Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Risk of Vaginal Infections at Early Gestation in Patients with Diabetic Conditions during Pregnancy: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Pregnant women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) are reported to be at increased risk for infections of the genital tract. This study aimed to compare the prevalence of asymptomatic bacterial vaginosis (BV) and Candida colonization at early gestation between pregnant women with and without diabetic conditions during pregnancy. We included data from 8, 486 singleton pregnancies that underwent an antenatal infection screen-and-treat programme at our department. All women with GDM or pre-existing diabetes were retrospectively assigned to the diabetic group (DIAB), whereas non-diabetic women served as controls (CON). Prevalence for BV and Candida colonization was 9% and 14% in the DIAB group, and 9% and 13% in the CON group, respectively (n.s.). No significant difference regarding stillbirth and preterm delivery (PTD), defined as a delivery earlier than 37 + 0 (37 weeks plus 0 days) weeks of gestation was found. We could not find an increased risk of colonization with vaginal pathogens at early gestation in pregnant women with diabetes, compared to non-diabetic women. Large prospective studies are needed to evaluate the long-term risk of colonization with vaginal pathogens during the course of pregnancy in these women.
The effects of delayed access to feed and water on the physical and functional development of the digestive system of young turkeys

Abstract Three experiments were conducted with turkeys to determine the influence of delayed access to feed and water on the development of the digestive system. In all experiments, poults were randomly assigned to three placement times, 6, 30, and 54 h posthatch. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 were terminated when poults were 10, 28, and 14 d old, respectively. In Experiment 1, six poults per treatment were sampled on Days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10. In Experiment 2, 12 poults per treatment were sampled on Days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, and 28. The objective of Experiment 3 was to determine the effect of delayed placement on dietary MEn. Delaying access to feed and water for 54 h adversely affected BW through 10, 28, and 14 d of age in Experiments 1, 2, and 3, respectively (P < or = 0.01). Delayed access to feed and water for 54 h decreased the absolute weights of the small intestine and pancreas and reduced lengths of the small intestine through 5 d posthatch (P < or = 0.05). The relative weights of the small intestine and proventriculus were reduced by delayed access to nourishment through 4 d posthatch. Poults placed on feed at 54 h posthatch had decreased pancreatic amylase activity (P < or = 0.05) at 3 and 4 d, and trypsin activities were depressed at 3 d posthatch (P < or = 0.05). In Experiment 3, dietary MEn value determined at 4 d of age with poults placed 54 h posthatch was less (P < or = 0.07) than the MEn value obtained with poults placed at 6 h posthatch. A 54-h delay in access to feed and water generally delayed development of the digestive system, impaired nutrient utilization, and reduced BW.
Surface modification of high-performance polyimide fibers by oxygen plasma treatment

In order to improve the interfacial compatibility between the fibers and epoxy resins, polyimide (PI) fibers were modified using oxygen plasma with various treatment powers. The properties of PI fibers before and after surface modification were comparatively characterized according to their chemical composition, surface morphology, surface free energy, single filament tensile strength, and interfacial shear strength (IFSS). Most of the fiber properties, including the ratio of oxygen to nitrogen, oxygen concentration, surface free energy, and IFSS firstly increased with the plasma power, and then decreased when the plasma power was higher than 120 W. With a plasma power of 120 W, the oxygen concentration and the ratio of oxygen to carbon atoms (O/C) was 26% (22% for untreated fiber) and 0.38 (0.28 for untreated fiber), respectively. Meanwhile, the values of surface free energy and IFSS were 89% and 30% higher than those for untreated fiber, respectively. Furthermore, the values of single filament tensile strength for modified fibers were only 2.3% lower than those for pristine one. These results indicated that the compatibility between PI fibers and epoxy resins was greatly improved without compromising mechanical properties.
Prevalence and Determinants of Peripheral Microvascular Endothelial Dysfunction in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients: A Multicenter Cross-Sectional Study

