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Lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI) is a common reason for hospitalization and antibacterial use globally. There is considerable overlap in the clinical presentation of bacterial and viral LRTIs. Low- or middle-income countries (LMICs) face the dual challenge of appropriately targeting antibacterials for bacterial LRTI while reducing inappropriate antibacterials for viral LRTI. We propose a framework by which an electronic clinical decision support tool (eCDST) for diagnosing LRTI and reducing unnecessary antibacterial use may be developed, validated, and prospectively evaluated in an LMIC. The developed tool would be data driven, low-cost, feasible in the local setting, adaptable based on resource availability, and updated in real time, with prospective assessment to identify its clinical impact. We draw upon our team's recent experience developing an eCDST for LRTI management in Sri Lanka. Publicly sharing such processes and data is valuable, such that we can collectively improve clinical care in LMICs and other settings.

Under traditional circumstances, most clinical trials rely on in-person operations to identify, recruit, and enroll study participants and to complete study-related visits. During unusual circumstances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the typical clinical trial model is challenged and forced to explore alternative approaches to implementing study recruitment, participant enrollment, and data collection strategies. One such alternative is a direct-to-participant approach which leverages electronic resources and relevant technological devices ( e.g. , smart phones) available to researchers and patients. This approach functions under the assumption that a participant has access to a device that connects to the internet such as a smart phone, tablet, or computer. Researchers are then able to transition a typical paper-based, in-person model to an electronic-based, siteless, remote study. This article describes the challenges clinicians and researchers faced when implementing a direct-to-participant study approach during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lessons learned during this study of infant populations could help increase efficiency of future trials, specifically, by lessening the burden on participants and clinicians as well as streamlining the process for enrollment and data collection. While direct-to-adult participant recruitment is not a novel approach, our findings suggest that studies attempting to recruit the infant population may benefit from such a direct-to-participant approach., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2024 The Authors.)

The purpose of this project was to assess the magnitude of the relationship between violence against women and cancer; to identify the exposures and cancers for which this relationship was particularly robust; to identify the effect of violence exposure on cancer screening. We conducted a meta-analysis of 36 studies to determine the relationship between violence against women and cancer outcomes, including screening, in 2017. Results from this review provide evidence of a significant, positive relationship between violence and cancer diagnoses, particularly for cervical cancer. Women who were victims of intimate partner violence and sexual abuse were more likely to be diagnosed with cancer compared with non-victims. Violence against women did not appear to be related to cancer screening practices and routine clinical service utilization; however, violence was associated with greater odds of abnormal pap test results. Victims of intimate partner violence and women who suffered physical abuse were more likely to have abnormal pap test results. In conclusion, use of screening tools for violence against women in clinical settings may improve the breadth and quality of research on violence against women and cancer. Investigators should consider how to creatively apply case-control and retrospective cohort designs to investigate the complex mechanisms and moderators of the relationship between violence against women and cancer., (Published by Elsevier Inc.)

An environmentally benign, transition metal- and base-free, iodine-promoted atom-economical protocol for the synthesis of the privileged isoquinolone scaffold via regioselective intramolecular iodoamidation of alkynes under mild conditions has been developed. The present synthetic approach being metal, additive, and solvent-free adheres to the principles of green chemistry, as it tends to minimize waste production. The synthesized product contains an iodo as well as a free –OH group that is readily accessible for subsequent transformation to afford biologically relevant compounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The direct C‐4 alkylation of isoquinolin‐1(2H)‐one moiety is a challenging transformation in organic synthesis. Here we present a practical and efficient synthesis of C‐4 alkylated isoquinolin‐1(2H)‐ones through conjugate addition of isoquinolin‐1(2H)‐ones to p‐quinone methides for the first time. The process is facilitated by Lewis acid catalysis and this operationally straightforward, mild, metal‐free and one‐pot transformation provides a wide range of C‐4 alkylated isoquinolin‐1(2H)‐ones at ambient temperature in good to excellent yields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Major health inequalities exist surrounding the utilisation of cervical cancer screening services globally. Jordan, a low- and middle-income country, has poor screening rates (15.8%), with barriers to accessing services, including lack of education. Emerging studies demonstrate that intimate partner violence (IPV) impacts reproductive health decisions. As a large proportion of Jordanian women have reported experiencing IPV, this study examines the association between