Sensitive Nature Research Articles

Background-Free SERS Nanosensor for Endogenous Hydrogen Sulfide Detection Based on Prussian Blue-Coated Gold Nanobipyramids.

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has great potential in biological analysis due to its specificity, sensitivity, and non-invasive nature. However, effectively extracting Raman information and avoiding spectral overlapping from biological background interference remain major challenges. In this study, we developed a background-free SERS nanosensor consisting of gold nanobipyramids (Au NBPs) core-Prussian blue (PB) shell (Au NBPs@PB), for endogenous H2S detection. The PB shell degraded quickly upon contact with endogenous H2S, generating a unique Raman signal response in the Raman silent region (1800-2800 cm-1). By taking advantage of the high SERS-activity of Au NBPs and H2S-triggered spectral changes of PB, these SERS nanosensors effectively minimize potential biological interferences. The nanosensor exhibits a detection range of 2.0 μM to 250 μM and a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.34 μM, with good reproducibility and minimal interference. We successfully applied this background-free SERS platform to monitor endogenous H2S concentrations in human serum samples with satisfied results.

Dare to Ask! A Model for Teaching Nursing Students about Identifying and Responding to Violence against Women and Domestic Violence.

The role of nurses in identifying and responding to family violence and violence against women has long been established. However, nurses' readiness to fully assume this role remains low due to various barriers and the sensitive nature of the subject. As part of capacity building to address this problem, an additional national qualitative learning target, i.e., to "show knowledge about men's violence against women and violence in close relationships", was introduced into the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance for nursing and seven other educational programs between 2017 and 2018. The aim of this paper is to describe how the national qualitative learning target is incorporated into the undergraduate nursing curriculum at the Swedish Red Cross University College. An overview of relevant teaching and learning activities and how they are organized is first presented, followed by the presentation of a proposed didactic model: Dare to Ask and Act! The model details a step-by-step progression from facts and figures, including the role of gender norms, to recognizing signs of abuse in complex clinical situations, as well as developing skills that enhance the courage to ask and act. Due to the sensitive nature of violence victimization, the proposed model reflects the importance of making the subject a reoccurring theme in undergraduate nursing education in order to boost nursing students' interests and confidence to "Dare to Ask and Act!". The model also shows that making the subject a recurring theme can be achieved with minimal disruptions to and without overcrowding an existing curriculum.

A Short Adverse Experiences Measure Among Mothers of Young Children.

Screening for parental adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in pediatric settings can be burdensome because of the questionnaire's length and sensitive nature. Rapid screening tools may help address these challenges. We evaluated a 2-item short ACE measure developed for adults in a cross-sectional sample of mothers of young children in an urban pediatric emergency department. From January 2011 to March 2020, we administered the ACE questionnaire in English or Spanish to 3999 biological mothers of children aged <4 years in a pediatric emergency department in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We assessed sensitivity and specificity of a shortened 2-item ACE measure defined as report of childhood emotional abuse and/or household substance use, using 4+ ACEs on the full questionnaire as the standard. We assessed convergent validity by comparing associations of the 2-item and standard measures with maternal, household, and child outcomes using adjusted log-binomial regression. Mothers were racially and ethnically diverse (54% Latina, 35% Black non-Latina); 94% of children were publicly insured. Thirteen percent of mothers reported childhood emotional abuse and 16% childhood household substance use; 23% reported at least 1 of these and 6% both. Compared with 4+ ACEs on the full questionnaire, the 2-item measure had sensitivity 88% and specificity 90%. In adjusted models, high adversity was associated with poor maternal, household, and child outcomes. A 2-item ACE measure assessing childhood emotional abuse and household substance use may be useful in pediatric settings to identify mothers who may have experienced significant child adversity and inform development, testing, or provision of comprehensive family supports.

Static charge is an ionic molecular fragment

What is static charge? Despite the long history of research, the identity of static charge and mechanism by which static is generated by contact electrification are still unknown. Investigations are challenging due to the complexity of surfaces. This study involves the molecular-scale analysis of contact electrification using highly well-defined surfaces functionalized with a self-assembled monolayer of alkylsilanes. Analyses show the elementary molecular steps of contact electrification: the exact location of heterolytic cleavage of covalent bonds (i.e., Si-C bond), exact charged species generated (i.e., alkyl carbocation), and transfer of molecular fragments. The strong correlation between charge generation and molecular fragments due to their signature odd-even effects further shows that contact electrification is based on cleavage of covalent bonds and transfer of ionic molecular fragments. Static charge is thus an alkyl carbocation; in general, it is an ionic molecular fragment. This mechanism based on cleavage of covalent bonds is applicable to general types of insulating materials, such as covalently bonded polymers. The odd-even effect of charging caused by the difference of only one atom explains the highly sensitive nature of contact electrification.

