Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vibroplasty in Severe Congenital or Acquired Meatal Stenosis by Coupling an Active Middle Ear Implant to the Short Process of the Incus.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the safety and effectiveness of coupling an active middle ear implant to the short process of the incus in subjects with meatal pathologies. STUDY DESIGN Retrospective study. SETTING Tertiary referral center. PATIENTS Twelve patients suffering from either congenital aural atresia or acquired meatal fibrosis. INTERVENTION Implantation of an active middle ear implant with coupling of the actuator to the short process of the incus. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Evaluation of the air conduction and bone conduction hearing thresholds pre- and postoperatively, aided warble-tone hearing thresholds, unaided and aided speech recognition in quiet and noise. Questionnaires on subjective benefit and quality of life. RESULTS Mean unaided postoperative air conduction and bone conduction thresholds did not vary significantly from preoperative values (p = 0.55 and 0.082, respectively). The mean functional gain amounted to 42.1 ± 8.8 dB, the mean aided sound field threshold of the implanted ear was 28.6 ± 8.6 dB. No significant difference in functional gain but a close to significant difference in postoperative aided thresholds (p = 0.053) were found between subjects with congenital atresia and acquired fibrosis. Subjective benefit assessed by the global score of the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit questionnaire revealed an improvement of 31 to 42%. CONCLUSION Coupling of the actuator to the short process of the incus is a safe and clinically promising procedure in cases where the standard application to the long process is not feasible. In pure conductive hearing loss the benefit is comparable to long incus process coupling, whereas in mixed hearing loss slightly worse results were observed.
Effects of a randomized gratitude intervention on death-related fear of recurrence in breast cancer survivors.

OBJECTIVE Among the most prevalent and distressing concerns endorsed by breast cancer survivors is fear of cancer recurrence (FOR), and one of the most salient facets is the worry that a recurrence of cancer could cause one's death. The primary goal of the present study was to test the effects of a brief, low-cost gratitude intervention on overall FOR and death-related FOR, positing pursuit of meaningful goals as a theoretically driven putative mediator. To replicate published tests of similar gratitude-eliciting interventions, positive affect (PA) was also considered as an outcome. METHOD Sixty-seven women with early stage breast cancer were randomly assigned to either a 6-week online gratitude intervention or a 6-week online control condition. Outcomes were assessed at pre- and posttreatment, as well as 1 month and 3 months after the end of treatment. The mediator, meaningful goal pursuit, was measured via assessments over the 6-week intervention period. RESULTS Results revealed that patients in the gratitude intervention experienced a significant decrease in death-related FOR compared to the control condition. Moreover, this effect was significantly mediated by meaningful goal pursuit (and not by PA). The gratitude intervention was also found to prevent declines in PA observed in the control condition. CONCLUSIONS Overall, findings support the notion that a brief gratitude intervention can promote well-being and psychological adaptation to cancer by stimulating the pursuit of meaningful goals and subsequently reducing death-related FOR. (PsycINFO Database Record
Application of Electron Spin Resonance Techniques to High Polymer Fracture

Abstract High polymer solids are often characterized by a complex response to mechanical excitations. This response is directly related to structural properties: the nature of the molecular chains, the kind and number of cross-links, degree of crystallinity, intermolecular forces, and the content and nature of fillers and plasticizers. These properties also influence the time-dependent ultimate strength of the material. It has been, therefore, and still is well-established practice to correlate ultimate strength, i.e., occurrence of fracture, with information obtained from a study of the elastic, anelastic, and plastic deformation of the material at various temperatures and under various modes of mechanical excitation.
Constraints on the Early Terrestrial Surface UV Environment Relevant to Prebiotic Chemistry.

