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Previous literature has recognized the importance of social relationship in understanding people’s engagement in aggressive behavior. Yet, largely due to data limitations, only few studies have empirically explored how social status precisely influences interpersonal violence. In this research, we investigate the determinants of peer-to-peer violence by focusing on individual’s positions in the status hierarchy within adolescent peer networks. More specifically, our study examines and demonstrates the extent to which the likelihood of interpersonal violence rises, first, as a function of one’s status (popularity) and, second, due to ambiguity between status positions of the parties involved in a physical altercation. Using a unique dataset collected on school-based children in Laos (Lao People’s Democratic Republic) in 2016 ( N = 1,332), we employ exponential random graph models to show the influence of status on the odds of involvement in on-campus violence. Results indicate that higher status, that is, more popular, students are more likely to be involved in a physical fight compared to their lower status counterparts. Moreover, we find a significant degree of similarity in status among students who engage in a fight. In other words, status ambiguity surrounding dyads in the peer network increases the likelihood of bringing them into a conflict situation. Our findings provide implications for understanding how social status shapes the dynamics of negative networks. By analyzing sociocentric network data, the present study extends and moves beyond prior findings mainly based on individual-level (non-dyadic) data.

Methods that can automate, support, and streamline the preanesthesia evaluation process may improve resource utilization and efficiency. Natural language processing (NLP) involves the extraction of relevant information from unstructured text data. We describe the utilization of a clinical NLP pipeline intended to identify elements relevant to preoperative medical history by analyzing clinical notes. We hypothesize that the NLP pipeline would identify a significant portion of pertinent history captured by a perioperative provider.For each patient, we collected all pertinent notes from the institution's electronic medical record that were available no later than 1 day before their preoperative anesthesia clinic appointment. Pertinent notes included free-text notes consisting of history and physical, consultation, outpatient, inpatient progress, and previous preanesthetic evaluation notes. The free-text notes were processed by a Named Entity Recognition pipeline, an NLP machine learning model trained to recognize and label spans of text that corresponded to medical concepts. These medical concepts were then mapped to a list of medical conditions that were of interest for a preanesthesia evaluation. For each condition, we calculated the percentage of time across all patients in which (1) the NLP pipeline and the anesthesiologist both captured the condition; (2) the NLP pipeline captured the condition but the anesthesiologist did not; and (3) the NLP pipeline did not capture the condition but the anesthesiologist did.A total of 93 patients were included in the NLP pipeline input. Free-text notes were extracted from the electronic medical record of these patients for a total of 9765 notes. The NLP pipeline and anesthesiologist agreed in 81.24% of instances on the presence or absence of a specific condition. The NLP pipeline identified information that was not noted by the anesthesiologist in 16.57% of instances and did not identify a condition that was noted by the anesthesiologist's review in 2.19% of instances.In this proof-of-concept study, we demonstrated that utilization of NLP produced an output that identified medical conditions relevant to preanesthetic evaluation from unstructured free-text input. Automation of risk stratification tools may provide clinical decision support or recommend additional preoperative testing or evaluation. Future studies are needed to integrate these tools into clinical workflows and validate its efficacy.

The literature provides conflicting evidence as to whether retirement may harm cognition. This study aimed to determine the relationship between retirement and cognitive impairment in Korean adults.This study was performed using biennial data collected during the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing survey between 2006 and 2018. A total of 6363 adults aged 45 years or older with normal cognition were followed for up to 12 years. Linear regression, adjusted for potential covariates, was used to examine the association between retirement and cognitive impairment.Retirees composed 27.6% of participants were older, and had several cohort-related features such as a lower education level and income. They were more likely to be single and to participate in religious activities, and had better healthy habits, but participated in fewer social activities and were more likely to have a depressive mood. Unadjusted models indicated that retirees were at higher risk of cognitive impairment, but this association became nonsignificant in age-adjusted models. Multivariate regression analysis identified several risk factors associated with cognitive impairment, but these did not include retirement.Retirement was not associated with cognitive impairment in Korean adults.

Many scholars have investigated the relationship between protest and repression. Less often examined is the legislative suppression of protest by elites seeking to make protest more costly to protesters. Because state legislatures are largely invisible to the public, this “wholesale” suppression of protest is less likely to trigger public opposition than repression by the police. This study explains the sharp increase in the number and the severity of state legislative bills to repress the right to protest both before and after the election of Donald Trump. In particular, it examines whether these can be attributed either to Republican control of state legislatures or to protest threat. Contrary to the findings in much of the literature, bills aimed at suppressing protest are less closely related to threat than to the realignment of state politics. The article also finds that these proposals were influenced by diffusion through policy brokerage.

