Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Study of the Relationships between the Characteristics of the Village Population Structure and Rural Residential Solid Waste Collection Services: Evidence from China

Based on survey data collected in 2016 from 100 villages across five provinces in China, this paper uses binary logistic model to explore the main factors related to the supply and quality of rural residential solid waste collection (RRSWC) services, especially focusing on the role of village population structure characteristics. It is indicated from the results that village population structure characteristics are significantly correlated with RRSWC services; specifically: (1) the total registered population of village households is significantly positively correlated with the supply of RRSWC services, however, the correlation between the registered population and the quality of RRSWC services is negative and the more the labors working and living outside the village, the less likely the village is to provide RRSWC services; (2) the villagers’ educational levels and RRSWC services show no significant correlativity at the present stage; (3) the preferential policies brought by population structure advantage play a positive role in the supply of RRSWC services but is not clearly related to the quality of RRSWC services, especially in the villages with a larger minority population. In addition, the study finds that, the economic development level of a village and the characteristics of village leaders are also positively correlated with the supply and quality of RRSWC services and; the natural and traffic conditions have no significant correlation with RRSWC services. This study can act as a reference for the further promotion of the development of RRSWC services in China.
Characteristics of lower leg and foot muscle thicknesses in sprinters: Does greater foot muscles contribute to sprint performance?

Abstract The present study aimed to determine the differences in thicknesses of the lower leg and foot muscles between sprinters and non-sprinters and to examine the relationship between these muscle thicknesses and sprint performance in sprinters. Twenty-six well-trained sprinters and 26 body size-matched non-sprinters participated in this study. Total 9 muscle thicknesses of bilateral lower leg and foot muscles in participants were measured using ultrasonography. Regarding the lower leg muscles, thicknesses of the tibialis anterior, gastrocnemius medial, and gastrocnemius lateral were measured. Regarding the foot muscles, thicknesses of the flexor digitorum longus, flexor hallucis longus, peroneal longus and brevis, abductor hallucis, flexor digitorum brevis, and flexor hallucis brevis were measured. Most muscle thicknesses were significantly larger in sprinters than in non-sprinters. The differences in mean thicknesses of both legs between the two groups were greater in the foot muscles, where it ranged from 10.2% to 17.1%, than in the lower leg muscles, where it ranged from −0.9% to 9.4%. Among foot muscles, the thickness of only the abductor hallucis was positively correlated with the personal best 100-m sprint time in sprinters (r = 0.419, P = 0.033), indicating that a greater abductor hallucis may be a negative factor for superior sprint performance. These findings suggest that although the foot muscles in addition to the lower leg muscles are more developed in sprinters than in non-sprinters, these muscle sizes may not contribute to achieve superior sprint performance.
Minor psychiatric disorders in nursing: prevalence and associated factors.

OBJECTIVE to investigate the prevalence of Minor Psychiatric Disorders and associated factors in nursing workers. METHOD observational and analytical sectional study. Data were collected from 285 nursing workers. A questionnaire containing sociodemographic, occupational, psychosocial aspects of work and mental health was used. Bivariate and multivariate analysis were performed by binary logistic regression. RESULTS the global prevalence of suspected Minor Psychiatric Disorders among nursing workers was 32.6%. Higher prevalence rates were found among female, young, married/common-law married individuals, in the nursing assistant/technician categories, with income up to four minimum wages, developing high-demand work with low social support, high effort-reward imbalance, and over-commitment. CONCLUSION the variables that remained associated with the mental health outcome in the final model were: female gender, married/common-law married, high-demand work, high effort-reward imbalance, and over-commitment.
Aging Is Associated With Impaired Activation of Protein Homeostasis‐Related Pathways After Cardiac Arrest in Mice

Background The mechanisms underlying worse outcome at advanced age after cardiac arrest (CA) and resuscitation are not well understood. Because protein homeostasis (proteostasis) is essential for cellular and organismal health, but is impaired after CA, we investigated the effects of age on proteostasis‐related prosurvival pathways activated after CA. Methods and Results Young (2–3 months old) and aged (21–22 months old) male C57Bl/6 mice were subjected to CA and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Functional outcome and organ damage were evaluated by assessing neurologic deficits, histological features, and creatinine level. CA/CPR‐related changes in small ubiquitin‐like modifier conjugation, ubiquitination, and the unfolded protein response were analyzed by measuring mRNA and protein levels in the brain, kidney, and spinal cord. Thiamet‐G was used to increase O‐linked β‐N‐acetylglucosamine modification. After CA/CPR, aged mice had trended lower survival rates, more severe tissue damage in the brain and kidney, and poorer recovery of neurologic function compared with young mice. Furthermore, small ubiquitin‐like modifier conjugation, ubiquitination, unfolded protein response, and O‐linked β‐N‐acetylglucosamine modification were activated after CA/CPR in young mice, but their activation was impaired in aged mice. Finally, pharmacologically increasing O‐linked β‐N‐acetylglucosamine modification after CA improved outcome. Conclusions Results suggest that impaired activation of prosurvival pathways contributes to worse outcome after CA/CPR in aged mice because restoration of proteostasis is critical to the survival of cells stressed by ischemia. Therefore, a pharmacologic intervention that targets aging‐related impairment of proteostasis‐related pathways after CA/CPR may represent a promising therapeutic strategy.
Prevalence and risk factors of HTLV-1/2 and other blood borne infectious diseases among blood donors in Yaounde Central Hospital, Cameroon