The UV environment is a key boundary condition to abiogenesis. However, considerable uncertainty exists as to planetary conditions and hence surface UV at abiogenesis. Here, we present two-stream multilayer clear-sky calculations of the UV surface radiance on Earth at 3.9 Ga to constrain the UV surface fluence as a function of albedo, solar zenith angle (SZA), and atmospheric composition. Variation in albedo and latitude (through SZA) can affect maximum photoreaction rates by a factor of >10.4; for the same atmosphere, photoreactions can proceed an order of magnitude faster at the equator of a snowball Earth than at the poles of a warmer world. Hence, surface conditions are important considerations when computing prebiotic UV fluences. For climatically reasonable levels of CO2, fluence shortward of 189 nm is screened out, meaning that prebiotic chemistry is robustly shielded from variations in UV fluence due to solar flares or variability. Strong shielding from CO2 also means that the UV surface fluence is insensitive to plausible levels of CH4, O2, and O3. At scattering wavelengths, UV fluence drops off comparatively slowly with increasing CO2 levels. However, if SO2 and/or H2S can build up to the ≥1-100 ppm level as hypothesized by some workers, then they can dramatically suppress surface fluence and hence prebiotic photoprocesses. H2O is a robust UV shield for λ < 198 nm. This means that regardless of the levels of other atmospheric gases, fluence ≲198 nm is only available for cold, dry atmospheres, meaning sources with emission ≲198 (e.g., ArF excimer lasers) can only be used in simulations of cold environments with low abundance of volcanogenic gases. On the other hand, fluence at 254 nm is unshielded by H2O and is available across a broad range of [Formula: see text], meaning that mercury lamps are suitable for initial studies regardless of the uncertainty in primordial H2O and CO2 levels. Key Words: Radiative transfer-Origin of life-Planetary environments-UV radiation-Prebiotic chemistry. Astrobiology 17, 169-204.
&ggr;&dgr; T Cells Mediate Angiotensin II-Induced Hypertension and Vascular Injury

Background: Innate antigen-presenting cells and adaptive immune T cells have been implicated in the development of hypertension. However, the T-lymphocyte subsets involved in the pathophysiology of hypertension remain unclear. A small subset of innate-like T cells expressing the &ggr;&dgr; T cell receptor (TCR) rather than the &agr;&bgr; TCR could play a role in the initiation of the immune response in hypertension. We aimed to determine whether angiotensin (Ang) II caused kinetic changes in &ggr;&dgr; T cells; deficiency in &ggr;&dgr; T cells blunted Ang II-induced hypertension, vascular injury, and T-cell activation; and &ggr;&dgr; T cells are associated with human hypertension. Methods: Male C57BL/6 wild-type and Tcr&dgr;−/− mice, which are devoid of &ggr;&dgr; T cells, or wild-type mice injected IP with control isotype IgG or &ggr;&dgr; T cell-depleting antibodies, were infused or not with Ang II for 3, 7, or 14 days. T-cell profiling was determined by flow cytometry, systolic blood pressure (SBP) by telemetry, and mesentery artery endothelial function by pressurized myography. TCR &ggr; constant region gene expression levels and clinical data of a whole blood gene expression microarray study, including normotensive and hypertensive subjects, were used to demonstrate an association between &ggr;&dgr; T cells and SBP. Results: Seven- and 14-day Ang II infusion increased &ggr;&dgr; T-cell numbers and activation in the spleen of wild-type mice (P<0.05). Fourteen days of Ang II infusion increased SBP (P<0.01) and decreased mesenteric artery endothelial function (P<0.01) in wild-type mice, both of which were abrogated in Tcr&dgr;−/− mice (P<0.01). Anti-TCR&ggr;&dgr; antibody-induced &ggr;&dgr; T-cell depletion blunted Ang II-induced SBP rise and endothelial dysfunction (P<0.05), compared with isotype antibody-treated Ang II-infused mice. Ang II-induced T-cell activation in the spleen and perivascular adipose tissue was blunted in Tcr&dgr;−/− mice (P<0.01). In humans, the association between SBP and &ggr;&dgr; T cells was demonstrated by a multiple linear regression model integrating whole blood TCR &ggr; constant region gene expression levels and age and sex (R2=0.12, P<1×10-6). Conclusions: &ggr;&dgr; T cells mediate Ang II-induced SBP elevation, vascular injury, and T-cell activation in mice. &ggr;&dgr; T cells might contribute to the development of hypertension in humans.
Learning over Knowledge-Base Embeddings for Recommendation

