Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neuroprotective Effect of Cardamom Oil Against Aluminum Induced Neurotoxicity in Rats

Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is an enzyme involved in the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Cardamom oil (CO) has been reported to have acetylcholinesterase inhibitory, antioxidant and anti-anxiety effects. Hence, we studied the effect of cardamom oil in aluminum chloride induced neurotoxicity in rats. AD like symptoms were induced in Wistar rats with aluminum chloride (100 mg/kg, p.o.). Cardamom oil was administered concomitantly by oral route at doses of 100 and 200 mg/kg for 42 days. Behavioral parameters like Morris water maze, elevated plus maze, passive avoidance test and locomotor activity were evaluated on day 21 and 42. AChE activity, oxidative stress parameters, histopathological studies and immunohistochemistry studies were carried out in hippocampus and cortex. Cardamom oil treatment showed significant improvement in behavioral parameters, inhibition of AChE activity (p < 0.001) and reduction in oxidative stress in the brain. Histopathological studies of hippocampus and cortex by hematoxylin & eosin (H. & E.) and congo red stain showed inhibition of neuronal damage and amyloid β plaque formation with cardamom oil treatment. Immunohistochemistry showed, CO treatment inhibited amyloid β expression and upregulated brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). The present study showed that, cardamom oil has neuroprotective effect in aluminum chloride induced neurotoxicity linked with inhibition of AChE activity and reduction in oxidative damage. This effect of cardamom oil may be useful in management of Alzheimer's disease.
A dual branch deep neural network for classification and detection in mammograms

In this paper, we propose a novel deep learning architecture for joint classification and localization of abnormalities in mammograms. We first assume a weakly supervised setting and present a new approach with data driven decisions. This novel network combines two learning branches with region-level classification and region ranking. The network provides a global classification of the image into multiple classes, such as malignant, benign or normal. Our method further enables the localization of abnormalities as global class discriminative regions in full mammogram resolution. Next, we extend this method to a semi-supervised setting that engages a small set of local annotations, using a novel architecture, and a multi-task objective function. We present the impact of the local annotations on several performance measures, including localization, to evaluate the cost effectiveness of lesion annotation effort. Our evaluation is made over a large multi-center mammography dataset of $\sim$3,000 mammograms with various findings. Experimental results demonstrate the capabilities and advantages of the proposed method over previous weakly-supervised strategies, and the impact of semi-supervised learning. We show that targeting the annotation of only 5% of the images can significantly boost performance.
The Beginning of Kyoto Collection: Focus on Memories

The early history of Kyoto Collection of Human Embryos and Fetuses was briefly described including reasons for planning the collection, ethical considerations, procedures for the collection, procedures for obtained specimens, research grants, participating members, and Professor Nishimura's Motto Anat Rec, 301:951–954, 2018. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
RF Breakdown of the Resonant Reflector in a Relativistic Backward Wave Oscillator

Radio frequency (RF) breakdown can result in pulse shortening and severely limits the performance of high-power microwave (HPM) generators. In this paper, the initial stage of RF breakdown in HPM generators with a strong external guiding magnetic field has been carefully analyzed. It is thought that the initial breakdown process involves electron emission induced by an intense local field, electron acceleration in the electric field, and electron bombardment on the structure’s surfaces. Strong external guiding magnetic fields play a key role in the RF breakdown process of HPM generators. They concentrate the impact energy and make it more destructive. To suppress RF breakdown, feasible solutions include lowering the local field strength, decreasing the energy of the field-emitted electrons obtained from the RF field, reducing the deposited energy density, and improving the material’s resistance to electron bombardment.
On Statistical Optimality of Variational Bayes

The article addresses a long-standing open problem on the justification of using variational Bayes methods for parameter estimation. We provide general conditions for obtaining optimal risk bounds for point estimates acquired from mean-field variational Bayesian inference. The conditions pertain to the existence of certain test functions for the distance metric on the parameter space and minimal assumptions on the prior. A general recipe for verification of the conditions is outlined which is broadly applicable to existing Bayesian models with or without latent variables. As illustrations, specific applications to Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Gaussian mixture models are discussed.
Inherited and Acquired Thrombophilia and Infertility in a Population of Brazilian Women

