Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deploying digital health data to optimize influenza surveillance at national and local scales

The surveillance of influenza activity is critical to early detection of epidemics and pandemics and the design of disease control strategies. Case reporting through a voluntary network of sentinel physicians is a commonly used method of passive surveillance for monitoring rates of influenza-like illness (ILI) worldwide. Despite its ubiquity, little attention has been given to the processes underlying the observation, collection, and spatial aggregation of sentinel surveillance data, and its subsequent effects on epidemiological understanding. We harnessed the high specificity of diagnosis codes in medical claims from a database that represented 2.5 billion visits from upwards of 120,000 United States healthcare providers each year. Among influenza seasons from 2002-2009 and the 2009 pandemic, we simulated limitations of sentinel surveillance systems such as low coverage and coarse spatial resolution, and performed Bayesian inference to probe the robustness of ecological inference and spatial prediction of disease burden. Our models suggest that a number of socio-environmental factors, in addition to local population interactions, state-specific health policies, as well as sampling effort may be responsible for the spatial patterns in U.S. sentinel ILI surveillance. In addition, we find that biases related to spatial aggregation were accentuated among areas with more heterogeneous disease risk, and sentinel systems designed with fixed reporting locations across seasons provided robust inference and prediction. With the growing availability of health-associated big data worldwide, our results suggest mechanisms for optimizing digital data streams to complement traditional surveillance in developed settings and enhance surveillance opportunities in developing countries.
Worldsheet fluctuations and the heavy quark potential in the AdS/CFT approach

We consider contributions to the heavy quark potential, in the AdS/CFT approach to SU(N) gauge theory, which arise from first order fluctuations of the associated worldsheet in anti-deSitter space. The gaussian fluctuations occur around a classical worldsheet configuration resembling an infinite square well, with the bottom of the well lying at the AdS horizon. The eigenvalues of the corresponding laplacean operators can be shown numerically to be very close to those in flat space. We find that two of the transverse world sheet fields become massive, which may have implications for the existence of a Luscher term in the heavy quark potential. It is also suggested that these massive degrees of freedom may relate to extrinsic curvature in an effective D = 4 string theory.
Compatibility of booster seats and vehicles in the U.S. market

ABSTRACT Objective: The objective of this study was to analyze booster and rear vehicle seat dimensions to identify the most frequent compatibility problems. Methods: Measurements were collected from 40 high-back and backless boosters and 95 left rear and center rear row seating positions in 50 modern vehicles. Dimensions were compared for 3,800 booster/vehicle seat combinations. For validation and estimation of tolerance and correction factors, 72 booster installations were physically completed and compared with measurement-based compatibility predictions. Dimensions were also compared to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) volumetric envelopes of forward-facing child restraints and boosters. Results: Seat belt buckles in outboard positions accommodated the width of boosters better than center positions (success rates of 85.4 and 34.7%, respectively). Adequate head restraint clearance occurred in 71.9 to 77.2% of combinations, depending on the booster's head support setting. Booster recline angles aligned properly with vehicle seat cushion angles in 71.5% of combinations. In cases of poor angle alignment, booster angles were more obtuse than the vehicle seat angles 97.7% of the time. Head restraint interference exacerbated angle alignment issues. Data indicate success rates above 90% for boosters being fully supported by the length of the seat cushion and for adequate height clearance with the vehicle roofline. Comparison to ISO envelopes indicates that most boosters on the U.S. market are taller and angled more obtusely than ISO target envelopes. Conclusions: This study quantifies some of the common interferences between boosters and vehicles that may complicate booster usage. Data are useful for design and to prioritize specific problem areas.
New techniques, applications and perspectives in neuropeptide research

ABSTRACT Neuropeptides are one of the most diverse classes of signaling molecules and have attracted great interest over the years owing to their roles in regulation of a wide range of physiological processes. However, there are unique challenges associated with neuropeptide studies stemming from the highly variable molecular sizes of the peptides, low in vivo concentrations, high degree of structural diversity and large number of isoforms. As a result, much effort has been focused on developing new techniques for studying neuropeptides, as well as novel applications directed towards learning more about these endogenous peptides. The areas of importance for neuropeptide studies include structure, localization within tissues, interaction with their receptors, including ion channels, and physiological function. Here, we discuss these aspects and the associated techniques, focusing on technologies that have demonstrated potential in advancing the field in recent years. Most identification and structural information has been gained by mass spectrometry, either alone or with confirmations from other techniques, such as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and other spectroscopic tools. While mass spectrometry and bioinformatic tools have proven to be the most powerful for large-scale analyses, they still rely heavily on complementary methods for confirmation. Localization within tissues, for example, can be probed by mass spectrometry imaging, immunohistochemistry and radioimmunoassays. Functional information has been gained primarily from behavioral studies coupled with tissue-specific assays, electrophysiology, mass spectrometry and optogenetic tools. Concerning the receptors for neuropeptides, the discovery of ion channels that are directly gated by neuropeptides opens up the possibility of developing a new generation of tools for neuroscience, which could be used to monitor neuropeptide release or to specifically change the membrane potential of neurons. It is expected that future neuropeptide research will involve the integration of complementary bioanalytical technologies and functional assays. Summary: This Review discusses a range of molecular aspects of neuropeptide biology and integrates techniques, model organisms and applications, highlighting new perspectives enabled by technical advancements in neuropeptide research.
Climatic Control of Upwelling Variability along the Western North-American Coast