IPV and cervical cancer screening in Jordan, the first of its kind using national-level data. Methods: Using Jordan's Demographic Health Survey 2017–18, cervical cancer screening awareness and self-reported screening were estimated in participants who answered questions on IPV (n = 6679). After applying sample weights, Heckman's two-stage probit model determined the association of awareness and utilisation of cervical cancer screening with experience of IPV, adjusting for the socio-economic factors. Results: Of the women with privacy to answer the IPV module, 180 (3.4%) were found to be victims of sexual violence, 691 of physical violence (12.6%) and 935 (16.2%) of emotional violence. Women subjected to sexual violence were less likely to admit to having awareness of a Pap smear test; however, this did not impact screening rates. Victims of emotional violence were more likely to be screened than non-victims. No association between physical violence and cervical cancer screening was found. Conclusions: A significant association between cervical screening awareness and IPV demonstrates that cancer screening policies must consider IPV among women to improve screening awareness. The paper further sheds light on the paradoxical association between emotional violence and screening. It is acknowledged this situation may be far worse than reported, as women without autonomy were unlikely to answer IPV questions that may endanger them—targeted surveys on cervical cancer screening warrant further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The current study aimed to systematically review the data obtained from studies on women with breast and gynaecologic cancers subjected to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Design: Systematic review without meta‐analysis. Data sources PubMed, ProQuest, Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science; databases were searched without time limit. Review method: The PRISMA model was guided the systematic literature search using Boolean keywords and operators. PICO statement was used to develop a question of this review. Studies examining women with breast and gynaecologic cancers subjected to IPV were included in the study after the quality of the articles was reviewed. Results: Eight studies that met the inclusion criteria and were conducted between 2000 and 2021 were included in the study. Conclusions: Studies confirm the effect of IPV on the severity and consequences of breast and gynaecologic cancers. Having a history of IPV can indirectly lead to breast and gynaecologic cancers. On the other hand, women suffering from IPV are more likely than other women to delay screening or not perform screening for cancer. Impact The dimensions and nature of violence and the disclosure or non‐disclosure of violence in vulnerable women are strongly affected by society's culture. Therefore, researchers need to have sufficient knowledge of the culture and social factors governing the community to achieve reliable findings related to IPV in qualitative, quantitative, and psychometric studies and the design of IPV assessment tools. It is recommended that IPV screening teams, that is, multidisciplinary teams of trained physicians, nurses and social workers, participate in two‐way screening programmes: IPV screening for women with gynaecological cancer and screening for gynaecological cancer in women with IPV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Few studies of intimate partner violence and health outcomes include multiple forms of intimate partner victimization, so this paper sought to examine health associations with intimate partner violence (IPV), including sexual, physical, stalking, and psychological forms, as well as polyvictimization. Methods: Data are from the 2010-2012 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, an on-going national random-digit-dial telephone survey of U.S. adults. There were 41,174 respondents. Logistic regression was used to compute prevalence ratios for any IPV, adjusted for demographics and non-IPV victimization. For individual forms of IPV, prevalence ratios were further adjusted for other forms of IPV. Tests for linear trend in poly-victimization were performed. Results: Any IPV was associated with all health conditions for both sexes with a few exceptions for males. Female penetrative sexual victimization and male stalking victimization were associated with the most health conditions. For each health condition, a significant linear trend indicated that as the number of forms of IPV experienced increased, prevalence of each health condition increased, with a few exceptions for males. Conclusions: It is important for service providers to screen for multiple forms of IPV, including psychological aggression, because individual forms or polyvictimization may have unique and cumulative health effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Violence against women is a relevant health and social problem with negative consequences on women's health. The interaction between genome and environmental factors, such as violence, represents one of the major challenges in molecular medicine. The Epigenetics for WomEn (EpiWE) project is a multidisciplinary pilot study that intends to investigate the epigenetic signatures associated with intimate partner and sexual violence-induced stress-related disorders. Materials and Methods: In 2020, 62 women exposed to violence (13 women suffering from sexual violence and 49 from Intimate Partner Violence, IPV) and 50 women with no history of violence were recruited at the Service for Sexual and Domestic Violence. All women aged 18–65 were monitored for their physical and psychological conditions. Blood samples were collected, and DNAs were extracted and underwent the epigenetic analysis of 10 stress-related genes. Results: PTSD prevalence in victims was assessed at 8.1%. Quantitative