Trust, Trust Repair, and Public Health: A Scoping Review Protocol

Trust can be defined as “a willingness to be vulnerable to another for a given set of tasks” and thus, trust and public health are inextricably linked. State actors are key participants in population health, organizing, among other things, mandates and guidelines that target health behaviors and encourage the uptake of medicines, screenings, diagnostics, and control of health conditions. Effective implementation of these crucial, government-sponsored health efforts is conditional on the public’s belief that the state is trustworthy and has one\u27s best interest in mind – positioning trust in government as a central determinant of public health. Trusting relationships between patients, health systems, and health care providers are also essential, as high-quality, safe care and adherence with healthcare professionals’ recommendations heavily depend upon trust. In many countries, trust in government and health care providers are inseparable, as governments are the primary providers of healthcare. Despite these critical relationships, existing studies that link trust and public health outcomes often focus on contemporaneous factors, many of which are endogenous to public health outcomes (e.g., support for the incumbent political party). For example, Sopory and colleagues reported a comprehensive examination of the phenomenon of trust during public health emergency events among 68 studies from 28 countries that included individuals who were directly affected by a public health emergency. Importantly, no studies from South America or Africa were included. The shortage of research on the sociostructural, historical, economic, and political sources of low trust limits our understanding of how trust deficits might be remedied so as to improve population health. Understanding why trust is low as well as how to repair trust are thus of critical importance

Measuring the impact of apnea and obesity on circadian activity patterns using functional linear modeling of actigraphy data

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Actigraphy provides a way to objectively measure activity in human subjects. This paper describes a novel family of statistical methods that can be used to analyze this data in a more comprehensive way.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A statistical method for testing differences in activity patterns measured by actigraphy across subgroups using functional data analysis is described. For illustration this method is used to statistically assess the impact of apnea-hypopnea index (apnea) and body mass index (BMI) on circadian activity patterns measured using actigraphy in 395 participants from 18 to 80 years old, referred to the Washington University Sleep Medicine Center for general sleep medicine care. Mathematical descriptions of the methods and results from their application to real data are presented.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Activity patterns were recorded by an Actical device (Philips Respironics Inc.) every minute for at least seven days. Functional linear modeling was used to detect the association between circadian activity patterns and apnea and BMI. Results indicate that participants in high apnea group have statistically lower activity during the day, and that BMI in our study population does not significantly impact circadian patterns.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Compared with analysis using summary measures (e.g., average activity over 24 hours, total sleep time), Functional Data Analysis (FDA) is a novel statistical framework that more efficiently analyzes information from actigraphy data. FDA has the potential to reposition the focus of actigraphy data from general sleep assessment to rigorous analyses of circadian activity rhythms.</p

Combination of 4-1BB and DAP10 promotes proliferation and persistence of NKG2D(bbz) CAR-T cells

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy has been shown to have considerable therapeutic effects in hematological malignancies, and NKG2D(z) CAR-T cell therapy has been verified to be safe based on clinical trials. However, due to the poor persistence of NKG2D(z) CAR-T cells, their therapeutic effect is not obvious. Here, we constructed NKG2D(bbz) CAR-T cells that can simultaneously activate 4-1BB and DAP10 costimulatory signaling. They were found to be cytotoxic to the target cells in vitro and in vivo. They exhibited low differentiation, low exhaustion, and good proliferation. Importantly, the proportions of central memory T (Tcm) and stem cell-like memory T (Tscm) cell subsets were strikingly increased. After long-term incubation with the target cells, they displayed reduced exhaustion compared to NKG2D(z) CAR-T cells. Further, in the presence of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitor LY294002, they exhibited reduced exhaustion and apoptosis, upregulated Bcl2 expression, and an increased proportion of Tcm cell subsets. Finally, NKG2D(bbz) CAR-T cells had better antitumor effects in vivo. In summary, the results showed that NKG2D(bbz) CAR-T cells may be valuable for cellular immunotherapy of cancer

Channel and Feature Selection for a Motor Imagery-Based BCI System Using Multilevel Particle Swarm Optimization

