Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fundus phenotype in retinitis pigmentosa associated with EYS mutations

ABSTRACT Purpose: to report phenotypic and genotypic features in a group of autosomal recessive retinitis pigmentosa (arRP) patients associated with EYS mutations. Methods: we retrospectively reviewed the clinical records and the molecular genetic data of arRP patients carrying mutations in the EYS gene. All the patients underwent a comprehensive opthalmological examination. Additional investigation included color fundus photography, fundus autofluorescence, Goldmann visual field, OCT scans and full-field standard electroretinography. Results: we studied 10 RP patients (20 eyes) characterized by mutations in the EYS gene. Thirteen different sequence variants in the EYS gene were identified. In total, nine mutations found in our series had not previously been reported in the literature. All patients in our series complained of typical RP symptoms at the onset of the disease, namely night blindness and progressive constriction of the visual field. Visual acuity ranged from light perception to 20/20. Relevant findings reported in our series are Interdigitation-zone (IZ band) involvement, present even in the milder phenotypes and an estimated prevalence of 6.2% of arRP associated with EYS mutations. Conclusions: we reported the mutation spectrum of a group of EYS-related RP patients including nine novel mutations and the associated clinical phenotypes. Our series is the largest group of EYS-related arRP patients in the Italian population.
Factors associated with use of maternal healthcare services during the Boko Haram insurgency in North-East Nigeria

ABSTRACT Studies have focused on both individual and community factors affecting the use of maternal healthcare services. However, studies in Nigeria have rarely examined whether the influence of individual and community factors in explaining the use of maternal healthcare has changed in the context of the Boko Haram insurgency in North-East Nigeria. This study investigates factors associated with the use of maternal healthcare services during the Boko Haram insurgency in North-East Nigeria. The study analysed data from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey. Results showed that some individual characteristics are no longer associated with the use of maternal healthcare services, compared to community characteristics which are. Humanitarian assistance to the region should take this into account when considering interventions to encourage better uptake of maternal healthcare services.
Nursing diagnoses of patients with kidney disease undergoing hemodialysis: a cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVE to identify Nursing Diagnoses of 5th stage chronic kidney disease patients undergoing hemodialysis. METHOD cross-sectional, descriptive and quantitative study carried out with 151 patients undergoing hemodialysis in a clinic specialized in nephrology from the Northwest of the Paraná State. Nursing Diagnoses were determined through Nanda-I in which had the percentage greater than 50%. The analysis used was the simple statistics. RESULTS 17 Nursing Diagnoses were identified, emphasizing the risks present in 100% of patients: risks for electrolyte imbalance; ineffective kidney perfusion; infection: vascular injuries, adverse response to the iodine-based contrast-enhanced and impaired urinary elimination. CONCLUSION the main diagnoses listed reflect the more frequent risks that patients undergoing hemodialysis are exposed to. Being aware of these risks allows the nursing planning with early interventions, in order to prevent complications related to the disease and to promote best life conditions.
Intrinsic connectivity networks underlying individual differences in control‐averse behavior

When people sense that another person tries to control their decisions, some people will act against the control, whereas others will not. This individual tendency to control‐averse behavior can have far‐reaching consequences, such as engagement in illegal activities or noncompliance with medical treatments. Although individual differences in control‐averse behavior have been well documented in behavioral studies, their neurological basis is less well understood. Here, we use a neural trait approach to examine whether individual differences in control‐averse behavior might be linked to stable brain‐based characteristics. To do so, we analyze the association between intrinsic connectivity networks as measured by resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging and control‐averse behavior in an economic exchange game. In this game, subjects make choices that are either free or controlled by another person, with real consequences to both interaction partners. We find that the individual level of control‐averse behavior can be positively predicted by intrinsic connectivity within the salience network, but not the central executive network or the default mode network. Specifically, subjects with a more prominent connectivity hub in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex show greater levels of control‐averse behavior. This finding provides the first evidence that the heterogeneity in control‐averse behavior might originate in systematic differences of the stable functional brain organization.
Two types of sensory proliferation patterns underlie the formation of spatially tuned olfactory receptive fields in the cockroach Periplaneta americana