Background There remain concerns about the safety and functional benefit of laparoscopic pylorus-preserving gastrectomy (LPPG) compared with laparoscopic distal gastrectomy (LDG). This study evaluated short-term outcomes of a randomized clinical trial (RCT) comparing LPPG with LDG for gastric cancer. Methods The Korean Laparoendoscopic Gastrointestinal Surgery Study (KLASS)-04 trial was an investigator-initiated, open-label, parallel-assigned, superiority, multicentre RCT in Korea. Patients with cT1N0M0 cancer located in the middle third of the stomach at least 5 cm from the pylorus were randomized to undergo LPPG or LDG. Participants, care givers and those assessing the outcomes were not blinded to group assignment. Outcomes were 30-day postoperative morbidity rate and death at 90 days. Results Some 256 patients from nine institutions were randomized (LPPG 129 patients, LDG 127 patients) between July 2015 and July 2017 and outcomes for 253 patients were analysed. Postoperative complications within 30 days were seen in 19.3 and 15.5 per cent in the LPPG and LDG groups respectively (P = 0·419). Postoperative pyloric stenosis was observed in nine (7.2 per cent) and two (1·5 per cent) patients in the LPPG and LDG groups (P = 0·026) respectively. In multivariable analysis higher BMI was a risk factor for postoperative complications (odds ratio 1·17, 95 per cent c.i. 1·04 to 1·32; P = 0·011). Death at 90 days was zero in both groups. Conclusion Postoperative complications and mortality was comparable in patients undergoing LPPG and LDG. Registration number: NCT02595086 (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov).

Abdominal tuberculosis (TB) occurs only in a subset of TB-infected persons. With a higher incidence in the immunocompromised population, successful treatment includes early diagnosis and initiation of anti-TB medications. This case report discusses a 22-year-old immunocompetent male diagnosed with advanced duodenal and peritoneal TB after perforation requiring emergent surgery and intravenous anti-TB treatment secondary to lack of enteral access.

How does religion shape individual decisions to participate in protests? On the one hand, past literature from Tocqueville’s perspective has suggested that people’s involvement in religious activities leads to engagement in civic activities. On the other hand, the Marxist approach has pointed to the possibility that one’s religious belief may rather lead to decreasing participation in civil society. Combining these two conflicting perspectives, this study examines the influence of religious beliefs and activities on protest participation, an increasingly important form of civic participation in contemporary times. Using the World Values Survey across 48 countries, the author’s findings provide support for the Marxist approach by suggesting that people’s religious beliefs are significantly and negatively associated with one’s participation in protests especially in non-Western religions. Additionally, while the results fail to support the Tocquevillian perspective that one’s religious activities are directly related to protest participation, religious activities do have a countervailing effect by minimizing the negative influence of religious beliefs people hold on protest participation. This study provides important implications to further our understanding on the paradoxical relationship between religion and civic participation.

Background One-in-two women and one-in-five men >50 years are expected to have an osteoporotic fracture during their lifetime. However, despite this 1-in-5 women who have broken a bone, break 3 or more before being diagnosed, highlighting the importance of early diagnosis. Aim NICE recommends a fragility fracture risk assessment in all women aged >65 and men >75 years. However, during our review of patients attending OPRAC, we found that only 3% of patients had an assessment done. Therefore, the primary aim of this project was to improve risk assessment of fragility fractures in this setting. Method We analysed the data for patients attending OPRAC between 23.09.20–23.10.20 and 01.05.21–15.06.21. We captured 35 and 51 patients respectively and sought to identify what proportion of the population had an accurate height, weight and fragility fracture assessment. We carried out our QIP using the PDSA cycle. Our interventions consisted of departmental teaching, posters and inclusion of fracture risk assessment in our induction handbook. Results The risk assessment went up from 3% to 33% post-intervention and documentation of height and weight went up from 74% to 98%. We retrospectively calculated the FRAX score for every single patient to assess whether the patients were receiving the appropriate treatment according to their risk score. What was consistent across both cycles was that if a patient had a risk assessment done, they were far more likely to have the correct treatment—89% and 82% in cycles 1 and 2 vs. 54% and 30% in those who didn’t have an assessment. Conclusion The above highlights what we already know about the importance of early diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis. The interventions we have implemented have made a difference however further incorporation of fragility fracture assessments in clinical protocols is needed to bring about sustained change.

