Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ticagrelor versus clopidogrel in East-Asian patients with acute coronary syndromes: a meta-analysis of randomized trials.

AIM To determine whether ticagrelor or clopidogrel provides the best outcomes for East-Asian patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS). MATERIALS & METHODS Identification and interrogation of electronic databases through 26 July 2016 revealed fully randomized and controlled trials wherein primary efficacy end points were major adverse cardiovascular events and all-cause death among East-Asian patients with ACS. Major bleeding and noncoronary artery bypass grafts major bleeding were primary safety end points. RESULTS Two studies met the inclusion criteria. Compared with clopidogrel, ticagrelor has no statistical difference in the end points of major adverse cardiovascular events (risk ratio [RR]: 1.08; 95% CI: 0.62-1.91; p = 0.7260), myocardial infarction (RR: 1.200; 95% CI: 0.64-2.24; p = 0.5669), stroke (RR: 1.11; 95% CI: 0.46-2.66; p = 0.8165), cardiovascular death (RR: 0.89; 95% CI: 0.48-1.65; p = 0.7150), or all-cause mortality (RR: 0.92; 95% CI: 0.43-1.96; p = 0.8252). When compared with clopidogrel, it was found that ticagrelor provoked marked increases in major bleeding (RR: 1.48; p = 0.0430) and noncoronary artery bypass grafts-associated major bleeding (RR: 1.62; p = 0.0454). CONCLUSION Ticagrelor and clopidogrel displayed similar efficacies in ACS presenting patients from East Asia. Administration of ticagrelor also displays some side effects including an increased risk of major bleeding.
Impacts of somatic mutations on gene expression: an association perspective

Assessing the functional impacts of somatic mutations in cancer genomes is critical for both identifying driver mutations and developing molecular targeted therapies. Currently, it remains a fundamental challenge to distinguish the patterns through which mutations execute their biological effects and to infer biological mechanisms underlying these patterns. To this end, we systematically studied the association between somatic mutations in protein-coding regions and expression profiles, which represents an indirect measurement of impacts. We defined mutation features (mutation type, cluster and status) and built linear regression models to assess mutation associations with mRNA expression and protein expression. Our results presented a comprehensive landscape of the associations between mutation features and expression profile in multiple cancer types, including 62 genes showing mutation type associated expression changes, 21 genes showing mutation cluster associations and 51 genes showing mutation status associations. We revealed four characteristics of the patterns that mutations impact on expression. First, we showed that mutation type (truncation versus amino acid-altering mutations) was the most important determinant of expression levels. Second, we detected mutation clusters in well-studied oncogenes that were associated with gene expression. Third, we found both similarities and differences in association patterns existed within and across cancer types. Fourth, although many of the observed associations stay stable at both mRNA and protein expression levels, there are also novel associations uniquely observed at the protein level, which warrant future investigation. Taken together, our findings provided implications for cancer driver gene prioritization and insights into the functional consequences of somatic mutations.
Hallucinations Experienced by Visually Impaired: Charles Bonnet Syndrome

&NA; Charles Bonnet Syndrome is a condition where visual hallucinations occur as a result of damage along the visual pathway. Patients with Charles Bonnet Syndrome maintain partial or full insight that the hallucinations are not real, absence of psychological conditions, and absence of hallucinations affecting other sensory modalities, while maintaining intact intellectual functioning. Charles Bonnet Syndrome has been well documented in neurologic, geriatric medicine, and psychiatric literature, but there is lack of information in optometric and ophthalmologic literature. Therefore, increased awareness of signs and symptoms associated with Charles Bonnet Syndrome is required among practicing clinicians. This review of the literature will also identify other etiologies of visual hallucinations, pathophysiology of Charles Bonnet Syndrome, and effective management strategies.
Stressful Family Environments and Children’s Behavioral Control: A Multimethod Test and Replication Study With Twins

Young children’s behavioral control predicts a broad range of developmental outcomes in child- and adulthood. It is therefore important to study how individual differences in behavioral control arise. Previous studies suggest that there are both genetic and environmental influences, which were estimated in the current study using a sample of mono- and dizygotic same-sex twins. Furthermore, we examined the associations between indicators of a stressful family environment like household chaos, parenting daily hassles, and parental depressive symptoms and children’s behavioral control in 2 samples. Children of the same twin pair were randomly divided over 2 samples; a test (N = 201, 48.3% boys, M age 46.53 months) and replication sample (N = 201, 49.8% boys, M age 46.06 months). Both parents reported on their children’s effortful control via the Child Behavior Questionnaire and children’s cheating behavior was observed during a throwing game. We found that AE models fitted the data for effortful control (A = 31%, E = 69%) and cheating (A = 16%, E = 84%) best. Path analyses revealed that children of parents experiencing more parenting daily hassles and depressive symptoms had lower levels of effortful control in the test sample. Furthermore, we found that children growing up in more chaotic households (parent report) had an increased risk of being in the cheating group versus the possible intention to cheat group in the test sample. These results were partially replicated. We suggest that the role of stressful family environments in the development of behavioral control should be considered when setting up prevention and intervention programs targeting children’s behavioral control.
Inflammation modifies the association of obesity with circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels in cancer survivors

