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Abstract Objective Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a clinically heterogeneous and complex autoimmune disease, making the prediction of therapeutic responses a significant challenge. This study aims to assess the role of clinical and synovial biomarkers in predicting poor response to adalimumab treatment in RA patients. Methods This single-center prospective study included 56 RA patients who had an inadequate response to methotrexate (MTX). At baseline, comprehensive assessments including complete blood count, liver and kidney function tests, blood glucose levels, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP), rheumatoid factor (RF), anti-citrullinated protein antibody (ACPA), as well as counts of swollen and tender joints, Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) score, pain visual analogue scale (VAS) scores, and DAS28-CRP scores were conducted. Synovial biopsies were performed, followed by an efficacy evaluation at 12 weeks of adalimumab treatment. Patients not meeting the ACR20 criteria were classified into the non-responder group, with the remainder categorized as the responder group. Results Out of the participants, 24 (42.9%) failed to achieve ACR20 with adalimumab treatment. Non-responders exhibited higher infiltration of plasma cells in the synovium. Multivariate logistic regression analysis identified the presence of plasma cells as an independent risk factor for inadequate response to adalimumab. Conclusion Inadequate responses to adalimumab in RA patients were associated with increased plasma cell infiltrations in the synovium. These findings suggest a promising target for tailored therapies in rheumatoid arthritis.

Abstract Background To explore the differences and correlations between the target volumes defined using preoperative prone diagnostic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and postoperative prone computed tomography (CT) simulation imaging based on deformable image registration (DIR) for external-beam partial breast irradiation (EB-PBI) after breast-conserving surgery (BCS). Methods Eighteen breast cancer patients suitable for EB-PBI were enrolled. Preoperative prone diagnostic MRI and postoperative prone CT scan sets for all the patients were acquired during free breathing. Target volumes and ipsilateral breast were all contoured by the same radiation oncologist. The gross tumor volume (GTV) delineated on the preoperative MRI images was denoted as the GTVpreMR and the tumor bed (TB) delineated on the postoperative prone CT images was denoted as the GTVpostCT. The MIM software system was used to deformably register the MRI and CT images. Results When based on the coincidence of the compared target centers, there were statistically significant increases in the conformity index (CI) and degree of inclusion (DI) values for GTVpostCT-GTVpreMR, GTVpostCT-CTVpreMR + 10, CTVpostCT + 10-GTVpreMR, and CTVpostCT + 10-CTVpreMR + 10 when compared with those based on the DIR of the thorax (Z = − 3.724, − 3.724, − 2.591, − 3.593, all P

This meta-analytical review aims to investigate the overall effect of comprehensive interventions on teacher well-being and the factors that moderate the effect by synthesizing empirical evidence. A total number of 176 effect sizes from 44 studies were included in this study. The results reported the mean effect size of intervention on teacher well-being was significant (g = 0.35). The study quality (F = 5.38, p < 0.01), intervention type (F = 3.03, p < 0.05), and intervention duration (F = 2.80, p < 0.05) were identified as the statistically significant moderators for the overall effect. The further multiple moderator model reported a significant outcome (F = 2.91, p < 0.01). This study is the first attempt to synthesize the impact of the intervention on teacher well-being using a three-level model. Conceptual, methodological, and practical implications were provided and particular guidelines for professionals and education policy makers to better promote teacher wellness were also presented.

This review summarizes the research outcomes and findings documented in 45 journal papers using a shared tunnel boring machine (TBM) dataset for performance prediction and boring efficiency optimization using machine learning methods. The big dataset was collected during the Yinsong water diversion project construction in China, covering the tunnel excavation of a 20 km-section with 199 items of monitoring metrics taken with an interval of one second. The research papers were the result of a call for contributions during a TBM machine learning contest in 2019 and covered a variety of topics related to the intelligent construction of TBM. This review comprises two parts. Part I is concerned with the data processing, feature extraction, and machine learning methods applied by the contributors. The review finds that the data-driven and knowledge-driven approaches in extracting important features applied by various authors are diversified, requiring further studies to achieve commonly accepted criteria. The techniques for cleaning and amending the raw data adopted by the contributors were summarized, indicating some highlights such as the importance of sufficiently high frequency of data acquisition (higher than 1 second), classification and standardization for the data preprocessing process, and the appropriate selections of features in a boring cycle. The review finds that both supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods have been utilized by various researchers. The ensemble and deep learning methods have found wide applications. Part I highlights the important features of the individual methods applied by the contributors, including the structures of the algorithm, selection of hyperparameters, and model validation approaches.