Privacy preserving image registration

Image registration is a key task in medical imaging applications, allowing to represent medical images in a common spatial reference frame. Current approaches to image registration are generally based on the assumption that the content of the images is usually accessible in clear form, from which the spatial transformation is subsequently estimated. This common assumption may not be met in practical applications, since the sensitive nature of medical images may ultimately require their analysis under privacy constraints, preventing to openly share the image content. In this work, we formulate the problem of image registration under a privacy preserving regime, where images are assumed to be confidential and cannot be disclosed in clear. We derive our privacy preserving image registration framework by extending classical registration paradigms to account for advanced cryptographic tools, such as secure multi-party computation and homomorphic encryption, that enable the execution of operations without leaking the underlying data. To overcome the problem of performance and scalability of cryptographic tools in high dimensions, we propose several techniques to optimize the image registration operations by using gradient approximations, and by revisiting the use of homomorphic encryption trough packing, to allow the efficient encryption and multiplication of large matrices. We focus on registration methods of increasing complexity, including rigid, affine, and non-linear registration based on cubic splines or diffeomorphisms parameterized by time-varying velocity fields. In all these settings, we demonstrate how the registration problem can be naturally adapted for accounting to privacy-preserving operations, and illustrate the effectiveness of PPIR on a variety of registration tasks.

An efficient estimator of population variance of a sensitive variable with a new randomized response technique

In sampling theory, a majority of the available estimators of population variance are designed for use with non-sensitive variables only. Such estimators cannot perform efficiently when the variable of interest is of sensitive nature, such as use of drugs, illegal income, abortion, cheating in examination, the amount of income tax payable, and the violation of rules by employees, etc. In the current literature, the shortage of research studies on variance estimators of a sensitive variable has created a big research gap and a room for improvement in the efficiency of such estimators. In this paper, a new randomized scrambling technique is proposed, along with a new estimator of population variance. The new estimator achieves improvement in efficiency over the available variance estimators. The proposed estimator is designed for use with simple random sampling and uses the information on an auxiliary variable. The improvement in efficiency is shown for different choices of constants. Besides efficiency, improvement in the unified measure of estimator quality is also achieved with the proposed estimator under the new randomized response model.

Differential Effects of Soy Isoflavones on the Biophysical Properties of Model Membranes.

The effects that the main soy isoflavones, genistein and daidzein, have upon the biophysical properties of a model lipid bilayer composed of 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DOPC) or DOPC with cholesterol (4 to 1 mol ratio) have been investigated by transbilayer water permeability, differential scanning calorimetry, and confocal Raman microspectroscopy. Genistein is found to increase water permeability, decrease phase transition temperature, reduce enthalpy of transition, and induce packing disorder in the DOPC membrane with an increasing concentration. On the contrary, daidzein decreases water permeability and shows negligible impact on thermodynamic parameters and packing disorder at comparable concentrations. For a cholesterol-containing DOPC bilayer, both genistein and daidzein exhibit an overall less pronounced effect on transbilayer water permeability. Their respective differential abilities to modify the physical and structural properties of biomembranes with varying lipid compositions signify a complex and sensitive nature to isoflavone interactions, which depends on the initial state of bilayer packing and the differences in the molecular structures of these soy isoflavones, and provide insights in understanding the interactions of these molecules with cellular membranes.

