Development and validation of an infectious disease control competency scale for public health professionals.

BACKGROUND: Infectious diseases persistently pose global threats, and it is imperative to accelerate the professionalization of public health workforce. This study aimed to develop and validate the infectious disease control competency scale (IDCCS) for public health professionals to fill a theoretical gap and elevate practical capabilities by informing public health professionals' development goals. METHODS: The initial item pool was generated through a literature review, and categorized into three dimensions (knowledge, practical skills, and leadership) based on the competency iceberg model and public health leadership framework. A two-round Delphi process was conducted to determine indicators within the scale. A pilot survey was utilized for item analysis and exploratory factor analysis (EFA). A formal survey was employed for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The weight value of each indicator was calculated using the analytic hierarchy process. RESULTS: An initial scale with three primary items, 14 secondary items, and 81 tertiary items was generated. Twenty experts participated in the two rounds of the Delphi process. Authority coefficients exceeded 0.9 in both rounds. Kendall's W was 0.29 and 0.19, respectively (both P < 0.001). Item analysis presented a Cronbach's Alpha of 0.98, with corrected item-total correlation coefficients ranging from 0.33 to 0.78. EFA demonstrated that cumulative variance explanations for the four primary dimensions (knowledge, practical skills, leadership, and personal quality) were 77.463%, 73.976%, 81.174%, and 68.654%, respectively. CFA indicated that all composite reliability values and average variance extracted surpassed 0.8 and 0.5, respectively. The standardized factor loadings of the items ranged from 0.630 to 0.977. Among the seven model fit indices, each of the four dimensions satisfied at least five criteria. A final three-level scale comprising four primary items, 14 secondary items, and 64 tertiary items was constructed. The weight values for the four primary items were 0.4064, 0.2878, 0.2082, and 0.0981, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The IDCCS was established to evaluate the competencies of knowledge, practical skills, leadership, and personal quality for public health professionals in infectious disease control. This scale demonstrates good reliability and validity, and can be used for performance evaluation, recruitment processes, curriculum development, and individual self-assessment.

Effectiveness of momentary intervention on influenza vaccination among the elderly in China: From willingness to action.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the impact of momentary intervention on the willingness and actual uptake of influenza vaccination among the elderly in China. METHODS: A cross-sectional study assessed the willingness of the elderly to receive influenza vaccination, and an momentary intervention aimed to increase vaccination willingness among those initially unwilling. The elderly reporting a willingness were offered free influenza vaccination through a community intervention program. RESULTS: A total of 3138 participants were recruited in this study, and 61.3 % (95 % CI 59.6 %-63.0 %) were willing to receive influenza vaccination at baseline. The willingness rate of influenza vaccination increased to 79.8 % (95 % CI 78.4 %-81.2 %), with an increase of 18.5 % (95 % CI 16.3 %-20.7 %) after momentary intervention. The influenza vaccination rate was 40.4 % (95 % CI 38.5 %-42.3 %) before and 53.9 % (95 % CI 52.0 %-55.8 %) after momentary intervention with an increase of 13.5 % (95 % CI 10.9 %-16.2 %). There was no significant difference in influenza vaccination rates between the initially willing people and those who changed to be willing to receive influenza vaccination after momentary intervention (vaccination rates: 78.0 % vs. 81.3 %). CONCLUSION: Momentary intervention has been shown to effectively enhance the willingness of the elderly to receive influenza vaccination, thereby facilitating the translation of this intention into actual behavior.

Detecting and genotyping high-risk human papillomavirus among male patients during 2015-2023 in Beijing, China.

Few studies focused on human papillomavirus (HPV) in male patients. This study aimed to explore the detection rate and genotyping of HPV among male patients in Beijing to provide a reference for formulating prevention strategies for HPV infection. The cross-sectional study was conducted in Beijing Chaoyang Hospital from November 2015 to March 2023. It covered male patients from the urology and dermatology departments. Fifteen high-risk HPV genotypes were detected by the multiplex real-time polymerase chain reaction method. The overall detection rate of HPV was 25.19% (1288/5114, 95% confidence interval [CI] 24.00%-26.38%), of which the single infection rate was 16.99% (869/5114, 95% CI 15.97%-18.05%) and the co-infection rate was 8.19% (419/5114, 95% CI 7.46%-8.98%). The detection rate of HPV was 40.77% (521/1278), 35.58% (58/163), 32.69% (101/309), 31.91% (60/188), 12.63% (299/2367), and 32.35% (131/405) among male patients with balanitis, warts, rash, urethritis, prostatitis, and other urinary inflammation, respectively (P < 0.001). The top five HPV genotypes were HPV-52, HPV-58, HPV-16, HPV-51, and HPV-66. After the first positive HPV test, the proportion of male patients who turned negative was 22.47% within 3 months, 26.40% within 3-6 months, 24.72% within 6-12 months, 17.98% within 12-24 months, and 8.43% more than 24 months. The detection rate of HPV was high among male patients from the urology and dermatology departments in Beijing, which should be considered to develop HPV vaccines with better prevention effects.

Detection of physical descaling damage in carp based on hyperspectral images and dimension reduction of principal component analysis combined with pixel values.

