Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interviewing intoxicated witnesses : Memory performance in theory and practice

Memory encoding and recall involving complex, effortful cognitive processes are impaired by alcohol primarily due to impairment of a select few, but crucial, cortical areas. This review shows how alcohol affects some, but not all, aspects of eyewitnesses’ oral free recall performance. The principal results, so far, are that: a) free recall reports by intoxicated witnesses (at the investigated BAC-levels) may contain less, but as accurate, information as reports by sober witnesses; b) immediate reports given by intoxicated witnesses may yield more information compared to reports by sober witnesses given after a one week delay; c) an immediate interview may enhance both intoxicated and sober witnesses’ ability to report information in a later interview; and d) reminiscence seems to occur over repeated interviews and the new information seems to be as accurate as the previously reported information. Based on this, recommendations are given for future research to enhance understanding of the multifaceted impact of alcohol on witnesses’ oral free recall of violent crimes.
Multimodal ultrasonographic algorithm in the differentiation of submandibular masses

Abstract Conclusion: The multimodal diagnostic algorithm is a simple diagnostic tool in the pre-operative assessment of submandibular masses that enables one-stage surgical concepts. Background: The pre-operative assessment of submandibular masses is of major clinical impact. This study assesses the diagnostic utility of a newly introduced diagnostic algorithm in the differentiation of submandibular masses based on epidemiological and B-mode ultrasonographic data. Methods: One hundred and eighty-eight patients with submandibular triangle masses were included. Epidemiological and ultrasonographic data of 128 consecutively included patients were assessed and structured in a multimodal algorithm. The diagnostic algorithm was prospectively validated in a further 60 patients. Results: Single epidemiological and ultrasonographic data do not reliably predict the lesional entity. The multimodal diagnostic algorithm achieved a diagnostic sensitivity/specificity of 100%/100% in sialolithiasis, 44%/100% in benign submandibular gland diseases (BSD), 94%/96% in nodal lymphoma/unspecific lymphadenitis, and 91%/84% in carcinomas. Reduced sensitivity in BSD or specificity in carcinomas increased after intra-operative fresh frozen section in patients suspected for BSD.
Surface EMG-Based Inter-Session Gesture Recognition Enhanced by Deep Domain Adaptation

High-density surface electromyography (HD-sEMG) is to record muscles’ electrical activity from a restricted area of the skin by using two dimensional arrays of closely spaced electrodes. This technique allows the analysis and modelling of sEMG signals in both the temporal and spatial domains, leading to new possibilities for studying next-generation muscle-computer interfaces (MCIs). sEMG-based gesture recognition has usually been investigated in an intra-session scenario, and the absence of a standard benchmark database limits the use of HD-sEMG in real-world MCI. To address these problems, we present a benchmark database of HD-sEMG recordings of hand gestures performed by 23 participants, based on an 8 × 16 electrode array, and propose a deep-learning-based domain adaptation framework to enhance sEMG-based inter-session gesture recognition. Experiments on NinaPro, CSL-HDEMG and our CapgMyo dataset validate that our approach outperforms state-of-the-arts methods on intra-session and effectively improved inter-session gesture recognition.
Title Predictors of high sensitivity cardiac troponin T in chronic kidney disease patients : a cross-sectional study in the chronic renal insufficiency cohort ( CRIC ) Permalink