DTSSN: A Distributed Trustworthy Sensor Service Network Architecture for Smart City

The smart city is an increasingly popular concept when it comes to urban development. In a smart city, numerous sensor services are generated by IoT sensors in a distributed manner, requiring proper management and effective interaction to guarantee the connectivity of different regions. However, the sensitive nature of sensor data raises concerns over joining public cloud centers or edge servers, despite assurances of their reliability from providers. Local deployment and maintenance of sensor services may cause these service providers to become ”data isolated islands”, hindering the construction process of smart city. This paper proposes a distributed trustworthy sensor service network architecture named DTSSN to support the building of a fully distributed sensor service network. The proposed network architecture operates through the collaboration of two core devices, the sensor service switch and router, to effectively enable the registration, discovery, invocation, transaction, and monitoring of cross-region sensor services. Then, a lightweight trustworthy transaction mechanism based on blockchain is proposed to realize SLA-based automatic service transaction while reducing potential risks in the service network. Comparative analysis and simulation experiments validate the effectiveness of the DTSSN architecture in terms of scalability, availability, and trustworthiness, underscoring its potential in advancing smart city development and governance.

Three-stage modeling of HIV infection and implications for antiretroviral therapy.

We consider a deterministic model of HIV infection that involves macrophages as a long-term active reservoir to describe all three stages of the disease process: the acute stage, chronic infection, and the transition to AIDS. The proposed model is shown to retain crucial properties, such as the positivity of solutions, regardless of variations in model parameters. A dynamical analysis is performed to identify the local stability properties of the viral clearance steady state. This analysis illustrates how chronically infected macrophages can explain the progression to AIDS and provoke viral explosion, while previous models do not. We further demonstrate that the infected T-cell population, even if not responsible for the majority of new infections that lead to viral explosion, may contribute significantly to the transition amongst the three stages of infection. Moreover, we explore the implications of the model for the administration of antiretroviral therapy (ART) and provide quantitative estimates that emphasize the time sensitive nature of treatment initiation and the level of drug efficacy. Finally, we study the effects of treatment interruption on the disease dynamics predicted by the model and elucidate the influence of both interruption time and duration.

Protein-fatty acid complexes as delivery agent for fat-soluble vitamin: a review

Fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, E, and K have an essential role in maintaining health. Deficiencies of vitamins A, D, E, and K are commonly known to cause night blindness, osteomalacia, increased oxidative cell stress, and hemorrhage. Vitamins are chemically reactive compounds that are fragile due to their sensitive and unstable nature. Aside from being prone to degradation due to environmental factors, the vitamins encounter various digestion factors that potentially affect their bioaccessibility and bioavailability when ingested. During digestion, the low pH environment of gastric juice may affect the bioavailability of vitamins. Decreasing vitamin bioavailability may lead to vitamin deficiency. Many methods are used for maintenance and improving vitamin bioavailability in the body. Using an encapsulation system can be helpful because it can maintain the vitamin's properties in the digestion system to optimize their benefits/uses and their bioavailability. The encapsulated substance is referred to as the core material, active agent, internal phase, or payload phase. The substance encapsulates is a coating, membrane, shell, carrier material, wall material, external phase, or matrix. It is important to use the transport medium as food and to create a barrier between the active agent and its environment. Proteins and fats are biomacromolecules that are good candidates for vitamin encapsulation. This article reviewed the protein-fatty acid complex (liprotides) potencies as a protecting and delivery agent for fat-soluble vitamins.

Automatic de-identification of French electronic health records: a cost-effective approach exploiting distant supervision and deep learning models

BackgroundElectronic health records (EHRs) contain valuable information for clinical research; however, the sensitive nature of healthcare data presents security and confidentiality challenges. De-identification is therefore essential to protect personal data in EHRs and comply with government regulations. Named entity recognition (NER) methods have been proposed to remove personal identifiers, with deep learning-based models achieving better performance. However, manual annotation of training data is time-consuming and expensive. The aim of this study was to develop an automatic de-identification pipeline for all kinds of clinical documents based on a distant supervised method to significantly reduce the cost of manual annotations and to facilitate the transfer of the de-identification pipeline to other clinical centers.MethodsWe proposed an automated annotation process for French clinical de-identification, exploiting data from the eHOP clinical data warehouse (CDW) of the CHU de Rennes and national knowledge bases, as well as other features. In addition, this paper proposes an assisted data annotation solution using the Prodigy annotation tool. This approach aims to reduce the cost required to create a reference corpus for the evaluation of state-of-the-art NER models. Finally, we evaluated and compared the effectiveness of different NER methods.ResultsA French de-identification dataset was developed in this work, based on EHRs provided by the eHOP CDW at Rennes University Hospital, France. The dataset was rich in terms of personal information, and the distribution of entities was quite similar in the training and test datasets. We evaluated a Bi-LSTM + CRF sequence labeling architecture, combined with Flair + FastText word embeddings, on a test set of manually annotated clinical reports. The model outperformed the other tested models with a significant F1 score of 96,96%, demonstrating the effectiveness of our automatic approach for deidentifying sensitive information.ConclusionsThis study provides an automatic de-identification pipeline for clinical notes, which can facilitate the reuse of EHRs for secondary purposes such as clinical research. Our study highlights the importance of using advanced NLP techniques for effective de-identification, as well as the need for innovative solutions such as distant supervision to overcome the challenge of limited annotated data in the medical domain.

