Displaying publications 21 - 40 of 2380 in total

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  1. Zheng P, Belaton B, Liao IY, Rajion ZA
    PLoS One, 2017;12(11):e0187558.
    PMID: 29121077 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187558
    Landmarks, also known as feature points, are one of the important geometry primitives that describe the predominant characteristics of a surface. In this study we proposed a self-contained framework to generate landmarks on surfaces extracted from volumetric data. The framework is designed to be a three-fold pipeline structure. The pipeline comprises three phases which are surface construction, crest line extraction and landmark identification. With input as a volumetric data and output as landmarks, the pipeline takes in 3D raw data and produces a 0D geometry feature. In each phase we investigate existing methods, extend and tailor the methods to fit the pipeline design. The pipeline is designed to be functional as it is modularised to have a dedicated function in each phase. We extended the implicit surface polygonizer for surface construction in first phase, developed an alternative way to compute the gradient of maximal curvature for crest line extraction in second phase and finally we combine curvature information and K-means clustering method to identify the landmarks in the third phase. The implementations are firstly carried on a controlled environment, i.e. synthetic data, for proof of concept. Then the method is tested on a small scale data set and subsequently on huge data set. Issues and justifications are addressed accordingly for each phase.
  2. Zhao Y, Sazlina SG, Rokhani FZ, Su J, Chew BH
    PLoS One, 2021;16(8):e0255865.
    PMID: 34424931 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255865
    Nursing homes integrated with smart information such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and digital health could improve not only the quality of care but also benefit the residents and health professionals by providing effective care and efficient medical services. However, a clear concept of a smart nursing home, the expectations and acceptability from the perspectives of the elderly people and their family members are still unclear. In addition, instruments to measure the expectations and acceptability of a smart nursing home are also lacking. The study aims to explore and determine the levels of these expectations, acceptability and the associated sociodemographic factors. This exploratory sequential mixed methods study comprises a qualitative study which will be conducted through a semi-structured interview to explore the expectations and acceptability of a smart nursing home among Chinese elderly people and their family members (Phase I). Next, a questionnaire will be developed and validated based on the results of a qualitative study in Phase I and a preceding scoping review on smart nursing homes by the same authors (Phase II). Lastly, a nationwide survey will be carried out to examine the levels of expectations and acceptability, and the associated sociodemographic factors with the different categories of expectations and acceptability (Phase III). With a better understanding of the Chinese elderly people's expectations and acceptability of smart technologies in nursing homes, a feasible smart nursing home model that incorporates appropriate technologies, integrates needed medical services and business concepts could be formulated and tested as a solution for the rapidly ageing societies in many developed and developing countries.
  3. Zhao Y, Hamat B, Wang T, Wang S, Pang LLL
    PLoS One, 2024;19(4):e0302005.
    PMID: 38603676 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0302005
    AIMS: In order to explore new consumer demands for Chinese tea set products, propose an innovative tea set product design and evaluation method to improve the user experience and satisfaction of the produced tea sets, thereby promoting the development of the tea set market and the promotion of tea culture.

    METHODS: Firstly, grounded theory (GT) was used to analyze interview data to extract consumer demand indicators and construct a design evaluation hierarchical model. Secondly, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to calculate the weights of the indicators, determine their priority of importance, and obtain several indicators that have a greater impact on the tea set design to guide innovative design practice. Lastly, the tea set design schemes were evaluated using the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method to select the optimal design scheme and also to act as a guideline for further design optimization.

    CONCLUSION: This study explores the innovative design and evaluation method for tea set products based on GT-AHP-FCE and validates the feasibility of this approach through a practical example of tea set design inspired by "The Classic of Mountains and Seas.". It provides innovative theoretical and practical guidance for designers of subsequent tea set products and also provides a new path for the inheritance and innovation of traditional culture.

