Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Yoga education program for older women diagnosed with sarcopenia: A multicity 10-year follow-up experiment

ABSTRACT This article reports a multicity yoga education program (YEP) experiment aimed at improving gait speed, muscular strength, and functional performance in Asian and African older women diagnosed with sarcopenia. Posttest gait speed and muscle strength scale scores were higher, and the six functional performance tests scores were above average for women who were from Asian cities; middle class; currently married; living with spouse, children, or kin; with good self-rated health; who regularly attended the YEP lessons and regularly self-practiced. Instructors’ self-practice record was the strongest predictor of higher posttest scores. The YEP is an effective long-term prevention for sarcopenic older women.
Current understanding of Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis and treatment

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia worldwide, with the prevalence continuing to grow in part because of the aging world population. This neurodegenerative disease process is characterized classically by two hallmark pathologies: β-amyloid plaque deposition and neurofibrillary tangles of hyperphosphorylated tau. Diagnosis is based upon clinical presentation fulfilling several criteria as well as fluid and imaging biomarkers. Treatment is currently targeted toward symptomatic therapy, although trials are underway that aim to reduce the production and overall burden of pathology within the brain. Here, we discuss recent advances in our understanding of the clinical evaluation and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, with updates regarding clinical trials still in progress.
Oxygen uptake kinetics and speed-time correlates of modified 3-minute all-out shuttle running in soccer players

How parameters derived from oxygen uptake V˙O2 kinetics relate to critical speed is not fully understood, and how such parameters relate to more sport-specific performances, such as shuttle running, has not been investigated. Therefore, the primary aims of the present student were to examine the V˙O2 kinetics during all-out linear and shuttle running and compare physiological variables of all-out running to variables measured during a graded exercise test (GXT). Fifteen male soccer players performed a graded exercise test (GXT) and the V˙O2 kinetics from a series of three different 3-min all-out tests (3MT’s) were evaluated. V˙O2max achieved during the GXT did not differ from maximal V˙O2 achieved during the all-out tests (F = 1.85, p = 0.13) (overall ICC = 0.65; typical error = 2.48 ml∙kg-1∙min-1; coefficient of variation = 4.8%). A moderate, inverse correlation (r = -0.62, p = 0.02) was observed between τ (14.7 ± 1.92 s) and CS (3.96 ± 0.52 m∙s-1) despite the narrow SD for τ. No differences (p > 0.05) were observed for any of the V˙O2 kinetics between continuous and shuttle running bouts. The linear running 3MT (r3MT) represents a viable surrogate to the GXT and data beyond CS and D’ may be gleaned by using the bi-exponential speed-time model.
Text Entry on Smartwatches: A Systematic Review of Literature

As an emerging technology that combines mobile and wearable markets, smartwatches are finding their place on consumers' daily lives. They allow tasks that used to be performed only by smartphones and tracking devices. Despite the increasing interest on them, a task that is still not fully covered by these devices is text entry, mainly due to their reduced screen size. Researchers have been working hard on solutions for this issue in the past years, and a number of methods for interactive text entry with smartphones now exist. The aim of this paper is to present a systematic review on these methods, showing what has been developed and what is the performance of the current state of art of the technology. The review focused on four databases. After applying a large selection criterion, it resulted in twenty-six approaches, which helped to answer questions that grounded this work. We hope to deliver a rich and useful foundation about methods, results, challenges and opportunities and to support new research on smartwatches.
In search of chondrocyte-specific antigen

