Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Teenage night owls or early birds? Chronotype and the mental health of adolescents

Evidence suggests that the timing of sleep (chronotype) impacts mental health in young people, but previous studies have not accounted for sleep duration or school start time in this association, or examined a broad range of mental outcomes. In this study, we investigated the association between chronotype and mental health in a representative sample of adolescents from the 2014 Canadian Health Behaviour in School‐Aged Children survey (29,635 students, 362 schools). We examined positive and negative aspects of mental health, using scores for emotional problems (range 0–33), emotional well‐being (0–22), behavioural problems (0–28) and prosocial behaviours (0–25). We estimated chronotype using the time of mid‐sleep on weekends and examined the associations using multilevel regressions, adjusted for sleep duration, school start time, individual, family and geographic characteristics. The average time of mid‐sleep (chronotype) was 04:11 hr. An hour delay in mid‐sleep time was associated with more emotional problems (0.34 [95% confidence interval 0.23, 0.45] point higher score), more behavioural problems (2.0% [95% confidence interval 1.4%, 2.6%] higher score), less emotional well‐being (0.19 [95% confidence interval 0.09, 0.20] point lower score), and fewer prosocial behaviours (0.18 [95% confidence interval 0.08, 0.29] point lower score). A later chronotype was associated with poorer mental health, independent of sleep duration and school start time, and across internalizing and externalizing mental health domains. Further research is needed to clarify the mechanisms underlying this association. The timing of sleep, and not just its duration, may be an additional consideration for youth mental health.
Septins in kidney: A territory little explored

Septins are a conserved family of GTP‐binding proteins that assemble into cytoskeletal filaments to function in a highly sophisticated and physiologically regulated manner. Originally septins were discovered in the budding yeast as membrane‐associated filaments that affect cell polarity and cytokinesis. In the last decades, much progress has been made in understanding the biochemical properties and cell biological functions of septins. In line with this, mammalian septins have been shown to be involved in various cellular processes, including regulation of cell polarity, cytoskeletal organization, vesicle trafficking, ciliogenesis, and cell–pathogen interactions. A growing number of studies have shown that septins play important roles in tissue and organ development and physiology; yet, little is known about their role in the kidney. In the following review, we discuss the structure and functions of septins in general and summarize the evidence for their presence and roles in the kidney.
Left atrial appendage occlusion for stroke prevention in diabetes mellitus patients with atrial fibrillation: Long‐term results

Concomitant diabetes mellitus (DM) in atrial fibrillation (AF) may increase the risk of thromboembolism. Left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) is an alternative treatment in AF patients in whom antithrombotic therapy is ineffective or contraindicated. The aim of this study was to evaluate the long‐term efficacy of LAAO in DM patients with AF.
Porous silicon based intravitreal platform for dual-drug loading and controlled release towards synergistic therapy

Abstract The number of blind and low vision persons in the US is projected to increase to 5.68 million by 2020. The eye diseases causing loss of vision are life-long, chronic, and often need protracted presence of therapeutics at the disease site to keep the disease in remission. In addition, multiple pathologies participate in the disease process and a single therapy seems insufficient to bring the disease under control and prevent vision loss. This study demonstrates the use of porous silicon (pSi) particles sequentially loaded with daunorubicin (DNR) and dexamethasone (DEX) to create a synergistic intravitreally injectable dual-drug delivery system. DEX targets chronic inflammation while DNR inhibits excessive cell proliferation as well as suppresses hypoxia-inducible factor 1 to reduce scarring. This pSi-based delivery system releases therapeutic concentrations of DNR for 100 days and DEX for over 165 days after a single dose. This intravitreal dual-drug delivery system is also well tolerated after injection into the rabbit eye model, attested by ocular biomicroscopy, ocular tonometry, electroretinography, and histology. This novel dual-drug delivery system opens an attractive modality for combination therapy to manage refractory chorioretinal diseases and further preclinical studies are warranted to evaluate its efficacy.
Effects of Proton Pump Inhibitor Coadministration on the Plasma Concentration of Erlotinib in Patients With Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer

