Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distribution of hepatitis C virus genotypes and subtypes in Croatia: 2008-2015.

OBJECTIVE Hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotyping is an important part of pre-treatment diagnostic algorithms as it guides the choice of therapeutic regimens. The aim of this study was to analyse the distribution of HCV genotypes in patients with chronic hepatitis C from Croatia in the period 2008-2015. METHODS The study enrolled 3,655 anti-HCV positive patients with available results of HCV genotyping from the three largest national HCV genotyping laboratories. RESULTS The majority of HCV-infected individuals enrolled in the study were male (70.7%). Analysis of age distribution in a subset of 2,164 individuals showed a mean age of 40.9 years (SD 11.77 years). Croatian patients were mostly infected with HCV genotype 1 (56.6%), followed by genotype 3 (37.3%), genotype 4 (4.2%) and genotype 2 (1.8%). Genotype 1 subtyping in a subset of 1,488 patients showed 54% (803/1,488) of 1b infections and 46% (685/1,488) of 1a infections. Percentages of genotype 1 were the highest in Central/Northwestern and Eastern Croatia and the lowest in the Central/Southern Adriatic Region. Genotype 3 was most frequently found in the Central/Southern Adriatic Region (49.1%) but represented only 17.5% of infections in Eastern Croatia (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS The results of this nine-year retrospective analysis on the distribution of HCV genotypes and subtypes in 3,655 HCV-infected individuals from Croatia showed that the majority of infections can be attributed to genotypes 1 and 3 with absence of major changes in the molecular epidemiology of the two most frequent HCV genotypes infection in Croatia in the past 20 years.
Gradient Harmonized Single-stage Detector

Despite the great success of two-stage detectors, single-stage detector is still a more elegant and efficient way, yet suffers from the two well-known disharmonies during training, i.e. the huge difference in quantity between positive and negative examples as well as between easy and hard examples. In this work, we first point out that the essential effect of the two disharmonies can be summarized in term of the gradient. Further, we propose a novel gradient harmonizing mechanism (GHM) to be a hedging for the disharmonies. The philosophy behind GHM can be easily embedded into both classification loss function like cross-entropy (CE) and regression loss function like smooth-L1 (SL1) loss. To this end, two novel loss functions called GHM-C and GHM-R are designed to balancing the gradient flow for anchor classification and bounding box refinement, respectively. Ablation study on MS COCO demonstrates that without laborious hyper-parameter tuning, both GHM-C and GHM-R can bring substantial improvement for single-stage detector. Without any whistles and bells, the proposed model achieves 41.6 mAP on COCO testdev set which surpass the state-of-the-art method, Focal Loss (FL) + SL1, by 0.8. The code1 is released to facilitate future research.
Effect of Abdominal Binding on Diaphragmatic Neuromuscular Efficiency, Exertional Breathlessness, and Exercise Endurance in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

We tested the hypothesis that abdominal binding (AB) would reduce breathlessness and improve exercise tolerance by enhancing neuromuscular efficiency of the diaphragm during exercise in adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In a randomized, controlled, crossover trial, 20 adults with COPD (mean ± SD FEV1, 60 ± 16% predicted) completed a symptom-limited constant-load cycle endurance exercise test at 75% of their peak incremental power output with concomitant measures of the diaphragm electromyogram (EMGdi) and respiratory pressures without (CTRL) vs. with AB sufficient to increase end-expiratory gastric pressure (Pga,ee) by 6.7 ± 0.3 cmH2O at rest. Compared to CTRL, AB enhanced diaphragmatic neuromuscular efficiency during exercise (p < 0.05), as evidenced by a 25% increase in the quotient of EMGdi to tidal transdiaphragmatic pressure swing. By contrast, AB had no demonstrable effect on exertional breathlessness and exercise tolerance; spirometry and plethysmography-derived pulmonary function test parameters at rest; and cardiac, metabolic, breathing pattern, inspiratory reserve volume and EMGdi responses during exercise (all p > 0.05 vs. CTRL). In conclusion, enhanced neuromuscular efficiency of the diaphragm during exercise with AB was not associated with relief of exertional breathlessness and improved exercise tolerance in adults with COPD. Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01852006.
Advanced Bio-Inspired System for Noninvasive Cuff-Less Blood Pressure Estimation from Physiological Signal Analysis