Objectives To define the prevalence and determinants of peripheral microvascular endothelial dysfunction (ED) in a large series of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients free of previous cardiovascular events. Materials and Methods Data from 874 RA patients enrolled in the EDRA study (Endothelial Dysfunction Evaluation for Coronary Heart Disease Risk Estimation in Rheumatoid Arthritis—ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02341066) were analyzed. Log-transformed reactive hyperemia index (Ln-RHI) was evaluated by peripheral arterial tonometry (PAT) using the EndoPAT2000 device: values of Ln-RHI < 0.51 were considered indicative of peripheral ED. Results Peripheral microvascular ED was documented in one-third of RA patients (33.5%); in multiple logistic regression analysis, ACPA negativity and higher triglycerides concentrations were independently associated with the presence of peripheral ED [OR (95% CI) = 1.708 (1.218–2.396), p < 0.01 and OR (95% CI) = 1.005 (1.002–1.009), p < 0.01, respectively]. Multiple regression analysis showed a positive correlation between Ln-RHI values and systolic blood pressure and HDL cholesterol levels; furthermore, higher values of Ln-RHI were associated with ACPA positivity, while smoking habit was associated with lower Ln-RHI values. Conclusions This study demonstrates for the first time a high prevalence of peripheral microvascular ED in patients with RA free of previous cardiovascular events that appear to be only partially driven by traditional cardiovascular risk factors. The association between ACPA negativity and ED warrants further exploration.
Interactive effects of dietary copper, water copper, and Eimeria spp. infection on growth, water intake, and plasma and liver copper concentrations of poults.

The effects of dietary Cu, water Cu, and coccidial infection on poult growth performance and selected tissue mineral concentrations were investigated in a 10-d experiment using 200 5-d-old Nicholas toms (five replicates of 5 poults each; initial weight = 85 g). Uninfected and coccidiosis-infected (Eimeria meleagrimitis, Eimeria dispersa, Eimeria adenoeides, and Eimeria gallopavonis; cocci) poults were assigned to two levels of dietary Cu [Basal (B) and B + 204 mg Cu/kg diet on Days 1 to 10] and two levels of water Cu (0 and 103 mg Cu/kg water on Days 6 to 10). Dietary Cu and water Cu (main effects) did not affect (P > .10) gain, feed intake, gain:feed, water intake, hemoglobin, hematocrit, or liver Fe and Zn concentrations. Dietary Cu and water Cu increased (P < .03) liver and plasma Cu concentrations. The combination of dietary Cu and water Cu increased plasma Cu more than the sum of the Cu additions (dietary Cu by water Cu, P < .08). Coccidial infection reduced (P < .07) gain, feed intake, gain:feed, water intake, and hemoglobin, and increased (P < .02) liver Zn. Water Cu reduced water intake in uninfected poults but increased water intake in coccidiosis-infected poults (water Cu by cocci, P < .07). Water Cu increased hemoglobin in uninfected poults but decreased hemoglobin in coccidiosis-infected poults (water Cu by cocci, P < .07). Water Cu increased plasma Cu and liver Cu more in coccidiosis-infected poults than in uninfected poults (water Cu by cocci, P < .02). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Structure and mechanism of benzaldehyde dehydrogenase from Pseudomonas putida ATCC 12633, a member of the Class 3 aldehyde dehydrogenase superfamily

Benzaldehyde dehydrogenase from Pseudomonas putida (PpBADH) belongs to the Class 3 aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) family. The Class 3 ALDHs are unusual in that they are generally dimeric (rather than tetrameric), relatively non-specific and utilize both NAD+ and NADP+. To date, X-ray structures of three Class 3 ALDHs have been determined, of which only two have cofactor bound, both in the NAD+ form. Here we report the crystal structure of PpBADH in complex with NADP+ and a thioacyl intermediate adduct. The overall architecture of PpBADH resembles that of most other members of the ALDH superfamily, and the cofactor binding residues are well conserved. Conversely, the pattern of cofactor binding for the rat Class 3 ALDH differs from that of PpBADH and other ALDHs. This has been interpreted in terms of a different mechanism for the rat enzyme. Comparison with the PpBADH structure, as well as multiple sequence alignments, suggest that one of two conserved glutamates, at positions 215 (209 in rat) and 337 (333 in rat), would act as the general base necessary to hydrolyze the thioacyl intermediate. While the latter is the general base in the rat Class 3 ALDH, site-specific mutagenesis indicates that Glu215 is the likely candidate for PpBADH, a result more typical of the Class 1 and 2 ALDH families. Finally, this study shows that hydride transfer is not rate limiting, lending further credence to the suggestion that PpBADH is more similar to the Class 1 and 2 ALDHs than it is to other Class 3 ALDHs.
Fingerprinting Defenses at the Application Layer

