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Monitoring for drug-induced liver injury (DILI) via serial transaminase measurements in patients on potentially hepatotoxic medications (e.g., for HIV and tuberculosis) is routine in resource-rich nations, but often unavailable in resource-limited settings. Towards enabling universal access to affordable point-of-care (POC) screening for DILI, we have performed the first field evaluation of a paper-based, microfluidic fingerstick test for rapid, semi-quantitative, visual measurement of blood alanine aminotransferase (ALT). Our objectives were to assess operational feasibility, inter-operator variability, lot variability, device failure rate, and accuracy, to inform device modification for further field testing. The paper-based ALT test was performed at POC on fingerstick samples from 600 outpatients receiving HIV treatment in Vietnam. Results, read independently by two clinic nurses, were compared with gold-standard automated (Roche Cobas) results from venipuncture samples obtained in parallel. Two device lots were used sequentially. We demonstrated high inter-operator agreement, with 96.3% (95% C.I., 94.3-97.7%) agreement in placing visual results into clinically-defined "bins" (5x upper limit of normal), >90% agreement in validity determination, and intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.89 (95% C.I., 0.87-0.91). Lot variability was observed in % invalids due to hemolysis (21.1% for Lot 1, 1.6% for Lot 2) and correlated with lots of incorporated plasma separation membranes. Invalid rates

The aim of this paper is to introduce and assess three algorithms for the identification of overlapping thematic structures in networks of papers. We implemented three recently proposed approaches to the identification of overlapping and hierarchical substructures in graphs and applied the corresponding algorithms to a network of 492 information-science papers coupled via their cited sources. The thematic substructures obtained and overlaps produced by the three hierarchical cluster algorithms were compared to a content-based categorisation, which we based on the interpretation of titles, abstracts, and keywords. We defined sets of papers dealing with three topics located on different levels of aggregation: h-index, webometrics, and bibliometrics. We identified these topics with branches in the dendrograms produced by the three cluster algorithms and compared the overlapping topics they detected with one another and with the three predefined paper sets. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of applying the three approaches to paper networks in research fields.

BACKGROUND: The CONSORT Statement is a reporting guideline for authors when reporting randomized controlled trials (RCTs). It offers a standard way for authors to prepare RCT reports. It has been endorsed by many high-impact medical journals and by international editorial groups. This study was conducted to assess the endorsement of the CONSORT Statement by high-impact medical journals in China by reviewing their instructions for authors. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A total of 200 medical journals were selected according to the Chinese Science and Technology Journal Citation Reports, 195 of which publish clinical research papers. Their instructions for authors were reviewed and all texts mentioning the CONSORT Statement or CONSORT extension papers were extracted. Any mention of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (URM) developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) or 'clinical trial registration' was also extracted. For journals endorsing the CONSORT Statement, their most recently published RCT reports were retrieved and evaluated to assess whether the journals have followed what the CONSORT Statement required. Out of the 195 medical journals publishing clinical research papers, only six (6/195, 3.08%) mentioned 'CONSORT' in their instructions for authors; out of the 200 medical journals surveyed, only 14 (14/200, 7.00%) mentioned 'ICMJE' or 'URM' in their instructions for authors, and another five journals stated in their instructions for authors that clinical trials should have trial registration numbers and that priority would be given to clinical trials which had been registered. Among the 62 RCT reports published in the six journals endorsing the CONSORT Statement, 20 (20/62, 32.26%) contained flow diagrams and only three (3/62, 4.84%) provided trial registration information. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Medical journals in China endorsing either the CONSORT Statement or the ICMJE's URM constituted a small percentage of the total; all of these journals used ambiguous language regarding what was expected of authors.

A Kuhnian approach to research assessment requires us to consider that the important scientific breakthroughs that drive scientific progress are infrequent and that the progress of science does not depend on normal research. Consequently, indicators of research performance based on the total number of papers do not accurately measure scientific progress. Similarly, those universities with the best reputations in terms of scientific progress differ widely from other universities in terms of the scale of investments made in research and in the higher concentrations of outstanding scientists present, but less so in terms of the total number of papers or citations. This study argues that indicators for the 1% high-citation tail of the citation distribution reveal the contribution of universities to the progress of science and provide quantifiable justification for the large investments in research made by elite research universities. In this tail, which follows a power low, the number of the less frequent and highly cited important breakthroughs can be predicted from the frequencies of papers in the upper part of the tail. This study quantifies the false impression of excellence produced by multinational papers, and by other types of papers that do not contribute to the progress of science. Many of these papers are concentrated in and dominate lists of highly cited papers, especially in lower-ranked universities. The h-index obscures the differences between higher- and lower-ranked universities because the proportion of h-core papers in the 1% high-citation tail is not proportional to the value of the h-index.

In large-scale epidemiology, bloodspot sampling by fingerstick onto filter paper has many advantages, including ease and low costs of collection, processing and transport. We describe the development of an enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA) for quantifying insulin from dried blood spots and demonstrate its application in a large trial.We adapted an existing commercial kit (Mercodia Human Insulin ELISA, 10-1113-01) to quantify insulin from two 3-mm diameter discs (≈6 µL of blood) punched from whole blood standards and from trial samples. Paediatricians collected dried blood spots in a follow-up of 13,879 fasted children aged 11.5 years (interquartile range 11.3-11.8 years) from 31 trial sites across Belarus. We quantified bloodspot insulin levels and examined their distribution by demography and anthropometry.Mean intra-assay (n = 157) coefficients of variation were 15% and 6% for 'low' (6.7 mU/L) and 'high' (23.1 mU/L) values, respectively; the respective inter-assay values (n = 33) were 23% and 11%. The intraclass correlation coefficient between 50 paired whole bloodspot versus serum samples, collected simultaneously, was 0.90 (95% confidence interval 0.85 to 0.95). Bloodspot insulin was stable for at least 31 months at -80°C, for one week at +30°C and following four freeze-thaw cycles. Paediatricians collected a median of 8 blood spots from 13,487 (97%) children. The geometric mean insulin (log standard deviation) concentrations amongst 12,812 children were 3.0 mU/L (1.1) in boys and 4.0 mU/L (1.0) in girls and were positively associated with pubertal stage, measures of central and peripheral adiposity, height and fasting glucose.Our simple and convenient bloodspot assay is suitable for the measurement of insulin in very small volumes of blood collected on filter paper cards and can be applied to large-scale epidemiology studies of the early-life determinants of circulating insulin.

