Causal Effects of High Stress Assessed Via Interviews on Mental and Physical Health: Toward Computer Agent-Driven Stress Assessment.

OBJECTIVES: This study investigated the causal effect of high stress assessment via an interview on the mental and physical health of workers 1 month later. METHODS: Stress assessment interviews and feedback were conducted with 50 Japanese workers. In addition to the interviewer, two occupational health professionals assessed participants' stress based on recordings. The average treatment effect was estimated by propensity score matching. RESULTS: High stress, according to the interview-based assessment, had a significant negative causal effect on self-reported well-being 1 month later (95% confidence interval: -3.02, -1.10). In addition, no effect of high stress on stress load, mental and physical symptoms, or burnout was observed. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides important insights into the prognosis of individuals who were assessed through interviews to have high stress. The findings are expected to help automate stress assessments using computer agents.

Influence and Analysis of Music Teaching Environment Monitoring on Students' Mental Health Using Data Mining Technology.

Students currently mostly experience psychological issues like worry and fear, which are primarily brought on by the high demands placed on them. One psychotherapy technique is music therapy. The goal is to use music to enhance health, particularly as a tool to break down barriers both inside and outside the body. Based on data mining (DM) technologies, this paper examines the impact of music education on students' psychological health. The study demonstrates that the DM algorithm utilised in this work has the lowest error rate, with an average error rate of only 6.90%, followed by the ACA method with an average error rate of 17.48%, and finally the AI algorithm with an average error rate of 29.35%. As can be shown, this approach is more suited to research the effects of music instruction on students' psychological well-being. The functional module based on DM is developed through simulation experiments to confirm the application effectiveness of the DM algorithm. This is done by using the data source of DM and the structural model of the mining system to build this module on the foundation of the original psychological evaluation system.

Construction of Decision Trees Based on Gene Expression Omnibus Data to Classify Bladder Cancer and Its Subtypes.

BACKGROUND Bladder cancer is a malignant tumor of the genitourinary system. Different subtypes of bladder cancer have different treatment methods and prognoses. Therefore, identifying hub genes affecting other genes is of great significance for the treatment of bladder cancer. MATERIAL AND METHODS We obtained expression profiles from the GSE13507 and GSE77952 datasets from the Gene Expression Omnibus database. First, principal component analysis was used to identify the difference in gene expression in different types of tissues. Differential expression analysis was used to find the differentially expressed genes between normal and tumor tissues, and between tumors with and without muscle infiltration. Further, based on differentially expressed genes, we constructed 2 decision trees for differentiating between tumor and normal tissues, and between muscle-infiltrating and non-muscle-infiltrating tumor tissues. A receiver operating characteristic curve was used to evaluate the prediction effect of the decision trees. RESULTS FAM107A and C8orf4 showed significantly lower expression in bladder cancer tissues than in normal tissues. Regarding muscle infiltration, CTHRC1 showed lower expression and HMGCS2 showed higher expression in non-muscle-infiltrating samples than in those with muscle infiltration. We constructed 2 decision trees for differentiating between tumor and normal tissue, and between tissues with and without muscle infiltration. Both decision trees showed good prediction results. CONCLUSIONS These newly discovered hub genes will be helpful in understanding the occurrence and development of different subtypes of bladder cancer, and will provide new therapeutic targets and biomarkers for bladder cancer.

Confidence intervals for Markov chain transition probabilities based on next generation sequencing reads data.

BACKGROUND: Markov chains (MC) have been widely used to model molecular sequences. The estimations of MC transition matrix and confidence intervals of the transition probabilities from long sequence data have been intensively studied in the past decades. In next generation sequencing (NGS), a large amount of short reads are generated. These short reads can overlap and some regions of the genome may not be sequenced resulting in a new type of data. Based on NGS data, the transition probabilities of MC can be estimated by moment estimators. However, the classical asymptotic distribution theory for MC transition probability estimators based on long sequences is no longer valid. METHODS: In this study, we present the asymptotic distributions of several statistics related to MC based on NGS data. We show that, after scaling by the effective coverage d defined in a previous study by the authors, these statistics based on NGS data approximate to the same distributions as the corresponding statistics for long sequences. RESULTS: We apply the asymptotic properties of these statistics for finding the theoretical confidence regions for MC transition probabilities based on NGS short reads data. We validate our theoretical confidence intervals using both simulated data and real data sets, and compare the results with those by the parametric bootstrap method. CONCLUSIONS: We find that the asymptotic distributions of these statistics and the theoretical confidence intervals of transition probabilities based on NGS data given in this study are highly accurate, providing a powerful tool for NGS data analysis.

Assessment of the Therapeutic Effects of Fucoxanthin by Attenuating Inflammation in Ovalbumin-Induced Asthma in an Experimental Animal Model.

Asthma has affected more than 300 million people worldwide and is considered one of the most debilitating global public health problems based on a recent statistical report from the Global Initiative for Asthma. Inflammation of the airways leads to the various interrelated mechanisms of innate and adaptive immunity acting mutually with the epithelium of the respiratory organ. Fucoxanthin is an orange or brown pigment which is naturally found in various seaweeds. To the best of our knowledge, there are no scientific claims or evidence of the curative effects of fucoxanthin against asthma. Hence, this present research was designed to investigate the curative activity of fucoxanthin against ovalbumin-induced asthma in a mouse model. Fucoxanthin (50 mg/kg) showed significant (P < 0.001) antiasthma activity. It effectively decreased intracellular secretion of reactive oxygen species and increased antioxidant enzyme activity. Fucoxanthin also decreased inflammatory cytokine markers in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Because fucoxanthin showed effective antiasthma activity against ovalbumin-induced asthma in experimental animals, further research on this natural antioxidant could lead to development of a novel drug for the treatment of asthma in humans.

