Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Targeting the Incretin/Glucagon System With Triagonists to Treat Diabetes

Abstract Glucagonlike peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists have been efficacious for the treatment of type 2 diabetes due to their ability to reduce weight and attenuate hyperglycemia. However, the activity of glucagonlike peptide 1 receptor–directed strategies is submaximal, and the only potent, sustainable treatment of metabolic dysfunction is bariatric surgery, necessitating the development of unique therapeutics. GLP-1 is structurally related to glucagon and glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide (GIP), allowing for the development of intermixed, unimolecular peptides with activity at each of their respective receptors. In this review, we discuss the range of tissue targets and added benefits afforded by the inclusion of each of GIP and glucagon. We discuss considerations for the development of sequence-intermixed dual agonists and triagonists, highlighting the importance of evaluating balanced signaling at the targeted receptors. Several multireceptor agonist peptides have been developed and evaluated, and the key preclinical and clinical findings are reviewed in detail. The biological activity of these multireceptor agonists are founded in the success of GLP-1-directed strategies; by including GIP and glucagon components, these multireceptor agonists are thought to enhance GLP-1’s activities by broadening the tissue targets and synergizing at tissues that express multiple receptors, such at the brain and pancreatic isletβ cells. The development and utility of balanced, unimolecular multireceptor agonists provide both a useful tool for querying the actions of incretins and glucagon during metabolic disease and a unique drug class to treat type 2 diabetes with unprecedented efficacy.
[Analysis on dietary patterns and influencing factors among the elderly in Yantai City].

OBJECTIVE To analyze the dietary patterns and influencing factors among the elderly in Yantai City. METHODS A total of 2626 old people( ≥60 years old) were recruited from 6 districts in Yantai City, including Zhifu District, Muping District, Haiyang District, Zhaoyuan District, Longkou District and Changdao County by stratified cluster of random sampling and surveyed using general questionnaires and dietary questionnaires, while physical examinations were conducted. Factors analysis was used to identify the dietary patterns. Influencing factors of dietary patterns were analyzed by multivariate logistic regression analysis. RESULTS Three evident dietary patterns were derived by factors analysis including healthy( 31. 83%), traditional( 45. 63%) and western( 22. 54%) dietary patterns. Non-smoking older men with low-literacy were more likely to follow traditional dietary pattern. The highly educated elderly women were likelyto follow healthy dietary pattern. The elder with a family history of chronic diseases were likely to follow western dietary pattern( P < 0. 001). People who were in family with higher incomes( OR = 1. 53, 95% CI 1. 32- 2. 61) or had family history of diabetes mellitus( OR = 1. 43, 95% CI 1. 21- 1. 98) or family history of coronary heart diseases( OR = 1. 17, 95% CI 1. 08- 1. 84) used western dietary pattern more than healthy dietary pattern. In addition, the elderly male( OR = 2. 87, 95% CI 2. 27- 3. 38) using traditional dietary pattern were more than the elderly female using healthy dietary pattern. CONCLUSION There are three dietary patterns among the elderly in Yantai City. The main influencing factors include gender, level of education, economic level and a family history of chronic diseases.
Perceptual rasterization for head-mounted display image synthesis

We suggest a rasterization pipeline tailored towards the needs of HMDs, where latency and field-of-view requirements pose new challenges beyond those of traditional desktop displays. Instead of image warping for low latency, or using multiple passes for foveation, we show how both can be produced directly in a single perceptual rasterization pass. We do this with per-fragment ray-casting. This is enabled by derivations of tight space-time-fovea pixel bounds, introducing just enough flexibility for the requisite geometric tests, but retaining most of the simplicity and efficiency of the traditional rasterizaton pipeline. To produce foveated images, we rasterize to an image with spatially varying pixel density. To compensate for latency, we extend the image formation model to directly produce "rolling" images where the time at each pixel depends on its display location. Our approach overcomes limitations of warping with respect to disocclusions, object motion and view-dependent shading, as well as geometric aliasing artifacts in other foveated rendering techniques. A set of perceptual user studies demonstrates the efficacy of our approach.
A Hierarchical Taxonomy of Test Validity for More Flexibility of Validation

Test validity lies at the core of educational and psychological testing, but there are controversies about what test validity is and how test validation should proceed. This paper develops a taxonomy to redefine test validity with hierarchical levels. On the basis of testing foundation, the hierarchy includes operational, measurable, realizable, and useful levels, which result in testing consequence. With the help of a context-specific construct, different levels of test validity, and different types of score use, the proposed taxonomy offers more flexibility for test validation. It can also shed light on the interpretations of important testing concepts and help streamline test development. Real-life examples are given to demonstrate the usefulness of the taxonomy across different settings.
Enhancing the Ecological Validity of fMRI Memory Research Using Virtual Reality