We plan to empirically study the assessment of scientific papers within the framework of the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic. This study is a follow-up study which is intended to answer open questions from the previous study with the same topic Bornmann (2021) and Bornmann (2023). The previous and follow-up studies address a central question in research evaluation: does bibliometrics create the social order in science it is designed to measure or does bibliometrics reflect the given social order (which is dependent on the intrinsic quality of research)? If bibliometrics creates the social order, it can be interpreted as an anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic. In the planned study, we shall undertake a survey of corresponding authors with an available email address in the Web of Science database. The authors are asked to assess the quality of articles that they cited in previous papers. The authors are randomly assigned to different experimental settings in which they receive (or not) citation information or a numerical access code to enter the survey. The control group will not receive any further numerical information. In the statistical analyses, we estimate how (strongly) the quality assessments of the cited papers are adjusted by the respondents to the anchor value (citation counts or access code). Thus, we are interested in whether possible adjustments in the assessments can not only be produced by quality-related information (citation counts), but also by numbers that are not related to quality, i.e. the access code. Strong effects of the anchors would mean that bibliometrics (or any other number) create the social order they are supposed to measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to smart greenhouses and IoT (Internet of Things) research. Our pioneering achievement centers on successfully designing, constructing, and testing a 30m2 smart greenhouse, explicitly focusing on the cultivation and development of Brassica Juncea, a mustard variety commonly grown in Vietnam. The construction phase entailed the meticulous integration of diverse IoT technologies and systems, culminating in the creation of a finely tuned environment to meet the unique needs of Brassica Juncea cultivation. Notably, our research team has realized the physical infrastructure and developed and implemented a robust web interface. This interface empowers users to monitor and remotely control the smart greenhouse conveniently. It provides real-time visualization of critical parameters, including temperature, humidity, soil moisture, and light intensity, enabling precise monitoring and supporting informed decision-making in crop management. In addition to the web interface, we have meticulously designed and completed an Android mobile application, further enhancing accessibility and convenience. This mobile app allows users to monitor and control the smart greenhouse while on the move. It is imperative to underscore that this work marks a significant milestone as the first complete smart greenhouse IoT solution dedicated to developing Brassica Juncea. Our pioneering accomplishments not only advance the frontiers of innovative greenhouse and IoT research but also contribute substantially to the progress of intelligent agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexually selected signals are common in many animals, though little reported in social insects. We investigated the occurrence of male visual signals mediating the dominance relationships among males and female choice of sexual partner in the paper wasp Polistes simillimus. Males have three conspicuous, variable and sexually dimorphic traits: black pigmentation on the head, a pair of yellow abdominal spots and body size differences. By conducting behavioral assays, we found that none of the three visual traits are associated with male-male dominance relationship. However, males with higher proportion of black facial pigmentation and bigger yellow abdominal spots are more likely chosen as sexual partners. Also, after experimentally manipulating the proportion of black pigment on males' face, we found that females may evaluate male facial coloration during the choice of a sexual partner. Thus, the black pigmentation on P. simillimus male's head appears to play a role as a sexually selected visual signal. We suggest that sexual selection is a common force in Polistes and we highlight the importance of this group as a model for the study of visual communication in insects.

In an iterated non-cooperative game, if all the players act to maximize their individual accumulated payoff, the system as a whole usually converges to a Nash equilibrium that poorly benefits any player. Here we show that such an undesirable destiny is avoidable in an iterated Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS) game involving two rational players, X and Y. Player X has the option of proactively adopting a cooperation-trap strategy, which enforces complete cooperation from the rational player Y and leads to a highly beneficial and maximally fair situation to both players. That maximal degree of cooperation is achievable in such a competitive system with cyclic dominance of actions may stimulate further theoretical and empirical studies on how to resolve conflicts and enhance cooperation in human societies.

The safety of chemicals, drugs, novel foods and genetically modified crops is often tested using repeat-dose sub-acute toxicity tests in rats or mice. It is important to avoid misinterpretations of the results as these tests are used to help determine safe exposure levels in humans. Treated and control groups are compared for a range of haematological, biochemical and other biomarkers which may indicate tissue damage or other adverse effects. However, the statistical analysis and presentation of such data poses problems due to the large number of statistical tests which are involved. Often, it is not clear whether a "statistically significant" effect is real or a false positive (type I error) due to sampling variation. The author's conclusions appear to be reached somewhat subjectively by the pattern of statistical significances, discounting those which they judge to be type I errors and ignoring any biomarker where the p-value is greater than p = 0.05. However, by using standardised effect sizes (SESs) a range of graphical methods and an over-all assessment of the mean absolute response can be made. The approach is an extension, not a replacement of existing methods. It is intended to assist toxicologists and regulators in the interpretation of the results. Here, the SES analysis has been applied to data from nine published sub-acute toxicity tests in order to compare the findings with those of the author's. Line plots, box plots and bar plots show the pattern of response. Dose-response relationships are easily seen. A "bootstrap" test compares the mean absolute differences across dose groups. In four out of seven papers where the no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) was estimated by the authors, it was set too high according to the bootstrap test, suggesting that possible toxicity is under-estimated.

In vitro 3D culture is an important model for tissues in vivo. Cells in different locations of 3D tissues are physiologically different, because they are exposed to different concentrations of oxygen, nutrients, and signaling molecules, and to other environmental factors (temperature, mechanical stress, etc). The majority of high-throughput assays based on 3D cultures, however, can only detect the average behavior of cells in the whole 3D construct. Isolation of cells from specific regions of 3D cultures is possible, but relies on low-throughput techniques such as tissue sectioning and micromanipulation. Based on a procedure reported previously ("cells-in-gels-in-paper" or CiGiP), this paper describes a simple method for culture of arrays of thin planar sections of tissues, either alone or stacked to create more complex 3D tissue structures. This procedure starts with sheets of paper patterned with hydrophobic regions that form 96 hydrophilic zones. Serial spotting of cells suspended in extracellular matrix (ECM) gel onto the patterned paper creates an array of 200 micron-thick slabs of ECM gel (supported mechanically by cellulose fibers) containing cells. Stacking the sheets with zones aligned on top of one another assembles 96 3D multilayer constructs. De-stacking the layers of the 3D culture, by peeling apart the sheets of paper, "sections" all 96 cultures at once. It is, thus, simple to isolate 200-micron-thick cell-containing slabs from each 3D culture in the 96-zone array. Because the 3D cultures are assembled from multiple layers, the number of cells plated initially in each layer determines the spatial distribution of cells in the stacked 3D cultures. This capability made it possible to compare the growth of 3D tumor models of different spatial composition, and to examine the migration of cells in these structures.

