The emergence of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and the necessary separation of populations have led to an unprecedented number of new social media users seeking information related to the ...pandemic. Currently, with an estimated 4.5 billion users worldwide, social media data offer an opportunity for near real-time analysis of large bodies of text related to disease outbreaks and vaccination. These analyses can be used by officials to develop appropriate public health messaging, digital interventions, educational materials, and policies. Our study investigated and compared public sentiment related to COVID-19 vaccines expressed on 2 popular social media platforms—Reddit and Twitter—harvested from January 1, 2020, to March 1, 2022. To accomplish this task, we created a fine-tuned DistilRoBERTa model to predict the sentiments of approximately 9.5 million tweets and 70 thousand Reddit comments. To fine-tune our model, our team manually labeled the sentiment of 3600 tweets and then augmented our data set through back-translation. Text sentiment for each social media platform was then classified with our fine-tuned model using Python programming language and the Hugging Face sentiment analysis pipeline. Our results determined that the average sentiment expressed on Twitter was more negative (5,215,830/9,518,270, 54.8%) than positive, and the sentiment expressed on Reddit was more positive (42,316/67,962, 62.3%) than negative. Although the average sentiment was found to vary between these social media platforms, both platforms displayed similar behavior related to the sentiment shared at key vaccine-related developments during the pandemic. Considering this similar trend in shared sentiment demonstrated across social media platforms, Twitter and Reddit continue to be valuable data sources that public health officials can use to strengthen vaccine confidence and combat misinformation. As the spread of misinformation poses a range of psychological and psychosocial risks (anxiety and fear, etc), there is an urgency in understanding the public perspective and attitude toward shared falsities. Comprehensive educational delivery systems tailored to a population’s expressed sentiments that facilitate digital literacy, health information–seeking behavior, and precision health promotion could aid in clarifying such misinformation.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Poly-l-cysteine (PLCysn) (n = 20) was immobilized onto the surface of commercially available magnetic gamma-Fe2O3 nanoparticles, and its use as a selective heavy metal chelator was demonstrated. ...Magnetic nanoparticles are an ideal support because they have a large surface area and can easily be retrieved from an aqueous solution. PLCysn functionalization was confirmed using FTIR and the quantitative Ellman's test. Metal binding capacities for As(III), Cd(II), Cu(II), Ni(II), Pb(II) and Zn(II) were determined at pH 7.0 and compared to adsorption capacities for unfunctionalized gamma-Fe2O3 nanoparticles. The effect of pH on the PLCysn functionalized nanoparticles was also investigated. For all of the metals examined, binding capacities (mumol metal/g support) were more than an order of magnitude higher than those obtained for PLCysn on traditional supports. For As(III), Cu(II), Ni(II) and Zn(II), the binding capacities were also higher than the metal adsorption capacities of the unfunctionalized particles. Metal uptake was determined to be rapid ( < 2.5 min) and metal recoveries of > 50% were obtained for all of the metals except As(III). PLCysn, which has a general metal selectivity towards soft metals acids, was chosen to demonstrate the proof of concept. Greater metal selectivity may be achievable through the use of combinatorial peptide library screening or by using peptide fragments based on known metal binding proteins.
Pancreatic tumors are highly desmoplastic and immunosuppressive. Delivery and distribution of drugs within pancreatic tumors are compromised due to intrinsic physical and biochemical stresses that ...lead to increased interstitial fluid pressure, vascular compression, and hypoxia. Immunotherapy-based approaches, including therapeutic vaccines, immune checkpoint inhibition, CAR-T cell therapy, and adoptive T cell therapies, are challenged by an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. Together, extensive fibrosis and immunosuppression present major challenges to developing treatments for pancreatic cancer. In this context, nanoparticles have been extensively studied as delivery platforms and adjuvants for cancer and other disease therapies. Recent advances in nanotechnology have led to the development of multiple nanocarrier-based formulations that not only improve drug delivery but also enhance immunotherapy-based approaches for pancreatic cancer. This review discusses and critically analyzes the novel nanoscale strategies that have been used for drug delivery and immunomodulation to improve treatment efficacy, including newly emerging immunotherapy-based approaches. This review also presents important perspectives on future research directions that will guide the rational design of novel and robust nanoscale platforms to treat pancreatic tumors, particularly with respect to targeted therapies and immunotherapies. These insights will inform the next generation of clinical treatments to help patients manage this debilitating disease and enhance survival rates.
Prostate cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related mortality among men in the United States. We examined the role of neighborhood obesogenic attributes on prostate cancer risk and ...mortality in the Southern Community Cohort Study (SCCS).
From the total of 34,166 SCCS male participants, 28,356 were included in the analysis. We assessed the relationship between neighborhood obesogenic factors neighborhood socioeconomic status (nSES) and neighborhood obesogenic environment indices including the restaurant environment index, the retail food environment index, parks, recreational facilities, and businesses and prostate cancer risk and mortality by controlling for individual-level factors using a multivariable Cox proportional hazards model. We further stratified prostate cancer risk analysis by race and body mass index (BMI).