Background: Cardiac troponin T is independently associated with cardiovascular events and mortality in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Serum levels of high sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-TnT) reflect subclinical myocardial injury in ambulatory patients. We sought to determine the distribution and predictors of hs-TnT in CKD patients without overt cardiovascular disease (CVD). Methods: We studied 2464 participants within the multi-ethnic Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort (CRIC) who did not have self-reported CVD. We considered renal and non-renal factors as potential determinants of hs-TnT, including demographics, comorbidities, left ventricular (LV) mass, serologic factors, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and albumin to creatinine ratio. Results: Hs-TnT was detectable in 81% of subjects, and the median (IQR) hs-TnT was 9.4 pg/ml (4.3-18.3). Analysis was performed using Tobit regression, adjusting for renal and non-renal factors. After adjustment, lower eGFR was associated with higher expected hs-TnT; participants with eGFR < 30 ml/min/1.73 m had 3-fold higher expected hs-TnT compared to subjects with eGFR > 60. Older age, male gender, black race, LV mass, diabetes and higher blood pressure all had strong, independent associations with higher expected hs-TnT. Conclusions: Knowledge of the determinants of hs-TnT in this cohort may guide further research on the pathology of heart disease in patients with CKD and help to stratify sub-groups of CKD patients at higher cardiovascular risk.
Gastrin stimulates a cholecystokinin-2-receptor-expressing cardia progenitor cell and promotes progression of Barrett's-like esophagus

Objective The incidence of esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) is increasing, but factors contributing to malignant progression of its precursor lesion, Barrett's esophagus (BE), have not been defined. Hypergastrinemia caused by long-term use of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), has been suggested as one possible risk factor. The gastrin receptor, CCK2R, is expressed in the cardia and upregulated in BE, suggesting the involvement of the gastrin-CCK2R pathway in progression. In the L2-IL-1β mouse model, Barrett's-like esophagus arises from the gastric cardia. Therefore, we aimed to analyze the effect of hypergastrinemia on CCK2R+ progenitor cells in L2-IL-1β mice. Design L2-IL-1β mice were mated with hypergastrinemic (INS-GAS) mice or treated with PPIs to examine the effect of hypergastrinemia in BE progression. CCK2R-CreERT crossed with L2-IL-1β mice were used to analyze the lineage progenitor potential of CCK2R+ cells. Cardia glands were cultured in vitro, and the effect of gastrin treatment analyzed. L2-IL-1β mice were treated with a CCK2R antagonist YF476 as a potential chemopreventive drug. Results Hypergastrinemia resulted in increased proliferation and expansion of Barrett's-like esophagus. Lineage tracing experiments revealed that CCK2R+ cells are long-lived progenitors that can give rise to such lesions under chronic inflammation. Gastrin stimulated organoid growth in cardia culture, while CCK2R inhibition prevented Barrett's-like esophagus and dysplasia. Conclusions Our data suggest a progression model for BE to EAC in which CCK2R+ progenitor cells, stimulated by hypergastrinemia, proliferate to give rise to metaplasia and dysplasia. Hypergastrinemia can result from PPI use, and the effects of hypergastrinemia in human BE should be studied further.
Evaluation of orally administered telmisartan for the reduction of indirect systolic arterial blood pressure in awake, clinically normal cats

Objectives The aim of this study was to compare the effects of multiple once- or twice-daily oral dosage rates of the angiotensin II, type-1 receptor blocker, telmisartan (TEL), or placebo (PLA) on indirect systolic arterial blood pressure (SBP) in awake, clinically normal cats. Methods Utilizing an incomplete crossover design and following a 14 day acclimation period, 28 healthy laboratory cats were randomized to undergo treatment with three of the following 14 day treatment protocols, each separated by a 1 week washout period: oral PLA q24h, oral TEL at a dosage of 1, 1.5, 2 or 3 mg/kg q24h, or oral TEL at a dosage of 1 or 1.5 mg/kg q12h. Using the Doppler ultrasound method, indirect SBP was measured daily during each treatment period, and daily during the first 5 days of each washout period, approximately 3 h after administration of the morning treatment. Results Each treatment protocol was administered to a total of 12 cats. A statistically significant effect of treatment period was identified for the entire study; therefore, only data from the first treatment period (four cats per treatment group) were used for further analysis. Compared with PLA, during the first treatment period, SBP values were significantly lower in cats treated with TEL at all tested dosages by the second week of treatment. SBP remained significantly lower than in PLA-treated animals for 2 days following administration of the last dose in all TEL treatment groups. No clinical signs of hypotension were noted in any group. Conclusions and relevance These results suggest that treatment with TEL at a total daily dose of 1–3 mg/kg – administered as a single dose, or split into two equal doses administered 12 h apart – results in a significant, relatively long-lasting reduction of SBP in clinically normal cats. TEL appears to be well tolerated by normal cats at the dosages tested.
Transit infrared spectroscopy of the hot Neptune around GJ 436 with the Hubble Space Telescope