Obesity, inflammation, and circulating 25‐hydroxyvitamin D (25‐OHD) have distinct roles in cancer prognosis. The interplay of these factors was investigated by evaluating the associations of body mass index (BMI) with circulating 25‐OHD levels in cancer survivors and determining whether associations were modified by inflammation, defined by C‐reactive protein (CRP) levels.
NS5ATP13 Promotes Liver Fibrogenesis Via Activation of Hepatic Stellate Cells

Liver fibrosis is a reversible wound‐healing response to any etiology of chronic hepatic injuries. Activation of hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) is the key event in liver fibrogenesis. Generally, persistent activation and proliferation of HSCs results in liver fibrosis progression, while primary mechanisms of liver fibrosis resolution are apoptosis and reversion to a quiescent phenotype of activated HSCs. NS5ATP13 (HCV NS5A‐transactivated protein 13) is involved in nucleologenesis and tumorigenesis, but its role in liver fibrosis and HSC activation remains unclear. This study found that NS5ATP13 was upregulated in both fibrotic liver tissues and activated human HSCs induced by TGF‐β1. Moreover, NS5ATP13 enhanced extracellular matrix (ECM) production and HSC activation, with or without TGF‐β1 treatment, likely involving the TGF‐β1/Smad3 signaling pathway. Additionally, NS5ATP13 boosted HSC proliferation by inhibiting cell apoptosis. Furthermore, HCV NS5A promoted the profibrogenic effect of NS5ATP13 partly through TGF‐β1 and NF‐κB p65 (RelA) upregulation. Meanwhile, NS5ATP13 was required for the pro‐fibrogenic effect of NF‐κB. Moreover, NS5ATP13 and NF‐κB phosphorylation as well as HSC activation were reduced by CX‐4945, a CK2 specific inhibitor. These findings indicated that NS5ATP13 acts as a profibrogenic factor, providing a potential target for antifibrotic therapies. J. Cell. Biochem. 118: 2463–2473, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A new false belief test for 36-month-olds

We report two studies that suggest that some 36-month-old (and younger) children understand others' false beliefs. In the false belief conditions, children and two adults (E1 and E2) watched as an object was put into a container. E1 left the room, and E2 switched that object with another. E1 returned, expressed her desire for the object, and struggled to open the container (without succeeding). She spied both objects across the room and said to the child. ‘Oh, there it is. Can you get it for me? ’ In other conditions, the object was not switched or E1 witnessed the switch. Other variations included using a novel word for the object and removing the ‘pull of the real’. Measures of children's latency and uncertainty were taken to determine whether those who were correct on the false belief tasks were guessing (luckily) or truly understanding. Results showed that between one-third and almost two-thirds of children took account of the adult's false belief when deciding which object the adult was requesting. We compare this task with other implicit and explicit tasks. We also conclude that certain task demands (e.g. the pull of the real) in traditional theory of mind assessments are unnecessary.
Inference of Causal Networks from Time-Varying Transcriptome Data via Sparse Coding

Temporal analysis of genome-wide data can provide insights into the underlying mechanism of the biological processes in two ways. First, grouping the temporal data provides a richer, more robust representation of the underlying processes that are co-regulated. The net result is a significant dimensional reduction of the genome-wide array data into a smaller set of vocabularies for bioinformatics analysis. Second, the computed set of time-course vocabularies can be interrogated for a potential causal network that can shed light on the underlying interactions. The method is coupled with an experiment for investigating responses to high doses of ionizing radiation with and without a small priming dose. From a computational perspective, inference of a causal network can rapidly become computationally intractable with the increasing number of variables. Additionally, from a bioinformatics perspective, larger networks always hinder interpretation. Therefore, our method focuses on inferring the simplest network that is computationally tractable and interpretable. The method first reduces the number of temporal variables through consensus clustering to reveal a small set of temporal templates. It then enforces simplicity in the network configuration through the sparsity constraint, which is further regularized by requiring continuity between consecutive time points. We present intermediate results for each computational step, and apply our method to a time-course transcriptome dataset for a cell line receiving a challenge dose of ionizing radiation with and without a prior priming dose. Our analyses indicate that (i) the priming dose increases the diversity of the computed templates (e.g., diversity of transcriptome signatures); thus, increasing the network complexity; (ii) as a result of the priming dose, there are a number of unique templates with delayed and oscillatory profiles; and (iii) radiation-induced stress responses are enriched through pathway and subnetwork studies.
SIFAT DASAR KAYU JATI PLUS PERHUTANI DARI BERBAGAI UMUR DAN KAITANNYA DENGAN SIFAT DAN KUALITAS PENGERINGAN (Wood Basic Properties of Jati Plus Perhutani from Different Ages and Their Relationships to Drying Properties and Qualities)

