Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluating temporal patterns of snakebite in Sri Lanka: the potential for higher snakebite burdens with climate change

Abstract Background Snakebite is a neglected tropical disease that has been overlooked by healthcare decision makers in many countries. Previous studies have reported seasonal variation in hospital admission rates due to snakebites in endemic countries including Sri Lanka, but seasonal patterns have not been investigated in detail. Methods A national community-based survey was conducted during the period of August 2012 to June 2013. The survey used a multistage cluster design, sampled 165 665 individuals living in 44 136 households and recorded all recalled snakebite events that had occurred during the preceding year. Log-linear models were fitted to describe the expected number of snakebites occurring in each month, taking into account seasonal trends and weather conditions, and addressing the effects of variation in survey effort during the study and of recall bias amongst survey respondents. Results Snakebite events showed a clear seasonal variation. Typically, snakebite incidence is highest during November–December followed by March–May and August, but this can vary between years due to variations in relative humidity, which is also a risk factor. Low relative-humidity levels are associated with high snakebite incidence. If current climate-change projections are correct, this could lead to an increase in the annual snakebite burden of 31.3% (95% confidence interval: 10.7–55.7) during the next 25–50 years. Conclusions Snakebite in Sri Lanka shows seasonal variation. Additionally, more snakebites can be expected during periods of lower-than-expected humidity. Global climate change is likely to increase the incidence of snakebite in Sri Lanka.
The Informational Role of Corporate Hedging

We study the informational role of corporate hedging, comparing two hypotheses. Under the “opacity” hypothesis, corporate hedging makes earnings less informative, renders the firm opaque, and increases informed traders’ profitability. Under the “transparency” hypothesis, hedging reduces uncertainty and erodes the informed traders’ information advantage and profitability. Our tests support the transparency hypothesis. Hedging is associated with lower uncertainty (lower implied volatility and analyst forecast dispersion, and greater breadth of ownership). It is also associated with a lower informed trading intensity, in particular for short selling. Short selling profits are more than twice lower on the stocks of firms engaging in corporate hedging. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016. 2717. This paper was accepted by Neng Wang, finance.
Prevalence and psychological impact of Acne vulgaris among female secondary school students in Arar city, Saudi Arabia, in 2018

Background Acne vulgaris is a common heath problem affecting adolescents with considerable impact on their quality of life. Objective To determine the prevalence of Acne vulgaris and its psychological impact among female secondary school students. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted during the period from January to March 2018, among all female secondary school students in 3 randomly selected schools, in Arar city (Saudi Arabia). The participants were clinically examined by a dermatologist to identify acne cases. Dermatological quality of life of acne cases were assessed using an Arabic version of Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI). Data collected were analyzed by IBM-SPSS version 20, using Chi-square, Fisher’s Exact test, Mann-Whitney U, and Kruskal Wallis test. P-value ≤0.05 was considered statically significant. Results The overall prevalence of Acne vulgaris was 14.3%. It was not significantly affected by age, marital status or nationality of participants. Post inflammatory hyper-pigmentation and scarring were detected in 11.6% and 8.7% respectively. Twenty nine percent of the cases had no impact; 56.3% had small to moderate impact and 14.5% had large effect. The psychological impact was significantly increased with increased severity, presence of acne lesions on face and other sites, presence of hyper pigmentation and scarring (p=0.001). Conclusion Acne vulgaris had large impact on quality of life in 14.5% of cases. Students should be counseled and educated on how to deal with this dermatological problem.
Prognostic role of aspartate aminotransferase-lymphocyte ratio index in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer: results from the randomized ITACa trial