Median follow-up time was 133 months interquartile range (IQR): 103, 152, and the mean age was 51.62 (SD: ± 8.42) years. There were 1,524 (5.37%) prostate cancer diagnoses and 98 (6.43%) prostate cancer deaths during follow-up. Compared to participants residing in the wealthiest quintile, those residing in the poorest quintile had a higher risk of prostate cancer (aHR = 1.32, 95% CI 1.12-1.57,
= 0.001), particularly among non-obese men with a BMI < 30 (aHR = 1.46, 95% CI 1.07-1.98,
= 0.016). The restaurant environment index was associated with a higher prostate cancer risk in overweight (BMI ≥ 25) White men (aHR = 3.37, 95% CI 1.04-10.94,
= 0.043, quintile 1 vs. None). Obese Black individuals without any neighborhood recreational facilities had a 42% higher risk (aHR = 1.42, 95% CI 1.04-1.94,
= 0.026) compared to those with any access. Compared to residents in the wealthiest quintile and most walkable area, those residing within the poorest quintile (aHR = 3.43, 95% CI 1.54-7.64,
= 0.003) or the least walkable area (aHR = 3.45, 95% CI 1.22-9.78,
= 0.020) had a higher risk of prostate cancer death.
Living in a lower-nSES area was associated with a higher prostate cancer risk, particularly among Black men. Restaurant and retail food environment indices were also associated with a higher prostate cancer risk, with stronger associations within overweight White individuals. Finally, residing in a low-SES neighborhood or the least walkable areas were associated with a higher risk of prostate cancer mortality.
A
bstract
According to holography, entanglement is the building block of spacetime; therefore, drastic changes of entanglement will lead to interesting transitions in the dual spacetime. In this ...paper, we study the effect of projective measurements on the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model’s thermofield double state, dual to an eternal black hole in Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity. We calculate the (Renyi-2) mutual information between the two copies of the SYK model upon projective measurement of a subset of fermions in one copy. We propose a dual JT gravity model that can account for the change of entanglement due to measurement, and observe an entanglement wedge phase transition in the von Neumann entropy. The entanglement wedge for the unmeasured side changes from the region outside the horizon to include the entire time reversal invariant slice of the two-sided geometry as the number of measured Majorana fermions increases. Therefore, after the transition, the bulk information stored in the measured subsystem is not entirely lost upon projection in one copy of the SYK model, but rather teleported to the other copy. We further propose a decoding protocol to elucidate the teleportation interpretation, and connect our analysis to the physics of traversable wormholes.
Radial cutoffs and holographic entanglement Grado-White, Brianna; Marolf, Donald; Weinberg, Sean J.
The journal of high energy physics,
01/2021, Letnik:
2021, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
A
bstract
Tensor networks,
T
T
¯
, and broader notions of a holographic principle all motivate the idea that some notion of gravitational holography should persist in the presence of a radial cutoff. ...But in the absence of time-reflection symmetry, the areas of Hubeny-Rangamani-Takayanagi surfaces anchored to the radial cutoff generally violate strong sub-additivity, even when the associated boundary regions are spacelike separated as defined by both bulk and boundary notions of causality. We thus propose an alternate definition of cutoff-holographic entropy using a restricted maximin prescription anchored to a codimension 2 cutoff surface. For bulk solutions that respect the null energy condition, we show that the resulting areas satisfy SSA, entanglement wedge nesting, and monogamy of mutual information in parallel with cutoff free results in AdS. These results hold even when the cutoff surface fails to be convex.
Despite its benefits, HPV vaccine uptake has been historically lower than other recommended adolescent vaccines in the United States (US). While hesitancy and misinformation have threatened ...vaccinations for many years, the adverse impacts from COVID-19 pandemic on preventive services have been far-reaching.
To explore the perceptions and experiences of adolescent healthcare providers regarding routine vaccination services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Between December 2020 and May 2021, in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted via Zoom video conferencing among a purposively selected, diverse group of adolescent healthcare providers (n = 16) within 5 healthcare practices in the US southeastern states of Georgia and Tennessee. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using a rapid qualitative analysis framework. Our analysis was guided by the grounded theory and inductive approach.
Participants reported that patient-provider communications; effective use of presumptive languaging; provider's continuing education/training; periodic reminders/recall messages; provider's personal conviction on vaccine safety/efficacy; early initiation of HPV vaccination series at 9 years; community partnerships with community health navigators/vaccine champions/vaccine advocates; use of standardized forms/prewritten scripts/standard operating protocols for patient-provider interactions; and vaccine promotion through social media, brochures/posters/pamphlets as well as outreaches to schools and churches served as facilitators to adolescent HPV vaccine uptake. Preventive adolescent services were adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic at all practices. Participants highlighted an initial decrease in patients due to the pandemic, while some practices avoided the distribution of vaccine informational materials due to sanitary concerns.
