded trial.

Weathering the storm: Decreased activity and glucocorticoid levels in response to inclement weather in breeding Columbian ground squirrels.

Inclement weather can rapidly modify the thermal conditions experienced by animals, inducing changes in their behavior, body condition, and stress physiology, and affecting their survival and breeding success. For animals living in variable environments, the extent to which they have adapted to cope with inclement weather is not established, especially for hibernating species with a short active season that are constrained temporally to breed and store energy for subsequent hibernation. We examined behavioral (foraging activity) and physiological (body mass and fecal cortisol metabolites) responses of Columbian ground squirrels (Urocitellus columbianus), small hibernating rodents inhabiting open meadows in Rocky Mountains, to 3 events of inclement weather (two snow storms in May 2021 and May 2022, one heavy rainfall in June 2022).

Differences in the Diets of Female and Male Red Deer: The Meaning for Sexual Segregation.

Sexual segregation is a common phenomenon among animals, particularly dimorphic ones. Although widely addressed, the reasons and consequences of sexual segregation are still an important topic in need of better understanding. In this study, we mainly evaluate the diet composition and feeding behaviour of animals, which are related to the use of different habitats by the sexes, a special case of sexual segregation also termed habitat segregation.

Feasibility and Efficacy of Adjuvant Chemotherapy With Gemcitabine After Liver Transplantation for Perihilar Cholangiocarcinoma - A Multi-Center, Randomized, Controlled Trial (pro-duct001).

Background: Liver transplantation (LT) is considered a therapeutic option for unresectable perihilar cholangiocarcinoma (PHC) within defined criteria. It remains uncertain whether patients can safely receive adjuvant chemotherapy after LT.

Methods: We performed a prospective, multi-center, randomized, non-blinded two-arm trial (pro-duct001).

A PRELIMINARY STUDY TO EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF LARYNGEAL MASK AIRWAYS IN ANESTHETIZED BIGHORN SHEEP () LAMBS.

Chemical immobilization of wildlife, required for many biological studies and management events, often induces hypoxemia and respiratory depression. Laryngeal mask airways (LMAs) have shown promise as an efficient method of airway protection during anesthesia. Nineteen wild bighorn sheep () lambs were immobilized using an IM combination of medetomidine (0.

Team IHMC at the 2020 Cybathlon: a user-centered approach towards personal mobility exoskeletons.

Background: The past few decades have seen rapid advancements in exoskeleton technology, with a considerable shift towards applications involving users with gait pathologies. Commercial devices from ReWalk, Ekso Bionics, and Indego, mainly designed for rehabilitation purposes, have inspired the development of many research platforms aimed at extending capabilities for use as safe and effective personal mobility devices. The 2016 Cybathlon featured an impressive demonstration of exoskeletons designed to enable mobility for individuals with spinal cord injury, however, not a single team completed every task and only two completed the stairs.

Linking EMR Data to REDCap: Implementation in the SOLKID Register.

Secondary use, the reuse of medical patient data stored during routine care in the hospital's electronic medical records (EMR) for research purpose is common, especially for registers and pragmatic trials. Often the medical data items are copied manually from the EMR into the used research database. This process is time consuming and error prone.

ELaPro, a LOINC-mapped core dataset for top laboratory procedures of eligibility screening for clinical trials.

Background: Screening for eligible patients continues to pose a great challenge for many clinical trials. This has led to a rapidly growing interest in standardizing computable representations of eligibility criteria (EC) in order to develop tools that leverage data from electronic health record (EHR) systems. Although laboratory procedures (LP) represent a common entity of EC that is readily available and retrievable from EHR systems, there is a lack of interoperable data models for this entity of EC.

Quality of life after robotic-assisted and laparoscopic radical prostatectomy: Results of a multicenter randomized controlled trial (LAP-01).

Background: To explore cross-sectional and longitudinal differences in general health-related and prostate cancer-specific quality of life (QoL) after robotic-assisted (RARP) and laparoscopic (LRP) radical prostatectomy and to analyze predictive variables for QoL outcomes.

Methods: In this multicenter, randomized controlled trial, prostate cancer patients were randomly assigned 3:1 to undergo either RARP or LRP. Patient-reported outcomes were prospectively collected before and 1, 3, 6, 12 months after radical prostatectomy and included QoL as a secondary outcome.

