Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Urinary BPA and Phthalate Metabolite Concentrations and Plasma Vitamin D Levels in Pregnant Women: A Repeated Measures Analysis

Background: In addition to its well-established role in maintaining skeletal health, vitamin D has essential regulatory functions in female reproductive and pregnancy outcomes. Phthalates and bisphenol A (BPA) are endocrine disruptors, and previous research has suggested that these chemical agents may disrupt circulating levels of total 25(OH)D in adults. Objectives: We investigated the relationships between repeated measures of urinary phthalate metabolites and BPA and circulating total 25(OH)D in a prospective cohort of pregnant women. Methods: The present study population includes participants (n=477) in a nested case–control study of preterm birth drawn from a prospective birth cohort of pregnant women at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Urine and blood samples were collected for biomarker measurements at median 10 wk and 26 wk of gestation. Results: In repeated measures analysis, we observed that an interquartile range (IQR) increase in urinary mono-3-carboxypropyl phthalate (MCPP) was associated with a 4.48% decrease [95% confidence interval (CI): −7.37, −1.58] in total 25(OH)D. We also detected inverse associations for metabolites of di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) [percent difference (%Δ)=−2.83 to −2.16]. For BPA, we observed a nonsignificant inverse association with total 25(OH)D in the overall population. Our sensitivity analysis revealed that the associations for some metabolites (e.g., MEHP) varied by race/ethnicity, which may reflect potential differences in susceptibility. In agreement with findings from repeated measures analysis, we reported that DEHP metabolites and BPA were significantly associated with an approximate 20% increase in the odds of vitamin D deficiency (≤20 ng/mL) [odds ratio (95% CI): 1.19 (1.06, 1.35) for molar sum of DEHP metabolites and 1.22 (1.01, 1.47) for BPA] at median 10 wk and 26 wk, respectively. Conclusions: Our results provide suggestive evidence of the potential for environmental exposure to phthalates and/or BPA to disrupt circulating vitamin D levels in pregnancy. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP1178
Sensors and instruments for oceanic dissolved carbon measurements

Abstract. Highly accurate and precise measurements of marine carbon components are required in the study of the marine carbon cycle, particularly when investigating the causes for its variability from seasonal to interannual timescales. This is especially true in the investigation of the consequences of anthropogenic influences. The analysis of any marine carbon component requires elaborate instrumentation, most of which is currently used onboard ships, either in manual or automated mode. Technological developments result in more and more instruments that have sufficient long-term reliability so that they can be deployed on commercial ships, surface moorings, and buoys, whilst the great technological and operational challenges mean that only few sensors have been developed that can be used for sub-surface in situ measurements on floats, robots, or gliders. There is a special need for autonomous instruments and sensors that are able to measure a combination of different components, in order to increase the spatial and temporal coverage of marine carbon data. This paper describes analytical techniques used for the measurement of the marine dissolved carbon components, both inorganic and organic: the fugacity of CO2, total dissolved inorganic carbon, pH, alkalinity, and dissolved organic carbon. By pointing out advantages, disadvantages, and/or challenges of the techniques employed in the analysis of each component, we aim to aid non-carbon marine scientists, sensor developers and technologists, in the decision of which challenges to address in further development.
Challenges in Managing Treatment-Refractory Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Tourette's Syndrome.

CASE HISTORY Mr. R was a 19-year-old, single, unemployed, homeless Hispanic male with a history of Tourette’s syndrome (TS), obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and posttraumatic stress disorder. In addition, he suffered from suicidal ideation, self-injurious behavior (superficial cutting and head banging), anxiety, depression, and anger outbursts. Hewas referred to our cognitivebehavioral therapy (CBT) partial hospitalization program (PHP) and associated homeless shelter for the targeted treatment of his OCD, TS, and anger outbursts after being discharged from a psychiatric hospital. At the time of presentation,Mr. R had recently aged out of a long-term adolescent state hospitalization program. Since that time, he has had a short stay in a crisis stabilization unit and a lengthier admission to a psychiatric hospital for poor impulse control and anger outbursts. At the crisis stabilization unit, he became “stuck” after the lights unexpectedly turned off in the bathroom, which led to uncontrollable tics, exacerbation of OCD symptoms, screaming that lasted three hours, and, finally, an angry outburst and acute hospitalization. After discharge, his outbursts were so severe that his mother did not feel safe with him at home. He was admitted
New Food Baits for Trapping German Cockroaches, Blattella germanica (L.) (Dictyoptera: Blattellidae)

