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Trop Anim Health Prod 2021 Apr 19;53(2):270. Epub 2021 Apr 19.

Key Laboratory of Agricultural Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction Ministry of Education, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, Hubei, People's Republic of China.

The current study was conducted to evaluate the effect of parity and days in milk on milk yield and milk production traits and their correlation with β-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) concentrations in milk of Chinese tropic Holstein dairy cows which are adapted to a humid subtropical climate in central China. About 3055 milking records of Holstein cows were obtained from three farms in the hot region in the center of China. The records were classified according to parity to 4 categories: first parity, second parity, third parity, and greater than third parity. Read More

New Phytol 1991 Jun;118(2):331-338

Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853.

Changes in antioxidant levels were investigated in red spruce (Picea rubens Sarg.) from three field sites in the northeastern United States. Whiteface Mountain, NY at an elevation of 1090 m, represents a red spruce population in decline, while Millinocket and Howland, Maine are at 518 and 105 m above sea level, respectively, and have red spruce stands that show no symptoms of decline. Read More

BMC Endocr Disord 2021 Apr 17;21(1):72. Epub 2021 Apr 17.

Spiritual Health Research Center, Research Institute for Health Development, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran.

Background: Diabetic foot self-care refers to a group of self-management behaviors that can reduce the incidence of foot ulcers and amputations. It is necessary to have a valid and reliable standard tool to measure foot self-care in diabetic patients. This study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the Diabetic Foot Self-Care Questionnaire of the University of Malaga, Spain (DFSQ-UMA) in Iran. Read More

Nurse Educ Today 2021 Apr 9;101:104890. Epub 2021 Apr 9.

Department of Nursing Science, Hospital District of Satakunta, 20014 University of Turku, Finland. Electronic address:

Background: The assessment of reasoning skills is recommended in undergraduate nursing student selection. Reasoning skills are crucial for sound decision-making, improving patient safety and are necessary from the very beginning of studies. Nursing applicants' reasoning skills based on the reasoning process have not been previously measured. Read More

BJS Open 2021 Mar;5(2)

Department of General, Visceral, and Transplantation Surgery, University Hospital of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.

Background: The value of virtual reality (VR) simulators for robot-assisted surgery (RAS) for skill assessment and training of surgeons has not been established. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to identify evidence on transferability of surgical skills acquired on robotic VR simulators to the operating room and the predictive value of robotic VR simulator performance for intraoperative performance.

Methods: MEDLINE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Web of Science were searched systematically. Read More

Zhonghua Xue Ye Xue Za Zhi 2021 Feb;42(2):146-150

Department of Hematology, The Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Zhengzhou University (Henan Cancer Hospital) , Zhengzhou 450008, China.

To explore the relationship between the expression of neuropilin-1 (NRP-1) on Treg cells and its ligands semaphorins-3A (Sema3A) , transforming growth factor-β(1) (TGF-β(1)) as well as the balance of type 1 helper T cells (Th(1)) and type 2 helper T cells (Th(2)) cells. This study enrolled 62 patients with immune thrombocytopenia (ITP; 33 and 29 newly diagnosed and chronic ITP, respectively) from March 2014 to May 2015. Consequently, 30 healthy people in the same period were selected as the normal control group. Read More

ERJ Open Res 2021 Apr 12;7(2). Epub 2021 Apr 12.

Dept of Public Health and Primary Care, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium.

Breathlessness is a common and distressing symptom in older adults and an independent predictor of adverse outcomes and yet its multidimensional assessment has not been validated in older adults. We apply and validate the Multidimensional Dyspnoea Profile (MDP) in a sample of adults 75 years and older in Belgium. Breathlessness was rated with the MDP, the modified Borg Dyspnoea Scale (mBDS), the Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB, a numerical rating scale for intensity and unpleasantness both before and after exertion), as well as with the Medical Research Council (MRC) Dyspnoea Scale. Read More

J Dent Res 2021 Apr 14:220345211005678. Epub 2021 Apr 14.

Indiana University School of Dentistry, Indianapolis, IN, USA.

