Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Epidemiological Aspects of Visceral Leishmaniasis in Larestan and Ghiro-Karzin Counties, Southwest of Iran

Objectives Leishmania parasites are the causative agents of leishmaniasis. The Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) form of the disease is fatal if not treated in most cases. This study examined the epidemiological aspects of VL in two southwest counties of Iran. Methods This was a retrospective study of hospitalized patients with a laboratory confirmation of VL from Larestan and Ghiro-Karzin Counties. Results For Larestan county, a decline in the incidence of VL has been observed from 2004 to 2015. Significantly more males (n = 14) than females (n = 6) were infected with VL in this county (p < 0.05), >95% of cases in children under 5 years of age. In Ghiro-Karzin county, the results were similar to a decline in VL infection from 2004 to 2015, and slightly more males (n = 14) than females (n = 11). Similarly, the majority of the patients infected with VL were children under 5 years old (88%). Conclusion The results from this study indicate that although the incidence of VL infection has reduced over time, VL was more prevalent in boys under 5 years old, suggesting that more attention to controlling the parasite and its vector are required.
Various clinical features of patients with anti-Hu associated paraneoplastic neurological syndromes

Abstract To describe and analyze the clinical features and prognosis of patients with anti-Hu associated paraneoplastic neurological syndromes (PNS). The symptoms, MRI findings, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) changes, electroencephalogram (EEG) characteristics and prognoses of 9 well-diagnosed anti-Hu associated PNS patients were analyzed. The study enrolled 6 female and 3 male patients. Three patients presented with vertigo and 6 patients exhibited a depressed mood, numbness of the lower limbs, generalized pains, seizures, mental disturbances, and a temporary unilateral hand tremor on initial presentation. Three patients presented with MRI abnormalities localized in the mesial temporal lobe and the thalamus. Abnormal interictal EEG readings were observed in all 5 patients who underwent EEG study. Four patients were found lung cancer (3 during hospitalization, 1 during follow-up). Seven patients were treated with immunotherapy and improved in symptoms. Three patients died during follow-up (2 with lung cancer). The clinical manifestation of anti-Hu associated PNS is diverse and multifocal. EEG may be more sensitive than MRI for early diagnosis of PNS. Long-term follow-up for patients with CT-negative anti-Hu associated PNS is necessary.
The Association of Insight and Change in Insight with Clinical Symptoms in Depressed Inpatients

Background Lack of insight has been extensively studied and was found to be adversely correlated with impaired treatment compliance and worse long term clinical outcomes among patients with schizophrenia, while not much is known about this phenonmenon in patients with severe depression. Aim To explore the correlates of insight and its relation to symptom changes among the most seriously ill patients with affective disorders, those who require hospitalization. Methods Patients hospitalized in a large psychiatric hospital in south China with either major depressive disorder (MDD)(N=55) or bipolar depression (BD) (N=85) based on ICD-10 diagnostic criteria were assessed with the Insight and Treatment Attitudes Questionnaire (ITAQ) one week after admission and at the time of discharge. Clinical symptoms were measured at the same time with the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAMD-17) and the Depression subscale of the Symptom Check list-90 (SCL-90). Length of stay (LOS), duration of illness, duration of untreated mood disorder, number of previous episodes of depression and previous admissions for depression were documented during interviews with patients and their families and from a review of medical records. Bivariate correlations and multiple regression analysis were used to examine the relationship of sociodemographic characteristics, clinical symptomatology and clinical history, to insight at the time of admission. The relationships between change in clinical symptoms and change in insight from admission to discharge were also examined. Results Stepwise multiple regression models suggested that any previous admissions for depression and higher anxiety factor scores on the HAMD-17 are significant independent predictors of insight accounting for 22.9% of the variance. Multiple regression analysis residual change scores (change scores adjusted for baseline values) on the ITAQ showed that improved insight over average stays of 51 days were inversely related to the residual psychomotor retardation factor on the HAMD-17 accounting for 9.1% of the variance. Conclusions More severe anxiety symptoms and previous hospitalization for depression were associated with greater insight into illness at admission. Reduction of motor retardation symptoms during treatment was associated with greater improvement in insight to the time of discharge. The patients who are sicker at admission and who show more improvement in psycho-motor retardation show the greatest insight.
Development and Initial Validation of a Measure of Attachment Security in Late Adulthood

