Interaction and main effects of physical and depressive symptoms on quality of life in Korean women seeking care for rectal prolapse: a cross-sectional observational study

Purpose Rectal prolapse is still a relatively understudied medical condition, especially in women, whereas physical symptoms, depressive symptoms, and quality of life (QOL) in women with pelvic organ prolapse have been steadily studied. This study aimed to examine the interaction and main effects of physical and depressive symptoms on physical and mental QOL of women seeking care for rectal prolapse in Korea. Methods Ninety-two women with rectal prolapse were recruited from a colorectal surgery clinic of a tertiary teaching hospital in Gwangju, Korea. Physical symptoms related to rectal prolapse (pelvic organ prolapse distress, POPD; colorectal-anal distress, CRAD; and urinary distress, UD), depression, and QOL were measured. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient, and two-way analysis of variance. Results The interaction between POPD symptoms and depressive symptoms (F=4.51, p=.037) affected physical QOL. The interaction between POPD (F=9.66, p=.003) and CRAD symptoms (F=7.48, p=.008), respectively, and depressive symptoms affected mental QOL. Depressive symptoms had a significant main effect on the physical QOL in the CRAD (F=6.22, p=.014) and UD (F=6.01, p=.016) groups and on mental QOL in the UD group (F=24.54, p<.001). Conclusion Physical and depressive symptoms should be considered together to improve the QOL in women with rectal prolapse. Nursing interventions and medical treatments to decrease rectal prolapse-related physical and depressive symptoms are required to improve QOL in women with symptomatic rectal prolapse

Accelerated chemical science with AI

In light of the pressing need for practical materials and molecular solutions to renewable energy and health problems, to name just two examples, one wonders how to accelerate research and development in the chemical sciences, so as to address the time it takes to bring materials from initial discovery to commercialization. Artificial intelligence (AI)-based techniques, in particular, are having a transformative and accelerating impact on many if not most, technological domains. To shed light on these questions, the authors and participants gathered in person for the ASLLA Symposium on the theme of ‘Accelerated Chemical Science with AI’ at Gangneung, Republic of Korea. We present the findings, ideas, comments, and often contentious opinions expressed during four panel discussions related to the respective general topics: ‘Data’, ‘New applications’, ‘Machine learning algorithms’, and ‘Education’. All discussions were recorded, transcribed into text using Open AI's Whisper, and summarized using LG AI Research's EXAONE LLM, followed by revision by all authors. For the broader benefit of current researchers, educators in higher education, and academic bodies such as associations, publishers, librarians, and companies, we provide chemistry-specific recommendations and summarize the resulting conclusions

Experimental and computational studies of the production of 1,3-butadiene from 2,3-butanediol using SiO2-supported H3PO4 derivatives

Silica-supported phosphoric acid and metal phosphate catalyzed 1,3-butadiene (BDE) production from 2,3-butanediol (2,3-BDO) was studied using experimental and computational techniques. The catalyst was initially tested in a continuous flow reactor using commercially available 2,3-BDO, leading to maximum BDE yields of 63C%. Quantum chemical mechanistic studies revealed 1,2-epoxybutane is a kinetically viable and thermodynamically stable intermediate, supported by experimental demonstration that this epoxide can be converted to BDE under standard reaction conditions. Newly proposed E2 and SN2′ elementary steps were studied to rationalize the formation of BDE and all detected side-products. Additionally, using quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) calculations, we modeled silica-supported phosphate catalysts to study the effect of the alkali metal center. Natural population analysis showed that phosphate oxygen atoms are more negatively charged in CsH2PO4/SiO2 than in H3PO4/SiO2. In combination with temperature-programmed desorption experiments using CO2, the results of this study suggest that the improved selectivity achieved when adding the metal center is related to an increase in the basicity of the catalyst.R.S.P. and J.V.A.-R. acknowledge the RMACC Summit supercomputer, supported by the NSF (ACI-1532235 and ACI1532236), and the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) allocations TG-CHE180056 and TG-CHE200033. J.V.A.-R. acknowledges financial support through the Gobierno de Aragón-Fondo Social Europeo (Research Group E07_23R) and a Juan de la Cierva Incorporación contract from the Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIN) and the State Research Agency (AEI) of Spain, and the European Union (NextGenerationEU/PRTR) under grant reference IJC2020-044217-I. S.K. acknowledges XSEDE allocation TG-CHE210034 and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Computational Science Center. This work was authored in part by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, managed and operated by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308. Funding was provided by U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office and in collaboration with the Consortium for Computational Physics and Chemistry (CCPC) and the Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy Consortium (ChemCatBio). G.R.H., X.H., F.G.B, K.A.U., B.C.K., R.E.D., and D.R.V. acknowledge funding from the Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy consortium by the Bioenergy Technologies Office in the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Microscopy was performed in collaboration with the Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy Consortium under contract no. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and through a user project supported by ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS), which is sponsored by the Scientific User Facilities Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy. Part of the microscopy research was also supported by the Office of Nuclear Energy, Fuel Cycle R&D Program and the Nuclear Science User Facilities. The results and analysis presented in this paper were partially possible thanks to the access granted to computing resources at the Galicia Supercomputing Center, CESGA, including access to the FinisTerrae supercomputer, the Red Española de Supercomputación (grant number QH-2023-1-0003) and the Drago cluster facility of SGAI-CSIC.Peer reviewe

