Federated Fuzzy Clustering for Decentralized Incomplete Longitudinal Behavioral Data.

The use of medical data for machine learning, including unsupervised methods such as clustering, is often restricted by privacy regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Medical data is sensitive and highly regulated and anonymization is often insufficient to protect a patient's identity. Traditional clustering algorithms are also unsuitable for longitudinal behavioral health trials, which often have missing data and observe individual behaviors over varying time periods. In this work, we develop a new decentralized federated multiple imputation-based fuzzy clustering algorithm for complex longitudinal behavioral trial data collected from multisite randomized controlled trials over different time periods. Federated learning (FL) preserves privacy by aggregating model parameters instead of data. Unlike previous FL methods, this proposed algorithm requires only two rounds of communication and handles clients with varying numbers of time points for incomplete longitudinal data. The model is evaluated on both empirical longitudinal dietary health data and simulated clusters with different numbers of clients, effect sizes, correlations, and sample sizes. The proposed algorithm converges rapidly and achieves desirable performance on multiple clustering metrics. This new method allows for targeted treatments for various patient groups while preserving their data privacy and enables the potential for broader applications in the Internet of Medical Things.

Indoor air pollution is associated with respiratory symptoms in children in urban Vietnam.

Exposure to indoor air pollution (IAP) is a leading environmental risk for respiratory diseases. We investigated the relationship between respiratory symptoms and polluting indoor activities such as smoking, cooking and contact with pets among children in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam. A cross-sectional survey applied a multistage sampling method in 24 randomly selected secondary schools across the city. Approximately 15,000 students completed self-administrated questionnaires on risk factors and respiratory health outcomes within the preceding 12 months. Data were analyzed using a multivariable logistic regression model with robust standard errors. Wheeze was the most common respiratory symptom (39.5 %) reported, followed by sneezing and runny nose (28.3 %). A small percentage of students self-reported asthma (8.6 %). Approximately 56 % of participants lived with family members who smoked. A positive association between exposure to indoor secondhand smoke and respiratory symptoms was observed, with adjusted odds ratios (aOR) of 1.41 (95 % CI: 1.25-1.60, p < 0.001) for wheezing and 1.64 (95 % CI: 1.43-1.87, p < 0.001) for sneezing and runny nose, respectively. Using an open stove fuelled by coal, wood, or kerosene for cooking was associated with wheeze (aOR: 1.36, CI 95 %: 1.10-1.68, p = 0.01) and sneezing and runny nose (aOR: 1.36, CI 95 %: 1.09-1.69, p = 0.01). In the present study, IAP was associated with adverse health outcomes, as evidenced by an increase in respiratory symptoms reported within the previous 12 months.

Climate change and human health in Vietnam: a systematic review and additional analyses on current impacts, future risk, and adaptation.

This study aims to investigate climate change's impact on health and adaptation in Vietnam through a systematic review and additional analyses of heat exposure, heat vulnerability, awareness and engagement, and projected health costs. Out of 127 reviewed studies, findings indicated the wider spread of infectious diseases, and increased mortality and hospitalisation risks associated with extreme heat, droughts, and floods. However, there are few studies addressing health cost, awareness, engagement, adaptation, and policy. Additional analyses showed rising heatwave exposure across Vietnam and global above-average vulnerability to heat. By 2050, climate change is projected to cost up to USD1-3B in healthcare costs, USD3-20B in premature deaths, and USD6-23B in work loss. Despite increased media focus on climate and health, a gap between public and government publications highlighted the need for more governmental engagement. Vietnam's climate policies have faced implementation challenges, including top-down approaches, lack of cooperation, low adaptive capacity, and limited resources.

DFT-Based Study for the Enhancement of CO2 Adsorption on Metal-Doped Nitrogen-Enriched Polytriazines.

