Real bad grammar: realistic grammatical description with grammaticality

Sampson (this issue) argues for a concept of “realistic grammatical description” in which the distinction between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences is irrelevant. In this article I also argue for a concept of “realistic grammatical description” but one in which a binary distinction between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences is maintained. In distinguishing between the grammatical and ungrammatical, this kind of grammar differs from that proposed by Sampson, but it does share the important property that invented sentences have no role to play, either as positive or negative evidence

The intrafamilial transmission of rheumatoid arthritis--V : Differences between rheumatoid arthritics and controls on selected personality variables

This study describes the differences between adult rheumatoid arthritics (RA's) and controls on a number of personality variables. The cases come both from a national interview sample and a university arthritis clinic, while the controls were part of a cluster which included the spouse of the RA, the RA's sib and his (her) spouse, a cousin of the RA, and an unrelated individual. The data were collected in the course of three structured interviews. The major findings were the following: 1. (1) RA's of both sexes score higher on several measures of poor mental health than the non-RA's. For the women, these differences are stronger and involve more diverse aspects of poor mental health.2. (2) Women with RA report more frequent anger-irritation and more frequent impulses to overt aggression than women without RA. Involved in these differences are scales reflecting both general anger-aggression and that which is directed at the husband.3. (3) Men with RA, compared with healthy men, report less frequent impulses to general overt aggression, less wife-directed aggression, stronger guilt about such aggression, and their anger episodes were of longer duration.4. (4) When a difference score was computed between two scales, frequency of impulses to overt aggression and frequency of actual aggressive acts, women with RA, compared with healthy women, showed stronger control over the expression of such impulses, but seemed unable to apply the control to all types of aggressive impulses equally.5. (5) Women with RA were unduly frequently found above median on `guilt about spouse-directed aggression' and above median on several measures of husband directed anger-aggression. It was suggested that this might indicate greater conflict among the RA women.6. (6) Comparing general and spouse-specific measures of overt aggression, (a) women with RA `preferred' to direct their aggression at their husbands more than healthy women; while (b) men with RA `avoided' directing their aggression at their wives more often than healthy men.7. (7) When husbands' self-reports of wife-directed anger-aggression were correlated with wives' self-reports of husband-directed anger-aggression, the associations were positive and moderate to strong.8. (8) Marriages of RA wives and healthy husbands were highest on mutually directed anger-aggression; marriages of RA husbands and healthy wives were the lowest, while the healthy husbands-healthy wives marriages were intermediate.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/32908/1/0000288.pd

Integrating health intervention into existing program structure of the neglected tropical diseases: lessons learned from Yobe and Ebonyi states

BackgroundNigeria has a national policy on neglected tropical diseases (NTD) which is coordinated by the Federal Ministry of Health and integrated into the health system at all government levels. A network of grassroots mobilizers, named community drug distributors (CDDs), deliver NTD drugs and commodities to rural and hard-to-reach communities throughout Nigeria.MethodsInterviews with state and local government coordinators of Nigerian NTD programs and focus group discussions with CDDs in Yobe and Ebonyi states were conducted to understand the working modalities of NTD programs in Nigeria to identify the potential of leveraging the NTD structure for additional health interventions such as COVID-19 vaccine rollouts. Collected data was coded and managed on NVivo version 12 using content analysis.Results and discussionThe study found that the NTD committee had the following: a structured planning and coordination process, a community mobilization approach for the effective delivery of routine Mass Administration of Medication (MAM) activities. Challenges encountered included little or no incentives for the CDDs, insecurity, transportation and logistics, and lack of equipment and drug commodities. Nigerian NTD health structures have a wide reach, with a presence in all states and local government areas (LGAs), and this has previously been leveraged to deliver commodities and interventions to rural and hard-to-reach communities for non-NTD health programs and could thus be used similarly for COVID-19 vaccination programs. The enablers of integrating health interventions into the NTD structure are increased availability of finances and manpower, while lack of financial incentives and partners’ buy-in were identified as possible. challenges.ConclusionThe study suggests that integrating COVID-19 interventions into the NTD program in Nigeria would be a significant accomplishment, as the existing structure can support future interventions. The study also highlights the efficiency of the NTD program’s modalities and processes, indicating that an organized structural system for public health interventions can. increase the services of existing interventions while allowing for the integration of future interventions