“It is Non-Summit” and “It is Abnormal” Unpacking Whiteness: Critiquing racialized and gendered representations in Non-Summit (Bijeongsanghoedam).

In this thesis, I focus on a Korean entertainment show Non-Summit as a media text through which to investigate racialized and gendered representations of transnational identities in Korean media. Specifically, I examine discursive strategies through which foreign male characters are racialized and gendered in order to interrogate the hegemonic masculinity of White, Western, and heterosexual identities. On the basis of a critical textual analysis of Non-Summit, I discuss Non-Summit reproduces and distributes representations of White, Western, and heterosexual masculinity as dominant foreign identities. Furthermore, I examine the ideological implications of such discourse on the hegemonic foreign identities given the current condition of multiculturalism in Korean society and context of transnational Whiteness. I found characterization of foreign panelists functions as a process of privileging White, Western, and heterosexual masculinity in Non-Summit. It reveals racialization in Non-Summit is insidiously and complicatedly formed through discourse of liberalism, egalitarianism, and homonationalism as a process of “othering.” Similarly, by connecting egalitarian, liberal, and tolerative identities to White, Western, and heterosexual panelists, who are from European countries, Canada, and the U.S., the hegemonic masculinity is dominantly possessed by Western masculine identities. In addition, the dominant representations of foreign characters reproduce postracial and postgender ideologies that emphasize we live in the raceless and genderless world. However, the ideological message should be critically evaluated and challenged in that Non-Summit is a media space with maintaining the dominant visibility of White, Western, educated, middle-class, and heterosexual masculinity

Photophysical Properties of Spirobifluorene-Based o-Carboranyl Compounds Altered by Structurally Rotating the Carborane Cages

9,9&prime;-Spirobifluorene-based o-carboranyl compounds C1 and C2 were prepared and fully characterized by multinuclear nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and elemental analysis. The solid-state structure of C1 was also determined by single-crystal X-ray diffractometry. The two carboranyl compounds display major absorption bands that are assigned to &pi;&minus;&pi;* transitions involving their spirobifluorene groups, as well as weak intramolecular charge-transfer (ICT) transitions between the o-carboranes and their spirobifluorene groups. While C1 only exhibited high-energy emissions (&lambda;em = ca. 350 nm) in THF at 298 K due to locally excited (LE) states assignable to &pi;&minus;&pi;* transitions involving the spirobifluorene group alone, a remarkable emission in the low-energy region was observed in the rigid state, such as in THF at 77 K or the film state. Furthermore, C2 displays intense dual emissive patterns in both high- and low-energy regions in all states. Electronic transitions that were calculated by time-dependent-DFT (TD-DFT) for each compound based on ground (S0) and first-excited (S1) state optimized structures clearly verify that the low-energy emissions are due to ICT-based radiative decays. Calculated energy barriers that are based on the relative energies associated with changes in the dihedral angle around the o-carborane cages in C1 and C2 clearly reveal that the o-carborane cage in C1 rotates more freely than that in C2. All of the molecular features indicate that ICT-based radiative decay is only available to the rigid state in the absence of structural fluctuations, in particular the free-rotation of the o-carborane cage

On some conditions for the existence of strong Nash equilibrium for multiplayer game