The nearby transiting system GJ 436b offers a unique opportunity to probe the structure and atmosphere of an extrasolar ‘hot Neptune’. In this Letter, we present the main results of observations covering two transit events with the Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectrograph (NICMOS) camera on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The data consist in high-cadence time series of grism spectra covering the 1.1–1.9 µm spectral range. We find R_pl= 4.04 ± 0.10 R_⊕ and R_*= 0.446 ± 0.011 R_⊙ for the planet and star radius, confirming and improving earlier measurements with a ground-based photometry and a Spitzer light curve at 8 µm, as opposed to a much higher value obtained with the Fine Guidance Sensor on the HST. We measure no departure from strict periodicity in the transits to the level of ∼7s. This strongly disfavours the proposed explanation of the orbital eccentricity of GJ 436b in terms of the perturbation by another close-by planet. We measure a flat transmission spectrum at the level of a few parts per 10 000 in flux, with no significant signal in the 1.4-µm water band to a level comparable to the maximum amplitude of the effect predicted by planetary atmosphere models.
The Collaboration for Content Delivery and Network Infrastructures: A Survey

With the explosive growth of Internet traffic and the rapid development of network technology, content delivery has become a significant service in the current Internet. However, the existing content delivery solutions, such as peer-to-peer and content delivery network, have many insufficient aspects. Meanwhile, the collaboration between content delivery and network infrastructures has been considered as a promising technique in network field. From the perspective of collaboration, content delivery systems can make full use of the network characteristics and the effective information provided by the network operators, so as to improve the efficiency of the content distribution and optimize the overall performance of the network. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on the collaboration for content delivery and network infrastructures. First, we provide some of the works, which have been done on collaboration solutions from two perspectives: evolutionary and revolutionary. And then, the advantages and disadvantages of these solutions are compared and analyzed from three aspects of technology, business, and standardization. Finally, we outline some challenges and research directions in the future.
Antioxidant activity of pea protein hydrolysates produced by batch fermentation with lactic acid bacteria

Nine Lactobacillus strains known for surface proteinase activity were chosen from our collection and tested for their ability to grow in pea seed protein-based medium, and to hydrolyze purified pea proteins in order to produce peptides with antioxidant (AO) activity. Two strains, Lactobacillus rhamnosus BGT10 and Lactobacillus zeae LMG17315, exhibited strong proteolytic activity against pea proteins. The AO activity of the pea hydrolysate fraction, MW <10 kDa, obtained by the fermentation of purified pea proteins with Lactobacillus rhamnosus BGT10, was tested by standard spectrophotometric assays (DPPH, ABTS, Fe3+-reducing capacity) and the recently developed direct current (DC) polarographic assay. The low molecular weight fraction of the obtained hydrolysate was separated using ion exchange chromatography, while the AO activity of eluted fractions was determined by means of a sensitive DC polarographic assay without previous concentration of samples. Results revealed that the fraction present in low abundance that contained basic peptides possessed the highest antioxidant activity. Based on the obtained results, it can be concluded that Lactobacillus rhamnosus BGT10 should be further investigated as a candidate strain for large-scale production of bioactive peptides from legume proteins. [Projekat Ministartsva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 173005 i br. 173026]
Multi-level attention model for weakly supervised audio classification