Esophagojejunostomy after laparoscopic total gastrectomy by OrVil™ or hemi-double stapling technique.

AIM: To investigate the feasibility, advantages and disadvantages of two types of anvil insertion techniques for esophagojejunostomy after laparoscopic total gastrectomy. METHODS: This was an open-label prospective cohort study. Laparoscopy-assisted radical total gastrectomy with D2 lymph node dissection was performed in 84 patients with primary non-metastatic gastric cancer confirmed by pre-operative histological examination. Overweight patients were excluded, as well as patients with peritoneal dissemination and invasion of adjacent organs. After total gastrectomy, all patients were randomized into two groups. Patients in Group I underwent esophagojejunostomy using a transorally-inserted anvil (OrVil(TM)), while patients in Group II underwent esophagojejunostomy using the hemi-double stapling technique (HDST). Both types of esophagojejunostomy were performed under laparoscopy. Patients' baseline characteristics, preoperative characteristics, perioperative characteristics, short-term postoperative outcomes and operation cost were compared between the two groups. The primary endpoint was evaluation of the surgical outcome (operating time, time of digestive tract reconstruction and time of anvil insertion) and the medical cost of each operation (operation cost and total cost of hospitalization). The secondary endpoints were time to solid diet, post-surgical hospitalization time, time to defecation, time to ambulation and intra-operative blood loss. In addition, complications were assessed and compared. RESULTS: Laparoscopic total gastrectomy and esophagojejunostomy were successfully performed in all 84 patients, without conversion to laparotomy. There were no significant differences in the operative time and time for total gastrectomy between the two groups (287.8 ± 38.4 min vs 271.8 ± 46.1 min, P = 0.09, and 147.7 ± 31.6 min vs 159.8 ± 33.8 min, P = 0.09, respectively). The time for digestive tract reconstruction and for anvil insertion were significantly decreased in Group II compared with Group I (47.8 ± 12.1 min vs 55.4 ± 15.7 min, P = 0.01, and 12.6 ± 4.7 min vs 18.7 ± 7.5 min, P = 0.001, respectively). Intra-operative blood loss (96.4 ± 32.7 mL vs 88.2 ± 36.9 mL, P = 0.28), time to defecation (3.5 ± 0.9 d vs 3.2 ± 1.1 d, P = 0.12), time to ambulation (3.9 ± 0.7 d vs 3.6 ± 1.1 d, P = 0.12), time to solid diet (7.6 ± 1.4 d vs 8.0 ± 2.7 d, P = 0.31) and total hospitalization (10.6 ± 2.6 d vs 10.8 ± 3.5 d, P = 0.80) were similar between the two groups. In addition, the total costs of hospitalization were similar between the two groups (73848.7 ± 11781.0 RMB vs 70870.3 ± 14003.5 RMB, P = 0.296), but operation cost was significantly higher in Group I compared with Group II (32401.9 ± 1981.6 RMB vs 26961.9 ± 2293.8 RMB, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Anvil insertion was faster and easier using the HDST technique compared with OrVil(TM), and was more cost-effective. There was no significant difference in safety.

[Assessment of neural respiratory drive in humans].

OBJECTIVE: Assessment of neural respiratory drive is useful for diagnosis of dyspnea and respiratory failure with unknown causes. The purpose of the study was to compare the sensitivity of trandiaphragmatic pressure (Pdi) and diaphragm electromyogram (EMGdi) in assessment of neural respiratory drive. METHODS: A combined catheter with 10 electrodes and 2 balloons was used to record EMGdi and Pdi during CO2 rebreathing. Three different inspiratory maneuvers-inspiration from functional residual capacity to total lung capacity (TLC), deep inspiration from functional residual capacity against closed airway (MIP), and short sharp inspiration through the nose (Sniff) were performed. Ten healthy subjects [male 4 and female 6; age (26 ± 4) years] were studied. RESULTS: Linear relationship between EMGdi and end-tidal CO2 (r = 0.83-0.98, all P < 0.01) was better than that between Pdi and end-tidal CO2 (r = 0.48-0.96, all P < 0.01) during CO2 rebreathing, Z = -2.731, P < 0.05. The slope of linear relation between EMGdi and end-tidal CO2 (16.3-32.5) was significantly higher than that between Pdi and end-tidal CO2 (0.4-11.1), Z = -3.780, P < 0.01. The maximal EMGdi derived from TLC maneuver (211 ± 48) µV was larger than those from the MIP maneuver (161 ± 48) µV and the Sniff maneuver (145 ± 37) µV, F = 5.931, P < 0.05, whereas the maximal Pdi derived from TLC maneuver (58 ± 27) cm H2O (1 cm H2O = 0.098 kPa) was significantly lower than those from the MIP maneuver (92 ± 32) cm H2O and the Sniff maneuver (95 ± 27) cm H2O, F = 5.155, P < 0.05. CONCLUSION: EMGdi is more sensitive than Pdi in the assessment of neural respiratory drive.