Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Responding to environmental change: plastic responses vary little in a synchronous breeder

The impact of environmental change on animal populations is strongly influenced by the ability of individuals to plastically adjust key life-history events. There is therefore considerable interest in establishing the degree of plasticity in traits and how selection acts on plasticity in natural populations. Breeding time is a key life-history trait that affects fitness and recent studies have found that females vary significantly in their breeding time–environment relationships, with selection often favouring individuals exhibiting stronger plastic responses. In contrast, here, we show that although breeding time in the common guillemot, Uria aalge, is highly plastic at the population level in response to a large-scale environmental cue (the North Atlantic Oscillation, NAO), there is very little between-individual variation—most individuals respond to this climate cue very similarly. We demonstrate strong stabilizing selection against individuals who deviate from the average population-level response to NAO. This species differs significantly from those previously studied in being a colonial breeder, in which reproductive synchrony has a substantial impact on fitness; we suggest that counter selection imposed by a need for synchrony could limit individuals in their response and potential for directional selection to act. This demonstrates the importance of considering the relative costs and benefits of highly plastic responses in assessing the likely response of a population to the environmental change.
Differential Opioid Tolerance and Opioid-induced Hyperalgesia: A Clinical Reality

<zdoi;10.1097/ALN.0000000000000963> Anesthesiology, V 124 • No 2 483 February 2016 O PIOIDS are highly effective analgesics and as such form the mainstay of pain management after surgery. However, they are associated with a formidable array of side effects, some of them potentially lethal. Also, the opioid signaling system has a remarkable ability—possibly unequaled by any other receptor system in the body—for tolerance development. Although not all patients necessarily develop profound tolerance,1 in many cases doses have to be increased over time to maintain analgesic benefit. Physicians have not typically been overly concerned about inducing opioid tolerance in the perioperative period. In the first place, it is assumed that the development of tolerance takes time and that the duration of the perioperative period is too short for significant tolerance to develop. In the second place, even if tolerance develops, it can be overcome by administering more opioids, and the drugs are inexpensive. Finally, it is generally assumed that increased tolerance to the analgesic effects of opioids is associated with increased tolerance to side effects as well, and therefore, even if larger doses have to be given, this would not entail any greater risk to the patient. Unfortunately, these arguments are probably wrong, at least to some degree. The perioperative period may be relatively short, but we now know that opioid tolerance can develop in a shorter time frame, possibly within hours when patients are exposed to high doses (i.e., a phenomenon that classically is referred to as tachyphylaxis). More importantly, many patients are already using opioid drugs for pain control before surgery and, therefore, are tolerant before they even arrive in the operating room. As to the development of tolerance to side effects, we now know that not all opioid targets develop tolerance at the same rate and to the same degree. This differential tolerance can put patients at significant risk. In addition, recent studies have made it clear that continued exposure to opioids induces more than tolerance. It also induces a degree of hyperalgesia. Whereas, in principle, tolerance can be overcome by increasing opioid dose, hyperalgesia is made worse in the long run by increasing the opioid administration. In this article, we will describe the clinical concepts of differential opioid tolerance and opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH) and discuss the role they may play in our management of patients in the perioperative setting. It should, however, be realized that these issues are relevant not just only to the perioperative period but also to all settings where opioids are administered. We will focus on the clinical setting; a substantial amount of mechanistic information on these processes is available and has been reviewed recently.2,3
Reduced electron thermal transport in low collisionality H-mode plasmas in DIII-D and the importance of TEM/ETG-scale turbulence

The first systematic investigation of core electron thermal transport and the role of local ion temperature gradient/trapped electron mode/electron temperature gradient (ITG/TEM/ETG)-scale core turbulence is performed in high temperature, low collisionality H-mode plasmas in the DIII-D tokamak. Wavenumber spectra of L-mode and H-mode density turbulence are measured by Doppler backscattering. H-mode wavenumber spectra are directly contrasted for the first time with nonlinear gyrokinetic simulation results. Core ITG/TEM-scale turbulence is substantially reduced/suppressed by E × B shear promptly after the L–H transition, resulting in reduced electron thermal transport across the entire minor radius. For small kθρs, both experiment and nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations using the GYRO code show density fluctuation levels increasing with kθρs in H-mode (r/a = 0.6), in contrast to ITG/TEM-dominated L-mode plasmas. GYRO simulations also indicate that a significant portion of the remaining H-mode electron heat flux results directly from residual intermediate/short-scale TEM/ETG turbulence. Electron transport at substantially increased electron-to-ion temperature ratio (Te/Ti ⩾ 1, r/a ⩽ 0.35) has been investigated in ECH-assisted, quiescent H-mode plasmas. A synergistic increase in core electron and ion thermal diffusivity (normalized to the gyro-Bohm diffusivity) is found with applied ECH. From linear stability analysis, the TEM mode is expected to become the dominant linear instability with ECH due to increased electron-to-ion temperature ratio and a reduction in the ion temperature gradient. This is consistent with increased electron temperature fluctuations and core electron thermal diffusivity observed experimentally. The reduced ion temperature gradient likely results from a reduction in the ITG critical gradient due to increased Te/Ti and reduced E × B shear. These studies are performed at collisonality ( , r/a ⩽ 0.6) and address transport in electron heat-dominated regimes, thought to be important in ITER due to α-particle heating.
Longitudinal antiretroviral adherence among adolescents infected with human immunodeficiency virus.