Brain-computer interface (BCI) is a communication and control system linking the human brain and computers or other electronic devices. However, irrelevant channels and misleading features unrelated to tasks limit classification performance. To address these problems, we propose an efficient signal processing framework based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) for channel and feature selection, channel selection, and feature selection. Modified Stockwell transforms were used for a feature extraction, and multilevel hybrid PSO-Bayesian linear discriminant analysis was applied to optimization and classification. The BCI Competition III dataset I was used here to confirm the superiority of the proposed scheme. Compared to a method without optimization (89% accuracy), the best classification accuracy of the PSO-based scheme was 99% when less than 10.5% of the original features were used, the test time was reduced by more than 90%, and it achieved Kappa values and F-score of 0.98 and 98.99%, respectively, and better signal-to-noise ratio, thereby outperforming existing algorithms. The results show that the channel and feature selection scheme can accelerate the speed of convergence to the global optimum and reduce the training time. As the proposed framework can significantly improve classification performance, effectively reduce the number of features, and greatly shorten the test time, it can serve as a reference for related real-time BCI application system research

Therapeutic Potential of Oridonin and Its Analogs: From Anticancer and Antiinflammation to Neuroprotection

Oridonin, a diterpenoid natural product commonly used in East Asian herbal medicine, is garnering increased attention in the biomedical community due to its extensive biological activities that include antitumor, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, hepatic fibrosis prevention, and neurological effects. Over the past decade, significant progress has been made in structure activity relationship and mechanism of action studies of oridonin for the treatment of cancer and other diseases. This review provides a brief summary on oridonin and its analogs in cancer drug discovery and antiinflammation and highlights its emerging therapeutic potential in neuroprotection applications

Detrital zircon evidence for the ternary sources of the Chinese Loess Plateau

The provenance of Chinese loess is fundamental for understanding its origin, transportation and climatic significance. In this paper, eight samples were collected for detrital zircon age analysis, five from different deserts, and three from the Jingbian Section in the northern Chinese Loess Plateau, covering an age range of 2.6-0.03 Ma. The new results, integrated with knowledge of relevant topography and wind patterns, demonstrate that the age spectra of the detrital zircons in the loess are different from those of the sands from the Tarim, Junggar and Qaidam basins, implying that these basins were not the sources of the silts of the Loess Plateau. Further analysis suggests that the three sources for the loess are: (1) elastic materials eroded from the mountains of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt (especially the Gobi Altai and Hangay), (2) elastic loess-sized materials generated by erosion of the Qilian Mountains in the NE Tibetan Plateau, and (3) minor elastic debris derived from the mountains of the North China Craton. Thus, silts of the Loess Plateau have a complex origin, although inland basins, long believed to be important sources, have only a minor role at most

Prevalence and characteristics of hypoxic hepatitis in the largest single-centre cohort of avian influenza A(H7N9) virus-infected patients with severe liver impairment in the intensive care unit

Avian influenza A(H7N9) virus (A(H7N9)) emerged in February 2013. Liver impairment of unknown cause is present in 29% of patients with A(H7N9) infection, some of whom experience severe liver injury. Hypoxic hepatitis (HH) is a type of acute severe liver injury characterized by an abrupt, massive increase in serum aminotransferases resulting from anoxic centrilobular necrosis of liver cells. In the intensive care unit (ICU), the prevalence of HH is ∼1%–2%. Here, we report a 1.8% (2/112) incidence of HH in the largest single-centre cohort of ICU patients with A(H7N9) infection. Both HH patients presented with multiple organ failure (MOF) involving respiratory, cardiac, circulatory and renal failure and had a history of chronic heart disease. On admission, severe liver impairment was found. Peak alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) values were 937 and 1281 U/L, and 3117 and 3029 U/L, respectively, in the two patients. Unfortunately, both patients died due to deterioration of MOF. A post-mortem biopsy in case 1 confirmed the presence of centrilobular necrosis of the liver, and real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction of A(H7N9)-specific genes was negative, which excluded A(H7N9)-related hepatitis. The incidence of HH in A(H7N9) patients is similar to that in ICU patients with other aetiologies. It seems that patients with A(H7N9) infection and a history of chronic heart disease with a low left ventricular ejection fraction on admission are susceptible to HH, which presents as a marked elevation in ALT at the time of admission

Meteorological Observations in the Tanggula Region, Tibetan Plateau during 2005

This note summarizes meteorological observations in the Tanggula region of the Tibetan Plateau in 2005. The variations of the wind velocity, air pressure, radiations, air temperature, relative humidity, precipitation and the soil moisture content at 5 cm are shown. The variations of the observed items have seasonal and diurnal characteristics