The high biological production of the California Current System (CCS) results from the seasonal development of equatorward alongshore winds that drive coastal upwelling. While several climatic fluctuation patterns influence the dynamics and biological productivity of the CCS, including the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation index (PDO) and the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO), the mechanisms of interaction between climatic oscillations and the CCS upwelling dynamics have remained obscure. Here, we use Singular Spectral Analysis (SSA) to reveal, for the first time, low-frequency concordance between the time series of climatic indices and upwelling intensity along the coast of western North America. Based on energy distributions in annual, semiannual and low-frequency signals, we can divide the coast into three distinct regions. While the annual upwelling signal dominates the energy spectrum elsewhere, low-frequency variability is maximal in the regions south of 33°N. Non-structured variability associated with storms and turbulent mixing is enhanced at northerly locations. We found that the low-frequency signal is significantly correlated with different climatic indices such as PDO, NPGO and ENSO with the correlation patterns being latitude-dependent. We also analyzed the correlations between this upwelling variability and sea surface temperature (SST) and sea level pressure (SLP) throughout the North Pacific to visualize and interpret the large-scale teleconnection dynamics in the atmosphere that drive the low-frequency coastal winds. These results provide new insights into the underlying mechanisms connecting climatic patterns with upwelling dynamics, which could enhance our prediction and forecast capabilities of the effects of future oceanographic and climatic variability in the CCS.
Significant Improvement Selected Mediators of Inflammation in Phenotypes of Women with PCOS after Reduction and Low GI Diet

Many researchers suggest an increased risk of atherosclerosis in women with polycystic ovary syndrome. In the available literature, there are no studies on the mediators of inflammation in women with PCOS, especially after dietary intervention. Eicosanoids (HETE and HODE) were compared between the biochemical phenotypes of women with PCOS (normal and high androgens) and after the 3-month reduction diet. Eicosanoid profiles (9(S)-HODE, 13(S)-HODE, 5(S)-HETE, 12(S)-HETE, 15(S)-HETE, 5(S)-oxoETE, 16(R)-HETE, 16(S)-HETE and 5(S), 6(R)-lipoxin A4, 5(S), 6(R), 15(R)-lipoxin A4) were extracted from 0.5 ml of plasma using solid-phase extraction RP-18 SPE columns. The HPLC separations were performed on a 1260 liquid chromatograph. No significant differences were found in the concentration of analysed eicosanoids in phenotypes of women with PCOS. These women, however, have significantly lower concentration of inflammatory mediators than potentially healthy women from the control group. Dietary intervention leads to a significant (p < 0.01) increase in the synthesis of proinflammatory mediators, reaching similar levels as in the control group. The development of inflammatory reaction in both phenotypes of women with PCOS is similar. The pathways for synthesis of proinflammatory mediators in women with PCOS are dormant, but can be stimulated through a reduction diet. Three-month period of lifestyle change may be too short to stimulate the pathways inhibiting inflammatory process.
DHEA protects against visceral obesity and muscle insulin resistance in rats fed a high-fat diet.

Visceral obesity is frequently associated with muscle insulin resistance. Rats fed a high-fat diet rapidly develop obesity and insulin resistance. Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) has been reported to protect against the development of obesity. This study tested the hypothesis that DHEA protects against the increase in visceral fat and the development of muscle insulin resistance induced by a high-fat diet in rats. Feeding rats a diet providing 50% of the energy as fat for 4 wk resulted in a twofold greater visceral fat mass and a 50% lower rate of maximally insulin-stimulated muscle 2-deoxyglucose (2-DG) uptake compared with controls. Rats fed the high-fat diet plus 0.3% DHEA were largely protected against the increase in visceral fat (+11.3 g in high fat vs. +2.9 g in high fat plus DHEA, compared with controls) and against the decrease in insulin-stimulated muscle 2-DG uptake (0.94 ± 0.15 μmol ⋅ ml-1 ⋅ 20 min-1, controls; 0.46 ± 0.06 μmol ⋅ ml-1 ⋅ 20 min-1, high-fat diet; 0.78 ± 0.07 μmol ⋅ ml-1 ⋅ 20 min-1, high fat + DHEA). DHEA did not affect food intake. These results show that DHEA has a protective effect against accumulation of visceral fat and development of muscle insulin resistance in rats fed a high-fat diet.
Learning for Disparity Estimation Through Feature Constancy