The intrafamilial transmission of rheumatoid arthritis--VI : Association of rheumatoid arthritis with several types of status inconsistency

This study examines the relationship of 2 focal variables, rheumatoid arthritis and self-esteem, to several types of status inconsistency: that of the parents, of the respondents themselves, and of the respondents' marriage. The RA cases came both from a national interview sample and a university arthritis clinic. Ths subjects without RA were part of a cluster which included the spouse of the RA, the RA's sib and his (her) spouse, a cousin of the RA, and an unrelated individual. The data were collected in the course of three structured interviews: The major findings were as follows: 1. (1) Women with RA are more likely to come from families where the parents' marriage is status discrepant and the father is incongruent on education vs. occupation.2. (2) Men with RA are somewhat less likely to come from such status inconsistent families, while the frequency of men with PU was unrelated to parental inconsistency.3. (3) Both men and women from status inconsistent families report lower self-esteem when describing themselves as adults.4. (4) Several forms of status incongruence of the respondents themselves bore no relationship to RA in women and to RA or PU in men.5. (5) Status incongruent men whose education was `inappropriately' high in relation to their occupation or to their perceived social class (PSC) were particularly low on self-esteem, while congruent men were generally the highest.6. (6) Status incongruent women had the lowest self-esteem if their education exceeded their perceived social class, but highest self-esteem if their social class exceeded their education while congruent women were intermediate but closer to the latter group.7. (7) Marriages where both spouses were healthy were less likely to be status discrepant than those marriages where one or the other of the spouses had RA.8. (8) Wives in status discrepant marriages were more likely to have low self-esteem and more depression than wives where little or no discrepancy existed. The associations for the husbands were in the same direction but not significant.9. (9) Status discrepant marriages were higher on marital hostility.10. (10) Healthy husbands who were themselves status incongruent were more likely to have wives with RA than healthy husbands who were status congruent. Such wives had also lower self-esteem.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/32909/1/0000289.pd

EGFR T790M Mutation as a Possible Target for Immunotherapy; Identification of HLA-A*0201-Restricted T Cell Epitopes Derived from the EGFR T790M Mutation

Treatment with epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs), such as gefitinib and erlotinib, has achieved high clinical response rates in patients with non–small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs). However, over time, most tumors develop acquired resistance to EGFR-TKIs, which is associated with the secondary EGFR T790M resistance mutation in about half the cases. Currently there are no effective treatment options for patients with this resistance mutation. Here we identified two novel HLA-A*0201 (A2)-restricted T cell epitopes containing the mutated methionine residue of the EGFR T790M mutation, T790M-5 (MQLMPFGCLL) and T790M-7 (LIMQLMPFGCL), as potential targets for EGFR-TKI-resistant patients. When peripheral blood cells were repeatedly stimulated in vitro with these two peptides and assessed by antigen-specific IFN-γ secretion, T cell lines responsive to T790M-5 and T790M-7 were established in 5 of 6 (83%) and 3 of 6 (50%) healthy donors, respectively. Additionally, the T790M-5- and T790M-7-specific T cell lines displayed an MHC class I-restricted reactivity against NSCLC cell lines expressing both HLA-A2 and the T790M mutation. Interestingly, the NSCLC patients with antigen-specific T cell responses to these epitopes showed a significantly less frequency of EGFR-T790M mutation than those without them [1 of 7 (14%) vs 9 of 15 (60%); chi-squared test, p = 0.0449], indicating the negative correlation between the immune responses to the EGFR-T790M-derived epitopes and the presence of EGFR-T790M mutation in NSCLC patients. This finding could possibly be explained by the hypothesis that immune responses to the mutated neo-antigens derived from T790M might prevent the emergence of tumor cell variants with the T790M resistance mutation in NSCLC patients during EGFR-TKI treatment. Together, our results suggest that the identified T cell epitopes might provide a novel immunotherapeutic approach for prevention and/or treatment of EGFR-TKI resistance with the secondary EGFR T790M resistance mutation in NSCLC patients