Introduction Transfusion-transmissible infectious microorganisms including bacteria and viruses are among the greatest threats to blood safety for the recipient. The prevalence and risk factors of HTLV-1/2 and other blood borne infectious diseases were determined among blood donors in Yaounde Central Hospital, Cameroon. Methods Design: cross sectional study. Setting: The blood bank unit of Yaounde Central Hospital, Cameroon. Subjects: a consecutive sample of 265 apparently healthy adult blood donors. Investigations: Search for the presence of hepatitis B surface antigen (AgHBs) and antibodies to human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (anti-HTLV-1/2), human immunodeficiency virus (anti-HIV), hepatitis C virus (anti-HCV) and syphilis and to determine the epidemiological correlates, if any, in the occurrence of HTLV infection. Results 77 (29.05%) of the blood donors had serological evidence of infection with at least one pathogen and 4 (5.2%) had dual infections with HTLV-1/2. The overall prevalence of HTLV-1/2, HIV, HCV, HBV and syphilis were 5.7%, 5.3%, 2.6%, 11.7%, 3.8% respectively. Surgical history (Chi2=4.785; P=0.029), scarification (Chi2=6.359; P = 0.012), piercing (Chi2 = 16.353; P = 0.000) and intravenous drug use (Chi2 = 15.660; P = 0.000) were identified as risk factors for HTLV-1/2 infection. Conclusion A relative high prevalence of viral infections and syphilis was recorded among the study participants especially for HTLV-1/2 for which none blood donation is routine screened in our set up. Therefore, a routine screen of blood prior to transfusion should include anti-HTLV-1/2 tests.
Family environment moderates the relation of sluggish cognitive tempo to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder inattention and depression.

OBJECTIVES The current study investigated whether a maladaptive family environment would moderate the strength of the relations of sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder inattention (ADHD-IN) and to depressive symptoms in a large sample of college students. METHODS Participants (n = 3,172), between the ages of 18-29 (M ± SDage = 19.24 ± 1.52; 69.8% women; 80.4% White) and enrolled in five universities in the United States completed self-report measures of symptomatology, interparental conflict, and family expressiveness of emotions. RESULTS A negative emotional climate strengthened relations of SCT with ADHD-IN and depressive symptoms. Moreover, the lack of a positive emotional climate strengthened the co-occurrence of SCT with depressive symptoms, though not with ADHD-IN. CONCLUSIONS The current study is the first to demonstrate that the family environment moderates the association between SCT and co-occurring symptomatology in young adults.
Bidirectional Generative Adversarial Networks for Neural Machine Translation

Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) has been proposed to tackle the exposure bias problem of Neural Machine Translation (NMT). However, the discriminator typically results in the instability of the GAN training due to the inadequate training problem: the search space is so huge that sampled translations are not sufficient for discriminator training. To address this issue and stabilize the GAN training, in this paper, we propose a novel Bidirectional Generative Adversarial Network for Neural Machine Translation (BGAN-NMT), which aims to introduce a generator model to act as the discriminator, whereby the discriminator naturally considers the entire translation space so that the inadequate training problem can be alleviated. To satisfy this property, generator and discriminator are both designed to model the joint probability of sentence pairs, with the difference that, the generator decomposes the joint probability with a source language model and a source-to-target translation model, while the discriminator is formulated as a target language model and a target-to-source translation model. To further leverage the symmetry of them, an auxiliary GAN is introduced and adopts generator and discriminator models of original one as its own discriminator and generator respectively. Two GANs are alternately trained to update the parameters. Experiment results on German-English and Chinese-English translation tasks demonstrate that our method not only stabilizes GAN training but also achieves significant improvements over baseline systems.
Assessing Generalization in Deep Reinforcement Learning