Nitrogen-enriched polytriazine (NPT), a carbon nitride-based material, has received much attention for CO2 storage applications. However, to enhance the CO2 uptake capacity more efficiently, it is necessary to understand the interaction mechanism between CO2 molecules and NPT through appropriate modification of the structures. Here, we introduce a method to enhance the CO2 adsorption capacity of NPT by incorporating metal atoms such as Sn, Co, and Ni into the polytriazine network. DFT calculations were used to investigate the CO2 adsorption mechanism of the polytriazine frameworks by tracking the interactions between CO2 and the various interaction sites of NPT. By optimizing the geometry of the pure and metal-containing NPT frameworks, we calculated the binding energy of metal atoms in the NPT framework, the adsorption energy of CO2 molecules, and the charge transfer between CO2 molecules and the corresponding adsorption systems. In this work, we demonstrate that the CO2 adsorption capacity of NPT can be greatly enhanced by doping transition-metal atoms into the cavities of NPT.

Comparison of cytotoxic potency between freshly cultured and freshly thawed cytokine-induced killer cells from human umbilical cord blood.

Immune cell therapy has been incorporated into cancer therapy over the past few years. Chimeric antigen receptor T cells (Car-T cells) transplantation is a novel and promising therapy for cancer treatment and introduces a new age of immune cell therapy. However, the expensive nature of genetic modification procedures limits the accessibility of Car-T cells for cancer treatment. Cytokine-induced killer cells (CIKs) can kill the target cells in an MHC-non-restricted manner; these cells can be developed to "off-the-shelf" immune cell products for cancer treatment. However, the anti-tumor potency of freshly thawed CIKs is not well documented. This study aimed to fill this gap, evaluating the anti-tumor potency of freshly thawed CIKs compared to that of freshly cultured CIKs. CIKs were produced from the human umbilical cord blood in accordance with published protocols. CIKs were cryopreserved in xeno-free cryomedium that contains 5% DMSO, 10% human serum in phosphate buffer saline at - 86 °C. These cells were thawed and immediately utilized in assays (called freshly thawed CIKs) with freshly cultured cells are control. The expression of the surface markers of CIKs, cytokine production, and in vitro anti-tumor cytotoxic cells of freshly thawed CIKs were evaluated and compared to freshly cultured CIKs. Additionally, the freshly thawed CIKs were injected into the breast of tumor-bearing mice to assess the anti-tumor potency in vivo. The results obtained in freshly thawed CIKs and freshly cultured CIKs demonstrated that the expression of CD3, and CD56 were comparable in both cases. The production of TNF-α, IFN-γ, and IL-10 was slightly reduced in freshly thawed cells compared to the freshly cultured cells. The in vitro lysis toward MCF-7 cancer cells was similar between freshly thawed and freshly cultured CIKs. Moreover, the freshly thawed CIKs displayed anti-breast tumor activity in the breast tumor-bearing mice. The volume of tumors significantly reduced in the mice grafted with freshly thawed CIKs while, conversely, the tumor volume in mice of the placebo group gradually increased. This study substantiated that freshly thawed CIKs preserved their anti-tumor potency in both in vitro and in vivo conditions. The results initially revealed the great potential of UCB-CIKs for "off-the-shelf" CIK product manufacturing. However, further studies on the effects of cryomedia, freezing rate, and thawing procedure should be undertaken before freshly thawed off-the-shelf UCB-CIKs are utilized in clinical trials.

Synthesis of Uniform Size Rutile TiO2 Microrods by Simple Molten-Salt Method and Its Photoluminescence Activity.

Uniform-size rutile TiO2 microrods were synthesized by simple molten-salt method with sodium chloride as reacting medium and different kinds of sodium phosphate salts as growth control additives to control the one-dimensional (1-D) crystal growth of particles. The effect of rutile and anatase ratios as a precursor was monitored for rod growth formation. Apart from uniform rod growth study, optical properties of rutile microrods were observed by UV-visible and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. TiO2 materials with anatase and rutile phase show PL emission due to self-trapped exciton. It has been observed that synthesized rutile TiO2 rods show various PL emission peaks in the range of 400 to 900 nm for 355 nm excitation wavelengths. All PL emission appeared due to the oxygen vacancy present inside rutile TiO2 rods. The observed PL near the IR range (785 and 825 nm) was due to the formation of a self-trapped hole near to the surface of (110) which is the preferred orientation plane of synthesized rutile TiO2 microrods.