As part of a larger study, we provided contextual information to refine an intervention package currently being developed to improve adolescent preventive care provision in healthcare practices. Our results could inform the implementation of comprehensive intervention strategies that improve HPV vaccination rates. Additionally, lessons learned (e.g. optimizing patient- provider interactions) could be adopted to expand COVID-19 vaccine acceptance on a sizable scale.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
8.
Marginally trapped surfaces and AdS/CFT Grado-White, Brianna; Marolf, Donald
The journal of high energy physics,
02/2018, Letnik:
2018, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
A
bstract
It has been proposed that the areas of marginally trapped or anti-trapped surfaces (also known as leaves of holographic screens) may encode some notion of entropy. To connect this to ...AdS/CFT, we study the case of marginally trapped surfaces anchored to an AdS boundary. We establish that such boundary-anchored leaves lie between the causal and extremal surfaces defined by the anchor and that they have area bounded below by that of the minimal extremal surface. This suggests that the area of any leaf represents a coarse-grained von Neumann entropy for the associated region of the dual CFT. We further demonstrate that the leading area-divergence of a boundary-anchored marginally trapped surface agrees with that for the associated extremal surface, though subleading divergences generally differ. Finally, we generalize an argument of Bousso and Engelhardt to show that holographic screens with all leaves anchored to the same boundary set have leaf-areas that increase monotonically along the screen, and we describe a construction through which this monotonicity can take the more standard form of requiring entropy to increase with boundary time. This construction is related to what one might call future causal holographic information, which in such cases also provides an upper bound on the area of the associated leaves.
Ethanolic fermentation is frequently performed under conditions of low nitrogen. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, nitrogen limitation induces macroautophagy, including the selective removal of ...mitochondria, also called mitophagy. Previous research showed that blocking mitophagy by deletion of the mitophagy-specific gene
increased the fermentation performance during the brewing of Ginjo sake. In this study, we tested if a similar strategy could enhance alcoholic fermentation in the context of fuel ethanol production from sugarcane in Brazilian biorefineries. Conditions that mimic the industrial fermentation process indeed induce Atg32-dependent mitophagy in cells of S. cerevisiae PE-2, a strain frequently used in the industry. However, after blocking mitophagy, no significant differences in CO
production, final ethanol titers, or cell viability were observed after five rounds of ethanol fermentation, cell recycling, and acid treatment, which is commonly performed in sugarcane biorefineries. To test if S. cerevisiae's strain background influenced this outcome, cultivations were carried out in a synthetic medium with strains PE-2, Ethanol Red (industrial), and BY (laboratory) with and without a functional
gene and under oxic and oxygen restricted conditions. Despite the clear differences in sugar consumption, cell viability, and ethanol titers, among the three strains, we did not observe any significant improvement in fermentation performance related to the blocking of mitophagy. We concluded, with caution, that the results obtained with Ginjo sake yeast were an exception and cannot be extrapolated to other yeast strains and that more research is needed to ascertain the role of autophagic processes during fermentation.
Bioethanol is the largest (per volume) ever biobased bulk chemical produced globally. The fermentation process is well established, and industries regularly attain nearly 85% of maximum theoretical yields. However, because of the volume of fuel produced, even a small improvement will have huge economic benefits. To this end, besides already implemented process improvements, various free energy conservation strategies have been successfully exploited at least in laboratory strains to increase ethanol yields and decrease byproduct formation. Cellular housekeeping processes have been an almost unexplored territory in strain improvement. It was previously reported that blocking mitophagy by deletion of the mitophagy receptor gene
in Saccharomyces cerevisiae led to a 2.1% increase in final ethanol titers during Japanese sake fermentation. We found in two commercially used bioethanol strains (PE-2 and Ethanol Red) that
deficiency does not lead to a significant improvement in cell viability or ethanol levels during fermentation with molasses or in a synthetic complete medium. More research is required to ascertain the role of autophagic processes during fermentation conditions.
A
bstract
We extend the results of arXiv:2209.12903 by studying local projective measurements performed on subregions of two copies of a CFT
2
in the thermofield double state and investigating their ...consequences on the bulk double-sided black hole holographic dual. We focus on CFTs defined on an infinite line and consider measurements of both finite and semi-infinite subregions. In the former case, the connectivity of the bulk spacetime is preserved after the measurement. In the latter case, the measurement of two semi-infinite intervals in one CFT or of one semi-infinite interval in each CFT can destroy the Einstein-Rosen bridge and disconnect the bulk dual spacetime. In particular, we find that a transition between a connected and disconnected phase occurs depending on the relative size of the measured and unmeasured subregions and on the specific Cardy state the measured subregions are projected on. We identify this phase transition as an entangled/disentangled phase transition of the dual CFT system by computing the post-measurement holographic entanglement entropy between the two CFTs. We also find that bulk information encoded in one CFT in the absence of measurement can sometimes be reconstructed from the other CFT when a measurement is performed, or can be erased by the measurement. Finally, we show that a purely CFT calculation of the Renyi entropy using the replica trick yields results compatible with those obtained in our bulk analysis.
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