Latent profiles of resilience and associations with quality of life in head and neck cancer patients undergoing proton and heavy ion therapy

BackgroundPsychological resilience is the most important psychological protection factor for cancer patients in the face of tumors and treatment. However, few studies have performed meaningful latent profile analyses of resilience to identify unobserved subgroups of head and neck cancer patients.PurposeThe purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of resilience in head and neck cancer patients using latent profile analysis (LPA) to determine the sociodemographic and disease characteristics of each profile. In particular, we examined the association of different resilience profiles with the quality of life of head and neck cancer patients.MethodsA total of 254 head and neck cancer patients completed a demographic questionnaire, the Resilience Scale Specific to Cancer and the EOTRC QLQ-C3O, used to assess their resilience and quality of life.ResultsLPA identified three distinct profiles based on varying levels of resilience: “low resilience” group (n = 45; 17.72%), “moderate resilience” group (n = 113; 44.49%), and “high resilience” group (n = 96; 37.80%). Gender (χ2 = 6.20; p < 0.01), education level (χ2 = 1,812.59; p < 0.01), treatment regimen (χ2 = 6.32; p < 0.01), tumor stage (χ2 = 3.92; p ≤ 0.05), and initial recurrence (χ2 = 5.13; p < 0.05) were important predictors. High resilience was significantly related to higher quality of life (χ2 = 15.694; p < 0.001).ConclusionsHead and neck cancer patients’ psychological resilience can be categorized as three resilience profiles; those who are female and have a low education level tend to have lower psychological resilience. Low resilience in patients is linked to poor role function and social function, low quality of life, and more severe pain symptoms, highlighting the need to address resilience in patient care for improved wellbeing

Fully Probabilistic Analysis of FRP-to-Concrete Bonded Joints Considering Model Uncertainty

This work presents a full reliability-based analysis framework for fiber-reinforced polymer(FRP)-to-concrete bonded joints considering model uncertainty. Eight frequently used bond strength models for FRP-to-concrete bonded joints were calibrated by defining a model factor. A total of 641 well-documented tests were considered. Four of the eight models had model factors that correlated with input design parameters and the systematic part of the model factor was removed by a regression equation f. By doing this type of characterization, all eight model factors could be comparatively uniform and described by lognormally distributed random variables. The merit of the uniform model uncertainties after calibration for the eight models was established by the reliability analysis. This study improves the predictability of concrete strengthened with fiber composites and provides useful suggestions on their model uncertainties in engineering practice

ActionPrompt: Action-Guided 3D Human Pose Estimation With Text and Pose Prompting

Recent 2D-to-3D human pose estimation (HPE) utilizes temporal consistency across sequences to alleviate the depth ambiguity problem but ignore the action related prior knowledge hidden in the pose sequence. In this paper, we propose a plug-and-play module named Action Prompt Module (APM) that effectively mines different kinds of action clues for 3D HPE. The highlight is that, the mining scheme of APM can be widely adapted to different frameworks and bring consistent benefits. Specifically, we first present a novel Action-related Text Prompt module (ATP) that directly embeds action labels and transfers the rich language information in the label to the pose sequence. Besides, we further introduce Action-specific Pose Prompt module (APP) to mine the position-aware pose pattern of each action, and exploit the correlation between the mined patterns and input pose sequence for further pose refinement. Experiments show that APM can improve the performance of most video-based 2D-to-3D HPE frameworks by a large margin.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 2023ICM

Exploring the experience of meaning-centered group psychotherapy among Chinese cancer patients during active treatment: a descriptive qualitative study

ObjectiveMeaninglessness poses a significant psychological challenge for cancer patients, negatively affecting their quality of life and increasing the risk of suicide. Meaning-Centered Group Therapy (MCGP) is an intervention designed specifically to enhance the meaning of life of cancer patients. Extensive research has documented its effectiveness across various cultures and populations. However, limited research has been conducted on the subjective experiences and perspectives of participants engaged in MCGP. Thus, the purpose of this study was to employ a qualitative design to explore the experiences and viewpoints of Chinese cancer patients who have undergone MCGP.MethodsWithin a two-week timeframe following the conclusion of MCGP, semi-structured interviews were administered to twenty-one participants who had engaged in the therapy. The interview data were transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis.ResultsFour main themes were identified: (a) Self-perceived personal change, (b) Overall experience of group therapy, (c) Barriers to participation of MCGP, and (d) Suggestions for future interventions.ConclusionDespite the barriers to participation in the MCGP process, the overall experience for Chinese cancer patients undergoing active treatment is valuable and positive, providing multiple benefits. Future studies could explore the adaptation of MCGP to a broader range of cancer populations and diverse study populations

Ultralong nitrogen/sulfur Co‐doped carbon nano‐hollow‐sphere chains with encapsulated cobalt nanoparticles for highly efficient oxygen electrocatalysis