Infertility affects between one-fifth and one-sixth of reproductive-age couples. Around 10% of couples of reproductive age experience difficulty conceiving [1]. Currently, women tend to delay maternity as a function of their professional life, further hampering their reproductive capacity. In addition to the woman’s age, various factors are associated with difficulties in conceiving. Endometrial receptivity has been the focus of investigative attention to evaluate the association between thrombophilic factors and infertility, since it involves vascularization during the embryo implantation process [2]. Thrombophilic factors may be acquired or inherited. The most studied inherited thrombophilic factors are: deficiencies of protein S (DPS), protein C (DPC), and antithrombin (DAT), Factor V Leiden mutation (FVL), and prothrombin mutation G20210A. Factors involved in acquired thrombophilia are antiphospholipid antibodies (anticardiolipin antibody [ACA] and lupus anticoagulant [LA]).
Repetition suppression in the medial temporal lobe and midbrain is altered by event overlap

Repeated encounters with the same event typically lead to decreased activation in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and dopaminergic midbrain, a phenomenon known as repetition suppression. In contrast, encountering an event that overlaps with prior experience leads to increased response in the same regions. Such increased responding is thought to reflect an associative novelty signal that promotes memory updating to resolve differences between current events and stored memories. Here, we married these ideas to test whether event overlap significantly modulates MTL and midbrain responses—even when events are repeated and expected—to promote memory updating through integration. While undergoing high‐resolution functional MRI, participants were repeatedly presented with objects pairs, some of which overlapped with other, intervening pairs and some of which contained elements unique from other pairs. MTL and midbrain regions showed widespread repetition suppression for nonoverlapping pairs containing unique elements; however, the degree of repetition suppression was altered for overlapping pairs. Entorhinal cortex, perirhinal cortex (PRc), midbrain, and PRc—midbrain connectivity showed repetition‐related increases across overlapping pairs. Notably, increased PRc activation for overlapping pairs tracked individual differences in the ability to reason about the relationships among pairs—our behavioral measure of memory integration. Within the hippocampus, activation increases across overlapping pairs were unique to CA1, consistent with its hypothesized comparator function. These findings demonstrate that event overlap engages MTL and midbrain functions traditionally implicated in novelty processing, even when overlapping events themselves are repeated. Our findings further suggest that the MTL—midbrain response to event overlap may promote integration of new content into existing memories, leading to the formation of relational memory networks that span experiences. Moreover, the results inform theories about the division of labor within MTL, demonstrating that the role of PRc in episodic encoding extends beyond familiarity processing and item‐level recognition. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Political Discourse on Social Media: Echo Chambers, Gatekeepers, and the Price of Bipartisanship

Echo chambers, i.e., situations where one is exposed only to opinions that agree with their own, are an increasing concern for the political discourse in many democratic countries. This paper studies the phenomenon of political echo chambers on social media. We identify the two components in the phenomenon: the opinion that is shared, and the »chamber» (i.e., the social network) that allows the opinion to »echo» (i.e., be re-shared in the network) -- and examine closely at how these two components interact. We define a production and consumption measure for social-media users, which captures the political leaning of the content shared and received by them. By comparing the two, we find that Twitter users are, to a large degree, exposed to political opinions that agree with their own. We also find that users who try to bridge the echo chambers, by sharing content with diverse leaning, have to pay a »price of bipartisanship» in terms of their network centrality and content appreciation. In addition, we study the role of »gatekeepers,» users who consume content with diverse leaning but produce partisan content (with a single-sided leaning), in the formation of echo chambers. Finally, we apply these findings to the task of predicting partisans and gatekeepers from social and content features. While partisan users turn out relatively easy to identify, gatekeepers prove to be more challenging.
Mechanism by which arylamine N-acetyltransferase 1 ablation causes insulin resistance in mice