Rocky desertification is a bottleneck that reduces ecological and environmental security in karst areas. Paper mulberry, a unique deciduous tree, shows good performance in rocky desertification areas. Its resistance mechanisms are therefore of high interest. In this study, a lysine acetylation proteomics analysis of paper mulberry seedling leaves was conducted in combination with the purification of acetylated protein by high-precision nano LC-MS/MS. We identified a total of 7130 acetylation sites in 3179 proteins. Analysis of the modified sites showed a predominance of nine motifs. Six positively charged residues: lysine (K), arginine (R), and histidine (H), serine (S), threonine (T), and tyrosine (Y) occurred most frequently at the +1 position, phenylalanine (F) was both detected both upstream and downstream of the acetylated lysines; and the sequence logos showed a strong preference for lysine and arginine around acetylated lysines. Functional annotation revealed that the identified enzymes were mainly involved in translation, transcription, ribosomal structure and biological processes, showing that lysine acetylation can regulate various aspects of primary carbon and nitrogen metabolism and secondary metabolism. Acetylated proteins were enriched in the chloroplast, cytoplasm, and nucleus, and many stress response-related proteins were also discovered to be acetylated, including PAL, HSP70, and ERF. HSP70, an important protein involved in plant abiotic and disease stress responses, was identified in paper mulberry, although it is rarely found in woody plants. This may be further examined in research in other plants and could explain the good adaptation of paper mulberry to the karst environment. However, these hypotheses require further verification. Our data can provide a new starting point for the further analysis of the acetylation function in paper mulberry and other plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DNA extraction, a vital pre-requisite for most biological studies, continues to be studied extensively. According to some studies, DNA shows a certain degree of absorbability on filter paper made of plant fiber-based adsorbent material. However, the principle underlying such specific adsorption as well as plant species associated with plant fiber-based adsorbents and optimized extraction conditions have not yet been studied. This study demonstrates the tight correlation between crystallinity and hygroscopicity in plant fiber-based adsorbents used for DNA extraction and proposes the concept of DNA adsorption on plant fiber-based adsorbents, for the first time. We also explored optimal extracting and eluting conditions and developed a novel plant fiber-based DNA extraction method that was quadruple times more powerful than current approaches. Starting with the screening of various types of earthed plant fiber-based adsorbents, we went on to mine new plant fiber-based adsorbents, bamboo paper and degreased cotton, and succeeded in increasing their efficiency of DNA extraction to 4.2 times than that of current approaches. We found a very strong correlation between the crystallinity and hygroscopicity of plant fiber-based adsorbents which showed efficiency for DNA extraction, and thus propose a principle that potentially governs such specific adsorption processes, in the hope that this information may guide related multidisciplinary research studies in the future. Nanodrop, electrophoresis and PCR were selected to demonstrate the quantity, quality, integrity and utility of the extracted DNA. Furthermore, crystallinity, hygroscopicity, pore size distribution and composition of plant fiber-based adsorbents were studied to explore their correlation in an attempt to understand the principle underlying this particular type of adsorption. The findings of this study may be further extended to the extraction of other types of nucleic acids with similar biochemical properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pyocyanin is a toxin produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Here we describe a novel paper-based electrochemical sensor for pyocyanin detection, manufactured with a simple and inexpensive approach based on electrode printing on paper. The resulting sensors constitute an effective electrochemical method to quantify pyocyanin in bacterial cultures without the conventional time consuming pretreatment of the samples. The electrochemical properties of the paper-based sensors were evaluated by ferri/ferrocyanide as a redox mediator, and showed reliable sensing performance. The paper-based sensors readily allow for the determination of pyocyanin in bacterial cultures with high reproducibility, achieving a limit of detection of 95 nM and a sensitivity of 4.30 μA/μM in standard culture media. Compared to the similar commercial ceramic based sensors, it is a 2.3-fold enhanced performance. The simple in-house fabrication of sensors for pyocyanin quantification allows researchers to understand in vitro adaptation of P. aeruginosa infections via rapid screenings of bacterial cultures that otherwise are expensive and time-consuming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, there has been a growing emphasis on basic number processing competencies (such as the ability to judge which of two numbers is larger) and their role in predicting individual differences in school-relevant math achievement. Children's ability to compare both symbolic (e.g. Arabic numerals) and nonsymbolic (e.g. dot arrays) magnitudes has been found to correlate with their math achievement. The available evidence, however, has focused on computerized paradigms, which may not always be suitable for universal, quick application in the classroom. Furthermore, it is currently unclear whether both symbolic and nonsymbolic magnitude comparison are related to children's performance on tests of arithmetic competence and whether either of these factors relate to arithmetic achievement over and above other factors such as working memory and reading ability. In order to address these outstanding issues, we designed a quick (2 minute) paper-and-pencil tool to assess children's ability to compare symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical magnitudes and assessed the degree to which performance on this measure explains individual differences in achievement. Children were required to cross out the larger of two, single-digit numerical magnitudes under time constraints. Results from a group of 160 children from grades 1-3 revealed that both symbolic and nonsymbolic number comparison accuracy were related to individual differences in arithmetic achievement. However, only symbolic number comparison performance accounted for unique variance in arithmetic achievement. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed which include the use of this measure as a possible tool for identifying students at risk for future difficulties in mathematics.

We describe a method that uses crowdsourced postcode coordinates and Google maps to estimate average distance and travel time for inhabitants of a municipality to a casualty clinic in Norway. The new method was compared with methods based on population centroids, median distance and town hall location, and we used it to examine how distance affects the utilisation of out-of-hours primary care services. At short distances our method showed good correlation with mean travel time and distance. The utilisation of out-of-hours services correlated with postcode based distances similar to previous research. The results show that our method is a reliable and useful tool for estimating average travel distances and travel times.

Highly porous polypyrrole (PPy)-nanocellulose paper sheets have been evaluated as inexpensive and disposable electrochemically controlled three-dimensional solid phase extraction materials. The composites, which had a total anion exchange capacity of about 1.1 mol kg(-1), were used for extraction and subsequent release of negatively charged fluorophore tagged DNA oligomers via galvanostatic oxidation and reduction of a 30-50 nm conformal PPy layer on the cellulose substrate. The ion exchange capacity, which was, at least, two orders of magnitude higher than those previously reached in electrochemically controlled extraction, originated from the high surface area (i.e. 80 m(2) g(-1)) of the porous composites and the thin PPy layer which ensured excellent access to the ion exchange material. This enabled the extractions to be carried out faster and with better control of the PPy charge than with previously employed approaches. Experiments in equimolar mixtures of (dT)(6), (dT)(20), and (dT)(40) DNA oligomers showed that all oligomers could be extracted, and that the smallest oligomer was preferentially released with an efficiency of up to 40% during the reduction of the PPy layer. These results indicate that the present material is very promising for the development of inexpensive and efficient electrochemically controlled ion-exchange membranes for batch-wise extraction of biomolecules.