Abstract German cockroaches (GCRs), Blattella germanica (L.) (Dictyoptera: Blattellidae), are attracted to those beer semiochemicals (e.g., ethanol) that formerly living and active yeasts have produced or otherwise formed in the brewing process. We predicted that an earlier step in the production of beer, where yeasts actively metabolize the sugar in malted barley powder (dry malt extract [DME]), is very attractive to GCRs. In laboratory experiments, a 3-component composition (3CC) comprising DME, water, and Brewer's yeast strongly attracted GCR nymphs, females, and males. Both Brewers' yeast and ‘spoilage organisms’ in the DME or water seem to add to the attractiveness of the 3CC, but there is no additive or synergistic effect between them.The 3CC becomes optimally attractive to GCRs after 12 h of fermentation and stays that attractive for at least 120 h. In field trapping experiments, the 3CC and—unexpectedly—also the DME each proved as effective for attracting and capturing GCRs as a commercial cockroach bait (Combat Roach Gel). Future studies will investigate lethal biocontrol agents that can be added to the 3CC, or the DME, and will explore the efficacy of such lethal baits for GCR control.
Women's decision-making and uptake of services to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission in Zambia

ABSTRACT Women's empowerment is associated with engagement in some areas of healthcare, but its role in prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) services has not been previously considered. In this secondary analysis, we investigated the association of women's decision-making and uptake of health services for PMTCT. Using data from population-based household surveys, we included women who reported delivery in the 2-year period prior to the survey and were HIV-infected. We measured a woman's self-reported role in decision-making in her own healthcare, making of large purchases, schooling of children, and healthcare for children. For each domain, respondents were categorized as having an “active” or “no active” role. We investigated associations between decision-making and specific steps along the PMTCT cascade: uptake of maternal antiretroviral drugs, uptake of infant HIV prophylaxis, and infant HIV testing. We calculated unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios via logistic regression. From March to December 2011, 344 HIV-infected mothers were surveyed and 276 completed the relevant survey questions. Of these, 190 (69%) took antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy; 175 (64%) of their HIV-exposed infants received antiretroviral prophylaxis; and 160 (58%) had their infant tested for HIV. There was no association between decision-making and maternal or infant antiretroviral drug use. We observed a significant association between decision-making and infant HIV testing in univariate analyses (OR 1.56–1.85; p < 0.05); however, odds ratios for the decision-making indicators were no longer statistically significant predictors of infant HIV testing in multivariate analyses. In conclusion, women who reported an active role in decision-making trended toward a higher likelihood of uptake of infant testing in the PMTCT cascade. Larger studies are needed to evaluate the impact of empowerment initiatives on the PMTCT service utilization overall and infant testing in particular.
Intubated Versus Nonintubated General Anesthesia for Video-Assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery-A Case-Control Study.