In the cockroach Periplaneta americana, to represent pheromone source in the receptive space, axon terminals of sex pheromone‐receptive olfactory sensory neurons (pSNs) are topographically organized within the primary center, the macroglomerulus, according to the peripheral locations of sex pheromone‐receptive single walled (sw)‐B sensilla. In this study, we sought to determine when and where pSNs emerge in the nymphal antenna. We revealed two different pSN proliferation patterns that underlie the formation of topographic organization in the macroglomerulus. In nymphal antennae, which lack sw‐B sensilla, pSNs are identified in the shorter sensilla, termed sw‐A sensilla. Because new sw‐A sensilla emerge on the proximal antenna at every molt, topographic organization in the macroglomerulus must be formed by adding axon terminals of newly emerged pSNs to the lateral region in the macroglomerulus at each molt. At the final molt, a huge number of new sw‐B sensilla appeared throughout the whole antenna. Sw‐B sensilla in the proximal part of the adult antenna were newly formed during the last instar stage, whereas those located in the distal antenna were transformed from sw‐A sensilla. This transformation was accompanied by an increase in the number of pSNs. Axon terminals of newborn pSNs in new sw‐B sensilla were recruited to the lateral part of the macroglomerulus, whereas those of newborn pSNs in transformed sw‐B sensilla were recruited to the macroglomerulus according to the sensillar location. These mechanisms enable an increase in sensitivity to sex pheromone in adulthood while retaining the topographic map formed during the postembryonic development.
Disfluency Detection using Auto-Correlational Neural Networks

In recent years, the natural language processing community has moved away from task-specific feature engineering, i.e., researchers discovering ad-hoc feature representations for various tasks, in favor of general-purpose methods that learn the input representation by themselves. However, state-of-the-art approaches to disfluency detection in spontaneous speech transcripts currently still depend on an array of hand-crafted features, and other representations derived from the output of pre-existing systems such as language models or dependency parsers. As an alternative, this paper proposes a simple yet effective model for automatic disfluency detection, called an auto-correlational neural network (ACNN). The model uses a convolutional neural network (CNN) and augments it with a new auto-correlation operator at the lowest layer that can capture the kinds of “rough copy” dependencies that are characteristic of repair disfluencies in speech. In experiments, the ACNN model outperforms the baseline CNN on a disfluency detection task with a 5% increase in f-score, which is close to the previous best result on this task.
Comparison of mechanical and dynamic mechanical behaviors of different dental resins polymerized by different polymerization techniques

Purpose: The aim of the present investigation was to evaluate the effect of autoclave polymerization method on the mechanical and dynamic mechanical properties of different polymethylmethacrylate denture base materials. Materials and Methods: Three different denture materials were used during the study, two of them were heat polymerizable denture base material (Meliodent and Paladent) and one was microwave polymerizable denture base material (Acron MC). Duncan test was used for the statistical analysis. Statistical analyses were completed using a two-way analysis of variance. Statistical analysis of test results was carried out with a 95% confidence level. Results: Tensile strength was increased with autoclave polymerization regardless of the denture base material type. Paladent specimens with autoclave polymerization (30 min at 60°C and 10 min at 130°C) have the highest average impact strength value. Acron MC specimens have the highest average flexural strength and modulus. Flexural strength improved with autoclave polymerization for both of 10 and 20 min polymerizations for each of Meliodent and Paladent specimens. Conclusions: Autoclave polymerization provided higher polymerization temperatures compared with the conventional heat polymerization. Autoclave-polymerized acrylic resin specimens showed higher tensile strength values; however, this was not the case for the impact test results. Flexural strength of specimens was improved with autoclave polymerization. Glass transition temperature was increased with autoclave polymerization.
Obesity and recurrent miscarriage: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

The aim of this study is to perform a systematic review and meta‐analysis on the relationship between excess weight and risk of recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) and to highlight the common immunological mechanisms of these two conditions. The PubMed and MEDLINE databases were searched for publications in English available as of November 2017. The search terms used were ‘recurrent pregnancy loss’, ‘body mass index’ (BMI), ‘overweight’ and ‘obesity’. For calculation of the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for miscarriage in different BMI groups, RevMan software was used (Review Manager, Version 5.3.5 for Windows; The Cochrane Collaboration). In total, 100 publications including the search terms were identified. Six studies were included for qualitative analysis, and two studies were included for quantitative analysis (meta‐analysis). The association between excess weight and RPL was significant (OR, 1.34; 95% CI, 1.05–1.70; P = 0.02). The isolated analyses of the groups of obese and overweight women revealed an association only between obesity and RPL (OR, 1.75; 95% CI, 1.24–2.47; P = 0.001). The data available in the current literature revealed that obese women with a history of RPL have a high risk of future pregnancy losses, a risk which was not found among overweight women.
Complex-Image-Based Sparse SAR Imaging and its Equivalence

Using sparse signal processing to replace matched filtering (MF) in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging has shown significant potential to improve image quality. Due to the huge computational cost needed, it is difficult to apply conventional observation-matrix-based sparse SAR imaging method for large-scene reconstruction. The azimuth-range decouple method is able to minimize the computational complexity and achieve image performance similar to that obtained by the observation-matrix-based algorithm. However, there still exist two difficult problems in sparse SAR imaging, i.e., real-time processing and lack of raw data. To solve these problems, this paper presents a novel complex-image-based sparse SAR imaging method. It is found that if the input MF-recovered SAR complex image is obtained via fully sampled raw data, the proposed method can achieve an identical high-resolution image to that obtained by the azimuth-range decouple algorithm. The computational complexity is also decreased to the same order as that of MF, which makes the real-time sparse SAR imaging become possible. In addition, it should be noted that even though without raw data, the proposed method can still obtain impressive sparse recovery performance by using only the available complex image. Performance analysis and experimental results on real data validate the proposed method.
Longitudinal in vivo Diffusion Tensor Imaging Detects Differential Microstructural Alterations in the Hippocampus of Chronic Social Defeat Stress-Susceptible and Resilient Mice

