Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cognitive Performance of Severely Hearing-impaired Older Adults Before and After Cochlear Implantation: Preliminary Results of a Prospective, Longitudinal Cohort Study Using the RBANS-H.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate cognitive change in severely hearing-impaired older adults after cochlear implantation. STUDY DESIGN Prospective, longitudinal cohort study with assessments before, and at 6 and 12 months after implantation. PATIENTS Twenty older adults (median age: 71.5 yr). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Change in the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status for Hearing-impaired individuals (RBANS-H) total score and subdomain scores were used to assess cognitive evolution. In addition, change in best-aided speech audiometry in quiet (monosyllabic words) and in noise (Leuven Intelligibility Sentences Test [LIST]) was examined, as well as patient-reported measures of health-related quality of life (Nijmegen Cochlear Implant Questionnaire [NCIQ]), self-perceived hearing disability (Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of hearing Scale-12 [SSQ12]), sound quality (Hearing Implant Sound Quality Index-19 [HISQUI19]), and states of anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale [HADS]). RESULTS The RBANS-H total scores improved significantly after 12 months cochlear implant (CI) usage (p < 0.001). At subdomain level, significant improvements were observed in the immediate and delayed memory domain (p = 0.005 and p = 0.002, respectively), and to a lesser extent also in the attention domain (p = 0.047). Furthermore, speech perception in quiet and in noise improved significantly after 6 months and remained stable after 12 months. Similarly, a significant improvement was observed on all patient-reported measures after 6 months of CI usage. These results remained stable after 12 months, except for the HADS. CONCLUSIONS A significant improvement in overall cognition after 12 months of CI usage was established. However, future research is imperative to further disentangle possible practice effects from the effects of the cochlear implantation. The significant, positive effect of cochlear implantation on speech perception and patient-reported measures was confirmed.
How Robust is 3D Human Pose Estimation to Occlusion?

Occlusion is commonplace in realistic human-robot shared environments, yet its effects are not considered in standard 3D human pose estimation benchmarks. This leaves the question open: how robust are state-of-the-art 3D pose estimation methods against partial occlusions? We study several types of synthetic occlusions over the Human3.6M dataset and find a method with state-of-the-art benchmark performance to be sensitive even to low amounts of occlusion. Addressing this issue is key to progress in applications such as collaborative and service robotics. We take a first step in this direction by improving occlusion-robustness through training data augmentation with synthetic occlusions. This also turns out to be an effective regularizer that is beneficial even for non-occluded test cases.
The association between 25(OH)D levels, frailty status and obesity indices in older adults

Background Vitamin D deficiency is common in older adults and has been linked with frailty and obesity, but it remains to be studied whether frail obese older adults are at higher risk of vitamin D deficiency. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the association between frailty, obesity indices and serum 25(OH)D concentrations. Methods 1447 individuals with 65 years or older, participating in a cross-sectional study (Nutrition UP 65) were included. Frailty, according to Fried et al., body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), body roundness index (BRI) and body shape index (ABSI) were evaluated. A stepwise multinomial logistic regression was carried out to quantify the association between 25(OH)D quartiles and independent variables. Results Median 25(OH)D levels were lower in individuals presenting both frailty and obesity (p<0.001). In the multivariate analysis, pre-frailty (OR: 2.65; 95% CI: 1.63–4.33) and frailty (OR: 3.77; 95% CI: 2.08–6.83) were associated with increased odds of lower 25(OH)D serum levels (first quartile). Regarding obesity indices, the highest categories of BMI (OR: 1.74; 95% CI: 1.06–2.86), WC (OR: 3.46; 95% CI: 1.95–6.15), BRI (OR: 4.35; 95% CI: 2.60–7.29) and ABSI (OR: 3.17 95% CI: 1.86–5.38) were directly associated with lower 25(OH)D serum levels (first quartile). Conclusions A positive association between frailty or obesity and lower vitamin D levels was found. Moreover, besides BMI and WC, other indicators of body adiposity, such as BRI and ABSI, were associated with lower 25(OH)D serum concentrations.
Impact of Obesity on Asthma Morbidity During a Hospitalization.