Stereo matching algorithms usually consist of four steps, including matching cost calculation, matching cost aggregation, disparity calculation, and disparity refinement. Existing CNN-based methods only adopt CNN to solve parts of the four steps, or use different networks to deal with different steps, making them difficult to obtain the overall optimal solution. In this paper, we propose a network architecture to incorporate all steps of stereo matching. The network consists of three parts. The first part calculates the multi-scale shared features. The second part performs matching cost calculation, matching cost aggregation and disparity calculation to estimate the initial disparity using shared features. The initial disparity and the shared features are used to calculate the feature constancy that measures correctness of the correspondence between two input images. The initial disparity and the feature constancy are then fed into a sub-network to refine the initial disparity. The proposed method has been evaluated on the Scene Flow and KITTI datasets. It achieves the state-of-the-art performance on the KITTI 2012 and KITTI 2015 benchmarks while maintaining a very fast running time. Source code is available at http://github.com/leonzfa/iResNet.
Cholesterol-Lowering Effects of Plant Sterols in One Serve of Wholegrain Wheat Breakfast Cereal Biscuits—A Randomised Crossover Clinical Trial

The meta-analysis of plant sterol supplement studies suggests an 8% lowering of low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol for 2 to 2.5 g/day of plant sterols. Cereal foods have been rarely tested, and one study showed a lower LDL lowering of 5.4% with 1.6 g of plant sterol in breakfast cereal. We aimed to test a breakfast wheat biscuit with 2 g of plant sterols in a single serve of two wholegrain wheat breakfast cereal biscuits. Fifty volunteers with a total cholesterol of >5.5 mmol/L were recruited for a randomised crossover study with two 4-week periods with no washout, of which 45 successfully completed the study. After exclusion of four outliers, the difference in LDL cholesterol between standard wholegrain wheat breakfast cereal biscuit and plant sterol-enriched wholegrain wheat breakfast cereal biscuit was 0.23 mmol/L or 5.6% (p = 0.001) with a 95% confidence interval of 2.4–8.9%. Men and daily cereal consumers had greater responses 9.8% vs. 3.6% and 7.2% vs. 3.8% respectively (p < 0.05). The LDL lowering effect of 2 g of plant sterol enriched from one serve of wholegrain wheat breakfast cereal biscuit was not significantly different from other food products delivering 2–2.5 g of plant sterols daily. Regular cereal consumers have a better response.
Key Proteins Involved in Spheroid Formation and Angiogenesis in Endothelial Cells After Long-Term Exposure to Simulated Microgravity

Background/Aims: Cardiovascular complications are common in astronauts returning from a prolonged spaceflight. These health problems might be driven by complex modulations of gene expression and protein synthesis in endothelial cells (ECs). Studies on the influence of microgravity on phenotype, growth pattern and biological processes of ECs can help to understand these complications. Methods: We exposed ECs (EA.hy926) to a Random Positioning Machine (RPM). Proteins associated with cell structure, angiogenesis and endothelial dysfunction were investigated in distinct pools of multicellular spheroids (MCS), adherent cells (AD) and tubular structures (TS) formed after a 35-day RPM-exposure. Results: Combining morphological and molecular approaches, we found AD, MCS and TS with changes in the synthesis and release of proteins involved in three-dimensional growth. Fibronectin and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) mRNAs and protein contents were elevated along with an increased secretion of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, MCP-1, intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1), vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1), neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) and regulated on activation, normal T cell expressed and secreted (RANTES) proteins in the culture supernatant as determined by multianalyte profiling technology. Together they form a network of interaction. Conclusions: These results show that a prolonged RPM-exposure of ECs induced TS and MCS formation. The factors VEGF, NGAL, IL-6, IL-8, MCP-1, VCAM-1, ICAM-1, fibronectin and RANTES seem to be affected when gravity is omitted.
Cell Type–Specific Contributions of the Angiotensin II Type 1a Receptor to Aorta Homeostasis and Aneurysmal Disease—Brief Report