This in situ erosive tooth wear (ETW) study tested enamel 3-dimensional (3D) surface texture outcomes for the detection and differentiation of ETW lesions simulated in clinically relevant conditions. Twenty participants enrolled in this 3-arm crossover intraoral ETW simulation and wore their own partial denture for 14 d holding 2 human enamel specimens (per arm). In each arm, participants were assigned to 1 of 3 different dental erosion protocols: severe (lemon juice/pH 2. Read More

J Clin Gastroenterol 2021 Apr 13. Epub 2021 Apr 13.

School of Humanities and Management, Research Center for Quality of Life and Applied Psychology, Key Laboratory for Quality of Life and Psychological Assessment and Intervention, Guangdong Medical University, Dongguan School of Public Health, Kunming Medical University The First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming Taian city central hospital, Taian Department of Statistics and Medical Record Management, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University, Jinan, China.

Background And Aim: Quality of life (QOL) for patients with chronic gastritis (CG) is of interest worldwide and disease-specific instruments are needed for clinical research and practice. This paper focused on the development and validation of the CG scale under the system of Quality of Life Instruments for Chronic Diseases (QLICD-CG) by the modular approach and both classical test theory and generalizability theory.

Methods: The QLICD-CG was developed based on programmed decision procedures including multiple nominal and focus group discussions, in-depth interviews and quantitative statistical procedures. Read More

Int J Med Inform 2021 Mar 31;150:104450. Epub 2021 Mar 31.

Faculty of Business Economics, Hasselt University, Martelarenlaan 42, 3500, Hasselt, Belgium. Electronic address:

Background And Purpose: Hospital staff's acceptance of an integrated Electronic Health Records system (EHR) is a critical success factor to exploit the benefits EHRs can offer. This study employs a repeated cross-sectional design to differentiate between the enablers and barriers of EHR acceptance prior to EHR implementation and those that arise over time by testing a theoretical model specifically tailored to the EHR context.

Methods: A repeated cross-sectional design, consisting of one measurement of staff's acceptance before and two after EHR implementation, was employed in a Belgian hospital. Read More

PLoS One 2021 13;16(4):e0249370. Epub 2021 Apr 13.

Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Department of Physiotherapy, College of Health Sciences, Bayero University Kano, Kano, Kano State, Nigeria.

Introduction: Negative attitudes and beliefs about low back pain (LBP) can lead to reduced function and activity and consequently disability. One self-report measure that can be used to assess these negative attitudes and beliefs and to determine their predictive nature is the Back Beliefs Questionnaire (BBQ). This study aimed to translate and cross-culturally adapt the BBQ into Hausa and assess its psychometric properties in mixed urban and rural Nigerian populations with chronic LBP. Read More

Front Psychiatry 2021 26;12:635214. Epub 2021 Mar 26.

Medical Psychological Center, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China.

The Personality Inventory for the DSM-5 (PID-5) is an established tool for assessing personality disorder (PD) traits that was developed based on section III of the DSM-5. It is composed of 220 items, organized into 25 facets, which are distributed among five domains. The psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the PID-5 remain to be demonstrated. Read More

Front Physiol 2021 25;12:654667. Epub 2021 Mar 25.

Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, Hacettepe University Medical School, Ankara, Turkey.

Few studies have explored the feasibility of shear-wave ultrasound elastography (SWUE) for evaluating the upper airways of patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). This study aimed to establish a reliable SWUE protocol for evaluating tongue muscle elasticity and its feasibility and utility in differentiating patients with OSA. Inter-rater and intra-rater reliability of SWUE measurements were tested using the intraclass correlation coefficients. Read More

BMC Pregnancy Childbirth 2021 Apr 9;21(1):281. Epub 2021 Apr 9.

Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands.

Background: Pregnancy distress is a combination of anxiety, stress, and depression during pregnancy. The first step in preventing pregnancy distress is to identify women at risk. The present study assessed adaptation and psychometric adequency of the Persian Adapted Version of Tilburg Pregnancy Distress Scale (P-TPDS). Read More

J Healthc Eng 2021 24;2021:8879061. Epub 2021 Mar 24.

