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The figure of merit (ZT) has been used for more than half a century to guide the research of thermoelectric materials. In this perspective viewpoint, we emphasize that the power ...factor (PF) is more important than the thermal conductivity for thermoelectric power generation for a given ZT. We also propose the newly defined engineering parameters (ZT)eng and (PF)eng are the more practical indicators to show the temperature dependent efficiency and output power, as compared with conventional ZT and PF.
Since its inception in March 2020, data from the OpenSAFELY-TPP electronic health record platform has been used for more than 20 studies relating to the global COVID-19 emergency. OpenSAFELY-TPP data ...is derived from practices in England using SystmOne software, and has been used for the majority of these studies. We set out to investigate the representativeness of OpenSAFELY-TPP data by comparing it to national population estimates.
With the approval of NHS England, we describe the age, sex, Index of Multiple Deprivation and ethnicity of the OpenSAFELY-TPP population compared to national estimates from the Office for National Statistics. The five leading causes of death occurring between the 1st January 2020 and the 31st December 2020 were also compared to deaths registered in England during the same period.
Despite regional variations, TPP is largely representative of the general population of England in terms of IMD (all within 1.1 percentage points), age, sex (within 0.1 percentage points), ethnicity and causes of death. The proportion of the five leading causes of death is broadly similar to those reported by ONS (all within 1 percentage point).
Data made available via OpenSAFELY-TPP is broadly representative of the English population. Users of OpenSAFELY must consider the issues of representativeness, generalisability and external validity associated with using TPP data for health research. Although the coverage of TPP practices varies regionally across England, TPP registered patients are generally representative of the English population as a whole in terms of key demographic characteristics.
Fibroblasts are mesenchymal cells that are responsible for creating and maintaining tissue architecture through the production of extracellular matrix. These cells also play critical roles in ...processes such as wound repair and immune modulation in normal tissues and various disease states including fibrosis, autoimmunity, and cancer. Fibroblasts have a complex repertoire of functions that vary by organ, inflammatory state, and the developmental stage of an organism. How fibroblasts manage so many functions in such a context-dependent manner represents a gap in our understanding of these cells. One possibility is that a tissue-resident precursor cell state exists that provides the fibroblast lineage with flexibility during growth, inflammation, or other contexts that require dynamic tissue changes. Recent work has suggested that a precursor fibroblast cell state is marked by expression of
Peptidase inhibitor 16 (
Pi16). This review aims to concatenate and compare studies on fibroblasts that express
Pi16 to clarify the roles of this cell state in fibroblast lineage development and other functions.
Background: The phylogenetic bootstrap, first proposed by Felsenstein in 1985, is a critically important statistical method in assessing the robusticity of phylogenetic datasets. Core to its concept ...was the use of pseudo sampling - assessing the data by generating new replicates derived from the initial dataset that was used to generate the phylogeny. In this way, phylogenetic support metrics could overcome the lack of perfect, infinite data. With infinite data, however, it is possible to sample smaller replicates directly from the data to obtain both the phylogeny and its statistical robusticity in the same analysis. Due to the growth of whole genome sequencing, the depth and breadth of our datasets have greatly expanded and are set to only expand further. With genome-scale datasets comprising thousands of genes, we can now obtain a proxy for infinite data. Accordingly, we can potentially abandon the notion of pseudo sampling and instead randomly sample small subsets of genes from the thousands of genes in our analyses.
Methods: We introduce Scoutknife, a jackknife-style subsampling implementation that generates 100 datasets by randomly sampling a small number of genes from an initial large-gene dataset to jointly establish both a phylogenetic hypothesis and assess its robusticity. We assess its effectiveness by using 18 previously published datasets and 100 simulation studies.
Results: We show that Scoutknife is conservative and informative as to conflicts and incongruence across the whole genome, without the need for subsampling based on traditional model selection criteria.
Conclusions: Scoutknife reliably achieves comparable results to selecting the best genes on both real and simulation datasets, while being resistant to the potential biases caused by selecting for model fit. As the amount of genome data grows, it becomes an even more exciting option to assess the robusticity of phylogenetic hypotheses.
Background:
Dementia research prioritisation allows for the
systematic allocation of investment in dementia research by governments, funding agencies and the private sector. There is currently a lack ...of information available in Ireland regarding priority areas for dementia research.
To address this gap,
a dementia research prioritisation exercise was undertaken, consisting of an online survey of professionals in the dementia field and workshops for people living with dementia and family carers.
Methods:
(1) An anonymous online survey of professionals, based on an existing WHO global survey: The global survey was adapted to an Irish context and participants were asked to score 65 thematic research avenues under 5 criteria; (2) A mixed-methods exercise for people living with dementia and family carers: This involved two facilitated workshops where participants voted on the research themes they felt were important to them and should be addressed through research.
Results:
Eight of the top ten research priorities in the survey of professionals (
n
=108) were focused on the delivery and quality of care and services for people with dementia and carers. Other research avenues ranked in the top ten focused on themes of timely and accurate diagnosis of dementia in primary health-care practices and diversifying therapeutic approaches in clinical trials. Participants in the workshops (
n
=13) ranked ‘better drugs and treatment for people with dementia’, ‘dementia prevention/ risk reduction’ and ‘care for people with dementia and carers’ as their top priority areas.
Conclusions:
Findings from this prioritisation exercise will inform and motivate policymakers, funders, and researchers to support and conduct research to address the burden of dementia and ensure that the limited resources made available are spent on research that has the most impact for those who will benefit from and use the results of research.