Attachment theory-guided studies of older adults have generally relied on self-report measures that were validated on young adult samples and that focus on fears of rejection by romantic partners and on experiences of chronic discomfort with romantic intimacy as the key indicators of adult attachment security. These assessment characteristics raise important questions as to whether these measures are appropriate for use with older adults. Unlike their younger adult counterparts, older adults may face distinctive life stage-related threats to their attachment security such as declining health and autonomy, spousal loss, and increased dependence on younger family members for instrumental and emotional support. In response to these concerns, we conducted two independent studies aimed at developing and validating a novel measure of attachment security in older adults—the Late Adulthood Attachment Scale (LAAS). In study one (N = 287), exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) methods were used to identify and support a 2-factor structure (Fearful Avoidance, Secure Engagement) underlying LAAS scores. In study two (N = 417), ESEM and regression analyses confirmed the 2-factor structure and demonstrated the ability of LAAS scores to predict participants’ well-being over a 3-month interval (n = 93). Findings from both studies support the psychometric adequacy of the LAAS as an alternative measure of attachment security for use with older adult samples.
n-3 fatty acids and serum lipoproteins: human studies.

The effects of n-3 fatty acids from fish oils (eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid) and plant oils (alpha-linolenic acid) on human serum lipids and lipoproteins are reviewed. Studies were included in this review if they were placebo-controlled, crossover, or parallel design studies providing < 7 g n-3 fatty acids/d and with treatment periods of > or = 2 wk duration. Only three studies were available for evaluation of the effects of alpha-linolenic acid on serum lipid concentrations. From these studies it appeared that alpha-linolenic acid (18:3n-3) was equivalent to n-6-rich oils vis-vis lipid and lipoprotein effects. Only when very large amounts of flaxseed oil were fed did the hallmark effect of marine n-3 fatty acids-reduced triacylglycerol concentrations-appear. Thus, in terms of effects on lipoprotein metabolism, the plant-derived n-3 fatty acid is not equivalent to the marine-based acids. More studies using the marine-based acids were examined and summarized. Both crossover (n = 36) and parallel (n = 29) design studies reached the same conclusions: total cholesterol is not materially affected by n-3 fatty acid consumption, low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations tend to rise by 5-10% and high-density-lipoprotein cholesterol by 1-3%, and serum triacylglycerol concentrations decrease by 25-30%. These effects of marine n-3 fatty acids are now well-established; what remains is to determine the mechanisms behind these effects and, more importantly, their health consequences.
Ecological Risks of Transgenic Plants: Effects of Spatial Dispersion on Gene Flow.

The spread of advantageous transgenic genes from crop plants into wild and weedy relatives is a potential ecological problem. The available theory indicates that the spread of a gene, over space and time, will depend in part on the relative selective advantage of that gene, and in part on gene flow, or the probability distribution of gene movement from source to target plants within a single generation. Risk assessment will require knowledge of both. This paper describes an empirical investigation of the effect of spatial dispersion on gene flow in Brassica campestris, utilizing a system of wild genotypes for target plants, and agronomic genotypes with a marker gene for source plants. I have found that gene flow can be reliably modeled with an exponential probability density function, and that the mean of that distribution can vary with the spatial dispersion of plants. Two-dimensional arrays of plants had lower mean gene dispersal distance than did one-dimensional arrays. In contrast, the degree of clumping and the size of patches of plants in my experiments had no effect on gene flow. However, I found an increase in mean gene dispersal distance with increased distance between clumps of plants, or between individual plants in one year. These results imply that large isolation distances accompanied by a rare long-distance pollination event will ultimately increase the risk of gene spread.
Empowerment of family caregivers of adults and elderly persons: A concept analysis