OBJECTIVE General anesthesia with endobronchial intubation and one-lung positive-pressure ventilation always has been considered mandatory for thoracic surgery. Recently, there has been interest in nonintubated techniques for video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) in awake and sedated patients. The authors' center developed a nonintubated technique with spontaneous ventilation with the patient under general anesthesia using a supraglottic airway device. The authors believe that this was the first study to compare a nonintubated general anesthetic technique with an intubated general anesthetic technique for VATS. DESIGN Retrospective, observational study. SETTING Specialist cardiothoracic hospital in the United Kingdom. PARTICIPANTS All patients who underwent elective minor VATS over 8 months (n = 73). INTERVENTIONS A nonintubated general anesthetic technique with spontaneous ventilation via a supraglottic airway device was used for minor VATS procedures. This was compared with a case-matched intubated group. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS Both groups had comparable baseline characteristics and surgical procedures. The anesthetic time was shorter in the nonintubated group (13.6±8.3 v 24.1±10.9 minutes, p<0.001). Surgical operating time and feasibility were similar. Intraoperatively, there were increases in end-tidal carbon dioxide (59.1±12.9 v 41.8±4.6, p<0.001) and respiratory rate (17.8±5.6 v 13.5±2.0, p<0.001) in the nonintubated group. Fewer patients in the nonintubated group had moderate-severe pain during recovery (19.4% v 48.4%, p = 0.02) and pain on discharge to the ward (25.8% v 61.3%, p = 0.004). There was a trend toward shorter recovery times, reduced oxygen requirement, and shorter hospital stays in the nonintubated group. CONCLUSIONS A nonintubated general anesthetic technique is a feasible alternative to intubated general anesthesia for minor VATS procedures.
Towards a Parlay-grid communication model for NGN service convergence

Service creation in next generation networks (NGN) gives rise to new challenges and opportunities. One main challenge is to offer value-added services spanning heterogeneous networks. Another challenge is to find a flexible and easy way for service creation. Facing these challenges, this paper proposes a Parlay and open grid services architecture (OGSA) based NGN service convergence architecture, which not only provides a uniform access to heterogeneous network capabilities, but also builds effective distributed convergence mechanisms beyond them. Based on the architecture, we further propose a service-oriented communication model between Parlay and grid, that is, PGCOM. Setting up the connection between Parlay service and grid service, it enables NGN convergent service on grid platform to access different network resources in telecom-level through Parlay interfaces. Our effort shows that it is an interesting research direction by applying rid related technologies to telecom service creation.
A hybird red blood cell model based on the linear spring network model and worm-like-chains model

Because the red blood cell (RBC) has good deformation performance, it's important to build an appropriate model for RBC when studying the RBC being sheared in flow and other situation. This paper built a hybird RBC model based on the linear spring network (SN) model and worm-like-chains (WLC) model. The hybird model has the advantage of SN model's simple structure and small computation amount, also has the advantage of WLC model's nonlinear response. Then, this paper simulated the RBC being stretched based on hybird model and SN model respectively. The comparison of simulation results with experiment result indicated the hybird model was more accurate. Immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann method (IB-LBM) was used in the simulation of RBC in shear flow. The deformation process and free energy change of RBC was studied. The result of hybird model performed more reasonable than the SN model. The threshold limit of RBC's free energy for hemolysis was found to be 3.5×10−15J.
Concatenated Power Mean Word Embeddings as Universal Cross-Lingual Sentence Representations

Average word embeddings are a common baseline for more sophisticated sentence embedding techniques. However, they typically fall short of the performances of more complex models such as InferSent. Here, we generalize the concept of average word embeddings to power mean word embeddings. We show that the concatenation of different types of power mean word embeddings considerably closes the gap to state-of-the-art methods monolingually and substantially outperforms these more complex techniques cross-lingually. In addition, our proposed method outperforms different recently proposed baselines such as SIF and Sent2Vec by a solid margin, thus constituting a much harder-to-beat monolingual baseline.
Lower excess postexercise oxygen consumption and altered growth hormone and cortisol responses to exercise in obese men.