Significance Insulin resistance in liver and skeletal muscle are major factors in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes; however, the molecular mechanism or mechanisms responsible for this phenomenon have not been established. Recently, an association of a single-nucleotide polymorphism in the human N-acetyltransferase 2 (Nat2) gene with insulin resistance in humans was found. Here, we show that the murine ortholog Nat1 knockout (KO) mice manifested whole-body insulin resistance associated with marked increases in liver and muscle lipid content. Nat1 KO mice also displayed reduced whole-body energy expenditure and reduced mitochondrial activity. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that Nat1 deletion promotes reduced mitochondrial activity and is associated with ectopic lipid-induced liver and muscle insulin resistance. A single-nucleotide polymorphism in the human arylamine N-acetyltransferase 2 (Nat2) gene has recently been identified as associated with insulin resistance in humans. To understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which alterations in Nat2 activity might cause insulin resistance, we examined murine ortholog Nat1 knockout (KO) mice. Nat1 KO mice manifested whole-body insulin resistance, which could be attributed to reduced muscle, liver, and adipose tissue insulin sensitivity. Hepatic and muscle insulin resistance were associated with marked increases in both liver and muscle triglyceride (TAG) and diacylglycerol (DAG) content, which was associated with increased PKCε activation in liver and increased PKCθ activation in skeletal muscle. Nat1 KO mice also displayed reduced whole-body energy expenditure and reduced mitochondrial oxygen consumption in white adipose tissue, brown adipose tissue, and hepatocytes. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that Nat1 deletion promotes reduced mitochondrial activity and is associated with ectopic lipid-induced insulin resistance. These results provide a potential genetic link among mitochondrial dysfunction with increased ectopic lipid deposition, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes.
Mobile Contextual Recommender System for Online Social Media

Exponential growth of media consumption in online social networks demands effective recommendation to improve the quality of experience especially for on-the-go mobile users. By means of large-scale trace-driven measurements over mobile Twitter traces from users, we reveal the significance of affective features in shaping users’ social media behaviors. Existing recommender systems however, rarely support such psychological effect in real-life. To capture such effect, in this paper we propose Kaleido, a real mobile system that achieves an online social media recommendation solution by taking affective context into account. Specifically, we design a machine learning mechanism to infer the affective pulse of online social media. Furthermore, a cluster-based latent bias model (LBM) is provided for jointly training the affective pulse as well as user’s behavior, location, and social contexts. Our comprehensive trace-driven experiments on Android prototype expose a superior prediction accuracy of 87 percent, which has 25 percent accuracy superior to existing mobile recommender systems. Moreover, by enabling users to offload their machine learning procedures to the deployed edge-cloud testbed, our system achieves speed-up of a factor of 1,000 against the local data training execution on smartphones.
Clinical, economic, and humanistic burden of needlestick injuries in healthcare workers

Introduction Needlestick injuries (NSIs) from a contaminated needle put healthcare workers (HCWs) at risk of becoming infected with a blood-borne virus and suffering serious short- and long-term medical consequences. Hypodermic injections using disposable syringes and needles are the most frequent cause of NSIs. Objective To perform a systematic literature review on NSI and active safety-engineered devices for hypodermic injection. Methods MEDLINE, EMBASE, and COCHRANE databases were searched for studies that evaluated the clinical, economic, or humanistic outcomes of NSI or active safety-engineered devices. Results NSIs have been reported by 14.9%–69.4% of HCWs with the wide range due to differences in countries, settings, and methodologies used to determine rates. Exposure to contaminated sharps is responsible for 37%–39% of the worldwide cases of hepatitis B and C infections in HCWs. HCWs may experience serious emotional effects and mental health disorders after a NSI, resulting in work loss and post-traumatic stress disorder. In 2015 International US$ (IntUS$), the average cost of a NSI was IntUS$747 (range IntUS$199–1,691). Hypodermic injections, the most frequent cause of NSI, are responsible for 32%–36% of NSIs. The use of safety devices that cover the needle-tip after hypodermic injection lowers the risk of NSI per HCW by 43.4%–100% compared to conventional devices. The economic value of converting to safety injective devices shows net savings, favorable budget impact, and overall cost-effectiveness. Conclusion The clinical, economic, and humanistic burden is substantial for HCWs who experience a NSI. Safety-engineered devices for hypodermic injection demonstrate value by reducing NSI risk, and the associated direct and indirect costs, psychological stress on HCWs, and occupational blood-borne viral infection risk.
Nutritional intake and dietary patterns in pregnancy: a longitudinal study of women with lifetime eating disorders