Background The aim of this study was to investigate the role of pre-treatment aspartate aminotransferase-lynphocyte ratio (ALRI) as a predictor of prognosis and treatment efficacy in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) enrolled in the prospective multicenter randomized ITACa (Italian Trial in Advanced Colorectal Cancer) trial to receive first-line chemotherapy (CT) + bevacizumab (B) or CT alone. Patients and methods Patients randomly received CT+B or CT alone as first-line therapy. CT consisted of either FOLFOX4 or FOLFIRI at the clinician’s discretion. Results Out of the 284 patients enrolled, increased ALRI levels were associated with shorter PFS and OS (p<0.0001). At baseline, median PFS was 10.3 months (95% CI 9.4–12.0) and 8.0 months (95 % CI 6.8–8.9), and median OS was 25.2 months (95 % CI 21.3–30.2) and 18.8 months (95 % CI 16.6–21.7) for patients with low (<14) and high (≥14) ALRI levels, respectively (HR 1.43, 95% CI 1.12–1.82, p=0.004; HR=1.51, 95% CI 1.17–1.96, p<0.001). Interaction tests on ALRI levels and treatment efficacy in the CT+B and the CT groups were statistically significant for PFS (p=0.0003), but not for OS (p=0.228). Conclusion Our results indicate that ALRI is a good prognostic and predictive marker for mCRC patients candidate for CT+B.
An Effective Concentration of 5-Aza-CdR to Induce Cell Death and Apoptosis in Human Pancreatic Cancer Cell Line through Reactivating RASSF1A and Up-Regulation of Bax Genes

Background: Promoter hyper-methylation of tumor suppressor genes is a common event that occurs in cancer. As methylation is a reversible modification, agents capable of reversing an abnormal methylation status should help to combat cancer. 5-Aza-CdR is a DNA methyl-transferase inhibitor. The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of 5-Aza-CdR on the proliferation of human pancreatic cancer cell line (PANC-1) and the expression of RASSF1A and Bax genes. Methods: PANC-1 cells were cultured and treated with 5 and 10 µM/L of 5-Aza-CdR for 24, 48, 72, and 96 hours and the percentages of cell viability and apoptosis were measured by MTT and flow cytometry. RASSF1A gene promoter methylation was assessed by methyl-specific primer-PCR (MSP-PCR) and the expression of RASSF1A and Bax genes was measured using quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR). All quantitative data are presented as mean±SD (standard deviation). The one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the LSD post hoc test was performed for statistical analysis using the SPSS software package, version 16.0. Results: 3-[4,5-dimethythiaziazol-2yl]-2,5-diphenyl tetrazoliumbr omide (MTT) assay revealed that 5-Aza-CdR significantly inhibit the growth and proliferation of PANC-1. The flow cytometry results showed over 40% and 70% of early and late apoptotic cells after treatment with 5 and 10 µm/L of 5-Aza-CdR, respectively. MSP-PCR data indicated that the treatment of cells with 10 µm/L 5-Aza-CdR resulted in partial demethylation of RASSF1A gene promoter. qPCR results showed significant re-expression of RASSF1A and up-regulation of Bax genes after 96 hours treatment of cells with 10 µm/L 5-Aza-CdR versus control cells (P<0.01). Conclusion: The result demonstrated that 5 and 10 µM of 5-Aza-CdR induce cell death and apoptosis by epigenetic reactivation of RASSF1A and up-regulation of Bax genes.
Chickens Expressing IFIT5 Ameliorate Clinical Outcome and Pathology of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza and Velogenic Newcastle Disease Viruses

Innate antiviral immunity establishes first line of defense against invading pathogens through sensing their molecular structures such as viral RNA. This antiviral potential of innate immunity is mainly attributed to a myriad of IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs). Amongst well-characterized ISGs, we have previously shown that antiviral potential of chicken IFN-induced proteins with tetratricopeptides repeats 5 (chIFIT5) is determined by its interaction potential with 5′ppp containing viral RNA. Here, we generated transgenic chickens using avian sarcoma-leukosis virus (RCAS)-based gene transfer system that constitutively and stably express chIFIT5. The transgenic chickens infected with clinical dose (EID50 104 for HPAIV and 105 EID50 for vNDV) of high pathogenicity avian influenza virus (HPAIV; H5N1) or velogenic strain of Newcastle disease virus (vNDV; Genotype VII) showed marked resistance against infections. While transgenic chickens failed to sustain a lethal dose of these viruses (EID50 105 for HPAIV and 106 EID50 for vNDV), a delayed and lower level of clinical disease and mortality, reduced virus shedding and tissue damage was observed compared to non-transgenic control chickens. These observations suggest that stable expression of chIFIT5 alone is potentially insufficient in providing sterile protection against these highly virulent viruses; however, it is sufficient to ameliorate the clinical outcome of these RNA viruses. These findings propose the potential of innate immune genes in conferring genetic resistance in chickens against highly pathogenic and zoonotic viral pathogens causing sever disease in both animals and humans.
Quantitative assessment of aberrant P16INK4a methylation in ovarian cancer: a meta-analysis based on literature and TCGA datasets