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has achieved breakthrough results on many tasks, but agents often fail to generalize beyond the environment they were trained in. As a result, deep RL algorithms that promote generalization are receiving increasing attention. However, works in this area use a wide variety of tasks and experimental setups for evaluation. The literature lacks a controlled assessment of the merits of different generalization schemes. Our aim is to catalyze community-wide progress on generalization in deep RL. To this end, we present a benchmark and experimental protocol, and conduct a systematic empirical study. Our framework contains a diverse set of environments, our methodology covers both in-distribution and out-of-distribution generalization, and our evaluation includes deep RL algorithms that specifically tackle generalization. Our key finding is that `vanilla' deep RL algorithms generalize better than specialized schemes that were proposed specifically to tackle generalization.
Prognostic Factors for Physical Functioning After Multidisciplinary Rehabilitation in Patients With Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain

Objectives: This systematic review aimed to identify and evaluate prognostic factors for long-term (≥6 mo) physical functioning in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain following multidisciplinary rehabilitation (MDR). Materials and Methods: Electronic searches conducted in MEDLINE, PsycINFO, EMBASE, CINAHL, Web of Science, and Cochrane CENTRAL revealed 25 original research reports, published 1983-2016, (n=9436). Potential prognostic factors relating to initial pain and physical and psychological functioning were synthesized qualitatively and quantitatively in random effects meta-analyses. The level of evidence (LoE) was evaluated with Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE). Results: Pain-related factors (intensity and chronicity) were not associated with function/disability at long-term follow-up, odds ratio (OR)=0.84; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.65-1.07 and OR=0.97; 95% CI, 0.93-1.00, respectively (moderate LoE). A better function at follow-up was predicted by Physical factors; higher levels of initial self-reported functioning, OR=1.07; 95% CI, 1.02-1.13 (low LoE), and Psychological factors; low initial levels of emotional distress, OR=0.77; 95% CI, 0.65-0.92, low levels of cognitive and behavioral risk factors, OR=0.85; 95% CI, 0.77-0.93 and high levels of protective cognitive and behavioral factors, OR=1.49; 95% CI, 1.17-1.90 (moderate LoE). Discussion: While pain intensity and long-term chronicity did not predict physical functioning in chronic pain patients after MDR, poor pretreatment physical and psychological functioning influenced the prognosis negatively. Thus, treatment should further target and optimize these modifiable factors and an increased focus on positive, psychological protective factors may perhaps provide an opening for yet untapped clinical gains.
Social comparison modulates the neural responses to regret and subsequent risk-taking behavior

Abstract The current functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI study investigated how outcomes achieved by others affect subjective regret and subsequent behavior. During the task, participants were asked to open a series of boxes consecutively until they decided to stop. Each box contained a reward (gold), except for one that contained an adverse stimulus (devil), which caused the participants to lose all the gold they collected in that trial. Importantly, participants were instructed that every trial they encountered would also be played in parallel by another player. During the feedback stage, outcomes of both the participant and the other player were presented. Behaviorally, participants felt less regret and took less risk when objective outcomes improved or when their outcomes were better than others. Participants tended to take more risk after experiencing regret. At the neural level, the ventral striatum (VS) and the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC) showed increased activation as objective outcomes improved. Across participants, activation of the VS was positively correlated with corresponding behavioral changes. Increased activation of the VS and significantly higher functional connectivity with the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) were found when their outcomes were better than others. Additionally, the VS‐dACC functional connectivity was correlated with risk‐taking behavior.
Exploring the Role of Non-Player Characters and Gender in Player Identification

Non-player characters (NPCs) are important for immersion, but how their character design affects player experience has received little attention in previous games research. Related work suggests that NPCs support player identification, which in turn impacts player enjoyment and immersion, but this has not been explored empirically. In a between-subjects study, we explored effects of NPC design on player experience. In particular, we investigated how biological sex of NPCs and player gender affect identification and NPC interaction. Our results provide first empirical support for NPC design supporting player identification, reveal gender differences in the identification process, and uncover new research questions regarding mediators of the identification process.
Wound Healing Properties of Selected Natural Products

Wound healing is a complex process of recovering the forms and functions of injured tissues. The process is tightly regulated by multiple growth factors and cytokines released at the wound site. Any alterations that disrupt the healing processes would worsen the tissue damage and prolong repair process. Various conditions may contribute to impaired wound healing, including infections, underlying diseases and medications. Numerous studies on the potential of natural products with anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antibacterial and pro-collagen synthesis properties as wound healing agents have been performed. Their medicinal properties can be contributed by the content of bioactive phytochemical constituents such as alkaloids, essential oils, flavonoids, tannins, saponins, and phenolic compounds in the natural products. This review highlights the in vitro, in vivo and clinical studies on wound healing promotions by the selected natural products and the mechanisms involved.
The Epithelial Barrier Model Shows That the Properties of VSL#3 Depend from Where it is Manufactured

