Current use of effect size or confidence interval analyses in clinical and biomedical research

The isolated use of the statistical hypothesis testing for two group comparison has limitations, and its combination with effect size or confidence interval analysis as complementary statistical tests is recommended. In the present work, we estimate the use of these complementary statistical tests (i.e. effect size or confidence interval) in recently published in research articles in clinical and biomedical areas. Methods: The ProQuest database was used to search published studies in academic journals between 2019 and 2020. The analysis was carried out using terms that represent five areas of clinical and biomedical research: “brain”, “liver”, “heart”, “dental”, and “covid-19”. A total of 119,558 published articles were retrieved. Results: The relative use of complementary statistical tests in clinical and biomedical publications was low. The highest frequency usage of complementary statistical tests was among articles that also used statistical hypothesis testing for two-sample comparison. Publications with the term “covid-19” showed the lowest usage rate of complementary statistical tests when all article were analyzed but presented the highest rate among articles that used hypothesis testing. Conclusion: The low use of effect size or confidence interval in two-sample comparison suggests that coordinate measures should be taken in order to increase the use of this analysis in clinical and biomedical research. Their use should be emphasized in statistical disciplines for college and graduate students, become a routine procedure in research laboratories, and recommended by reviewers and editors of scientific journals.

     

Learning disabilities and visual-motor skills; comparing assessment from a hapto-virtual reality tool and Bender-Gestalt test

Previous investigations conducted on post-secondary adult students with learning disabilities (LD) suggest that deficits in visual-motor skills contribute to difficulties in written expression which impact academic achievement. Intervention strategies for individuals with LD include assistive computer-based technologies (ATs) to compensate for or maximize performance. However, research fails to assess the impact of ATs on performance, learning, and motivation of students with LD. Also, one of the limitations of ATs is that they cannot be used for assessment and training and there are very few methods to assess or train visual-motor skills in this population. The present study explores the usefulness of a hapto-visual virtual reality motor skills assessment (MSA) device for visual-motor functioning in adults with and without LD. This is a preliminary step of developing an intervention to improve impaired visual-motor skills in adults with LD. A sample of 22 male and female university students with and without LD had their visual-motor skills pretested using a standard paper-and-pencil Bender-Gestalt (BG) test and were compared according to their performance on the MSA tool. We hypothesized that our LD participants’ performance would be significantly lower than our control participants on the VR task in terms of number of errors and speed. Results showed that participants without LD performed better and more rapidly on the VR task than participants with LD. There were no correlations between the BG and MSA performance. We did not find significant differences between the groups on the Bender-Gestalt scores, previous experience with video game, arousal, and mood. Our results suggest that a novel 3D virtual reality tool such as the MSA can potentially discriminate motor function of people with and without LD; however, the difference between both may also be due to a lack of problem-solving ability in LD.     

Electrochemical Corrosion of Composite Ceramics and Thermal Spray Coatings in the ZrB2–SiC–AlN System

Powder Metallurgy and Metal Ceramics - Polarization studies of the ZrB2–SiC–AlN compact ceramic material and thermal spray coatings of the same composition were conducted in a 3% NaCl...     

Peptides Derived from Histone 3 and Modified at Position 18 Inhibit Histone Demethylase KDM6 Enzymes

The KDM6 subfamily of histone lysine demethylases has recently been implicated as a putative target in the treatment of a number of diseases; this makes the availability of potent and selective inhibitors important. Due to high sequence similarity of the catalytic domain of Jumonji C histone demethylases, the development of small‐molecule, family‐specific inhibitors has, however, proven challenging. One approach to achieve the selective inhibition of these enzymes is the use of peptides derived from the substrate, the histone 3 C terminus. Here we used computational methods to optimize such inhibitors of the KDM6 family. Through natural amino acid substitution, it is shown that a K18I variant of a histone H3 derived peptide significantly increases affinity towards the KDM6 enzymes. The crystal structure of KDM6B in complex with a histone 3 derived K18I peptide reveals a tighter fit of the isoleucine side chain, compared with that of the arginine. As a consequence, the peptide R17 residue also has increased hydrophilic interactions. These interactions of the optimized peptide are likely to be responsible for the increased affinity to the KDM6 enzymes.     

Ultrahigh-Temperature HfB2-Based Ceramics: Structure,High-Temperature Strength,and Oxidation Resistance

Powder Metallurgy and Metal Ceramics - Ultrahigh-temperature hafnium diboride ceramics with additions of 15 vol.% MoSi2 or 15 vol.% SiC or a combined addition of 15 vol.% SiC and 5 vol.% WC were...     

Hydrogen storage properties of the pseudo binary laves phase (Sc1−xZrx)(Co1−yNiy)2 system

The (Sc_1−xZr_x)(Co_1−yNi_y)₂-H_z system has been studied using both experimental techniques and ab initio calculations. The material was synthesised through high temperature synthesis and characterised using powder XRD. Hydrogen absorption and desorption was studied in-situ using synchrotron radiation. Maximal storage capacity increased when Co replaced Ni and substitution of Sc for Zr increased the equilibrium pressure. Density functional based calculations reproduce the experimental trends in terms of cell parameters both for the non-hydrogenated systems as well as for the hydrogenated systems, and helped to quantitatively understand the observed hydrogen uptake properties.     

Sensory characteristics of meat cooked for prolonged times at low temperature

The present study evaluated the sensory characteristics of low temperature long time (LTLT) treated Semitendinosus from pork and beef and Pectoralis profundus from chicken. Semitendinosus and Pectoralis profundus muscles were heat treated at 53°C and 58°C for T_c + 6 h, T_c + 17 h, and T_c + 30 h (only Semitendinosus from pork and beef). T_c was the time for the samples to equalize with the temperature in the water bath. Tenderness increased with increasing heating temperature and time in pork and beef, but not in chicken. Juiciness decreased with increasing heating temperature and time in all species, and cooking loss increased with increasing temperature. A done appearance was developed with increasing heating time at 58 °C in pork and beef, while in chicken the done appearance was only affected by temperature. Flavor attributes were less affected by the LTLT treatment for all species.