Artistic installations in cities: the contemporary art by Henrique Oliveira, Regina Silveira and Ernesto Neto, raising sensitive awareness in people in daily urban lives

This article analyzes some artistic installations, designed for spaces within cities, expanding their field of exhibition, awakening the sensitive nature of people who live or walk in urban centers. The study highlights the frequent problems that affect cities, causing discomfort to the population, therefore, it observes the importance of contemporary art, which is installed in spaces and environments, as an efficient element to interpret aspects of daily life, through awareness and visual poetry. Therefore, three art installations were selected, produced by three Brazilian visual artists, such as Henrique Oliveira, Regina Silveira e Ernesto Neto, respectively in these cities: Porto Alegre/RS – 2009, São Paulo/SP – 2010 and Zurich/Germany – 2018. The choice and their respective artworks proposals, composed of distinct aesthetic characteristics and several materials, exemplifies the diversity of languages that contemporary art provides, precisely when the art installations are exhibited in cities, particularly in places where artists can create attractive artworks interacting with the public. Through critical comments regarding the chosen artistic works, the text introduces the magnitude of contemporary art as an object of multiple readings, capable of instigating and suggesting reflections. It concludes by highlighting the relevance of art as an element that reflects and interprets the world in constant transformation, re-educating and expanding the cultural repertoire, above all, showing how the artistic installations contribute to cities, raising sensitive awareness of the people in the face of problems that impact urban lives.

Understanding the Experiences of Medical Interpreters in Palliative Care: An Exploration of Measurement Tools

Medical interpreters aid in providing culturally sensitive palliative care to patients with limited-English proficiency. However, navigating their complex, and sometimes contradictory, roles and the sensitive nature of the content in palliative care encounters can negatively impact medical interpreters. Compassion fatigue (CF) and secondary traumatic stress (STS) are concepts that have been explored in many healthcare professionals but have not been fully explored in medical interpreters in palliative care. This review examines the psychometric properties of three measures of CF and STS that have been utilized in various populations of healthcare providers. There are no measures of CF or STS that have been shown to be valid and reliable in medical interpreters participating palliative care encounters. Further research is needed to investigate the validity of the reviewed measures in medical interpreters, and it may be beneficial to modify existing tools to measure CF and STS more accurately in this population.

Differences in sensitivity toward situations classified as sexual harassment in the workplace between men and women in Syria