Providing model-generated explanations in recommender systems is important to user experience. State-of-the-art recommendation algorithms—especially the collaborative filtering (CF)- based approaches with shallow or deep models—usually work with various unstructured information sources for recommendation, such as textual reviews, visual images, and various implicit or explicit feedbacks. Though structured knowledge bases were considered in content-based approaches, they have been largely ignored recently due to the availability of vast amounts of data and the learning power of many complex models. However, structured knowledge bases exhibit unique advantages in personalized recommendation systems. When the explicit knowledge about users and items is considered for recommendation, the system could provide highly customized recommendations based on users’ historical behaviors and the knowledge is helpful for providing informed explanations regarding the recommended items. A great challenge for using knowledge bases for recommendation is how to integrate large-scale structured and unstructured data, while taking advantage of collaborative filtering for highly accurate performance. Recent achievements in knowledge-base embedding (KBE) sheds light on this problem, which makes it possible to learn user and item representations while preserving the structure of their relationship with external knowledge for explanation. In this work, we propose to explain knowledge-base embeddings for explainable recommendation. Specifically, we propose a knowledge-base representation learning framework to embed heterogeneous entities for recommendation, and based on the embedded knowledge base, a soft matching algorithm is proposed to generate personalized explanations for the recommended items. Experimental results on real-world e-commerce datasets verified the superior recommendation performance and the explainability power of our approach compared with state-of-the-art baselines.
Presbycusis Disrupts Spontaneous Activity Revealed by Resting-State Functional MRI

Purpose: Presbycusis, age-related hearing loss, is believed to involve neural changes in the central nervous system, which is associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment. The goal of this study was to determine if presbycusis disrupted spontaneous neural activity in specific brain areas involved in auditory processing, attention and cognitive function using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) approach. Methods: Hearing and resting-state fMRI measurements were obtained from 22 presbycusis patients and 23 age-, sex- and education-matched healthy controls. To identify changes in spontaneous neural activity associated with age-related hearing loss, we compared the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) and regional homogeneity (ReHo) of fMRI signals in presbycusis patients vs. controls and then determined if these changes were linked to clinical measures of presbycusis. Results: Compared with healthy controls, presbycusis patients manifested decreased spontaneous activity mainly in the superior temporal gyrus (STG), parahippocampal gyrus (PHG), precuneus and inferior parietal lobule (IPL) as well as increased neural activity in the middle frontal gyrus (MFG), cuneus and postcentral gyrus (PoCG). A significant negative correlation was observed between ALFF/ReHo activity in the STG and average hearing thresholds in presbycusis patients. Increased ALFF/ReHo activity in the MFG was positively correlated with impaired Trail-Making Test B (TMT-B) scores, indicative of impaired cognitive function involving the frontal lobe. Conclusions: Presbycusis patients have disrupted spontaneous neural activity reflected by ALFF and ReHo measurements in several brain regions; these changes are associated with specific cognitive performance and speech/language processing. These findings mainly emphasize the crucial role of aberrant resting-state ALFF/ReHo patterns in presbycusis patients and will lead to a better understanding of the neuropathological mechanisms underlying presbycusis.
Molecular mechanism underlying juvenile hormone-mediated repression of precocious larval–adult metamorphosis