AIM This concept analysis defined and described the components of empowerment of family caregivers who care for adults and the elderly. METHODS Rodgers evolutionary method of concept analysis was used. Data sources included Pub Med, CINAHL, Scopus, and Igaku Chuo Zasshi. Thirty articles published between 1995 and 2015 focusing on the empowerment of family caregivers providing care to adults and the elderly were selected. RESULT The analysis reveals 6 attributes, 5 antecedents, and 5 consequences. In addition, the results reveal structured aspects of family caregivers, care receivers, and other people surrounding them, and their relationships. Empowerment of adults' and elders' family caregivers may be defined as "positive control of one's mind and body, cultivating a positive attitude, proactively attempting to understand one's role as a caregiver to improve caregiving capabilities, focusing on others as well as oneself, supporting the independence of the care receiver, and creating constructive relationships with other people surrounding them. " CONCLUSION The components of empowerment clarified in this research can be used for the measurement of and interventions aimed at improving empowerment among family caregivers. Furthermore, clarifying the definition of empowerment among family caregivers enables researchers to better distinguish empowerment from similar concepts in the future.
Social Beliefs and Visual Attention: How the Social Relevance of a Cue Influences Spatial Orienting

Abstract We are highly tuned to each other's visual attention. Perceiving the eye or hand movements of another person can influence the timing of a saccade or the reach of our own. However, the explanation for such spatial orienting in interpersonal contexts remains disputed. Is it due to the social appearance of the cue—a hand or an eye—or due to its social relevance—a cue that is connected to another person with attentional and intentional states? We developed an interpersonal version of the Posner spatial cueing paradigm. Participants saw a cue and detected a target at the same or a different location, while interacting with an unseen partner. Participants were led to believe that the cue was either connected to the gaze location of their partner or was generated randomly by a computer (Experiment 1), and that their partner had higher or lower social rank while engaged in the same or a different task (Experiment 2). We found that spatial cue‐target compatibility effects were greater when the cue related to a partner's gaze. This effect was amplified by the partner's social rank, but only when participants believed their partner was engaged in the same task. Taken together, this is strong evidence in support of the idea that spatial orienting is interpersonally attuned to the social relevance of the cue—whether the cue is connected to another person, who this person is, and what this person is doing—and does not exclusively rely on the social appearance of the cue. Visual attention is not only guided by the physical salience of one's environment but also by the mental representation of its social relevance.
Determining Changes in Electromyography Indices when Measuring Maximum Acceptable Weight of Lift in Iranian Male Students

Background: In spite of the increasing degree of automation in industry, manual material handling (MMH) is still performed in many occupational settings. The aim of the current study was to determine the maximum acceptable weight of lift using psychophysical and electromyography indices. Methods: This experimental study was conducted among 15 male students recruited from Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Each participant performed 18 different lifting tasks which involved three lifting frequencies, three lifting heights and two box sizes. Each set of experiments was conducted during the 20 min work period using free-style lifting technique and subjective as well as objective assessment methodologies. SPSS version 18 software was used for descriptive and analytical analyses by Friedman, Wilcoxon and Spearman correlation techniques. Results: The results demonstrated that muscle activity increased with increasing frequency, height of lift and box size (P<0.05). Meanwhile, MAWLs obtained in this study are lower than those in Snook table (P<0.05). In this study, the level of muscle activity in percent MVC in relation to the erector spine muscles in L3 and T9 regions as well as left and right abdominal external oblique muscles were at 38.89%, 27.78%, 11.11% and 5.55% in terms of muscle activity is more than 70% MVC, respectively. The results of Wilcoxon test revealed that for both small and large boxes under all conditions, significant differences were detected between the beginning and end of the test values for MPF of erector spine in L3 and T9 regions, and left and right abdominal external oblique muscles (P<0.05). The results of Spearman correlation test showed that there was a significant relation between the MAWL, RMS and MPF of the muscles in all test conditions (P<0.05). Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, it was concluded if muscle activity is more than 70% of MVC, the values of Snook tables should be revisited. Furthermore, the biomechanical perspective should receive special attention in determining the standards for MMH.
CD8, FoxP3, and CD45RO+ Lymphocytic Infiltrates in Type I and Type II Endometrial Cancers in African American and European American Females

