General

OBJECTIVES: This study examined the potential of ChatGPT as an accurate and readable source of information for parents seeking guidance on adenoidectomy, tonsillectomy, and ventilation tube insertion surgeries (ATVtis). METHODS: ChatGPT was tasked with identifying the top 15 most frequently asked questions by parents on internet search engines for each of the three specific surgical procedures. We removed repeated questions from the initial set of 45. Subsequently, we asked ChatGPT to generate answers to the remaining 33 questions...

Electrocatalytic sulfur reduction reaction (SRR) is emerging as an effective strategy to combat the polysulfide shuttling effect, which remains a critical factor impeding the practical application of the Li-S battery. Single-atom catalyst (SAC), one of the most studied catalytic materials, has shown considerable potential in addressing the polysulfide shuttling effect in a Li-S battery. However, the role played by transition metal vs coordination mode in electrocatalytic SRR is trial-and-error, and the general understanding that guides the synthesis of the specific SAC with desired property remains elusive...

BACKGROUND: Adults with cancer experience a significantly higher level of anxiety compared with the general population. Anxiety is reported at diagnosis and throughout the cancer trajectory, and it is particularly heightened at the initiation of infusion treatments. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated anxiety levels in patients receiving cancer treatments. OBJECTIVES: This evidence-based practice project evaluated the feasibility and effectiveness of using medical-grade weighted blankets to reduce anxiety in patients with cancer receiving the first two infusion treatments in the ambulatory setting...

Before the 20th century, peripheral artery disease (PAD) manifested as extreme pain, chronic wounds, and, eventually, gangrene requiring amputation. Despite this, it was rarely diagnosed. However, at the turn of the century, Western medicine shifted focus from infectious to chronic illnesses, and with this change, physicians' engagement with PAD transformed. Aiming to mitigate long-term injury, physicians now worked to identify and treat vessel disease to restore meaningful blood circulation. This article explores the development and deployment of a new device resulting from this refocus, the PAssive VAscular EXerciser (PAVAEX) Boot, and its role as a creative response to a previously intractable clinical problem...

The recently developed Quasiparticle Energy (QE) scheme, based on a DFT calculation with one more (or less) electron, offers a good description of excitation energies, even with charge transfer characters. In this work, QE is further extended to calculate electron transfer (ET) couplings involving two excited states. We tested it with a donor-acceptor complex, consisting of a furan and a 1,1-dicyanoethylene (DCNE), in which two low lying charge transfer and local excitation states are involved. With generalized Mülliken-Hush and fragment charge-difference schemes, couplings from the QE approach generally agree well with those obtained from TDDFT, except that QE couplings exhibit better exponential distance dependence...

ConspectusStereochemistry has played a key role in the development of synthetic chemistry for the simple reason that the function and properties of most molecules, from medicine to materials science, depend on their shape and thus the stereoisomer used. However, despite the potential for rotaxanes and catenanes to display unusual forms of stereochemistry being identified as early as 1961, this aspect of the mechanical bond remained underexplored and underexploited; until 2014 it was only possible to access chiral rotaxanes and catenanes whose stereoisomerism is solely attributable to the mechanical bond using chiral stationary phase high performance liquid chromatography, which limited their production on scale and thus inhibited the investigation of their properties and applications...

There is much excitement about the opportunity to harness the power of large language models (LLMs) when building problem-solving assistants. However, the standard methodology of evaluating LLMs relies on static pairs of inputs and outputs; this is insufficient for making an informed decision about which LLMs are best to use in an interactive setting, and how that varies by setting. Static assessment therefore limits how we understand language model capabilities. We introduce CheckMate, an adaptable prototype platform for humans to interact with and evaluate LLMs...

Impulsivity is a personality construct frequently employed to explain and predict important human behaviors. Major inconsistencies in its definition and measurement, however, have led some researchers to call for an outright rejection of impulsivity as a psychological construct. We address this highly unsatisfactory state with a large-scale, preregistered study ( N = 1,676) in which each participant completed 48 measures of impulsivity derived from 10 self-report scales and 10 behavioral tasks and reported frequencies of seven impulsivity-related behaviors (e...

Statins are widely used crucial drugs for the primary and secondary prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). Although generally well tolerated, statin intolerance can unfortunately limit statin use, with statin-associated muscle symptoms (SAMS) being the most common side effect associated with its discontinuation. Statin intolerance is an inability to tolerate a dose of statin required to sufficiently reduce an individual's cardiovascular risk, limiting the effective treatment of patients at risk of or with cardiovascular disease (CVD)...

Mixing two solvents can sometimes make a much better solvent than expected from their weighted mean. This phenomenon, called synergistic solvation, has commonly been explained via the Hildebrand and Hansen solubility parameters, yet their inability in other solubilization phenomena, most notably hydrotropy, necessitates an alternative route to elucidating solubilization. While, recently, the universal theory of solubilization was founded on the statistical thermodynamic fluctuation theory (as a generalization of the Kirkwood-Buff theory), its demand for experimental data processing has been a hindrance for its wider application...

