Orca

BACKGROUND: Although patients have easy access to their electronic health records and laboratory test result data through patient portals, laboratory test results are often confusing and hard to understand. Many patients turn to web-based forums or question-and-answer (Q&A) sites to seek advice from their peers. The quality of answers from social Q&A sites on health-related questions varies significantly, and not all responses are accurate or reliable. Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have opened a promising avenue for patients to have their questions answered...

Philopatric kin-based societies encourage a narrow breadth of conservative behaviours owing to individuals primarily learning from close kin, promoting behavioural homogeneity. However, weaker social ties beyond kin, and across a behaviourally diverse social landscape, could be sufficient to induce variation and a greater ecological niche breadth. We investigated a network of 457 photo-identified killer whales from Norway (548 encounters in 2008-2021) with diet data available (46 mixed-diet individuals feeding on both fish and mammals, and 411 exclusive fish-eaters) to quantify patterns of association within and between diet groups, and to identify underlying correlates...

This article draws on the deliberative play framework to examine empirical examples of storytelling in an online deliberative forum: The Oregon Citizen Assembly (ORCA) Pilot on COVID-19 Recovery. ORCA engaged 36 citizens in deliberation about state policy through an online deliberative process spanning seven weeks. Drawing on literature on small stories in deliberation, we trace stories related to a policy proposal about paying parents to educate children at home. Our analysis demonstrates that storytelling activities accomplish aspects of deliberative play through introducing uncertainty, resisting premature closure, and promoting an "as if" frame that allows groups to explore the scope and implications of proposals...

CONTEXT: In this study, we have investigated the structure, reactivity, bonding, and electronic transitions of DPA and PDTC along with their Ni-Zn complexes using DFT/TD-DFT methods. The energy gap between the frontier orbitals was computed to understand the reactivity pattern of the ligands and metal complexes. From the energies of FMO's, the global reactivity descriptors such as electron affinity, ionization potential, hardness (η), softness (S), chemical potential (μ), electronegativity (χ), and electrophilicity index (ω) have been calculated...

Killer whales ( Orcinus orca ) are currently recognized as a single ecologically and morphologically diverse, globally distributed species. Multiple morphotypes or ecotypes have been described, often associated with feeding specialization, and several studies have suggested taxonomic revision to include multiple subspecies or species in the genus. We review the ecological, morphological and genetic data for the well-studied 'resident' and Bigg's (aka 'transient') ecotypes in the eastern North Pacific and use quantitative taxonomic guidelines and standards to determine whether the taxonomic status of these killer whale ecotypes should be revised...

Matching-to-sample tasks have been a useful method in visual cognitive studies on non-human animals. The use of touch panels in matching-to-sample tasks has contributed to cognitive studies on terrestrial animals; however, there has been a difficulty in using these devices underwater, which is one of the factors that has slowed the progress of visual studies on underwater animals. Cetaceans (e.g., dolphins and whales) are highly adapted to underwater environments, and further studies on their cognitive abilities are needed to advance our understanding of the interactions between environmental factors and the evolution of cognitive abilities...

Beginning in December 2018, increased numbers of gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) strandings were reported along the west coast of Mexico, the United States, and Canada, prompting declaration of a gray whale Unusual Mortality Event (UME) by the United States National Marine Fisheries Service. Although strandings declined in 2020 and 2021 from a peak in 2019, the UME is still ongoing as of fall 2023. Between 17 December 2018 and 31 December 2021, 503 animals stranded along the west coast of North America, with 226 strandings in Mexico, 71 in California, 12 in Oregon, 56 in Washington, 21 in British Columbia, and 117 in Alaska...

This work reports on new software for automatic conformer energy benchmarking calculations for flexible molecules. The software workflow consists of four parts: conformational search, preoptimization, optimization, and frequency calculations at a higher level and last calculations using several theoretical levels. The software was written to be user-friendly and versatile to be used by nonexperts in computational chemistry. Any theoretical levels available in either Gaussian 16 or ORCA 5 may be applied in the benchmarking study...

Lab results are often confusing and hard to understand. Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have opened a promising avenue for patients to get their questions answered. We aim to assess the feasibility of using LLMs to generate relevant, accurate, helpful, and unharmful responses to lab test-related questions asked by patients and to identify potential issues that can be mitigated with augmentation approaches. We first collected lab test results related question and answer data from Yahoo! Answers and selected 53 QA pairs for this study...

OBJECTIVES: There is a strong association among risk factors for oral cancer (ORCA), such as smoking, alcohol consumption, fiber intake, and red meat intake. The apparent synergistic effects reported in previous observational studies may also underestimate the independent effects. Our study aims to further explore the potential etiology and causality of oral cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study used the genome-wide associations study database (GWAS) in European populations for Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to explore exposure factors associated with ORCA and detect the genetic causality between these exposures and ORCA risk...