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a powerful research tool to understand the neural underpinnings of human memory. However, as memory is known to be context-dependent, differences in contexts between naturalistic settings and the MRI scanner environment may potentially confound neuroimaging findings. Virtual reality (VR) provides a unique opportunity to mitigate this issue by allowing memories to be formed and/or retrieved within immersive, navigable, visuospatial contexts. This can enhance the ecological validity of task paradigms, while still ensuring that researchers maintain experimental control over critical aspects of the learning and testing experience. This mini-review surveys the growing body of fMRI studies that have incorporated VR to address critical questions about human memory. These studies have adopted a variety of approaches, including presenting research participants with VR experiences in the scanner, asking participants to retrieve information that they had previously acquired in a VR environment, or identifying neural correlates of behavioral metrics obtained through VR-based tasks performed outside the scanner. Although most such studies to date have focused on spatial or navigational memory, we also discuss the promise of VR in aiding other areas of memory research and facilitating research into clinical disorders.
Risk factors of the Clostridium difficile infection in patients with chronic kidney disease.

BACKGROUND Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) is a Gram-positive bacillus responsible for diarrhea and colitis, mainly among hospitalized patients. It is a leading cause of nosocomial infections. OBJECTIVES The main goal of the study was to assess the risk factors of the C. difficile infection in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). MATERIAL AND METHODS We evaluated the medical records of all patients treated at the Department of Nephrology and Renal Transplantation of the Research and Development Center in the Provincial Specialist Hospital in Wrocław, Poland, between February 2009 and May 2012, who developed diarrhea, abdominal pain and/or fever within 72 h after admission. In patients with these symptoms, an enzyme cassette immunoassay was performed to detect antigens of C. difficile toxins A and B in stool. RESULTS There were 207 patients enrolled in the study, presented with the symptoms of the C. difficile infection. Out of these patients, 69 (33%) persons were positive for C. difficile toxins. Longer hospitalization time and lower initial serum albumin concentration significantly increased the risk of infection (p < 0.05). Apart from the C. difficile infection, age, the number of used antibiotics, longer hospitalization time, and lower initial serum albumin concentration significantly augmented the risk of death (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS In patients with CKD, longer hospitalization time and lower serum albumin concentration significantly increased the risk of the C. difficile infection. The C. difficile infection, age, the number of used antibiotics, longer hospitalization time, and lower initial serum albumin concentration notably augmented the risk of death. Although the incidence of the C. difficile infection did not correlate with the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), 67% of patients who tested positive were class 5 of CKD, whereas only 5.7% were class 1.
Protection of pregnant women at work in Switzerland: practices, obstacles and resources. A mixed-methods study protocol

Introduction Like most industrialised countries, Switzerland has introduced legislation to protect the health of pregnant workers and their unborn children from workplace exposure. This legislation provides for a risk assessment, adaptations to workplaces and, if the danger is not eliminated, preventive leave (prescribed by a gynaecologist). This study’s first objective is to analyse the degree to which companies, gynaecologists and midwives implement the law. Its second objective is to understand the obstacles and resources of this implementation, with a focus on how relevant stakeholders perceive protective measures and their involvement with them. Methods and analysis Data will be collected using mixed methods: (1) online questionnaires for gynaecologists and midwives; telephone questionnaires with company human resources (HR) managers in the healthcare and food production sectors; (2a) case studies of 6–8 companies in each sector, including interviews with stakeholders such as women workers, HR managers and occupational health physicians; (2b) two focus groups, one involving occupational physicians and hygienists, one involving labour inspectors. Quantitative data will be analysed statistically using STATA software V.15. Qualitative data will be transcribed and thematically analysed using MaxQDA software. Ethics and dissemination The Human Research Ethics Committee of the Canton Vaud (CER-VD) has certified that this research study protocol falls outside of the field of application of the Swiss Federal Act on Research Involving Humans. The publications and recommendations resulting from this study will form the starting point for future improvements to the protection of pregnant women at work and their unborn children. This study started in February 2017 and will continue until January 2020.
Characteristics and Factors Associated With the Mortality of Hypotensive Patients Attending the Emergency Department