Background: Erlotinib is used for treating non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Intestinal absorption of erlotinib is impaired under gastric pH elevation; therefore, coadministration of gastric acid suppressants may provide lower blood concentration of erlotinib. We investigated the effects of erlotinib coadministration with proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and histamine H2 receptor blockers (H2RBs) on the plasma concentration of erlotinib and erlotinib-induced adverse reaction in patients with NSCLC. Methods: Forty-two patients receiving erlotinib therapy for NSCLC were recruited for this study. Association of adverse reactions (rash and diarrhea) with plasma concentration of erlotinib was examined. Plasma concentration-to-dose (C/D) ratios and oral clearance (CL/F), which was estimated by population pharmacokinetic analysis of plasma concentrations of erlotinib, were compared among 3 patient groups: without coadministration of gastric acid suppressants (control group), with coadministration of PPI (PPI group), and coadministration of H2RB (H2RB group). Results: Patients with grade ≥2 rash had higher plasma concentrations of erlotinib compared with those with grade ⩽1 [1.02 (0.43–2.60) versus 0.67 (0.10–1.85) mcg/mL, P < 0.01]. The C/D ratios of erlotinib in the PPI and H2RB groups were lower than that in the control group [0.39 (0.08–0.76) and 0.48 (0.33–0.81) versus 0.51 (0.28–1.28) mcg·mL−1·mg−1·kg−1], where statistical significance was observed between PPI and control groups (P < 0.05). The population pharmacokinetic estimated oral CL/F in the PPI and H2RB groups were higher than that in the control group [5.55 (3.36–14.52) and 4.82 (2.08–6.32) versus 3.95 (2.01–10.44) L/h], where statistical significance was observed between PPI and control groups (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Plasma concentrations of erlotinib in patients under coadministration of gastric acid suppressants were lower than those without gastric acid suppressants through drug interaction, suppressing the intestinal absorption of erlotinib. The magnitude of this drug interaction was more pronounced in the coadministration of PPI compared with H2RB.
Femtosecond laser inscribed straight waveguide in no-core fiber for in-line Mach-Zehnder interferometer construction.

A new fiber in-line Mach-Zehnder interferometer based on a straight waveguide along the central axis of the no-core fiber sandwiched between single mode fibers is fabricated by a femtosecond laser. The device can be used for high temperature sensing with a sensitivity of -278.86 pm/°C and for bending sensing with a sensitivity of 0.28 nm/m-1. The high mechanical strength, simple fabrication, and precisely controlled free spectral range make the device attractive for potential applications in high temperature monitoring.
Biogenic iron oxides for phosphate removal

ABSTRACT Biogenic iron oxides (BioFeO) formed by Leptothrix sp. and Gallionella sp. were compared with chemically formed iron oxides (ChFeO) for their suitability to remove and recover phosphate from solutions. The ChFeO used for comparison included a commercial iron-based adsorbent (GEH) and chemically oxidized iron precipitates from groundwater. Despite contrary observations in earlier studies, the batch experiments showed that BioFeO do not have superior phosphate adsorption capacities compared to ChFeO. However, it seems multiple mechanisms are involved in phosphate removal by BioFeO which make their overall phosphate removal capacity higher than that of ChFeO. The overall phosphate removal capacity of Leptothrix sp. deposits was 26.3 mg P/g d.s. , which could be attributed to multiple mechanisms. This included adsorption on the solid phase (6.4 mg P/g d.s.) as well as removal via precipitation and/or adsorption onto suspended complexes released from the BioFeO of Leptothrix sp. (19.6 mg P/g d.s.). Only a very small part of phosphorus (0.3 mg P/g d.s.) was retained in the Leptothrix sp. sheats during bacterial growth. Deposits of Gallionella sp. had an overall phosphate removal capacity of 39.6 mg P/g d.s. Significant amounts of phosphate were apparently incorporated into the Gallionella sp. stalks during their growth (31.0 mg P/g d.s.) and only one-fifth of the total phosphate removal can be related to adsorption (8.6 mg P/g d.s.). Their overall ability to immobilize large quantities of phosphate from solutions indicates that BioFeO could play an important role in environmental and engineered systems for removal of contaminants. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
The effect of processing load on loss of information from short-term memory

