Ancient environmental microbiomes and the cryosphere.

In this review, we delineate the unique set of characteristics associated with cryosphere environments (namely, ice and permafrost) which present both challenges and opportunities for studying ancient environmental microbiomes (AEMs). In a field currently reliant on several assumptions, we discuss the theoretical and empirical feasibility of recovering microbial nucleic acids (NAs) from ice and permafrost with varying degrees of antiquity. We also summarize contamination control best practices and highlight considerations for the latest approaches, including shotgun metagenomics, and downstream bioinformatic authentication approaches.

The influence of religious beliefs on bullying and cheating among secondary school students in Hong Kong.

This study examines the influence of religious beliefs on the perceptions on bullying and cheating among students in Hong Kong. 727 secondary school students (age 16 to 18) were involved as participants. Data collection utilized validated measures of religious beliefs, bullying, and cheating.

Associations between childhood maltreatment, peripheral immune biomarkers, and psychiatric symptoms in adults: A cohort study of over 138,000 participants.

Background: Few studies have integrated the impact of individual and cumulative childhood maltreatment on multiple psychiatric symptoms, with the mechanisms underlying these associations largely unknown. This study aims to comprehensively assess the associations between childhood maltreatment, multiple peripheral immune biomarkers, and various psychiatric symptoms in adulthood and to explore whether peripheral immune inflammation plays a mediator role in the associations between childhood maltreatment and psychiatric symptoms in adulthood.

Methods: Using data from the UK Biobank, we constructed a retrospective cohort study of 138,915 participants who provided self-reported childhood maltreatment and had peripheral immune biomarkers assessed.

Heterogeneous Mediation Analysis for Cox Proportional Hazards Model With Multiple Mediators.

This study proposes a heterogeneous mediation analysis for survival data that accommodates multiple mediators and sparsity of the predictors. We introduce a joint modeling approach that links the mediation regression and proportional hazards models through Bayesian additive regression trees with shared typologies. The shared tree component is motivated by the fact that confounders and effect modifiers on the causal pathways linked by different mediators often overlap.

Dynamic Landscapes of Long Noncoding RNAs During Early Root Development and Differentiation in Glycine max and Glycine soja.

Soybean (Glycine max) is an important crop for its nutritional value. Its wild relative, Glycine soja, provides a valuable genetic resource for improving soybean productivity. Root development and differentiation are essential for soybean plants to take up water and nutrients, store energy and anchor themselves.

Unleashing the strengths of unlabelled data in deep learning-assisted pan-cancer abdominal organ quantification: the FLARE22 challenge.

Deep learning has shown great potential to automate abdominal organ segmentation and quantification. However, most existing algorithms rely on expert annotations and do not have comprehensive evaluations in real-world multinational settings. To address these limitations, we organised the FLARE 2022 challenge to benchmark fast, low-resource, and accurate abdominal organ segmentation algorithms.

Hypocalcemia Event Associated with Denosumab: A Real-World Study from FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) Database.

Background And Objective: Denosumab is widely used for osteoporosis and cancer treatment. However, hypocalcemia induced by denosumab is a frequent adverse event. The objective of this study is to comprehensively investigate the safety signals and the occurrence of hypocalcemia in real-world patient cases reported through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS).

Are Optometrists Prepared to Be Involved in Post-Stroke Rehabilitation?

Background/objectives: Stroke survivors often experience various visual consequences that impact their daily life and may benefit from visual interventions. However, some of these usually go unaddressed as optometrists are rarely included in the post-stroke care pathway. Yet, optometrists are interested in contributing to the care of these patients.

Trajectories and predictors of depressive symptoms among pregnant women: A 3-year longitudinal study.

Objective: Not all women experience the same changes in depression from pregnancy through the years following childbirth, but the patterns of prenatal and postnatal depression are underexplored. This study investigated the trajectories and associated predictors of depressive symptoms in women from pregnancy through the first 3 years postpartum.

Method: We followed 340 pregnant women from an antenatal clinic in Hong Kong, first at 20-24 weeks of gestation, then at 4 weeks after childbirth, and again at 3 years after childbirth.

Habitat variations of sediment microbial community structure and functions and the influential environmental factors in a Ramsar protected wetland in South China.

Ecological functions of coastal wetlands are closely linked to microbiome that is affected by anthropogenic pollution, but related systematic research is rare. This study explored microbial community and physicochemical characteristics of sediments in three habitats, mudflat, mangrove and inter-tidal shrimp ponds (gei wai), in a Ramsar using 16S amplicon sequencing. Proteobacteria was the most abundant and Vibrio was detected in all habitats.

The Chinese 10-Item Empathy Quotient and Systemising Quotient-Revised: Internal Consistency, Test-Retest Reliability, Known-Groups Validity, and Sex Differences in Autistic and Non-Autistic Adults.

Purpose: The 10-item version of the Empathy Quotient (EQ-10) and the Systemising Quotient-Revised (SQ-R-10) were originally developed in the English-speaking population. However, little is known about the reliability of these measures. There is also extremely limited research translating or evaluating any translated version of these 10-item measures.

Anxiety, Depressive Symptoms, Health-Related Quality of Life, and Their Associated Factors Among Caregivers of Children With Cancer: A Cross-section Study.

Background: A child's cancer diagnosis and treatment are stressful for family caregivers, who may experience anxiety, depressive symptoms, and poor health-related quality of life (HRQoL) related to the care they provide.

Objective: This study assessed the prevalence of anxiety, depressive symptoms, HRQoL, and associated factors among caregivers of children with cancer.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 167 caregivers of children with cancer in Malawi.