In 2015 and 2016, atmospheric transport modeling challenges were conducted in the context of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) verification, however, with a more limited scope with respect to emission inventories, simulation period and number of relevant samples (i.e., those above the Minimum Detectable Concentration (MDC)) involved. Therefore, a more comprehensive atmospheric transport modeling challenge was organized in 2019. Stack release data of Xe-133 were provided by the Institut National des Radioéléments/IRE (Belgium) and the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories/CNL (Canada) and accounted for in the simulations over a three (mandatory) or six (optional) months period. Best estimate emissions of additional facilities (radiopharmaceutical production and nuclear research facilities, commercial reactors or relevant research reactors) of the Northern Hemisphere were included as well. Model results were compared with observed atmospheric activity concentrations at four International Monitoring System (IMS) stations located in Europe and North America with overall considerable influence of IRE and/or CNL emissions for evaluation of the participants' runs. Participants were prompted to work with controlled and harmonized model set-ups to make runs more comparable, but also to increase diversity. It was found that using the stack emissions of IRE and CNL with daily resolution does not lead to better results than disaggregating annual emissions of these two facilities taken from the literature if an overall score for all stations covering all valid observed samples is considered. A moderate benefit of roughly 10% is visible in statistical scores for samples influenced by IRE and/or CNL to at least 50% and there can be considerable benefit for individual samples. Effects of transport errors, not properly characterized remaining emitters and long IMS sampling times (12-24 h) undoubtedly are in contrast to and reduce the benefit of high-quality IRE and CNL stack data. Complementary best estimates for remaining emitters push the scores up by 18% compared to just considering IRE and CNL emissions alone. Despite the efforts undertaken the full multi-model ensemble built is highly redundant. An ensemble based on a few arbitrary runs is sufficient to model the Xe-133 background at the stations investigated. The effective ensemble size is below five. An optimized ensemble at each station has on average slightly higher skill compared to the full ensemble. However, the improvement (maximum of 20% and minimum of 3% in RMSE) in skill is likely being too small for being exploited for an independent period.

This report describes a purely laparoscopic/robotic technique for successful living donor liver transplantation (LDLT). Purely laparoscopic explant hepatectomy followed by purely laparoscopic and robotic graft implantation can be performed in LDLT.

We present a case of a 31-year-old Filipino man with vertebral osteomyelitis and bilateral psoas abscesses. Vertebral osteomyelitis is a rare infection of the bone and bone marrow that affects the vertebral column. The patient’s initial presentation included a 1-week history of cough, fatigue, diarrhea, fevers, and a 40-pound weight loss. An extensive workup including a computed tomography (CT) scan of the abdomen and pelvis demonstrated bilateral psoas abscesses with subcutaneous air tracking into the right flank. Blood cultures revealed Escherichia coli , Streptococcus anginosus , and Bacteroides . However, with an unclear primary source of infection, the most likely causative factor we believed to be due to immobility. J Med Cases. 2020;11(11):345-347 doi: https://doi.org/10.14740/jmc3565

OBJECTIVES To determine the 3-year outcomes of men with prostate cancer managed with active surveillance (AS) in a cohort of geographically diverse community-based urology practices. AS is the management of choice for a majority of men with lower risk prostate cancer.1,2,3 Little is known about the contemporary "real-world" follow-up and adherence rates in the most common setting of urologic care, community (private) practice.4 METHODS: We retrospectively evaluated outcomes for men diagnosed between January 1, 2013 and May 31, 2014 with National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) very low, low and intermediate risk prostate cancer who selected AS in 9 large community urology practices. We used univariate and multivariate analyses to describe associations between race, age, insurance status, family history, comorbidity, clinical stage, Gleason score, NCCN risk-group, and PSA density with discontinuation of AS. RESULTS Five hundred and forty-eight men on AS were followed for a median of 3.35 years. 89% (492) continued to follow-up with diagnosing practice. 32% (171) discontinued AS. On multivariate analysis, increasing NCCN risk classification (Hazard ratio [HR] 1.65, P = 0.02 and HR 2.09, P < 0.01 for low and intermediate risk vs very low risk) was significantly associated with discontinuation. Among those who discontinued AS, surgery and radiation were utilized equally (47% and 53%, respectively, P = 0.48). CONCLUSION In this community-based cohort of men on AS, a minority was lost to follow-up and adherence to AS was similar to other reports. Disease characteristics more than sociodemographic characteristics correlated with adherence to AS, while surgery and radiotherapy were utilized equally among those discontinuing AS, both suggesting guideline concordant practice of medicine.

