Modeling the Multidimensional Nature of Impulsivity and its Relation to Functional Outcomes

The present studies examined the role that impulsivity plays in personality development and emotion dysregulation both concurrently and longitudinally. The three studies utilized two extant (secondary) datasets as well as new data collection with a Canadian undergraduate sample. First, data from the Block and Block dataset were used to assess the relations between impulsivity and personality development across the life span. Next, the lifelong relation between impulsivity and emotion dysregulation was examined using the Simmons Longitudinal Study dataset. Finally, 175 undergraduate students were administered multiple measures associated with impulsivity. The aim was to use measures across theoretical orientations to explore the multifactorial nature of impulsivity. Results revealed the existence of two distinct, yet related factors of impulsivity. Cognitive and Behavioural facets of impulsivity were differentially related to psychopathology and engagement in risky behaviour. The integrated results of these three studies identified a link between childhood impulsivity and subsequent personality development and emotion dysregulation. Clinical and research implications are discussed

Television content and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms: Testing the relationship on preschoolers

The present study examined the role that the violent television plays in the manifestation of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms in a Canadian sample of preschool-aged children. The parents of preschool-aged children at increased risk (n = 8) and low risk (n = 25) for ADHD provided information about their child’s television viewing patterns and favourite programs. Separate ANOVAs were used to evaluate the relationship between the group status and the amount of television viewing per day and the level of violence in their preferred television program. Results indicated that television exposure is not significantly related to the manifestation of ADHD symptoms in a Canadian sample of preschool-aged children. These findings partially replicate those from a recent study indicating lack of correlation between television exposure and ADHD associated behaviours in children at-risk of ADHD. However, further research should be conducted with a larger sample size

Can a presepsin (SCD14-ST) obtained from tracheal aspirate be a biomarker for early-onset neonatal sepsis

© 2020, University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Science. All rights reserved. In absence of clear clinical signs and clear definition, neonatal sepsis is still one of the major cause of morbidity and mortality. Most researchs in past time was directional on finding new biomarkers with greater sensitivity and specific-ity in detection of neonatal sepsis. The aim of our study was to investigate if presepsin obtained from tracheal asprate in intubated newborns, can be a novel biomarker of systemic bacterial infection. Our ‘’case control’’ study included 60 newborns, 11 with suspected neonatal sepsis. Tracheal aspirate for examination was taken in the usual toilets, in asep-tic conditions, by lavage with 2 ml of 0.9% NaCl in Mucus suction set. In the same day were mesured presepsin (blood), CRP, PCT, leukocytes and neutrophyls, as well as blood cul-ture. Our research showed higher levels for PCT and prese-psin (blood) in septic newborns, as well as in newborns with clinical signs of SIRS. Presepsin obtained from a tracheal aspirate had high score for septic newborns. As the coefficients of simple linear correlation showed, there was quantitative agreement between presepsin (blood) with presepsin (trache-al aspirate)-increase in the value of one leads to an increase in other. In conjunction with an already validated markers of infection, presepsin obtained from tracheal aspirate cam be turned on in diagnostic procedures

Work ability as a major determinant of clinical nurses’ quality of life.

Aims and objectives. To examine quality of life determinants among clinical nurses in Croatia with an emphasis on their work ability. Background. An important personnel management challenge is to explore factors that stimulate or hinder the development of individual work ability and quality of life throughout a career. Design. A cross-sectional study. Methods. The study was performed during [2007][2008] 3) for the environmental domain. Conclusions. Satisfactory work ability was a major quality of life determinant in all WHOQL-BREF domains with the highest odds ratio for the physical domain. Maintaining clinical nurses' work ability is an important issue, because it is foundational for the quality of life of the workforce. Relevance to clinical practice. Our study provides quantified estimates of the extent to which a satisfactory WAI score predicts a better score in physical, psychosocial, social relationships and environmental domain of nurses' quality of life. Therefore, maintaining or improving nurses' work ability remains the essential aim of hospital managers

High-Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Temporomandibular Joint Low Agreement with Clinical Diagnosis in Asymptomatic Females

