Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Acute myeloblastic leukemia: Important clinical and epidemiological facts from Hiwa Hospital in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq

BACKGROUND: Acute myeloblastic leukemia is the most common acute leukemia in adults, with both diagnostic and therapeutic challenges. It has a poor treatment outcome both locally and internationally. The aim of this study was to investigate some epidemiological aspects and treatment outcome of AML patients treated in single center. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A retrospective observational study extended from February 2013 to February 2018 and included 98 patients who referred to Hiwa Hematology Oncology Hospital in Sulaymaniyah city. All patients had met the diagnostic criteria by flow cytometry for de novo acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Electronic records of all patients were reviewed carefully. RESULTS: Ninety-eight patients (46 females and 52 males) with a mean age of 42 years were included the study, with new diagnosis of AML, most of the patients were below the age of 60 years (81%), while only 19% were 60 years of age or older. The most frequent subtype is AML M3 (n = 25; 25.5%) of patients, followed by M1, M2 (n = 16; 16.3%) each, and M5 (n = 15; 15.3%) with M4, M0, M6, M7, and acute leukemia of ambiguous lineage comprising the remainder, respectively. The clinical features at the diagnosis of the 98 patients included pallor in 91 patients (92.9%), easy fatigability in 82 patients (83.6%), while bleeding tendency was present in 46 patients (46.9%) in the form of ecchymosis, petechial hemorrhage, epistaxis, or abnormal vaginal bleeding. Fever was present in 85 patients (86.7%), while pain in the form of headache, generalized body ache, or bone pain was initially manifested in 29 patients (29.6%). The survival of our patients at 1 year is (88%) M3 patients, while it was (58%) for non-M3 patient. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical and epidemiological characteristics were different in some aspect, while comparable in other when compared to published studies. treatment outcome and survival data were comparable to international data.
Comparison of Efficacy of Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography with Contrast-Enhanced Computed Tomography in Pretreatment Evaluation of Head and Neck Cancers: An Institutional Experience

Abstract Introduction: Head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) constitute 5.4% of all cancers worldwide, and 23% of all cancers in males and 6% of all cancers in females diagnosed in India. Lots of ambiguity exists in primary, nodal, and metastatic workup of these patients, especially in developing countries. Aim: The study was designed to compare the accuracy of whole-body positron emission tomography/computed tomography (WBPET/CT) scan with contrast-enhanced CT (CECT) face and neck as pretreatment evaluation for staging workup and management decision and to confirm the nodal findings on imaging with fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC). Design: It was a single-institute, prospective, observational, interventional study over a 2-year period. All cases of SCC of upper aerodigestive tract who were scheduled for definitive treatment concurrent chemoradiotherapy or radiotherapy were evaluated with routine investigations followed by imaging in the form of CECT face and neck and 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) WBPET/CT. Results: In the 40 enrolled patients, all underwent CECT face and neck and WBPET/CT. During initial workup, biopsy was taken from primary site and FNAC was done from neck nodes for diagnosis and for staging. In 40 patients, CECT neck showed nodal metastasis in 39 patients; however, FNAC came positive in 38 cases. PET/CT showed nodal metastasis in 38 patients; however, FNAC came positive in 38 cases. Any node with Standardized uptake value (SUV) >2.5 was taken as suspicious lesion and FNAC was done. Sensitivity of CECT and PET/CT was 97.36% and 100%, respectively, while the specificity was 0% and 100%, respectively. Positive predictive value calculated for CECT and WBPET was 94.87% and 100%, respectively, while the negative predictive value for CECT and WBPET was 0% and 100%, respectively. Conclusion: In head and neck SCC, FDG-PET/CT is more accurate than CECT in staging of the neck.
Towards Age-friendly Exergame Design: The Role of Familiarity