Objective— Two were the aims of this study: first, to translate whole-genome expression profiles into computational predictions of functional associations between signaling pathways that regulate aorta homeostasis and the activity of angiotensin II type 1a receptor (At1ar) in either vascular endothelial or smooth muscle cells; and second, to characterize the impact of endothelial cell– or smooth muscle cell–specific At1ar disruption on the development of thoracic aortic aneurysm in fibrillin-1 hypomorphic (Fbn1mgR/mgR) mice, a validated animal model of early onset progressively severe Marfan syndrome. Approach and Results— Cdh5-Cre and Sm22-Cre transgenic mice were used to inactivate the At1ar-coding gene (Agt1ar) in either intimal or medial cells of both wild type and Marfan syndrome mice, respectively. Computational analyses of differentially expressed genes predicted dysregulated signaling pathways of cell survival and matrix remodeling in Agt1arCdh5−/− aortas and of cell adhesion and contractility in Agt1arSm22−/− aortas. Characterization of Fbn1mgR/mgR;Agt1arCdh5−/− mice revealed increased median survival associated with mitigated aneurysm growth and media degeneration, as well as reduced levels of phosphorylated (p-) Erk1/2 but not p-Smad2. By contrast, levels of both p-Erk1/2 and p-Smad2 proteins were normalized in Fbn1mgR/mgR;Agt1arSm22−/− aortas in spite of them showing no appreciable changes in thoracic aortic aneurysm pathology. Conclusions— Physiological At1ar signaling in the intimal and medial layers is associated with distinct regulatory processes of aorta homeostasis and function; improper At1ar activity in the vascular endothelium is a significant determinant of thoracic aortic aneurysm development in Marfan syndrome mice.
Cost-effective biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles using different organs of plants and their antimicrobial applications: A review

In the recent times, fabrication of metallic nanoparticles has become an enthralling area of research in the field of materials science. Among all, silver nanoparticles have taken the position of talented candidate for the modern study because of their efficient applications in biomedical field. Various chemical and physical routs have been explored for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles. However, green synthesis is found to be the most advantageous, environment-friendly, exciting and easily adoptable pathway over the other conventional approaches. In this review, we have highlighted the role of plants and their different parts for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles and their antibacterial applications. Moreover, the effect of different experimental parameters on the size of nanoparticles is also described.
Peroxisome proliferators alter lipid acquisition and elastin gene expression in neonatal rat lung fibroblasts.

During the alveolar stage of lung development, lipid droplet-laden interstitial cells are present at the base of elongating alveolar septa. These cells that have been named lipid interstitial cells or lipofibroblasts (LFs) may supply lipids for surfactant production, the synthesis of membrane phospholipids, and/or energy metabolism. They also have myofibroblastic characteristics and participate in the generation of the interstitial elastic fiber network, that is, in the pulmonary alveolar septum. To understand how this cell regulates its lipid-storing and elastin-producing properties, we have examined the effects of peroxisome proliferators on the expression of the genes that are associated with an elastin-producing myofibroblastic phenotype or an adipocyte-like phenotype. Two known ligands for peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors, 5,8,11,14-eicosatetraynoic acid (ETYA) and 15-deoxy-Δ-12,14-prostaglandin J2(15-dPGJ2), decrease elastin gene transcription and the steady-state levels of tropoelastin (TE) and α-smooth muscle actin mRNAs in cultured LFs. Concurrently, cultured LFs increase the expression of adipocyte lipid binding protein, which is regarded as an adipocyte-specific protein, and accumulate lipid droplets. Their abilities to store lipids and express desmin intermediate filaments, α-smooth muscle actin, and smooth muscle myosin heavy chain in contractile filaments in vitro illustrate similarities among the pulmonary LF, the hepatic lipocyte, and the contractile interstitial cell, which contribute to the repair reaction in the lung after pulmonary injury.
Arabidopsis ICK/KRP cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors function to ensure the formation of one megaspore mother cell and one functional megaspore per ovule

In most plants, the female germline starts with the differentiation of one megaspore mother cell (MMC) in each ovule that produces four megaspores through meiosis, one of which survives to become the functional megaspore (FM). The FM further develops into an embryo sac. Little is known regarding the control of MMC formation to one per ovule and the selective survival of the FM. The ICK/KRPs (interactor/inhibitor of cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK)/Kip-related proteins) are plant CDK inhibitors and cell cycle regulators. Here we report that in the ovules of Arabidopsis mutant with all seven ICK/KRP genes inactivated, supernumerary MMCs, FMs and embryo sacs were formed and the two embryo sacs could be fertilized to form two embryos with separate endosperm compartments. Twin seedlings were observed in about 2% seeds. Further, in the mutant ovules the number and position of surviving megaspores from one MMC were variable, indicating that the positional signal for determining the survival of megaspore was affected. Strikingly, ICK4 fusion protein with yellow fluorescence protein was strongly present in the degenerative megaspores but absent in the FM, suggesting an important role of ICKs in the degeneration of non-functional megaspores. The absence of or much weaker phenotypes in lower orders of mutants and complementation of the septuple mutant by ICK4 or ICK7 indicate that multiple ICK/KRPs function redundantly in restricting the formation of more than one MMC and in the selective survival of FM, which are critical to ensure the development of one embryo sac and one embryo per ovule.