CONTEXT Obesity is associated with altered patterns of substrate utilization at rest and during exercise. OBJECTIVE The relationship between obesity and fat oxidation during recovery from exercise was examined. HYPOTHESIS The postexercise shift toward fat oxidation is blunted in the obese state, reflected by higher respiratory exchange ratio (RER), blunted GH, and increased cortisol values compared with lean controls. DESIGN Each subject completed two 160-min protocols (baseline and exercise). During baseline, subjects rested for 160 min; during exercise, they completed 30 min of cycling at ventilatory threshold, followed by 130 min of rest. SETTING This study was performed at the University of Alberta. SUBJECTS Healthy untrained (maximal oxygen consumption, <45 ml/kg.min or <3.35 liter/min) lean (<16% body fat; n = 6) and obese (>25% body fat; n = 7) men, aged 30-39 yr, were studied. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES RER, GH, cortisol, oxygen consumption, heart rate, tympanic temperature, and lactate were obtained during both protocols at matched time intervals and analyzed by repeated measures ANOVA. RESULTS During baseline, there were no differences detected between lean and obese groups for any of the measured variables. In contrast, during exercise, peak GH levels were blunted (P < 0.05) and cortisol levels were elevated (P < 0.05) in the obese compared with the lean subjects, but RER values were similar in the two groups. The differences in GH and cortisol persisted during the postexercise period accompanied by higher RER values (P < 0.05) and reduced total oxygen consumption (P < 0.05) in the obese group. CONCLUSION These findings indicate that exercise-induced fat oxidation is diminished in obese men.
The clinical impact of tumour‐infiltrating lymphocytes in colorectal cancer differs by anatomical subsite: A cohort study

Accumulating evidence demonstrates an association between dense infiltration of lymphocytes and prognosis in colorectal cancer (CRC), but whether this prognostic impact differs by tumour location remains unknown. This study investigated the prognostic impact of cytotoxic and regulatory T cells in CRC, with particular reference to the anatomical subsite of the primary tumour. The density of CD3+, CD8+ and FoxP3+ tumour‐infiltrating T cells was calculated in tissue microarrays with tumours from 557 incident CRC cases from a prospective population‐based cohort. Kaplan–Meier and Cox regression analyses were applied to determine the impact of high and low lymphocyte density on 5‐year overall survival, in subgroup analysis of right colon, left colon and rectum. High CD8+ cell density was a favourable prognostic factor for patients with right‐sided colon tumours (hazard ratio [HR]=0.53, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.29–0.95), independent of age, sex, TNM stage, differentiation grade and vascular invasion, with a significant prognostic interaction between CD8+ cells and right‐sidedness (p = 0.031). High FoxP3+ cell density was an independent favourable prognostic factor only in patients with rectal tumours (HR = 0.54, 95% CI 0.30‐0.99), and CD3+ cell density was an independent favourable prognostic factor for tumours in the right colon and rectum, but there was no significant prognostic interaction between CD3+ or FoxP3+ cells and sidedness. These results demonstrate that the prognostic impact of tumour‐infiltrating lymphocytes in CRC differs by primary tumour site, further indicating that tumour location may be an important factor to take into consideration in therapeutic decisions, including eligibility for immunotherapy.
Development and Validation of a Novel RNA Sequencing–Based Prognostic Score for Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Abstract Background Recent progress in sequencing technologies allows us to explore comprehensive genomic and transcriptomic information to improve the current European LeukemiaNet (ELN) system of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Methods We compared the prognostic value of traditional demographic and cytogenetic risk factors, genomic data in the form of somatic aberrations of 25 AML-relevant genes, and whole-transcriptome expression profiling (RNA sequencing) in 267 intensively treated AML patients (Clinseq-AML). Multivariable penalized Cox models (overall survival [OS]) were developed for each data modality (clinical, genomic, transcriptomic), together with an associated prognostic risk score. Results Of the three data modalities, transcriptomic data provided the best prognostic value, with an integrated area under the curve (iAUC) of a time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.73. We developed a prognostic risk score (Clinseq-G) from transcriptomic data, which was validated in the independent The Cancer Genome Atlas AML cohort (RNA sequencing, n = 142, iAUC = 0.73, comparing the high-risk group with the low-risk group, hazard ratio [HR]OS = 2.42, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.51 to 3.88). Comparison between Clinseq-G and ELN score iAUC estimates indicated strong evidence in favor of the Clinseq-G model (Bayes factor = 26.78). The proposed model remained statistically significant in multivariable analysis including the ELN and other well-known risk factors (HRos = 2.34, 95% CI = 1.30 to 4.22). We further validated the Clinseq-G model in a second independent data set (n = 458, iAUC = 0.66, adjusted HROS = 2.02, 95% CI = 1.33 to 3.08; adjusted HREFS = 2.10, 95% CI = 1.42 to 3.12). Conclusions Our results indicate that the Clinseq-G prediction model, based on transcriptomic data from RNA sequencing, outperforms traditional clinical parameters and previously reported models based on genomic biomarkers.
Generalized stacking fault energy of γ-Fe