Exergames have been shown to be effective in helping older adults maintain their physical abilities. However, it is sometimes difficult for older adults to experiment with exergames due to a perceived digital divide. In this work, we propose to bridge this divide through infusing familiarity design into exergames. Specifically, we identify five sub-constructs of familiarity, namely prior experience, positive emotion, occurrence frequency, level of processing, and retention rate. We evaluate the correlations between these five sub-constructs and familiarity through a field study involving 59 Singaporean older adults. Four exergames designed with different interfaces and tasks were sequentially played by the participants. Questionnaire and interview data about the participants' assessment of the five sub-constructs and the overall familiarity on different exergames were collected. The analysis results show that all five sub-constructs have significant positive correlations with familiarity. Moreover, there is a high positive correlation between the participants' perceived familiarity of the exergame and their satisfaction with the exergame. Informed by these results, we propose familiarity design guidelines based on the five sub-constructs for age-friendly exergames.
The first report on epidemiology of oropharyngeal Kingella kingae carriage in Scandinavian children: K. kingae carriage is very common in children attending day care facilities in Western Norway

Kingella kingae colonizes the upper airways in children and has been recognized as the most common causative agent of osteoarticular infections (OAI) in children below 4 years of age. This is the first Scandinavian study to investigate oropharyngeal K. kingae carriage in healthy children. From June 2015 to August 2016, we recruited 198 healthy children aged 11–14 months from routine consultations at health promotion centers in Hordaland County, Norway for a cross‐sectional study. After their parents had provided informed consent; demographic data were registered, and an oropharyngeal swab was collected. The oropharyngeal swab was analyzed with a real‐time PCR assay specific to K. kingae targeting the RTX toxin locus. Results showed an asymptomatic carriage rate of 12.6%. A striking and highly significant difference was observed between the children that had started attending day care facilities as compared with children still being at home (33.33% vs 8.5%; p < 0.001). K. kingae is prevalent in young children in Norway. This study emphasize that K. kingae should be considered an important etiological agent in OAI. Transmission seems to be facilitated in day care facilities. The correlation between oropharyngeal carriage and OAI needs to be further explored.
Effect of Endogenous Clostridioides difficile Toxin Antibodies on Recurrence of C. difficile Infection.

BACKGROUND Endogenous antibodies (eAbs) against Clostridioides (Clostridium) difficile toxins may protect against recurrence of C. difficile infection (rCDI). This hypothesis was tested using placebo group data from MODIFY (Monoclonal Antibodies for C. difficile Therapy) I and II (NCT01241552 and NCT01513239, respectively), global, randomized phase 3 trials that assessed the efficacy and safety of the antitoxin monoclonal antibodies bezlotoxumab and actoxumab in participants receiving antibiotic therapy for CDI. METHODS A placebo infusion (normal saline) was administered on study day 1. Serum samples were collected on day 1, week 4, and week 12, and eAb-A and eAb-B titers were measured by 2 validated electrochemiluminescence immunoassays. Rates of initial clinical cure and rCDI were summarized by eAb titer category (low, medium, high) at each time point. RESULTS Serum eAb titers were available from a total of 773 participants. The proportion of participants with high eAb-A and eAb-B titers increased over time. Rates of initial clinical cure were similar across eAb titer categories. There was no correlation between eAb-A titers and rCDI rate at any time point. However, there was a negative correlation between rCDI and eAb-B titer on day 1 and week 4. rCDI occurred in 22% of participants with high eAb-B titers at baseline compared with 35% with low or medium titers (P = .015). CONCLUSIONS Higher eAb titers against toxin B, but not toxin A, were associated with protection against rCDI. These data are consistent with the observed efficacy of bezlotoxumab, and lack of efficacy of actoxumab, in the MODIFY trials.High titers of endogenous antibodies to Clostridioides difficile toxin B, but not toxin A, were associated with reduced recurrence of C. difficile infection. These findings are consistent with efficacy data from the phase 3 MODIFY trials of bezlotoxumab and actoxumab.
TSLP induces a proinflammatory phenotype in circulating innate cells and predicts prognosis in sepsis patients

Thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) has been identified as a crucial inflammatory cytokine in immune homeostasis. Previous studies have reported conflicting effects of TSLP on sepsis in mice, and the effect of TSLP on sepsis in humans has not been investigated. In this study, we used the ELISA to measure serum levels of TSLP in patients with sepsis, and used flow cytometry and ELISA to evaluate the proinflammatory phenotype of circulating immune cells. In addition, we used quantitative RT‐PCR to examine the expression of proinflammatory cytokines [interleukin (IL)‐1β, IL‐6, tumor necrosis factor‐α, transferrin growth factor‐β, IL‐10, and matrix metalloproteinase] between patients with high and low levels of TSLP. Flow cytometry analysis was performed to evaluate the phagocytic and respiratory burst of circulating neutrophils. A significant increase in the production of proinflammatory cytokines by nonclassical monocytes and the number of interferon (IFN)‐γ+ CD4+ monocytes was observed in patients with high levels of TSLP. Furthermore, the number of IL‐10+ regulatory T cells was observed to be increased in patients with high levels of TSLP. We found that TSLP values greater than 350 pg·mL−1 were associated with a higher mortality rate and longer stays in intensive care (sensitivity of 89% and specificity of 79%). In patients with low levels of neutrophils, the area under curve was only 0.71 (based on the cutoff value in the diagnostic test evaluation; sensitivity of 62% and specificity of 68%). Our findings suggest that the serum levels of TSLP may be suitable as a biomarker for prediction of prognosis in a subgroup of patients with sepsis who are exhibiting hyperleukocytosis and a high neutrophil ratio.
The Value of Hyperimmune Globulin (HIG) in Pregnancies Complicated by Cytomegalovirus Infection: A Continuing Saga.

EDITORIAL COMMENTARY • cid 2020:71 (15 September) • 1499 Received 10 October 2019; editorial decision 11 October 2019; accepted 16 October 2019; published online October 20, 2019. Correspondence: M. R. Schleiss, Center for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology Translational Research, University of Minnesota Medical School, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology, Minneapolis, MN 55455 (schleiss@umn.edu). Clinical Infectious Diseases 2020;71(6):1499–501 © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. DOI: 10.1093/cid/ciz1036 The Value of Hyperimmune Globulin in Pregnancies Complicated by Cytomegalovirus Infection: A Continuing Saga
Carbon fixation gene expression in Skeletonema marinoi in nitrogen‐, phosphate‐, silicate‐starvation, and low‐temperature stress exposure

Diatoms are unicellular algae with a set of extraordinary genes, metabolic pathways, and physiological functions acquired by secondary endosymbiosis, especially for their efficient photosynthetic carbon fixation mechanisms, which can be a reason for their successful environmental adaptation and great contribution to primary production. Based on the available genomic information, the expression patterns of carbon fixation genes were analyzed using transcriptomic sequencing and reverse transcription‐quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT‐qPCR) in Skeletonema marinoi. Meanwhile, suitable reference genes applying to specific experimental treatments were selected. In our results, carbon fixation genes were standardized by actin and TATA box‐binding protein‐coding genes in growth phase samples and stress conditions, respectively. It was found that a series of carbon fixation genes, such as the pyruvate orthophosphate dikinase (PPDK)‐coding gene, had significantly up‐regulated expression in nitrogen‐starvation, phosphate‐starvation, and low‐temperature conditions, but consistently down‐regulated in silicate‐starvation treatment. These carbon fixation genes exhibited variable expression levels in different conditions and will be useful for investigating gene expression mechanisms in S. marinoi and improve our understanding of diatom carbon fixation pathways.
Emerging infectious diseases: the fifth stage of the epidemiologic transition?