This review discusses the application scenarios of the machine learning-supported performance prediction and the optimization efficiency of tunnel boring machines (TBMs). The rock mass quality ratings, which are based on the Chinese code for geological survey, were used to provide “labels” suitable for supervised learning. As a result, the generation of machine prediction for rock mass grades reasonably agreed with the ground truth documented in geological maps. In contrast, the main operational parameters, i.e., thrust and torque, can be reasonably predicted based on historical data. Consequently, 18 collapse sections of the Yinsong project have been successfully predicted by several researchers. Preliminary studies on the selection of the optimal penetration rate and cost were conducted. This review also presents a summary of the main achievements in response to the initiatives of the Lotus Pool Contest in China. For the first time, large and well-documented TBM performance data has been shared for joint scientific research. Moreover, the review discusses the technical problems that require further study and the perspectives in the future development of intelligent TBM construction based on big data and machine learning.

Trust is crucial to the public’s compliance with policies and rules released by governments, particularly in times of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. However, it remains unclear whether and to what extent late adolescents’ interpersonal and institutional trust fluctuated from the pre-COVID-19 pandemic to the lasting phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study uses three-wave longitudinal data from the Youth Got Talent (YGT) project to address this gap (n = 1,423; 43% boys; Mage = 17.85, SD = 1.95). Latent basis growth curve models showed that interpersonal trust remained relatively stable over time. In contrast, institutional trust temporarily increased from pre-COVID-19 pandemic (Fall 2019) to the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (Spring 2020) and subsequently, decreased during the lasting phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (Fall 2020). These results enhance our understanding of trust among late adolescents and have implications for policies aiming to manage the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract Background In the face of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, families with young children are bombarded with new challenges and stressors. This study examined the additive and interactive effects of parental stress and negative emotions during COVID-19 on parents’ severity of depressive symptoms. Methods Participants were 221 Chinese families involving maritally intact mothers and fathers of preschool-aged children. Discussion Path analysis indicated that mothers’ parental stress interacted with their negative emotions, such that their stress was related to their severity of depressive symptoms only when negative emotions were high. By comparison, fathers’ stress and negative emotions were additively associated with their severity of depressive symptoms. Supporting the cumulative risk model, parental stress during COVID-19 and negative emotions were linked to parents’ severity of depressive symptoms additively or interactively, depending on the gender of the parent. These findings inform practitioners about the relevance of parents’ stress and negative emotions to their severity of depressive symptoms during the pandemic.

Abstract Background Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to represent one's own and others' mental states, and emotion understanding involves appropriately comprehending and responding to others' emotional cues in social interactions. Individual differences in mind and emotion understanding have been associated strongly with verbal ability and interaction and, as such, existing training for children's ToM and emotion understanding is mostly language-based. Building on the literature on embodied cognition, this study proposes that mind and emotion understanding could be facilitated by one's visuospatial experience in simulating other's frames of reference. Methods This protocol consists of two training studies. Study 1 will examine if visuospatial perspective-taking training promotes ToM and emotion understanding. Participants will consist of 96 4.5-year-olds and will be randomly assigned to one of two training groups: the altercentric block building group (trained to be visuospatial perspective-takers), or the egocentric block building group (no visuospatial perspective-taking is involved). Study 2 will compare the engagement of visuospatial perspective-taking and verbal interaction in the development of mind and emotion understanding. Participants will consist of 120 4.5-year-olds. They will be randomly assigned to one of three training groups: the socialized altercentric block building (both visuospatial perspective-taking and verbal interaction), the parallel altercentric block building (visuospatial perspective-taking only), or the paired dialogic reading (verbal interaction only). Conclusions In terms of theoretical implications, the potential causal relationship between visuospatial perspective-taking and ToM and emotion understanding may shed new insights on what underlies the development of mental state understanding. The findings of this study also have practical implications: researchers and educators may popularize visuospatial perspective-taking training in the form of block-building games if it is found to be effective in complementing conventional language-based theory-of-mind training.