CONTEXT: It has been reported that photoexcitation of azastilbene compounds like E-1,2-bispyrazinyl-ethylene (bpe) can undergo E → Z photoisomerization of its quaternary salts via the excited triplet state. However, experimentally it is possible to get low fluorescence and photoisomerisation quantum yields in a state with higher internal conversion than intersystem crossing. We modelled bpe and its methylated derivative (bpeMe), as well as its quaternary halogen salts (bpeMeX with X = F- , Cl- , Br- and I- ) to study levels of fluorescence, phosphorescence and excited state potential energy surfaces (PES)...

CONTEXT: Nucleophilic substitution reactions of aliphatic amines with alkyl halides represent a simple and direct mechanism for obtaining higher-order aliphatic amines. However, it is well known that these reactions suffer from low selectivity due to multiple alkylations, which is attributed to the higher reactivity of the newly formed amine. In order to provide a detailed explanation for this kind of system, we have investigated the reactivity of primary and secondary amines with 1-bromopropane and 2-bromopropane...

Along the northeast Pacific coast, the salmon-eating southern resident killer whale population (SRKW, Orcinus orca) have been at very low levels since the 1970s. Previous research have suggested that reduction in food availability, especially of Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), could be the main limiting factor for the SRKW population. Using the ecosystem modelling platform Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE), this study evaluated if the decline of the Pacific salmon populations between 1979 and 2020 may have been impacted by a combination of factors, including marine mammal predation, fishing activities, and climatic patterns...

With the development of deep learning technology, researchers are increasingly paying attention to how to efficiently salvage surface garbage. Since the 1980s, the development of plastic products and economic growth has led to the accumulation of a large amount of garbage in rivers. Due to the large amount of garbage and the high risk of surface operations, the efficiency of manual garbage retrieval will be greatly reduced. Among existing methods, using YOLO algorithm to detect target objects is the most popular...

This article presents a novel algorithm for the calculation of analytic energy gradients from second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory within the Resolution-of-the-Identity approximation (RI-MP2), which is designed to achieve high performance on clusters with multiple graphical processing units (GPUs). The algorithm uses GPUs for all major steps of the calculation, including integral generation, formation of all required intermediate tensors, solution of the Z-vector equation and gradient accumulation...

We present the Dynamic Radii Adjustment for COntinuum solvation (DRACO) approach, which employs precomputed atomic partial charges and coordination numbers of the solute atoms to improve the solute cavity. As such, DRACO is compatible with major solvation models, improving their performance significantly and robustly at virtually no extra cost, especially for charged solutes. Combined with the purely electrostatic CPCM and COSMO models, DRACO reduces the mean absolute deviation (MAD) of the solvation free energy by up to 4...

INTRODUCTION: The Core Curriculum in Cariology (CCC) was developed by ORCA and ADEE in 2010. This article summarizes challenges for the implementation of the CCC at university/country level identified at the "Education Platform" of the ORCA 2022 conference in Cagliari, Sardinia. METHODS: Participants from Universities from 3 European (Italy, Poland, and UK), 2 Asian (India and Russia), and 3 American countries (Brazil, Colombia and USA) led the presentations, discussion, and generation of statements...

Reinforcement learning (RL) methods have helped to define the state of the art in the field of modern artificial intelligence, mostly after the breakthrough involving AlphaGo and the discovery of novel algorithms. In this work, we present a RL method, based on Q-learning, for the structural determination of adsorbate@substrate models in silico, where the minimization of the energy landscape resulting from adsorbate interactions with a substrate is made by actions on states (translations and rotations) chosen from an agent's policy...

Catharanthus roseus produces a large array of terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs) that are important natural source for many drugs. Ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation have been proved to have regulatory effect towards biosynthesis of TIAs, which were meaningful for boost of TIA production. To decipher more comprehensive molecular characteristics in C. roseus under UVB radiation, integrated analysis of the nuclear proteome together with the transcriptome data under UVB radiation were performed. Expression of genes related to transmembrane transporters gradually increased during the prolonged exposure to UVB radiation...

Electric load forecasting is a vital task for energy management and policy-making. However, it is also a challenging problem due to the complex and dynamic nature of electric load data. In this paper, a novel technique, called LSV/MOPA, has been proposed for electric load forecasting. The technique is a hybrid model that combines the advantages of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Support Vector Regression (SVR), two powerful artificial intelligence algorithms. The hybrid model is further optimized by a newly Modified Orca Predation Algorithm (MOPA), which enhances the forecasting accuracy and efficiency...