Jati Plus Perhutani (JPP) is a fast growing teak ( L.f.) species that has been developed since 20 years ago by Research and Development Center of Perum Perhutani through a serial program of tree improvement. At the same age, stem diameter of this superior teak tree is larger than that of the conventional teak. However wood behavior during kiln drying has not been much studied. This study examined drying property and quality of 5, 7 and 9 year old of JPP woods in relation to their wood basic properties Results showed that basic properties of JPP wood are inferior compared than those of conventional teak wood. Drying property and quality are affected significantly by cell wall thickness, juvenile wood portion, heartwood-sapwood percentage, MFA, initial moisture content, wood density and specific gravity, as well as growth stresses. Compared to those of conventional teak wood with similar in diameter (older tree), drying quality of JPP wood until 9 year-old was still poor and unfavorable. Based on the drying quality and specific condition of the JPP wood, the minimummaximum drying temperature was around of 30-40°C for 5 year-old, 40-50°C for 7year-old and 40-60°C for 9 year-old
Modelling engagement in dementia through behaviour. Contribution for socially interactive robotics

In this paper, we present a novel tool to measure engagement in people with dementia playing board games and interacting with a social robot, Pleo. We carried out two studies to reach a comprehensive inventory of behaviours accounting for engagement in dementia. The first one is an exploratory study aimed at modelling engagement in cognitive board games. The second one is a longitudinal study to investigate how people with dementia express engagement in cognitive games and in interactions with social robots. We adopted a technique coming from Ethology to mould behaviour, the ethogram. Ethogram is founded on low level behaviours, and allows hierarchical structuring. Herein, we present preliminary results consisting in the description of two ethograms and in their structuring obtained through thematic analysis. Such results show that an underlying structure of engagement exists across activities, and that different activities trigger different behavioural displays of engagement that adhere to such a structure.
DO COTTONMOUTHS (AGKISTRODON PISCIVORUS) HABITUATE TO HUMAN CONFRONTATIONS?

Abstract The defensive behavior of snakes towards humans has been well documented. Ironically, many of these early studies focused on harmless colubrid species. Knowledge of venomous snake defensive behavior is limited, and further research is necessary to understand how pitvipers react to human confrontations. I performed laboratory tests daily over a period of five days to investigate whether cottonmouths would habituate to handling. Eleven days after the last habituation test, snakes were tested again to see if cottonmouths show a recovery response. Cottonmouths exhibited a significant change in defensive behavior between Day 1 and Day 5 of the experiment. However, they did not significantly revert to their original behavior 11 days later.
Coordination and Success in Multidisciplinary Scientific Collaborations

The research enterprise increasingly involves multidisciplinary collaboration, sometimes over geographic distance. Technological advances have made these collaborations possible, and the history of past innovations suggests these collaborations are desirable. Yet multidisciplinary projects can carry high coordination costs. This study investigated how collaborations address disciplinary differences and geographic dispersion to coordinate people and tasks to achieve success. We conducted an inductive study of 62 scientific collaborations supported by a program of the U.S. National Science Foundation in 1998 and 1999. Projects with principal investigators in more disciplines did not appear to suffer more coordination losses and reported as many positive outcomes as did projects involving fewer disciplines. By contrast, geographic dispersion, rather than multidisciplinarity, was most problematic. Dispersed projects, with principal investigators from more universities, were significantly less well coordinated and reported fewer positive outcomes than collocated projects. Coordination mechanisms that brought researchers together physically somewhat reduced the negative impact of dispersion. We discuss several implications for theory, practice, and policy.
Exceptional Response to Nivolumab and Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT) in Neuroendocrine Cervical Carcinoma with High Tumor Mutational Burden: Management Considerations from the Center For Personalized Cancer Therapy at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center

This article reports a patient with a rare metastatic, chemotherapy‐refractory neuroendocrine carcinoma who was treated with stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) combined with anti‐programmed cell death protein 1 antibody. The novel treatment modality of SBRT combined with a checkpoint inhibitor is discussed, as well as the implications of molecular profiling and tumor mutational burden as potential predictors of response.
Effects of Low-Volume, High-Intensity Training on Performance in Competitive Swimmers: A Systematic Review