African American (AA) females with endometrial carcinoma have a significantly worse prognosis with regard to disease-free survival and overall survival than their European American (EA) counterparts and this finding is true across all stages and grades. The presence of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) has been demonstrated to be of prognostic significance in a variety of malignancies, including endometrial cancers. This study aims to determine whether clinically significant differences in levels of CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes, FoxP3+ regulatory T lymphocytes, and CD45RO+ memory T lymphocytes exist between races and to document the clinical impact of TILs. One hundred ten patients with endometrial adenocarcinoma, treated with hysterectomy from 2003 to 2011 were studied. Patients were selected to provide equal representation across type and grade for both EAs and AAs. Immunohistochemical stains were used to highlight CD8-positive, FoxP3-positive, and CD45RO-positive TILs at the endometrial-myometrial interface on slides from paraffin-embedded tissue. Patients with “high” or “low” levels of TILs were compared with respect to the race, tumor type, and survival. High levels of CD45RO+ TILs were associated with improved overall survival in EA women (hazard ratio, 0.32; 95% confidence interval, 0.11-0.92; P=0.034). Comparatively, AA women with high levels of CD45RO+ TILs received no survival benefit (hazard ratio, 0.96; 95% confidence interval, 0.35-2.64; P=0.94). High levels of CD8-positive or FoxP3-positive TILs, alone, had no impact on survival. EA patients with TILs containing high levels of CD45RO cells but low levels of CD8+ cells lost the survival benefit; however, limited numbers preclude significant conclusions from this observation. Neither tumor type nor race were predictive of the levels of TILs of any type. Further study with a larger sample size is required to determine the impact of TIL subtype combinations on survival.
Delivery of the Nonpresenting Twin First: Rates and Associated Factors.

OBJECTIVE To estimate the rate of delivery of the nonpresenting twin first and to identify risk factors for such an event by using a cohort of opposite-sex twins for whom the intrauterine order was well documented with ultrasonography before delivery. METHODS We conducted a retrospective cohort study of all opposite-sex dichorionic twins in a single tertiary center between 2002 and 2016. Reports of ultrasonograms performed less than 2 weeks before birth were reviewed for information on twins' presenting order in relation to fetal sex. Intrauterine labeling was compared with labeling at the time of birth. Multivariable regression analysis was used to identify factors associated with delivery of the nonpresenting twin first. RESULTS Of 1,746 women with dichorionic twin pregnancies, 942 (53.9%) had opposite-sex twins and 617 had recent data on ultrasonographic twin labeling. In 456 of 617 (73.9%) pregnancies, both twins were delivered by cesarean delivery and in 161 of 617 (26.1%) pregnancies, one or both twins were delivered vaginally. The overall rate of delivery of the nonpresenting twin first was 6.8% (95% CI 4.5-9.1%, 31/456) in the cesarean group; there were no deliveries (95% CI 0.0-2.3%, 0/161) of the nonpresenting twin first in the vaginal group (P=.001). The following factors were independently associated with delivery of the nonpresenting twin first at cesarean delivery: discordance greater than 25% in birth weights (17.5%, adjusted odds ratio [OR] 4.0, 95% CI 1.7-9.1), nonvertex presentation of the presenting twin (11.6%, adjusted OR 3.8, 95% CI 1.7-8.3), and gestational age less than 32 0/7 weeks (14.9%, adjusted OR 3.6, 95% CI 1.6-7.8). CONCLUSIONS Delivery of the nonpresenting twin first in dichorionic, opposite-sex twins at the time of birth occurs in 6.8% of cesarean deliveries. Clinicians and researchers should be aware of this phenomenon because it has implications for neonatal care and long-term outcome.
ScanNet: A Fast and Dense Scanning Framework for Metastastic Breast Cancer Detection from Whole-Slide Image