OBJECTIVES To longitudinally follow a cohort of adolescents with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and to investigate long-term antiretroviral therapy adherence and factors associated with adherence. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS Adolescents infected with HIV (N = 231; mean age, 18.4 years; 72.7% female; 74.9% African American) from 13 cities throughout the United States were assessed at 3-month intervals. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Self-reported adherence measures were validated by comparison with HIV-1 RNA viral load, and behavioral factors that may be associated with antiretroviral therapy adherence were assessed. RESULTS At the initial visit, approximately 69% of the adolescents reported being adherent to antiretroviral therapy. Adolescents in the later HIV disease stage were less likely to be adherent compared with those in the earlier disease stage. Less alcohol use and being in school were associated with adherence by adolescents on weekends and over the preceding month. Longitudinal adherence was investigated among 65 subjects initially adherent with available information for at least 4 consecutive visits. The median time to nonadherence was 12 months, and failure to maintain adherence was significantly associated with younger age and depression. Among adolescents who attained an undetectable viral load, only about 50% maintained an undetectable viral load for the year. CONCLUSIONS These findings indicate an urgent need for better interventions to assist adolescents with HIV in adhering to their medication regimens. Adolescents with advanced disease are likely to need more intervention. New treatments recently found effective for adolescent depression may assist in improving adherence for a majority of adolescents with HIV.
Toward uniform implementation of parametric map Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine standard in multisite quantitative diffusion imaging studies

Abstract. This paper reports on results of a multisite collaborative project launched by the MRI subgroup of Quantitative Imaging Network to assess current capability and provide future guidelines for generating a standard parametric diffusion map Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) in clinical trials that utilize quantitative diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). Participating sites used a multivendor DWI DICOM dataset of a single phantom to generate parametric maps (PMs) of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) based on two models. The results were evaluated for numerical consistency among models and true phantom ADC values, as well as for consistency of metadata with attributes required by the DICOM standards. This analysis identified missing metadata descriptive of the sources for detected numerical discrepancies among ADC models. Instead of the DICOM PM object, all sites stored ADC maps as DICOM MR objects, generally lacking designated attributes and coded terms for quantitative DWI modeling. Source-image reference, model parameters, ADC units and scale, deemed important for numerical consistency, were either missing or stored using nonstandard conventions. Guided by the identified limitations, the DICOM PM standard has been amended to include coded terms for the relevant diffusion models. Open-source software has been developed to support conversion of site-specific formats into the standard representation.
Size-aware Sharding For Improving Tail Latencies in In-memory Key-value Stores

This paper introduces the concept of size-aware sharding to improve tail latencies for in-memory key-value stores, and describes its implementation in the Minos key-value store. Tail latencies are crucial in distributed applications with high fan-out ratios, because overall response time is determined by the slowest response. Size-aware sharding distributes requests for keys to cores according to the size of the item associated with the key. In particular, requests for small and large items are sent to disjoint subsets of cores. Size-aware sharding improves tail latencies by avoiding head-of-line blocking, in which a request for a small item gets queued behind a request for a large item. Alternative size-unaware approaches to sharding, such as keyhash-based sharding, request dispatching and stealing do not avoid head-of-line blocking, and therefore exhibit worse tail latencies. The challenge in implementing size-aware sharding is to maintain high throughput by avoiding the cost of software dispatching and by achieving load balancing between different cores. Minos uses hardware dispatch for all requests for small items, which form the very large majority of all requests. It achieves load balancing by adapting the number of cores handling requests for small and large items to their relative presence in the workload. We compare Minos to three state-of-the-art designs of in-memory KV stores. Compared to its closest competitor, Minos achieves a 99th percentile latency that is up to two orders of magnitude lower. Put differently, for a given value for the 99th percentile latency equal to 10 times the mean service time, Minos achieves a throughput that is up to 7.4 times higher.
Autocrine signals increase ovine mesenchymal stem cells migration through Aquaporin‐1 and CXCR4 overexpression

