Identifying high-impact-opportunity hospitals for improving healthcare quality based on a national population analysis of inter-hospital variation in mortality, readmissions and prolonged length of stay.

Objectives: To study between-hospital variation in mortality, readmissions and prolonged length of stay across Belgian hospitals.

Design: A retrospective nationwide observational study.

Setting: Secondary and tertiary acute-care hospitals in Belgium.

Subthalamic nucleus oscillations during facial emotion processing and apathy in Parkinson's disease.

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is primarily characterized by motor symptoms, but patients also experience a relatively high prevalence of non-motor symptoms, including emotional and cognitive impairments. While the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is a common target for deep brain stimulation to treat motor symptoms in PD, its role in emotion processing is still under investigation. This study examines the subthalamic neural oscillatory activities during facial emotion processing and its association with affective characteristics.

Exploring intra- and intergenomic variation in haplotype-resolved pangenomes.

With advances in long-read sequencing and assembly techniques, haplotype-resolved (phased) genome assemblies are becoming more common, also in the field of plant genomics. Computational tools to effectively explore these phased genomes, particularly for polyploid genomes, are currently limited. Here we describe a new strategy adopting a pangenome approach.

A safety and feasibility randomized placebo controlled trial exploring electroencephalographic effective connectivity neurofeedback treatment for fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain condition contributing to significant disability worldwide. Neuroimaging studies identify abnormal effective connectivity between cortical areas responsible for descending pain modulation (pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, pgACC) and sensory components of pain experience (primary somatosensory cortex, S1). Neurofeedback, a brain-computer interface technique, can normalise dysfunctional brain activity, thereby improving pain and function.

Blocking interleukin-1 receptor type 1 (IL-1R1) signaling in hepatocytes slows down diethylnitrosamine-induced liver tumor growth in obese mice.

Background: An increasing number of HCC develops in the context of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease and its inflammatory form, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, even in the absence of cirrhosis. Chronic metabolic inflammation is the driving force of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease progression and a key factor in hepatocarcinogenesis. Given the prominent role of IL-1 signaling in inflammation and metabolic diseases, we investigated the relevance of the hepatocyte-specific IL-1 receptor type 1 knockout in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis-related noncirrhotic HCC.

Noninfectious Complications of Dorsal Root Ganglion Stimulation: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Introduction: Dorsal root ganglion stimulation (DRGS) has emerged as a promising treatment for chronic neuropathic pain. However, its safety and complications are not fully understood, with existing literature primarily based on case reports, observational studies, and data base analyses. This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to assess the prevalence of noninfectious complications associated with DRGS, focusing on the trial phase, postimplantation period, and revisions, while identifying risk factors for these outcomes.

How does depressive cognition develop? A state-dependent network model of predictive processing.

Depression is vastly heterogeneous in its symptoms, neuroimaging data, and treatment responses. As such, describing how it develops at the network level has been notoriously difficult. In an attempt to overcome this issue, a theoretical "negative prediction mechanism" is proposed.

Thalamocortical dysrhythmia and reward deficiency syndrome as uncertainty disorders.

A common anatomical core has been described for psychiatric disorders, consisting of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula, processing uncertainty. A common neurophysiological core has been described for other brain related disorders, called thalamocortical dysrhythmia (TCD), consisting of persistent cross-frequency coupling between low and high frequencies. And a common genetic core has been described for yet another set of hypodopaminergic pathologies called reward deficiency syndromes (RDS).

Uncoupling FRUITFULL's functions through modification of a protein motif identified by co-ortholog analysis.

Many plant transcription factors (TFs) are multifunctional and regulate growth and development in more than one tissue. These TFs can generally associate with different protein partners depending on the tissue type, thereby regulating tissue-specific target gene sets. However, how interaction specificity is ensured is still largely unclear.

Lactuca super-pangenome reduces bias towards reference genes in lettuce research.

Background: Breeding of lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.), the most important leafy vegetable worldwide, for enhanced disease resistance and resilience relies on multiple wild relatives to provide the necessary genetic diversity. In this study, we constructed a super-pangenome based on four Lactuca species (representing the primary, secondary and tertiary gene pools) and comprising 474 accessions.

Expanding the Triangle of U: Comparative analysis of the Hirschfeldia incana genome provides insights into chromosomal evolution, phylogenomics and high photosynthesis-related traits.

Background And Aims: The Brassiceae tribe encompasses many economically important crops and exhibits high intraspecific and interspecific phenotypic variation. After a shared whole-genome triplication (WGT) event (Br-α, ~15.9 million years ago), differential lineage diversification and genomic changes contributed to an array of divergence in morphology, biochemistry, and physiology underlying photosynthesis-related traits.

Enzyme structure correlates with variant effect predictability.

