Longitudinal impact of past-year reproductive coercion on contraceptive use dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from eight population-based cohorts.

Background: Reproductive coercion (RC) is a type of abuse where a partner intentionally attempts to interfere with fertility through deception or violence, often by manipulating one's contraceptive use or reproductive decision-making. Cross-sectional studies on the magnitude of RC across sub-Saharan Africa have noted associations with contraceptive use. No studies have longitudinally examined RC experiences as related to future contraceptive dynamics, including discontinuation or forgoing use altogether.

Analysis of the Behavioral Change and Utility Features of Electronic Activity Monitors.

The aim of this study was to perform a content analysis of electronic activity monitors that also evaluates utility features, code behavior change techniques included in the monitoring systems, and align the results with intervention functions of the Behaviour Change Wheel program planning model to facilitate informed device selection. Devices were coded for the implemented behavior change techniques and device features. Three trained coders each wore a monitor for at least 1 week from December 2019-April 2020.

SIGNALING SEPSIS SCENARIO DEVELOPMENT & VALIDATION.

Patient-based scenario-driven usability tests are routinely created for health information technology and clinical decision support evaluations. Due to low clinician awareness of sepsis, a study was undertaken to understand clinician performance and preference of different display types for sepsis clinical decision support through multi-centered usability testing. Patient-based clinical scenarios were created to mimic the environment in which providers would interact with clinical decision support.

Source-specific bias correction of US background and anthropogenic ozone modeled in CMAQ.

United States (US) background ozone (O) is the counterfactual O that would exist with zero US anthropogenic emissions. Estimates of US background O typically come from chemical transport models (CTMs), but different models vary in their estimates of both background and total O. Here, a measurement-model data fusion approach is used to estimate CTM biases in US anthropogenic O and multiple US background O sources, including natural emissions, long-range international emissions, short-range international emissions from Canada and Mexico, and stratospheric O.

Evaluating endogenous viral targets as potential treatment monitoring surrogates for onsite non-potable water reuse.

Onsite non-potable water reuse systems (ONWS) are decentralized systems that treat and repurpose locally collected waters ( greywater or combined wastewater) for uses such as irrigation and flushing toilets. To ensure that treatment is meeting risk benchmarks, it is necessary to monitor the efficacy of pathogen removal. However, accurate assessment of pathogen reduction is hampered by their sporadic and low occurrence rates in source waters and concentrations in treated water that are generally below measurement detection limits.

Personal Narratives in Aphasia: Coherence in the Context of Use.

Background: Discourse functionality is a primary goal of aphasia assessment and intervention. People who have aphasia often display a paradoxical functionality in their production of discourse, despite their aphasic impairment. A variety of linguistic and non-linguistic resources are orchestrated together to produce coherent discourse.

Functional principal component analysis with informative observation times.

Functional principal component analysis has been shown to be invaluable for revealing variation modes of longitudinal outcomes, which serve as important building blocks for forecasting and model building. Decades of research have advanced methods for functional principal component analysis, often assuming independence between the observation times and longitudinal outcomes. Yet such assumptions are fragile in real-world settings where observation times may be driven by outcome-related processes.

Analyzing Potential Non-Ignorable Selection Bias in an Off-Wave Mail Survey Implemented in a Long-Standing Panel Study.

Typical design-based methods for weighting probability samples rely on several assumptions, including the random selection of sampled units according to known probabilities of selection and ignorable unit nonresponse. If any of these assumptions are not met, weighting methods that account for the probabilities of selection, nonresponse, and calibration may not fully account for the potential selection bias in a given sample, which could produce misleading population estimates. This analysis investigates possible selection bias in the 2019 Health Survey Mailer (HSM), a sub-study of the longitudinal Health and Retirement Study (HRS).

On the Perception of Moral Standing to Blame.

Is everyone equally justified in blaming another's moral transgression? Across five studies (four pre-registered; total = 1,316 American participants), we investigated the perception of -the appropriateness and legitimacy for someone to blame a moral wrongdoing. We propose and provide evidence for a moral commitment hypothesis-a blamer is perceived to have low moral standing to blame a moral transgressor if the blamer demonstrates weak commitment to that moral rule. As hypothesized, we found that when blamers did not have the chance or relevant experience to demonstrate good commitment to a moral rule, participants generally believed that they had high moral standing to blame.

Preliminary evidence on the effects of exercise on tumor biology: a potential guide for prescribing exercise.

Purpose Of Review: This report reviews the preliminary evidence of how exercise may alter the tumor microenvironment and tumor biology in animal and human studies; and how to incorporate this information in clinical practice of oncology rehabilitation.

Recent Findings: Potential mechanisms explaining the impact of exercise on the tumor microenvironment include activating and mobilizing immune cells, reducing inflammation, and modifying tumor vasculature which enhances the delivery of anticancer therapies. Pre-clinical data translates to promising preliminary data in human studies; however, randomized, controlled trials in patients are limited.

MT-Keyboard: A Bayesian Model-assisted Interval Design to Account for Toxicity Grades and Types for Phase I Trials.

Conventionally, dose finding trials are based on dose-limiting toxicity (DLT) that only captures the most severe toxicities, e.g., treatment related grade 3 or higher toxicity according to the NCI Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events.

Efficient inferences for linear transformation models with doubly censored data.

Doubly-censored data, which consist of exact and case-1 interval-censored observations, often arise in medical studies, such as HIV/AIDS clinical trials. This article considers nonparametric maximum likelihood estimation (NPMLE) of semiparametric transformation models that encompass the proportional hazards and proportional odds models when data are subject to double censoring. The maximum likelihood estimator is obtained by directly maximizing a nonparametric likelihood concerning a regression parameter and a nuisance function parameter, which facilitates efficient and reliable computation.