ABSTRACT We report an experiment in which we varied the nature of the articulatory suppression task being performed during a filled retention interval in serial recall. During the retention interval participants performed one of three computer-paced colour naming tasks designed to prevent subvocal rehearsal: A Stroop color-interference task with items presented at a rate of one every 750 ms, and two color-consistent control tasks at a rate of either 750 ms or 500 ms per item. Memory performance over a 12 s interval declined much more dramatically with the Stroop task and the 500 ms control task than with the 750 ms control. There was no difference between the Stroop condition and the 500 ms control. These results pose problems for models that assume that loss of information from memory is determined entirely by interference, as there are more interfering events in the control 500 ms condition than the 750 ms Stroop. They also pose problems for models relying solely on time-based decay and articulatory rehearsal because all three conditions should block rehearsal and produce equivalent performance. The results illustrate that articulatory suppression tasks are not all equivalent, and suggest that the rate of decay from short-term memory is strongly influenced by the resource demands of concurrent processing
Genetic dissection of the secretory route followed by a fungal extracellular glycosyl hydrolase

Hyphal tip cells of Aspergillus nidulans are > 100 µm‐long, which challenges intracellular traffic. In spite of the basic and applied interest of the secretory pathway of filamentous fungi, only recently has it been investigated in detail. We used InuA, an inducible and highly glycosylated inulinase, and mutations affecting different intracellular membranous compartments, to investigate the route by which the enzyme traffics to the extracellular medium. InuA is core‐N‐glycosylated in the ER and hyperglycosylated during transit across the Golgi. Hyperglycosylation was prevented by ts mutations in sarASAR1 impeding ER exit, and in sedVSED5 and rabORAB1 dissipating the early Golgi, but not by mutations in the TGN regulators hypATRS120 and hypBSEC7, implicating the early Golgi in cargo glycosylation. podB1ts(cog2ts) affecting the COG complex also prevents glycosylation, without disassembling early Golgi cisternae. That InuA exocytosis is prevented by inactivation of any of the above genes shows that it follows a conventional secretory pathway. However, ablation of RabBRAB5 regulating early endosomes (EEs), but not of RabSRAB7, its equivalent in late endosomes, also prevents InuA accumulation in the medium, indicating that EEs are specifically required for InuA exocytosis. This work provides a framework to understand the secretion of enzyme cargoes by industrial filamentous fungi.
A Deep CNN-LSTM Model for Particulate Matter (PM2.5) Forecasting in Smart Cities

In modern society, air pollution is an important topic as this pollution exerts a critically bad influence on human health and the environment. Among air pollutants, Particulate Matter (PM2.5) consists of suspended particles with a diameter equal to or less than 2.5 μm. Sources of PM2.5 can be coal-fired power generation, smoke, or dusts. These suspended particles in the air can damage the respiratory and cardiovascular systems of the human body, which may further lead to other diseases such as asthma, lung cancer, or cardiovascular diseases. To monitor and estimate the PM2.5 concentration, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) are combined and applied to the PM2.5 forecasting system. To compare the overall performance of each algorithm, four measurement indexes, Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) Pearson correlation coefficient and Index of Agreement (IA) are applied to the experiments in this paper. Compared with other machine learning methods, the experimental results showed that the forecasting accuracy of the proposed CNN-LSTM model (APNet) is verified to be the highest in this paper. For the CNN-LSTM model, its feasibility and practicability to forecast the PM2.5 concentration are also verified in this paper. The main contribution of this paper is to develop a deep neural network model that integrates the CNN and LSTM architectures, and through historical data such as cumulated hours of rain, cumulated wind speed and PM2.5 concentration. In the future, this study can also be applied to the prevention and control of PM2.5.
Multi‐omics analyses reveal epigenomics basis for cotton somatic embryogenesis through successive regeneration acclimation process