Sheep is a relevant large animal model that is frequently used to test innovative tissue engineering (TE) approaches especially for bone reconstruction. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are used in TE applications because they represent key component of adult tissue repair. Importantly, MSCs from different species show similar characteristics, which facilitated their application in translational studies using animal models. Nowadays, many researches are focusing on the use of ovine mesenchymal stem cells (oMSCs) in orthopedic preclinical settings for regenerative medicine purposes. Therefore, there is a need to amplify our knowledge on the mechanisms underlying the behaviour of these cells. Recently, several studies have shown that MSC function is largely dependent on factors that MSCs release in the environment, as well as, in conditioned medium (CM). It has been demonstrated that MSCs through autocrine and paracrine signals are able to stimulate proliferation, migration, and differentiation of different type of cells including themselves. In this study, we investigated the effects of the CM produced by oMSCs on oMSCs themselves and we explored the signal pathways involved. We observed that CM caused an enhancement of oMSC migration. Furthermore, we found that CM increased levels of two membrane proteins involved in cell migration, Aquaporin 1 (AQP1), and C‐X‐C chemokine receptor type 4 (CXCR4), and activated Akt and Erk intracellular signal pathways. In conclusion, taken together our results suggest the high potential of autologous CM as a promising tool to modulate behaviour of MSCs thus improving their use in therapeutically approaches.
Chinese Text in the Wild

We introduce Chinese Text in the Wild, a very large dataset of Chinese text in street view images. While optical character recognition (OCR) in document images is well studied and many commercial tools are available, detection and recognition of text in natural images is still a challenging problem, especially for more complicated character sets such as Chinese text. Lack of training data has always been a problem, especially for deep learning methods which require massive training data. In this paper we provide details of a newly created dataset of Chinese text with about 1 million Chinese characters annotated by experts in over 30 thousand street view images. This is a challenging dataset with good diversity. It contains planar text, raised text, text in cities, text in rural areas, text under poor illumination, distant text, partially occluded text, etc. For each character in the dataset, the annotation includes its underlying character, its bounding box, and 6 attributes. The attributes indicate whether it has complex background, whether it is raised, whether it is handwritten or printed, etc. The large size and diversity of this dataset make it suitable for training robust neural networks for various tasks, particularly detection and recognition. We give baseline results using several state-of-the-art networks, including AlexNet, OverFeat, Google Inception and ResNet for character recognition, and YOLOv2 for character detection in images. Overall Google Inception has the best performance on recognition with 80.5% top-1 accuracy, while YOLOv2 achieves an mAP of 71.0% on detection. Dataset, source code and trained models will all be publicly available on the website.
Adnexal Tumors of Skin: An Experience at a Tertiary Care Center at Delhi

Background: Adnexal skin tumors are a heterogeneous group of uncommon tumors usually misdiagnosed clinically due to a huge variety of types and their variants. Histopathology usually helps in establishing the diagnosis. Aims: The study was undertaken to analyze the morphological, clinical, and histological features of adnexal tumors (ATs) of the skin at our center over a period of 4 years. Subjects and Methods: retrospective study was conducted over a period of 4 years (April 2010–March 2014), comprising 25 ATs of skin diagnosed in the Department of Pathology, Hamdard Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi. All the consecutively reported AT cases were reviewed and reclassified as AT arising from sebaceous glands, hair follicles, or sweat glands. The concordance of clinical and histopathological diagnosis was also assessed. Results: Most of the ATs were benign (24/25) with head and neck being the most common location (72%). Nearly 56% of the tumors exhibited sweat gland differentiation, 28% hair follicle differentiation, and sebaceous gland tumors accounted for 16%. The most common varieties of tumors encountered in the present study included hidradenoma papilliferum and pilomatricoma. The concordance between clinical and histopathological diagnosis was found to be 50% approximately. Conclusions: ATs of the skin are rare neoplasms with benign tumors being far more common. They are often misdiagnosed clinically, so histopathology remains the gold standard for establishing an accurate diagnosis of skin ATs.
Evaluation of Flexible Tacrolimus Drug Concentration Monitoring Approach in Patients Receiving Extended‐Release Once‐Daily Tacrolimus Tablets

The majority of United States kidney transplant patients are treated with tacrolimus, a drug effective in preventing graft rejection, but with a narrow therapeutic range, necessitating close monitoring to avoid increased risks of transplant rejection or toxicity if the tacrolimus concentration is too low or too high, respectively. The trough drug concentration tests are time sensitive; patients treated on a twice‐daily basis have blood draws exactly 12 hours after their previous dose. The schedule's rigidity causes problems for both patients and health care providers. Novel once‐daily tacrolimus formulations such as LCPT (an extended‐release tablet by Veloxis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Cary, North Carolina) have allowed for blood draws on a once‐daily basis; however, even that schedule can be restrictive. Results from tests taken either before or after that 24‐hour target time may be discarded, or worse, may lead to inappropriate dose changes. Data from ASTCOFF, a phase 3B pharmacokinetic clinical trial (NCT02339246), demonstrated that the unique pharmacokinetic curve of LCPT may allow for a therapeutic monitoring window that extends for 3 hours before or after the 24‐hour monitoring target. Furthermore, important tools to help clinicians interpret these levels, such as formulas to estimate the 24‐hour trough level if an alternative monitoring time is used, were constructed from these data. These study results give treating clinicians access to data that allow them to safely use and monitor LCPT in their patients and expand the body of evidence surrounding differentiation and practical application of the novel LCPT tacrolimus formulation.
Early Marriage and Less Education as Independent Predictors for High Fertility in Yemen