Raman spectroscopy has proven to be an indispensable technique for the identification of various types of analytes due to the fingerprint vibration spectrum obtained. Paper microfluidics has also emerged as a low cost, easy to fabricate and portable approach for point of care testing. However, due to inherent background fluorescence, combining Raman spectroscopy with paper microfluidics is to date an unmet challenge in the absence of using surface enhanced mechanisms. We describe the first use of wavelength modulated Raman spectroscopy (WMRS) for analysis on a paper microfluidics platform. This study demonstrates the ability to suppress the background fluorescence of the paper using WMRS and the subsequent implementation of this technique for pharmaceutical analysis. The results of this study demonstrate that it is possible to discriminate between both paracetamol and ibuprofen, whilst, also being able to detect the presence of each analyte quantitatively at nanomolar concentrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amongst the numerous problems associated with the use of impact factors as a measure of quality are the systematic differences in impact factors that exist among scientific fields. While in theory this can be circumvented by limiting comparisons to journals within the same field, for a diverse and multidisciplinary field like evolutionary biology, in which the majority of papers are published in journals that publish both evolutionary and non-evolutionary papers, this is impossible. However, a journal's overall impact factor may well be a poor predictor for the impact of its evolutionary papers. The extremely high impact factors of some multidisciplinary journals, for example, are by many believed to be driven mostly by publications from other fields. Despite plenty of speculation, however, we know as yet very little about the true impact of evolutionary papers in journals not specifically classified as evolutionary. Here I present, for a wide range of journals, an analysis of the number of evolutionary papers they publish and their average impact. I show that there are large differences in impact among evolutionary and non-evolutionary papers within journals; while the impact of evolutionary papers published in multidisciplinary journals is substantially overestimated by their overall impact factor, the impact of evolutionary papers in many of the more specialized, non-evolutionary journals is significantly underestimated. This suggests that, for evolutionary biologists, publishing in high-impact multidisciplinary journals should not receive as much weight as it does now, while evolutionary papers in more narrowly defined journals are currently undervalued. Importantly, however, their ranking remains largely unaffected. While journal impact factors may thus indeed provide a meaningful qualitative measure of impact, a fair quantitative comparison requires a more sophisticated journal classification system, together with multiple field-specific impact statistics per journal.

Ecological studies of orangutans have almost exclusively focused on populations living in primary or selectively logged rainforest. The response of orangutans to severe habitat degradation remains therefore poorly understood. Most experts assume that viable populations cannot survive outside undisturbed or slightly disturbed forests. This is a concern because nearly 75% of all orangutans live outside protected areas, where degradation of natural forests is likely to occur, or where these are replaced by planted forests. To improve our understanding of orangutan survival in highly altered forest habitats, we conducted population density surveys in two pulp and paper plantation concessions in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. These plantations consist of areas planted with fast-growing exotics intermixed with stands of highly degraded forests and scrublands. Our rapid surveys indicate unexpectedly high orangutan densities in plantation landscapes dominated by Acacia spp., although it remains unclear whether such landscapes can maintain long-term viable populations. These findings indicate the need to better understand how plantation-dominated landscapes can potentially be incorporated into orangutan conservation planning. Although we emphasize that plantations have less value for overall biodiversity conservation than natural forests, they could potentially boost the chances of orangutan survival. Our findings are based on a relatively short study and various methodological issues need to be addressed, but they suggest that orangutans may be more ecologically flexible than previously thought.

In the context of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) on HIV testing in the emergency department (ED) setting, we evaluated preferences for survey modality and data quality arising from each modality.Enrolled participants were offered the choice of answering a survey via audio computer assisted self-interview (ACASI) or pen and paper self-administered questionnaire (SAQ). We evaluated factors influencing choice of survey modality. We defined unusable data for a particular survey domain as answering fewer than 75% of the questions in the domain. We then compared ACASI and SAQ with respect to unusable data for domains that address sensitive topics.Of 758 enrolled ED patients, 218 (29%) chose ACASI, 343 chose SAQ (45%) and 197 (26%) opted not to complete either. Results of the log-binomial regression indicated that older (RR = 1.08 per decade) and less educated participants (RR = 1.25) were more likely to choose SAQ over ACASI. ACASI yielded substantially less unusable data than SAQ.In the ED setting there may be a tradeoff between increased participation with SAQ versus better data quality with ACASI. Future studies of novel approaches to maximize the use of ACASI in the ED setting are needed.

BACKGROUND: A minority of scientific journals publishes the majority of scientific papers and receives the majority of citations. The extent of concentration of the most influential articles is less well known. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The 100 most-cited papers in the last decade in each of 21 scientific fields were analyzed; fields were considered as ecosystems and their "species" (journal) diversity was evaluated. Only 9% of journals in Journal Citation Reports had published at least one such paper. Among this 9%, half of them had published only one such paper. The number of journals that had published a larger number of most-cited papers decreased exponentially according to a Lotka law. Except for three scientific fields, six journals accounted for 53 to 94 of the 100 most-cited papers in their field. With increasing average number of citations per paper (citation density) in a scientific field, concentration of the most-cited papers in a few journals became even more prominent (p