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine the technical feasibility and safety of middle meningeal arterial (MMA) embolization combined with drilling drainage in the treatment of acute epidural hematoma (AEDH) by comparing it with traditional craniotomy in the treatment. METHODS: One hundred seventeen patients with AEDH treated for MMA embolization combined with drilling and drainage or craniotomy hematoma removal from January 2017 to September 2020 were retrospectively analyzed and divided into a craniotomy group (n=85) and a minimally invasive group (n=32)...

Fatty liver disease (FLD) affects approximately 25% of global adult population. Metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is a term used to emphasize components of metabolic syndrome in FLD. MAFLD does not exclude coexistence of other liver disease, but impact of coexisting MAFLD is unclear. We investigated prevalence and characteristics of MAFLD in patients with biopsy-proven autoimmune hepatitis (AIH), primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), or toxic liver disease. Liver histopathology and clinical data from Helsinki University Hospital district (1...

OBJECTIVE: Short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) are produced when the microbiota in the large intestine cause fermentation of dietary carbohydrates and fibers. These fatty acids constitute the primary energy source of colon mucosa cells and have a protective effect in patients suffering from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). This study aimed to compare the SCFA levels in the stools of patients with IBD and healthy controls. METHOD: Healthy controls and patients with IBD aged 18 and over were included in the study...

AIMS: The identification of patients at greater mortality risk of death at admission into an intensive cardiovascular care unit (ICCU) has relevant consequences for clinical decision-making. We described patient characteristics at admission into an ICCU by predicted mortality risk assessed with noncardiac intensive care unit (ICU) and evaluated their performance in predicting patient outcomes. METHODS: A total of 202 consecutive patients (130 men, 75 ± 12 years) were admitted into our tertiary-care ICCU in a 20-week period...

Herein, we employed high-flux backscattering spectroscopy to capture for the first time the motions of hydrated vanadyl ions in ionomer nanocomposites prepared by both solution-cast and in situ sol-gel condensation methods. Both local and jump diffusion coefficients of the hydrated vanadyl (VO2+ ) ions as well as the dynamic length scales of ion motions and the fraction of immobile hydrogen atoms were extracted from the scattering spectra. Notably, for solution-cast membranes, the jump and local diffusion coefficients of hydrated VO2+ ions were seen to decrease by over 10- and 4-fold, respectively, with the introduction of 10 mass % silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) compared to their neat counterparts...

BACKGROUND: The use of three-dimensional(3D) printing is broadly across many medical specialties. It is an innovative, and rapidly growing technology to produce custom anatomical models and medical conditions models for medical teaching, surgical planning, and patient education. This study aimed to evaluate the accuracy and feasibility of 3D printing in creating a superficial femoral artery pseudoaneurysm model based on CT scans for endovascular training. METHODS: A case of a left superficial femoral artery pseudoaneurysm was selected, and the 3D model was created using DICOM files imported into Materialise Mimics 22...

Nursing is considered indigent and oppressed because of uneven organizational hierarchies and unsatisfactory work environments. This study aimed to highlight the critical aspects of organizational culture in the nursing profession and, in general, those propagating hostile behaviours among female nursing staff that result in dissatisfaction and intention to leave the organization. A quantitative research approach was applied and a survey research strategy was used to collect the data. Convenience sampling was applied and data were collected from female nurses who were easily accessible and willing to participate in the research...

Striking progress has been made in understanding cognition by analyzing how the brain is engaged in different modes of information processing. For instance, so-called synergistic information (information encoded by a set of neurons but not by any subset) plays a key role in areas of the human brain linked with complex cognition. However, two questions remain unanswered: (a) how and why a cognitive system can become highly synergistic; and (b) how informational states map onto artificial neural networks in various learning modes...

Partially encased concrete (PEC) has better mechanical properties as a structure where steel and concrete work together. Due to the increasing amount of construction waste, recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) is being considered by more people. However, although RAC has more points, the performance is inferior to natural aggregate concrete (NAC). To narrow or address this gap, lightweight, high-strength and corrosion-resistant CFRP can be used, also protecting the steel flange of the PEC structure. Therefore, carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) confined partially encased recycled coarse aggregate concrete columns were studied in this paper...

BACKGROUND: One of the aims of value-based healthcare (VBHC) is to deliver more patient-centred care. However, little is known about the effect of VBHC interventions on patient experiences. We aim to explore how patients experience VBHC as implemented in an HIV outpatient clinic in an academic hospital in the Netherlands. METHODS: The HIV outpatient clinic of the Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, an academic tertiary hospital, implemented a VBHC intervention consisting of 1) implementation of a generic quality of life questionnaire, administered before each visit, 2) a change in consultation schedule; from twice a year face-to-face to one face-to-face double consultation and one remote consultation per year, and 3) a change in consultation structure; from a single face-to-face consultation with the infectious diseases (ID) specialist to a double consultation in which the patient visits both the nurse and the ID specialist...