In this paper, we propose a multi-level attention model for the weakly labelled audio classification problem. The objective of audio classification is to predict the presence or the absence of sound events in an audio clip. Recently, Google published a large scale weakly labelled AudioSet dataset containing 2 million audio clips with only the presence or the absence labels of the sound events, without the onset and offset time of the sound events. Previously proposed attention models only applied a single attention module on the last layer of a neural network which limited the capacity of the attention model. In this paper, we propose a multi-level attention model which consists of multiple attention modules applied on the intermediate neural network layers. The outputs of these attention modules are concatenated to a vector followed by a fully connected layer to obtain the final prediction of each class. Experiments show that the proposed multi-attention attention model achieves a state-of-the-art mean average precision (mAP) of 0.360, outperforming the single attention model and the Google baseline system of 0.327 and 0.314, respectively.
Peer Communication in Online Mental Health Forums for Young People: Directional and Nondirectional Support

Background The Internet has the potential to help young people by reducing the stigma associated with mental health and enabling young people to access services and professionals which they may not otherwise access. Online support can empower young people, help them develop new online friendships, share personal experiences, communicate with others who understand, provide information and emotional support, and most importantly help them feel less alone and normalize their experiences in the world. Objective The aim of the research was to gain an understanding of how young people use an online forum for emotional and mental health issues. Specifically, the project examined what young people discuss and how they seek support on the forum (objective 1). Furthermore, it looked at how the young service users responded to posts to gain an understanding of how young people provided each other with peer-to-peer support (objective 2). Methods Kooth is an online counseling service for young people aged 11-25 years and experiencing emotional and mental health problems. It is based in the United Kingdom and provides support that is anonymous, confidential, and free at the point of delivery. Kooth provided the researchers with all the online forum posts between a 2-year period, which resulted in a dataset of 622 initial posts and 3657 initial posts with responses. Thematic analysis was employed to elicit key themes from the dataset. Results The findings support the literature that online forums provide young people with both informational and emotional support around a wide array of topics. The findings from this large dataset also reveal that this informational or emotional support can be viewed as directive or nondirective. The nondirective approach refers to when young people provide others with support by sharing their own experiences. These posts do not include explicit advice to act in a particular way, but the sharing process is hoped to be of use to the poster. The directive approach, in contrast, involves individuals making an explicit suggestion of what they believe the poster should do. Conclusions This study adds to the research exploring what young people discuss within online forums and provides insights into how these communications take place. Furthermore, it highlights the challenge that organizations may encounter in mediating support that is multidimensional in nature (informational-emotional, directive-nondirective).
Meta-analysis of laparoscopic versus open liver resection for colorectal liver metastases

Background To compare surgical and oncological outcomes of laparoscopic versus open liver resection for colorectal liver metastases. Results A total of 14 retrospective studies with 1679 colorectal liver metastases patients were analyzed: 683 patients treated with laparoscopic liver resection and 996 patients with open liver resection. With respect to surgical outcomes, laparoscopic compared with open liver resection was associated with lower blood loss (MD, -216.7, 95% CI, -309.4 to -124.1; P < 0.00001), less requiring blood transfusion (OR, 0.36; 95% CI, 0.23 to 0.55; P < 0.00001), lower postoperative complication morbidity (OR, 0.61; 95% CI, 0.47 to 0.80; P = 0.003), and shorter hospitalization time (MD, -3.85, 95% CI, -5.00 to -2.71; P < 0.00001). However, operation time and postoperative mortality were no significant difference between the two approaches. With respect to oncological outcomes, laparoscopic liver resection group was prone to lower recurrence rate (OR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.61−0.99; P = 0.04), but surgical margins R0, overall survival and disease-free survival were no significant difference. Materials and Methods We performed a systematic search in MEDLINE, EMBASE, and CENTRAL for all relevant studies. All statistical analysis was performed using Review Manager version 5.3. Dichotomous data were calculated by odds ratio (OR) and continuous data were calculated by mean difference (MD) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Conclusions Laparoscopic and open liver resection for colorectal liver metastases have the same effect on oncological outcomes, but laparoscopic liver resection achieves better surgical outcomes.
Rasburicase (Elitek): A Novel Agent for Tumor Lysis Syndrome