(1) Background: The aim of this study was to investigate the agreement between a clinical diagnosis based on research diagnostic criteria/temporomandibular disorders (RDC/TMD) and high-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings of temporomandibular joints (TMJs) in asymptomatic females. (2) Methods: A prospective study on 100 females (200 TMJs) was performed, using clinical examinations (RDC/TMD) and same-day MRIs of TMJs on a 3T MR unit. The inclusion criteria were as follows: females, age > 18, the presence of upper and lower incisors, and an understanding of the Serbian language. Descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) and ANOVA with a post hoc Tukey test for differences among the patient subgroups was performed. The agreement between the clinical and MRI findings was determined using Cohen’s kappa coefficient (k p ≤ 0.05. (3) Results: Normal findings were observed in 86.7%, disc dislocation (DD) was observed in 9.2%, and arthralgia/osteoarthritis/osteoarthrosis was observed in 2.6% of TMJs using RDC/TMD. On the MRI, normal findings were observed in 50.5%, disc dislocation was observed in 16.3%, and arthralgia/osteoarthritis/osteoarthrosis was observed in 23.5% of TMJs. The anterior DD with reduction showed fair agreement of the clinical and MRI findings (k = 0.240, p p < 0.001). Both showed high specificity (94.9% and 99.4%) but low sensitivity (24.2% and 25.0%). The sensitivity in osteoarthritic changes was low (4.8%), but the specificity remained high (96.2%). (4) Conclusions: The sensitivity of the clinical examination remains low compared with 3T MRI, especially in osteoarthritic changes and anterior DD with reduction. However, the number of false positive diagnoses using RDC/TMD is low in asymptomatic patients. RDC/TMD remains a sensible method for establishing a clinical diagnosis and avoiding the overtreatment of asymptomatic patients

Influence of Dimethacrylate Monomer on the Polymerization Efficacy of Resin-Based Dental Cements&mdash;FTIR Analysis

The degree of polymerization for dimethacrylate resin-based materials (BisGMA, TEGDMA, UDMA, HEMA) ranges from 55 to 75%. Literature data indicate that polymerization efficacy depends, among other factors, on the type of methacrylate resin comprising the material. The aim of this study was to evaluate the polymerization efficacy of four dental cement materials characterized by different polymerization mechanisms using FTIR analysis. In the present study, the FTIR method was adopted to analyze the degree of polymerization efficacy of four resin-based dental cement materials, two of which were self-cured and two were dual-cured cements. The IR spectral analysis was performed 24 h after the polymerization of the cementitious material. RelyX ARC cement exhibits the lowest polymerization efficacy (61.3%), while that of Variolink II (85.8%) and Maxcem Elite is the highest (90.1%). Although the efficacy of self-cured cements appears to be superior, the difference is not statistically significant (p = 0.280). Polymerization efficacy largely depends on the chemical structure of the material in terms of the presence of a particular methacrylate resin and less on the polymerization mechanism itself, i.e., whether it is a self-cured or dually cured dental cement. Thus, in clinical practice, cementitious materials with a higher proportion of TEGDMA compared with BisGMA are recommended

CardioPRINT: Biometric identification based on the individual characteristics derived from cardiogram

Objective: This paper investigates the potential of cardiogram-derived traits from electrocardiogram (ECG) and impedance cardiogram (ICG) for biometric identification. Additionally, the influence of induced emotions on cardiogram attributes and their impact on identification accuracy is explored. Method: We conduct a comparative evaluation of 7 machine learning classifiers using dataset gathered from 202 individuals to identify the highest-performing classifiers. Subsequently, we analyze three different feature sets employing (ECG-only, ICG-only, and both ECG and ICG). Additionally, we investigate the performance of classifiers under altered emotional states to assess classifiers’ robustness. Results: The analysis demonstrates that models employed with both ECG and ICG have the highest accuracies that are statistically significant. The best-performing Random Forest (RF) model using both ECG and ICG achieves an average accuracy of 97.2%. All models reveal a decrease in classification accuracies (~13%) when they are not trained and tested under identical emotional conditions. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that integration of ECG and ICG-based features could increase the accuracy of identification compared to a single-signal-based approach. Although certain models show slight robustness to altered emotional state, the effect of the emotion is evident and future selection of cardiogram-based features, as well as biometric models, should consider emotional responses

Improvement of VIS and IR camouflage properties by impregnating cotton fabric with PVB/IF-WS2