Protein engineering increasingly relies on machine learning models to computationally pre-screen promising novel candidates. Although machine learning approaches have proven effective, their performance on prospective screening data leaves room for improvement; prediction accuracy can vary greatly from one protein variant to the next. So far, it is unclear what characterizes variants that are associated with large prediction error.

Can self-control make you happy?

The relationship between self-control and happiness is often considered antithetical because self-control would require effortful discipline precluding the experience of pleasure. However, recent research reveals a robust (but moderate) association with all parameters that are seen as relevant in happiness research: satisfaction with life, positive affect, and the experience of meaning in life. Factors moderating this relationship suggest a significant role for strategies that are employed during the early stages of a self-control conflict and, to a lesser extent, making (some) progress towards one's goals.

Rates Of Patient Safety Indicators In Belgian Hospitals Were Low But Generally Higher Than In US Hospitals, 2016-18.

More than two decades ago, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality developed its Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) to monitor potentially preventable and severe adverse events within hospitals. Application of PSIs outside the US was explored more than a decade ago, but it is uncertain whether they remain relevant within Europe, as no up-to-date assessments of overall PSI-associated adverse event rates or interhospital variability can be found in the literature. This article assesses the nationwide occurrence and variability of thirteen adverse events for a case study of Belgium.

Hope for the best or prepare for the worst? Calm perseverance, not vigilant monitoring, contributes to adolescent life satisfaction.

Objective: Which kind of self-regulatory strategies contribute to life satisfaction in adolescence?

Materials And Methods: In the present research, we tested two competing hypotheses arguing that either a strategy of vigilant monitoring of opportunities for working towards goal achievement or a calm perseverance strategy steadily working towards goals in a slower pace would promote life satisfaction in a large and diverse sample of adolescents. We also tested whether the employment of these strategies would hinge on perceptions of goal importance and goal attainability.

Results: Employing a longitudinal design, we found support that calm perseverance was the sole significant predictor of life satisfaction regardless of goal perceptions.

Spatial dependence of non-traumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in a Swiss region: A retrospective analysis.

Background: Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) incidence and survival often vary within regions according to patient-related and contextual factors. This study aims to establish the overall spatial dependence of incidence, bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (BCPR) and 48-h survival of OHCA with their associated demographic and socioeconomic characteristics in a Swiss region.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective study using data of all OHCAs recorded between 2007 and 2019 in the canton of Vaud and, more specifically, in the Lausanne area.

The brain's duck test in phantom percepts: Multisensory congruence in neuropathic pain and tinnitus.

Chronic neuropathic pain and chronic tinnitus have been likened to phantom percepts, in which a complete or partial sensory deafferentation results in a filling in of the missing information derived from memory. 150 participants, 50 with tinnitus, 50 with chronic pain and 50 healthy controls underwent a resting state EEG. Source localized current density is recorded from all the sensory cortices (olfactory, gustatory, somatosensory, auditory, vestibular, visual) as well as the parahippocampal area.

Adaptation of Fusarium Head Blight Pathogens to Changes in Agricultural Practices and Human Migration.

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is one of the most destructive wheat diseases worldwide. To understand the impact of human migration and changes in agricultural practices on crop pathogens, here population genomic analysis with 245 representative strains from a collection of 4,427 field isolates of Fusarium asiaticum, the causal agent of FHB in Southern China is conducted. Three populations with distinct evolution trajectories are identifies over the last 10,000 years that can be correlated with historically documented changes in agricultural practices due to human migration caused by the Southern Expeditions during the Jin Dynasty.

Closed-Loop Infraslow Brain-Computer Interface can Modulate Cortical Activity and Connectivity in Individuals With Chronic Painful Knee Osteoarthritis: A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial.

Chronic pain is a percept due to an imbalance in the activity between sensory-discriminative, motivational-affective, and descending pain-inhibitory brain regions. Evidence suggests that electroencephalography (EEG) infraslow fluctuation neurofeedback (ISF-NF) training can improve clinical outcomes. It is unknown whether such training can induce EEG activity and functional connectivity (FC) changes.

Environmental and geographical factors influencing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 over 2 years: a fine-scale spatiotemporal analysis.

Introduction: Since its emergence in late 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has led to a global health crisis, affecting millions and reshaping societies and economies worldwide. Investigating the determinants of SARS-CoV-2 diffusion and their spatiotemporal dynamics at high spatial resolution is critical for public health and policymaking.

Methods: This study analyses 194,682 georeferenced SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests from March 2020 and April 2022 in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland.

A catalogue of recombination coldspots in interspecific tomato hybrids.

Increasing natural resistance and resilience in plants is key for ensuring food security within a changing climate. Breeders improve these traits by crossing cultivars with their wild relatives and introgressing specific alleles through meiotic recombination. However, some genomic regions are devoid of recombination especially in crosses between divergent genomes, limiting the combinations of desirable alleles.