Website Fingerprinting (WF) allows a passive network adversary to learn the websites that a client visits by analyzing traffic patterns that are unique to each website. It has been recently shown that these attacks are particularly effective against . onion sites, anonymous web servers hosted within the Tor network. Given the sensitive nature of the content of these services, the implications of WF on the Tor network are alarming. Prior work has only considered defenses at the client-side arguing that web servers lack of incentives to adopt countermeasures. Furthermore, most of these defenses have been designed to operate on the stream of network packets, making practical deployment difficult. In this paper, we propose two application-level defenses including the first server-side defense against WF, as . onion services have incentives to support it. The other defense is a lightweight client-side defense implemented as a browser add-on, improving ease of deployment over previous approaches. In our evaluations, the server-side defense is able to reduce WF accuracy on Tor . onion sites from 69.6% to 10% and the client-side defense reduces accuracy from 64% to 31.5%.
Object Detection with Mask-based Feature Encoding

Region-based Convolutional Neural Networks (R-CNNs) have achieved great success in the field of object detection. The existing R-CNNs usually divide a Region-of-Interest (ROI) into grids, and then localize objects by utilizing the spatial information reflected by the relative position of each grid in the ROI. In this paper, we propose a novel feature-encoding approach, where spatial information is represented through the spatial distributions of visual patterns. In particular, we design a Mask Weight Network (MWN) to learn a set of masks and then apply channel-wise masking operations to ROI feature map, followed by a global pooling and a cheap fully-connected layer. We integrate the newly designed feature encoder into the Faster R-CNN architecture. The resulting new Faster R-CNNs can preserve the object-detection accuracy of the standard Faster R-CNNs by using substantially fewer parameters. Compared to R-FCNs using state-of-art PS ROI pooling and deformable PS ROI pooling, the new Faster R-CNNs can produce higher object-detection accuracy with good run-time efficiency. We also show that a specifically designed and learned MWN can capture global contextual information and further improve the object-detection accuracy. Validation experiments are conducted on both PASCAL VOC and MS COCO datasets.
Improving Exploration of Topic Hierarchies: Comparative Testing of Simplified Library of Congress Subject Heading Structures

Many large digital collections are organized by sorting their items into topics and arranging these topics hierarchically, such as those displayed in a tree view. The resulting information organization structures mitigate some of the challenges of searching digital information realms; however, the topic hierarchies are often large and complex, and thus difficult to navigate. Automated techniques have been shown to produce significantly smaller, simplified versions of existing topic hierarchies while preserving access to the majority of the collection, but these simplified topic hierarchies have never been tested with human participants, and so it is not clear what effect simplification would have on the exploration and use of such structures for browsing and retrieval. This study partly addresses this gap by performing a comparative test with three groups of university students (N=62) performing ten topic hierarchy exploration tasks using one of three versions of the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) hierarchy: 1) the original LCSH hierarchy, acting as a baseline, 2) a shallower version of 1), and 3) a narrower version of 2). A quantitative analysis of measures of accuracy, time, and browsing shows that participants using the simplified trees were significantly more accurate and faster than those using the unmodified tree, and the narrower, balanced tree was also faster than the shallower tree. These results show that automated topic hierarchy simplification can facilitate the use of such hierarchies, which has implications for the development of information organization theory and human-information interaction techniques for similar information structures.
Selective Experience Replay for Lifelong Learning