  4. Zhao X, Wider W, Zhang X, Fauzi MA, Wong CH, Jiang L, et al.
    PLoS One, 2024;19(3):e0297791.
    PMID: 38536845 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0297791
    This cross-sectional study investigated the effects of value-based leadership and growth mindset on the intrinsic work motivation of Chinese lecturers. In addition, this study used age as a categorical moderator to investigate generational differences between the effects of Millennials and their predecessors. A sample of 518 lecturers from various Chinese universities was used to collect data, and SEM-PLS was used to analyse the data. The results showed that value-based leadership and growth mindset had a significant positive impact on both younger and older lecturers' intrinsic work motivation, with the effect of value-based leadership on younger lecturers' intrinsic motivation being significantly stronger than on older lecturers' intrinsic motivation, whereas the effect of growth mindset on intrinsic work motivation did not differ significantly between the younger and older groups. This study contributes to the existing research literature by contrasting the value-based leadership and growth mindset in relation to lecturers' intrinsic work motivation across younger and older groups in Chinese higher education settings, where greater heterogeneity between age groups was identified. The findings also provided university administrators with recommendations for boosting the intrinsic work motivation of lecturers, influencing future education policy.
  5. Zhao M, Kuan G, Zhou K, Musa RM, Majeed APPA, Kueh YC
    PLoS One, 2024;19(1):e0296035.
    PMID: 38166088 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296035
    BACKGROUND: To assess emotion regulation strategies in a clear and direct manner, Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) was developed based on the process model of emotion regulation. ERQ primarily assesses an individual's propensity for reappraisal (a cognitive change in the individual's psychological state in specific situations) and expressive suppression (a regulatory response where an individual alters their emotional response after the onset of an emotional reaction). Recent studies have suggested that the abbreviated 8-item version of the ERQ exhibits comparable model fit to the original version. The present study aimed to explore the psychometric properties and assess cross-gender invariance of the ERQ-8 in Chinese university students.

    METHODS: University students from Jiangsu Province participated in this study. Participants completed self-report surveys assessing emotion regulation strategies. It was conducted from May 2022 to July 2022. The study employed confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to assess the two-factor model of ERQ-8 and measurement invariance across male and female samples.

    RESULTS: The mean age of 1534 participants was 19.83 years (SD = 1.54), and the majority were female (70.4%). The initial ERQ-10 model with ten items demonstrated good fit for all indicators, CFI (Comparative Fit index) = 0.967, TLI (Tucker-Lewis Index) = 0.957, RMSEA (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation) = 0.043, SRMR (Standardised Root Mean Square Residual) = 0.029. However, to assess the fit of the previously proposed ERQ-8 model, two items (Q1 and Q3) were excluded. The fit of the ERQ-8 model was further improved (CFI = 0.989, TLI = 0.984, RMSEA = 0.029, SRMR = 0.021). All item loadings exceeded or were equal to 0.573. Internal consistency analysis based on the ERQ-8 model revealed Cronbach's alpha values of 0.840 for reappraisal and 0.745 for suppression, and corresponding composite reliability (CR) values of 0.846 and 0.747, respectively. Test-retest reliability, assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) (95% CI) within a one-week interval, ranged from 0.537 to 0.679. The correlation coefficient between the two factors was 0.084, significantly below 0.85, which suggested a low correlation between the two factors. The results of the invariance analysis across gender demonstrated that the values of ΔCFI and ΔTLI were both below 0.01. It was supported the gender invariance of the ERQ-8 among university students.

    CONCLUSION: The eight-item ERQ demonstrated validity and reliability in evaluating emotion regulation strategies, and measurement invariance was observed across gender among university students. The ERQ-8 may prove to be a practical and cost-effective tool, particularly in time-constrained situations.

  6. Zhao H, Rafik-Galea S, Fitriana M, Song TJ
    PLoS One, 2022;17(11):e0278092.
    PMID: 36445890 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0278092
    BACKGROUND: Smartphone addiction is very prevalent among college students, especially Chinese college students, and it can cause many psychological problems for college students. However, there is no valid research instrument to evaluate Chinese college students' smartphone addiction.

    OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to translate the Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version (SAS-SV) into Chinese and evaluate the psychometric characteristics of the Smartphone Addiction Scale- Chinese Short version (SAS-CSV) among Chinese college students.

    METHODS: The SAS-SV was translated into Chinese using the forward-backward method. The SAS-CSV was completed by 557 Chinese college students (sample 1: n = 279; sample 2: n = 278). 62 college students were randomly selected from the 557 Chinese college students to be meas- ured twice, with an interval of two weeks. The reliability of the SAS-CSV was evaluated by internal consistency reliability and test-retest reliability, and the validity of the SAS-CSV was evaluated by content validity, structural validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity.