Background: VSL#3 has been extensively investigated and is currently recommended for the prevention and treatment of chronic pouchitis and ulcerative colitis. Nonetheless, in vitro and in vivo stud-ies have recently shown variability in the VSL#3 efficacy often attributed to the manufacturing process. Objective: The aim was to comparatively study the in vitro effects of two VSL#3 preparations produced in different sites (named US- and Italy-made VSL#3) on CaCo-2 epithelial barrier model in terms of trans-epithelial electrical resistance (TEER), dextran flux and expression of Tight Junctions (TJ) proteins i.e. zonulin-1 (ZO-1) and occludin, in the absence or presence of a heat stress-related damage of mono-layer. Methods: TEER was evaluated on CaCo-2 differentiated monolayers. Epithelial permeability of polarized monolayers was assessed by measuring the FITC-labeled dextran flux from the apical to basolateral chambers. ZO-1/occludin levels were analyzed by western blot analysis. A set of experiments was per-formed to compare the effects of both VSL#3 on TEER values, dextran flux and ZO-1/occludin expres-sion in CaCo-2 monolayers after heat stress exposure. Results: US- and Italy-made VSL#3 have opposing effects on TEER values, dextran flux, and ZO-1/occludin expression, being all these parameters negatively influenced just by Italy-made product. US-made probiotic did not affect baseline TEER, dextran flux and ZO-1 expression and strongly increased occludin levels. Of note, pre-treatment of monolayer with US-made VSL#3, but not Italy-made product, totally prevented the heat-induced epithelial barrier integrity loss. Conclusion: Our data trigger the need for reassessing efficacy or safety of the Italy-made VSL#3 con-sidering intestinal epithelial barrier plays an important role in maintaining host health.
A Spatial Survival Model in Presence of Competing Risks for Iranian Gastrointestinal Cancer Patients

Background: Gastrointestinal cancer is one of the common causes of death from cancer in Iran. Survival analysis is usually used to detect prognostic factors of time to death from gastrointestinal cancers. The use of ordinary survival models, in the presence of competing risks and/or when data is collected within geographic areas, may lead to distorting the results. Therefore, the aim of this study is to use the spatial survival models in the presence of competing risks to assess the risk factors affecting the survival time of gastrointestinal cancer patients. Methods: The data in this study was collected from 602 patients who were diagnosed with gastrointestinal cancer in Golestan and Mazandaran provinces registered in Iran’s National Institute of Health Research from 2002 through 2007 and were followed up to July 2017. The data was analyzed using the cause-specific hazard frailty model with multivariate conditional autoregressive distribution for frailties in the presence of competing risks (death from gastrointestinal cancer, heart disease, and other causes) via OpenBUGS software. Results: The hazard of death from gastrointestinal cancer in men patients, patients who lived in rural areas, patients whose relatives did not have a history of cancer, patients who did not undergo surgery, and patients with gastric cancer was significantly higher than others. Based on the deviance information criterion (DIC), frailty models and spatial frailty models seemed better than no-frailty model and non-spatial frailty model, respectively. Conclusions: This study showed that the use of the spatial frailty term in the model helps better fit the model. Also, the spatial pattern in the figures suggests the necessity of presence of some still missing, spatially varying covariates relevant for time to death from gastrointestinal cancer, heart disease, or other causes.
Soman‐induced status epilepticus, epileptogenesis, and neuropathology in carboxylesterase knockout mice treated with midazolam

Exposure to chemical warfare nerve agents (CWNAs), such as soman (GD), can induce status epilepticus (SE) that becomes refractory to benzodiazepines when treatment is delayed, leading to increased risk of epileptogenesis, severe neuropathology, and long‐term behavioral and cognitive deficits. Rodent models, widely used to evaluate novel medical countermeasures (MCMs) against CWNA exposure, normally express plasma carboxylesterase, an enzyme involved in the metabolism of certain organophosphorus compounds. To better predict the efficacy of novel MCMs against CWNA exposure in human casualties, it is crucial to use appropriate animal models that mirror the human condition. We present a comprehensive characterization of the seizurogenic, epileptogenic, and neuropathologic effects of GD exposure with delayed anticonvulsant treatment in the plasma carboxylesterase knockout (ES1−/−) mouse.
Learning and Inferring Movement with Deep Generative Model

Learning and inference movement is a very challenging problem due to its high dimensionality and dependency to varied environments or tasks. In this paper, we propose an effective probabilistic method for learning and inference of basic movements. The motion planning problem is formulated as learning on a directed graphic model and deep generative model is used to perform learning and inference from demonstrations. An important characteristic of this method is that it flexibly incorporates the task descriptors and context information for long-term planning and it can be combined with dynamic systems for robot control. The experimental validations on robotic approaching path planning tasks show the advantages over the base methods with limited training data.