This prospective study tested if parental factors from the theory of planned behavior (TPB) predicted children’s uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine and examined whether parents’ intention to vaccinate children against COVID-19 would mediate such associations. Participants were 852 Hong Kong parents of 1076 children aged 5–12. At Time 1, parents reported on items measuring the TPB predictors (i.e. attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) and intention. At Time 2 (approximately 4 months after Time 1), parents reported whether their children had received the COVID-19 vaccine. Attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and intention predicted children’s actual uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine. Intention mediated the relations between two TPB predictors, namely attitudes and subjective norms, and children’s COVID-19 vaccination uptake. The TPB is considered a useful framework in the development of future COVID-19 vaccine programs for children to promote parents’ intention and the subsequent uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine among children.

Abstract Background The 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19) has caused enormous negative impacts on adolescents’ routines, social interaction, interpersonal relationships, psychosocial well-being, and physical health. Nevertheless, theories suggest that individuals also often seek out solutions that may facilitate positive changes when they are faced with uncertainty and crisis. However, the existing literature has disproportionately focused on the negative effect of COVID-19 on adolescents, and scant research has examined to what extent and in what aspects adolescents would experience positive changes in times of the pandemic. This pre-registered research aims to bridge said gaps by: (1) exploring different profiles of positive changes in various life outcomes in Chinese adolescents over the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) examining the role of resilience in differentiating different profiles; (3) comparing adolescents’ mental health across profiles. Method Participants were 2,567 adolescents aged 12 to 24 recruited from 32 provinces in mainland China (66.89% females; Mage = 19.87 years, SD = 2.02). Through an online survey, participants rated how much their lives of different domains had experienced positive changes since the outbreak of the pandemic. They also answered standardized questionnaires that measured their resilience and mental health. Results Results of latent profile analysis revealed three profiles: limited positive changes (33.3%), partial positive changes (49.5%), and overall strong positive changes (17.2%). Moreover, adolescents with a higher level of resilience were more likely to be categorized into the partial positive changes profile compared to the limited positive changes profile and categorized into the overall strong positive changes profile compared to the other two profiles, after controlling for multiple covariates. Adolescents in the overall strong positive changes profile had better mental health than their counterparts of the other two profiles. Conclusion Chinese adolescents appear to experience positive changes in various life outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for those with high levels of resilience. Such positive changes have important implications on adolescents’ mental health.

Children were suggested to be at lower risk of developing the severe form of the COVID-19. However, children infected with COVID-19 may be more likely to experience biopsychosocial stressors associated with the pandemic and display poorer developmental outcomes. The current study is among the first to compare children infected and uninfected with COVID-19 on outcomes related to parents’ use of mobile phones to calm children, routines, parent–child relationship, externalizing and internalizing problems, prosocial behavior, gratitude, and happiness. A total of 1,187 parents (88.6% mothers) of children aged 5 to 12 completed an online survey between April 2022 and May 2022 when schools were suspended during the 5th wave of resurgence in Hong Kong. Our findings showed no substantial differences in various psychological, social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes between infected and uninfected children. Our findings can be used to educate parents to reduce their fear and anxieties associated with their children’s COVID-19 infection. Our findings also suggested that support during the pandemic should be provided to children and families regardless of whether children have been infected with COVID-19.

COVID-19 vaccines (Sinovac and Pfizer/BioNTech) have recently been approved for Hong Kong children. Understanding parental intentions to vaccinate children against COVID-19 is important to the development of an effective COVID-19 vaccine campaign. From a large-scale, geographically representative dataset in Hong Kong (N = 11,141), we examined parents’ intentions to vaccinate their children against COVID-19 under three conditions: (1) no policy restrictions, (2) vaccination rate considered for school resumption, and (3) more choices of vaccine. Results showed that levels of vaccine hesitancy in Hong Kong parents are high. Hong Kong parents’ intention to vaccinate their children was highest when there were more vaccines to choose from, followed by when vaccination rate was considered to resume school, and when there was no policy restrictions. Finally, Hong Kong parents with higher education backgrounds and family income were less willing to vaccinate their children. Together, these findings indicate that effective vaccines campaign should consider the characteristics and preferences of parents who have little intention to vaccinate within a specific social context.