    RESULTS: The SAS-CSV presented good content validity, high internal consistency (sample 1: α = 0.829; sample 2: α = 0.881), and good test-retest reliability (ICC: 0.975; 95% CI: 0.966-0.985). After one exploratory factor analysis, three components (tolerance, withdrawal, and negative effect) with eigenvalues greater than 1 were obtained, and the cumulative variance contribution was 50.995%. The results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that all the fit indexes reached the standard of good model fit (χ2/df = 1.883, RMSEA = 0.056, NFI = 0.954, RFI = 0.935, IFI = 0.978, TLI = 0.969, CFI = 0.978). The SAS-CSV presented good convergent validity for the factor loading of all the items ranged from 0.626 to 0.892 (higher than 0.50), the three latent variables' AVE ranged from 0.524 to 0.637 (higher than 0.50), and the three latent variables' CR ranged from 0.813 to 0.838 (higher than 0.70). Moreover, the square roots of the AVE of component 1 (tolerance), component 2 (withdrawal) and component 3 (negative effect) were 0.724, 0.778, and 0.798, respectively, higher than they were with other correlation coefficients, indicating that the SAS-CSV had good discrimination validity.

    CONCLUSION: The SAS-CSV is a valid instrument for measuring smartphone addiction among Chinese college students.

  7. Zhao D, Kim MH, Pastor-Barriuso R, Chang Y, Ryu S, Zhang Y, et al.
    PLoS One, 2016;11(1):e0146057.
    PMID: 26731527 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0146057
    IMPORTANCE: Intraocular pressure (IOP) reduction or stabilization is the only proven method for glaucoma management. Identifying risk factors for IOP is crucial to understand the pathophysiology of glaucoma.

    OBJECTIVE: To examine the associations of change in body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, and percent fat mass with change in intraocular pressure (IOP) in a large sample of Korean adults.

    DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Cohort study of 274,064 young and middle age Korean adults with normal fundoscopic findings who attended annual or biennial health exams from January 1, 2002 to Feb 28, 2010 (577,981 screening visits).

    EXPOSURES: BMI, waist circumference, and percent fat mass.

    MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): At each visit, IOP was measured in both eyes with automated noncontact tonometers.

    RESULTS: In multivariable-adjusted models, the average increase in IOP (95% confidence intervals) over time per interquartile increase in BMI (1.26 kg/m2), waist circumference (6.20 cm), and percent fat mass (3.40%) were 0.18 mmHg (0.17 to 0.19), 0.27 mmHg (0.26 to 0.29), and 0.10 mmHg (0.09 to 0.11), respectively (all P < 0.001). The association was stronger in men compared to women (P < 0.001) and it was only slightly attenuated after including diabetes and hypertension as potential mediators in the model.

    CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Increases in adiposity were significantly associated with an increase in IOP in a large cohort of Korean adults attending health screening visits, an association that was stronger for central obesity. Further research is needed to understand better the underlying mechanisms of this association, and to establish the role of weight gain in increasing IOP and the risk of glaucoma and its complications.

  8. Zhao C, Wong L, Zhu Q, Yang H
    PLoS One, 2018;13(6):e0199006.
    PMID: 29902222 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0199006
    BACKGROUND: The escalating problem of multiple chronic conditions among older adults in China draws public health attention due to increasing proportion of the elderly population. This study sought to assess the prevalence of and factors associated with four chronic diseases in older adults in Haikou, the capital city of Hainan Province, China.

    METHOD: In this cross-sectional study, 9432 community-dwelling elderly people aged 60 years and older living in rural or urban areas in Haikou were investigated. The interviews collected self-reported information on the presence of four major chronic diseases, as well as socio-demographic characteristics, lifestyle factors and self-reported height and weight.

    FINDINGS: Overall, 31.7% (2961/9344) reported at least one of the four chronic diseases. The prevalence of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, COPD, and stroke was 26.0% (2449/9407), 8.0% (749/9371), 1.0% (95/9360), and 1.9% (175/9382), respectively. Common correlates of the four major chronic diseases were older age, being engaged in intellectual work, currently being a smoker and obesity. Gender, locality of residence, and alcohol consumptions were also found to be associated to some of the chronic conditions.

    CONCLUSION: This finding indicates that multiple chronic conditions among elderly people in Haikou are prevalent and warrant special attention to reduce diseases burden and align health care services to cater the holistic elderly patients' need.