PurposeSexual harassment is a pervasive and damaging issue that affects the physical and mental health and well-being of employees in the workplace. It is a serious public health concern that requires urgent attention and action and very dangerous problem in management. Our studies have shown that women are more likely to be the victims of sexual harassment and are more dissatisfied with the situation, organizations have a moral and legal obligation to take proactive measures to prevent and address sexual harassment, including implementing effective policies, providing employee training and fostering a culture of respect and accountability. By doing so, we can create safer, healthier and more productive work environments for all the employees.Design/methodology/approachThis study consisted of 344 individuals from the Syrian community who completed a questionnaire, that contained statements about harassment to gauge each gender’s perception and sensitivity toward it. The questionnaire was carefully designed to include 30 questions, including daily situations in the work environment that may occur and how they are classified by males and females. Is it harassment or not, and about the HR department have personal safety and security standards such as the code of conduct and the rules regulating these behaviors or not and our research project was a collaboration between the two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs): Stemosis and Institute of Human Resources Management (IHRM).FindingsOur research reveals a distinction between the thinking patterns and coping mechanisms of females and males when it comes to dealing with this phenomenon. We presented various scenarios to our respondents, depicting situations that an individual might face in their everyday life and asked them questions related to the definition of harassment, its root causes and strategies for addressing it. Research has shown that women are at a higher risk of experiencing feelings of fear and dissatisfaction when subjected to sexual harassment. This unfortunate reality highlights the need for greater awareness and action to combat such reprehensible behaviors. Save Women!Research limitations/implicationsThe study faced several limitations in collecting data due to the sensitive and shameful nature of the topic for both men and women in the Syrian Arab Republic. This caused embarrassment for some participants, leading to their unwillingness to participate in the research. Additionally, the study encountered difficulties in dealing with companies, as they did not accept exposure to such situations and failed to show any codes of conduct under the name of their company, and the participants did not consider certain factors as reasons for harassment. Specifically, 71.2% of participants did not consider inappropriate outfits as a reason for harassment. However, there was a significant difference between the opinions of men and women on this matter (p-value &lt; 0.05). Additionally, political, social and psychological reactions were not considered a reason for harassment by 64.8% of participants.Practical implicationsIn our study, there was a situation that one of the respondents (male) was exposed to by the HR manager (female) who was pretending to be a professional, after he confronted her, she threatened him with expulsion from work and despite his annoyance, he ignored her because it was pointless to talk with her and during the study, (44.7%) of the participants had experienced sexual harassment.Social implicationsVictims of sexual harassment experience a similar condition to post-traumatic stress disorder, which can lead to many mental and psychological issues. The overall organizational environment plays a critical role in the well-being of employees. It is widely accepted that victims of violence suffer from a lack of well-being. Employee well-being is based on feelings of happiness and satisfaction that come from a sense of security. According to the Maslow’s theory of needs, security is fundamental to people and a toxic workplace environment can destroy an individual’s sense of security, negatively impacting their well-being In Syria.Originality/valueIn Syria, society is considered closed about sexual issues and considers it a sensitive issue despite its presence and spread in work environments, as the results showed, and this is one of the challenges we face. Therefore, our study is the first in Syria and the largest that sheds light on this phenomenon clearly, strongly, deeply and directly.

(022) Utility of Artificial Intelligence in Patient Educational Materials for Men’s Sexual Health

Abstract Introduction ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) platform with expanding uses across society, including the solicitation of medical advice by patients. Traditionally, men’s health patients obtained educational information through the Urology Care Foundation (UCF) or institutional websites. Today, men are increasingly turning to social media and AI given improving technology and prevalent stigma surrounding sexual health issues. Previous studies have demonstrated the ability of ChatGPT to perform certain physician tasks, but studies of its patient-facing use are limited. Most online health educational information far exceeds the recommended American sixth grade reading level, as defined by the NIH and AMA. Hence, existing resources are largely inaccessible to large swaths of the population. In this study, we questioned whether AI holds may help improve the provision of health educational information for the public. Objective To conduct the first analysis of ChatGPT-created information regarding men’s sexual health conditions and provide statistical comparison with resources produced by UCF. Methods Frequently asked patient questions regarding erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, low testosterone, sperm retrieval, penile augmentation, and male infertility were compiled from the American Urological Association. Questions included definition of the condition, etiology, diagnostics, treatment, prognosis, and common patient concerns. Responses from UCF and ChatGPT were compared using the following validated readability formulas: Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning-Fog Index, Simple Measure of Gobbledygook, Coleman-Liau Index, and Automated Readability Index. Descriptive analysis of word count, sentence length, syllable count, and word complexity was also performed. Furthermore, adjusted ChatGPT (ChatGPT-a) responses were generated by prompting the language model with the command “Explain it to me like I am in sixth grade.” Finally, all responses were further graded by two independent reviewers for accuracy and comprehensiveness. Statistical comparisons were made using Welch’s unpaired t-test. Results Readability scores are presented in Table 1. UCF was significantly more readable than ChatGPT for all six sexual medicine topics across all scoring metrics (all p&amp;lt;0.001). FKGL was 8.87 for UCF versus 14.83 for ChatGPT. ChatGPT responses were longer (278.3 versus 222.9 words) and included more complex words (28.1% versus 14.3%). When prompted with a command for more accessible language (ChatGPT-a), responses approached the readability of UCF across all metrics, including an average Flesch Reading Ease of 54.8 and FKGL of 9.6. UCF and ChatGPT had equal quality and accuracy on qualitative analysis. Conclusions Men’s health information provided by ChatGPT is less accessible when compared to UCF, although both platforms exceed the recommended sixth grade level. Given its sensitive nature, sexual medicine information is increasingly sought out online. Our findings indicate that AI can simplify online information to accommodate an individual user’s health literacy, but improvement in the current platform is needed. Future iterations of ChatGPT may be adapted towards the provision of medical information and trained on evidence-based literature, hence improving both readability and quality. As AI grows, providers must study this new platform to better understand and assist their patients. Disclosure No.