Epidemiologic transition theory has proved to be a useful tool for categorizing levels of mortality and for comparing the relative risks of death across population subgroups over time. However neither the extensions of this model nor the original model itself captures the unique set of mortality conditions that are associated with the rising threats from infectious diseases that have surfaced during the last quarter of the century. A significant number of new infectious and parasitic diseases (IPDs) have emerged in recent years. These IPDs already had a profound effect on human mortality and there is scientific justification to suspect that infectious diseases will continue to have significant impact on human health in the future. In fact the unique set of demographic and health conditions have now made the human population more vulnerable to IPDs than at any previous time in history. As such the question of whether the existing mortality patterns and risks should be labeled the fifth stage of the epidemiologic transition or the re-emergence of the first stage is probably only of concern to academic scholars. Labels are far less important than the elevated risks from IPDs that human populations are now experiencing and the reasons why these risks are increasing. Monitoring these alarming events must be intensified.
Psychiatric/Mental Health Nursing: Concepts of Care

-- Uses the stress-adaptation model as its conceptual framework-- The latest classification of psychiatric disorders in DSM IV-- Access to 50 psychotropic drugs with client teaching guidelines on our website-- Each chapter based on DSM IV diagnoses includes tables with abstracts describing recent research studies pertaining to specific psychiatric diagnoses-- Within the DSM IV section, each chapter features a table with guidelines for client/family education appropriate to the specific diagnosis-- Four new chapters: Cognitive Therapy, Complementary Therapies, Psychiatric Home Health Care, and Forensic Nursing-- Includes critical pathways for working in case management situations-- Chapters include objectives, glossary, case studies using critical thinking, NCLEX-style chapter review questions, summaries, and care plans with documentation standards in the form of critical pathways-- The only source to thoroughly cover assertiveness training, self-esteem, and anger/aggression management-- Key elements include historic and epidemiologic factors; background assessment data, with predisposing factors/symptomatology for each disorder; common nursing diagnoses with standardized guidelines for intervention in care; and outcome criteria, guidelines for reassessment, evaluation of care, and specific medication/treatment modalities-- Special topics include the aging individual, the individual with HIV/AIDS, victims of violence, and ethical and legal issues in psychiatric/mental health nursing-- Includes information on the Mental Status exam, Beck depression scale, and Holmes & Rahe scale defense mechanisms criteria
The Practical Guide to the Genetic Family History

The Language of the Pedigree. Practical Inheritance. Getting to the Roots: Recording the Family Tree. Directed Medical--Genetic Family History Queries: Separating the Trees from the Forest. Using a Pedigree to Recognize Individuals with an Increased Susceptibility to Cancer. Medical Verification of a Family History. The Challenge of Family History and Adoption. The Pedigree and Assisted Reproductive Technologies. Making a Referral for Genetic Services: Where to Turn and What to Expect. Pedigree Predicaments. Glossary. Appendices. Index.
Localization of Fake News Detection via Multitask Transfer Learning

The use of the internet as a fast medium of spreading fake news reinforces the need for computational tools that combat it. Techniques that train fake news classifiers exist, but they all assume an abundance of resources including large labeled datasets and expert-curated corpora, which low-resource languages may not have. In this work, we make two main contributions: First, we alleviate resource scarcity by constructing the first expertly-curated benchmark dataset for fake news detection in Filipino, which we call “Fake News Filipino. ” Second, we benchmark Transfer Learning (TL) techniques and show that they can be used to train robust fake news classifiers from little data, achieving 91% accuracy on our fake news dataset, reducing the error by 14% compared to established few-shot baselines. Furthermore, lifting ideas from multitask learning, we show that augmenting transformer-based transfer techniques with auxiliary language modeling losses improves their performance by adapting to writing style. Using this, we improve TL performance by 4-6%, achieving an accuracy of 96% on our best model. Lastly, we show that our method generalizes well to different types of news articles, including political news, entertainment news, and opinion articles.
Scalar quasinormal modes of a family of generalised Ellis--Bronnikov wormholes