Background: The lack of information regarding the burden of acute bacterial meningitis in Latin America leads to a reduction in the estimated incidence rates of the disease, and impairs public health decisions on the use and follow-up of preventive interventions, particularly, the evaluation of existing vaccination policies. The use of the real-time PCR in diagnostic routine procedures has resulted in a substantial increase in confirmed bacterial meningitis cases. However, in resource-poor countries, these assays are only available in reference laboratories. Sample transportation to these laboratories is a critical constraint, as it requires specialized, high cost courier services. To overcome this barrier we evaluated the use of FTATM Elute filter paper cards for the conservation and processing of samples under normal environmental conditions, as they would be when transported from remote and under-equipped healthcare facilities to the reference centers. A total of 401 samples received in 2015 as part of Sao Paulo’s national surveillance for routine diagnosis were selected for this study. Methods: The sensitivity and specificity of real-time PCR were evaluated using fresh serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples processed using our laboratory’s standard DNA extraction, and processing the same samples after being dried and stored on FTATM card, and DNA extracted following the manufacturer’s instructions. Results: The sensitivities for detection of Neisseria meningitidis, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Haemophilus influenzae from CSF dried and stored on FTATM cards were 98%, 92%, and 100%, respectively, and with serum samples were 73%, 88%, and 100%, respectively. When compared to our laboratory’s standard methodology, results showed high concordance, with Kappa index ranges of 0.9877–1.00 for CSF, and 0.8004–1.00 for serum samples. Conclusion: The use of FTATM cards for CSF and serum conservation and transport represents a rapid, reliable, and cost-effective alternative that will allow obtaining valuable epidemiological information that would otherwise be lost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the peer review system of academic journals is seen as fundamental to scientific achievement, a major threat to the validity of the system is a potential evaluation bias resulting from constraints at the journal level. In this study, we examine how the time pressure to maintain a fixed periodical quota for journal publication can influence a journal editor's decision to accept or reject a paper at any given point in time. We find that an increase in publication backlog, proxied as the average delay between paper acceptance and print publication, is correlated with an increase in the subsequent rejection rates of new submissions. Our findings suggest that time pressures inherent in the peer review system may be a source of potential evaluator bias, calling for a need to reconsider the current quota system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a facile and cost-effective method to obtain superhydrophobic filter paper and demonstrate its application for efficient water/oil separation. By coupling structurally distinct organosilane precursors (e.g., octadecyltrichlorosilane and methyltrichlorosilane) to paper fibers under controlled reaction conditions, we have formulated a simple, inexpensive, and efficient protocol to achieve a desirable superhydrophobic and superoleophilic surface on conventional filter paper. The silanized superhydrophobic filter paper showed nanostructured morphology and demonstrated great separation efficiency (up to 99.4%) for water/oil mixtures. The modified filter paper is stable in both aqueous solutions and organic solvents, and can be reused multiple times. The present study shows that our newly developed binary silanization is a promising method of modifying cellulose-based materials for practical applications, in particular the treatment of industrial waste water and ecosystem recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) can evolve in a viable technology if environmentally sound materials are developed and became available at low cost for these devices. This is especially important not only for the designing of large wastewater treatment systems, but also for the fabrication of low-cost, single-use devices. In this work we synthesized membranes by a simple procedure involving easily-biodegradable and economic materials such as poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA), chitosan (CS) and the composite PVA:CS. Membranes were chemical and physically characterized and compared to Nafion®. Performance was studied using the membrane as separator in a typical H-Type MFCs showing that PVA:CS membrane outperform Nafion® 4 times (power production) while being 75 times more economic. We found that performance in MFC depends over interactions among several membrane characteristics such as oxygen permeability and ion conductivity. Moreover, we design a paper-based micro-scale MFC, which was used as a toxicity assay using 16 μL samples containing formaldehyde as a model toxicant. The PVA:CS membrane presented here can offer low environmental impact and become a very interesting option for point of need single-use analytical devices, especially in low-income countries where burning is used as disposal method, and toxic fluoride fumes (from Nafion®) can be released to the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biosensors have emerged as a valuable tool with high specificity and sensitivity for fast and reliable detection of hazardous substances in drinking water. Numerous substances have been addressed using synthetic biology approaches. However, many proposed biosensors are based on living, genetically modified organisms and are therefore limited in shelf life, usability and biosafety. We addressed these issues by the construction of an extensible, cell-free biosensor. Storage is possible through freeze drying on paper. Following the addition of an aqueous sample, a highly efficient cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) reaction is initiated. Specific allosteric transcription factors modulate the expression of ‘superfolder’ green fluorescent protein (sfGFP) depending on the presence of the substance of interest. The resulting fluorescence intensities are analyzed with a conventional smartphone accompanied by simple and cheap light filters. An ordinary differential equitation (ODE) model of the biosensors was developed, which enabled prediction and optimization of performance. With an optimized cell-free biosensor based on the Shigella flexneri MerR transcriptional activator, detection of 6 μg/L Hg(II) ions in water was achieved. Furthermore, a completely new biosensor for the detection of gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), a substance used as date-rape drug, was established by employing the naturally occurring transcriptional repressor BlcR from Agrobacterium tumefaciens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), like many other research funders, requires its grantees to make papers available via open access (OA). This article investigates the effect of publishing in OA journals and international collaboration within and between European and sub-Saharan African countries on citation impact and likelihood of falling into the top 1% and top 10% most cited papers in poverty-related disease (PRD) research. Methods: Disease-specific research publications were identified in the Web of Science™ and MEDLINE using Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms. Data on the open accessibility of scientific literature were derived from 1science oaFindr. Publication data, including relative citation counts, were extracted for 2003–2015. Regression models were applied to quantify the relationship between relative citations and presence in the 1% and top 10% most cited papers versus OA and international collaboration. Results: The results show that since 2003 papers on PRDs have become increasingly available in OA. Among all PRD areas, malaria research is most frequently published in OA and in international collaboration. The adjusted regression analyses show that holding other factors constant, publishing research in OA and in international collaboration has a significant and meaningful citation advantage over non-OA or non-international collaborative research. Publishing papers as part of a European-wide or European- sub-Saharan African collaboration increases research impact. In contrast, such collaboration advantage is not observed for research output involving sub-Saharan Africa only which seems to decrease research impact. Conclusions: Our results indicate that there is a real, measurable citation advantage for publishing PRD research in OA and international collaboration. However, the international collaboration advantage seems to be region-specific with increased research impact for European-wide and European-sub-Saharan African collaborations but a decrease in research impact of collaborations confined to sub-Saharan African research institutions. Further research is required to further verify this finding and to understand the underlying factors related to this observed decrease in research impact. To target future research capacity building activities in sub-Saharan Africa it is important to assess whether the observed decreased impact reflects the scientific competencies and geographic distribution of individual researchers or institutional-, national- or funder-specific research requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some states in the U.S. have traditionally received less federal research funding than other states. The National Science Foundation (NSF) created a program in 1979, called the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) to enhance the research competitiveness in such states. While the geographic disparity in federal research funding is well known, the overall impact of federal funding on the research performance of EPSCoR and non-EPSCoR has not been previously studied. In the current study, we compared the combined research productivity of Ph.D. granting institutions in EPSCoR versus the non-EPSCoR states to better understand the scientific impact of federal investments in sponsored research across all states. The research outputs we measured included journal articles, books, conference papers, patents, and citation count in academic literature. Unsurprisingly, results indicated that the non-EPSCoR states received significantly more federal research funding than their EPSCoR counterparts, which correlated with a higher number of faculty members in the non-EPSCoR versus EPSCoR states. Also, in the overall research productivity expressed on a per capita, the non-EPSCoR states fared better than EPSCoR states. However, when the research output was measured based on per $1M investment of federal research funding, EPSCoR states performed significantly better than the non-EPSCoR states in many research productivity indicators, with the notable exception of patents. Together, this study found preliminary evidence that EPSCoR states achieved a high degree of research productivity despite receiving significantly fewer federal research dollars. The limitations and next steps of this study are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mountain areas provide essential resources for a significant proportion of the Earth's population. This study presents the development of mountain research between 1900 and 2019 based on peer-reviewed articles in English listed in Web of ScienceTM (WOS). We analyzed the number of publications over time, journals and scientific categories, frequent topics, and geographical distributions based on 40 mountain ranges and authors' countries as well as institutional contributions. From 1900–2019, 195k ±10% mountain research papers were published; over 50% from 2010–2019. While papers were published in more than 1000 different journals, indicating a wide range of disciplines engaged in mountain research, 94% of the papers were assigned to "Science & Technology", only <5% to "Social Sciences" and "Arts & Humanities". The most papers were written by researchers in the USA, followed by China. The number of papers per area or capita showed high variability across the investigated mountain ranges. Thus, geographically and disciplinarily more balanced research activities and better accessibility of knowledge about mountain regions are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Currently, more than 30,200,000 COVID-19 cases have been diagnosed in Germany alone. However, data regarding prevalence of COVID-19 in children, both in Germany and internationally, are sparse. We sought to evaluate the number of infected children by measuring IgG antibodies. Methods: Oropharyngeal swabs were collected between December 2020 and August 2021 to measure SARS-CoV-2, and capillary blood for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies (by rapid test NADAL® and filter paper test Euroimmun® ELISA); venous blood was taken for validation (Roche® ECLIA and recomLine Blot) in 365 German children aged 3–16 years from 30 schools and preschools. We used multiple serological tests because the filter paper test Euroimmun® ELISA performs better in terms of sensitivity and specificity than the rapid test NADAL®. The Roche® ECLIA test is used to detect SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and the recomLine Blot test is used to rule out the possibility of infection by seasonal SARS-viruses and to test for specific SARS-CoV-2 proteins (NP, RBD and S1). In addition, one parent each (n = 336), and 4–5 teachers/caregivers (n = 90) per institution were tested for IgG antibodies from capillary blood samples. The total study duration was 4 months per child, including the first follow-up after 2 months and the second after 4 months. Results: Of 364 children tested at baseline, 3.6% (n = 13) were positive for SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies using Euroimmun® ELISA. Seven children reported previously testing positive for SARS-CoV-2; each of these was confirmed by the Roche® Anti-SARS-CoV-2-ECLIA (antibody to spike protein 1) test. SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies persisted over a 4-month period, but levels decreased significantly (p = 0.004) within this timeframe. The median IgG values were 192.0 BAU/ml [127.2; 288.2], 123.6 BAU/ml [76.6; 187.7] and 89.9 BAU/ml [57.4; 144.2] at baseline, 2 months and 4 months after baseline, respectively. During the study period, no child tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 by oropharyngeal swab. A total of 4.3% of all parents and 3.7% of teachers/caregivers tested positive for IgG antibodies by Euroimmun® ELISA at baseline. Conclusion: We noted a rather low seroprevalence in children despite an under-reporting of SARS-CoV-2 infections. Measurement of IgG antibodies derived from capillary blood appears to be a valid tool to detect asymptomatic infections in children. However, no asymptomatic active infection was detected during the study period of 4 months in the whole cohort. Further data on SARS-CoV-2 infections in children are needed, especially in the group of <5-year-olds, as there is currently no licensed vaccine for this age group in Germany. The Robert Koch Institute's Standing Commission on Vaccination (STIKO) recommended COVID-19 vaccination for 12–17 and 5–11 year olds in August 2021 and May 2022 respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The composition of solid waste affects technology choices and policy decisions regarding its management. Analyses of waste composition studies are almost always made on a parameter by parameter basis. Multivariate distance techniques can create wholisitic determinations of similarities and differences and were applied here to enhance a series of waste composition comparisons. A set of New York City residential waste composition studies conducted in 1990, 2004, 2013, and 2017 were compared to EPA data and to 88 studies conducted in other US jurisdictions from 1987–2021. The total residential waste stream and the disposed wastes in NYC were found to be similar in nature, and very different from the composition of wastes set out for recycling. Disposed wastes were more similar across the five NYC boroughs in a single year than in one borough over the 28-year time period, but recyclables were more similar across 14 years than across the boroughs in a single year. Food and plastics percentages in total and disposed waste streams increased over time, and paper percentages fell. The food disposal rate in NYC over time increased much less than EPA data show. The rate of plastics and paper disposal in NYC decreased. NYC data largely conformed to trends from the 88 other waste composition studies and did not generally agree with EPA data sets. The use of novel-to-waste studies multivariate distance analyses offers the promise of simplifying the identification of overall similarities and differences across waste studies, and so improving management and planning for solid waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extending product life is one of the effective ways to reduce the waste of resources. However, many unsatisfactory products are scrapped because of a lack of adequate performance. The product should be improved and upgraded innovatively, and the existing upgradable products may create more economic benefits for the longer product life cycles. This paper proposed a product innovative design and product upgrade employing an Extenics-TRIZ Integrated requirement-function-principle-structure (RFPS) model, which aims at complex requirement flexibility with easy-to-use design process when the product needs a redesign. Here, the requirement flexibility refers to the ability of a design object to adapt its design levels. There are two design strategies: the extension analysis methods are utilized to map the top-level requirements to functions, principles, and structures requirements, and then the TRIZ is used to handle the design problems according to the objects on different levels. This design knowledge is summarized as RFPS, and it can be reused in computer-aided innovation further. A case study for a cutting table is illustrated to the innovation and upgrade, and it indicates the effectiveness for designers to implement the design methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Examine peer-reviewed scientific articles that used internal industry documents in the chemical sector to reveal corporate influence. Summarize sources of internal documents used in prior scientific papers to identify ongoing corporate strategies within the chemical field. Compare the corporate strategies identified in the chemical sector with the ones identified already identified in the pharmaceutical sector. Propose a theoretical framework for categorizing and examining the different form of corporate capture at play. Design: Performed a scoping review to pinpoint scientific papers employing internal industry/corporate documents within the chemical sector. Methods: We