Deep reinforcement learning has emerged as a powerful tool for a variety of learning tasks, however deep nets typically exhibit forgetting when learning multiple tasks in sequence. To mitigate forgetting, we propose an experience replay process that augments the standard FIFO buffer and selectively stores experiences in a long-term memory. We explore four strategies for selecting which experiences will be stored: favoring surprise, favoring reward, matching the global training distribution, and maximizing coverage of the state space. We show that distribution matching successfully prevents catastrophic forgetting, and is consistently the best approach on all domains tested. While distribution matching has better and more consistent performance, we identify one case in which coverage maximization is beneficial---when tasks that receive less trained are more important. Overall, our results show that selective experience replay, when suitable selection algorithms are employed, can prevent catastrophic forgetting.
Administration of doxycycline hydrochloride via drinking water to turkeys under laboratory and field conditions.

A series of experiments were carried out in order to determine doxycycline hydrochloride (DoxHCl) plasma levels in 6-wk-old turkeys medicated via drinking water containing DoxHCl at a concentration of 250 mg/L under laboratory and field conditions. Maximal plasma concentration (Cmax) values of 5.7 (+/-1.0) microgram/mL and 4.9 (+/-1.4) micrograms/mL obtained after DoxHCl administration during 2 and 7 d, respectively, were not significantly different. A significant difference was found between the area under the plasma concentration-time profile, calculated between 0 and 168 h (AUC(0-168)), Cmax, and the minimal plasma concentration (Cmin) values obtained after medication with a DoxHCl solution at a concentration of 250 mg/L (431.9 +/- 96.6 micrograms.h/mL, 4.9 +/- 1.4 micrograms/mL and 0.7 +/- 0.3 microgram/mL) and after medication with a DoxHCl solution at a concentration of 750 mg/L (1,176.5 +/- 201.8 micrograms.h/mL, 12.5 +/- 2.7 micrograms/mL and 2.9 +/- 0.4 micrograms/mL), respectively. The increase in body weight was also significantly higher for turkeys medicated with a DoxHCl solution at a concentration of 750 mg/L (83.7 g/d) than for the lower concentration (35.6 g/d). The DoxHCl solution uptake significantly decreased with the increase of DoxHCl concentration. A Cmax value of 1.7 +/- 0.6 micrograms/mL and a Cmin value of 0.5 +/- 0.1 microgram/mL were observed during the field experiment. Water consumption under laboratory conditions was followed for tap water (70 +/- 50 mL/kg.d) and for a DoxHCl solution at a concentration of 250 mg/L supplemented with 1 g anhydrous citric acid/L (119 +/- 6 mL/kg.d) and revealed to be not significantly different. The variability was significantly higher for tap water than for the DoxHCl solution. The stability of the DoxHCl solution containing 1 g citric acid/L over 24 h was 99% expressed as the percentage of the initial concentration.
The combined use of triacylglycerols containing medium-chain fatty acids and exogenous lipolytic enzymes as an alternative to in-feed antibiotics in piglets: concept, possibilities and limitations. An overview

In the search for alternatives to banned in-feed antibiotics, a concept was developed based on studies with medium-chain fatty acid-containing triacylglycerols (MCTAG) and selected lipases for in situ generation of diacylglycerols, monoacylglycerols and medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA) in the stomach and proximal gut of piglets. MCFA are known to have strong antibacterial properties but can hardly be used as such because of their repellent odour and taste. Those problems could be overcome by the generation of MCFA in situ. The concept was tested in vitro and validated in vivo with gastric-cannulated piglets and under field conditions, including effects on zootechnical performance, with classical antibacterial growth promoters or organic acids acting as positive controls. Furthermore, the metabolic and dietary constraints on the nutritional and nutritive use of MCTAG and/or MCFA (for example, the effects on digestive physiology, gut flora, feed intake, performance, carcass composition) are reviewed. The role of natural preduodenal lipase activity, the presence of endogenous plant lipase activity in raw materials and the feasibility for exogenous lipase addition to the feed are discussed, in order to optimize the concept. The present review illustrates the similarity of the action of MCFA and commonly used antimicrobials on the flora (total flora, Gram-positive flora, Gram-negative flora, potential pathogens) and epithelial morphology and histology in the foregut. These observations are believed to be the basis for obtaining optimal growth performances. In addition, these naturally occurring antimicrobial agents have little or no human or animal toxicity and induce no problems of residues and cross-resistance induction. They are proposed as a valuable alternative to in-feed antibiotics, used for growth promotion, and even for the preventive and curative treatment of gastrointestinal diseases.
Anti-factor H antibody affecting factor H cofactor activity in a patient with dense deposit disease