Computational Analysis of HLA-presentation of Non-synonymous Recipient Mismatches Indicates Effect on the Risk of Chronic Graft-vs.-Host Disease After Allogeneic HSCT

Genetic mismatches in protein coding genes between allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) recipient and donor can elicit an alloimmunity response via peptides presented by the recipient HLA receptors as minor histocompatibility antigens (mHAs). While the impact of individual mHAs on allo-HSCT outcome such as graft-vs.-host and graft-vs.-leukemia effects has been demonstrated, it is likely that established mHAs constitute only a small fraction of all immunogenic non-synonymous variants. In the present study, we have analyzed the genetic mismatching in 157 exome-sequenced sibling allo-HSCT pairs to evaluate the significance of polymorphic HLA class I associated peptides on clinical outcome. We applied computational mismatch estimation approaches based on experimentally verified HLA ligands available in public repositories, published mHAs, and predicted HLA-peptide affinites, and analyzed their associations with chronic graft-vs.-host disease (cGvHD) grades. We found that higher estimated recipient mismatching consistently increased the risk of severe cGvHD, suggesting that HLA-presented mismatching influences the likelihood of long-term complications in the patient. Furthermore, computational approaches focusing on estimation of HLA-presentation instead of all non-synonymous mismatches indiscriminately may be beneficial for analysis sensitivity and could help identify novel mHAs.Peer reviewe

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Physical and mental health correlates of status incongruence

The report explored the relationship between status incongruence, the degree of similarity of rankings on paired status variables, and diverse interview-based measures of physical and mental health. The subjects in the study were some 169 adult men; one half of them came from a national survey sample, while the other half represented an arthritis clinic sample with patients and controls. Data on education, occupation, income, and perceived social class (PSC) were used to construct several status incongruence indices. The major findings were: 1. Neither rheumatoid arthritis nor ulcer were related to status incongruence. 2. Education-occupation incongruence showed by far the strongest association with poor mental health. Among the two types of incongruence, education > occupation and occupation > education, the former had particularly poor mental health. 3. Education-PSC, occupation-PSC, education-income, and occupation-income types of incongruence showed weaker associations. Direction of incongruence made a difference in the education-PSC comparison: the education > PSC incongruent group had poorer mental health than the PSC > education incongruent group. Ce rapport étudie la relation entre la discordance du status («status incongruence»), le degré de similitude d'évaluation de variables couplées du status et diverses mesures de la santé physique et mentale basées sur des interviews. Les sujets de l'étude étaient 169 hommes adultes dont la moitié provenait d'un échantillon d'une investigation nationale, tandis que l'autre moitié représentait un échantillon d'une clinique d'arthritiques avec des patients et des cas de contrôle. Des données sur l'éducation, l'occupation, le revenu et la classe sociale (perceived social class = PSC) furent utilisées pour l'élaboration de divers indices de discordance de status. Les résultats principaux furent: 1) Ni l'arthrite rhumatoïde ni l'ulcère n'étaient reliés à la discordance du status. 2) La discordance éducation-occupation était de loin la plus étroitement associée à une santé mentale défaillante. Parmi les deux types de discordance, éducation > occupation et occupation > éducation, le premier était caractérisé par une santé mentale particulièrement mauvaise. 3) Les types de discordance éducation-PSC, occupation-PSC, éducation-revenu et occupationrevenu étaient plus faiblement associés. La direction de la discordance faisait une différence dans la comparaison éducationPSC: le groupe de discordance éducation > PSC se distinguait par une santé mentale moins bonne que le groupe de discordance PSC > éducation. Der Bericht gibt die Untersuchung der Beziehung zwischen der Unausgeglichenheit innerhalb des Sozialstands, dem Ausmaß der Ähnlichkeit von Einstufungen durch vorgegebene Gegensatzpaare von Statusmerkmalen und verschiedenen, auf Interviewbasis begründeten Einschätzungen der körperlichen und seelischen Gesundheit wieder. Die Probanden der Studie waren 169 erwachsene Männer; die Hälfte von ihnen stammte aus einer staatlichen Begutachtungsgruppe, die andere Hälfte verkörperten Patienten und Kontrollpersonen aus einer Arthritisklinik. Daten über Erziehung, Beruf, Einkommen und beurteilte Sozialklasse (perceived social class = PSC) wurden verwandt, um mehrere Indices für Statusinkongruenz zu bilden. Die Hauptergebnisse waren: 1) Weder rheumatische Arthritis noch Ulcus standen in Beziehung mit Statusinkongruenz. 2) Ein Mißverhältnis zwischen Erziehung und Beruf zeigte bei weitem die engste Beziehung zu schlechter seelischer Gesundheit. Von den beiden Inkongruenztypen, Erziehung > Beruf und Beruf > Erziehung, hatte der erste eine besonders schlechte seelische Gesundheit. 3) Mißverhältnisse zwischen Erziehung und PSC, Beruf und PSC, Erziehung und Einkommen und Beruf und Einkommen zeigten schwächere Beziehungen. Die Richtung der Inkongruenz bewirkte einen Unterschied im Vergleich zwischen Erziehung und PSC: die inkongruente Gruppe Erziehung > PSC war bei schlechterer seelischer Gesundheit als die inkongruente Gruppe PSC > Erziehung.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41742/1/127_2004_Article_BF00584107.pd