conducted a systematic search using broad and case study-derived keywords, detailed in the S1 Appendix. This resulted in 351 sources from 28 databases, encompassing peer-reviewed articles analyzing internal documents of chemical corporations. We complemented our efforts with a snowball sampling method to uncover additional case studies and journal articles not initially captured by our search. Results were categorized and analyzed using Marc-Andre Gagnon and Sergio Sismondo's ghost management framework. Results: The final results included and analyzed 18 scientific papers. Legal proceedings served as the primary source of internal document data for all examined articles. We uncovered and categorized dynamic strategies employed by chemical corporations to protect and advance their interests, including scientific capture (n = 16), regulatory capture (n = 15), professional capture (n = 7), civil society capture (n = 6), media capture (n = 4), legal capture (n = 4), technological capture (n = 3), and market capture (n = 2). Comparative analysis: The limited scientific literature meeting our criteria confirms early findings by Wieland et al, highlighting a research gap in the chemical industry. Our analysis, building on the ghost-management framework, shows a different emphasis in the way internal documents were used in scientific literature to understand corporate strategies at play in the chemical sector as compared to the pharmaceutical sector. In contrast to Gagnon and Dong's pharmaceutical corporate capture review, which identified 37 papers before 2022, our chemical industry findings reveal a lower count, with only 18 papers identified. Notably, the vast majority of the papers in both sectors shows an emphasis on analyzing strategies used for scientific capture. However, the area of regulatory capture reveals a significant distinction: only 6 of the 37 articles related to the pharmaceutical industry analyzed this dimension, as compared to 15 of the 18 articles related to the chemical industry. This body of work suggests that existing research on the chemical industry is particularly concerned with analyzing how the sector navigates and circumvents regulatory oversight. Both industries employ strategies involving conflicts of interest and the legitimization of their actions to shield themselves from public policy scrutiny and protect their interests. However, their goals seem to be significantly different. The scientific literature analyzing the pharmaceutical industry's internal document tends to identify strategies maximizing profits through the biased promotion of health products, whereas the scientific literature analyzing the chemical industry's internal documents is more inclined in identifying strategies institutionalizing ignorance about existing risks, evading accountability, and preventing regulatory actions. Strengths: Our scoping review shows how internal documents can reveal how the chemical industry strategically institutionalizes ignorance to manage business risks. It exposes intentional efforts by chemical corporations to promote ignorance and foster conflicts of interest, thereby legitimizing their business models and safeguarding corporate interests. We shared our research findings on the Dataverse/ Borealis platform (https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/EOIOAU), making them accessible for future studies to apply the same analytical framework seamlessly. Limitations: We excluded papers that did not meet our research criteria, prioritizing those that analyzed internal corporate documents for uncovering covert ghost management captures. Beyond scientific literature, various grey literature sources have conducted quality investigations on ghost management strategies in the chemical industry, and many leaked internal documents in the chemical industry, often available through toxicdocs.org, were not analyzed in the scientific literature. Also, market concentration and other corporate captures can be investigated using publicly available resources. Despite searching scientific papers in various languages, no relevant publications were found outside of English. This presents an opportunity for future research to conduct a separate scoping review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) remains a leading cause of hospitalization and death in China. Accurate mortality prediction of inpatient is crucial for clinical decision-making of non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) patients. Methods: In this study, a total of 3061 patients between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2022 diagnosed with NSTEMI were enrolled in this study. A new method based on Stacking ensemble model is proposed to predict the in-hospital mortality risk of NSTEMI using clinical data. This method mainly consists of three parts. Firstly, oversampling technique was used to alleviate the class imbalance problem. Secondly, the feature selection method of Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE) was selected for effective feature selection. Finally, a unique double-layer stacking model is designed to improve the performance of the algorithm. Seven classical artificial intelligence methods of Logistic Regression (LR), Decision Tree (DT), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), Adaptive Boosting (ADB), Extra Tree (ET), and Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT) were selected as candidate models for the base model of the first layer of the model, and extreme gradient enhancement (XGBOOST) was selected as the meta-model for the second layer. Results: Patient were divided into the surviving group and the death group, and a total of 57 clinical features showed statistically significant for the two groups and finally included in the subsequent model. The results show that the Area Under Curve (AUC) of the Stacking model proposed in this paper is 0.987, which is higher than that of LR (0.934), DT (0.946), SVM (0.942), RF (0.948), ADB (0.949), ET (0.938) and GBDT (0.920). At the same time, the proposed Stacking model has higher performance than each single model in terms of Accuracy, Precision, Recall and F1 evaluation indicators. Conclusions: The Stacking model proposed in this paper can integrate the advantages of LR, DT, SVM, RF, ADB, ET and GBDT models to achieve better prediction performance. This model can provide valuable insights for physicians to identify high-risk patients more precisely and timely, thereby maximizing the potential for early clinical interventions to reduce the mortality rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Loneliness and physical inactivity are issues that affect both young people and older adults. This can have negative health outcomes and well as high costs on health services. Physical activity can positively influence both physical and psychosocial health outcomes, however enjoyment is necessary for adherence. Combining exercise with arts-based activities can improve enjoyment for older adults and young people. Dance has been found to be a safe and enjoyable form of physical activity that can be equally or more effective than conventional exercise options. Intergenerational interventions can improve relationships between generations. The aim of this scoping review was to collate and map the available evidence for intergenerational dance. Methods: This scoping review followed the guidance outlined by the Joanna Briggs Institute. A systematic search of nine multidisciplinary databases and four repositories was conducted. Inclusion criteria were intergenerational dance or movement to music programmes. Exclusion criteria included dance movement therapy or groups with less than one generational gap. Data were extracted and summarised using narrative synthesis and research papers were appraised using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Results: The search identified eleven research studies, seven expert opinion/practice expertise and 13 sources from the grey literature. Dance classes were typically 11–12 weeks long. Genres varied with some programmes including co-creation through choreography. Experiences and social outcomes were the most assessed outcomes, with a lack of studies examining physical outcomes. Participants reported enjoying the programmes stating they felt proud for taking part and looked forward to sessions. The term intergenerational was not defined in any paper. Conclusions: Intergenerational dance is an emerging area of research. Many programmes run in communities but are not researched, therefore several gaps remain. More large-scale trials are needed around intergenerational dance. Definitions and descriptions of dance and intergenerational activity should be considered in future studies to ensure consistency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reproducibility of computational biology models can be greatly facilitated by widely adopted standards and public repositories. We examined 50 models from the BioModels Database and attempted to validate the original curation and correct some of them if necessary. For each model, we reproduced these published results using Tellurium. Once reproduced we manually created a new set of files, with the model information stored by the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML), and simulation instructions stored by the Simulation Experiment Description Markup Language (SED-ML), and everything included in an Open Modeling EXchange (OMEX) file, which could be used with a variety of simulators to reproduce the same results. On the one hand, the reproducibility procedure of 50 models developed a manual workflow that we would use to build an automatic platform to help users more easily curate and verify models in the future. On the other hand, these exercises allowed us to find the limitations and possible enhancement of the current curation and tooling to verify and curate models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: C-reactive protein (CRP) and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) are measures of inflammation used in diagnosis, to guide treatment decisions, and in disease prediction. Variability in measured CRP and hsCRP may affect their clinical utility but estimates of within-subject variability are based on limited data. Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis was performed to estimate longitudinal within-subject variability of CRP and hsCRP over any time period. Follow-up studies of any design in adults or children, with repeated measures of CRP or hsCRP were sought. Multiple databases were searched from inception to November 2022. Titles and abstracts were screened in duplicate. Full text screening and data extraction were performed by one reviewer and verified by a second. Risk of bias was assessed with a modified Consensus-based Standards for the Selection of Health Measurement Instruments (COSMIN) tool. Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) results were pooled with a meta-analysis and coefficient of variation (CV) results were described by median and range. Results: Of 2675 studies identified, 60 met the inclusion criteria: 34 reported CRP and 26 reported hsCRP. For CRP, median CV was 0.41 (range 0.11 to 0.89), and the pooled estimate of ICC was 0.55 (95% CI 0.35 to 0.74). For hsCRP, median CV was 0.44 (range 0.27 to 0.76) and the pooled estimate of ICC was 0.62 (95% CI 0.58 to 0.67). Limitations: Assessment of variability was not the main aim of many of the included papers, and it is possible that some relevant papers have been missed. Many of the papers included had low numbers of participants and/or low numbers of repeated measurements. Conclusions: Estimated within-subject variability is high for both CRP and hsCRP, but estimates are based on small numbers of participants and measurements. There is a need for better estimates of within-subject variability from analysis of larger numbers of repeated measurements in larger numbers of subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The objective of this proposed scoping review is to identify and map the available evidence on interventions that aim to help informal caregivers identify and/or manage delirium in an older person at home. Introduction: Delirium is a neurocognitive condition characterized by acute confusion and is associated with increased risk of morbidity and mortality. Research estimates delirium to be present in 17% of community-dwellers aged 85 and older, increasing proportionally with age to 45% in those aged 90 and older. Delirium often occurs at the onset of an older person's acute illness or exacerbation of a chronic illness (sometimes while at home) and, because of its protracted nature, usually continues after a hospital stay. Even when an older person's delirium resolves during hospitalization, they remain at risk of its recurrence after discharge home. Consequently, knowing how to detect and manage delirium is critical for informal caregivers of older people at home. However, there are no reviews focused exclusively on this topic in this setting. Inclusion criteria: The population of interest includes informal caregivers of a person aged 65+. Concepts of interest include delirium detection and/or management interventions. The context of interest is any setting where informal care is delivered, including the transition from hospital to home, in any geographical area. Materials and methods: The review will be conducted according to the JBI guidelines for scoping reviews. A three-step search strategy will be used to locate both published and unpublished papers in MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Web of Science Core Collection, ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health, SCOPUS, LILACS, and SciELO, PQD&T, NDLTD, Google Scholar and Google. No language restrictions will be placed on the review. Papers will be screened for eligibility at the title, abstract, and full text level by two independent reviewers. Data will be extracted by two independent reviewers and managed in Covidence. Any disagreements in screening or data extraction will be resolved by consensus or a third reviewer. Results will be summarised in narrative and tabular formats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of online interaction between investors and enterprises on stock liquidity, using data from A-share listed companies in China from 2010 to 2021. Firstly, our findings reveal that more frequent interaction leads to better stock liquidity, and this result remains consistent across various robustness tests. Secondly, we observe that the expected tenure of senior executives and the ratio of institutional investor ownership exert a significant moderating effect on this relationship. Thirdly, this effect varies across enterprises at different development stages and with different ownership structures, being more pronounced in growing and privately-owned companies. Furthermore, this paper finds an inverted U-shaped relationship between reply length and stock liquidity, indicating that excessively long replies may introduce noise and negatively affect liquidity. This study provides new insights into how online interactions can improve market efficiency and offers practical implications for corporate governance and investor relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CNN has demonstrated remarkable performance in EEG signal detection, yet it still faces limitations in terms of global perception. Additionally, due to individual differences in EEG signals, the generalization ability of epilepsy detection models is week. To address this issue, this paper presents a cross-patient epilepsy detection method utilizing a multi-head self-attention mechanism. This method first utilizes Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) to transform the original EEG signals into time-frequency features, then models local information using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), subsequently captures global dependency relationships between features using the multi-head self-attention mechanism of Transformer, and finally performs epilepsy detection using these features. Meanwhile, this model employs a light multi-head attention mechanism module with an alternating structure, which can comprehensively extract multi-scale features while significantly reducing computational costs. Experimental results on the CHB-MIT dataset show that the proposed model achieves accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, F1 score, and AUC of 92.89%, 96.17%, 92.99%, 94.41%, and 96.77%, respectively. Compared to the existing methods, the method proposed in this paper obtains better performance along with better generalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do highly productive researchers have significantly higher probability to produce top cited papers? Or do high productive researchers mainly produce a sea of irrelevant papers—in other words do we find a diminishing marginal result from productivity? The answer on these questions is important, as it may help to answer the question of whether the increased competition and increased use of indicators for research evaluation and accountability focus has perverse effects or not. We use a Swedish author disambiguated dataset consisting of 48.000 researchers and their WoS-publications during the period of 2008–2011 with citations until 2014 to investigate the relation between productivity and production of highly cited papers. As the analysis shows, quantity does make a difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Citation data can be used to evaluate the editorial policies and procedures of scientific journals. Here we investigate citation counts for the three different publication tracks of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). This analysis explores the consequences of differences in editor and referee selection, while controlling for the prestige of the journal in which the papers appear. Methodology/Principal Findings: We find that papers authored and ''Contributed'' by NAS members (Track III) are on average cited less often than papers that are ''Communicated'' for others by NAS members (Track I) or submitted directly via the standard peer review process (Track II). However, we also find that the variance in the citation count of Contributed papers, and to a lesser extent Communicated papers, is larger than for direct submissions. Therefore when examining the 10% most-cited papers from each track, Contributed papers receive the most citations, followed by Communicated papers, while Direct submissions receive the least citations. Conclusion/Significance: Our findings suggest that PNAS ''Contributed'' papers, in which NAS-member authors select their own reviewers, balance an overall lower impact with an increased probability of publishing exceptional papers. This analysis demonstrates that different editorial procedures are associated with different levels of impact, even within the same prominent journal, and raises interesting questions about the most appropriate metrics for judging an editorial policy's success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]