The overall incidence of tumor lysis syndrome in adults is not well defined, and its occurrence can be unpredictable. Several strategies are available for the prevention and treatment of tumor lysis syndrome, with rasburicase being the most recent. Rasburicase is a recombinant urate oxidase enzyme approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration in patients who are at risk of developing tumor lysis syndrome or for the management of elevated uric acid levels. Clinical trials have demonstrated rasburicase to be effective in both the pediatric and adult populations, although the drug is currently indicated only for use in the pediatric population. Adverse effects associated with rasburicase can be significant, ranging from anaphylactic reactions to methemoglobinemia. To ensure accuracy of uric acid test results, special laboratory handling procedures must be followed while patients receive rasburicase. Compared with allopurinol and intravenous sodium bicarbonate, rasburicase is costly, and therefore judicious use of the medication is warranted.
The Mobile bypass Signal Arrests Shoot Growth by Disrupting Shoot Apical Meristem Maintenance, Cytokinin Signaling, and WUS Transcription Factor Expression1[OPEN]

Wild-type shot WUS expression and cytokinin responses can be repressed by a signal produced by bps1 mutant roots. The bypass1 (bps1) mutant of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) produces a root-sourced compound (the bps signal) that moves to the shoot and is sufficient to arrest growth of a wild-type shoot; however, the mechanism of growth arrest is not understood. Here, we show that the earliest shoot defect arises during germination and is a failure of bps1 mutants to maintain their shoot apical meristem (SAM). This finding suggested that the bps signal might affect expression or function of SAM regulatory genes, and we found WUSCHEL (WUS) expression to be repressed in bps1 mutants. Repression appears to arise from the mobile bps signal, as the bps1 root was sufficient to rapidly down-regulate WUS expression in wild-type shoots. Normally, WUS is regulated by a balance between positive regulation by cytokinin (CK) and negative regulation by CLAVATA (CLV). In bps1, repression of WUS was independent of CLV, and, instead, the bps signal down-regulates CK responses. Cytokinin treatment of bps1 mutants restored both WUS expression and activity, but only in the rib meristem. How the bps signal down-regulates CK remains unknown, though the bps signal was sufficient to repress expression of one CK receptor (AHK4) and one response regulator (AHP6). Together, these data suggest that the bps signal pathway has the potential for long-distance regulation through modification of CK signaling and altering gene expression.
Predicting lifespans of popular tweets in microblog

In microblog like Twitter, popular tweets are usually retweeted by many users. For different tweets, their lifespans (i.e., how long they will stay popular) vary. This paper presents a simple yet effective approach to predict the lifespans of popular tweets based on their static characteristics and dynamic retweeting patterns. For a potentially popular tweet, we generate a time series based on its first-hour retweeting information, and compare it with those of historic tweets of the same author and post time (at the granularity of hour). The top-k historic tweets are identified, whose mean lifespan is estimated as the lifespan of the new tweet. Our experiments on a three-month real data set from Tencent Microblog demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.
Reactive Powder Concrete as a Polymer Modified Concrete

One of the varieties of cement-based composites, characterized by ultra high strength, are the materials belonging to a group called Reactive Powder Concretes (RPC). These materials, of compressive strength of several hundred MPa, are achieved through appropriate selection of components and the use of different technological treatments. One of the components, dosed in a very small quantity, is a polymer acting as superplasticizer. Modification of concrete mixture fluidity is of very short-term and has a transient nature, but without it, obtaining the final material would be impossible. The paper presents the material developed in Cracow University of Technology belonging to the RPC group. One of the goals of the paper is to demonstrate that this material should be classified as a variety of highly efficient polymer-modified concrete (PMC).