The development of simple and effective strategies to prepare electrocatalysts, which possess unique and stable structures comprised of metal/nonmetallic atoms for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), is currently an urgent issue. Herein, an efficient bifunctional electrocatalyst featured by ultralong N, S-doped carbon nano-hollow-sphere chains about 1300 nm with encapsulated Co nanoparticles (Co-CNHSCs) is developed. The multifunctional catalytic properties of Co together with the heteroatom-induced charge redistribution (i.e., modulating the electronic structure of the active site) result in superior catalytic activities toward OER and ORR in alkaline media. The optimized catalyst Co-CNHSC-3 displays an outstanding electrocatalytic ability for ORR and OER, a high specific capacity of 1023.6 mAh gZn−1, and excellent reversibility after 80 h at 10 mA cm−2 in a Zn-air battery system. This work presents a new strategy for the design and synthesis of efficient multifunctional carbon-based catalysts for energy storage and conversion devices

Chatter suppression in large overhang face milling using a toolholder with high dynamic performance

There is increasing demand for the large overhang toolholder to machine certain workpieces with complex cavities during milling operation, but this kind of toolholder may bring an undesired source of chatter. This paper develops a novel toolholder with high dynamic performance to suppress chatter. Firstly, the dynamics of the milling cutter are investigated according to the cantilever beam theory. The obtained analysis result shows that the increasing stiffness and damping ratio can effectively reduce the vibration amplitude; based on this finding, a novel toolholder is developed through embedding the strips and damping core into the toolholder body. Subsequently, the dynamic characteristic of the novel toolholder is studied qualitatively by the complex number method, and its geometrical parameters are optimized by the finite element method. Finally, modal tests and milling experiments are conducted to verify the chatter stability improvement of the novel toolholder. The experimental results demonstrate that the chatter stability of the developed toolholder is enhanced significantly

Development of a toolholder with high dynamic stiffness for mitigating chatter and improving efficiency in face milling

The toolholder featuring large ratio of length to diameter and variable corss-sections is required to achieve some special machining tasks in face milling operation, whereas the chatter phenomenon can easily occur attributing to the weak dynamic characteristic of the toolholder. This paper developed a novel toolholder which possessed high dynamic performance and was able to mitigate the chatter and improve material removing rate (MRR) simultaneously. The relationship between dynamic property of cutter with its modal characteristics was theoretically investigated from the built dynamic model of face milling operation. Based on the above findings, a novel toolholder was designed to increase the dynamic stiffness of the cutter, whose geometrical parameters and corresponding materials were optimized and selected. After manufacturing and detecting, the stability and machining conditions of the new toolholder were validated and amended with the aid of transfer function, milling forces and acceleration signal responses obtained from the tool point dynamics test and milling experiments respectively. As demonstrated in the experimental results, comparing with the conventional toolholder, the dynamic stiffness of the developed toolholder was increased by about 3.75 times, expanding significantly the stability frontier. The corresponding MRR with 2.81 times was achieved without increasing the machining response amplitudes

The 100 most-cited articles in castration-resistant prostate cancer: a bibliometric analysis

Purpose: To assess the present landscape and future research directions, a bibliometric analysis was performed to identify the characteristics of the 100 most-cited articles (T100 articles) on CRPC research. Methods: A list of the T100 articles investigating CRPC was generated by searching the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection database. Different characteristics of the T100 articles, including the countries/territories, journals, authors, and research areas, were analyzed. Results: The number of citations of T100 articles published between 1992 and 2017 ranged from 282 to 3594, with an average of 654.9 citations. According to the topic of the article, “Mechanisms related to tumor progression or metastasis” ranked first with 41 T100 articles, while immunotherapy ranked fourth with 7 T100 articles. The T100 articles originated from 31 countries, with more than half originating from the USA (n = 89). Professor Scher HI published the most T100 articles as the first author (4) and as the corresponding author (5), while Pro De Bono JS from the Institute of Cancer Research published 3 articles as the first author and 8 articles as the corresponding author. The journal Cancer Research published 20 T100 articles with a total of 8946 citations. The number of T100 articles (r = 0.485, P = 0.01) and the total number of citations (r = 0.626, P < 0.001) were all positively correlated with the IF of the journal. Conclusions: This analysis offers a historical perspective on the progress and attempts to reveal future trends in CRPC research using bibliometric analysis. This study’s results suggest that immunotherapy and the study of androgen receptors as well as their signaling axes will possibly be hot topics and trends in CRPC research

Interferon antagonist proteins of influenza and vaccinia viruses are suppressors of RNA silencing

Homology-dependent RNA silencing occurs in many eukaryotic cells. We reported recently that nodaviral infection triggers an RNA silencing-based antiviral response (RSAR) in Drosophila, which is capable of a rapid virus clearance in the absence of expression of a virus-encoded suppressor. Here, we present further evidence to show that the Drosophila RSAR is mediated by the RNA interference (RNAi) pathway, as the viral suppressor of RSAR inhibits experimental RNAi initiated by exogenous double-stranded RNA and RSAR requires the RNAi machinery. We demonstrate that RNAi also functions as a natural antiviral immunity in mosquito cells. We further show that vaccinia virus and human influenza A, B, and C viruses each encode an essential protein that suppresses RSAR in Drosophila. The vaccinia and influenza viral suppressors, E3L and NS1, are distinct double-stranded RNA-binding proteins and essential for pathogenesis by inhibiting the mammalian IFN-regulated innate antiviral response. We found that the double-stranded RNA-binding domain of NS1, implicated in innate immunity suppression, is both essential and sufficient for RSAR suppression. These findings provide evidence that mammalian virus proteins can inhibit RNA silencing, implicating this mechanism as a nucleic acid-based antiviral immunity in mammalian cells