Innovative Pedagogical Strategies in Health Professions Education: Active Learning in Dental Materials Science.

Dental materials science education is frequently delivered via traditional didactic lectures in preclinical dental programs. This review aimed to appraise the current evidence on innovative pedagogical strategies in teaching dental materials science courses. English-language articles on teaching methods for dental materials science published between January 1990 to October 2022 were searched in nine online databases (Google Scholar, PubMed, Web of Science [WoS], Science Direct, Cochrane Library, EBSCO, LILACS, Open Grey, and EMBASE) according to PRISMA guidelines. The risk of bias (RoB) was assessed using the Cochrane RoB-2 and ROBIN-I tools, whereas the level of evidence was determined based on the OCEBM guidelines. Only 12 primary studies were included. Two randomized studies (RCTs) were deemed as being of "some concern", and one showed a high risk of bias (RoB). Three non-randomized controlled studies (NRS) demonstrated a moderate RoB, whereas the remaining seven were low. Most studies were ranked at Levels 2 and 3 of evidence. Several innovative pedagogical strategies were identified: flipped classrooms, clinical-based learning, computer-assisted learning, group discussion, microteaching with the BOPPPS (bridge-in, learning objective, pre-test, participatory learning, post-test, and summary) model, and game-based learning. The evidence suggested that students generally showed positive perceptions toward these pedagogical strategies. Dental educators should revise their current undergraduate dental materials science curricula and integrate more effective teaching methods

The future of the food supply chain: a systematic literature review and research directions towards sustainability, resilience, and technology adoption

In recent years, our food supply chain facing various disruptions shows a need for higher resilience and sustainability. To better prepare for future uncertainties the food supply chain may encounter, it is imperative to understand the status quo of the food supply chain resilience literature, which focuses on deploying digital technology and integrating sustainability in supply chain management. Motivated by this, our study critically reviews the literature on food supply chain resilience against different types of disruptions, identifies research gaps, and provides a reference for the food supply chain to respond to uncertainties more effectively through digital technology and sustainability integration. To fulfil this objective, we perform a systematic literature review of academic journal articles from 2010 to 2020. Our study is novel in investigating different potential strategies to respond to various disruptions, emphasising the role of digital technologies and sustainability. The findings complement existing literature on supply chain resilience and serve as guides to supply chain practitioners facing disruptions. In addition, we investigate possible ways of adopting and optimising digital technologies to enhance food supply chain resilience and indicate areas where a sustainable future can be achieved through a more resilient food supply chain powered by digital innovations

Redox-responsive nanoplatform for codelivery of miR-519c and gemcitabine for pancreatic cancer therapy

Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved. Desmoplastic and hypoxic pancreatic cancer microenvironment induces aberrant expression of miRNAs and hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) responsible for gemcitabine (GEM) resistance. We demonstrated that miR-519c was down-regulated in pancreatic cancer and transfection of miR-519c in GEM-resistant pancreatic cancer cells inhibited HIF-1α level under hypoxia. We synthesized redox-sensitive mPEG-co-P(Asp)-g-DC-g-S-S-GEM polymer, with GEM payload of 14% (w/w) and 90% GEM release upon incubation with l-glutathione. We synthesized mPEGco- P(Asp)-g-TEPA-g-DC for complex formation with miRNA. Chemical modification of miR-519c with 2\u27-O-methyl phosphorothioate (OMe-PS) at 3\u27 end enhanced its stability and activity without being immunogenic. Epidermal growth factor receptor targeting peptide GE11 decoration increased tumor accumulation of micelles after systemic administration and significantly inhibited orthotopic desmoplastic pancreatic cancer growth in NSG mice by down-regulating HIF-1α and genes responsible for glucose uptake and cancer cell metabolism. Our multifunctional nanomedicine of GEM and OMe-PS-miR-519c offers a novel therapeutic strategy to treat desmoplasia and hypoxia-induced chemoresistance in pancreatic cancer

Randomized Benchmarking of Multi-Qubit Gates

As experimental platforms for quantum information processing continue to mature, characterization of the quality of unitary gates that can be applied to their quantum bits (qubits) becomes essential. Eventually, the quality must be sufficiently high to support arbitrarily long quantum computations. Randomized benchmarking already provides a platform-independent method for assessing the quality of one-qubit rotations. Here we describe an extension of this method to multi-qubit gates. We provide a platform-independent protocol for evaluating the performance of experimental Clifford unitaries, which form the basis of fault-tolerant quantum computing. We implemented the benchmarking protocol with trapped-ion two-qubit phase gates and one-qubit gates and found an error per random two-qubit Clifford unitary of $0.162 \pm 0.008$, thus setting the first benchmark for such unitaries. By implementing a second set of sequences with an extra two-qubit phase gate at each step, we extracted an error per phase gate of $0.069 \pm 0.017$. We conducted these experiments with movable, sympathetically cooled ions in a multi-zone Paul trap - a system that can in principle be scaled to larger numbers of ions.Comment: Corrected description of parallel single-qubit benchmark experiment. Results unchange

