Characterization of Three-Dimensional Spatial Aggregation and Association Patterns of Brown Rot Symptoms within Intensively Mapped Sour Cherry Trees

Characterization of spatial patterns of plant disease can provide insights into important epidemiological processes such as sources of inoculum, mechanisms of dissemination, and reproductive strategies of the pathogen population. While two-dimensional patterns of disease (among plants within fields) have been studied extensively, there is limited information on three-dimensional patterns within individual plant canopies. Reported here are the detailed mapping of different symptom types of brown rot (caused by Monilinia laxa) in individual sour cherry tree (Prunus cerasus) canopies, and the application of spatial statistics to the resulting data points to de-termine patterns of symptom aggregation and association. Methods – A magnetic digitizer was uti-lized to create detailed three-dimensional maps of three symptom types (blossom blight, shoot blight, and twig canker) in eight sour cherry tree canopies during the green fruit stage of develop-ment. The resulting point patterns were analyzed for aggregation (within a given symptom type) and pairwise association (between symptom types) using a three-dimensional extension of nearest-neighbor analysis. Key Results – Symptoms of M. laxa infection were generally aggregated within the canopy volume, but there was no consistent pattern for one symptom type to be more or less aggre-gated than the other. Analysis of spatial association among symptom types indicated that previous year’s twig cankers may play an important role in influencing the spatial pattern of current year’s symptoms. This observation provides quantitative support for the epidemiological role of twig can-kers as sources of primary inoculum within the tree. Conclusions – Presented here is a new approach to quantify spatial patterns of plant disease in complex fruit tree canopies using point pattern anal-ysis. This work provides a framework for quantitative analysis of three-dimensional spatial patterns within the finite tree canopy, applicable to many fields of research

An Investigation of Value Updating Bidders in Simultaneous Online Art Auctions

Simultaneous online auctions, in which the auction of all items being sold starts at the same time and ends at the same time, are becoming popular especially in selling items such as collectables and art pieces. In this paper, we analyze the characteristics of bidders (Reactors) in simultaneous auctions who update their preauction value of an item in the presence of influencing bidders (Influencers). We represent an auction as a network of bidders where the nodes represent the bidders participating in the auction and the ties between them represent an Influencer-Reactor relationship. We further develop a random effects bilinear model that is capable of handling covariates of both bidder types at the same time and account for higher-order dependence among the bidders during the auction. Using the model and data from a Modern Indian Art auction, we find that Reactors tend to update their values on items that have high preauction estimates, bid on items created by high investment risk artists, bid selectively only on certain items, and are more active in the second half of the auction. Implications for the auction house managers are discussed

Advancing patient-centric care: integrating patient reported outcomes for tolerability assessment in early phase clinical trials – insights from an expert virtual roundtable

Early phase clinical trials provide an initial evaluation of therapies’ risks and benefits to patients, including safety and tolerability, which typically relies on reporting outcomes by investigator and laboratory assessments. Use of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) to inform risks (tolerability) and benefits (improvement in disease symptoms) is more common in later than early phase trials. We convened a two-day expert roundtable covering: (1) the necessity and feasibility of a universal PRO core conceptual model for early phase trials; (2) the practical integration of PROs in early phase trials to inform tolerability assessment, guide dose decisions, or as real-time safety alerts to enhance investigator-reported adverse events. Participants (n = 22) included: patient advocates, regulators, clinicians, statisticians, pharmaceutical representatives, and PRO methodologists working across diverse clinical areas. In this manuscript, we report major recommendations resulting from the roundtable discussions corresponding to each theme. Additionally, we highlight priority areas necessitating further investigation

Garotas de loja, história social e teoria social [Shop Girls, Social History and Social Theory]

Shop workers, most of them women, have made up a significant proportion of Britain’s labour force since the 1850s but we still know relatively little about their history. This article argues that there has been a systematic neglect of one of the largest sectors of female employment by historians and investigates why this might be. It suggests that this neglect is connected to framings of work that have overlooked the service sector as a whole as well as to a continuing unease with the consumer society’s transformation of social life. One element of that transformation was the rise of new forms of aesthetic, emotional and sexualised labour. Certain kinds of ‘shop girls’ embodied these in spectacular fashion. As a result, they became enduring icons of mass consumption, simultaneously dismissed as passive cultural dupes or punished as powerful agents of cultural destruction. This article interweaves the social history of everyday shop workers with shifting representations of the ‘shop girl’, from Victorian music hall parodies, through modernist social theory, to the bizarre bombing of the Biba boutique in London by the Angry Brigade on May Day 1971. It concludes that progressive historians have much to gain by reclaiming these workers and the service economy that they helped create

HelexKids:a word frequency database for Greek and Cypriot primary school children

In this article, we introduce HelexKids, an online written-word database for Greek-speaking children in primary education (Grades 1 to 6). The database is organized on a grade-by-grade basis, and on a cumulative basis by combining Grade 1 with Grades 2 to 6. It provides values for Zipf, frequency per million, dispersion, estimated word frequency per million, standard word frequency, contextual diversity, orthographic Levenshtein distance, and lemma frequency. These values are derived from 116 textbooks used in primary education in Greece and Cyprus, producing a total of 68,692 different word types. HelexKids was developed to assist researchers in studying language development, educators in selecting age-appropriate items for teaching, as well as writers and authors of educational books for Greek/Cypriot children. The database is open access and can be searched online at www.helexkids.org

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570

Model County-level Poverty Rate in Georgia Using Spatial Analysis Method

Conditionally Auto-regression is employed to investigate the determinants of countylevel poverty rates in Georgia 2011, and also examine whether those poverty rates are spatial correlated. The results indicate that annual income, white person percent, and elder percent have positive effects, while there is no significant spatial correlation