Objective To characterize the contemporary management of prostate cancer patients in large community practices. The optimal management of incident prostate cancer has changed in the last decades to include active surveillance for a large number of men. At the same time, many community practices have merged into larger groups. The adoption of evidence-based guidelines is of increasing importance, but poorly understood in this newer practice setting. Methods We conducted a retrospective chart review of men ≤75 years old with very low, low, and intermediate risk incident prostate cancer diagnosed between December 1, 2012 and March 31, 2014, in 9 geographically distributed large urology practices. We used descriptive statistics and multivariable regression to assess predictors of primary management choice. Results 2029 men were in the study cohort. A majority were white (68.7%). Total of 45.7% had intermediate risk, 36.2% low risk, and 17.9% had very low risk disease cancer. Active surveillance (AS) was the initial treatment for 74.7% of men with very low risk disease, 43.5% of men with low risk disease and 10.8% of men with intermediate risk disease. The probability of choosing surgery vs radiation for men with lower and intermediate risk disease was 0.54 (95% confidence interval: 0.42, 0.65) and 0.59 (95% confidence interval: 0.48, 0.69), respectively. Conclusion We found that the initial management of lower risk prostate cancer in large community urology practices largely followed clinical characteristics, widespread adoption of active surveillance, and equal use of surgery and radiation. However, some variation by practice suggested a need for further investigation and continued improvement.

Evidence suggests that the cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical circuitry plays an important role in schizophrenia pathophysiology. Cerebellar contribution from deep cerebellar nuclei to the circuitry has not yet been examined. The authors investigated resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) of cerebellar output nuclei with striatal-thalamic-cortical regions in relation to white-matter integrity and regional gray-matter volumes in first-episode psychosis (FEP).

PurposeMelanoma is one of the most aggressive cancer with 1.6% of total cancer deaths in United States. In recent years treatment options for metastatic melanoma have been improved by the FDA approval of new therapeutic agents. However, these inhibitors based therapies are non-specific and have severe toxicities including hyperkeratosis, photosensitivity, hepatitis, arthralgia and fatigue. The aim of this study is to determine the synthetic lethal effect (paclitaxel and radiations) on melanoma cells and reduce the total radiation doses by increasing the dose rates up to 2400 MU/min.MethodsWe previously reported a radiation treatment (10 MV x-rays, 10X-FFF, dose rate 2400MU/min, low total dose 0.5 Gy) that kills melanoma cells with 80% survival of normal HEM in vitro. In this study we extended the radiation cycle up to four and include paclitaxel treatment to study the synthetic lethal effect on melanoma and two additional normal primary cells, HDF and HEK. Cells were treated with paclitaxel prior to radiations of dose rate of 400 and 2400 MU/min with total radiation dose of only 0.5 Gy. To study induction of apoptosis and cell death, mitochondria respiration assay, DNA damage assay and colony formation assay were performed.ResultsFour days of consequent radiation treatment with paclitaxel significantly reduces the survival of melanoma cells by inducing of apoptosis and mitochondrial damages. After treatment, excessive DNA damage in melanoma cells leads to increase in expression of pro-apoptotic genes (Casp3) and decrease in expression of DNA repair gene (PARP1) and anti-apoptotic gene (Bcl2) to activate apoptosis pathway. Combination of paclitaxel and radiations reduces the survival of melanoma cells colonies when compared to radiation alone.ConclusionOur study indicates radiations with paclitaxel has potential synthetic lethal effect on melanoma cells and can be develop as therapy for melanoma without having toxicities or harmful effects to normal primary skin cells.

Owing to tunability of MTJ stack characteristics based on perpendicular magnetic anisotropy control via sophisticated magnetic material engineering, STT-MRAM can meet a wide range of product specifications for various applications: 1) flash-type applications such as microcontroller and AI inferencing device and 2) SRAM-type applications such as frame buffer memory. However each application has different reliability challenges. In this paper, we discuss the reliability requirements for Flash-type and SRAM-type STT-MRAM, verifying superb reliability of highly tunable STT-MRAM technology.