There is limited knowledge about dietary patterns and nutrient/food intake during pregnancy in women with lifetime eating disorders (ED). The objective of the present study was to determine patterns of food and nutrient intake in women with lifetime ED as part of an existing longitudinal population-based cohort: the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Women with singleton pregnancies and no lifetime psychiatric disorders other than ED (n 9723) were compared with women who reported lifetime (ever) ED: (anorexia nervosa (AN, n 151), bulimia nervosa (BN, n 186) or both (AN+BN, n 77)). Women reported usual food consumption using a FFQ at 32 weeks of gestation. Nutrient intakes, frequency of consumption of food groups and overall dietary patterns were examined. Women with lifetime ED were compared with control women using linear regression and logistic regression (as appropriate) after adjustment for relevant covariates, and for multiple comparisons. Women with lifetime ED scored higher on the ‘vegetarian’ dietary pattern; they had a lower intake of meat, which was compensated by a higher consumption of soya products and pulses compared with the controls. Lifetime AN increased the risk for a high ( ≥ 2500 g/week) caffeine consumption in pregnancy. No deficiencies in mineral and vitamin intake were evident across the groups, although small differences were observed in macronutrient intakes. In conclusion, despite some differences in food group consumption, women with lifetime ED had similar patterns of nutrient intake to healthy controls. Important differences in relation to meat eating and vegetarianism were highlighted, as well as high caffeine consumption. These differences might have an important impact on fetal development.
Fruit and vegetable intakes , dietary antioxidant nutrients , and total mortality in Spanish adults : findings from the Spanish cohort of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition ( EPIC-Spain ) 1 – 3

Background: Epidemiologic data suggest that persons with diets rich in fruit and vegetables are at a lower risk of several chronic diseases and mortality than are persons with diets poor in fruit and vegetables. Often, this effect is attributed to antioxidant micronutrients found in plant foods. Objective: We aimed to assess the relation of mortality to the consumption of fruit, vegetables, and other plant foods and to the dietary intake of vitamin C, vitamin E, and carotenoids. Design: The study was a prospective study in the Spanish cohort of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition. During 6.5 y of follow-up, 562 deaths occurred in 41358 subjects aged 30–69 y. Proportional hazards regression analysis was used to assess the relation between dietary factors and total mortality. Results: After adjustment for age, sex, and several potential confounders, the hazard ratio for the highest versus the lowest quartile of consumption was 0.79 (95% CI: 0.62, 1.00; P for trend 0.029) for fresh fruit, 0.72 (0.56, 0.91; P for trend 0.006) for root vegetables, and 0.77 (0.60, 0.98; P for trend 0.015) for fruiting vegetables (ie, vegetables that contain the “fruit” part of the plant, the seeds). The corresponding figures for antioxidant nutrients were 0.74 (0.58, 0.94; P for trend 0.009) for vitamin C, 0.68 (0.53, 0.87; P for trend 0.006) forprovitaminAcarotenoids,and0.65(0.51,0.84;P for trend0.001) for lycopene. The effect of vitamin C and provitamin A disappeared after adjustment for total antioxidant capacity in plant foods. Conclusions: A high intake of fresh fruit, root vegetables, and fruiting vegetables is associated with reduced mortality, probably as a result of their high content of vitamin C, provitamin A carotenoids, and lycopene. Antioxidant capacity could partly explain the effect of ascorbic acid and provitamin A but not the association with lycopene. Am J Clin Nutr 2007;85:1634–42.
The Impact of Recreational Marijuana Legislation in Washington, DC on Marijuana Use Cognitions