Smoke-free hospitality environments and cognitive health: A population-based study in the United States.

Introduction: Cigarette smoking is among the largest risk factors for cognitive decline in later life. This study examines the associations between hospitality smoke-free coverage in the US and the prevalence of self-rated cognitive function decline and disparities therein.

Methods: I use the repeated cross-sectional Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance data collected between 2017 and 2022 from a sample of Americans 45 years and older and estimate logistic regression models predicting self-rated cognitive function decline by calculated smoke-free hospitality coverage in restaurants and bars.

Epidemiological, economic and humanistic burden of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia in Europe: A systematic literature review.

Introduction: High-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) is a premalignant lesion of the cervix caused by persistent human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, which can lead to cervical cancer. Despite ongoing primary prevention efforts, considerable burden of illness remains. This study assessed the epidemiological, economic, and humanistic burden associated with high-grade CIN among adult women in Europe.

Comparison of percutaneous coronary intervention vs coronary artery bypass graft for left main coronary artery disease in patients with prior cerebrovascular disease: A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression.

Background: Previous studies suggest similar cardiovascular (CV) benefits for either percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) or coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) in patients with left main coronary artery disease (LMCAD). However, limited data exist on the influence of prior cerebrovascular disease (CEVD). Thus, we aim to compare the CV outcomes in patients with LMCAD and prior CEVD, undergoing either PCI or CABG.

The burden of group A (GAS) infections: The challenge continues in the twenty-first century.

is a Gram-positive bacterium, also known as Group A (GAS), that has become a significant threat to the healthcare system, infecting more than 18 million people and resulting in more than 500,000 deaths annually worldwide. GAS infection rates decreased gradually during the 20th century in Western countries, largely due to improved living conditions and access to antibiotics. However, post-COVID-19, the situation has led to a steep increase in GAS infection rates in Europe, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, which triggers a global concern.

Millimeter-scale radioluminescent power for electronic sensors.

The storage and generation of electrical energy at the mm-scale is a core roadblock to realizing many untethered miniature systems, including industrial, environmental, and medically implanted sensors. We describe the potential to address the sensor energy requirement in a two-step process by first converting alpha radiation into light, which can then be translated into electrical power through a photovoltaic harvester circuit protected by a clear sealant. Different phosphorescent and scintillating materials were mixed with the alpha-emitter Th-227, and the conversion efficiency of europium-doped yttrium oxide was the highest at around 2%.

Development and application of a non-targeted analysis method using GC-MS and LC-MS for identifying chemical contaminants in drinking water via point-of-use filters.

While many chemicals are regulated and routinely monitored in drinking water, they represent just a portion of all contaminants that may be present. Typical drinking water analyses involve sampling one liter or less of water, which could lead to trace level contaminants going undetected. In this study, a method was developed for using point-of-use activated carbon block drinking water filters as sampling devices.

A faunal inventory of methane seeps on the Pacific margin of Costa Rica.

The methane seeps on the Pacific margin of Costa Rica support extensive animal diversity and offer insights into deep-sea biogeography. During five expeditions between 2009 and 2019, we conducted intensive faunal sampling via 63 submersible dives to 11 localities at depths of 300-3600 m. Based on these expeditions and published literature, we compiled voucher specimens, images, and 274 newly published DNA sequences to present a taxonomic inventory of macrofaunal and megafaunal diversity with a focus on invertebrates.

MiMICRI: Towards Domain-centered Counterfactual Explanations of Cardiovascular Image Classification Models.

The recent prevalence of publicly accessible, large medical imaging datasets has led to a proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) models for cardiovascular image classification and analysis. At the same time, the potentially significant impacts of these models have motivated the development of a range of explainable AI (XAI) methods that aim to explain model predictions given certain image inputs. However, many of these methods are not developed or evaluated with domain experts, and explanations are not contextualized in terms of medical expertise or domain knowledge.

Fibromuscular Dysplasia Clinical Phenotype Manifesting as a Distal Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection in a Middle-Aged Man.

Fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD) is a non-atherosclerotic, non-inflammatory vascular disease of medium-sized arteries that causes abnormal cellular growth in arterial walls and most commonly affects young to middle-aged women (20-50 years of age). While FMD often involves the renal arteries, it can affect any arterial bed. FMD has a characteristic angiographic appearance of a "string of beads.

Retraction: Silent Myocardial Infarction: A Case Report.

[This retracts the article DOI: 10.7759/cureus.43906.

The role of dentate status and dental caries on diabetes-related complications: a hospital-based cross-sectional study.

This study explored the role of dentate status and dental caries on diabetes-related complications among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). A hospital-based cross-sectional design was applied to collect data on diabetic patients attending integrated services for non-communicable diseases and oral health at a public hospital in Thailand. Diabetic complication outcomes included diabetic eye and foot complications and chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Second-line treatment patterns and outcomes in advanced HCC after progression on atezolizumab/bevacizumab.

Background & Aims: Atezolizumab/bevacizumab (A/B) is now a standard first-line treatment for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but the optimal second-line regimen is not known. We evaluated real-world treatment patterns and outcomes to investigate factors associated with post-progression survival (PPS).

Methods: In this multicenter, international, retrospective study, we examined clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients with advanced HCC who progressed on first-line A/B.

Modeling and correction of protein conformational disease in iPSC-derived neurons through personalized base editing.

Altered protein conformation can cause incurable neurodegenerative disorders. Mutations in , the gene encoding neuroserpin, can alter protein conformation resulting in cytotoxic aggregation leading to neuronal death. Familial encephalopathy with neuroserpin inclusion bodies (FENIB) is a rare autosomal dominant progressive myoclonic epilepsy that progresses to dementia and premature death.