Abstract Nugent, FJ, Comyns, TM, Burrows, E, and Warrington, GD. Effects of low-volume, high-intensity training on performance in competitive swimmers: a systematic review. J Strength Cond Res 31(3): 837–847, 2017—The purpose of this systematic review was to examine the extent and quality of the current research literature to determine the effects of low-volume, high-intensity training (HIT) on physiological performance and swimming performance in competitive swimmers. The methodology followed the preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocol. A search of relevant databases and conference proceedings was performed until December 2015. The inclusion criteria were (a) competitive swimmers, (b) ≥4 weeks HIT intervention, (c) comparison group had to involve a higher training volume, (d) outcome measures of physiological and swimming performance, and (e) all experimental study designs. Quality assessment was performed using the Quality Index checklist. Results indicate that of the 538 studies retrieved, 7 studies met the inclusion criteria. Six of the 7 studies found that an HIT intervention resulted in significant improvements in physiological performance. Four of the 7 studies found that HIT resulted in significant improvements in swimming performance, whereas none of the 7 studies resulted in a reduction in physiological or swimming performance. Despite the positive findings of this review, the short study duration is a limitation to a number of studies. The current evidence on the effects of HIT on performance is promising; however, it is difficult to draw accurate conclusions until further research has been conducted.
Jointly learning word embeddings using a corpus and a knowledge base

Methods for representing the meaning of words in vector spaces purely using the information distributed in text corpora have proved to be very valuable in various text mining and natural language processing (NLP) tasks. However, these methods still disregard the valuable semantic relational structure between words in co-occurring contexts. These beneficial semantic relational structures are contained in manually-created knowledge bases (KBs) such as ontologies and semantic lexicons, where the meanings of words are represented by defining the various relationships that exist among those words. We combine the knowledge in both a corpus and a KB to learn better word embeddings. Specifically, we propose a joint word representation learning method that uses the knowledge in the KBs, and simultaneously predicts the co-occurrences of two words in a corpus context. In particular, we use the corpus to define our objective function subject to the relational constrains derived from the KB. We further utilise the corpus co-occurrence statistics to propose two novel approaches, Nearest Neighbour Expansion (NNE) and Hedged Nearest Neighbour Expansion (HNE), that dynamically expand the KB and therefore derive more constraints that guide the optimisation process. Our experimental results over a wide-range of benchmark tasks demonstrate that the proposed method statistically significantly improves the accuracy of the word embeddings learnt. It outperforms a corpus-only baseline and reports an improvement of a number of previously proposed methods that incorporate corpora and KBs in both semantic similarity prediction and word analogy detection tasks.
Dynamic quantitative detection of ABC transporter family promoter methylation by MS-HRM for predicting MDR in pancreatic cancer

The main focus of the present study was to evaluate whether ABC transporter family promoter methylation predicted multidrug resistance in gemcitabine-resistant cancer cell lines (BxPC-3/Gem and PANC-1/Gem). Using low concentrations of gemcitabine, the cell lines acquired drug resistance with different initial gemcitabine concentrations. A novel technology, methylation-sensitive high-resolution melting, was used to monitor the dynamic changes of ABC transporter family promoter methylation, including ATP binding cassette subfamily B member 1 (ABCB1), ATP binding cassette subfamily C (ABCC) and ATP binding cassette subfamily G member 2 (ABCG2) mRNA expression. It was revealed that, with elevation of initial gemcitabine concentration, expression of ABCB1, ABCC and ABCG2 mRNA and corresponding downstream proteins was increased while promoter methylation was decreased. These discoveries indicate that promoter methylation of ABCB1, ABCC and ABCG2 may be a valuable indicator of drug-resistance characteristics in BxPC-3/Gem and PANC-1/Gem cells via quantitative and simultaneous detection. These results also implied that MDR in pancreatic cancer not only arises from gene mutation, but also originates from promoter methylation.
How does paid sick leave relate to health care affordability and poverty among US workers?

ABSTRACT Secondary data analysis on the 2015 National Health Interview Survey was conducted to determine if having paid sick leave increases the odds of being able to afford specific health care goods and services, and not having access to paid sick leave increases the odds of being in poverty, being food insecure and having elevated medical costs among a representative sample of US workers age 18-64. We found a statistically significant association between paid sick leave and ability to afford dental care, eyeglasses and prescription medication. Workers who lack paid sick leave are more likely than those with paid sick leave to be in poverty and have high medical costs. In conclusion, we found a relationship between paid sick leave benefits and being able to afford needed healthcare services and goods and being more vulnerable to economic hardship.