TOPIC: Chest Infections TYPE: Original Investigations PURPOSE: Many patients diagnosed with COVID-19 develop a post-viral syndrome commonly known as Long COVID-19. Long COVID is described as when a patient experiences persistent symptoms for more than 12 weeks after their initial infection. Recent studies have shown that patients may experience long covid for as many as 6 months after initial infection. We conducted a follow up study on patients diagnosed with COVID-19 one year ago at one of the worst affected tertiary hospitals in the state of New Jersey. METHODS: This was a prospective cohort study consisting of patients with a confirmed positive COVID-19 test by PCR in the months of March and April of 2020 in the St. Joseph’s University Hospital network. Individuals who were either admitted to the hospital or tested positive in the outpatient setting with Sars- CoV2 were included in the study. Patients under 18 years of age or those with cognitive impairment or inability to complete the survey were excluded. Informed consent was taken over the telephone. The participants completed a comprehensive questionnaire including sociodemographic information and a review of systems to evaluate for persistent symptoms they have experienced over the past year directly due to COVID-19. All patient identifying information was de-identified in compliance with HIPAA rules and regulations. RESULTS: There were 91 inpatients ( 91/173 [52.6%]) and 82 outpatients (82/173 [47.4%]) with a mean age of 51.5. The most common ethnicities were Hispanic (80/173 [46.24%]) African American (48/173 [27.74%]), Caucasian (32/173 [18.49%]) and the most common comorbidities were hypertension (68/173 [39.5%]), obesity (45/173 [26.9%]) and diabetes (33/173 [19.1%]). There were 91 inpatients ( 91/173 [52.6%]) and 82 outpatients (82/173 [47.4%]), of which 85 were male (85/173 [49.42%]). Overall 83 patients (47.9%) still experienced at least one persistent symptom after initial infection. The most commonly reported symptoms were shortness of breath (44/173 [25.4%]), fatigue (43/173 [21%]), anxiety (36/173 [20.8%]), difficulty focusing/brain fog (32/173 [18.5%]), body aches (32/173 [18.5%]), headaches (29/173 [16.8%]), memory loss (25/173 [14.5%]), cough (23/173 [13.3%]), depression (22/173 [12.7%]), chest pain (19/173 [11%]), palpitations (15/173 [8.7%]), lightheadedness (15/173 [8.7%]), runny nose (12/173 [6.9%]) and loss of taste (11/173 [6.4%]). CONCLUSIONS: In our patient population nearly half of all patients (47.9%) still experienced at least one symptom 12 months after their initial infection. In both patient populations the most common persistent symptoms were shortness of breath, fatigue, anxiety and difficulty focusing/brain fog. The risk factors and pathophysiology of long covid remain unknown, highlighting the importance of further research into the topics. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Nearly half of our patient population still experienced at least one symptom from their COVID-19 infection after one year. This further suggests that infection with COVID-19 may carry a risk of developing long term and possibly permanent sequelae from the virus. As more patients continue to be infected with COVID-19 and subsequently develop long covid, a public health crisis may be looming in the future. This highlights the need for continued public education on COVID-19 as well as the critical importance of widespread vaccination across the world to end the pandemic. DISCLOSURES: No relevant relationships by Polina Aron, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Hamdallah Ashkar, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Sohail Chaudhry, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Arslan Chaudhry, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Beenish Faheem, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Alisa Farokhian, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by George Horani, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Humberto Jimenez, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Christina Kmiecik, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Patrick Michael, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Christopher Millet, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Spandana Narvaneni, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Sherif Roman, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Fady Shafeek, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Yezin Shamoon, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Jin Suh, source=Web Response

This study examines the factors that facilitated the international diffusion of Uber, one of the fastest growing global companies in the sharing economy. We particularly focus on the legal and institutional conditions under which this ride-sharing platform could spread to customers online. Using a unique cross-national, longitudinal dataset, we employ event history models to investigate the effect of institutional environment on the diffusion of Uber. The results suggest that the establishment of the rule of law has a positive impact on the spread of Uber, even after controlling for economic and political characteristics. In addition, the overall quality of governmental regulations on markets is positively related to the diffusion of this ride-sharing platform. Our study contributes to the emerging literature on the sharing economy by identifying critical institutional factors that enable the transformation of business models worldwide.

We present the world-first demonstration of 28-nm embedded MRAM (eMRAM) for frame buffer memory, highlighting the smallest macro size (0.08 mm2/Mb) reported to date. Compared to SRAM that is commonly used for frame buffer memory, eMRAM provides 47% area saving. For frame buffer applications, read disturbance and endurance are the most critical reliability considerations. With magnetic tunnel junction process improvements, we have verified sufficient read disturbance margins and met the endurance requirement (> 1E10 cycles) which corresponds to 10-year continuous usage. Compared to flash-type eMRAM, we have achieved 40% switching current reduction with < 50ns read/write speed.