Robotic-assisted Versus Laparoscopic Radical Prostatectomy: 12-month Outcomes of the Multicentre Randomised Controlled LAP-01 Trial.

Background: Recently, our LAP-01 trial demonstrated superiority of robotic-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (RARP) over conventional laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (LRP) with respect to continence at 3 mo.

Objective: To compare the continence, potency, and oncological outcomes between RARP and LRP in the 12-mo follow-up.

Design, Setting, And Participants: In this multicentre, randomised, patient-blinded controlled trial, patients referred for radical prostatectomy to four hospitals in Germany were randomly assigned (3:1) to undergo either RARP or LRP.

Age-stratified outcomes after radical prostatectomy in a randomized setting (LAP-01): do younger patients have more to lose?

Objective: Age is known to have an impact on outcomes after radical prostatectomy (RP). However, age differences can be investigated from a cross-sectional as well as from a longitudinal perspective. This study combines both perspectives.

Territorial scent-marking effects on vigilance behavior, space use, and stress in female Columbian ground squirrels.

Social environments can profoundly affect the behavior and stress physiology of group-living animals. In many territorial species, territory owners advertise territorial boundaries to conspecifics by scent marking. Several studies have investigated the information that scent marks convey about donors' characteristics (e.

Group cognitive remediation therapy prior to behavioral weight loss treatment for adults with severe obesity: A randomized clinical trial (CRT study).

Individuals with obesity show executive dysfunctions that have been implicated in weight management failure. Initial evidence suggests that cognitive remediation therapy (CRT) conducted after behavioral weight loss (BWL) treatment improves weight loss and executive function, but efficacy for CRT conducted before BWL treatment is unknown. This study investigated whether group CRT in adults with Class II or III obesity (body mass index, BMI≥35 kg/m2) improves weight loss, executive function, weight management behavior, and mental and physical health in real-world group BWL treatment.

A Systematic Analysis of Metal and Metalloid Concentrations in Eight Zebrafish Recirculating Water Systems.

Metals and metalloids are integral to biological processes and play key roles in physiology and metabolism. Nonetheless, overexposure to some metals or lack of others can lead to serious health consequences. In this study, eight zebrafish facilities collaborated to generate a multielement analysis of their centralized recirculating water systems.

Patient Empowerment Through Digital Voice Pens: A Feasibility Study.

Reading is an important ability, especially for patients during their medical treatment. It is needed, for instance, to complete administrative forms and patient-reported outcome questionnaires in clinical routine. Unfortunately, not every patient is able to read caused by illiteracy, low vision or simply speaking another language.

The utility of a novel formulation of alfaxalone in a remote delivery system.

Objective: To quantify induction time, reliability, physiological effects, recovery quality and dart volume of a novel formulation of alfaxalone (40 mg mL) used in combination with medetomidine and azaperone for the capture and handling of wild bighorn sheep.

Study Design: Prospective clinical study.

Animals: A total of 23 wild bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) in Sheep River Provincial Park, AB, Canada.

Pragmatic MDR: a metadata repository with bottom-up standardization of medical metadata through reuse.

Background: The variety of medical documentation often leads to incompatible data elements that impede data integration between institutions. A common approach to standardize and distribute metadata definitions are ISO/IEC 11179 norm-compliant metadata repositories with top-down standardization. To the best of our knowledge, however, it is not yet common practice to reuse the content of publicly accessible metadata repositories for creation of case report forms or routine documentation.

Robotic-assisted Versus Laparoscopic Surgery: Outcomes from the First Multicentre, Randomised, Patient-blinded Controlled Trial in Radical Prostatectomy (LAP-01).

Background: The LAP-01 trial was designed to address the lack of high-quality literature comparing robotic-assisted (RARP) and laparoscopic (LRP) radical prostatectomy.

Objective: To compare the functional and oncological outcomes between RARP and LRP at 3 mo of follow-up.

Design, Setting, And Participants: In this multicentre, randomised, patient-blinded controlled trial, patients referred for radical prostatectomy to four hospitals in Germany were randomly assigned (3:1) to undergo either RARP or LRP.

Association of contact to small children with a mild course of COVID-19.

It is known that severe COVID-19 cases in small children are rare. If a childhood-related infection were protective against a severe course of COVID-19, it would be expected that adults with intensive and regular contact with small children also may have a mild course of COVID-19 more frequently. To test this hypothesis, a survey among 4010 recovered COVID-19 patients was conducted in Germany.