The surface of carp is easily damaged during the descaling process, which jeopardizes the quality and safety of carp products. Damage recognition realized by manual detection is an important factor restricting the automation in the pretreatment. For the commonly used methods of mechanical and water-jet descaling, damage area recognition according to the hyperspectral data was proposed. Two discrimination models, including decision tree (DT) and self-organizing feature mapping (SOM), were established to recognize the damaged and normal descaling area with the average spectral value. The damage-discrimination model based on DT was determined to be the optimal one, which possessed the best model performance (accuracy = 96.7%, sensitivity = 96.7%, specificity = 96.7%, F1-score = 96.7%). Considering the efficiency and precision of damage-area recognition and visualization, the principal component analysis (PCA) combined with pixel values statistical analysis was used to reduce the dimension of hyperspectral images at the image level. Through statistical analysis, the value 0 was used as the threshold to distinguish the normal area and the damaged area in the PC image to achieve preliminary segmentation. Then, the spectral values of the initially discriminated damage area were input into the DT discrimination model to realize the final discriminant of damaged area. On this basis, the position information of the damaged area could be used to realize the visualization. The final visualization maps for mechanical and water-jet descaling damage were obtained by image morphology processing. The average recognition accuracy can reach 94.9% and 90.3%, respectively. The results revealed that the hyperspectral imaging technique has great potential to recognize the carp damage area nondestructively and accurately under descaling processing. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: This study demonstrated that hyperspectral imaging technique can realize the carp damage area detection nondestructively and accurately under descaling processing. With the advantages of nondestructive and rapid, hyperspectral imaging system and the method can be widely expanded and applied to the quality detection of other freshwater fish pretreatment.

Two bHLH transcription factors, bHLH48 and bHLH60, associate with phytochrome interacting factor 7 to regulate hypocotyl elongation in Arabidopsis.

The basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor PHYTOCHROME-INTERACTING FACTOR 7 (PIF7) is a central regulator that promotes stem growth by activating growth-related gene expression during shade-avoidance responses. Studying the co-factors of PIF7 can facilitate understanding of the mechanism of PIFs and light signal transduction. Here, we describe the identification of two bHLH transcription factors, bHLH48 and bHLH60 (bHLH48/bHLH60), as essential partners for PIF7-dependent modulation of hypocotyl elongation and function downstream of phytochrome B. These two bHLH factors display DNA binding activity and interact with PIF7. Genetic analysis indicated that bHLH48/bHLH60 and PIF7 are interdependent in promoting hypocotyl elongation. Chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) analysis identified the substantially overlapping downstream targets of bHLH60 and PIF7. Biochemical analysis revealed that bHLH48/bHLH60 enhance the DNA binding ability of PIF7. These results provide evidence that bHLH48/bHLH60 act as positive partners of PIF7 for mutual benefit in the regulation of hypocotyl elongation.

Comparison between voltammetric detection methods for abalone-flavoring liquid.

This article attempts to determine the most accurate classification method for different abalone-flavoring liquids. Three common voltammetric detection methods, namely, linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), cyclic voltammetry (CV), and square-wave voltammetry (SWV), were considered. To compare their classification accuracies of abalone-flavoring liquids, three methods were separately adopted to classify five different abalone-flavoring liquids, using a four-electrode (Au, Pt, Pd, and W) sensor array. Then the data acquired by each method were subject to the principal component analysis (PCA): the first three principal components whose eigenvalues were greater than 1 were extracted from each set of data; the cumulative variance contribution rate and the principal component scores of each method were obtained. The PCA results show that the first three principal components obtained by the CV had the highest cumulative variance contribution rate (91.307%), indicating that the CV can more comprehensively characterize the information of abalone-flavoring liquid samples than the other two methods. According to the principal component scores, compared with those of LSV and SWV, the same kind of samples detected by the CV were highly clustered and the different kinds of samples detected by the CV were greatly dispersed. This indicates that the CV can effectively distinguish between the five abalone-flavoring liquids. Finally, the detection data were further verified through probabilistic neural network and a support vector machine algorithm optimized by genetic algorithm. The results further confirm that the CV is more accurate than the other two methods in the classification of abalone-flavoring liquids. Therefore, the CV was recommended for the classification of abalone-flavoring liquids.

Inhibition of miRNA-210 reverses nicotine-induced brain hypoxic-ischemic injury in neonatal rats.

Maternal tobacco use in pregnancy increases the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders and neurobehavioral deficits in postnatal life. The present study tested the hypothesis that perinatal nicotine exposure exacerbated brain vulnerability to hypoxic-ischemic (HI) injury in neonatal rats through up-regulation of miR-210 expression in the developing brain. Nicotine was administered to pregnant rats via subcutaneous osmotic minipumps. Experiments of HI brain injury were performed in 10-day-old pups. Perinatal nicotine treatment significantly decreased neonatal body and brain weights, but increased the brain to body weight ratio. Perinatal nicotine exposure caused a significant increase in HI brain infarct size in the neonates. In addition, nicotine enhanced miR-210 expression and significantly attenuated brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and tropomyosin-related kinase isoform B (TrkB) protein abundance in the brain. Of importance, intracerebroventricular administration of a miR-210 inhibitor (miR-210-LNA) significantly decreased HI-induced brain infarct size and reversed the nicotine-increased vulnerability to brain HI injury in the neonate. Furthermore, miR-210-LNA treatment also reversed nicotine-mediated down-regulation of BDNF and TrkB protein expression in the neonatal brains. These findings provide novel evidence that the increased miR-210 plays a causal role in perinatal nicotine-induced developmental programming of ischemic sensitive phenotype in the brain. It represents a potential novel therapeutic approach for treatment of brain hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy in the neonate-induced by fetal stress.