Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) has been recommended as a meta-analytic technique for the quantitative synthesis of single-case experimental design (SCED) studies. The HLM approach is flexible and ...can model a variety of different SCED data complexities, such as intervention heterogeneity. A major advantage of using HLM is that participant and-or study characteristics can be incorporated in the model in an attempt to explain intervention heterogeneity. The inclusion of moderators in the context of meta-analysis of SCED studies did not yet receive attention and is in need of methodological research. Prior to extending methodological work validating the hierarchical linear model including moderators at the different levels, an overview of characteristics of moderators typically encountered in the field is needed. This will inform design conditions to be embedded in future methodological studies and ensure that these conditions are realistic and representative for the field of SCED meta-analyses. This study presents the results of systematic review of SCED meta-analyses, with the particular focus on moderator characteristic. The initial search yielded a total of 910 articles and book chapters. After excluding duplicate studies and non peer-reviewed studies, 658 unique peer-reviewed studies were maintained and screened by two independent researchers. Sixty articles met the inclusion criteria and were eligible for data retrieval. The results of the analysis of moderator characteristics retrieved from these 60 meta-analyses are presented. The first part of the results section contains an overview of moderator characteristics per moderator level (within-participant level, participant level, and study level), including the types of moderators, the ratio of the number of moderators relative to the number of units at that level, the measurement scale, and the degree of missing data. The second part of the results section focuses on the metric used to quantify moderator effectiveness and the analysis approach. Based on the results of the systematic review, recommendations are given for conditions to be included in future methodological work.
Purpose
To compare the tumor size measurements assessed by computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) versus measurements of resected pathologic specimens from patients with ...pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).
Methods
This study included 114 patients with histologically confirmed PDAC who underwent contrast-enhanced CT and MRI before surgery. The tumor sizes from CT, MRI, and pathologic specimens were compared by using Bland–Altman analyses and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). The discrepancies in PDAC size between CT/MRI and pathologic specimens were calculated and contributing factors for the discrepancies, including tumor locations (pancreatic head/neck, body, or tail), T stages (T1, T2, or T3), and N stages (N0, N1, or N2), were analyzed with Pearson’s correlation coefficients and multivariable linear regression analyses.
Results
There was significant difference among the mean tumor sizes of three measurements (
P
< 0.001). The difference in mean tumor size between the pathologic sizes for PDAC was 4.3 mm (ICC 0.67) on CT and 5.8 mm (ICC 0.65) on MRI. Both CT and MRI showed wide ranges of limits of agreement (LOAs) between the pathologic specimens for tumor size measurements (LOAs, − 28.9 to 21.4 and − 29.4 to 17.8, respectively). The tumor size on CT or MRI was estimated to be smaller than that on pathology when the tumor was > 30 mm. The discrepancies in the tumor size estimated between CT/MRI and pathologic specimens were significantly different for tumors of different T stages (
P
< 0.001).
Conclusions
Both contrast-enhanced CT and MRI underestimate the mean tumor size by 4.3 mm and 5.8 mm, respectively, compared to the size of pathologic specimens. A larger tumor size indicates a greater discrepancy in the PDAC size measurements between CT/MRI and pathologic specimens.
Abstract
Salidroside is a natural product of phenols, which has a wide scape of pharmacological effects, but its pharmacological effects and molecular mechanism on endometrial cancer are not clear. ...To systematically explore the pharmacological effects and molecular mechanisms of salidroside on endometrial cancer through the method of network pharmacology. The possible target genes of salidroside were obtained through different pharmacological databases and analysis platforms, and then the relevant target genes of endometrial cancer were obtained through the GeneCards website, and the target genes were uniformly converted into standardized gene names with Uniprot. The collected data were then processed to obtain common target genes and further analyzed through the String website to construct a protein–protein interaction (PPI) network, followed by gene ontology (GO) functional annotation and Kyoto Gene and Genome Encyclopedia (KEGG) pathway analysis. We further interpreted the molecular mechanism of salidroside for the treatment of endometrial cancer by constructing a “drug component–target gene–disease” network. Finally, we performed molecular docking to validate the binding conformation between salidroside and the candidate target genes. There were 175 target genes of salidroside after normalization, among which 113 target genes interacted with endometrial cancer. GO analysis indicated that the anti-endometrial cancer effect of salidroside may be strongly related to biological processes such as apoptosis and response to drug. KEGG analysis indicated that its mechanism may be related to pathway in cancer and PI3K-AKT signaling pathway. Molecular docking showed that salidroside had high affinity with five key genes. Based on the novel network pharmacology and molecular docking validation research methods, we have revealed for the first time the potential mechanism of salidroside in the therapy of endometrial cancer.