BACKGROUND Asthma and obesity are 2 common pediatric problems. Obesity is a known risk factor for asthma, and obese children with asthma have higher disease burden. However, little is known on how obesity in urban minority children, mainly Hispanic and African American children, impacts morbidity during pediatric asthma hospitalizations. METHODS A retrospective chart review was conducted on children and adolescents age 2 to 18 years hospitalized at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore for an acute asthma exacerbation. We elucidated the association of overweight or obese status with severity of the exacerbation, quantified by length of stay (LOS) and need for intensive care management. Multivariate analysis was conducted to identify independent predictors of LOS. RESULTS A total of 975 children met the inclusion criteria, of whom 55% were normal weight and 45% were overweight or obese. Sixty percent were Hispanic, and 37% were African American. The overall average LOS was 2.57 days (range: 0.67-12.92). Overweight or obese status was associated with a higher asthma severity at baseline (P = .021). Overweight or obese children had a longer average LOS compared with normal weight children (2.75 vs 2.39 days; P < .01) with more PICU stays (P = .006), even after adjustment for higher baseline asthma severity. The severity of the exacerbation did not differ by ethnicity. CONCLUSIONS Obesity in children hospitalized for asthma is associated with more severe asthma exacerbations, longer LOS, and increased use of PICU level care, independent of their higher baseline disease severity and ethnicity.
The role of TCF3 as potential master regulator in blastemal Wilms tumors

Wilms tumors are the most common type of pediatric kidney tumors. While the overall prognosis for patients is favorable, especially tumors that exhibit a blastemal subtype after preoperative chemotherapy have a poor prognosis. For an improved risk assessment and therapy stratification, it is essential to identify the driving factors that are distinctive for this aggressive subtype. In our study, we compared gene expression profiles of 33 tumor biopsies (17 blastemal and 16 other tumors) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The analysis of this dataset using the Regulator Gene Association Enrichment algorithm successfully identified several biomarkers and associated molecular mechanisms that distinguish between blastemal and nonblastemal Wilms tumors. Specifically, regulators involved in embryonic development and epigenetic processes like chromatin remodeling and histone modification play an essential role in blastemal tumors. In this context, we especially identified TCF3 as the central regulatory element. Furthermore, the comparison of ChIP‐Seq data of Wilms tumor cell cultures from a blastemal mouse xenograft and a stromal tumor provided further evidence that the chromatin states of blastemal cells share characteristics with embryonic stem cells that are not present in the stromal tumor cell line. These stem‐cell like characteristics could potentially add to the increased malignancy and chemoresistance of the blastemal subtype.
Artificial neuronal networks (ANN) to model the hydrolysis of goat milk protein by subtilisin and trypsin

The enzymatic hydrolysis of milk proteins yield final products with improved properties and reduced allergenicity. The degree of hydrolysis (DH) influences both technological (e.g., solubility, water binding capacity) and biological (e.g., angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibition, antioxidation) properties of the resulting hydrolysate. Phenomenological models are unable to reproduce the complexity of enzymatic reactions in dairy systems. However, empirical approaches offer high predictability and can be easily transposed to different substrates and enzymes. In this work, the DH of goat milk protein by subtilisin and trypsin was modelled by feedforward artificial neural networks (ANN). To this end, we produced a set of protein hydrolysates, employing various reaction temperatures and enzyme/substrate ratios, based on an experimental design. The time evolution of the DH was monitored and processed to generate the ANN models. Extensive hydrolysis is desirable because a high DH enhances some bioactivities in the final hydrolysate, such as antioxidant or antihypertensive. The optimization of both ANN models led to a maximal DH of 23·47% at 56·4 °C and enzyme–substrate ratio of 5% for subtilisin, while hydrolysis with trypsin reached a maximum of 21·3% at 35 °C and an enzyme–substrate ratio of 4%.
Fluoroquinolones and BK Virus Nephropathy: A Myth or a Reality

BK polyomavirus (BKV) is a challenging problem for the transplant nephrologist. Various strategies have been used to prevent or treat BK virus nephropathy (BKVN). These include reduction in immunosuppression, intravenous immune globulin, cidofovir, leflunomide, and the fluoroquinolone antibiotics. All these agents have their own toxicities. Great interest was shown to use fluoroquinolones to prevent BKVN after its useful experience was reported in bone marrow transplant. Fluoroquinolones being cheap and easily available, attracted nephrologists to use it, for prevention of BKVN. These agents have been shown in vitro studies to be effective. However, there are mixed results about their effectiveness in prevention of BKVN in clinical setting. This review will focus the evidence available for using fluoroquinolones in prevention of BKVN and its usefulness. Furthermore, a way forward to use these agents or not for prevention of BKVN will also be discussed.
An Overview of the Potential Therapeutic Applications of CO-Releasing Molecules

Carbon monoxide (CO) has long been known as the “silent killer” owing to its ability to form carboxyhemoglobin—the main cause of CO poisoning in humans. Its role as an endogenous neurotransmitter, however, was suggested in the early 1990s. Since then, the biological activity of CO has been widely examined via both the direct administration of CO and in the form of so-called “carbon monoxide releasing molecules (CORMs). ” This overview will explore the general physiological effects and potential therapeutic applications of CO when delivered in the form of CORMs.
SOLAR: Deep Structured Latent Representations for Model-Based Reinforcement Learning

