Characteristics and Related Factors of Chinese Herbal Medicine Use in Middle-Aged and Older Patients with Cardiovascular Disease in China: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) poses a significant health burden in middle-aged and older Chinese populations, with Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) often used as a complementary therapy. This study aimed to analyze the characteristics of CHM use and its influencing factors in middle-aged and older Chinese patients with CVD.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional study based on data from the 2018 China Health and Aging Longitudinal Study (CHARLS).

Improving Spinal Cord Stimulation Patient Triage: Random Forest Model with Custom Evaluation Functions.

Effective healthcare referral triage poses a significant challenge, especially extracting referral notes on time for scheduling. To offset this issue, this study aims to develop an optimized Random Forest classifier to recreate the referral notes content and identify patients requiring Spinal Cord Stimulation procedures. A performance index was introduced to improve accuracy, while a consistency index was designed to prevent overfitting.

Impact of Di-(2-Ethylhexyl)-Phthalate on Metabolic Syndrome: Insights from Network Toxicology and Molecular Docking and Dynamics.

Background: Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is strongly associated with exposure to environmental pollutants, especially endocrine disruptors (EDCs). Di-(2-ethylhexyl)-Phthalate (DEHP), a typical EDC widely found in plastic products, has been shown to interfere with lipid metabolism and insulin signalling. However, the specific molecular mechanism by which it mediates MetS remains unclear.

Characteristics of High-Performing Administrative Leaders in a Physician-Administrator Dyad in an Academic Medical Center.

Goal: The purpose of the research is to explore, through the lens of organizational performance and staff satisfaction, the characteristics of administrative leaders working as dyad partners with physician leaders.

Methods: All 54 administrative leaders from 71 clinical departments at the three US Mayo Clinic sites were invited to participate in the study. We used an unsupervised cluster analysis machine learning method to group the leaders based on their characteristics, as measured by the 32-dimension Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ 32r), and we used a three-cluster model to explore the relationships between the clusters and the performance outcome.

Reallocation of chemotherapy appointments in a large health system using a mixed integer linear programming approach.

Outpatient chemotherapy scheduling has significant implications for both patients and health systems. Consideration of treatment location preference is important for patient satisfaction and outcomes, and it is a complex decision impacted by travel distance. In health systems with one treatment site that stands out from the rest as a destination medical center (the primary site), there are financial and resource utilization incentives to free up as much space as possible for appointments at that site.

The miR-876-5p/SOCS4/STAT3 pathway induced the expression of PD-L1 and suppressed antitumor immune responses.

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) remains a formidable challenge due to its high recurrence rates and poor prognosis. This study focuses on miR-876, a microRNA significantly associated with OSCC recurrence and clinical outcomes. Analysis of miRNA expression profiles from recurrent OSCC patients revealed that miR-876-5p is markedly upregulated in recurrent tumor tissues and the high expression of miR-876-5p correlates with reduced disease-free and overall survival.

Redirecting On-surface Cycloaddition Reactions in a Self-assembled Ordered Molecular Array on Graphite.

The synthesis of atomically precise carbon nanostructures in ultra-high vacuum has seen extensive progress on metal surfaces. However, this remains challenging on chemically inert surfaces. It is because the thermally activated C-C coupling encounters a severe "desorption problem" on weakly interacting substrates.

Urgency Prediction for Medical Laboratory Tests Through Optimal Sparse Decision Tree: Case Study With Echocardiograms.

Background: In the contemporary realm of health care, laboratory tests stand as cornerstone components, driving the advancement of precision medicine. These tests offer intricate insights into a variety of medical conditions, thereby facilitating diagnosis, prognosis, and treatments. However, the accessibility of certain tests is hindered by factors such as high costs, a shortage of specialized personnel, or geographic disparities, posing obstacles to achieving equitable health care.

Development and Implementation of Automated Referral Triaging System for Spinal Cord Stimulation Procedure in Pain Medicine.

Effective referral triaging enhances patient service outcomes, experience and access to care especially for specialized procedures. This study presents the development and implementation of an automated triaging system to predict patients who would benefit from Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS) procedure for their pain management. The proposed triage system aims to improve the triage process by reducing unnecessary appointments before SCS assessment, ensuring appropriate pain management care.

Realization of Two-Dimensional Intrinsic Polar Metal in a Buckled Honeycomb Binary Lattice.

Structural topology and symmetry of a two-dimensional (2D) network play pivotal roles in defining its electrical properties and functionalities. Here, a binary buckled honeycomb lattice with C symmetry, which naturally hosts topological Dirac fermions and out-of-plane polarity, is proposed. It is successfully achieved in a group IV-V compound, namely monolayer SiP epitaxially grown on Ag(111) surface.