Lymph node metastasis is one of the most significant diagnostic indicators in breast cancer, which is traditionally observed under the microscope by pathologists. In recent years, computerized histology diagnosis has become one of the most rapidly expanding directions in the field of medical image computing, which aims to alleviate pathologists' workload and simultaneously reduce misdiagnosis rate. However, automatic detection of lymph node metastases from whole slide images remains a challenging problem, due to the large-scale data with enormous resolutions and existence of hard mimics resulting in a large number of false positives. In this paper, we propose a novel framework by leveraging fully convolutional networks for efficient inference to meet the speed requirement for clinical practice, while reconstructing dense predictions under different offsets for ensuring accurate detection on both microand macro-metastases. Incorporating with the strategies of asynchronous sample prefetching and hard negative mining, the network can be effectively trained. Extensive experiments on the benchmark dataset of 2016 Camelyon Grand Challenge corroborated the efficacy of our method. Compared with the state-of-the-art methods, our method achieved superior performance with a faster speed on the tumor localization task and even surpassed human performance on the WSI classification task.
Conducting International Business at eBay: The Determinants of Success of e-Stores

Many small businesses have started to use eBay as their electronic commerce platform. Such a strategy increases their reach to global customers without high financial and technical costs in building their own e-commerce infrastructure or in intense advertising. How can these e-stores conduct successful international business on eBay? This paper addresses this complex issue by discussing how online customers' perceptions of an e-store's culture, size, and history affect the e-store's feedback rating and successful sales. We analyze data of the completed transactions of 400+ e-stores on eBay across twenty-two countries. The results suggest that feedback rating is a significant determinant of the success of an e-store, and that an e-store's culture, size, and history significantly affect the e-store's feedback rating.
The Putative O-Linked N-Acetylglucosamine Transferase SPINDLY Inhibits Class I TCP Proteolysis to Promote Sensitivity to Cytokinin1

The putative catalytic O-GlcNAc domain of SPINDLY is required for stability of the transcription factor TCP14 and cytokinin responses in developing Arabidopsis leaves and flowers. Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) SPINDLY (SPY) is a putative serine and threonine O-linked N-acetylglucosamine transferase (OGT). While SPY has been shown to suppress gibberellin signaling and to promote cytokinin (CK) responses, its catalytic OGT activity was never demonstrated and its effect on protein fate is not known. We previously showed that SPY interacts physically and functionally with TCP14 and TCP15 to promote CK responses. Here, we aimed to identify how SPY regulates TCP14/15 activities and how these TCPs promote CK responses. We show that SPY activity is required for TCP14 stability. Mutation in the putative OGT domain of SPY (spy-3) stimulated TCP14 proteolysis by the 26S proteasome, which was reversed by mutation in CULLIN1 (CUL1), suggesting a role for SKP, CUL1, F-box E3 ubiquitin ligase in TCP14 proteolysis. TCP14 proteolysis in spy-3 suppressed all TCP14 misexpression phenotypes, including the enhanced CK responses. The increased CK activity in TCP14/15-overexpressing flowers resulted from increased sensitivity to the hormone and not from higher CK levels. TCP15 overexpression enhanced the response of the CK-induced synthetic promoter pTCS to CK, suggesting that TCP14/15 affect early steps in CK signaling. We propose that posttranslational modification of TCP14/15 by SPY inhibits their proteolysis and that the accumulated proteins promote the activity of the CK phosphorelay cascade in developing Arabidopsis leaves and flowers.