Epigenetic alteration of P16INK4a is conventionally thought to induce the initiation of carcinoma. However, the role of P16INK4a methylation in ovarian cancer still remains controversial. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis to further elucidate the relationship between P16INK4a promoter methylation and ovarian cancer. A total of 24 studies, including 20 on risk, 10 on clinicopathological features, and 3 on prognosis, were included in our meta-analysis. Our results indicated that the frequency of P16INK4a methylation in cancer tissues was significantly higher than normal tissues and low malignant potential tumor tissues (odds ratio [OR] =5.01, 95% CI=1.55–16.14; OR =1.88, 95% CI=1.10–3.19, respectively), but similar to benign tissues (OR =1.18, 95% CI=0.52–2.65). Furthermore, P16INK4a promoter methylation was not strongly correlated with age, clinical stage, tumor differentiation, or histological subtype in patients with ovarian cancer. Additionally, survival analysis showed that patients with P16INK4a promoter methylation had a shorter progression-free survival in univariate and multivariate Cox regression models (hazard ratio =1.68, 95% CI=1.26–2.24; hazard ratio =1.55, 95% CI=1.15–2.08; respectively). In The Cancer Genome Atlas datasets, the methylation levels of seven out of nine CpG sites were significantly increased in the ovarian tumor tissues compared with the normal tissues. In conclusion, the present meta-analysis suggests that P16INK4a promoter methylation may be useful in distinguishing malignant cancer from healthy ovarian tissues, and it may be a potential predictive marker for prognosis in patients with ovarian cancer.
Prognostic value of serum alkaline phosphatase in the survival of prostate cancer: evidence from a meta-analysis

Background Many studies have evaluated the relationship between alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and the prognosis for prostate cancer (PCa). But they have not reached a widespread consensus yet. Therefore, we completed a meta-analysis to ascertain the significance of ALP and the prognosis for PCa. Methods A literature search was performed in the PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science databases. HRs concerning overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), and cancer-specific survival (CSS) were extracted to evaluate the impacts of ALP on the prognosis for PCa. Subgroup analyses were conducted on different study types, regions, sample sizes, and cutoff values. Sensitivity analysis was performed by removing one study in sequence. Results A total of 63 studies from 54 articles with 16,135 patients were included in this meta-analysis. The pooled results indicated that high baseline ALP was associated with obviously poor OS (HR=1.74, 95% CI: 1.47–2.06) and PFS (HR=1.60, 95% CI: 1.13–2.26) in patients with PCa. The pooled HR for bone-specific ALP and OS was 1.76 (95% CI: 1.45–2.15). However, no association between ALP and CSS (HR=1.002, 95% CI: 0.998–1.005) was found for PCa. The results of subgroup analyses were all in accordance with the main findings. Sensitivity analysis suggested that no single study could affect the stability of the results. Conclusion High serum ALP is significantly associated with poor OS and PFS except for CSS in PCa. ALP is an efficient and convenient biomarker for PCa prognosis.
Learning temporal structures for human activity recognition

