Trust in one's physician drives positive health practices. However, the conceptualization and subsequent operationalization of trust have become clouded due to the multitude of approaches that have ...resulted in several different measures with varied dimensions and indicators. The objectives of this scoping review were: 1) to discover any new developments in the measurement of trust, 2) to identify those measures of trust, whether newly created or refined in the last ten years, that have known reliability and validity, and 3) to compare those instruments' conceptualizations, dimensions, and indicators. This researcher conducted an electronic search of three databases (PubMed, SOCAB, and PsycINFO). Two reviewers screened those selected studies and identified the following six key measurement tools, of which three had shorter, more abbreviated derivatives: the Trust in Physician Scale and its modification, the Wake Forest Physician Trust Scale and its short form, the Health Care Relationship Trust Scale and its refinement, the Trust in Oncologist Scale and its shortened form, the Trust in Health Care Providers Scale, and the Trust in My Doctor Scale. Of these six distinct tools, only the Trust in Oncologist Scale was developed and validated in non-US populations. Also identified were ten dimensions of trust: fidelity, technical competence, communicative competence, interpersonal competence (i.e., caring), honesty, confidentiality, global, behavioral, fairness, and system trust/accountability. Interpersonal competence and fairness emerged as newer dimensions that deserve further study. A comparative analysis of the indicators of these trust dimensions revealed some discrepancies that deserve theoretical and psychometric attention. In addition, incorporating item-response theory to assess measurement invariance has enhanced the assessment of external validity. This review provides a resource for researchers that will lead to a more uniform understanding of trust, thereby setting the basis for future theoretical integration and measurement development.
The adaptive immune system recognizes antigens
an immense array of antigen-binding antibodies and T-cell receptors, the immune repertoire. The interrogation of immune repertoires is of high relevance ...for understanding the adaptive immune response in disease and infection (e.g., autoimmunity, cancer, HIV). Adaptive immune receptor repertoire sequencing (AIRR-seq) has driven the quantitative and molecular-level profiling of immune repertoires, thereby revealing the high-dimensional complexity of the immune receptor sequence landscape. Several methods for the computational and statistical analysis of large-scale AIRR-seq data have been developed to resolve immune repertoire complexity and to understand the dynamics of adaptive immunity. Here, we review the current research on (i) diversity, (ii) clustering and network, (iii) phylogenetic, and (iv) machine learning methods applied to dissect, quantify, and compare the architecture, evolution, and specificity of immune repertoires. We summarize outstanding questions in computational immunology and propose future directions for systems immunology toward coupling AIRR-seq with the computational discovery of immunotherapeutics, vaccines, and immunodiagnostics.
Neutrophils, the most abundant human immune cells, are rapidly recruited to sites of infection, where they fulfill their life-saving antimicrobial functions. While traditionally regarded as ...short-lived phagocytes, recent findings on long-term survival, neutrophil extracellular trap (NET) formation, heterogeneity and plasticity, suppressive functions, and tissue injury have expanded our understanding of their diverse role in infection and inflammation. This review summarises our current understanding of neutrophils in host-pathogen interactions and disease involvement, illustrating the versatility and plasticity of the neutrophil, moving between host defence, immune modulation, and tissue damage.
Since the publication of the Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) care considerations in 2010, multidisciplinary care of this severe, progressive neuromuscular disease has evolved. In conjunction with ...improved patient survival, a shift to more anticipatory diagnostic and therapeutic strategies has occurred, with a renewed focus on patient quality of life. In 2014, a steering committee of experts from a wide range of disciplines was established to update the 2010 DMD care considerations, with the goal of improving patient care. The new care considerations aim to address the needs of patients with prolonged survival, to provide guidance on advances in assessments and interventions, and to consider the implications of emerging genetic and molecular therapies for DMD. The committee identified 11 topics to be included in the update, eight of which were addressed in the original care considerations. The three new topics are primary care and emergency management, endocrine management, and transitions of care across the lifespan. In part 1 of this three-part update, we present care considerations for diagnosis of DMD and neuromuscular, rehabilitation, endocrine (growth, puberty, and adrenal insufficiency), and gastrointestinal (including nutrition and dysphagia) management.
Organoids have immense potential as ex vivo disease models for drug discovery and personalized drug screening. Dynamic changes in individual organoid morphology, number, and size can indicate ...important drug responses. However, these metrics are difficult and labor-intensive to obtain for high-throughput image datasets. Here, we present OrganoID, a robust image analysis platform that automatically recognizes, labels, and tracks single organoids, pixel-by-pixel, in brightfield and phase-contrast microscopy experiments. The platform was trained on images of pancreatic cancer organoids and validated on separate images of pancreatic, lung, colon, and adenoid cystic carcinoma organoids, which showed excellent agreement with manual measurements of organoid count (95%) and size (97%) without any parameter adjustments. Single-organoid tracking accuracy remained above 89% over a four-day time-lapse microscopy study. Automated single-organoid morphology analysis of a chemotherapy dose-response experiment identified strong dose effect sizes on organoid circularity, solidity, and eccentricity. OrganoID enables straightforward, detailed, and accurate image analysis to accelerate the use of organoids in high-throughput, data-intensive biomedical applications.
Tissue barriers that restrict passage of liquids, ions, and larger solutes are essential for the development of multicellular organisms. In simple organisms this allows distinct cell types to ...interface with the external environment. In more complex species, the diversity of cell types capable of forming barriers increases dramatically. Although the plasma membranes of these barrier-forming cells prevent flux of most hydrophilic solutes, the paracellular, or shunt, pathway between cells must also be sealed. This function is accomplished in vertebrates by the zonula occludens, or tight junction. The tight junction barrier is not absolute but is selectively permeable and is able to discriminate between solutes on the basis of size and charge. Many tight junction components have been identified over the past 20 years, and recent progress has provided new insights into the proteins and interactions that regulate structure and function. This review presents these data in a historical context and proposes an integrated model in which dynamic regulation of tight junction protein interactions determines barrier function.
In this paper, we propose an algorithm for fully automatic neural face swapping in images and videos. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first method capable of rendering photo‐realistic and ...temporally coherent results at megapixel resolution. To this end, we introduce a progressively trained multi‐way comb network and a light‐ and contrast‐preserving blending method. We also show that while progressive training enables generation of high‐resolution images, extending the architecture and training data beyond two people allows us to achieve higher fidelity in generated expressions. When compositing the generated expression onto the target face, we show how to adapt the blending strategy to preserve contrast and low‐frequency lighting. Finally, we incorporate a refinement strategy into the face landmark stabilization algorithm to achieve temporal stability, which is crucial for working with high‐resolution videos. We conduct an extensive ablation study to show the influence of our design choices on the quality of the swap and compare our work with popular state‐of‐the‐art methods.
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