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We used social media data from “covid19positive” subreddit, from 03/2020 to 03/2022 to identify COVID-19 cases and extract their reported symptoms automatically using natural language processing (NLP). We trained a Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers classification model with chunking to identify COVID-19 cases; also, we developed a novel QuadArm model, which incorporates Question-answering, dual-corpus expansion, Adaptive rotation clustering, and mapping, to extract symptoms. Our classification model achieved a 91.2% accuracy for the early period (03/2020-05/2020) and was applied to the Delta (07/2021–09/2021) and Omicron (12/2021–03/2022) periods for case identification. We identified 310, 8794, and 12,094 COVID-positive authors in the three periods, respectively. The top five common symptoms extracted in the early period were coughing (57%), fever (55%), loss of sense of smell (41%), headache (40%), and sore throat (40%). During the Delta period, these symptoms remained as the top five symptoms with percent authors reporting symptoms reduced to half or fewer than the early period. During the Omicron period, loss of sense of smell was reported less while sore throat was reported more. Our study demonstrated that NLP can be used to identify COVID-19 cases accurately and extracted symptoms efficiently.

Purpose Weight gain is common among breast cancer patients and may contribute to poorer treatment outcomes. Most programs target breast cancer survivors after the completion of therapy and focus on weight reduction. This study examined the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of an intervention designed to prevent primary weight gain among women receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer. Methods Thirty-eight newly diagnosed stage II or III breast cancer patients were randomized to the BALANCE intervention or usual care within 3 weeks of starting neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The intervention used a size acceptance-based approach and encouraged home-based resistance and moderate-intensity aerobic exercise as well as a low energy-dense diet to prevent weight gain. Assessments were conducted at baseline, mid-chemotherapy (3 months), and post-chemotherapy (6 months). Intervention feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effects on anthropometric, quality of life, and circulating biomarker measures were evaluated. Results Intervention participant retention (100%) and in-person session attendance (80%) were high during the intervention period, although attendance dropped to 43% for telephone-delivered sessions. The majority of participants reported being satisfied with the intervention during chemotherapy (88%). Participants in the intervention group had greater reductions in waist circumference ( p  = .03) and greater improvements in self-reported vitality scores ( p  = .03) than the control group at the end of chemotherapy. Significant effects on biomarkers were not observed. Conclusions A size acceptance weight management program is feasible during neoadjuvant chemotherapy among breast cancer patients and may have beneficial effects on waist circumference and patient vitality. Trial registration This study was registered as a clinical trial at www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT00533338).

Background Endometrial cancer survivors are at an increased risk of poor quality of life outcomes. Physical activity is positively associated with general quality of life in this population, however, little is known about how changes in physical activity may be associated with changes in specific aspects of quality of life. The aim of this secondary data analysis was to explore the relationships between change in physical activity and change in physical, mental, social, and other aspects of quality of life in endometrial cancer survivors receiving a physical activity intervention. Methods Endometrial cancer survivors ( N  = 100) participated in a telephone-based physical activity intervention for six months. At baseline and post-intervention we measured physical activity via accelerometry and ecological momentary assessment, and quality of life via the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36), the Quality of Life of Adult Cancer Survivors instrument, the Brief Symptom Inventory, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and the Perceived Stress Scale. We conducted structural equation modeling path analyses to investigate how physical activity post-intervention was associated with the quality of life measures’ subscales post-intervention, adjusting for baseline levels and potentially confounding covariates. Results Increasing physical activity was positively associated with improvements in general health ( p  = .044), role limitation due to physical health ( p  = .005), pain ( p  = .041), and somatic distress ( p  = .023). There was no evidence to indicate that change in physical activity was associated with change in other aspects of quality of life. Conclusions Endometrial cancer survivors are at higher risk for suffering from challenges to physical quality of life, and findings from this study suggest that increasing physical activity may alleviate some of these problems. Further research is needed to determine whether other aspects of quality of life are linked to change in physical activity. Trial registration Trial registration number: NCT00501761 Name of registry: clinicaltrials.gov Date of registration: July 16, 2007. Date of enrollment: June 16, 2005.

Purpose The aim of this study was to examine associations between participants' quality of life and study completion. This is a secondary analysis of an exercise intervention study for endometrial cancer survivors. Methods We considered data for one-hundred post-treatment endometrial cancer survivors from a single-arm, sixmonth longitudinal exercise study. Participants received a home-based intervention consisting of exercise recommendations and telephone counseling sessions to encourage adherence. In addition to monitoring adherence to physical exercise recommendations, participants completed multiple psychological assessments, including health-related quality of life. Associations between study completion and health-related quality of life factors were analyzed using generalized additive models, to allow for possibly nonlinear associations. Results Measures of bodily pain contributed to the odds of study completion in a nonlinear way (p = 0.025), suggesting that improvements in these factors were associated with study completion, especially for individuals reporting very high levels of pain. In addition, association between participants' levels of anxiety and study completion showed an inverse U-shaped relation: Whereas increase in anxiety was associated with higher odds of completion for individuals with low anxiety score (0-4), increase in anxiety contributed to lower odds of study completion for individuals with anxiety scores of approximately 5-10 (p = 0.035). Conclusions Results from this study indicate that baseline health-related quality of life factors may be associated with study completion in exercise intervention studies. In order to increase study completion rates, individually tailored study strategies may be prepared based on the baseline quality of life responses.