We investigate the generalized stacking fault energy (-surface) of paramagnetic -Fe as a function of temperature. At static condition, the face-centred cubic (fcc) lattice is thermodynamically unstable with respect to the hexagonal close-packed lattice, resulting in a negative intrinsic stacking fault energy (ISF). However, the unstable stacking fault energy (USF), representing the energy barrier along the -surface connecting the ideal fcc and the intrinsic stacking fault positions, is large and positive. The ISF is calculated to have a strong positive temperature coefficient, while the USF decreases monotonously with temperature. According to the recent plasticity theory, the overall effect of temperature is to move paramagnetic fcc Fe from the stacking fault formation regime ( K) towards maximum twinning ( K) and finally to a dominating full-slip regime ( K). Our predictions are discussed in connection with the available experimental observations.
Quantitative ergodicity for some switched dynamical systems

We provide quantitative bounds for the long time behavior of a class of Piecewise Deterministic Markov Processes with state space $\mathbb{R}^d\times E$ where $E$ is a finite set. The continous component evolves according to a smooth vector field that it switched at the jump times of the discrete coordinate. The jump rates may depend on the whole position of the process. Under regularity assumptions on the jump rates and stability conditions for the vector fields we provide explicit exponential upper bounds for the convergence to equilibrium in terms of Wasserstein distances.
Policy Improvement Methods: Between Black-Box Optimization and Episodic Reinforcement Learning

Policy improvement methods seek to optimize the parameters of a policy with respect to a utility function. There are two main approaches to performing this optimization: reinforcement learning (RL) and black-box optimization (BBO). Whereas BBO algorithms are generic optimization methods that, due to there generality, may also be applied to optimizing policy parameters, RL algorithms are specifically tailored to leveraging the structure of policy improvement problems. In recent years, benchmark comparisons between RL and BBO have been made, and there has been several attempts to specify which approach works best for which types of problem classes. In this article, we make several contributions to this line of research: 1) We define four algorithmic properties that further clarify the relationship between RL and BBO: action-perturbation vs. parameter-perturbation, gradient estimation vs. rewardweighted averaging, use of only rewards vs. use of rewards and state information, actor-critic vs. direct policy search. 2) We show how the chronology of the derivation of ever more powerful algorithms displays a trend towards algorithms based on parameter-perturbation and reward-weighted averaging. A striking feature of this trend is that it has moved RL methods closer and closer to BBO. 3) We continue this trend by applying two modifications to the state-of-the-art "Policy Improvement with Path Integrals" (PI2), which yields an algorithm we denote PIBB. We show that PIBB is a BBO algorithm, and, more specifically, that it is a special case of the "Covariance Matrix Adaptation - Evolutionary Strategy" algorithm. Our empirical evaluation demonstrates that the simpler PIBB outperforms PI2 on simple evaluation tasks in terms of convergence speed and final cost. 4) Although our evaluation implies that, for these five tasks, BBO outperforms RL, we do not hold this to be a general statement, and provide an analysis of why these tasks are particularly well-suited for BBO. Thus, rather than making the case for BBO or RL, one of the main contributions of this article is rather to provide an algorithmic framework in which such cases may be made, as PIBB and PI2 use identical perturbation and parameter update methods, and differ only in being BBO and RL approaches respectively.