Background: Microstructural alterations in the hippocampus may underlie stress-related disorders and stress susceptibility. However, whether these alterations are pre-existing stress vulnerability biomarkers or accumulative results of chronic stress remain unclear. Moreover, examining the whole hippocampus as one unit and ignoring the possibility of a lateralized effect of stress may mask some stress effects and contribute to the heterogeneity of previous findings. Methods: After C57BL/6 mice were exposed to a 10-day chronic social defeat stress (CSDS) paradigm, different stress phenotypes, i.e., susceptible (n = 10) and resilient (n = 7) mice, were discriminated by the behavior of the mice in a social interaction test. With in vivo diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) scans that were conducted both before and after the stress paradigm, we evaluated diffusion properties in the left and right, dorsal (dHi) and ventral hippocampus (vHi) of experimental mice. Results: A significantly lower fractional anisotropy (FA) was found in the right vHi of the susceptible mice prior to the CSDS paradigm than that found in the resilient mice, suggesting that pre-existing microstructural abnormalities may result in stress susceptibility. However, no significant group differences were found in the post-stress FA values of any of the hippocampal regions of interest (ROIs). In addition, mean diffusivity (MD) and radial diffusivity (RD) values were found to be significantly greater only in the right dHi of the resilient group compared to those of the susceptible mice. Furthermore, a significant longitudinal decrease was only observed in the right dHi RD value of the susceptible mice. Moreover, the social interaction (SI) ratio was positively related to post-stress left MD, right dHi MD, and right dHi RD values and the longitudinal right dHi MD percent change. Meanwhile, a negative relationship was detected between the SI ratio and bilateral mean of the post-stress left relative to right vHi FA value, highlighting the important role of right hippocampus in stress-resilience phenotype. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrated different longitudinal microstructural alterations in the bilateral dHi and vHi between stress-susceptible and resilient subgroups and indicated a right-sided lateralized stress effect, which may be useful in the diagnosis and prevention of stress-related disorders as well as their intervention.
Outage Performance of Transdermal Optical Wireless Links in the Presence of Pointing Errors

This paper studies the outage performance of trans-dermal optical wireless communication (OWC) links, in the presence of pointing errors. In this sense, we present a novel tractable path-gain model, which is derived through respective experimental results. Based on this model, we provide the theoretical framework that evaluates and quantifies the impact of pointing errors on transdermal OWC links. In more detail, we obtain a closed-form expression for the outage probability of the optical wireless transdermal link, which takes into account the channel particularities, the transmitter-receiver misalignment, the characteristics of the optical units, as well as, the physical constraints of the in-body device. The results reveal that pointing errors drastically affect the reliability and effectiveness of the link and should be taken into consideration when designing a transdermal OWC link.
A comprehensive analysis of auditory event‐related potentials and network oscillations in an NMDA receptor antagonist mouse model using a novel wireless recording technology

There is growing evidence that impaired sensory processing significantly contributes to cognitive deficits found in schizophrenia. Electroencephalography (EEG) has become an important preclinical and clinical technique to investigate the underlying mechanisms of neurophysiological dysfunctions in psychiatric disorders. Patients with schizophrenia show marked deficits in auditory event‐related potentials (ERP), the detection of deviant auditory stimuli (mismatch negativity, MMN), the generation and synchronization of 40 Hz gamma oscillations in response to steady‐state auditory stimulation (ASSR) and reduced auditory‐evoked oscillation in the gamma range. Due to a novel data‐logging technology (Neurologger, TSE Systems), it is now possible to record wireless EEG data in awake, free‐moving small rodents without any restrictions due to size of the device or attached cables. Recently, a new version of the Neurologger was released with improved performance to record time‐locked event‐related EEG signals. In this study, we were able to show in mice that pharmacological intervention with the NMDA receptor antagonists Ketamine and MK‐801 can impair a comprehensive selection of EEG/ERP readouts (ERP N1 amplitude, 40 Hz ASSR, basal and evoked gamma oscillation, MMN) and therefore mimic the EEG deficits observed in patients with schizophrenia. Our data support the translational value of NMDA receptor antagonists as a model for preclinical evaluation of sensory processing deficits relevant to schizophrenia. Further, the new Neurologger system is a suitable device for wireless recording of clinically relevant EEG biomarkers in freely moving mice and a robust translational tool to investigate novel therapeutic approaches regarding sensory processing deficits related to psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia.
Analysis of a token density metric for concern detection in Matlab sources using UbiSOM