We propose a hierarchical method for learning temporal structures for the recognition of complex human activities or actions in videos. Low level features (HOG, HOF, MBH x and MBH y ) are ﬁrst computed from video snippets to form concatenated feature vectors. A novel segmentation algorithm based on K -means clustering is then used to divide the video into segments, with each segment corresponding to a sub-action with uniform motion characteristics. Using low level features as inputs, a many-to-one encoder is trained to extract generalized features for the snippets in each segment. A second many-to-one encoder is then used to compute higher-level features from the generalized features. The higher-level features from individual segments are then concatenated together and used to train a third many-to-one encoder to extract a high-level feature representation for the entire video. The ﬁnal descriptor is the concatenation of higher-level features from individual segments and the high-level feature for the entire video. Using the proposed descriptor and a mutli-class linear support vector machine (SVM), we achieved state-of-the-art results on datasets Olympic Sports and UCF50, and beat the state-of-the-art result on the challenging HMD51 dataset by a wide margin of 17%.
A Lightweight Convolutional Neural Network Based on Visual Attention for SAR Image Target Classification

With the continuous development of the convolutional neural network (CNN) concept and other deep learning technologies, target recognition in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images has entered a new stage. At present, shallow CNNs with simple structure are mostly applied in SAR image target recognition, even though their feature extraction ability is limited to a large extent. What’s more, research on improving SAR image target recognition efficiency and imbalanced data processing is relatively scarce. Thus, a lightweight CNN model for target recognition in SAR image is designed in this paper. First, based on visual attention mechanism, the channel attention by-pass and spatial attention by-pass are introduced to the network to enhance the feature extraction ability. Then, the depthwise separable convolution is used to replace the standard convolution to reduce the computation cost and heighten the recognition efficiency. Finally, a new weighted distance measure loss function is introduced to weaken the adverse effect of data imbalance on the recognition accuracy of minority class. A series of recognition experiments based on two open data sets of MSTAR and OpenSARShip are implemented. Experimental results show that compared with four advanced networks recently proposed, our network can greatly diminish the model size and iteration time while guaranteeing the recognition accuracy, and it can effectively alleviate the adverse effects of data imbalance on recognition results.
The development of a staphylococcus aureus four antigen vaccine for use prior to elective orthopedic surgery

ABSTRACT Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is a challenging bacterial pathogen which can cause a range of diseases, from mild skin infections, to more serious and invasive disease including deep or organ space surgical site infections, life-threatening bacteremia, and sepsis. S. aureus rapidly develops resistance to antibiotic treatments. Despite current infection control measures, the burden of disease remains high. The most advanced vaccine in clinical development is a 4 antigen S. aureus vaccine (SA4Ag) candidate that is being evaluated in a phase 2b/3 efficacy study in patients undergoing elective spinal fusion surgery (STaphylococcus aureus suRgical Inpatient Vaccine Efficacy [STRIVE]). SA4Ag has been shown in early phase clinical trials to be generally safe and well tolerated, and to induce high levels of bactericidal antibodies in healthy adults. In this review we discuss the design of SA4Ag, as well as the proposed clinical development plan supporting licensure of SA4Ag for the prevention of invasive disease caused by S. aureus in elective orthopedic surgical populations. We also explore the rationale for the generalizability of the results of the STRIVE efficacy study (patients undergoing elective open posterior multilevel instrumented spinal fusion surgery) to a broad elective orthopedic surgery population due to the common pathophysiology of invasive S. aureus disease and commonalties of patient and procedural risk factors for developing postoperative S. aureus surgical site infections.
Trend in relative survival in squamous cervical cancer by decade from 1983 to 2012: a period analysis

Objective Squamous cervical cancer (SCC), the predominant histological type, represents approximately 75–80% of all cervical cancers. Although the overall incidence of cervical cancer has declined worldwide, the data describing the changes in the incidence and long-term survival in SCC remain limited. Methods The data were extracted from Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registries for an evaluation of the changes in the incidence and survival associated with SCC during 1983–2012. In addition, the patients with SCC were stratified by age, race, and socioeconomic status (SES). Stata 12.0 software was used to perform the Cox regression and Spearman’s rank correlation analyses. Results The overall incidence of SCC constantly declined from 7.3 to 5.6 to 4.3 per 100,000 people; the peak age of incidence was 55–69 years in the first decade, while the 40–54 age group served as another incidence peak in the last 2 decades. Median survival increased from 189 months to 231 months in the first 2 decades and was not reached in the third decade. The 10-year relative survival rates (RSRs) changed from 63.2% to 66.5% to 62.1% across the 3 decades. Additionally, the survival gaps narrowed from 13% to 8% between Whites and Blacks and from 5.4% to 3.5% between low- and medium-poverty groups in the 3 decades. Conclusion This study demonstrated a declining incidence over the 3 decades with an improvement in median survival. However, the relative survival associated with SCC did not improve in the last decade. Furthermore, the survival gaps between races and various SESs significantly narrowed over the 3 decades.
Dental Myth, Fallacies and Misconceptions in Rural Population of Bhopal City: A Cross-sectional Study