The purpose of this work was to establish, whether rat chondrocyte associated antigen, transmembrane Tmp21 protein belonging to the p24 protein family may immunize rats and thus be included into the panel of immunogens potentially involved in cartilage pathology. For immunization of rats extract from cultured chondrocytes containing surface chondrocyte proteins suspended in incomplete Freund’s adjuvant was used. Control animals were injected with incomplete Freund’s adjuvant without chondrocyte extract. Morphological observations indicated that both in control and experimental animals occurred subperiosteal resorption of bone, suggesting that it arised as the response to adjuvant. In trachea, however, resorption of cartilage and inflammatory changes in the respiratory epithelium and lamina propria were present only in animals exposed to antigen. Unexpectedly, sera from immunized rats strongly reacted with other antigen, which we were able to identify by Western blot and protein sequencing as cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP). COMP is attached to chondrocyte membrane by integrins and its presence in chondrocyte extract is not surprising. Antibody response to COMP raises a question whether the observed changes in tracheal cartilage and epithelium represent anti-COMP reaction or were caused by some other, no specified factors. COMP is used as the marker of osteoarthritis progression, but its role in polychondritis, cartilage pathology involving i.a. tracheal cartilage resorption remains unknown. Thus, our observations may serve as the starting point for future studies in this direction.
Melanoma Recognition in Dermoscopy Images via Aggregated Deep Convolutional Features

In this paper, we present a novel framework for dermoscopy image recognition via both a deep learning method and a local descriptor encoding strategy. Specifically, deep representations of a rescaled dermoscopy image are first extracted via a very deep residual neural network pretrained on a large natural image dataset. Then these local deep descriptors are aggregated by orderless visual statistic features based on Fisher vector (FV) encoding to build a global image representation. Finally, the FV encoded representations are used to classify melanoma images using a support vector machine with a Chi-squared kernel. Our proposed method is capable of generating more discriminative features to deal with large variations within melanoma classes, as well as small variations between melanoma and nonmelanoma classes with limited training data. Extensive experiments are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method. Comparisons with state-of-the-art methods show the superiority of our method using the publicly available ISBI 2016 Skin lesion challenge dataset.
Tumor associated macrophages induce epithelial to mesenchymal transition via the EGFR/ERK1/2 pathway in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

The development of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is closely associated with inflammation. Tumor associated macrophages (TAMs), the largest population of inflammatory cells in the tumor stroma, serve an important role in accelerating cancer progression. The present study aimed to investigate the role of TAMs in the metastasis of HNSCC. TAM biomarkers and epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT)-associated proteins were detected using immunohistochemical and immunofluorescence staining in HNSCC. Then, direct and indirect co-culture systems of TAMs and HNSCC cells were established. The EMT-associated proteins and associated signaling pathways in HNSCC cells of the co-culture system were measured by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction and western blotting. Finally, hierarchical clustering was performed to analyze associations among TAM biomarkers, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), activated extracellular signal-regulated protein kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) and EMT-associated proteins in HNSCC tissues. The results indicated that the expression of EMT-associated proteins was positively associated with M2 macrophage biomarkers in HNSCC tissues. Cal27 cells were isolated from the co-culture system by fluorescence-activated cell sorting, and it was identified that E-cadherin was downregulated in Cal27 cells, while Vimentin and Slug were upregulated. Furthermore, the results indicated that EGF released by M2 macrophages in the co-culture served an important role by activating ERK1/2. The correlation and cluster analyses indicated that activated ERK1/2 was positively correlated with cluster of differentiation-163, EGFR, Vimentin and Slug. This suggested that TAMs may induce the EMT of cancer cells by activating the EGFR/ERK1/2 signaling pathway in HNSCC, which may be a promising approach to suppressing cancer metastasis.
Management of Amiodarone-Induced Thyrotoxicosis at a Cardiac Transplantation Centre