(399) Reducing Out-of-Pocket Expenses for Peyronie’s Disease Therapy with a Novel Penile Traction Device

Abstract Introduction Penile traction therapy (PTT) has gained popularity as a nonsurgical approach to penile lengthening and curvature correction in those with Peyronie's disease (PD). PD is an acquired fibrotic plaque that develops within the tunica albuginea and causes penile curvature, which can have significant physical and mental health consequences. Due to the sensitive nature of this disease presentation and the large number of unidentified or misdiagnosed people, current prevalence estimations in the US are around 11%. PD therapies aim to correct penile curvature while also addressing erectile dysfunction and pain. Common PD therapies include oral medications, intralesional penile injections, surgery, and stretching techniques. When deciding which therapies to pursue, disease severity, costs, compliance, and patient access to facilities and trained providers must be considered. Of these therapies, PTT with a penile traction device (PTD), although uncovered by insurance, has proven to be one of the most cost-effective PD treatments. While an effective treatment in some men, PTDs cost hundreds of dollars out-of-pocket. Objective Our project aims to address the financial and practicality concerns of penile traction therapy by creating an affordable and comfortable PTD. Methods Our PTD offers precise, dial-adjustable tensioning and penile holding systems with contoured penile holding plates lined with silicone cushions for improved grip and comfort. Our PTD is 3D-printed using polylactic acid (PLA) and medical-grade silicone. To assess our efforts in improving comfort, we measured holding capacity under tension at increasing amounts of penile clamping. We compared our silicone-lined clamp to an all-plastic clamp: this test served as a surrogate for comfort. By improving its grip on the penis, patients can secure their penis with minimal clamping force, thereby improving comfort. Results Our literature search revealed that the average cost for PTDs recommended by urologists for patients with PD was approximately $883. Our PTD currently costs $6.38 to manufacture and assemble. We found a statistically significant (p=0.000276) increase in the tension-holding capacity of the silicone-lined clamp compared to that of the all-plastic clamp. This demonstrates that our silicone-lined clamp may exert less clamping force on the penis, thereby providing patients with the same stretching and a more comfortable grip. Conclusions Future directions include exploring urologists' perception of PTT for PD and their PTD recommendation patterns, refining our current PTD model, and clinically testing our device compared to those currently available. Disclosure No.

(297) Assessment of the Accuracy of Chatgpt on Testosterone Management Uncovers the Limits of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Abstract Introduction Testosterone has become an increasing cultural touchstone. It is estimated that one third of men on testosterone replacement are not testosterone deficient and that another large percentage of men who would qualify for treatment do not receive it. This is likely partially due to the significant amount misinformation and disinformation available online. Recently there has been an explosion of interest in generative artificial intelligence (AI). Given the sensitive nature of questions regarding sexual health, many men may see generative AI as an anonymous, confidential, and accurate source of information. Specifically, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the most used generative AI that offers an easy to navigate conversation-based resource where patients may inquire about many topics including sexual health concerns. This study aims to validate ChatGPT responses to questions about testosterone and evaluate the references used for its claims. Objective To evaluate the accuracy of ChatGPT responses to common questions about testosterone therapy and the sources substantiating claims. Methods Questions regarding testosterone function and therapy were created based on American Urological Association (AUA) Care Foundation brochures for patient education on testosterone. ChatGPT was prompted to respond to these questions during a single interactive session with the ending phrase, “include references,” to evaluate the sources of responses. Responses were then separated into individual statements made by the AI and their associated references. Each response was evaluated for accuracy by matching the AI generated statements to AUA guidelines and published AUA resources. References were evaluated on the accuracy of the authors, article, journal, and date of publication based on the PubMed index, Google Scholar, and the cited journal’s website. Results A total of 9 questions were posed to the generative AI. The interactive session with ChatGPT yielded 53 separate statements backed by 21 references. The majority of queries yielded true statements by matched criteria to AUA guidelines (50/53, 94.3%). The references provided by the generative AI were drawn primarily from peer-reviewed journals (15/21, 71.4%); hospital websites (3/21, 14.3%), unknown sources (2/21, 9.5%) and AUA guidelines (1/21, 4.8%). The mean impact factor for the cited peer reviewed journals was 27.2 (SD 60.5). A majority of references were found to be legitimate sources (13/21, 61.9%). However, 4 (19.0%) included citation errors and 4 (19.0%) references were found to be fabricated by the AI. The question yielding the most fabricated references (3/4, 75%) was “How do I boost my testosterone levels naturally?” Conclusions We found that ChatGPT offers a reliable conversation-based resource where patients may receive accurate information in response to their testosterone related questions. However, when queried about topics with fewer references, the large language model fabricated sources with real reputable authors and real journals. This is highly concerning as the general public would not be able to differentiate between real and fake information. Patients should be counseled with caution, and guardrails should be put in place for the safety of patients using large language models for medical information. Disclosure No.