Matrix and data manipulation programming languages are an essential tool for data analysts. However, these languages are often unstructured and lack modularity mechanisms. This article presents a knowledge discovery approach for studying manifestations of the lack of modularity support in that sort of languages. The study is focused on Matlab, as a well‐established representative of those languages. We present a technique for the automatic detection and quantification of concerns in Matlab and their exploration in a code base. The Ubiquitous Self Organizing Map (UbiSOM) is used to perform exploratory data analysis over concerns detected in a, possibly changing, repository of Matlab files. The UbiSOM is quite effective in detecting patterns of co‐occurrence of multiple concerns. To illustrate the technique, a repository comprising over 35,000 Matlab files is analysed. The results show that the use of Token Density metrics in conjunction with UbiSOM enables the detection of patterns of co‐occurrence of multiple concerns in m‐files.
Changes in health-related quality of life in oesophagogastric cancer patients participating in palliative and curative therapies

Background: Various treatments are used to prolong survival and improve quality of life (QOL). The purpose of this study was to assess the change in QOL scores in patients with Oesophagogastric (OG) cancer undergoing curative intent and palliative therapy. Methods: This was a mix-designed cohort study with a consecutive sampling of patients with OG cancer who underwent curative or palliative treatment regimens. The QOL, as a determinant of efficacy and impact of cancer care, was evaluated using the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaires. QOL data were collected from the eligible subjects at three points of time. The repeated measurement test was used to compare the significance of change in scores. Results: Overall, 149 patients (54.4% male, 61.1% curative intent, 52.3% esophageal, 37.6 % gastric, 10.1% OG junction cancer; with mean age 62 year) with OG cancer were eligible for inclusion in the study. Compared to the palliative group, the curative group was more likely to have an esophageal tumor site, Squamous Cell Carcinoma, and stage 2 (versus stomach, Adenocarcinoma, and stage 4 in the palliative group). In comparing the patients' functional, global health status, and cancer symptom, considering time, group of treatment, and their mutual effect the result indicated significant difference between the intervention groups. Conclusion: Most patients with Oesophagogastric cancer are diagnosed with an incurable form of the disease. Hence in absence of curative treatment, palliative therapy is the most effective therapy to maintain patient independency and relieve pain and symptom in order to improve their QOL. The present study has shown that palliative similar to curative intervention can improve the QOL in cancer patient especially in short term.
Stillbirths in Jordan: rate, causes, and preventability

Abstract Objectives: This study aimed to determine the stillbirth rate in Jordan and to determine the leading causes of stillbirths. Analyzing the stillbirth data from a large sample size of Jordanian women would be very valuable for planning the resources and improving the services. Methods: The data from the national study of perinatal mortality in Jordan were analyzed. A total of 21,980 women who delivered at a gestational age ≥20 weeks in any of the 18 selected hospitals during the study period (March 2011–April 2012) were analyzed. The stillbirth rate was calculated as the number of stillbirths per 1000 total births. The deaths were also classified according to NICE classification system. Results: The rates of stillbirths were 11.6/1000 total births born after 20 weeks of gestation, 11.2/1000 total births born ≥22 weeks of gestation, 10.6/1000 total births born ≥24 weeks of gestation, and 9.0/1000 total births born ≥28 weeks of gestation. According to NICE classification, the main causes of stillbirths were maternal diseases (19.5%), unexplained immaturity (18.8%), congenital anomalies (17.6%), unexplained antepartum stillbirths (17.6%), obstetric complications (8.4%), placental abruption (5.7%), and multiple births (5%). The expert Panel judged that 34.5% of all fetal deaths were preventable and 30.3% were possibly preventable with optimal care. Conclusions: This study highlighted stillbirth risks in Jordan, which could encourage maternal–infant health-care providers, other researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders to implement solutions and to develop a feasible intervention.
Social Determinants of Health in the lives of urinary catheter users.

OBJECTIVE To identify the influence of social determinants of health on the life conditions of patients who use intermittent urinary catheters. METHOD This was a descriptive study conducted in a rehabilitation center with 243 neurogenic bladder patients who used clear intermittent urinary catheters. The study was carried out between March 2012 and October 2015, using interviews based on semi-structured instruments, and data analysis using descriptive statistics. RESULTS Most of the patients were men, between 16 and 64 years old, single, with an elementary education level, and a monthly household income of 2 to 3 minimum wages. The results show that the social determinants of health were related to socioeconomic, demographic, and health factors. CONCLUSION The findings indicate a complex relationship between social determinants of health and the life conditions of patients who use clean intermittent urinary catheters, presenting greater vulnerability related to some aspects of health conditions.