  9. Zhang SF, Tuo JL, Huang XB, Zhu X, Zhang DM, Zhou K, et al.
    PLoS One, 2018;13(1):e0191789.
    PMID: 29377913 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0191789
    Human coronavirus (HCoV) is one of the most common causes of respiratory tract infection throughout the world. To investigate the epidemiological and genetic variation of HCoV in Guangzhou, south China, we collected totally 13048 throat and nasal swab specimens from adults and children with fever and acute upper respiratory infection symptoms in Gunazhou, south China between July 2010 and June 2015, and the epidemiological features of HCoV and its species were studied. Specimens were screened for HCoV by real-time RT-PCR, and 7 other common respiratory viruses were tested simultaneously by PCR or real-time PCR. HCoV was detected in 294 cases (2.25%) of the 13048 samples, with most of them inpatients (251 cases, 85.4% of HCoV positive cases) and young children not in nursery (53.06%, 156 out of 294 HCoV positive cases). Four HCoVs, as OC43, 229E, NL63 and HKU1 were detected prevalent during 2010-2015 in Guangzhou, and among the HCoV positive cases, 60.20% were OC43, 16.67% were 229E, 14.97% were NL63 and 7.82% were HKU1. The month distribution showed that totally HCoV was prevalent in winter, but differences existed in different species. The 5 year distribution of HCoV showed a peak-valley distribution trend, with the detection rate higher in 2011 and 2013 whereas lower in 2010, 2012 and 2014. The age distribution revealed that children (especially those <3 years old) and old people (>50 years) were both high risk groups to be infected by HCoV. Of the 294 HCoV positive patients, 34.69% (101 cases) were co-infected by other common respiratory viruses, and influenza virus was the most common co-infecting virus (30/101, 29.70%). Fifteen HCoV-OC43 positive samples of 2013-2014 were selected for S gene sequencing and phylogenetic analysis, and the results showed that the 15 strains could be divided into 2 clusters in the phylogenetic tree, 12 strains of which formed a separate cluster that was closer to genotype G found in Malaysia. It was revealed for the first time that genotype B and genotype G of HCoV-OC43 co-circulated and the newly defined genotype G was epidemic as a dominant genotype during 2013-2014 in Guanzhou, south China.
  10. Zhang S, Bani Y, Izah Selamat A, Abdul Ghani J
    PLoS One, 2023;18(6):e0287910.
    PMID: 37384722 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287910
    Income inequality is a good indicator reflecting the quality of people's livelihood. There are many studies on the determinants of income inequality. However, few studies have been conducted on the impacts of industrial agglomeration on income inequality and their spatial correlation. The goal of this paper is to investigate the impact of China's industrial agglomeration on income inequality from a spatial perspective. Using data on China's 31 provinces from 2003 to 2020 and the spatial panel Durbin model, our results show that industrial agglomeration and income inequality present an inverted "U-shape" relationship, proving that they are the non-linear change. As the degree of industrial agglomeration increases, income inequality will rise, after it reaches a certain value, income inequality will drop. Therefore, Chinese government and enterprises had better pay attention to the spatial distribution of industrial agglomeration, thereby reducing China's regional income inequality.
  11. Zhang Q, Sun H, Peng X, Lin Q
    PLoS One, 2023;18(6):e0287227.
    PMID: 37352245 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287227
    The intention of pro-environmental behavior (PEB) directly affects the sustainable development of protected areas, especially national parks, but few studies have done comparative research on tourist and hiker behaviors. This study explores the intention of tourists' and hikers' pro-environmental behavior based on theory of planned behavior (TPB) and norm activation theory (NAM). Researchers surveyed 454 tourists and 466 hikers in Wuyishan National Park a structural equation modeling data analysis method. The results demonstrate that the TPB and the NAM were accurate in describing for tourists' and hikers' pro-environmental behavior in national park. However, for specific influencing factors, hikers' attitude, awareness of consequences, and assumption of responsibility were significantly different from those of the tourists. This study sheds light on how to better comprehend and advocate for PEB in national parks and proposes different management approaches to improve the PEB of tourists and hikers.
  12. Zhang Q, Wang Y, Ariffin SK
    PLoS One, 2024;19(2):e0296339.
    PMID: 38358985 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296339
    The rapid development of live-streaming e-commerce has driven billions of sales revenues and made customers' purchase intention a life-and-death issue for sellers. This study examines the influencing factors of customers' purchase intention from a value perspective by adopting and extending the Theory of Consumption Values (TCV). We also incorporated streamer popularity as a moderating variable to reveal its significant impact on live-streaming e-commerce. This study collected 457 valid online questionnaires from Chinese live-streaming e-commerce users. Our findings show that five of six consumption values, namely functional, social, emotional, conditional, and self-gratification value, are significant drivers of purchase intention. In addition, streamer popularity has strengthened the influence of functional, social, emotional, and self-gratification value on purchase intention. This study deepens the current understanding of live-streaming and customer value research by establishing and validating a comprehensive research model, and reveals the decisive role of multi-dimensional value and streamer popularity in live-streaming industry. The research findings could guide live-streaming merchants to increase sales by reallocating their resources to different consumption values and optimising their investment strategy in popular streamers.