We obtain the scalar quasinormal modes (QNMs) in a family of Lorentzian wormholes proposed many years ago, as a generalisation of the well--known Ellis-Bronnikov spacetime. The effective potentials governing wave propagation, for different values of a metric parameter $n$ and the angular momentum parameter $m$, show, in general, double--barrier features. However, for large $m$ we do obtain potentials close to a single barrier. We use various methods to find the QNMs, eg. Prony-fit from the time-domain profile, direct integration and the semi-analytical WKB method. An agreement between the results, found by the two numerical methods, is achieved. The WKB results indicate, as expected, a deviation for small values of $m$ and an agreement for large $m$, a fact demonstrated through our results. We also note the behaviour of the QNMs as a function of $n$ (the metric parameter) and $b_0$ (the throat radius). The values of the QNM frequencies and damping time-constant for typical values of $b_0$ (multiples of the solar mass) are found. We conclude by noting how the shape of the wormhole, which is determined by the parameter $n$ (and also by $b_0$) may be obtained from the nature and the values of the QNMs.
A Type of Virtual Force-Based Energy-Hole Mitigation Strategy for Sensor Networks

In the era of Big Data and Mobile Internet, how to ensure the terminal devices (e.g., sensor nodes) work steadily for a long time is one of the key issues to improve the efficiency of the whole network. However, a lot of facts have shown that the unattended equipments are prone to failure due to energy exhaustion, physical damage and other reasons. This may result in the emergence of energy-hole, seriously affecting network performance and shortening its lifetime. To reduce data redundancy and avoid the generation of sensing blind areas, a type of Virtual Force based Energy-hole Mitigation strategy (VFEM) is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the virtual force (gravitation and repulsion) between nodes is introduced that makes nodes distribute as uniformly as possible. Secondly, in order to alleviate the “energy-hole problem”, the network is divided into several annuluses with the same width. Then, another type of virtual force, named “virtual gravity generated by annulus”, is proposed to further optimize the positions of nodes in each annulus. Finally, with the help of the “data forwarding area”, the optimal paths for data uploading can be selected out, which effectively balances energy consumption of nodes. Experiment results show that, VFEM has a relatively good performance on postponing the generation time of energy-holes as well as prolonging the network lifetime compared with other typical energy-hole mitigation methods.
Correlation Maximized Structural Similarity Loss for Semantic Segmentation

Most semantic segmentation models treat semantic segmentation as a pixel-wise classification task and use a pixel-wise classification error as their optimization criterions. However, the pixel-wise error ignores the strong dependencies among the pixels in an image, which limits the performance of the model. Several ways to incorporate the structure information of the objects have been investigated, \eg, conditional random fields (CRF), image structure priors based methods, and generative adversarial network (GAN). Nevertheless, these methods usually require extra model branches or additional memories, and some of them show limited improvements. In contrast, we propose a simple yet effective structural similarity loss (SSL) to encode the structure information of the objects, which only requires a few additional computational resources in the training phase. Inspired by the widely-used structural similarity (SSIM) index in image quality assessment, we use the linear correlation between two images to quantify their structural similarity. And the goal of the proposed SSL is to pay more attention to the positions, whose associated predictions lead to a low degree of linear correlation between two corresponding regions in the ground truth map and the predicted map. Thus the model can achieve a strong structural similarity between the two maps through minimizing the SSL over the whole map. The experimental results demonstrate that our method can achieve substantial and consistent improvements in performance on the PASCAL VOC 2012 and Cityscapes datasets. The code will be released soon.
Combinatorial results for network-based models of metabolic origins

A key step in the origin of life is the emergence of a primitive metabolism. This requires the formation of a subset of chemical reactions that is both self-sustaining and collectively autocatalytic. A generic theory to study such processes (called 'RAF theory') has provided a precise and computationally effective way to address these questions, both on simulated data and in laboratory studies. One of the classic applications of this theory (arising from Stuart Kauffman's pioneering work in the 1980s) involves networks of polymers under cleavage and ligation reactions; in the first part of this paper, we provide the first exact description of the number of such reactions under various model assumptions. Conclusions from earlier studies relied on either approximations or asymptotic counting, and we show that the exact counts lead to similar (though not always identical) asymptotic results. In the second part of the paper, we solve some questions posed in more recent papers concerning the computational complexity of some key questions in RAF theory. In particular, although there is a fast algorithm to determine whether or not a catalytic reaction network contains a subset that is both self-sustaining and autocatalytic (and, if so, find one), determining whether or not sets exist that satisfy certain additional constraints exist turns out to be NP-complete.