Summary Plant regeneration via somatic embryogenesis is time‐consuming and highly genotype‐dependent. The plant somatic embryogenesis process provokes many epigenetics changes including DNA methylation and histone modification. Recently, an elite cotton Jin668, with an extremely high regeneration ability, was developed from its maternal inbred Y668 cultivar using a Successive Regeneration Acclimation (SRA) strategy. To reveal the underlying mechanism of SRA, we carried out a genome‐wide single‐base resolution methylation analysis for nonembryogenic calluses (NECs), ECs, somatic embryos (SEs) during the somatic embryogenesis procedure and the leaves of regenerated offspring plants. Jin668 (R4) regenerated plants were CHH hypomethylated compared with the R0 regenerated plants of SRA process. The increase in CHH methylation from NEC to EC was demonstrated to be associated with the RNA‐dependent DNA methylation (RdDM) and the H3K9me2‐dependent pathway. Intriguingly, the hypomethylated CHH differentially methylated regions (DMRs) of promoter activated some hormone‐related and WUSCHEL‐related homeobox genes during the somatic embryogenesis process. Inhibiting DNA methylation using zebularine treatment in NEC increased the number of embryos. Our multi‐omics data provide new insights into the dynamics of DNA methylation during the plant tissue culture and regenerated offspring plants. This study also reveals that induced hypomethylation (SRA) may facilitate the higher plant regeneration ability and optimize maternal genetic cultivar.
Physiology and central carbon metabolism of the gut bacterium Prevotella copri

The human gut microbiota is a crucial factor for the host’s physiology with respect to health and disease. Metagenomic shotgun sequencing of microbial gut communities revealed that Prevotella copri is one of the most important players in the gastrointestinal tract of many individuals. Because of the importance of this bacterium we analyzed the growth behavior and the central metabolic pathways of P. copri. Bioinformatic data, transcriptome profiling and enzyme activity measurements indicated that the major pathways are based on glycolysis and succinate production from fumarate. In addition, pyruvate can be degraded to acetate and formate. Electron transport phosphorylation depends on fumarate respiration with NADH and reduced ferredoxin as electron donors. In contrast to Bacteroides vulgatus, P. copri showed a more pronounced dependency on the addition of CO2 or bicarbonate for biomass formation, which is a remarkable difference between P. copri and Bacteroides spp. with important implication in the context of gut microbial competition. The analysis of substrate consumption and product concentrations from many P. copri cultures with different optical densities allowed a prediction of the carbon and electron flow in the central metabolism and a detailed calculation of growth yields as well as carbon and redox balances.
Direct Observation of Procedural Skills in Otorhinolaryngology Training.

Objective To assess the experience on using direct observation of procedural skills (DOPS) by trainees and trainers and to evaluate its use during the training process of Otorhinolaryngology (ORL) residency. Methods This study was designed as a prospective educational research. For the quantitative assessment, the "construct validity" of the assessment tool was examined. For the qualitative assessment, the trainees and trainers' experiences regarding the use of DOPS in training process were investigated. Results A total of 55 DOPS assessment forms were filled during the study. The mean observation time was 7.14±4.83 (range: 1-20) minutes, and the mean feedback time was 2.11±2.01 (range: 0.5-10) minutes. A significant difference was detected between the first year trainees and the older ones, whereas no significant difference was observed between the third, fourth, and fifth year trainees. A statistically significant, positive correlation was found between the years of education and the average score. According to the results of the qualitative assessment, the trainees stated that they realized their technical inadequacy in some procedures and it helped them to improve their skills during their residency training. The trainers confirmed that they gave feedback after each assessment. Both the trainers and trainees suggested that specific guidelines should be prepared for every procedure. Conclusion DOPS is a useful, valid, and fair tool for assessing Otorhinolaryngology trainees. The data obtained from the DOPS forms can be used for demonstrating the success of a training clinic and to evaluate the training program.
TRP Channel Involvement in Salivary Glands—Some Good, Some Bad