Blood Pressure (BP) is one of the most important physiological indicators that provides useful information in the field of health-care monitoring. Blood pressure may be measured by both invasive and non-invasive methods. A novel algorithmic approach is presented to estimate systolic and diastolic blood pressure accurately in a way that does not require any explicit user calibration, i.e., it is non-invasive and cuff-less. The approach herein described can be applied in a medical device, as well as in commercial mobile smartphones by an ad hoc developed software based on the proposed algorithm. The authors propose a system suitable for blood pressure estimation based on the PhotoPlethysmoGraphy (PPG) physiological signal sampling time-series. Photoplethysmography is a simple optical technique that can be used to detect blood volume changes in the microvascular bed of tissue. It is non-invasive since it takes measurements at the skin surface. In this paper, the authors present an easy and smart method to measure BP through careful neural and mathematical analysis of the PPG signals. The PPG data are processed with an ad hoc bio-inspired mathematical model that estimates systolic and diastolic pressure values through an innovative analysis of the collected physiological data. We compared our results with those measured using a classical cuff-based blood pressure measuring device with encouraging results of about 97% accuracy.
People of Diverse Genders and/or Sexualities Caring For and Protecting Animal Companions in the Context of Domestic Violence

This article reports on a thematic analysis of open-ended questions about how humans respond to violence directed toward animals in the context of violent human relationships, derived from an Australian–U.K. survey of people of diverse genders and/or sexualities. From the 137 responses, three major themes were identified: (a) animals are an important source of support, (b) humans actively protect animal companions, and (c) witnessing animal abuse can trigger leaving violent relationships. The findings offer unique insights for practitioners into the help-seeking needs of people of diverse genders and/or sexualities who live with animal companions in the context of domestic violence.
Saxagliptin but Not Sitagliptin Inhibits CaMKII and PKC via DPP9 Inhibition in Cardiomyocytes

Some oral anti-hyperglycemic drugs, including gliptins that inhibit dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP4), have been linked to the increased risk of heart failure (HF) in type-2 diabetic patients. While the cardiovascular safety trial, TECOS, revealed no link between sitagliptin and the risk of HF, a substantial 27% increase in the hospitalization for HF was observed in type-2 diabetic patients treated with saxagliptin within the SAVOR-TIMI 53 trial. A previous in vitro study revealed that saxagliptin impairs the Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII)-phospholamban (PLB)-sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPase 2a axis and protein kinase C (PKC) activity in cardiomyocytes leading to impaired cardiac contractility and electrophysiological function. However, the link between saxagliptin and its target proteins (CaMKII and PKC) remains to be explored. Since DPP8 and DPP9 (but not DPP4) are expressed by cardiomyocytes and saxagliptin is internalized by cardiomyocytes, we investigated whether DPP8/9 contribute to saxagliptin-mediated inhibition of CaMKII and PKC activity. Structural analysis revealed that the DPP4-saxagliptin interaction motif (S630, Y547) for the cyanopyrrolidine group is conserved in DPP8 (S755, Y669) and DPP9 (S730, Y644). Conversely, F357 that facilitates binding of the anchor lock domain of sitagliptin in the S2 extensive subsite of DPP4 is not conserved in DPP8/9. In parallel, unlike saxagliptin, sitagliptin did not affect phosphorylation of CaMKII/PLB or activity of PKC in HL-1 cardiomyocytes. These findings were recapitulated by pharmacological inhibition (TC-E-5007, a DPP8/9 antagonist) and knock-down of DPP9 (but not DPP8). In primary mouse ventricular cardiomyocytes, saxagliptin (but not sitagliptin) impaired Ca2+ transient relaxation and prolonged action potential duration (APD). These results suggest that saxagliptin-DPP9 interaction impairs the CaMKII-PLB and PKC signaling in cardiomyocytes. We reveal a novel and potential role of DPP9 in cardiac signaling. The interaction of saxagliptin with DPP9 may represent an underlying mechanism for the link between saxagliptin and HF. Elucidation of saxagliptin-DPP9 interaction and downstream events may foster a better understanding of the role of gliptins as modulators of cardiac signaling.
Optimal Time Interval for Surgery After Neoadjuvant Chemoradiotherapy in Patients With Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer: Analysis of Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service Data