methylation evaluation of the ten selected trauma/stress-related genes revealed the differential iper-methylation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, dopamine receptor D2 and insulin-like growth factor 2 genes. These genes are among those related to brain plasticity, learning, and memory pathways. Conclusions: The association of early detection of posttraumatic distress and epigenetic marker identification could represent a new avenue for addressing women survivors toward resilience. This innovative approach in gender-based violence studies could identify new molecular pathways associated with the long-term effects of violence and implement innovative protocols of precision medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) have been used for the first time as a sustainable medium in a ruthenium-catalyzed C–H activation reaction. This study describes an efficient, simple and straightfoward protocol for the direct C–H activation of a broad range of aromatic substrates and reaction with several olefins and alkynes, affording interesting heterocyclic systems as products. A simple, robust and commercially available ruthenium catalyst was used along with different DESs under different reaction conditions. This methodology was compatible with the use of either internal or external oxidant (oxygen from air) using a catalytical amount of copper salts for the last case. Different functional directing groups were well tolerated obtaining promising results, that were comparable and even better that those reported in the literature. Also, the reaction medium could be recycled up to 3 consecutive times and this transformation could be carried out on a gram scale with excellent yield. Several green chemistry mass metrics, such as reaction mass efficiency, process mass intensity and optimum efficiency, as well as qualitative parameters were calculated and compared with those of the classical protocols, showing the advantages of using DESs for C–H activation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The direct C-4 alkylation of isoquinolin-1(2H)-one moiety is a challenging transformation in organic synthesis. Here we present a practical and efficient synthesis of C-4 alkylated isoquinolin-1(2H)-ones through conjugate addition of isoquinolin-1(2H)-ones to p-quinone methides for the first time. The process is facilitated by Lewis acid catalysis and this operationally straightforward, mild, metal-free and one-pot transformation provides a wide range of C-4 alkylated isoquinolin-1(2H)-ones at ambient temperature in good to excellent yields., (© 2023 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

An efficient sulfuration of isoquinolin-1(2H)-ones at the C-4 position is reported by employing ethyl sulfinates, and the corresponding products are obtained in moderate to excellent yields in the presence of iodine. This synthetic strategy provides a range of thioether-isoquinolin-1(2H)-ones while tolerating a number of functional groups on the isoquinoline nitrogen atom and benzene ring. In addition, pyridin-2(1H)-one is also reacted smoothly and afforded the corresponding thioether product in moderate yield. A plausible mechanism is suggested based on the preliminary mechanistic studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple, efficient, and green method for the iodine‐promoted regioselective C‐4 sulfenylation of isoquinolin‐1(2H)‐ones using commercially available aryl sulfonyl chlorides as the sulfur source was described under metal‐ and solvent‐free conditions. The reaction proceeded smoothly under simple conditions to obtain 4‐arylthioisoquinolin‐1(2H)‐ones in moderate to good yields, and showed high regioselectivity, broad substrate scope, and good functional group tolerance. A radical reaction mechanism involving ArS. radicals as key intermediates is proposed for the present transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Herein, we report a Rh(III)-catalyzed 1,3-dienylation of isoquinolin-1(2H)-ones through C-H activation. The present reaction enables the preparation of 3-(buta-1,3-dien-2-yl)isoquinolin-1(2H)-ones through the direct cross-coupling reaction of readily available isoquinolin-1(2H)-ones with methylenecyclopropanes, while tolerating many sensitive functional groups. Therefore, this method provides an efficient and convenient approach for modification of interesting molecules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, we report an atom‐efficient, rapid, green, and sustainable approach to synthesize isoquinolines and isoquinolinones using a homogeneous recyclable ruthenium catalyst in PEG Media assisted by microwave energy. Dibenzoylhydrazine was used for C–H/N–N activation reactions for the first time in combination with ketazine as oxidizing directing groups for annulation reactions with internal alkynes. The developed protocol is environmentally benign due to significantly shortened times with an easy extraction method, higher atom economy, external oxidant and silver or antimony salt free conditions, applicability to a gram scale synthesis, use of biodegradable solvent and wide substrate scope with higher product yields. Moreover, it is worth noting that the established methodology allowed reuse of the catalytic system for up to five successive runs with minimal loss in activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The first example of a chiral cinchona‐squaramide catalyzed enantioselective intramolecular aza‐Michael addition for the synthesis of dihydroisoquinolines and tetrahydropyridines has been developed. In general, good yields and excellent enantioselctivities were observed. Broad classes of Michael acceptors, such as enones, esters, thioesters, and Weinreb amides, were successful substrates. The possibility of recycling the catalysts has also been demonstrated. An oxidation of combined enamine and keto functionalities on chiral