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE:Active surveillance (AS) is guideline recommended for low risk and some intermediate risk prostate cancer. We previously reported on the use and adherence to AS, but litt...

Background and Objective This study aimed to examine psychometric properties of the Korean Ford Insomnia Response to Stress Test (K-FIRST). The FIRST measures personal vulnerability of sleep difficulties in response to stressful events. Methods 377 participants (mean age = 21.80 ± 2.91 years, 76.9% female) completed online surveys about demographic information, sleep reactivity (K-FIRST), insomnia (Insomnia Severity Index, ISI), perceived stress (Perceived Stress Scale, PSS), and depression (Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale, CES-D). Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to determine the factor structure of the K-FIRST. Results K-FIRST showed adequate internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.85) and significant goodness of fit test result (χ2 = 1386.33, p < 0.001). A two-factor structure was selected as a result of the factorial analysis, with rumination and worry as the two factors. K-FIRST was significantly associated with the ISI (r = 0.35, p < 0.01), PSS (r = 0.30, p < 0.01), and CES-D (r = 0.42, p < 0.01). Conclusions The results of this present study supported the reliability and validity of K-FIRST. It is expected that the K-FIRST can be used in future research in investigating personal vulnerabilities that may predispose individuals to sleep disturbance.

Proper design decoupling in the context of Axiomatic Design (AD) is essential to transforming customer needs to functional requirements, design parameters, and process variables using matrices. It is common that design decoupling is performed by adopting methods that are philosophically and methodologically different from AD, such as TRIZ. However, transformation of coupling problems following the approach lacks a uniform description for design coupling and also a systematic methodology for decoupling. This article presents a novel method that allows problems involving design coupling to be described by their attributes using the basic concepts of Extenics. The resulted descriptions are well-defined in the basic-element form with a set of uniform characteristics, enabling the decoupling process to be general, structured and effective in search for the knowledge needed for solving the coupling problem. Three decoupled models each exploring AD and Extenics for following a particular decoupling direc...

Graphite has been the most common anode materials in the Li-ion batteries (LIBs). However, it has a limited Coulombic efficiency and cycling stability which are crucial for the practical use of LIBs. Here, we present a lithium (Li)-intercalated graphite (LIG) electrode with a stable passivating layer on the surface for an improved electrochemical performance. The LIG was prepared by thermal treatment of commercial graphite in the presence of Li metal vapor and subsequent exposure to air. Characterization revealed that the surface of LIG was passivated by a thin inorganic compound (Li2CO3). This passivation layer on the graphite surface function as a preformed stable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) films and allows the graphite electrode to deliver a high reversible capacity, high Coulombic efficiency, and stable cycle life.

Objective This study aimed to evaluate psychometric properties of the Munich ChronoType Questionnaire (MCTQ) in a sample of Korean older adults. Methods One-hundred ninety two participants aged 65 and over completed interview-based questionnaires about chronotype, insomnia, depression, and anxiety. Additionally, a small subset of subjects completed a 7-day sleep diary and actigraphy measurements. Results Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) scores were significantly negatively correlated with Midpoint of sleep on free days corrected for sleep debt accumulated through weekdays (MSFsc) (r=-0.45, pl0.01) assessed by the MCTQ. MSFsc using the MCTQ was significantly positively correlated with MSFsc assessed by both the sleep diary (r=0.74, pl0.05) and actigraphy (r=0.76, pl0.05). Additionally, MSFsc assessed by the MCTQ was significantly positively correlated with insomnia (r=0.26, pl0.01), depression (r=0.25, pl0.01), and anxiety (r=0.18, pl0.05). Finally, based on MEQ scores, we derived a cut-off score for the MCTQ that distinguishes morning type and other types (intermediate/evening types) in older adults. Conclusion The results of these studies supported the validity of the MCTQ in Korean older adults. Additionally, while sleep rhythms in elder adults may be more advanced, eveningness tendency may be still important and indicative of sleep and psychological disturbance.

What is known and objective Candida catenulata is a fungus commonly found in Australian cheeses. C. catenulata has been identified as the causative pathogen for one report of onychomycosis and one report of candidaemia. Case description A 37-year-old male underwent surgery for an incarcerated umbilical hernia repair and bowel obstruction and presented with severe abdominal pain and ascitic fluid draining from the surgical site. C. catenulata was isolated in blood cultures. The patient was treated with antifungal therapy for approximately 6 weeks. What is new and conclusion To our knowledge, this is the first case describing successful treatment of possible fungal endocarditis caused by C. catenulata.