Purpose Pathologic downstaging of rectal cancer has been suggested to be associated with the time interval from chemoradiotherapy (CRT) completion to surgery. We aimed to evaluate the effect of this time interval for patients with rectal cancer on the pathologic response. Methods All patients with rectal cancer undergoing neoadjuvant CRT with evaluable data were selected from among the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service data. Patients were divided into groups according to the time between CRT and surgery. CRT responses were analyzed. Results Two hundred forty-nine patients were included, of whom 86 (34.5%) were in the 5- to 7-week interval, 113 (45.4%) in the 7- to 9-week interval, 38 (15.3%) in the 9- to 11-week interval, and 12 (4.8%) in the >11-week interval. The median time interval between CRT completion and surgery was 7.4 weeks (range: 5–22.7 weeks; interquartile range, 6.7–8.7 weeks). Surgery 9–11 weeks after CRT completion resulted in the highest, but not statistically significant, pathologic complete response (pCR) rate (3 patients, 8.6%; P = 0.886), no pCR was noted in the >11-week interval group. Results for downstaging in the 9- to 11-week interval group were as follows: T downstaging, 38.2% (P = 0.735); N downstaging, 50.0% (P = 0.439); and TN downstaging, 52.9% (P = 0.087). The 3-year overall survival rates for the 5- to 7-week, 7- to 9-week, 9- to 11-week, and >11-week interval groups were 93.0%, 85.0%, 81.6%, and 91.7%, respectively (P = 0.326). Conclusion Delaying surgery by 9 to 11 weeks may increase TN downstaging, but delaying for over 11 weeks may not increase additional tumor downstaging from long-course CRT.
Classification of Music Mood Using MPEG-7 Audio Features and SVM with Confidence Interval

Psychologically, music can affect human mood and influence human behavior. In this paper, a novel method for music mood classification is introduced. In the experiment, music mood classification was performed using feature extraction based on MPEG-7 features from the ISO/IEC 15938 standard for describing multimedia content. The result of this feature extraction are 17 low-level descriptors. Here, we used the Audio Power, Audio Harmonicity, and Audio Spectrum Projection features. Moreover, the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) was utilized for audio signal reconstruction. The reconstructed audio signals were classified by the new method, which uses a support vector machine with a confidence interval (SVM-CI). According to the experimental results, the success rate of the proposed method was satisfactory and SVM-CI outperformed the ordinary SVM.
ALS-Associated E478G Mutation in Human OPTN (Optineurin) Promotes Inflammation and Induces Neuronal Cell Death

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a group of neurodegenerative disorders that featured with the death of motor neurons, which leads to loss of voluntary control on muscles. The etiologies vary among different subtypes of ALS, and no effective management or medication could be provided to the patients, with the underlying mechanisms incompletely understood yet. Mutations in human Optn (Optineurin), particularly E478G, have been found in many ALS patients. In this work, we report that NF-κB activity was increased in Optn knockout (Optn−/−) MEF (mouse embryonic fibroblast) cells expressing OPTN of different ALS-associated mutants especially E478G. Inflammation was significantly activated in mice infected with lenti-virus that allowed overexpression of OPTNE478G mutation in the motor cortex, with marked increase in the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines as well as neuronal cell death. Our work with both cell and animal models strongly suggested that anti-inflammation treatment could represent a powerful strategy to intervene into disease progression in ALS patients who possess the distinctive mutations in OPTN gene.
High-Performance Super-Resolution via Patch-Based Deep Neural Network for Real-Time Implementation