Tin‐based perovskite solar cells (TPSCs) are attracting intense research interest due to their excellent optoelectric properties and eco‐friendly features. To further improve the device performance, ...developing new fullerene derivatives as electron transporter layers (ETLs) is highly demanded. Four well‐defined regioisomers (trans‐2, trans‐3, trans‐4, and e) of diethylmalonate‐C60 bisadduct (DCBA) are isolated and well characterized. The well‐defined molecular structure enables us to investigate the real structure‐dependent effects on photovoltaic performance. It is found that the chemical structures of the regioisomers not only affect their energy levels, but also lead to significant differences in their molecular packings and interfacial contacts. As a result, the devices with trans‐2, trans‐3, trans‐4, and e as ETLs yield efficiencies of 11.69%, 14.58%, 12.59%, and 10.55%, respectively, which are higher than that of the as‐prepared DCBA‐based (10.28%) device. Notably, the trans‐3‐based device also demonstrates a certified efficiency of 14.30%, representing one of the best‐performing TPSCs.
Structure‐dependent effects of the four fullerene bisadduct regioisomers on the device performance of tin‐based perovskite solar cells are systemically investigated. Benefiting from the favorable molecular packing, energy level alignment, and interfacial interaction, the trans‐3‐based devices yield a champion efficiency of 14.58% with a certified efficiency of 14.30%, representing one of the best‐performing tin‐based devices.
This study using PROSPER data (N = 977, age 11.5–age 15) investigated the longitudinal within-family associations between parent reported parental monitoring and adolescent aggression. Importantly, ...this study is the first one to examine parent gender and adolescent gender differences on these within-family associations. Results differed between mothers and fathers. There was a negative, bidirectional within-family association between maternal monitoring and adolescent aggression, such that more maternal monitoring than usual was associated with fewer adolescent aggressive behavior problems than usual within the same family, and vice versa. In contrast, during mid-adolescence, a positive, bidirectional within-family association between paternal monitoring and adolescent males’ aggression was found, such that more paternal monitoring than usual was related to more adolescent males’ aggression than usual within the same family, and vice versa. Practical implications on intervention strategies are discussed.
The event-triggered tracking control for large-scale high order nonlinear uncertain systems, whose state information is immeasurable, is investigated via an observer-based approach. Firstly, a neural ...observer is designed to estimate the unmeasurable state information of high order nonlinear systems. Then, a relative threshold event-triggered strategy is proposed to reduce the communication burden between the actuator and the controller. On this basis, a novel observer-based adaptive event-triggered controller is designed to achieve the output tracking of the reference trajectory via the backstepping technique. Theoretical proof shows that the proposed controller guarantees the stability of the closed-loop systems and the Zeno-behavior can be excluded. Finally, some simulation examples are performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
The increasing drastic competition between tourism destinations decides on only the sites with good reputation can attract more and more tourists. The tourism destination reputation will affect ...tourists’ choices before traveling and consumption behavior during traveling. In order to analyze tourist consumption behavior during traveling, this article initially builds a theoretical model of tourism destination reputation, tourist enjoyment, tourist memorability, and tourist consumption behavior. Then, 490 valid questionnaires are collected based on a field survey. Meanwhile, a basic sample information collection, reliability, and validity testing (confirmatory factor analysis) and testing analysis based on structural equation model are conducted on the collected data. The result of the confirmatory factor analysis shows that the tourism destination reputation is measured by five factors: catering, accommodation, landscape, culture, and recreation and entertainment; tourist enjoyment is measured by the feeling of joy and relaxation; tourist memorability is measured by emotional memory, expectation memory, benefit memory, and interest memory; tourist consumption behavior is represented by five indexes: willing consumption, urgent consumption, guided consumption, repeated consumption, and recommended consumption. The hypothesis testing shows that the heritage tourism destination reputation not only directly and positively influences tourist consumption behavior but also indirectly affects tourist consumption behavior through tourist memorability and the chain relationship between tourist enjoyment and memorability. Finally, some suggestions are put forward to improve the tourism destination reputation and tourist enjoyment and memorability.