PurposeTo utilize data from lifestyle intervention pilot studies for cancer survivors to elucidate demographic, disease-related, and health behavior factors that might predict enrollment in this type of research. Additionally, factors were differentially compared based on intervention design (i.e., individual versus couple-based).MethodsSecondary data analysis was conducted regarding predictors of enrollment into lifestyle intervention studies, including Healthy Moves Weight Loss (individual participants, screened n = 89, enrolled n = 30) and Healthy Moves Couples (survivors and their partners, screened n = 197, enrolled n = 23). Due to small sample sizes, common in pilot studies, random forest analyses were used to maximize information yielded by the data.ResultsResults identified numerous important predictors of enrollment in individual and couple-based lifestyle interventions. Percent energy from fat and physical activity minutes were identified as important predictors for both recruitment methods. Age, cancer site, and marital status were important predictors of enrollment in the individual-based intervention. Weight, fiber consumption, and disease-related symptom severity and interference were important predictors of enrollment in the couple-based intervention.ConclusionAlthough there was some overlap in predictors for enrollment between studies, many differential predictors were identified between individual versus couple-based study designs for lifestyle intervention in cancer survivors. Future lifestyle intervention studies for cancer survivors may benefit from targeting different predictors of enrollment based on study design to optimize recruitment. Additionally, understanding predictors may allow certain barriers to enrollment (i.e., symptom burden) to be directly addressed, making lifestyle intervention research more feasible and acceptable to difficult-to-recruit survivors.

Recently, wearable sensors have emerged as promising tools for collecting behavioral data in free-living conditions. For example, physical activity monitors have been used in large population-based studies such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and the UK Biobank to track participants’ levels of physical activity in their free-living environment. Such large, population-based studies puts forward unprecedented opportunities in exploring demographic, biological, behavioral, and genetic factors associated with physical activity in free living conditions. However, analyzing the large scale behavioral data collected using the wearable devices may warrant special attention for a variety of reasons. First, the device wear times can be highly variable within- and between- individuals over the measurement days, and may be associated with the measurement outcome such as minutes in moderate to vigorous physical activity (informative observation times). Second, study participants may stop wearing the device from a certain measurement day and onwards (censored observations). Third, the early termination of the wearable sensor monitoring may be related to the measured outcome (informative censoring). Fourth, exploration of large number of potential correlates to the wearable sensor measured outcome may necessitate computationally efficient methods. Lastly, rapid developments in the high-resolution sensor technology have demanded more accurate methods for extracting activity intensity features from these data. The overall goal of this study was to develop novel statistical methods to account for the aforementioned challenges in analyzing data from modern wearable devices, scalable for exploring large population level datasets utilizing the state-of-the-art wearable sensor technology.

Weight loss interventions have been successfully delivered via several modalities, but recent research has focused on more disseminable and sustainable means such as telephone- or Internet-based platforms. The aim of this study was to compare an Internet-delivered weight loss intervention to a comparable telephone-delivered weight loss intervention. This randomized pilot study examined the effects of 6-month telephone- and Internet-delivered social cognitive theory-based weight loss interventions among 37 cancer survivors. Measures of body composition, physical activity, diet, and physical performance were the outcomes of interest. Participants in the telephone intervention (n=13) showed greater decreases in waist circumference (-0.75 cm for telephone vs -0.09 cm for Internet, P=.03) than the Internet condition (n=24), and several other outcomes trended in the same direction. Measures of engagement (eg, number of telephone sessions completed and number of log-ins) suggest differences between groups which may account for the difference in outcomes. Cancer survivors in the telephone group evidenced better health outcomes than the Internet group. Group differences may be due to higher engagement in the telephone group. Incorporating a telephone-based component into existing weight loss programs for cancer survivors may help enhance the reach of the intervention while minimizing costs. More research is needed on how to combine Internet and telephone weight loss intervention components so as to maximize engagement and outcomes. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01311856; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01311856 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6tKdklShY).

A new development process for the noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) of a vehicle is presented using data analysis and machine learning with long-term NVH driving data. The process includes exploratory data analysis (EDA), variable importance analysis, correlation analysis, sensitivity analysis, and development target selection. In this paper, to dramatically reduce the development period and cost related to vehicle NVH, we propose a technique that can accurately identify the precise connectivity and relationship between vehicle systems and NVH factors. This new technique uses whole big data and reflects the nonlinearity of dynamic characteristics, which was not considered in existing methods, and no data are discarded. Through the proposed method, it is possible to quickly find areas that need improvement through correlation analysis and variable importance analysis, understand how much room noise increases when the NVH level of the system changes through sensitivity analysis, and reduce vehicle development time by improving efficiency. The method could be used in the development process and the validation of other deep learning and machine learning models. It could be an essential step in applying artificial intelligence, big data, and data analysis in the vehicle and mobility industry as a future vehicle development process.