Aim: The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of myths related to dentistry in the rural population of Bhopal city. The minimum sample size calculated was 100 individual persons. Introduction- The underlying cultural beliefs and practices influence the conditions of the teeth and mouth, through diet, care-seeking behaviour, or use of home remedies. Myths may arise as either truthful depictions or over­ elaborated accounts of historical events, as allegory or personification of natural phenomena, or as an explanation of ritual. Materials and Methods: The questionnaire consisted of two parts. The first part included a provision for recording socio-demographic data of the participant. The second part consisted of a set of 23 closed-ended questions on myths related to dentistry classified under five domains—decayed tooth, oral hygiene, primary dentition, tobacco, and treatment. Statistical Evaluation: The questionnaire was investigator administered. A calibrate examiner was asked the question to the participants for the better response rate of the study. For the statistical analysis, SPSS version 23 was used. Result- In the present study 24% of the study participants were 20 to 30 years of age 56% participants were 30-40 years of age 16% participants were 40-50 years of age and 4% participants were more than 50 years of age. In the present study, 54% were male and 46% were female. 41% of study participants were educated and 59% of study participants were uneducated. There was 91% of study participants had a dental history. Discussion: Inequalities in oral health persist worldwide, with mainly affected being the deprived population. India has a low budget to meet the general populations’ oral health treat­ment needs, a high disease burden and a low literacy rate. All these factors predispose the general population to poor oral healthcare, false treatment needs assumptions and false beliefs.
Efficacy of bariatric surgery in improving metabolic outcomes in patients with diabetes. A 24-month follow-up study from a single center in the UAE

Background Owing to its impact on weight loss, remission of diabetes mellitus and metabolic syndrome, bariatric surgery has offered hope for grossly obese individuals. In recent years, obesity has increased in the UAE and the use of bariatric surgery has increased in-line with this trend. However, data regarding bariatric surgery outcomes in diabetic Emirati people is scarce. Objective To evaluate the effect of bariatric surgery in patients with diabetes mellitus. Methods This is a retrospective analysis of diabetic patients treated with bariatric surgery with a minimal follow-up of 1 year and extended for some patients (21) to 2 years follow up. A total of 80 patients underwent bariatric surgery. Two surgical procedures were used; laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (n=53) or mini-gastric bypass between January 1, 2015, and July 20, 2017. Results Mean baseline weight was 119.2±31.2 kg, this has significantly dropped to 100.1±23.1, 91.2±22.3, 82.3±17.5, and 81.3±15.3 kg at 3, 6, 12, and 24 months respectively, and this change was statistically significant P<0.001 at each time point. Mean baseline HbA1c was 8.6% ± 2.3% and this dropped significantly to 6.5±1.7, 5.9±1.2, 5.6±0.8, and 5.4±0.7 at 3, 6, 12, and 24 months respectively (P<0.000). In 49 (61.3%) we considered fatty liver based on ultrasound features either with or without elevation in alanine aminotransferase (ALT). We noticed a significant decrease in ALT at 3, 6, and 12 months after surgery. Furthermore, 11 patients (22.4%) showed sonographic features of improvement in fatty liver in addition to normalization of ALT. Conclusions Bariatric surgery was effective over a follow-up period of 2 years in achieving significant weight loss as well as resulting in improvements in glycemic control, blood pressure, and fatty liver.