Background The prevalence of hypotension in emergency departments (EDs) is approximately 1-2%, but is associated with a mortality rate of 8-15%. There has never been a study in Thailand examining the epidemiology or the risk factors for early mortality of patients presenting with hypotension in the ED. Therefore, this study aimed to define the characteristics, mortality rate within 48 h and associated factors of hypotensive patients at ED. Methods Data of patients with hypotension attending the ED of Thammasat University Hospital (TUH) were retrospectively studied. Results Of the 9,000 patients seen in the TUH ED, 233 were hypotensive for a prevalence of 2.5%. Patients were old, with a mean age of 61 ± 20 years. The most common presenting symptom was fever, and sepsis was the most common cause of hypotension. The mean systolic blood pressure (SBP) was 78 ± 8 mm Hg. Isotonic crystalloid volume resuscitation in first hour was 758 mL (interquartile range (IQR), 500 - 1,000) and the total volume to achieve a mean arterial pressure (MAP) ≥ 65 mm Hg was 1,142 mL (IQR, 500 - 1,500). Twenty-seven percent of patients needed vasopressor support. Nineteen patients died ≤ 48 h, giving a case fatality rate of 8.2%. Three independent factors associated with 48-h mortality were initial pulse rate > 100 beats/min (odds ratio (OR), 4.21; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.05 - 16.88; P = 0.042), diagnosis of shock (OR, 13.74 (1.49 - 126.61); P = 0.021) and recurrent hypotension (OR, 6.91 (1.54 - 30.99); P = 0.012). Conclusions Hypotension in the ED was common and associated with high mortality rate. Better triage, patient monitoring and treatment may improve outcomes in these patients.
Improving herpes zoster vaccine rates: The impact of a targeted educational program

Background and purpose: Despite demonstrated efficacy, the utilization of herpes zoster vaccine (HZV), recommended by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for all immunocompetent adults aged above 60 years, is low (31%). The aim of this study was to identify nurse practitioner (NP) barriers to HZV administration and then to use these results to develop and evaluate the outcomes of an educational program. Methods: This study used a two-phase design. In Phase I, barriers that obstruct the provision of HZV were identified and NPs were surveyed to determine current HZV practice. The second phase used a quasiexperimental pretest–posttest design to evaluate the impact of the constructed program. Conclusions: In Phase I, NYS Primary Care NPs with practice years ranging from 1 to 24, who reported working in practice sites that ranged from 1 to 20 providers, possessed limited knowledge of the vaccine, especially, the financial aspects of the vaccination such as up-front cost (46%), cost to patients (39%), and reimbursement (29%), resulting in fewer provider recommendations. In Phase II, a paired-samples t test revealed a statistically significant difference between pretest scores (mean = 3.4, SD = 1.2) and posttest scores (mean = 4.7, SD = 1.3) on the knowledge survey, t (37) = −7.1, p < . 0, demonstrating NPs' improved understanding of HZV. Implications for practice: Nurse practitioners will increase compliance with the CDC recommendations for HZV administration.
Cold-Start Aware User and Product Attention for Sentiment Classification

The use of user/product information in sentiment analysis is important, especially for cold-start users/products, whose number of reviews are very limited. However, current models do not deal with the cold-start problem which is typical in review websites. In this paper, we present Hybrid Contextualized Sentiment Classifier (HCSC), which contains two modules: (1) a fast word encoder that returns word vectors embedded with short and long range dependency features; and (2) Cold-Start Aware Attention (CSAA), an attention mechanism that considers the existence of cold-start problem when attentively pooling the encoded word vectors. HCSC introduces shared vectors that are constructed from similar users/products, and are used when the original distinct vectors do not have sufficient information (i.e. cold-start). This is decided by a frequency-guided selective gate vector. Our experiments show that in terms of RMSE, HCSC performs significantly better when compared with on famous datasets, despite having less complexity, and thus can be trained much faster. More importantly, our model performs significantly better than previous models when the training data is sparse and has cold-start problems.
A metapopulation model of the spread of the Devil Facial Tumour Disease predicts the long term collapse of its host but not its extinction

The Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD), a unique case of a transmissible cancer, had a devastating effect on its host, the Tasmanian Devil. Current estimates of its density are at roughly 20% of the pre-disease state, and single-population epidemiological models have predicted the likely extinction of the host. Here we take advantage of extensive surveys across Tasmania providing data on the spatial and temporal spread of DFTD, and investigate the dynamics of this host-pathogen system using a spatial metapopulation model. We first confirm a most likely origin of DFTD in the north-east corner of the island, and then use the inferred dynamics to predict the fate of the species. We find that our medium-term predictions match additional data not used for fitting, and that on the longterm, Tasmanian Devils are predicted to coexist with the tumour. The key process allowing persistence is the repeated reinvasion of extinct patches from neighbouring areas where the disease has flared up and died out, resulting in a dynamic equilibrium with different levels of spatial heterogeneity. However, this dynamic equilibrium is predicted to keep this apex predator at about 9 % of its original density, with possible dramatic effects on the Tasmanian ecosystem.
Wound Closure on the Neonatal Rat Skin II. The Potential Ability of Epidermis to Close Small-Sized Wounds Independently of the Underlying Dermis