Dipeptidyl-peptidase IV (DPP4) inhibitors have shown potential anti-tumor properties. This study investigates the therapeutic potential of evogliptin, a DPP4 inhibitor, both as a single agent and in combination with temozolomide (TMZ), in glioma models. In vitro studies were performed using U87 and U373 glioma cell lines exposed to different concentrations of TMZ (250, 500 μM) and evogliptin (250, 500 ng/mL), either alone or together, for 24, 48, and 72 h. Cell viability was determined with the MTT assay. In vivo effectiveness was tested in a xenograft mouse model treated with intraperitoneal injections of evogliptin (60 mg/k g/day), TMZ (15 mg/kg/day), or their combination over 3 weeks. The combination of TMZ and evogliptin markedly reduced cell viability compared to single-agent treatments. DPP4 mRNA levels decreased more substantially with combination therapy. miRNA expression profiling with Affymetrix arrays indicated that certain miRNAs, such as miR-4440 and miR-6780b-5p, were upregulated after treatment with evogliptin or the combination regimen, whereas others were downregulated. These miRNAs could play a role in limiting glioma growth through DPP4 regulation. In the animal model, evogliptin alone did not provide a survival advantage. Analysis of TCGA data showed that glioma patients with decreased DPP4 expression had improved survival rates. The co-administration of evogliptin and temozolomide resulted in distinct miRNA profile changes. Nevertheless, both in vitro and in vivo, the added cytotoxicity from the combination was minimal.

RPD3 is an evolutionarily conserved class I histone deacetylase (HDAC) that plays a pivotal role in diverse cellular processes. In filamentous fungal pathogens, abrogation of the gene encoding RPD3 results in either lethality or severe growth impairment, making subsequent genetic analyses challenging. Magnaporthe oryzae is a causal agent of rice blast disease, which is responsible for significant annual yield losses in rice production. Acetylation and deacetylation of histones are key epigenetic mechanisms for gene regulation in response to environmental stimuli. RPD3 is a well-conserved class I histone deacetylase (HDAC) that is involved in diverse biological processes. Here, we investigated the roles of the Magnaporthe oryzae RPD3 ( MoRPD3 ) gene, an ortholog of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Rpd3 , during development and pathogenesis in the model plant-pathogenic fungus Magnaporthe oryzae . We demonstrated that the MoRPD3 gene is able to functionally complement the yeast Rpd 3 deletion mutant despite the C-terminal extension of the MoRPD3 protein. MoRPD3 localizes primarily to the nuclei of vegetative hyphae, asexual spores, and invasive hyphae. Deletion of MoRPD3 appears to be lethal. Depletion of MoRPD3 transcripts via gene silencing ( MoRPD3 kd , where “ kd ” stands for “knockdown”) has opposing effects on asexual and sexual reproduction. Although conidial germination and appressorium formation rates of the mutants were almost comparable to those of the wild type, in-depth analysis revealed that the appressoria of mutants are smaller than those of the wild type. Furthermore, the MoRPD3 kd strain shows a significant reduction in pathogenicity, which can be attributed to the delay in appressorium-mediated penetration and impaired invasive growth. Interestingly, MoRPD3 does not regulate potassium transporters, as shown for Rpd3 of S. cerevisiae . However, it functioned in association with the target of rapamycin (TOR) kinase pathway, resulting in the dependency of appressorium formation on hydrophilic surfaces and on TOR’s inhibition by MoRPD3. Taken together, our results uncovered distinct and evolutionarily conserved roles of MoRPD3 in regulating fungal reproduction, infection-specific development, and virulence. IMPORTANCE RPD3 is an evolutionarily conserved class I histone deacetylase (HDAC) that plays a pivotal role in diverse cellular processes. In filamentous fungal pathogens, abrogation of the gene encoding RPD3 results in either lethality or severe growth impairment, making subsequent genetic analyses challenging. Magnaporthe oryzae is a causal agent of rice blast disease, which is responsible for significant annual yield losses in rice production. Here, we characterized the RPD3 gene of M. oryzae ( MoRPD3 ) in unprecedented detail using a gene-silencing approach. We provide evidence that MoRPD3 is a bona fide HDAC regulating fungal reproduction and pathogenic development by potentially being involved in the TOR-mediated signaling pathway. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the most comprehensive genetic dissection of RPD3 in filamentous fungal pathogens. Our work extends and deepens our understanding of how an epigenetic factor is implicated in the development and virulence of fungal pathogens of plants.