College of Medical Instruments, Shanghai University of Medicine & Health Sciences, Shanghai 201318, China.

The dynamic detection of human motion is important, which is widely applied in the fields of motion state capture and rehabilitation engineering. In this study, based on multimodal information of surface electromyography (sEMG) signals of upper limb and triaxial acceleration and plantar pressure signals of lower limb, the effective virtual driving control and gait recognition methods were proposed. The effective way of wearable human posture detection was also constructed. Read More

BMC Neurol 2021 Apr 7;21(1):151. Epub 2021 Apr 7.

Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR.

Background: The prevalence of fatigue and sleep disturbances is high in stroke populations. Sleep quality can be targeted by interventions to alleviate fatigue following a stroke. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of fatigue and poor sleep quality, and to quantify the contribution of sleep quality to fatigue following a stroke, in chronic (≥1 year) stroke survivors. Read More

Clin Chem Lab Med 2021 Apr 7. Epub 2021 Apr 7.

Institute of Human Genetics, University of Leipzig Medical Center, Leipzig, Germany.

Objectives: Sweat chloride testing (SCT) is the mainstay for the diagnosis of cystic fibrosis (CF) and biomarker in the evaluation of CFTR-modifying drugs. To be a reliable and valid tool, analytical variance (CVA) must be minimized. However, external quality assessments have revealed significant deviations in routine clinical practice. Read More

Am J Clin Nutr 2021 Apr 7. Epub 2021 Apr 7.

UCD Institute of Food and Health, School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.

Background: Early applications of metabolomics in nutrition and health research identified associations between dietary patterns and metabolomic profiles. Twin studies show that diet-related phenotypes and diet-associated metabolites are influenced by genes. However, studies have not examined whether diet-metabolite associations are explained by genetic or environmental factors and whether these associations are reproducible over multiple time points. Read More

Stat Methods Med Res 2021 Apr 7:962280221990415. Epub 2021 Apr 7.

Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA.

The modified Poisson regression coupled with a robust sandwich variance has become a viable alternative to log-binomial regression for estimating the marginal relative risk in cluster randomized trials. However, a corresponding sample size formula for relative risk regression via the modified Poisson model is currently not available for cluster randomized trials. Through analytical derivations, we show that there is no loss of asymptotic efficiency for estimating the marginal relative risk via the modified Poisson regression relative to the log-binomial regression. Read More

Clin Psychol Psychother 2021 Apr 7. Epub 2021 Apr 7.

Department of Psychosomatics and Psychiatry, Zhongda Hospital, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.

The present study was conducted to primarily evaluate the clinimetric sensitivity of the Chinese version of the Euthymia Scale (ES), testing whether this measure discriminated between different groups of patients. Concurrent validity, a clinimetric property that refers to the assessment of the extent to which the rating scale under examination correlates with another related, previously validated, assessment instrument, was also tested investigating whether the ES significantly and negatively correlated with measures of depression and anxiety. A cross-sectional study was conducted. Read More

Vaccine 2021 Apr 3. Epub 2021 Apr 3.

CBG-MEB, Graadt van Roggenweg 500, 3531 AH Utrecht, the Netherlands. Electronic address:

For batch release of legacy vaccines such as DTaP, in vivo potency release assays are required. We quantified the variability of in vivo potency release assays for four DTaP (Diphtheria, Tetanus, acellular Pertussis) products of different manufacturers. With their large CV (Coefficients of Variance) ranging from 16% to 132%, these in vivo assays are of limited value to ensure their potency is consistent and similar to the clinical batches used for the marketing authorisation. Read More

Psychol Methods 2021 Apr 5. Epub 2021 Apr 5.

Research Institute of Child Development and Education.

Current interrater reliability (IRR) coefficients ignore the nested structure of multilevel observational data, resulting in biased estimates of both subject- and cluster-level IRR. We used generalizability theory to provide a conceptualization and estimation method for IRR of continuous multilevel observational data. We explain how generalizability theory decomposes the variance of multilevel observational data into subject-, cluster-, and rater-related components, which can be estimated using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation. Read More

Stat Pap (Berl) 2021 Mar 31:1-43. Epub 2021 Mar 31.