Public SARS-CoV-2 genomes from the Delta lineage show complex and confusing patterns of mutations at Spike codon 142, and at another nearby position, Spike codon 95. It has been hypothesised that ...these represent recurrent mutations with interesting evolutionary dynamics, and that these mutations may affect viral load. Here we show that these patterns, and the relationship with viral load, are artifacts of sequencing difficulties in this region of the Delta genome caused be a deletion in the binding site for the 72_RIGHT primer of the ARTIC V3 schema. Spike G142D should be considered a lineage-defining mutation of Delta.
The endosymbiotic bacterium
infects numerous species of insects and
transinfection of
mosquito species is now being used for biocontrol programs as
strains can both inhibit arboviruses and invade ...wild mosquito populations. The discovery of novel, resident
strains in mosquito species warrants further investigation as potential candidate strains for biocontrol strategies.
We obtained mosquito specimens from diverse Culicine mosquitoes from Cameroon including ecologically diverse locations in the Central and West Regions.
prevalence rates were assessed in addition to the environmentally acquired bacterial species
in major Culicine genera. PCR-based methods were also used with phylogenetic analysis to confirm identities of host mosquito species and
strains were classified using multi-locus sequence typing (MLST).
: We report high
prevalence rates for Culicine species, including in a large cohort of
collected from west Cameroon in which 100% of mono-specific pools were infected. Furthermore, co-infections with
bacteria were observed across multiple genera, demonstrating that these two bacteria can co-exist in wild mosquito populations.
strain MLST and phylogenetic analysis provided evidence for diverse
strains in 13 different mosquito species across seven different genera. Full or partial MLST profiles were generated from resident
strains in six
species (
,
,
and
two
species
and
and in
and
Our study provides further evidence that
is widespread within wild mosquito populations of diverse Culicine species and provides further candidate strains that could be investigated as future options for
-based biocontrol to inhibit arbovirus transmission.
Background: Evaluation of the knowledge about stroke in the general population is extremely vital as it prevents stroke development, limits complications, and achieves better quality of life. We ...assume that the general Lebanese population lacks awareness about stroke and its associated complications. This study aims to evaluate stroke knowledge and determine the factors associated with stroke awareness among the general Lebanese population.
Methods: This cross-sectional study assessed respondents' sociodemographic characteristics and the identification of risk factors, warning signs, stroke consequences, and early response to stroke symptoms. A total of 551 Lebanese adults without a history of stroke filled in an online self-reported questionnaire publicly shared on social applications. Logistic regression analysis was performed to identify the factors associated with poor knowledge of stroke.
Results: Among the 551 participants enrolled, 403 (74.2%) were females and 312 (56.7%) were under 30 years of age. Females compared to males and employed compared to unemployed had significantly higher odds of identifying at least one risk factor (OR=4.3 95%CI=1.1;16.8 and 6 95%CI=1.2;29.6, respectively). Also, when compared to unemployed, employed participants had significantly higher odds of recognizing at least one of the early stroke symptoms (OR=3.3 95%CI=1.2;8.9) and identifying at least one of the stroke consequences (OR=5.3 95%CI=1.1;25.9). Reaching a university level of education compared to a school level was associated with significantly higher odds (OR=2.3 95%CI=1.1;4.8) of taking a patient to a hospital.
Conclusion: Well-educated, employed, and female participants were more knowledgeable about stroke. Tailored interventions focusing on individuals with inadequate stroke literacy are needed. Further studies, more representative of the general Lebanese population with a larger sample size, are necessary to confirm our findings.
There are important differences in the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and death depending on occupation. Infections in healthcare workers have received the most attention, and there are clearly ...increased risks for intensive care unit workers who are caring for COVID-19 patients. However, a number of other occupations may also be at an increased risk, particularly those which involve social care or contact with the public. A large number of data sets are available with the potential to assess occupational risks of COVID-19 incidence, severity, or mortality. We are reviewing these data sets as part of the Partnership for Research in Occupational, Transport, Environmental COVID Transmission (PROTECT) initiative, which is part of the National COVID-19 Core Studies. In this report, we review the data sets available (including the key variables on occupation and potential confounders) for examining occupational differences in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 incidence, severity and mortality. We also discuss the possible types of analyses of these data sets and the definitions of (occupational) exposure and outcomes. We conclude that none of these data sets are ideal, and all have various strengths and weaknesses. For example, mortality data suffer from problems of coding of COVID-19 deaths, and the deaths (in England and Wales) that have been referred to the coroner are unavailable. On the other hand, testing data is heavily biased in some periods (particularly the first wave) because some occupations (e.g. healthcare workers) were tested more often than the general population. Random population surveys are, in principle, ideal for estimating population prevalence and incidence, but are also affected by non-response. Thus, any analysis of the risks in a particular occupation or sector (e.g. transport), will require a careful analysis and triangulation of findings across the various available data sets.
Background
Despite significant advancements in closing the global gender gap, there is still much progress to be made, particularly in the field of science and scientific research. Numerous studies ...have addressed this issue and identified a variety of factors that contribute to gender asymmetries in research.
Methods
This study aimed to identify the determinants of gender gaps in scientific research present in the most cited studies of the past ten years as a first step towards closing these differences. Through a systematic literature review that incorporated the Proknow-C Knowledge Development Process and Constructivism methodology.
Results
The results lead us to identify four dimensions to classify the determinants of the gaps in scientific research: academic supply, research policies, scientific production and researcher profile with their respective quantitative or qualitative indicators.
Conclusions
As a potential basis for further modeling that offers greater analytical and correlational depth, as well as the identification of targeted strategies aimed at reducing gender gaps in research.
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