Background: Amiodarone-induced thyrotoxicosis (AIT) is associated with significant morbidity and mortality, particularly in patients with cardiac failure. The aim of the study was to evaluate the management of AIT at a tertiary hospital specialising in cardiac failure and transplantation. Methods: Retrospective audit of 66 patients treated for AIT by Endocrinology (2007–2016), classified as type 1 (T1) or type 2 (T2) based on radiological criteria. Main outcome measurements were response rate to initial treatment, time to euthyroidism, and frequency/safety of thyroidectomy. Results: Mean age was 60 ± 2 years; 80% were male. Sixty-four patients commenced medical treatment: thionamides (THIO) in 23, glucocorticoids (GC) in 17 and combination (COMB) in 24. Median thyroxine (fT4) was 35.1 (31.2–46.7) in THIO, 43.1 (30.4 –60.7) in GC, and 60.0 (39.0 –>99.9) pmol/L in COMB (p = 0.01). Initial therapy induced euthyroidism in 52%: 70% THIO, 53% GC, and 33% COMB (p = 0.045) by 100 (49–167), 47 (35–61), and 53 (45–99) days, respectively (p = 0.02). A further 11% became euthyroid after transitioning from monotherapy to COMB. Thyroidectomy was undertaken in 33%. Patients who underwent thyroidectomy were younger (54 ± 3 vs. 63 ± 2 years; p = 0.03), with higher prevalence of severely impaired left ventricular function prior to diagnosis of AIT (38 vs. 18%; p = 0.08). Despite median American Society of Anaesthesiologists classification 4, no thyroidectomy patient experienced cardiorespiratory complications/death. Conclusions: Patients with AIT had limited response to medical treatment. The poorest response was observed in COMB group, likely related to greater hyperthyroidism severity. Thyroidectomy is safe in patients with severe cardiac failure if performed in a centre with cardiac anaesthetic expertise. There should be low threshold for proceeding to thyroidectomy in patients with severe AIT and/or cardiac failure.
QuAC: Question Answering in Context

We present QuAC, a dataset for Question Answering in Context that contains 14K information-seeking QA dialogs (100K questions in total). The dialogs involve two crowd workers: (1) a student who poses a sequence of freeform questions to learn as much as possible about a hidden Wikipedia text, and (2) a teacher who answers the questions by providing short excerpts from the text. QuAC introduces challenges not found in existing machine comprehension datasets: its questions are often more open-ended, unanswerable, or only meaningful within the dialog context, as we show in a detailed qualitative evaluation. We also report results for a number of reference models, including a recently state-of-the-art reading comprehension architecture extended to model dialog context. Our best model underperforms humans by 20 F1, suggesting that there is significant room for future work on this data. Dataset, baseline, and leaderboard available at http://quac.ai.
First Population-Based Report of Infants with Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia: 30-Day Outcomes from the American College of Surgeons National Quality Improvement Program

Abstract Aim The American College of Surgeons has developed a registry, the National Quality Improvement Program Pediatric (NSQIP-P), that provides participating centers with high-quality surgical outcome data for children. Herein, we aimed to analyze for the first time the short-term outcomes of live-born infants with congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) registered on this large North American database. Methods During 2015 to 2016, up to 101 participating centers uploaded 95 perioperative data points on the NSQIP-P database for patients that underwent surgical repair of CDH. The demographics, peri-, and post-operative data (up to 30 days following surgical repair) of infants with CDH were reviewed. Binary logistic regression was performed to test associations between risk factors and mortality. Main Results There were 432 (61% male) infants, who underwent CDH surgical repair during the study period. The prematurity rate (gestational age < 37 weeks) was 17%. The majority of infants (82%) had cardiac risk factors identified (72% were reported as major/severe). Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) was employed in 13% of patients prior to surgery. The majority of infants (83%) were ventilated preoperatively, and 34% received inotropes. Median age at surgery was 5 (0–74) days. CDH repair was attempted via thoracoscopy in 18% (n = 79) infants, but with a high rate of conversion to open surgery (n = 32, 41%). The postoperative 30-day mortality rate was 9%. At binary logistic regression, major cardiac risk factors (odds ratio [OR], 1.7 [0.9–3.2], p = 0.095), Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, and Respiration at 1 minute (OR, 0.7 per unit [0.5–0.8], p < 0.005), and birth weight (OR, 0.5 per kg [0.2–1.0], p < 0.05) were retained in the final model as significantly associated with mortality. Conclusion This is the first report on CDH outcomes from the NSQIP-P database. Utilization of ECMO was low compared with single-center studies from North America. The early postoperative mortality rate of babies with CDH considered suitable for surgery remains high.
Interactive Semantic Parsing for If-Then Recipes via Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning

Given a text description, most existing semantic parsers synthesize a program in one shot. However, it is quite challenging to produce a correct program solely based on the description, which in reality is often ambiguous or incomplete. In this paper, we investigate interactive semantic parsing, where the agent can ask the user clarification questions to resolve ambiguities via a multi-turn dialogue, on an important type of programs called “If-Then recipes. ” We develop a hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL) based agent that significantly improves the parsing performance with minimal questions to the user. Results under both simulation and human evaluation show that our agent substantially outperforms non-interactive semantic parsers and rule-based agents.1
Both Basal and Acute Restraint Stress-Induced c-Fos Expression Is Influenced by Age in the Extended Amygdala and Brainstem Stress Centers in Male Rats

The hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) is the main regulator of the stress response. The key of the HPA is the parvocellular paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (pPVN) controlled by higher-order limbic stress centers. The reactivity of the HPA axis is considered to be a function of age, but to date, little is known about the background of this age-dependency. Sporadic literature data suggest that the stress sensitivity as assessed by semi-quantitation of the neuronal activity marker c-Fos may also be influenced by age. Here, we aimed at investigating the HPA activity and c-Fos immunoreactivity 2 h after the beginning of a single 60 min acute restraint stress in eight age groups of male Wistar rats. We hypothesized that the function of the HPA axis (i.e., pPVN c-Fos and blood corticosterone (CORT) level), the neuronal activity of nine stress-related limbic areas (i.e., magnocellular PVN (mPVN), medial (MeA), central (CeA), basolateral nuclei of the amygdala, the oval (ovBNST), dorsolateral (dlBNST), dorsomedial (dmBNST), ventral and fusiform (fuBNST) divisions of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST)), and two brainstem stress centers such as the centrally projecting Edinger-Westphal nucleus (cpEW) and dorsal raphe nucleus (DR) show age dependency in their c-Fos response. The somatosensory barrel cortex area (S1) was evaluated to test whether the age dependency is specific for stress-centers. Our results indicate that the stress-induced rise in blood CORT titer was lower in young age reflecting relatively low HPA activity. All 12 stress-related brain areas showed c-Fos response that peaked at 2 months of age. The magnitude of c-Fos immunoreactivity correlated negatively with age in seven regions (MeA, CeA, ovBNST, dlBNST, dmBNST, fuBNST and pPVN). Unexpectedly, the CeA, ovBNST and cpEW showed a considerable basal c-Fos expression in 1-month-old rats which decreased with age. The S1 showed a U-shaped age-related dynamics in contrast to the decline observed in stress centers. We conclude that the age- and brain area dependent dynamics in stress-induced neuronal activity pattern may contribute to the age dependance of the stress reactivity. Further studies are in progress to determine the neurochemical identity of neurons showing age-dependent basal and/or stress-induced c-Fos expression.
Salidroside mitigates hypoxia/reoxygenation injury by alleviating endoplasmic reticulum stress-induced apoptosis in H9c2 cardiomyocytes

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-induced apoptosis serves a crucial role in the development of myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. Salidroside is a phenylpropanoid glycoside isolated from Rhodiola rosea L. , which is a plant often used in traditional Chinese medicine. It possesses multiple pharmacological actions and protects against myocardial I/R injury in vitro and in vivo. However, it is not yet clear whether ER stress or ER stress-induced apoptosis contributes to the cardioprotective effects of salidroside against myocardial I/R injury. Hence, hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R)-treated H9c2 cardiomyocytes were used in the current study to mimic myocardium I/R injury in vivo. It was hypothesized that salidroside alleviates ER stress and ER stress-induced apoptosis, thereby reducing H/R injury in H9c2 cells. The results demonstrated that salidroside attenuated H/R-induced H9c2 cardiomyocyte injury, as cell viability was increased, lactate dehydrogenase release was decreased, morphological changes in apoptotic cells were ameliorated and the apoptosis ratio was reduced compared with the H/R group. ER stress was reversed, indicated by the downregulation of glucose regulated protein 78 and C/EBP homologous protein following pretreatment with salidroside. In addition, salidroside attenuated ER stress-induced apoptosis, as the expression of cleaved caspase-12 and pro-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 associated X protein and activity of caspase-3 was decreased, while the expression of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 was increased following pretreatment with salidroside. Furthermore, the results indicated that salidroside decreases the activation of the ER stress-associated signaling pathway, as the expression of phosphorylated protein kinase RNA (PKR)-like ER kinase (p-PERK) and phosphorylated inositol-requiring enzyme-1α (p-IRE1α) proteins were decreased following pretreatment with salidroside. These results demonstrate that salidroside protects against H/R injury via regulation of the PERK and IRE1α pathways, resulting in alleviation of ER stress or ER stress-induced apoptosis in H9c2 cardiomyocytes.
Time‐specific and pleiotropic quantitative trait loci coordinately modulate stem growth in Populus