Background: It is widely acknowledged that demographic variables have a major effect on high fertility, which classified as five or more (≥5) births per woman. In Yemen, the association of gender-sensitive demographic variables with high fertility is inadequately reported. Aim: This study was aimed to investigate the independent predictors of ≥ 5 living children among Yemeni mothers, according to their age at first marriage, residence, educational status, and occupation. Subjects and Methods: A cross-sectional study of a pretested semi-structured questionnaire was carried out among 400 mothers visiting the reproductive health centres in Dhamar governorate during the study time. Prevalence of ≥ 5 living children were examined among the study subjected demographic groups. Estimates of prevalence risk (PR) for predicting high fertility were developed using Poisson regression model incorporating the robust estimator and Log link function. Results: Outcomes of the multivariate model indicated that 10 – 14 and 15 – 19 ages at first marriage, illiteracy, and simple literacy were confirmed as independent predictors for high fertility level. Place of residence and occupation, however, emerged as dependent predictors. Conclusion: Early marriage and less education are the major factors underlying high fertility among the study population. These findings further confirm the need for serious interventions towards the community’s attitude devastating girls’ marriage and education.
Micro-mechanical modeling of nano-toughened adhesives

Signi cant toughening of structural adhesives is attainable with addition of nano particles.Experimental Tapered Double Cantilever Beam (TDCB) tests conducted at University Col-lege Dublin (UCD) have observed a signi cant dependance of the fracture toughness of theseadhesives with bond gap thickness[2]. Classical analysis suggests the change in toughness maybe attributed to a physical constraint of the size of which a plastic zone around a crack tipmay develop. However, simulation of these TDCB tests using OpenFOAM have found thatlittle plasticity develops in the bulk adhesive layer and is instead concentrated in the fractureprocess zone. Signi cant changes in void evolution with bond gap is observed on the fracturesurface of these tests using SEM. This research aims to develop a realistic numerical model ofthe studied adhesive to investigate the parameters a ecting damage evolution and fracture inthe fracture process zone, which ultimately a ect the toughness of these adhesives.
A sequence analysis of patterns in self‐harm in young people with and without experience of being looked after in care

OBJECTIVES Young people in the public care system ('looked-after' young people) have high levels of self-harm. DESIGN This paper reports the first detailed study of factors leading to self-harm over time in looked-after young people in England, using sequence analyses of the Card Sort Task for Self-harm (CaTS). METHODS Young people in care (looked-after group: n = 24; 14-21 years) and young people who had never been in care (contrast group: n = 21; 13-21 years) completed the CaTS, describing sequences of factors leading to their first and most recent episodes of self-harm. Lag sequential analysis determined patterns of significant transitions between factors (thoughts, feelings, behaviours, events) leading to self-harm across 6 months. RESULTS Young people in care reported feeling better immediately following their first episode of self-harm. However, fearlessness of death, impulsivity, and access to means were reported most proximal to recent self-harm. Although difficult negative emotions were salient to self-harm sequences in both groups, young people with no experience of being in care reported a greater range of negative emotions and transitions between them. For the contrast group, feelings of depression and sadness were a significant starting point of the self-harm sequence 6 months prior to most recent self-harm. CONCLUSIONS Sequences of factors leading to self-harm can change and evolve over time, so regular monitoring and assessment of each self-harm episode are needed. Support around easing and dealing with emotional distress is required. Restricting access to means to carry out potentially fatal self-harm attempts, particularly for the young persons with experience of being in care, is recommended. PRACTITIONER POINTS Self-harm (and factors associated with self-harm) can change and evolve over time; assessments need to reflect this. Looked-after young people reported feeling better after first self-harm; fearlessness of death, access to means, and impulsivity were reported as key in recent self-harm. Underlying emotional distress, particularly depression and self-hatred were important in both first and most recent self-harm. Looked-after young people should undergo regular monitoring and assessment of each self-harm episode and access to potentially fatal means should be restricted. The CaTS would have clinical utility as an assessment tool Recruiting participants can be a significant challenge in studies with looked-after children and young people. Future research with larger clinical samples would be valuable.