Uptake of COVID-19 vaccines is an important measure to curb the transmission of the coronavirus. Before the vaccines were available, numerous studies found that people had a moderate-to-high intention to receive the vaccines. Several studies have also used the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to predict people’s COVID-19 vaccination intention with three elements (i.e. attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) . However, the vaccination rate falters after the vaccines became available, and there were few updated data documenting people’s vaccination intention and how well TPB can explain their intention. In addition, studies investigating other outcomes found that the predictive utilities of TPB often varied across gender, but such gender differences received little consideration in the literature of COVID-19 vaccination intention. To help fill these gaps, we examined the associations between TPB elements and people’s intention to receive COVID-19 vaccines and the moderation of gender in the context of vaccination campaign. Participants were 405 Chinese citizens. They reported on the three TPB elements and intention to receive vaccines in the coming months. Descriptive results showed that participants’ vaccination intention was moderate. Results of path analysis showed that subjective norms and perceived behavioral control were positively related to vaccination intention for the whole sample. Furthermore, results of multigroup path analysis showed that attitudes were only related to males’, while subjective norms were only related to females’, intention. These findings enhance the utility of TPB in explaining people’s COVID-19 vaccination intention and inform gender-specific strategies to boost males’ and females’ vaccination intention.

The current letter provides the backdrop context of the study “Intention to vaccinate young children against COVID-19: a large-scale survey of Hong Kong parents” conducted when the COVID-19 vaccination was first made available to young children in Hong Kong during the fifth wave of the outbreak. The study was conducted to examine parents’ intention for informing the development of an effective child COVID-19 vaccine program because parents were speculated to have low intention to vaccinate their children against COVID-19.

Parental attachment is important for adolescents’ development as well as cultural context. Poland used to be collectivist but now is closer to individualistic due to social and economic transformation. Few studies have examined parental attachment and self-esteem among Polish adolescents. This descriptive study (N = 303 Polish adolescents) investigated the levels of parental attachment, gender differences, preferred attachment figure, association with self-esteem and cultural differences with collectivistic (China) and individualistic (Italy) cultures. The results indicated that: (1) there was no gender difference in parental attachment; (2) mother was the preferred attachment figure; (3) parental attachment was related to self-esteem; and (4) cultural differences were found. Findings were discussed in terms of Polish sociopolitical situation.

This study compared six models, namely the Gaines, Sikka, Nelder, Wood, Dhanoa and Hayashi models, for the estimation of 305 days milk yield in Chinese Holstein cattle. We compared their ability to reliably predict 305-day lactation yield from incomplete (3 or 6 test-day (TD)) records. Our findings revealed that the accuracies (ACC) were 0.6655–0.9948, 0.8652–0.9977 and 0.9169–0.9968, whereas the mean square errors (MSE) were 0.0121–2.4807, 0.0139–1.0716 and 0.0170–0.5528 when 3 TD records were used in the first, second and higher lactations, respectively; when 6 TD records were used, the ACC were 0.8800–0.9992, 0.8742–0.9998 and 0.7950–0.9996, whereas the MSE values were 0.0017–0.3348, 0.0011– 0.8605 and 0.0021–1.4869 in the first, second and higher lactations, respectively. All the models were fitted more accurately with 6 TD than 3 TD records. Further analysis revealed that the curves made by the Nelder, Wood and Dhanoa models were close to the actual curves. These three models can be used to predict the 305-day yield for management decisions in farms and for the genetic evaluation of Chinese Holstein cattle.

Pretend play has a central role for children’s development and psychological well-being. However, there is a paucity of standardized and valid measures specifically devoted to assess the core domains involved in play activities in preschool and primary school children. The Affect in Play Scale-Preschool (4-5 years) and the Affect in Play Scale-Preschool Extended Version (6-10 years) are semi-structured parallel tools designed to explore child’s cognitive and affective processes using a standardized play task. The current study administered this 5-minutes play task to 538 Italian children aged 4-10. The purposes were to compare play abilities in boys versus girls and in preschool versus primary school children, to correlate pretend play with divergent thinking and to evaluate the structural validity of the measure along the considered age span. No differences, excepting for Organization, were found between boys and girls, whereas school age children reported higher play abilities then the younger ones. External validity was assessed using correlational analysis with the divergent thinking task (the Alternate Uses Test) for preschoolers and primary school-aged children, in line with findings from Manova. Construct validity, assessed through the Confirmatory Factor Analysis, showed good fits for the two-factor model with cognitive and affective factor for both the Affect in Play Scale-Preschool and its Extended Version. A multi-group factor analysis suggested a partial invariance of the two-factor model across preschool (4-5 years old) and primary school-aged (6-10 years old) children. Results supported the use of the Affect in Play Scale-Preschool and its Extended Version as adequate measures to assess the interplay of cognitive and affective skills in preschool and school age children. The discussion highlights clinical and research implications linked to the possibility to have a unique play task able to assess child’s affective and cognitive abilities throughout a quite wide life span (from 4 to 10 years old).