Significance Juvenile hormone (JH) intricately controls molting and metamorphosis in holometabolous insects. Ecdysone-induced protein 93F (E93) functions as an adult specifier gene in the pupal–adult transition. JH is known to repress E93 expression to prevent immature larvae from bypassing the pupal stage and progressing to precocious adult development; however, the molecular mechanism underlying JH-mediated E93 repression remains unknown. Here, we demonstrated that JH-inducible Krüppel homolog 1 functions as a direct transcriptional repressor of E93. This study markedly advances the present understanding of the molecular basis of JH function in repressing insect metamorphosis. Juvenile hormone (JH) represses precocious metamorphosis of larval to pupal and adult transitions in holometabolous insects. The early JH-inducible gene Krüppel homolog 1 (Kr-h1) plays a key role in the repression of metamorphosis as a mediator of JH action. Previous studies demonstrated that Kr-h1 inhibits precocious larval–pupal transition in immature larva via direct transcriptional repression of the pupal specifier Broad-Complex (BR-C). JH was recently reported to repress the adult specifier gene Ecdysone-induced protein 93F (E93); however, its mechanism of action remains unclear. Here, we found that JH suppressed ecdysone-inducible E93 expression in the epidermis of the silkworm Bombyx mori and in a B. mori cell line. Reporter assays in the cell line revealed that the JH-dependent suppression was mediated by Kr-h1. Genome-wide ChIP-seq analysis identified a consensus Kr-h1 binding site (KBS, 14 bp) located in the E93 promoter region, and EMSA confirmed that Kr-h1 directly binds to the KBS. Moreover, we identified a C-terminal conserved domain in Kr-h1 essential for the transcriptional repression of E93. Based on these results, we propose a mechanism in which JH-inducible Kr-h1 directly binds to the KBS site upstream of the E93 locus to repress its transcription in a cell-autonomous manner, thereby preventing larva from bypassing the pupal stage and progressing to precocious adult development. These findings help to elucidate the molecular mechanisms regulating the metamorphic genetic network, including the functional significance of Kr-h1, BR-C, and E93 in holometabolous insect metamorphosis.
Partially restored resting-state functional connectivity in women recovered from anorexia nervosa.

BACKGROUND We have previously shown increased resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in the frontoparietal network (FPN) and the default mode network (DMN) in patients with acute anorexia nervosa. Based on these findings we investigated within-network rsFC in patients recovered from anorexia nervosa to examine whether these abnormalities are a state or trait marker of the disease. To extend the understanding of functional connectivity in patients with anorexia nervosa, we also estimated rsFC between large-scale networks. METHODS Girls and women recovered from anorexia nervosa and pair-wise, age- and sex-matched healthy controls underwent a resting-state fMRI scan. Using independent component analyses (ICA), we isolated the FPN, DMN and salience network. We used standard comparisons as well as a hypothesis-based approach to test the findings of our previous rsFC study in this recovered cohort. Temporal correlations between network time-course pairs were computed to investigate functional network connectivity (FNC). RESULTS Thirty-one patients recovered from anorexia nervosa and 31 controls participated in our study. Standard group comparisons revealed reduced rsFC between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the FPN in the recovered group. Using a hypothesis-based approach we extended the previous finding of increased rsFC between the angular gyrus and the FPN in patients recovered from anorexia nervosa. No group differences in FNC were revealed. LIMITATIONS The study design did not allow us to conclude that the difference found in rsFC constitutes a scar effect of the disease. CONCLUSION This study suggests that some abnormal rsFC patterns found in patients recovered from anorexia nervosa normalize after long-term weight restoration, while distorted rsFC in the FPN, a network that has been associated with cognitive control, may constitute a trait marker of the disorder.
Acute Aerobic Exercise Hastens Emotional Recovery From a Subsequent Stressor

Objective: Despite findings that regular exercise is broadly associated with emotional well-being, more basic research is needed to deepen our understanding of the exercise and emotion connection. This paper examines how acute aerobic exercise in particular influences subjective emotional recovery from a subsequent stressor. Potential mediators and moderators, including level of physical fitness, attentional control, and perseverative negative thinking were explored. Method: All of the participants (n = 95) completed 3 laboratory visits, each including 1 of 3 activities (i.e., cycling, resting, stretching), tests of working memory and attentional control, and an experimental stressor. Self-reported rumination after the stressor and the experience of positive and negative emotions throughout the study were recorded. Results: In this within-subjects paradigm, as expected, higher rumination in response to the stressor predicted more persistent negative emotion afterward; this effect was attenuated only by prior acute aerobic exercise, in this case, cycling, both 5 min and 15 min poststressor. This effect was unrelated to physical fitness or cognitive performance. Physical fitness level did predict greater attentional control and the capacity to update working memory. Conclusion: Acute aerobic exercise may facilitate subjective emotional recovery from a subsequent stressor and improve emotional flexibility.
Skin color detection based super pixel