The Nash equilibrium (NE) is known to be a very important solution concept in game theory. However, it is strictly used in a non-cooperative games where no cooperation among the players is allowed. On the other hand, strong Nash equilibrium (SNE) is an appealing solution concept in cooperative games where the players can form coalitions. An SNE must be a Nash equilibrium and at the same time considered to be a Pareto optimal of the game. In this paper, we discuss three conditions for the existence of the strong Nash equilibrium: two necessary conditions and one sufficient condition. Forcing an SNE to be resilient to pure multilateral deviations is one of the necessary conditions. By applying the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions, we provide another necessary but not sufficient condition. Lastly, an NE to be a Pareto efficient with respect to coalition correlated strategies is a sufficient but not necessary condition. Then we introduce the spatial branch-and-bound algorithm for SNE finding which finds a candidate solution and then verifies the candidate whether it is a strong Nash equilibrium or not. An application of the algorithm is also presented to validate the algorithm and to show how it works in the specific game. All of the three discussions are based on the article Algorithms for Strong Nash Equilibrium with More than Two Agents by Gatti, Rocco, and Sandholm [5]

Public’s Experience with an Online Reservation System for Residual COVID-19 Vaccines and the Potential for Increasing the Actual Vaccination Rate

This study aimed to investigate the public’s experience of online reservation of residual COVID-19 vaccines in an additional vaccination program. Online reservation was used to predict the vaccination rate. A sample of 620 participants completed the online survey between July and August 2021. About 38% of the participants made the online reservation. About 91% had a vaccination intention. Online reservations showed significant differences in their distribution according to age group, educational level, past flu shot experience, and COVID-19 vaccination intention. A negative experience was the most common response, which was mostly attributed to the difficulty in making an online reservation due to reservations being full. Positive experiences included updated information and notifications on the residual vaccines available, being able to choose a vaccination clinic, and the ease of making, changing, and canceling a reservation. About 72% reported the positive effect of residual vaccine usage on herd immunity. The results of this study suggest that when developing another online reservation program for vaccination, it is necessary to consider and address the negative experiences of the public with online reservations. The additional vaccinations may have resulted in an increased vaccination rate. Vaccination reservations can be used as an indicator to predict the actual vaccination rate and as a measure of a positive attitude toward COVID-19 vaccination

Information-rich localization microscopy through machine learning.

Recent years have witnessed the development of single-molecule localization microscopy as a generic tool for sampling diverse biologically relevant information at the super-resolution level. While current approaches often rely on the target-specific alteration of the point spread function to encode the multidimensional contents of single fluorophores, the details of the point spread function in an unmodified microscope already contain rich information. Here we introduce a data-driven approach in which artificial neural networks are trained to make a direct link between an experimental point spread function image and its underlying, multidimensional parameters, and compare results with alternative approaches based on maximum likelihood estimation. To demonstrate this concept in real systems, we decipher in fixed cells both the colors and the axial positions of single molecules in regular localization microscopy data

Public–Private Partnership: Participants’ Experiences of the Web-Based Registration-and-Management System for Patients with Hypertension and Diabetes Mellitus

Hypertension and diabetes mellitus, which induce cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, require government intervention. In South Korea, the web-based registration-and-management system for patients with hypertension and diabetes mellitus was operated as a pilot program. This study explored the experiences of the 71 participating medical centers in G city, South Korea, of using the web-based registration-and-management system for preventing and managing hypertension and diabetes mellitus. After the survey, 40 physicians participated in interviews, and the recorded interviews were analyzed and classified into three categories: participation motivation, participation experiences, and suggestions. The study participants participated in a national pilot project with different expectations. Similar to the survey results on participation experiences, the satisfaction from a patient-care perspective was high, but there was an excessive burden of administrative work from the perspective of primary-medical-center operations. In addition, the suggestions included strengthening systematic education, continuous maintenance, broad project application, and improvements to the system. The system needs to be unified and simplified, the project continuity needs to be secured, and the application of the system to other regions and medical centers needs to be considered to induce public–private cooperation to reduce the amount of administrative work, which is currently excessive

The Impact of View Histories on Edit Recommendations

Recommendation systems are intended to increase developer productivity by recommending files to edit. These systems mine association rules in software revision histories. However, mining coarse-grained rules using only edit histories produces recommendations with low accuracy, and can only produce recommendations after a developer edits a file. In this work, we explore the use of finer-grained association rules, based on the insight that view histories help characterize the contexts of files to edit. To leverage this additional context and fine-grained association rules, we have developed MI, a recommendation system extending ROSE, an existing edit-based recommendation system. We then conducted a comparative simulation of ROSE and MI using the interaction histories stored in the Eclipse Bugzilla system. The simulation demonstrates that MI predicts the files to edit with significantly higher recommendation accuracy than ROSE (about 63 over 35 percent), and makes recommendations earlier, often before developers begin editing. Our results clearly demonstrate the value of considering both views and edits in systems to recommend files to edit, and results in more accurate, earlier, and more flexible recommendations