Salivary glands secrete saliva, a mixture of proteins and fluids, which plays an extremely important role in the maintenance of oral health. Loss of salivary secretion causes a dry mouth condition, xerostomia, which has numerous deleterious consequences including opportunistic infections within the oral cavity, difficulties in eating and swallowing food, and problems with speech. Secretion of fluid by salivary glands is stimulated by activation of specific receptors on acinar cell plasma membrane and is mediated by an increase in cytosolic [Ca2+] ([Ca2+]i). The increase in [Ca2+]i regulates a number of ion channels and transporters that are required for establishing an osmotic gradient that drives water flow via aquaporin water channels in the apical membrane. The Store-Operated Ca2+ Entry (SOCE) mechanism, which is regulated in response to depletion of ER-Ca2+, determines the sustained [Ca2+]i increase required for prolonged fluid secretion. Core components of SOCE in salivary gland acinar cells are Orai1 and STIM1. In addition, TRPC1 is a major and non-redundant contributor to SOCE and fluid secretion in salivary gland acinar and ductal cells. Other TRP channels that contribute to salivary flow are TRPC3 and TRPV4, while presence of others, including TRPM8, TRPA1, TRPV1, and TRPV3, have been identified in the gland. Loss of salivary gland function leads to dry mouth conditions, or xerostomia, which is clinically seen in patients who have undergone radiation treatment for head-and-neck cancers, and those with the autoimmune exocrinopathy, Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS). TRPM2 is a unique TRP channel that acts as a sensor for intracellular ROS. We will discuss recent studies reported by us that demonstrate a key role for TRPM2 in radiation-induced salivary gland dysfunction. Further, there is increasing evidence that TRPM2 might be involved in inflammatory processes. These interesting findings point to the possible involvement of TRPM2 in Sjögren’s Syndrome, although further studies will be required to identify the exact role of TRPM2 in this disease.
Effects of probiotics combined with enteral nutrition on immune function and inflammatory response in postoperative patients with gastric cancer.

PURPOSE To explore the therapeutic effect of probiotics combined with enteral nutrition (ΕΝ) in postoperative patients with gastric cancer (GC). METHODS 140 GC patients were enrolled in this study and randomly assigned into the test group and the control group, with 70 patients in each group. Patients in the test group were treated with probiotics combined with ΕΝ, while those in the control group were treated with common ΕΝ. Patients' conditions were observed for 8 days. IgG, IgA, IgM, IL-6, IL- 8, TNF-α, hemoglobin, albumin, pre-albumin, time to relief of abdominal distension, time to first flatus, length of hospital stay and adverse events were recorded and analyzed. RESULTS The factors related to immune function in patients of the test group, such as IgG, IgA and IgM, were higher than those of the control group. Moreover, the improvements of inflammatory cytokines including IL-6, IL-8 and TNF-α in patients of the test group were better than those of the control group. However, no obvious difference was found in the nutritional status before and after treatment between the two groups (p>0.05). In the comparison of clinical symptoms, time to relief of abdominal distention and time to first flatus were both earlier in patients of the test group than in those of the control group (p=0.002, p=0.03, respectively). Additionally, the diarrhea caused by ΕΝ was also significantly less in the test group compared with the probiotics control (p=0.03). CONCLUSIONS Probiotics combined with ΕΝ could improve the immune function and reduce the inflammatory response and the incidence of diarrhea in postoperative patients with gastric cancer.