Model-based reinforcement learning (RL) methods can be broadly categorized as global model methods, which depend on learning models that provide sensible predictions in a wide range of states, or local model methods, which iteratively refit simple models that are used for policy improvement. While predicting future states that will result from the current actions is difficult, local model methods only attempt to understand system dynamics in the neighborhood of the current policy, making it possible to produce local improvements without ever learning to predict accurately far into the future. The main idea in this paper is that we can learn representations that make it easy to retrospectively infer simple dynamics given the data from the current policy, thus enabling local models to be used for policy learning in complex systems. To that end, we focus on learning representations with probabilistic graphical model (PGM) structure, which allows us to devise an efficient local model method that infers dynamics from real-world rollouts with the PGM as a global prior. We compare our method to other model-based and model-free RL methods on a suite of robotics tasks, including manipulation tasks on a real Sawyer robotic arm directly from camera images. Videos of our results are available at https://sites.google. com/view/solar-iclips
A Robust Analysis of a Minority Census: The Distribution of Travelling People in England

Although there must be some doubts about the value of economic and social analyses of peripheral minority groups in promoting their interests, an account of the spatial dimensions of the Traveller community in England may at least help to dispel some myths. Counts of caravans compiled by the Department of the Environment are described using exploratory data methods. The distributional pattern and the patterns of variability and periodicity provide some clues about the factors contributing to change, but local studies are required to complement this kind of analysis if the statistics are to be useful in critical evaluations of policy.
Seminal plasma modulates the immune-cytokine network in the porcine uterine tissue and pre-ovulatory follicles

Evidence is emerging that the interaction between male seminal fluid and female tissues promotes fertility, pregnancy, and health of offspring. This includes the acceleration of ovulation in a species known as a spontaneous ovulator, the domestic pig. Earlier studies revealed that seminal plasma acts by a local mechanism in the female pig. The aim of the present study was to examine local short-term and mid-term effects of seminal plasma (SP) on mRNA expression of immunoregulatory genes and transcripts associated with follicle- and oocyte maturation. In the porcine animal model, effects on mRNA expression in the female tract and preovulatory follicles were examined. SP suppressed mRNA expression of Prostaglandin-Endoperoxide Synthase 2 (PTGS2) ipsilateral to the infused uterine horn which was associated with a lower presence of immune cells in the uterine epithelium and lower PTGS2 immunoreaction. Depending on the sampling time (2 h vs. 17 h) and hormonal status, SP altered significant correlative relations of mRNA expression between PTGS2 and the transcripts Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha, Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha-Induced Protein 6 and Pentraxin 3 in uterus, granulosa and cumulus cells. A modulatory effect of SP on the oocyte gene network comprising eight oocyte transcripts was observed: uterine exposure to SP induced positive correlations (r >0.08, p<0.05) of maturation promoting factors among each other and with cumulus cells on the side of the treated horn. In conclusion, SP orchestrates the gene network regulating the bidirectional communication between oocytes and surrounding somatic cells. The modulation of the immune-cytokine network of the female reproductive system could contribute to the previously reported SP-induced acceleration of ovulation in the porcine species.
Peripheral keratoameloblastoma: A novel case report

Keratoameloblastoma is an exceptionally rare subtype of ameloblastoma that has been reported <20 times previously in the literature. All present as intraosseous lesions. We report an unusual case of keratoameloblastoma localized in the palate without involving palatal bone, thus presenting as a peripheral lesion. To the best knowledge of the authors, no case of peripheral keratoameloblastoma has been reported in the English literature till now, probably rendering this case to be the first one. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to present a rare and the first case of peripheral keratoameloblastoma with histopathological features of this tumor.
A Deep Learning Approach for Modulation Recognition via Exploiting Temporal Correlations

We consider the problem of automatic modulation recognition for either digital or analogue modulation types. The receiver does not have any knowledge about the modulation type of the received signal, and the objective of this paper is to develop a deep learning approach that can automatically recognize the modulation type of the received signal. The performance of most existing automatic modulation recognition algorithms is highly dependent on the choice of key features and classifiers. In this paper, we resort to a deep learning approach to improve the robustness for modulation recognition. Specifically, to efficiently explore the temporal and spatial correlation, we construct a deep neural network consisting of a convolutional neural network followed by a long short-term memory as the classifier. Our experimental results show that the proposed network architecture achieves a higher classification accuracy than a convolutional neural network architecture that exploits only the spatial correlation of the signal.
Current state and future prospects of artificial intelligence in ophthalmology: a review

