Asymmetric three-component 1,2-oxytrifluoromethylations of styrenes were explored by using N-oxyphthalimide (NOPI) as the resulting benzylic radical anchor after cross-coupling by a CF3 radical under ...the catalyses of chiral N-salicylidene-derived oxovanadium(V) complexes. Among the 15 different solvents and 15 different catalysts examined, the best scenarios were in i-PrOH with C3-tert-butyl or C3-fluoro-/2,5-dimethylphenyl-substituted vanadyl catalysts that led to the corresponding complementary S and R products in up to 88% yields and 87/86% ees, respectively, with further enrichment to at least 94% ee after a single recrystallization. The ccontrol α-(2-phenylcyclopropyl)styrene was tested to prove the asymmetric event involving the benzylic radical species. DFT computations showed that the SOMO of the benzylic radical is placed in a way to orient the CF3CH2 group away from the tert-butyl group in the salicylidene-l-tert-butylglycinate template by interacting with the N-oxygen atom of NOPI bound to the vanadium center with a bimolecular homolytic substitution (SH2) type mechanism. The enantioselectivity profile was dominated by several noncovalent interactions between the intermediary vanadium(NOPI) complex and the resulting benzylic radical.
Prognostic indices can enhance personalized predictions of health burdens. However, a simple, practical, and reproducible tool is lacking for clinical use. This study aimed to develop a machine ...learning-based prognostic index for predicting all-cause mortality in community-dwelling older individuals.
We utilized the Healthy Aging Longitudinal Study in Taiwan (HALST) cohort, encompassing data from 5 663 participants. Over the 5-year follow-up, 447 deaths were confirmed. A machine learning-based routine blood examination prognostic index (MARBE-PI) was developed using common laboratory tests based on machine learning techniques. Participants were grouped into multiple risk categories by stratum-specific likelihood ratio analysis based on their MARBE-PI scores. The MARBE-PI was subsequently externally validated with an independent population-based cohort from Japan.
Beyond age, sex, education level, and BMI, 6 laboratory tests (low-density lipoprotein, albumin, aspartate aminotransferase, lymphocyte count, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, and creatinine) emerged as pivotal predictors via stepwise logistic regression (LR) for 5-year mortality. The area under curves of MARBE-PI constructed by LR were 0.799 (95% confidence interval 95% CI: 0.778-0.819) and 0.756 (95% CI: 0.694-0.814) for the internal and external validation data sets, and were 0.801 (95% CI: 0.790-0.811) and 0.809 (95% CI: 0.774-0.845) for the extended 10-year mortality in both data sets, respectively. Risk categories stratified by MARBE-PI showed a consistent dose-response association with mortality. The MARBE-PI also performed comparably with indices constructed with clinical health deficits and/or laboratory results.
The MARBE-PI is considered the most applicable measure for risk stratification in busy clinical settings. It holds potential to pinpoint older individuals at elevated mortality risk, thereby aiding clinical decision-making.
High cyanobacteria-derived dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in source water can cause drinking water quality to deteriorate, producing bad taste, odor, toxins, and possibly elevated levels of ...disinfection byproduct (DBP) precursors. Conventional water treatment processes do not effectively remove algal organic substances. In this study, rapid-sand-filtration effluent from a water treatment plant on Kinmen Island, where serious cyanobacterial blooms occurred, was used to evaluate the DOC- and DBP-removal efficiency of ozonation and/or biofiltration. To simulate a small-scale water distribution system following water treatment, 24 h simulated distribution system (SDS) tests were conducted. The following DBPs were analyzed: trihalomethanes (THMs), haloacetic acids (HAAs), haloacetonitriles (HANs), and trichloronitromethane (TCNM). Applying biological activated-carbon filtration (BAC) on its own achieved the greatest reduction in SDS-DBPs. Ozonation alone caused adverse effects by promoting THM, HAA, and TCNM formation. Ozonation and BAC filtration yielded better DOC removal (51%) than BAC filtration alone (41%). Considering the cost of ozonation, we suggest that when treating high cyanobacterial organic matter in water destined for a small-scale water distribution system, BAC biofiltration alone could be an efficient, economical option for reducing DBP precursors. If DOC removal needs to be improved, preceding ozonation could be incorporated.
•More patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) are surviving into old age.•The late-life health-related quality of life (HRQoL) they might experience remains unclear.•We repeatedly assessed HRQoL in a ...cohort of older adults with CHB over five years.•The HRQoL changes older CHB patients might experience were delineated.•Extrahepatic organ/system abnormalities were associated with changes in HRQoL.