A review of harmonization methods for studying dietary patterns.

Data harmonization is the process by which each of the variables from different research studies are standardized to similar units resulting in comparable datasets. These data may be integrated for more powerful and accurate examination and prediction of outcomes for use in the intelligent and smart electronic health software programs and systems. Prospective harmonization is performed when researchers create guidelines for gathering and managing the data before data collection begins. In contrast, retrospective harmonization is performed by pooling previously collected data from various studies using expert domain knowledge to identify and translate variables. In nutritional epidemiology, dietary data harmonization is often necessary to construct the nutrient and food databases necessary to answer complex research questions and develop effective public health policy. In this paper, we review methods for effective data harmonization, including developing a harmonization plan, which common standards already exist for harmonization, and defining variables needed to harmonize datasets. Currently, several large-scale studies maintain harmonized nutrient databases, especially in Europe, and steps have been proposed to inform the retrospective harmonization process. As an example, data harmonization methods are applied to several U.S longitudinal diet datasets. Based on our review, considerations for future dietary data harmonization include user agreements for sharing private data among participating studies, defining variables and data dictionaries that accurately map variables among studies, and the use of secure data storage servers to maintain privacy. These considerations establish necessary components of harmonized data for smart health applications which can promote healthier eating and provide greater insights into the effect of dietary patterns on health.

Enhancement of anisotropy energy of SmCo5 by ceasing the coupling at 2c sites in the crystal lattice with Cu substitution.

SmCo5 and SmCo5-xCux magnetic particles were produced by co-precipitation followed by reduction diffusion. HRTEM confirmed the Cu substitution in the SmCo5 lattice. Non-magnetic Cu was substituted at "2c" site in the SmCo5 crystal lattice and effectively stopped the coupling in its surroundings. This decoupling effect decreased magnetic moment from SmCo5 (12.86 µB) to SmCo4Cu (10.58 µB) and SmCo3Cu2 (7.79 µB) and enhanced anisotropy energy from SmCo5 (10.87 Mega erg/cm3) to SmCo4Cu (14.05 Mega erg/cm3) and SmCo3Cu2 (14.78 Mega erg/cm3). Enhancement of the anisotropy energy increased the coercivity as its values for SmCo5, SmCo4Cu and SmCo3Cu2 were recorded as 4.5, 5.97 and 6.99 kOe respectively. Being six times cheaper as compared to Co, substituted Cu reduced the price of SmCo3Cu2 up to 2%. Extra 15% Co was added which not only enhanced the Mr value but also reduced the 5% of the total cost because of additional weight added to the SmCo3Cu2. Method reported in this work is most energy efficient method on the synthesis of Sm-Co-Cu ternary alloys until now.

Impact of temperature on hospital admission for acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) among pre-school children in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Changes in ambient temperature have been reported as an important risk factor for respiratory diseases among pre-school children. However, there have been few studies so far on the effects of temperature on children respiratory health in developing countries including Vietnam. This study examined the impact of short-term changes in ambient temperature on hospital admissions for acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) among children aged less than 5 years old in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam. Data on daily hospital admissions from 2013 to 2017 were collected from two large paediatric hospitals of the city. Daily meteorological data of the same period were also collected. Time series analysis was performed to evaluate the association between risk of hospitalisations and temperatures categorised by seasons, age, and causes. We found that a 1 °C increase in maximum temperature was associated with 4.2 and 3.4% increase in hospital admission for ALRI among children 3-5 years old during the dry season and the rainy season, respectively. Surprisingly, in the rainy season, a rise of 1°C diurnal temperature range (DTR) was significantly associated with a decrease from 2.0 to 2.5% risk of hospitalisation for ALRI among children <3 years old. These findings suggested that although high temperature is a risk factor for hospital admissions among children in general, other modifiable factors such as age, exposure time, air conditioning usage, wearing protective clothing, socioeconomic status, and behaviour may influence the overall effect of high temperature on hospital admissions of children <5 years old in HCMC. The findings of this study have provided evidence for building public health policies aimed at preventing and minimizing the adverse health effects of temperature on children in HCMC.