  13. Zhang GH, Chin KL, Yan SY, Pare R
    PLoS One, 2023;18(10):e0287817.
    PMID: 37788276 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287817
    Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a common amnestic cognitive impairment characterised by β-amyloid (Aβ) plaques deposit in the brain of the elderly. AD is a yet incurable disease due to its unknown exact pathogenesis and unavailability of effective remedies in clinical application. Thymosin β4 (Tβ4) is a housekeeping protein that plays important role in cell proliferation, migration and differentiation. It has the ability to protect and repair neurons however it is still unclear involvement in AD. Therefore, the aim of this study is to elucidate the role and mechanism of Tβ4 in mediating the improvement of AD. AD-like cell model was constructed in neuroblastoma cell line SH-SY5Y treated with Aβ. Overexpression of Tβ4 were done using lentivirus infection and downregulation through siRNA transfection. We performed western blot and flow cytometry to study the apoptosis and standard kits to measure the oxidative stress-associated biomarkers. There is significant increased in viability and decreased apoptosis in Tβ4 overexpression group compared to control. Furthermore, overexpression of Tβ4 suppressed the expression of pro-apoptotic markers such as Caspase-3, Caspase-8, and Bax meanwhile upregulated the expression of anti-apoptotic gene Bcl-2. Tβ4 alleviated oxidative damage by reducing MDA, LDH and ROS and increasing SOD and GSH-PX in Aβ-treated SH-SY5Y cells. We found that Tβ4 inhibit ERK/p38 MAPK pathway and intensify the expression of 5-HTR1A. Additionally, we showed that upregulation of 5-HTR1A dampened the Tβ4 to activate ERK signalling. In conclusion, our study revealed the neuroprotective role of Tβ4 in AD which may open up new therapeutic applications in AD treatment.
  14. Zhang C, Phoong SW
    PLoS One, 2024;19(1):e0297977.
    PMID: 38295093 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0297977
    The evolution of Internet technology is closely mirrored by the innovative business and profit models emerging within the platform economy. Integrating this economic framework, online video platforms are dynamically refining their pricing strategies to optimize profit margins. This paper, anchored in the theoretical construct of second-degree price discrimination, selects the Chinese online video platforms iQiyi and Tencent Video for in-depth case studies. It charts the progression of its pricing strategies and juxtaposes these with those of prominent international online video sites to highlight both congruities and divergences. The synthesis of theoretical models with real-world case studies culminates in strategic recommendations to foster the growth of Chinese online video platforms in the global Internet arena.
  15. Zhang B, Chandran Sandaran S, Feng J
    PLoS One, 2023;18(1):e0280190.
    PMID: 36696455 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0280190
    Recently, ecological damage and environmental pollution have become increasingly serious. Experts in various fields have started to study related issues from diverse points of view. To prevent the accelerated deterioration of the ecological environment, ecolinguistics emerged. Eco-critical discourse analysis is one of the important parts of ecolinguistics research, that is, it is a critical discourse analysis of the use of language from the perspective of the language's ecological environment. Firstly, an ecological tone and modality system are constructed from an ecological perspective. Under the guidance of the ecological philosophy of "equality, harmony, and symbiosis", this study conducts an ecological discourse analysis on the Sino-US trade friction reports, aiming to present the similarities and differences between the two newspapers' trade friction discourses and to reveal the ecological significance of international ecological factors in the discourse. Secondly, this method establishes a vector expression of abstract words based on emotion dictionary resources and introduces emotion polarity and part-of-speech features of words. Then the word vector is formed into the text feature matrix, which is used as the input of the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model, and the Back Propagation algorithm is adopted to train the model. Finally, in the light of the trained CNN model, the unlabeled news is predicted, and the experimental results are analyzed. The results reveal that during the training process of Chinese and English datasets, the accuracy of the training set can reach nearly 100%, and the loss rate can be reduced to 0. On the test set, the classification accuracy of Chinese text can reach 83%, while that of English text can reach 90%, and the experimental results are ideal. This study provides an explanatory approach for ecological discourse analysis on the news reports of Sino-US trade frictions and has certain guiding significance for the comparative research on political news reports under different ideologies between China and the United States.
  16. Zhang B, Zhang R, Deng H, Cui P, Li C, Yang F, et al.
    PLoS One, 2023;18(12):e0294768.
    PMID: 38051740 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0294768
    BACKGROUND AND AIM: Primarily, this study compares the efficacy of probiotic and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) in alleviating the severity of alcohol craving and alcohol use disorder (AUD) among patients who had undergo two weeks of in-patient detoxification. Secondarily, this study compares the efficacy of probiotic and ACT in mitigating the severity of comorbid depression and anxiety symptoms; decreasing serum level of pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as interleukin 1β (IL-1β), interleukin 6 (IL-6), and tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α); changing the event-related potential in electroencephalogram (EEG) and restoring microbiota flora in the gut of AUD patients.

    METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Initially, during Phase I of the study, the serum level of IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α; ERP changes in the EEG and fecal microbiota content will be compared between 120 AUD patients and 120 healthy controls. Subsequently in Phase II of the study, 120 AUD patients will be randomized by stratified permuted block randomization into the probiotic, ACT and placebo groups in a 1:1:1 ratio. Participants in the probiotic and placebo groups will be administered one sachet per day of Lactobacillus spp. probiotic and placebo, respectively for 12 weeks. While those in the ACT group will receive one session per week of ACT for 8 weeks. Outcome measures will be administered at four timepoints, such as t0 = baseline assessment prior to intervention, t1 = 8 weeks after intervention began, t2 = 12 weeks after intervention and t3 = 24 weeks after intervention. Primary outcomes are the degrees of alcohol craving, alcohol withdrawal during abstinence and AUD. Secondary outcomes to be assessed are the severity of co-morbid depression and anxiety symptoms; the serum levels of IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α; changes in ERP and fecal microbiota content.

    TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT05830708 (ClinicalTrials.gov). Registered on April 25, 2023.

  17. Zeng J, Liu W
    PLoS One, 2024;19(3):e0293156.
    PMID: 38446752 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0293156
    Professional identity has become a central topic in teacher education research and a crucial factor in shaping teachers' self-perception and perspectives on various aspects of their profession, including teacher roles, scholarly research, curriculum design, classroom instruction, instructional methods, and strategies, as well as their interactions within the educational context. Despite the considerable scholarly interest in teacher identity development, relatively few studies have considered how to measure teacher professional identity. This study developed and validated a new measurement of professional identity among Chinese pre-service teachers from an English language education program. A total of 560 pre-service teachers majoring in English language education were invited to participate in a survey and 542 questionnaires were deemed valid and subjected to analysis. Through this analysis, a scale with 17 items was developed, focusing on three different dimensions: professional self-efficacy, career commitment, and professional knowledge. After excluding items with a relatively poor correlation with factor loading, the final scale consisted of 13 items. The results showed that the developed scale has relatively good reliability (α = 0.939) and structural validity (χ2/df = 2.46, p < .001, CFI = 0.978, TLI = 0.971, SRMR = 0.033, RMSEA (90% CI) = 0.071 0.054, 0.089). This study may provide a quantitative instrument for future research to measure professional identity among pre-service teachers, both in Chinese and other contexts.
  18. Zegarra Rodríguez D, Daniel Okey O, Maidin SS, Umoren Udo E, Kleinschmidt JH
    PLoS One, 2023;18(10):e0286652.
    PMID: 37844095 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0286652
    Recent years have witnessed an in-depth proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) systems linked to Industry 4.0 technology. The increasing rate of IoT device usage is associated with rising security risks resulting from malicious network flows during data exchange between the connected devices. Various security threats have shown high adverse effects on the availability, functionality, and usability of the devices among which denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS), which attempt to exhaust the capacity of the IoT network (gateway), thereby causing failure in the functionality of the system have been more pronounced. Various machine learning and deep learning algorithms have been used to propose intelligent intrusion detection systems (IDS) to mitigate the challenging effects of these network threats. One concern is that although deep learning algorithms have shown good accuracy results on tabular data, not all deep learning algorithms can perform well on tabular datasets, which happen to be the most commonly available format of datasets for machine learning tasks. Again, there is also the challenge of model explainability and feature selection, which affect model performance. In this regard, we propose a model for IDS that uses attentive mechanisms to automatically select salient features from a dataset to train the IDS model and provide explainable results, the TabNet-IDS. We implement the proposed model using the TabNet algorithm based on PyTorch which is a deep-learning framework. The results obtained show that the TabNet architecture can be used on tabular datasets for IoT security to achieve good results comparable to those of neural networks, reaching an accuracy of 97% on CIC-IDS2017, 95% on CSE-CICIDS2018 and 98% on CIC-DDoS2019 datasets.
  19. Zawiah M, Yousef AM, Khan AH, Al-Ashwal FY, Matar A, ALKhawaldeh B, et al.
    PLoS One, 2020;15(6):e0234779.
    PMID: 32555684 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0234779
    BACKGROUND: Pharmacists have crucial role in providing drug information and medication counseling to patients. This survey aimed to benchmark the current knowledge of the pharmacists concerning food-drug interactions (FDIs) in Jordan.

    METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Amman, the capital and largest city of Jordan, using a validated questionnaire. It was distributed to pharmacists working in community and hospital pharmacies using a convenience sampling technique. Descriptive and inferential statistics were performed in this study.

    RESULTS: A total of 340 questionnaires distributed, 300 (88%) pharmacists responded. Over 50% of pharmacists claimed that they have sufficient knowledge regarding FDI. Virtually, the overall median (interquartile range) knowledge score was 18 (15-21), approximately 60%. The highest knowledge scores were for alcohol-drug interactions section (66.6%) followed by both common food-drug interactions and the timing of drug intake to food consumption sections with a score of (58.3%) for each, reflecting a suboptimal knowledge of FDIs among the pharmacists.

    CONCLUSION: Pharmacists had unsatisfactory knowledge about common FDIs, with no significant difference between hospital and community pharmacists. Therefore, more attention and efforts should be played to improve awareness about potential food-drug interactions.

  20. Zanaruddin SN, Yee PS, Hor SY, Kong YH, Ghani WM, Mustafa WM, et al.
    PLoS One, 2013;8(11):e80229.
    PMID: 24224046 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080229
    OBJECTIVES: The frequency of common oncogenic mutations and TP53 was determined in Asian oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC).

    MATERIALS AND METHODS: The OncoCarta(™) panel v1.0 assay was used to characterize oncogenic mutations. In addition, exons 4-11 of the TP53 gene were sequenced. Statistical analyses were conducted to identify associations between mutations and selected clinico-pathological characteristics and risk habits.

    RESULTS: Oncogenic mutations were detected in PIK3CA (5.7%) and HRAS (2.4%). Mutations in TP53 were observed in 27.7% (31/112) of the OSCC specimens. Oncogenic mutations were found more frequently in non-smokers (p = 0.049) and TP53 truncating mutations were more common in patients with no risk habits (p = 0.019). Patients with mutations had worse overall survival compared to those with absence of mutations; and patients who harbored DNA binding domain (DBD) and L2/L3/LSH mutations showed a worse survival probability compared to those patients with wild type TP53. The majority of the oncogenic and TP53 mutations were G:C > A:T and A:T > G:C base transitions, regardless of the different risk habits.

    CONCLUSION: Hotspot oncogenic mutations which are frequently present in common solid tumors are exceedingly rare in OSCC. Despite differences in risk habit exposure, the mutation frequency of PIK3CA and HRAS in Asian OSCC were similar to that reported in OSCC among Caucasians, whereas TP53 mutations rates were significantly lower. The lack of actionable hotspot mutations argue strongly for the need to comprehensively characterize gene mutations associated with OSCC for the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic tools.

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