Due to the limited semantic information extraction with small objects and difficulty in distinguishing similar targets, it brings great challenges to target detection in remote sensing scenarios, ...which results in poor detection performance. This paper proposes an improved YOLOv5 remote sensing image target detection algorithm, SEB-YOLO (SPD-Conv + ECSPP + Bi-FPN + YOLOv5). Firstly, the space-to-depth (SPD) layer followed by a non-strided convolution (Conv) layer module (SPD-Conv) was used to reconstruct the backbone network, which retained the global features and reduced the feature loss. Meanwhile, the pooling module with the attention mechanism of the final layer of the backbone network was designed to help the network better identify and locate the target. Furthermore, a bidirectional feature pyramid network (Bi-FPN) with bilinear interpolation upsampling was added to improve bidirectional cross-scale connection and weighted feature fusion. Finally, the decoupled head is introduced to enhance the model convergence and solve the contradiction between the classification task and the regression task. Experimental results on NWPU VHR-10 and RSOD datasets show that the mAP of the proposed algorithm reaches 93.5% and 93.9%respectively, which is 4.0% and 5.3% higher than that of the original YOLOv5l algorithm. The proposed algorithm achieves better detection results for complex remote sensing images.
Diallyl disulfide (DADs), a natural organic compound, is extracted from garlic and scallion and has anti-tumor effects against various tumors. This study investigated the anti-tumor activity of DADs ...in human osteosarcoma cells and the mechanisms. MG-63 cells were exposed to DADs (0, 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 μM) for different lengths of time (24, 48, and 72 h). The CCK8 assay results showed that DADs inhibited osteosarcoma cell viability in a dose-and time-dependent manner. FITC-Annexin V/propidium iodide staining and flow cytometry demonstrated that the apoptotic ratio increased and the cell cycle was arrested at the G
/M phase as the DADs concentration was increased. A Western blot analysis was employed to detect the levels of caspase-3, Bax, Bcl-2, LC3-II/LC3-I, and p62 as well as suppression of the mTOR pathway. High expression of LC3-II protein revealed that DADs induced formation of autophagosome. Furthermore, DADs-induced apoptosis was weakened after adding 3-methyladenine, demonstrating that the DADs treatment resulted in autophagy-mediated death of MG-63 cells. In addition, DADs depressed p-mTOR kinase activity, and the inhibited PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway increased DADs-induced apoptosis and autophagy. In conclusion, our results reveal that DADs induced G
/M arrest, apoptosis, and autophagic death of human osteosarcoma cells by inhibiting the PI3K/Akt/mTOR signaling pathway.
Children are the hope and future of the country, and doing an excellent job for children is of great importance to social development. Social work program efficiency assessment, can help service ...providers and program implementers understand the effectiveness of program implementation. For this reason, this study uses data envelopment analysis and the Tobit regression model to construct a child protection social work program efficiency assessment model. The input-output indicators of child protection program efficiency are selected. The model is used to analyze the input-output efficiency of social work child protection programs in City H from 2018-2021 as an example. The variables that affect the efficiency of child protection programs are explored in depth to explore the effective ways of child protection. The results show that the comprehensive technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency, and scale efficiency of the child protection program in 2018-2021 are all less than 1 and have not reached DEA efficiency. The comprehensive technical efficiency of the program is significantly affected by the scale efficiency, which necessitates an increase in resource investment in the child protection program. In addition, the six selected influencing factors are significant, at least at the 10% level, all of which positively affect the efficiency of child protection programs and need to be focused on to better improve the efficiency of social work services.
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