Prediction of gestational diabetes mellitus at the first trimester: machine-learning algorithms.

Purpose: Short- and long-term complications of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) involving pregnancies and offspring warrant the development of an effective individualized risk prediction model to reduce and prevent GDM together with its associated co-morbidities. The aim is to use machine learning (ML) algorithms to study data gathered throughout the first trimester in order to predict GDM.

Methods: Two independent cohorts with forty-five features gathered through first trimester were included.

Two-dimensional ferroelectricity in a single-element bismuth monolayer.

Ferroelectric materials are fascinating for their non-volatile switchable electric polarizations induced by the spontaneous inversion-symmetry breaking. However, in all of the conventional ferroelectric compounds, at least two constituent ions are required to support the polarization switching. Here, we report the observation of a single-element ferroelectric state in a black phosphorus-like bismuth layer, in which the ordered charge transfer and the regular atom distortion between sublattices happen simultaneously.

Modeling Family Medicine Provider Care Team Design to Improve Patient Care Continuity.

Background And Objectives: Continuity of care is an integral aspect of high-quality patient care in primary care settings. In the Department of Family Medicine at Mayo Clinic, providers have multiple responsibilities in addition to clinical duties or panel management time (PMT). These competing time demands limit providers' clinical availability.

Convolutional Neural Networks for Classifying Cervical Cancer Types Using Histological Images.

Cervical cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide. The diagnosis and classification of cancer are extremely important, as it influences the optimal treatment and length of survival. The objective was to develop and validate a diagnosis system based on convolutional neural networks (CNN) that identifies cervical malignancies and provides diagnostic interpretability.

Balancing Clinician Workload Through Strategic Patient Panel Designs.

Background And Objectives: Clinician workload is a key contributor to burnout and well-being as well as overtime and staff shortages, particularly in the primary care setting. Appointment volume is primarily driven by the size of patient panels assigned to clinicians. Thus, finding the most appropriate panel size for each clinician is essential to optimization of patient care.

Coordination of Intraoperative Neurophysiologic Monitoring Technologist and Surgery Schedules.

Resource coordination in surgical scheduling remains challenging in health care delivery systems. This is especially the case in highly-specialized settings such as coordinating Intraoperative Neurophysiologic Monitoring (IONM) resources. Inefficient coordination yields higher costs, limited access to care, and creates constraints to surgical quality and outcomes.

Room Temperature Ferromagnetism of Monolayer Chromium Telluride with Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy.

The realization of long-range magnetic ordering in 2D systems can potentially revolutionize next-generation information technology. Here, the successful fabrication of crystalline Cr Te monolayers with room temperature (RT) ferromagnetism is reported. Using molecular beam epitaxy, the growth of 2D Cr Te films with monolayer thickness is demonstrated at low substrate temperatures (≈100 °C), compatible with Si complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology.

Diverse Structures and Magnetic Properties in Nonlayered Monolayer Chromium Selenide.

Thickness-dependent magnetic behavior has previously been observed in chemical vapor deposition-grown chromium selenide. However, the low-dimensional structure in nonlayered chromium selenide, which plays a crucial role in determining the low-dimensional magnetic order, needs further study. Here, we report the structure-dependent magnetic properties in monolayer CrSe and CrSe grown by molecular beam epitaxy.

Coronavirus Disease 2019-Related Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Background: This study aimed to describe the clinical symptoms, laboratory findings, treatment, and outcomes of coronavirus disease 2019-related multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children to provide a reference for clinical practice.

Methods: We employed a literature search of databases such as PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE, and Johns Hopkins University for articles on COVID-19-related multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children published between April 1, 2020, and January 15, 2021. High-quality articles were selected for analysis on the basis of their quality standard scores.

Reduce Patient Treatment wait time in a Proton Beam Facility - A Gatekeeper Approach.

Patient wait time can negatively impact treatment quality in a proton therapy center, where multiple treatment rooms share one proton beam. Wait time increases patient discomfort that can lead to patient motion, dissatisfaction, and longer treatment delay. This study was to develop a patient call-back model that reduced patient wait while efficiently utilizing the proton beam.

Ketogenic Diet Suppressed T-Regulatory Cells and Promoted Cardiac Fibrosis via Reducing Mitochondria-Associated Membranes and Inhibiting Mitochondrial Function.

Ketogenic diet (KD) is popular in diabetic patients but its cardiac safety and efficiency on the heart are unknown. The aim of the present study is to determine the effects and the underlined mechanisms of KD on cardiac function in diabetic cardiomyopathy (DCM). We used db/db mice to model DCM, and different diets (regular or KD) were used.