dihydroisoquinolines leads to a single diastereomer of an architecturally unprecedented tetracyclic core without loss in enantioselectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate urban areas information is important for a variety of applications, especially city planning and natural disaster prediction and management. In recent years, extraction of urban structures from remotely sensed images has been extensively explored. The key advantages of this imaging modality are reduction of surveying expense and time. It also elevates restrictions on ground surveys. Thus far, much research typically extracts these structures from very high resolution satellite imagery, which are unfortunately of relatively poor spectral resolution, resulting in good precision yet moderate accuracy. Therefore, this paper investigates extraction of buildings from middle and high resolution satellite images by using spectral indices (Normalized Difference Building Index: NDBI, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index: NDVI, Soil Adjustment Vegetation Index: SAVI, Modified Normalized Difference Index: MNDWI, and Global Environment Monitoring Index: GEMI) by means of various Machine Learning methods (Artificial Neural Network: ANN, K-Nearest Neighbor: KNN, and Support Vector Machine: SVM) and Data Fusion (i.e., Majority Voting). Herein empirical results suggested that suitable learning methods for urban areas extraction are in preferring order Data Fusion, SVM, KNN, and ANN. Their accuracies were 85.46, 84.86, 84.66, and 84.91%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on enhancing the cancer workforce response to domestic violence and abuse. Topics include qualitative research participants reporting about DVA not abating and often intensified after a cancer diagnosis; and experiencing cancer specific abuse such as being prevented from recovering, talking to others about the cancer or accessing treatment.

Vulnerability discovery models (VDMs) operate on known vulnerability data to estimate the total number of vulnerabilities that will be reported after a software is released. VDMs have been proposed by industry and academia, but there has been no systematic independent evaluation by researchers who are not model proponents. Moreover, the traditional evaluation methodology has some issues that biased previous studies in the field. In this work we propose an empirical methodology that systematically evaluates the performance of VDMs along two dimensions (quality and predictability) and addresses all identified issues of the traditional methodology. We conduct an experiment to evaluate most existing VDMs on popular web browsers’ vulnerability data. Our comparison shows that the results obtained by the proposed methodology are more informative than those by the traditional methodology. Among evaluated VDMs, the simplest linear model is the most appropriate choice in terms of both quality and predictability for the first 6-12 months since a release date. Otherwise, logistics-based models are better choices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Motivated by biological inspiration and the issue of instruction disruption, we develop a new form of Linear Genetic Programming (LGP) called Parallel LGP (PLGP) for classification problems. PLGP programs consist of multiple lists of instructions. These lists are executed in parallel after which the resulting vectors are combined to produce the classification result. PLGP limits the disruptive effects of crossover and mutation, which allows PLGP to significantly outperform regular LGP. Furthermore, PLGP programs are naturally suited to caching due to their parallel architecture. Although caching techniques have been used in tree based GP, to our knowledge, there are no caching techniques specifically developed for LGP. Thus, a novel caching technique is also developed with the intrinsic properties of PLGP in mind, which can decrease fitness evaluation time by almost an order of magnitude for the classification problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic programming has now been used to produce at least 76 instances of results that are competitive with human-produced results. These human-competitive results come from a wide variety of fields, including quantum computing circuits, analog electrical circuits, antennas, mechanical systems, controllers, game playing, finite algebras, photonic systems, image recognition, optical lens systems, mathematical algorithms, cellular automata rules, bioinformatics, sorting networks, robotics, assembly code generation, software repair, scheduling, communication protocols, symbolic regression, reverse engineering, and empirical model discovery. This paper observes that, despite considerable variation in the techniques employed by the various researchers and research groups that produced these human-competitive results, many of the results share several common features. Many of the results were achieved by using a developmental process and by using native representations regularly used by engineers in the fields involved. The best individual in the initial generation of the run of genetic programming often contains only a small number of operative parts. Most of the results that duplicated the functionality of previously issued patents were novel solutions, not infringing solutions. In addition, the production of human-competitive results, as well as the increased intricacy of the results, are broadly correlated to increased availability of computing power tracked by Moore’s law. The paper ends by predicting that the increased availability of computing power (through both parallel computing and Moore’s law) should result in the production, in the future, of an increasing flow of human-competitive results, as well as more intricate and impressive results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]