In order to examine the possibility to improve its camouflage properties standard cotton fabric with camouflage print was impregnated with poly(vinyl butyral), PVB and fullerene-like nanoparticles of tungsten disulfide, PVB/IF-WS2. FTIR analysis excluded any possible chemical interaction of IF-WS2 with PVB and the fabric. The camouflage behavior of the impregnated fabric has been examined firstly in the VIS part of the spectrum. Diffuse reflection, specular gloss and color coordinates were measured for three different shades (black, brown and dark green). Thermal imaging was applied to examine the camouflage abilities of this impregnation in IR part of the spectrum. The obtained results show that PVB/IF-WS2 impregnation system induced enhacement of the materials camouflage properties, i.e. that IF-WS2 have a positive effect on spectrophotometric characteristics of the fabric. (c) 2020 China Ordnance Society. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co. Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Influence of Implant Impression Methods, Polymer Materials, and Implant Angulation on the Accuracy of Dental Models

The paper presents the influence of impression methods, polymer materials, and implant angulation on the accuracy of the definitive working model for the production of implant-supported dental restorations, based on the analysis of results obtained using different impression methods, materials, and parallel and angulated implants. The study findings indicate that all aforementioned factors impact the accuracy of the definitive working model. Specifically, 20° implant angulation in relation to the vertical plane has a greater impact on the impression accuracy compared to parallel implants. The open and splint method in combination with addition silicone, as well as the splint method and polyether combination yielded more accurate results when using implants under 20° angulation compared to other method and material combinations. The splint method in combination with addition silicone resulted in the smallest mean deviations from the center of the parallel implant base compared to other combinations of methods and materials. Analysis results further revealed statistically significant differences in the measured indicators across impression methods, implants, and polymer materials

Data_Sheet_1_Genome sequence diversity of SARS-CoV-2 in Serbia: insights gained from a 3-year pandemic study.docx

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, has been evolving rapidly causing emergence of new variants and health uncertainties. Monitoring the evolution of the virus was of the utmost importance for public health interventions and the development of national and global mitigation strategies. Here, we report national data on the emergence of new variants, their distribution, and dynamics in a 3-year study conducted from March 2020 to the end of January 2023 in the Republic of Serbia. Nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs from 2,398 COVID-19-positive patients were collected and sequenced using three different next generation technologies: Oxford Nanopore, Ion Torrent, and DNBSeq. In the subset of 2,107 SARS-CoV-2 sequences which met the quality requirements, detection of mutations, assignment to SARS-CoV-2 lineages, and phylogenetic analysis were performed. During the 3-year period, we detected three variants of concern, namely, Alpha (5.6%), Delta (7.4%), and Omicron (70.3%) and one variant of interest—Omicron recombinant “Kraken” (XBB1.5) (<1%), whereas 16.8% of the samples belonged to other SARS-CoV-2 (sub)lineages. The detected SARS-CoV-2 (sub)lineages resulted in eight COVID-19 pandemic waves in Serbia, which correspond to the pandemic waves reported in Europe and the United States. Wave dynamics in Serbia showed the most resemblance with the profile of pandemic waves in southern Europe, consistent with the southeastern European location of Serbia. The samples were assigned to sixteen SARS-CoV-2 Nextstrain clades: 20A, 20B, 20C, 20D, 20E, 20G, 20I, 21J, 21K, 21L, 22A, 22B, 22C, 22D, 22E, and 22F and six different Omicron recombinants (XZ, XAZ, XAS, XBB, XBF, and XBK). The 10 most common mutations detected in the coding and untranslated regions of the SARS-CoV-2 genomes included four mutations affecting the spike protein (S:D614G, S:T478K, S:P681H, and S:S477N) and one mutation at each of the following positions: 5′-untranslated region (5’UTR:241); N protein (N:RG203KR); NSP3 protein (NSP3:F106F); NSP4 protein (NSP4:T492I); NSP6 protein (NSP6: S106/G107/F108 - triple deletion), and NSP12b protein (NSP12b:P314L). This national-level study is the most comprehensive in terms of sequencing and genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 during the pandemic in Serbia, highlighting the importance of establishing and maintaining good national practice for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses circulating worldwide.</p