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a major frontier in computer science research. Although AI has broad application across many medical fields, it will have particular utility in ophthalmology and will dramatically change the diagnostic and treatment pathways for many eye conditions such as corneal ectasias, glaucoma, age‐related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. However, given that AI has primarily been driven as a computer science, its concepts and terminology are unfamiliar to many medical professionals. Important key terms such as machine learning and deep learning are often misunderstood and incorrectly used interchangeably. This article presents an overview of AI and new developments relevant to ophthalmology.
COFGA: Classification Of Fine-Grained Features In Aerial Images

Classification between thousands of classes in high-resolution images is one of the heavily studied problems in deep learning over the last decade. However, the challenge of fine-grained multi-class classification of objects in aerial images, especially in low resource cases, is still challenging and an active area of research in the literature. Solving this problem can give rise to various applications in the field of scene understanding and classification and re-identification of specific objects from aerial images. In this paper, we provide a description of our dataset - COFGA of multi-class annotated objects in aerial images. We examine the results of existing state-of-the-art models and modified deep neural networks. Finally, we explain in detail the first published competition for solving this task.
Phenology-Based Backscattering Model for Corn at L-Band

In this paper, we developed and evaluated a phenology-based coherent scattering model to estimate terrain backscatter at the L-band for growing corn. The scattering model accounted for combined effects from periodicity in soil and vegetation, and changes in plant structure and phenology. The model estimates were compared with observations during the two growing seasons in North Central Florida. The unbiased average root-mean-square (rms) differences between the model and observations decreased from 5 to 1.31 dB when these combined effects were included. During the early stage, direct scattering from soil was the primary scattering mechanism, and as the vegetation increased, the interactions between stems and soil became the dominant scattering mechanism. The most sensitive soil parameters were moisture content and rms height, and vegetation parameters were the widths of stems, leaves, and ears, and the stem water content. This paper demonstrates that it is necessary to consider periodicity and plant structural effects in algorithms to retrieve realistic soil moisture in agricultural terrain.
Costimulation of Murine Osteoblasts with Interferon-γ and Tumor Necrosis Factor-α Induces Apoptosis through Downregulation of Bcl-2 and Release of Cytochrome c from Mitochondria

During chronic inflammation from diseases, such as periodontal disease, the proinflammatory cytokines interferon-gamma (IFNγ) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNFα) alter bone remodeling. To elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms, we investigated the effect of IFNγ and TNFα on the proliferation and survival of clonal MC3T3-E1 mouse osteoblasts. We found that although IFNγ or TNFα alone affected cell growth and survival only marginally, costimulation with both synergistically inhibited cell growth and reduced cell viability. The diminished cell viability was due to apoptosis, as indicated by increased TUNEL staining and elevated caspase 3, 8, and 9 activities. Western blot also showed that costimulation with IFNγ and TNFα elicited cytochrome c release and downregulated B cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) expression without affecting Bcl-2-associated X (Bax) protein expression. Furthermore, stable Bcl-2 overexpression significantly alleviated cell death following costimulation. Collectively, these results suggested that IFNγ and TNFα elicited osteoblast apoptosis via cytochrome c release from damaged mitochondria, caspase activation, and Bcl-2 downregulation.
Competences and Barriers for the Evidence-Based Practice in Nursing: an integrative review.

OBJECTIVE To analyze knowledge, attitudes, practices, and frequent barriers to the implementation of the Evidence-Based Practice among nursing assistants in the hospital. METHOD This is an integrative review, whose search for primary studies occurred in the PubMed, CINAHL and LILACS databases. For the analysis, cross-sectional observational studies were included in English, Portuguese and Spanish, published in nursing journals, from January 2007 to July 2016. RESULTS The search resulted in 363 articles, including nine primary studies. The sources of recurrent evidence among care nurses were: personal experience and local care protocols. These professionals presented weaknesses in the implementation of the Evidence-Based Practice related to the lack of knowledge for evidence evaluation, work overload and resistance to change of practice. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS Nurses presented favorable attitudes, however, with little knowledge to perform the Evidence-Based Practice. Results can support interventions for its implementation in the hospital.
Immunohistochemical expression of melanocytic and myofibroblastic markers and their molecular correlation in atypical fibroxanthomas and pleomorphic dermal sarcomas

Atypical fibroxanthomas (AFXs) and pleomorphic dermal sarcomas (PDSs) are UV‐induced pleomorphic skin tumors with a non‐specific immunoprofile. For that reason, exclusion of other dedifferentiated tumor entities by immunohistochemistry is still mandatory to avoid misdiagnosis.