Summary In perennial woody plants, the coordinated increase of stem height and diameter during juvenile growth improves competitiveness (i.e. access to light); however, the factors underlying variation in stem growth remain unknown in trees. Here, we used linkage‐linkage disequilibrium (linkage‐LD) mapping to decipher the genetic architecture underlying three growth traits during juvenile stem growth. We used two Populus populations: a linkage mapping population comprising a full‐sib family of 1,200 progeny and an association mapping panel comprising 435 unrelated individuals from nearly the entire natural range of Populus tomentosa. We mapped 311 quantitative trait loci (QTL) for three growth traits at 12 timepoints to 42 regions in 17 linkage groups. Of these, 28 regions encompassing 233 QTL were annotated as 27 segmental homology regions (SHRs). Using SNPs identified by whole‐genome re‐sequencing of the 435‐member association mapping panel, we identified significant SNPs (P ≤ 9.4 × 10−7) within 27 SHRs that affect stem growth at nine timepoints with diverse additive and dominance patterns, and these SNPs exhibited complex allelic epistasis over the juvenile growth period. Nineteen genes linked to potential causative alleles that have time‐specific or pleiotropic effects, and mostly overlapped with significant signatures of selection within SHRs between climatic regions represented by the association mapping panel. Five genes with potential time‐specific effects showed species‐specific temporal expression profiles during the juvenile stages of stem growth in five representative Populus species. Our observations revealed the importance of considering temporal genetic basis of complex traits, which will facilitate the molecular design of tree ideotypes.
Decrease of MiR‐31 induced by TNF‐α inhibitor activates SATB2/RUNX2 pathway and promotes osteogenic differentiation in ethanol‐induced osteonecrosis

Suppressed osteogenic differentiation is considered a main cause of ethanol‐induced osteonecrosis. Tumor necrosis factor α (TNF‐α) and miR‐31 have been reported to be involved in the osteogenic induction. This study aimed to explore a possible molecular mechanism regulating osteogenic differentiation in ethanol‐induced osteonecrosis bone marrow stromal stem cells (BMSCs).
Acute and Chronic Effects of Exercise on Appetite, Energy Intake, and Appetite-Related Hormones: The Modulating Effect of Adiposity, Sex, and Habitual Physical Activity

Exercise facilitates weight control, partly through effects on appetite regulation. Single bouts of exercise induce a short-term energy deficit without stimulating compensatory effects on appetite, whilst limited evidence suggests that exercise training may modify subjective and homeostatic mediators of appetite in directions associated with enhanced meal-induced satiety. However, a large variability in responses exists between individuals. This article reviews the evidence relating to how adiposity, sex, and habitual physical activity modulate exercise-induced appetite, energy intake, and appetite-related hormone responses. The balance of evidence suggests that adiposity and sex do not modify appetite or energy intake responses to acute or chronic exercise interventions, but individuals with higher habitual physical activity levels may better adjust energy intake in response to energy balance perturbations. The effect of these individual characteristics and behaviours on appetite-related hormone responses to exercise remains equivocal. These findings support the continued promotion of exercise as a strategy for inducing short-term energy deficits irrespective of adiposity and sex, as well as the ability of exercise to positively influence energy balance over the longer term. Future well-controlled studies are required to further ascertain the potential mediators of appetite responses to exercise.