Investigating the Joint Impact of Exchange Rate and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows on Domestic Interest Rate in Nigeria

&lt;p&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"&gt;The sensitive nature of interest rate has spurred empirical interests on the factors that determine it. This paper examined the joint impact of exchange rate and foreign direct investment inflows on interest rate in Nigeria over the period from 1981-2022. The study made use of the auto regressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test and results of findings reveal that in both the short-run and the long-run the impact of the interaction between FDI inflows and exchange rate on real interest rate was negative and significant. Also, while credit to the private sector was found to have significant positive impact on real interest rate in both the time horizons, the impact of consumer price index was negative only in the short. Oil revenue was found to impact positively on real interest rate only in the long-run, but the impact of broad money supply was negative and significant in both the short-run and the long-run. The study suggests that policies to regulate domestic interest rate should focus on joint regulation of both exchange rate and FDI inflows and this requires a synergy between monetary and fiscal policies.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Enhancing medical image classification with convolutional neural networks through transfer learning: A comprehensive review

Medical imaging has become crucial in diagnostics, but manual analysis of the vast amount of data is cumbersome. Transfer learning, utilizing techniques like data augmentation, has addressed the challenges faced by deep learning methods like CNNs in this domain, improving classification accuracy. This study offers a comprehensive review of the applications and potential benefits of deep learning and transfer learning in medical image classification while also shedding light on prospective challenges and avenues for future research. After a comprehensive review and analysis of the literature, it can be inferred that transfer learning addresses the primary challenges deep learning faces in the medical field, enhancing its applicability. While deep learning has substantial potential, it grapples with issues of model "black-box" interpretability, where decisions made by the model are hard for clinicians to understand, and potential breaches of individual data security given the sensitive nature of medical records.

High-velocity micromorphological observation and simulation of magnetorheological gel using programmable magneto-controlled microfluidics system and micro-tube dynamic models

Application of magnetorheological gel (MRG) is a promising tool for high performance mitigation due to its outstanding energy absorption and dissipation properties. However, the lack of recognition on micromorphological variation for MRG and its magneto-mechanical coupling mechanism limits its extensive application. Herein, combined with the magnetic sensitivity nature of MRG, we develop a magneto-controlled microfluidic system for flexible simulation toward ms-level impact conditions. Microstructural changes of MRG, prepared with solid–liquid composite method, are characterized from variable magnet-field setups and gradual velocities. Experiments reveal that the increasing magnetic flux density can effectively enhance the stability of chains in as-fabricated MRG, while the chains can support excessive velocities up to 4.5 m s−1 before breaking. Meanwhile, under the preset velocity range, the maximum change rates of the average and standard deviation for inclinations are 183.71% and 40.06%, respectively. Successively, an experiment-conducted microdynamic model is developed for numerical simulation of the MRG mechanical behaviors. During that, high-velocity MRG behaviors are explored with a tubular rather than regular flat-structure boundary condition setups, to pursue more trustable results. Simulation readouts meet nicely with those from experiments in revealing the magneto-mechanical coupling mechanism of MRG under multiphysics. The interaction between magnetic force, repulsive force and viscous resistance is mainly illustrated. This work provides a reliable observation basis for micromorphological variation of MRG, also suggests a new method for the mechanism of magneto-mechanical coupling at extreme velocities.