SUMMARY Recently, Super-resolution convolutional neural network (SRCNN) is widely known as a state of the art method for achieving single-image super resolution. However, performance problems such as jaggy and ringing artifacts exist in SRCNN. Moreover, in order to realize a real-time upconverting system for high-resolution video streams such as 4K / 8K 60 fps, problems such as processing delay and implementation cost remain. In the present paper, we propose high-performance super-resolution via patch-based deep neural network (SR-PDNN) rather than a convolutional neural network (CNN). Despite the very simple end-to-end learning system, the SR-PDNN achieves higher performance than the conventional CNN-based approach. In addition, this system is suitable for ultra-low-delay video processing by hardware implementation using an application-speciﬁc integrated circuit (ASIC) or a ﬁeld-programmable gate array (FPGA).
The relationships and interactions between age, exercise and physiological function

This brief review focuses on the relationships and interactions between human ageing, exercise and physiological function. It explores the importance of the selection of participants for ageing research, the strengths and deficiencies of both cross‐sectional and longitudinal studies, and the complexities involved in understanding time‐dependent, lifelong physiological processes. As being physically active is crucial to fostering healthy ageing, it is essential that participants in health and ageing research are defined in terms of their physical activity/exercise status as well as other lifestyle factors. Comparisons of exercisers with non‐exercisers has suggested that there is a mosaic of regulation of ageing both within and across physiological systems. We suggest that four broad categories exist which encompass this regulation. These are (i) systems and indices that are age dependent, but activity independent; (ii) systems that are age dependent, but also malleable by exercise; (iii) systems that are not age affected but are altered by exercise; and (iv) systems that are neither age nor activity dependent. We briefly explore the concept of a mosaic of regulation in a selection of physiological systems. These include skeletal muscle, the immune and endocrine systems, gastrointestinal as well as cognitive function. We go onto examine how these categories might fit within the broad framework of understanding the physiology of human ageing.
ABox Abduction via Forgetting in ALC (Long Version)

Abductive reasoning generates explanatory hypotheses for new observations using prior knowledge. This paper investigates the use of forgetting, also known as uniform interpolation, to perform ABox abduction in description logic (ALC) ontologies. Non-abducibles are specified by a forgetting signature which can contain concept, but not role, symbols. The resulting hypotheses are semantically minimal and each consist of a set of disjuncts. These disjuncts are each independent explanations, and are not redundant with respect to the background ontology or the other disjuncts, representing a form of hypothesis space. The observations and hypotheses handled by the method can contain both atomic or complex ALC concepts, excluding role assertions, and are not restricted to Horn clauses. Two approaches to redundancy elimination are explored for practical use: full and approximate. Using a prototype implementation, experiments were performed over a corpus of real world ontologies to investigate the practicality of both approaches across several settings.
Interacting Particles with Lévy Strategies: Limits of Transport Equations for Swarm Robotic Systems

L\'{e}vy robotic systems combine superdiffusive random movement with emergent collective behaviour from local communication and alignment in order to find rare targets or track objects. In this article we derive macroscopic fractional PDE descriptions from the movement strategies of the individual robots. Starting from a kinetic equation which describes the movement of robots based on alignment, collisions and occasional long distance runs according to a L\'{e}vy distribution, we obtain a system of evolution equations for the fractional diffusion for long times. We show that the system allows efficient parameter studies for a search problem, addressing basic questions like the optimal number of robots needed to cover an area in a certain time. For shorter times, in the hyperbolic limit of the kinetic equation, the PDE model is dominated by alignment, irrespective of the long range movement. This is in agreement with previous results in swarming of self-propelled particles. The article indicates the novel and quantitative modeling opportunities which swarm robotic systems provide for the study of both emergent collective behaviour and anomalous diffusion, on the respective time scales.
Living Well in Times of Threat: The Importance of Adjustment Processes to Explain Functional Adaptation to Uncertain Security in Expatriates Deployed in the Sudan