Complement alternative pathway dysregulation seems to be the pathophysiological basis of Dense Deposit Disease (DDD). Here, we describe a monoclonal anti-factor H (FH) autoantibody in a woman diagnosed with DDD with a monoclonal gammapathy. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays evidenced the presence of anti-FH antibodies in the patient's serum and showed that they were associated with the monoclonal IgG-λ fraction. These autoantibodies recognize the N-terminal region of FH and interfere with its regulatory function. In summary, in the DDD patient described here, the activation of complement alternative pathway was favoured by the presence of anti-FH autoantibodies that recognize the regulatory region of this protein and impede its function and which could ultimately cause the glomerulopathy.
"Is there anything else I can help you with?": Challenges in Deploying an On-Demand Crowd-Powered Conversational Agent

Intelligent conversational assistants, such as Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Amazon's Echo, have quickly become a part of our digital life. However, these assistants have major limitations, which prevents users from conversing with them as they would with human dialog partners. This limits our ability to observe how users really want to interact with the underlying system. To address this problem, we developed a crowd-powered conversational assistant, Chorus, and deployed it to see how users and workers would interact together when mediated by the system. Chorus sophisticatedly converses with end users over time by recruiting workers on demand, which in turn decide what might be the best response for each user sentence. Up to the first month of our deployment, 59 users have held conversations with Chorus during 320 conversational sessions. In this paper, we present an account of Chorus' deployment, with a focus on four challenges: (i) identifying when conversations are over, (ii) malicious users and workers, (iii) on-demand recruiting, and (iv) settings in which consensus is not enough. Our observations could assist the deployment of crowd-powered conversation systems and crowd-powered systems in general.
CRoss-lingual and Multilingual Speech Emotion Recognition on English and French

Research on multilingual speech emotion recognition faces the problem that most available speech corpora differ from each other in important ways, such as annotation methods or interaction scenarios. These inconsistencies complicate building a multilingual system. We present results for cross-lingual and multilingual emotion recognition on English and French speech data with similar characteristics in terms of interaction (human-human conversations). Further, we explore the possibility of fine-tuning a pre-trained cross-lingual model with only a small number of samples from the target language, which is of great interest for low-resource languages. To gain more insights in what is learned by the deployed convolutional neural network, we perform an analysis on the attention mechanism inside the network.
Android application for determining surgical variables in brain-tumor resection procedures

Abstract. The fidelity of image-guided neurosurgical procedures is often compromised due to the mechanical deformations that occur during surgery. In recent work, a framework was developed to predict the extent of this brain shift in brain-tumor resection procedures. The approach uses preoperatively determined surgical variables to predict brain shift and then subsequently corrects the patient’s preoperative image volume to more closely match the intraoperative state of the patient’s brain. However, a clinical workflow difficulty with the execution of this framework is the preoperative acquisition of surgical variables. To simplify and expedite this process, an Android, Java-based application was developed for tablets to provide neurosurgeons with the ability to manipulate three-dimensional models of the patient’s neuroanatomy and determine an expected head orientation, craniotomy size and location, and trajectory to be taken into the tumor. These variables can then be exported for use as inputs to the biomechanical model associated with the correction framework. A multisurgeon, multicase mock trial was conducted to compare the accuracy of the virtual plan to that of a mock physical surgery. It was concluded that the Android application was an accurate, efficient, and timely method for planning surgical variables.