Chemical synthesis of Nd2Fe14B/Fe-Co nanocomposite with high magnetic energy product.

Nd2Fe14B is one of the most popular permanent magnets (PMs) possessing the best energy product (BH)max among the common PM materials. However, exchange-coupled nanocomposite magnets fabricated by embedding nanostructures of soft-phase magnetic materials into a hard-phase magnetic matrix manifest higher remanence and a higher energy product. Here we present the fabrication of exchange coupled Nd2Fe14B/Fe-Co magnetic nanocomposites using gel-combustion and diffusion-reduction processes. Pre-fabricated CoFe2O4 nanoparticles (NPs) of ∼5 nm diameter were incorporated into a Nd-Fe-B oxide matrix during its synthesis by gel-combustion. The obtained mixed oxide was further processed with oxidative annealing at 800 °C for 2 h and reductive annealing at 900 °C for 2 h to form a Nd2Fe14B/Fe-Co nanocomposite. Nanocomposites with different mol% of soft-phase were prepared and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and physical property measurement system (PPMS) to study their crystalline phase, morphology and magnetic behavior. Addition of 7.7 mol% of soft-phase was found to be optimum, producing a coercivity (H c) of 5.6 kOe and remanence (M r) of 54 emu g-1 in the nanocomposite.

Clinical Trials with Cytokine-Induced Killer Cells and CAR-T Cell Transplantation for Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Treatment.

The idea of utilizing the human immune system to eradicate tumors has been successfully practiced for the past decades, as reported in multiple published studies. Among cancer types, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is considered the most lethal type, leading to the necessity of finding an effective treatment for this category of cancer. Building on the success of basic and preclinical studies, numerous clinical trials of cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cells or chimera antigen receptor (CAR) T cells for NSCLC therapy have been reported. In this review paper, we will summarize those findings in the context of clinical outcomes and adverse effects. In NSCLC, compared to CAR-T cells, CIK cells show relatively stronger antitumor efficacy and lower adverse effects. More clinical studies are needed to further confirm the clinical efficiency of both types of cellular immunotherapy.

Stressful life events, culture, and violence.

This study explored the contributions of stressful life events and their interactions with social support and cultural factors in predicting serious violence among American adolescent immigrants of Chinese and Southeast Asian origins. Youth differed in their exposure to stressors and how they responded to them. Cambodian and Laotian youth reported the highest levels of stressors, except for emotional abuse. Only physical abuse was an independent predictor of serious violence for all groups, except Chinese. Perceived social support buffered the effects of some stressors, whereas increased levels of acculturation, intergenerational/intercultural conflict, and individualism placed youth at increased risk for serious violence. The results suggest that the moderating effects of culture and social support need to be considered when examining the association between life stressors and serious violence for Chinese and Southeast Asian youth.

Sorting by restricted-length-weighted reversals.

Classical sorting by reversals uses the unit-cost model, that is, each reversal consumes an equal cost. This model limits the biological meaning of sorting by reversal. Bender and his colleagues extended it by assigning a cost function f(l) = l(alpha) for all alpha > or =0, where l is the length of the reversed subsequence. In this paper, we extend their results by considering a model in which long reversals are prohibited. Using the same cost function above for permitted reversals, we present tight or nearly tight bounds for the worst-case cost of sorting by reversals. Then we develop algorithms to approximate the optimal cost to sort a given 0/1 sequence as well as a given permutation. Our proposed problems are more biologically meaningful and more algorithmically general and challenging than the problem considered by Bender et al. Furthermore, our bounds are tight and nearly tight, whereas our algorithms provide good approximation ratios compared to the optimal cost to sort 0/1 sequences or permutations by reversals.