College of Mathematics and Statistics, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 401331 People's Republic of China.

Recently, many literatures have proved that prior information and structure in many application fields can be formulated as constraints on regression coefficients. Following these work, we propose a penalized LAD estimation with some linear constraints in this paper. Different from constrained lasso, our estimation performs well when heavy-tailed errors or outliers are found in the response. Read More

J Chem Phys 2021 Mar;154(12):124503

Institute of Condensed Matter Physics, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Hochschulstraße 6, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany.

We combine field-cycling (FC) relaxometry and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to study the rotational and translational dynamics associated with the glassy slowdown of glycerol. The H NMR spin-lattice relaxation rates R(ω) probed in the FC measurements for different isotope-labelled compounds are computed from the MD trajectories for broad frequency and temperature ranges. We find high correspondence between experiment and simulation. Read More

Antioxidants (Basel) 2021 Mar 13;10(3). Epub 2021 Mar 13.

Institute of Nutritional Sciences, University of Hohenheim, Garbenstrasse 28, D-70599 Stuttgart, Germany.

Epidemiological studies frequently rely on a single biomarker measurement to assess the relationship between antioxidant status and diseases. This bears an inherent risk for misclassification, if the respective biomarker has a high intra-individual variability. The present study investigates the intra-individual variation and reliability of enzymatic and non-enzymatic biomarkers of the antioxidant system in premenopausal women. Read More

Animals (Basel) 2021 Mar 8;11(3). Epub 2021 Mar 8.

Meragem Group, Department of Genetic, Campus de Rabanales, University of Córdoba, Ctra, Madrid-Cádiz, km 396, 14014 Córdoba, Spain.

We studied the effect of the Temperature Humidity Index (THI) (i.e., the average of temperature and relative humidity registered at meteorological stations) closest to the farms taken during the test day (TD), for total daily protein and fat yields (fpy) of the three main Spanish dairy goats. Read More

Int J Environ Res Public Health 2021 Mar 14;18(6). Epub 2021 Mar 14.

Red Cross College of Nursing, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 06974, Korea.

Background: The purpose of the present study was to examine the internal consistency reliability and construct validity of the Caregiving Burden Instrument in Korean informal caregivers of stroke survivors.

Methods: A descriptive survey design was used with a convenience sample of 208 primary caregivers of stroke survivors. Internal consistency reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha coefficients. Read More

PLoS One 2021 2;16(4):e0248186. Epub 2021 Apr 2.

Department of Genetics, Ribeirão Preto Medical School, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil.

The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effects of different selection practices on the environmental sensitivity of reproductive and growth traits in males and females of three Nellore selection lines [control (NeC), selection (NeS), and traditional (NeT) lines]. Moreover, genetic trends for the intercept and slope were estimated for each line, and the possible reranking of sires was examined. A total of 8,757 records of selection weight (SW), 3,331 records of scrotal circumference (SC), and 2,311 records of days to first calving (DFC) from Nellore cattle born between 1981 and 2017 were analyzed. Read More

Appl Neuropsychol Adult 2021 Mar 31:1-7. Epub 2021 Mar 31.

Istanbul Faculty of Medicine, Department of Neurology, Behavioral Neurology and Movement Disorders Unit, Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Aim: In this study, we aimed to establish Turkish normative data for two versions of The Pyramids and Palm Trees Test (PPTT), pictorial (PPTT-P), and verbal (PPTT-V) using Turkish culture-specific items.

Methods: The study sample involves 181 participants stratified into three age groups and further stratified into three education levels and gender. The participants were given the PPTT versions along with a neuropsychological battery. Read More

Hernia 2021 Mar 29. Epub 2021 Mar 29.

Department of General Surgery, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, A. Mickevičiaus g. 9, LT-44307, Kaunas, Lithuania.

Purpose: Quality of life (QoL) is an important outcome following surgery. The Carolinas Comfort scale (CCS) is a specific questionnaire used to evaluate QoL in patients who underwent abdominal hernia repair with mesh. The aim of this study was to create a Lithuanian version of the CCS. Read More