Reepithelialization of skin which comprises epidermis and dermis has not been fully elucidated due to the complexity of the participants as well as the interactions therein. In this study, the intrinsic roles and behaviors of epidermis itself during wound closure on neonatal rat skin were explored by developing and utilizing a novel in vivo wound model, termed “shallow incisional wound” in which the injury of dermis was minimized. The shallow wounds were closed by 12 h postwounding (PW) by the migration of the wound-marginal epidermal sheets in which activated myosin light chain (p-MLC) was predominantly detected at the lateral plasma membrane of individual cells. By local administration of Rho-associated protein kinase (ROCK) inhibitor Y27632, p-MLC disappeared at the wound margin and wounds were not closed by 12 h PW. Inhibition of Rac 1 by NSC23766 also resulted in hold of wound closure by 12 h PW, though NSC23766 somewhat slowly acted on p-MLC expression. These results suggest that, without joining of dermis, epidermal cells have a potential ability of closing wounds by active epithelial sheet movement integrated by Rho family small GTPases-dependent extension and contraction of the individual cell bodies.
hicken trunk neural crest migration visualized with HNK 1

The development of the nervous system involves cells remaining within the neural tube (CNS) and a group of cells that delaminate from the dorsal neural tube and migrate extensively throughout the developing embryo called neural crest cells (NCC). These cells are a mesenchymal highly migratory group of cells that give rise to a wide variety of cell derivatives: melanocytes, sensory neurons, bone, Schwann cells, etc. But not all NCC can give rise to all derivatives, they have fate restrictions based on their axial level of origin: cranial, vagal, trunk and sacral. Our aim was to provide a thorough presentation on how does trunk neural crest cell migration looks in the chicken embryo, in wholemount and in sections using the unique chicken marker HNK1. The description presented here makes a good guideline for those
Grounded Textual Entailment

Capturing semantic relations between sentences, such as entailment, is a long-standing challenge for computational semantics. Logic-based models analyse entailment in terms of possible worlds (interpretations, or situations) where a premise P entails a hypothesis H iff in all worlds where P is true, H is also true. Statistical models view this relationship probabilistically, addressing it in terms of whether a human would likely infer H from P. In this paper, we wish to bridge these two perspectives, by arguing for a visually-grounded version of the Textual Entailment task. Specifically, we ask whether models can perform better if, in addition to P and H, there is also an image (corresponding to the relevant “world” or “situation”). We use a multimodal version of the SNLI dataset (Bowman et al., 2015) and we compare “blind” and visually-augmented models of textual entailment. We show that visual information is beneficial, but we also conduct an in-depth error analysis that reveals that current multimodal models are not performing “grounding” in an optimal fashion.
Ultrasound-Guided Percutaneous Peripheral Nerve Stimulation

Background and Objectives Percutaneous peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) is an analgesic modality involving the insertion of a lead through an introducing needle followed by the delivery of electric current. This modality has been reported to treat chronic pain as well as postoperative pain the day following knee surgery. However, it remains unknown if this analgesic technique may be used in ambulatory subjects following foot procedures beginning within the recovery room immediately following surgery, and with only short series of patients reported to date, the only available data are derived from strictly observational studies. The purposes of this proof-of-concept study were to demonstrate the feasibility of using percutaneous sciatic nerve PNS to treat postoperative pain following ambulatory foot surgery in the immediate postoperative period and provide the first available data from a randomized controlled study design to provide evidence of analgesic effect. Methods Preoperatively, an electrical lead (SPRINT; SPR Therapeutics, Inc, Cleveland, Ohio) was percutaneously inserted posterior to the sciatic nerve between the subgluteal region and bifurcation with ultrasound guidance. Following hallux valgus osteotomy, subjects received 5 minutes of either stimulation or sham in a randomized, double-masked fashion followed by a 5-minute crossover period and then continuous stimulation until lead removal on postoperative days 14 to 28. Results During the initial 5-minute treatment period, subjects randomized to stimulation (n = 4) experienced a downward trajectory in their pain over the 5 minutes of treatment, whereas those receiving sham (n = 3) reported no such change until their subsequent 5-minute stimulation crossover. During the subsequent 30 minutes of stimulation, pain scores decreased to 52% of baseline (n = 7). Three subjects (43%) used a continuous popliteal nerve block for rescue analgesia during postoperative days 0 to 3. Overall, resting and dynamic pain scores averaged less than 1 on the numeric rating scale, and opioid use averaged less than 1 tablet daily with active stimulation. One lead dislodged, 2 fractured during use, and 1 fractured during intentional withdrawal. Conclusions This proof-of-concept study demonstrates that percutaneous sciatic nerve PNS is feasible for ambulatory foot surgery and suggests that this modality provides analgesia and decreases opioid requirements following hallux valgus procedures. However, lead dislodgement and fracture are concerns. Clinical Trial Registration This study was registered at Clinicaltrials.gov, identifier NCT02898103.