Skin color has a wide range of applications in the fields such as face recognition and gesture recognition. Many pix-el based skin color detection methods are proposed for now, however, it's not confidence to determine whether it is a skin color just based on single pixel in many case. In this paper, super pixel was adopted to detect skin color. Firstly, color images was segmented by the watershed algorithm to get super pixels and the corresponding ground-truth images; then the features of super pixels was extracted as input data and the ground-truth images was ta-ken as output data; finally, support vector machine and random forests was adopted to train the input data and the output data. Experimental results show that, the method based on the features proposed by this paper using SVM and random forests are both better performance than the method based on single pixel.
Characterisation and Wettability Properties of Anodised Titanium in Sulphuric Acid for Biomedical Application

Anodic oxidation is an effective method to modify the smooth surface (bioinert) of titanium to rough or porous surface (bioactive) to be able the titanium to be used as artificial implant in biomedical. In this study, the effect of ultraviolet (UV) light treatment on anodised titanium in various UV light treatment conditions is evaluated. Anodised titanium was prepared using traditional anodic oxidation method in 0.3 M of sulphuric acid (H2SO4). The anodised titanium was modified by using 100 V of applied voltage with constant 75 mA.cm-2 current density for 10 min of oxidation process at room temperature. After anodic oxidation, the anodised titanium undergoes UV light treatment under different wavelength and soaking duration in distilled water. The anodised titanium films were characterised using X-ray diffraction (XRD), and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). Contact angle goniometer was used to determine the wettability properties of UV light treated anodised titanium. From this study, the UV light treatment affect the wettability properties of the anodised titanium without changing it physical properties. The UV-C (365 nm) of UV light wavelength with 4 hours soaking duration produced better hydrophilic properties. This will leads better apatite formation ability when soak in simulated body fluid for bioactivity test.
Symptom burden in mesothelioma patients admitted to home palliative care

Abstract Context: Mesothelioma is a very aggressive cancer that is brought on by asbestos exposure. Because there is a long latency period between exposure to asbestos and symptoms of disease, most patients with mesothelioma present with advanced disease and survive an average of 8–12 months. Thus, best supportive care should be considered critical to optimally manage these patients. Aim: The aim of this study was to examine the epidemiological characteristics and symptom burden of mesothelioma patients when admitted to home palliative care. Methods: The charts of a consecutive sample of patients admitted to the home palliative care program with a diagnosis of mesothelioma in an endemic industrialized area were reviewed. The estimated survival time was about two months from admission. Epidemiological characteristics were collected. Karnofsky status, characteristics of pain and analgesic treatment at time of admission were recorded. ESAS (Edmonton Symptom Assessment System) and other clinical problems reported in the charts at admission time were also recorded. Results: Of the 674 charts reviewed, 56 patients (8.3%) had a diagnosis of mesothelioma. About three quarters of those had pain, with 18 and 2 patients with moderate and severe pain, respectively, despite receiving medium to high doses of opioids. The principal pain site was the chest. Pain was significantly associated with opioid consumption (p < .0005) and dyspnea (p = .049). Symptom burden was relevant, with a global ESAS of about 40. Pain, weakness, poor appetite, poor well-being, and dyspnea were the most frequent symptoms with the highest intensity; cough and pleural effusion were more frequently present as clinical problems. Conclusion: This study shows that mesothelioma is a devastating cancer with a relevant symptom burden, and that patients were referred to palliative care late in the course of their disease, suggesting that earlier integration of palliative care should be considered to relieve suffering in all disease stages – not only at the end of life.