Despite the increasing health burden of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) in aging populations, little is known about the course of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) changes. We aimed to assess individual-level longitudinal HRQoL changes in elderly patients with CHB and to examine their correlates. A prospective 5.1 years-cohort study was conducted in community-dwelling adults aged 55 years with hepatitis B surface antigen-positive. Participants underwent serial measurement of HRQoL using the short-form (12) health survey version 2. Of 503 participants, 82.7% remained in good physical health throughout the study period, whereas 9.1% had declining physical health and 8.2% were in poor physical health. We likewise identified three trajectories of mental health changes (“good mental health” 86.9%, “declining mental health” 6.8%, and “poor mental health” 6.4%). Three baseline characteristics were independently associated with a lower likelihood of remaining physically or mentally healthy: sarcopenic obesity (odds ratio OR with 95% confidence interval 95% CI of 7.5 2.8–20.5 for poor physical health, 3.1 1.1–8.4 for declining physical health, 4.3 1.4–13.0 for poor mental health), a higher number of metabolic abnormalities (OR 95% CI of 3.6 1.6–8.0 for poor physical health) and depressed mood (OR 95% CI of 21.7 5.8–81.0 for poor physical health, 5.3 1.4–19.9 for declining physical health, 83.1 19.7–350.2 for poor mental health, 13.6 2.9–64.8 for declining mental health). In conclusion, in a cohort of elderly patients with CHB, we demonstrated the heterogeneity and nonlinearity of HRQoL changes and their associations with variations in specific extrahepatic organs/systems.
ABSTRACT
Our recent studies indicated that electrodialysed deep‐sea water (ED‐DSW) revealed the cardiovascular health effects, such as hindrances of the dietary‐induced evaluation of total ...cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG) and nonhigh‐density‐lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL‐C), as well as improvement of HDL‐C/non‐HDL‐C ratio and blood pressure. In the current study, we further revealed the beneficial effects of ED‐DSW on high‐cholesterol dietary mice by reducing abnormal cardiac architecture, apoptosis and enhancing insulin‐like growth factor‐1 receptor (IGF‐1R) cardiac survival signaling compared with those mice that were treated with distilled water, reverse osmosis (RO)‐DSW or 10% (v/v) dilution with ddH2O (10% DSW). These findings further clarified the possible mechanisms of cardiac protective effects of ED‐DSW and might suggest ED‐DSW as an ingredient of cardiovascular health food in some niche markets.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
Deep‐sea water (DSW) has been applied on several fields including aquaculture, agriculture, food processing, cosmetics and medicine. Recently, we have indicated that high‐cholesterol dietary mice drinking electrodialysed DSW (ED‐DSW) showed decreased serum lipids, blood pressure and improving blood cholesterol profile. In this study, we further demonstrated the beneficial effects of ED‐DSW on high‐cholesterol dietary mice by reducing abnormal cardiac architecture, apoptosis in left ventricle and increasing cardiac survival signaling, such as insulin‐like growth factor‐1 receptor, phosphoinositide‐3‐kinases and p‐AKT/AKT ratio. Altogether, these findings indicated that ED‐DSW revealed the cardiac protective effects and might be suggested as an ingredient of cardiovascular health food in a variety of niche markets.
Considering a binary image, a new two-phase representation is presented in this paper to reduce the memory requirement in the conventional tree-based spatial data structures (SDSs) such as the linear ...quadtree, DF-expression, S-tree representation, etc. Experimental results show that not only our proposed two-phase representation has a better memory-saving effect but it also can speed up the coding-time when compared to the existing SDSs. We also show that our proposed two-phase representation has a better computational performance when running geometric operations, such as computing the area and the centroid, on the proposed two-phase representation directly.
The significance of tumor burden for survival is unknown for patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (R/M HNSCC). The purpose of our study was to evaluate the ...prognostic impact of programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) and tumor burden score (TBS) in patients with R/M HNSCC.
R/M HNSCC patients who were treated with cisplatin, 5-fluorouracil plus cetuximab (EPF) or pembrolizumab (PPF) as first-line treatment were included in our study. PD-L1 and TBS were estimated and correlated with treatment responses. Kaplan-Meier curves were plotted for outcomes estimation.
A total of 252 R/M HNSCC patients were included, with 126 high tumor burden (HTB) and 126 low tumor burden (LTB) patients. Median progression-free survival (PFS) was 7.1 months in LTB and 3.9 months in HTB (
< 0.001) and median overall survival (OS) was 14.2 months in LTB and 9.2 months in HTB (
= 0.001). Patients with LTB had better PFS and OS than those with HTB independent of PD-L1 status. Subgroup analysis showed HTB patients treated with EPF had better survival than those treated with PPF, regardless of PD-L1 expression. For LTB PD-L1 positive patients, there was a longer survival with PPF than EPF, while for LTB PD-L1 negative patients, survival was similar between PPF and EPF. Multivariate analysis exhibited that tumor burden was significantly correlated with OS.
Tumor burden is significantly correlated with survival in patients with R/M HNSCC. PD-L1 and TBS should be taken into consideration to determine first-line treatment.
Leveraging upper echelons theory and the Awareness‐Motivation‐Capability (AMC) framework of competitive dynamics, we investigate the moderating influence of CEO time horizons on the relationship ...between negative analyst recommendations and the temporal patterning of competitive actions. We argue that negative recommendations are associated with less intensity but greater irregularity in competitive actions. Moreover, CEO time horizons weaken these effects, such that CEOs with longer time horizons are less influenced by such recommendations. Results from a longitudinal study of 296 CEOs from 2004 to 2015 support these arguments. Our study contributes by underscoring CEO time horizon as a critical contingency in studying the impact of analyst pressures.