The present study investigated expatriate humanitarian aid workers’ perceptions and responses to uncertain security while deployed in the Sudan. Interviews conducted in Khartoum (n = 7) and Darfur (n = 17) focused on risk perception, concern for personal security, and strategies used to function well in an insecure environment. Despite a high perceived general risk, as well as broad knowledge and experience with security incidents, participants often expressed low concern. General adjustment processes were drawn on to explain this finding, while different constellations of processes resulted in different patterns of adjustment. Functional adjustment, resulting in adequate risk perception, protective behavior, protection, and low concern, was characterized by a constellation of complementary activation of accommodation and assimilation processes.
De-Escalation of Antiplatelet Therapy in Patients With Acute Coronary Syndrome Undergoing Percutaneous Coronary Intervention: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials

Aims: Patients with acute coronary syndrome undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) are recommended to be placed on potent P2Y12 blockade. However, the long-term bleeding risk is high. Therefore, despite no definitive evidence, switching to clopidogrel beyond the acute phase is common. We aimed to evaluate the clinical outcomes of antiplatelet de-escalation compared with continuation in patients treated with PCI. Methods: We searched databases for randomized clinical trials (RCTs) that evaluated the safety and efficacy of antiplatelet de-escalation compared with continuation in patients treated with PCI. Pooled summary estimates were calculated. Results: We included 3 RCTs with 3391 patients (median follow-up: 12 months). Compared with the continued group, the net clinical outcome (composite of bleeding or thrombotic events) was significantly reduced in the group switched to clopidogrel (8.7% vs 12.1%; risk ratio [RR]: 0.64; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.43-0.97; P = .03). However, there were similar clinical outcomes between groups for major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE; RR: 0.78; 95% CI: 0.55-1.11; P = .17), all Bleeding Academic Research Consortium (BARC) types bleeding (RR: 0.61; 95% CI: 0.33-1.11; P = .10), or BARC types ≥2 bleeding (RR: 0.49; 95% CI: 0.19-1.26; P = .14). Conclusions: Our results suggest a net clinical benefit of de-escalation therapy shortly after PCI, without increased risk of MACE. Larger randomized trials will be necessary to confirm these findings.
Incidence and risk factors for clinical neurodegenerative Langerhans cell histiocytosis: a longitudinal cohort study

Neurodegenerative (ND) complications in Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) are a late‐onset but dramatic sequelae for which incidence and risk factors are not well defined. Based on a national prospective registry of paediatric LCH patients, we determined the incidence rate of clinical ND LCH (cND‐LCH) and analysed risk factors, taking into account disease extent and molecular characteristics. Among 1897 LCH patients, 36 (1·9%) were diagnosed with a cND‐LCH. The 10‐year cumulative incidence of cND‐LCH was 4·1%. cND‐LCH typically affected patients previously treated for a multisystem, risk organ–negative LCH, represented in 69·4% of cND‐LCH cases. Pituitary gland, skin and base skull/orbit bone lesions were more frequent (P < 0·001) in cND‐LCH patients compared to those without cND‐LCH (respectively 86·1% vs. 12·2%, 75·0% vs. 34·2%, and 63·9% vs. 28·4%). The ‘cND susceptible patients’ (n = 671) i.e., children who had experienced LCH disease with pituitary or skull base or orbit bone involvement, had a 10‐year cND risk of 7·8% vs. 0% for patients who did not meet these criteria. Finally, BRAFV600E status added important information among these cND susceptible patients, with the 10‐year cND risk of 33·1% if a BRAFV600E mutation was present compared to 2·9% if it was absent (P = 0·002).