2012 ACCF/AHA/ACP/AATS/PCNA/SCAI/STS guideline for the diagnosis and management of patients with stable ischemic heart disease

The recommendations listed in this document are, whenever possible, evidence based. An extensive evidence review was conducted as the document was compiled through December 2008. Repeated literature searches were performed by the guideline development staff and writing committee members as new issues were considered. New clinical trials published in peer-reviewed journals and articles through December 2011 were also reviewed and incorporated when relevant. Furthermore, because of the extended development time period for this guideline, peer review comments indicated that the sections focused on imaging technologies required additional updating, which occurred during 2011. Therefore, the evidence review for the imaging sections includes published literature through December 2011

Addressing barriers to accessing family planning services using mobile technology intervention among internally displaced persons in Abuja, NigeriaAJOG Global Reports at a Glance

BACKGROUND: Inadequate access to sexual and reproductive health services is prevalent among women of reproductive age in internally displaced people's camps. To address this, we implemented a mobile technology intervention, known as the Linking Underserved Populations to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services, in the Wassa Internally Displaced People's camp, Abuja, Nigeria. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to assess the impact of the Linking Underserved Populations to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services Intervention in improving sexual and reproductive health services among women of reproductive age in Wassa Internally Displaced People's camp. STUDY DESIGN: A baseline survey was conducted among 105 women of reproductive age in the Wassa camp, followed by the deployment of the Linking Underserved Populations to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services intervention, which delivered family planning messages to camp residents between September 2020 and June 2021. This was followed by an endline survey. The FP utilization data in the camp health post were mined during the period of the intervention and were analyzed using Stata version 15 with a chi-square test performed at a significance level of 5%. RESULTS: Awareness of family planning among women of reproductive age in Wassa camp increased from 54.2% at baseline to 98% at endline. The major reason for refusal of family planning at baseline, which was a lack of spousal consent reduced from 29.5% to 7% at endline. Contraceptive prevalence rate increased from 18.1% at baseline to 26.2% at endline. In addition, 133 new family planning users were recorded at the endline. The uptake of family planning services recorded a strong association with family planning consultations (P<.05; χ2=6.41) and receipt of bulk short message service (P<.05; χ2=4.90). CONCLUSION: Mobile technology interventions are a recommended strategy that can increase family planning awareness and address barriers to family planning uptake