ABSTRACT Background: There is little published research that tests the effect of recreational marijuana legislation on risk-related cognitions and how individuals respond immediately after legislative approval. Objectives: The objective was to test whether learning about the passage of Initiative 71, a voter referendum that legalized recreational use of marijuana in the District of Columbia, would lead individuals to adopt more favorable marijuana cognitions than they had before the Initiative was passed. Methods: Undergraduate students (N = 402) completed two web-based questionnaires in 2014. The first questionnaire was completed prior to the referendum vote and the follow-up questionnaire was completed after voters approved Initiative 71. Attitudes, perceived norms, intentions, prototypes, and willingness were measured at time 1 and time 2. Study hypotheses were tested using repeated-measures analysis of covariance. Results: Results showed that attitudes, intentions, perceived norms, and willingness to use marijuana were more favorable after Initiative 71 was passed. However, the increase in attitudes and willingness was moderated by past experience with marijuana whereby the increases were statistically significant only among those with the least experience. The increase in perceived norms was also moderated by past experience whereby increases were statistically significant among those who were moderate or heavy users. The passage of Initiative 71 had no effect on favorable prototypes. Conclusion/Importance: Legalization may have the unintended outcome of leading to more favorable intentions to use marijuana and might lead abstainers or experimental users to become more frequent users of marijuana via more positive attitudes and willingness towards marijuana use.
Diversity, Function, and Application of Clostridium in Chinese Strong Flavor Baijiu Ecosystem: A Review.

Baijiu is a Chinese traditional distilled liquor with an annual yield over 13.12 million tons. Strong flavor baijiu (SFB) also called Luzhou-flavor liquor, takes account for > 70% of the total baijiu produced. SFB is produced by an open solid fermentation process with a complex microbial ecosystem. Clostridium is one of the most important microorganisms for the formation of the main flavor compounds of SFB, such as ethyl caproate. In this paper, we review current research progress on the Clostridium in the SFB ecosystem, focusing on the species diversity, physiological and metabolic features along with interspecies interactions. Systems biology approaches for the study of Clostridium from SFB ecosystems were discussed and explored. Furthermore, current applications of Clostridium in SFB production were discussed. PRACTICAL APPLICATION Strong flavor baijiu (SFB) accounts for more than 70% of total yield of Chinese baijiu, which exists for hundreds of years. Clostridium is common in SFB ecosystem and identified to be one of main contributors of flavor compounds in SFB. Study on the Clostridium from SFB ecosystem is not only helpful for the understanding of flavor compounds formation mechanism, but also the improvement of SFB quality. This study focuses on the current researches on the Clostridium species in SFB ecosystem, including the species diversity, physiological and metabolic features, and applications.
SparseNet: A Sparse DenseNet for Image Classification

Deep neural networks have made remarkable progresses on various computer vision tasks. Recent works have shown that depth, width and shortcut connections of networks are all vital to their performances. In this paper, we introduce a method to sparsify DenseNet which can reduce connections of a L-layer DenseNet from O(L^2) to O(L), and thus we can simultaneously increase depth, width and connections of neural networks in a more parameter-efficient and computation-efficient way. Moreover, an attention module is introduced to further boost our network's performance. We denote our network as SparseNet. We evaluate SparseNet on datasets of CIFAR(including CIFAR10 and CIFAR100) and SVHN. Experiments show that SparseNet can obtain improvements over the state-of-the-art on CIFAR10 and SVHN. Furthermore, while achieving comparable performances as DenseNet on these datasets, SparseNet is x2.6 smaller and x3.7 faster than the original DenseNet.