Improving the Clinical Diagnosis of Influenza—a Comparative Analysis of New Influenza A (H1N1) Cases

BACKGROUND: The presentation of new influenza A(H1N1) is broad and evolving as it continues to affect different geographic locations and populations. To improve the accuracy of predicting influenza infection in an outpatient setting, we undertook a comparative analysis of H1N1(2009), seasonal influenza, and persons with acute respiratory illness (ARI) in an outpatient setting. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Comparative analyses of one hundred non-matched cases each of PCR confirmed H1N1(2009), seasonal influenza, and ARI cases. Multivariate analysis was performed to look for predictors of influenza infection. Receiver operating characteristic curves were constructed for various combinations of clinical and laboratory case definitions. The initial clinical and laboratory features of H1N1(2009) and seasonal influenza were similar. Among ARI cases, fever, cough, headache, rhinorrhea, the absence of leukocytosis, and a normal chest radiograph positively predict for both PCR-confirmed H1N1-2009 and seasonal influenza infection. The sensitivity and specificity of current WHO and CDC influenza-like illness (ILI) criteria were modest in predicting influenza infection. However, the combination of WHO ILI criteria with the absence of leukocytosis greatly improved the accuracy of diagnosing H1N1(2009) and seasonal influenza (positive LR of 7.8 (95%CI 3.5-17.5) and 9.2 (95%CI 4.1-20.3) respectively). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The clinical presentation of H1N1(2009) infection is largely indistinguishable from that of seasonal influenza. Among patients with acute respiratory illness, features such as a temperature greater than 38 degrees C, rhinorrhea, a normal chest radiograph, and the absence of leukocytosis or significant gastrointestinal symptoms were all positively associated with H1N1(2009) and seasonal influenza infection. An enhanced ILI criteria that combines both a symptom complex with the absence of leukocytosis on testing can improve the accuracy of predicting both seasonal and H1N1-2009 influenza infection

Plastome phylogenomics and morphological traits analyses provide new insights into the phylogenetic position, species delimitation and speciation of Triplostegia (Caprifoliaceae)

Background The genus Triplostegia contains two recognized species, T. glandulifera and T. grandifora, but its phylogenetic position and species delimitation remain controversial. In this study, we assembled plastid genomes and nuclear ribosomal DNA (nrDNA) cistrons sampled from 22 wild Triplostegia individuals, each from a separate population, and examined these with 11 recently published Triplostegia plastomes. Morphological traits were measured from herbarium specimens and wild material, and ecological niche models were constructed. Results Triplostegia is a monophyletic genus within the subfamily Dipsacoideae comprising three monophyletic species, T. glandulifera, T. grandifora, and an unrecognized species Triplostegia sp. A, which occupies much higher altitude than the other two. The new species had previously been misidentifed as T. glandulifera, but difers in taproot, leaf, and other characters. Triplotegia is an old genus, with stem age 39.96Ma, and within it T. glandulifera diverged 7.94Ma. Triplostegia grandifora and sp. A diverged 1.05Ma, perhaps in response to Quaternary climate fuctuations. Niche overlap between Triplostegia species was positively correlated with their phylogenetic relatedness. Conclusions Our results provide new insights into the species delimitation of Triplostegia, and indicate that a taxonomic revision of Triplostegia is needed. We also identifed that either rpoB-trnC or ycf1 could serve as a DNA barcode for Triplostegi

A Privacy-Preserved Analytical Method for eHealth Database with Minimized Information Loss

Digitizing medical information is an emerging trend that employs information and communication technology (ICT) to manage health records, diagnostic reports, and other medical data more effectively, in order to improve the overall quality of medical services. However, medical information is highly confidential and involves private information, even legitimate access to data raises privacy concerns. Medical records provide health information on an as-needed basis for diagnosis and treatment, and the information is also important for medical research and other health management applications. Traditional privacy risk management systems have focused on reducing reidentification risk, and they do not consider information loss. In addition, such systems cannot identify and isolate data that carries high risk of privacy violations. This paper proposes the Hiatus Tailor (HT) system, which ensures low re-identification risk for medical records, while providing more authenticated information to database users and identifying high-risk data in the database for better system management. The experimental results demonstrate that the HT system achieves much lower information loss than traditional risk management methods, with the same risk of reidentification