is an employee of Analysis Group, Inc., which received consultancy fees from Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA to conduct this study. Jipan Xie is an employee of Analysis Group, Inc., which received consultancy fees from Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA to conduct this study. Muhan Yuan is an employee of Analysis Group, Inc., which received consultancy fees from Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA to conduct this study. John Cook received grants from Merck & Co., Inc. during the conduct of this study.

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The purpose of the current study was to explore the relationship between prosody, which is the expressive quality of reading out loud, and reading comprehension in adults with low literacy skills compared to skilled readers. All participants read a passage orally, and we extracted prosodic measures from the recordings. We examined pitch changes and how long readers paused at various points while reading. Finally, for the adults with low literacy skills, we collected information on decoding, word recognition, and reading comprehension. We found several interesting results. First, adults with low literacy skills paused longer than skilled readers and paused at a substantially greater number of punctuation marks. Second, while adults with low literacy skills do mark the end of declarative sentences with a pitch declination similar to skilled readers, their readings of questions lack a change in pitch. Third, decoding and word recognition skills were related to pauses while reading; readers with lower skills made longer and more frequent and inappropriate pauses. Finally, pausing measures explained a significant amount of variance in reading comprehension among the adults with low literacy skills.

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Introduction: Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors are a class of targeted therapies for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with established clinical efficacy. However, little is known about their efficacy compared with each other. This network meta-analysis (NMA) estimated the comparative efficacy of JAK inhibitors currently approved for RA. Methods: A targeted literature review was conducted for phase III randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the efficacy of three approved JAK inhibitors (tofacitinib, baricitinib, and upadacitinib) as monotherapy or combination therapy among patients with moderate-to-severe RA who had inadequate response to conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (csDMARD-IR). Using Bayesian NMA, American College of Rheumatology (ACR) 20/50/70 responses and clinical remission (defined as DAS28-CRP \ 2.6) were evaluated separately at 12 and 24 weeks. Results: Eleven RCTs were identified and included in the NMA. All JAK inhibitors demonstrated significantly better efficacy than csDMARD. Among combination therapies, upadacitinib 15 mg had the highest 12-week ACR50 responses (median [95% credible interval]: 43.4% [33.4%, 54.5%]), followed by tofacitinib 5 mg (38.7% [28.6%, 49.8%]), baricitinib 2 mg (37.1% [25.0%, 50.6%]), and baricitinib 4 mg (36.7%, [27.2%, 47.0%]). Similar results were observed for ACR20/ 70 and at week 24. Upadacitinib 15 mg ? csDMARD was also found to have the highest clinical remission rates at week 12 (29.8% [16.9%, 47.0%]), followed by tofacitinib 5 mg (24.3%, [12.7%, 40.2%]), baricitinib 4 mg (22.8%, [11.8%, 37.5%]), and baricitinib 2 mg (20.1%, [8.6%, 37.4%]). Similar results were seen at week 24. Among monotherapies, upadacitinib had a higher ACR50 response (38.5% [25.3%, 53.2%]) than tofacitinib (30.4% [18.3%, 45.5%]). The differences in efficacy measures were not statistically significant between the JAK inhibitors. Conclusions: The NMA found that upadacitinib 15 mg once daily had numerically higher efficacy in terms of ACR response and clinical remission among approved JAK combination Key Summary Points Why carry out this study?JAK inhibitors are a class of targeted therapies for treating patients with moderate-to-severe rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who have an inadequate response to csDMARDs (csDMARD-IR).Because of the absence of direct head-tohead studies, comparative efficacy data between the currently approved JAK inhibitors -tofacitinib, baricitinib, and upadacitinib is limited.This network meta-analysis (NMA) compared ACR20/50/70 and DAS28-CRP remission outcomes at 12-and 24-weeks for all JAK inhibitors currently approved for the treatment of RA.What was learned from the study?The results indicated that upadacitinib 15 mg once daily ? csDMARD had numerically the highest ACR responses and DAS28-CRP remission rates among all combination therapies at both 12 and 24 weeks and among monotherapies, ACR responses with upadacitinib 15 mg once daily were numerically higher than those with tofacitinib 5 mg twice daily.The study helps in better understanding of t...

In this retrospective, non-randomized study of mRCC patients with prior TKI treatment, everolimus was associated with significantly prolonged OS and PFS compared to temsirolimus and significantly prolonged OS compared to sorafenib.

Bismuth titanate Bi4Ti3O12 (BiT), was one of the most promising lead-free high-temperature piezoelectric materials, due to high Curie temperature (675 °C) and large spontaneous polarization (50 µC/cm2); however, extensive studies had revealed that high leakage conductivity interferes with the poling process, hindering its practical applications. In this paper, an electrically insulating property was achieved by a low level Nb donor substitution to suppress a high level of holes associated with high oxygen vacancy concentration. Bi4Ti2.97Nb0.03O12 ceramic showed significant enhancements of electrical resistivity by more than three order of magnitude and activity energy with value >1.2 eV, which are significant for piezoelectric applications of BiT-based materials. However, pure and A2O3-excess (A = Bi, La and Nd; 3 at %) BiT ceramics, were mixed hole and oxygen ion conductors. Schottky barriers were both formed at grain boundary region and the sample-electrode interface, because of the existence of semiconducting bulk. Interestingly, the electron conduction could be suppressed in N2, as a consequence, they became oxide ion conductors with conductivity of about 4 × 10−4 S cm−1 at 600 °C.

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