Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cancer-Related Cognitive Impairment in Breast Cancer Patients: Influences of Psychological Variables

Approximately 3.1 million women in the US are living with breast cancer and up to 75% of these women experience cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI). CRCI is described as impairments in memory, verbal fluency, thought processes, and attention span. Despite the high prevalence of breast cancer, only a few studies have been published on CRCI and most of these studies primarily focused on its pathophysiological mechanism. However, recent evidence has demonstrated that breast cancer patients with CRCI are more likely to have high level of psychologic distress, suggesting a possible relationship between CRCI and psychologic distress. This review aims to examine existing literature that describes CRCI in relation to psychological distress among breast cancer patients. One thousand four hundred and ninety-eight articles were searched using PubMed, CINAHL, and PsycINFO. Thirteen studies met inclusion criteria, and one article was additionally pulled from article reference lists. Of these19 studies, psychologic distress has been operationalized in varied ways such as anxiety (n = 3), depression (n = 2), both anxiety and depression (n = 4), stress (n = 4), worry (n = 2), mental fatigue (n = 1), and undefined psychological distress (n = 2). Except for six studies designed as a longitudinal study, the rest of studies used a cross-sectional design. Twelve studies used both subjective and objective measures to assess cognitive function. We found that the patients with high psychological distress displayed lower performance on cognitive function tests. Our finding indicates that psychological variables contributed to CRCI that breast cancer patients experienced. Areas for further investigation are proposed that will advance the care of breast cancer patients with CRCI.
Large-Dimensional Behavior of Regularized Maronna's M-Estimators of Covariance Matrices

Robust estimators of large covariance matrices are considered, comprising regularized (linear shrinkage) modifications of Maronna's classical M-estimators. These estimators provide robustness to outliers, while simultaneously being well-defined when the number of samples does not exceed the number of variables. By applying tools from random matrix theory, we characterize the asymptotic performance of such estimators when the numbers of samples and variables grow large together. In particular, our results show that, when outliers are absent, many estimators of the regularized-Maronna type share the same asymptotic performance, and for these estimators, we present a data-driven method for choosing the asymptotically optimal regularization parameter with respect to a quadratic loss. Robustness in the presence of outliers is then studied: in the nonregularized case, a large-dimensional robustness metric is proposed, and explicitly computed for two particular types of estimators, exhibiting interesting differences depending on the underlying contamination model. The impact of outliers in regularized estimators is then studied, with interesting differences with respect to the nonregularized case, leading to new practical insights on the choice of particular estimators.
Carbon Stable-Isotope and Physicochemical Data as a Possible Tool to Differentiate between Honey-Production Environments in Uruguay

The allocation of honey origin is an increasingly important issue worldwide as it is closely related to product quality and consumer preference. In South America, honeys produced in grasslands and eucalyptus or native forests are preferred at the regional level, so their differentiation is essential to assure consumers of their authenticity according to their productive system. The objective of this study was to differentiate honeys produced in three environments: one, a monoculture system based on the eucalyptus forest, and two others based in natural environments of grasslands and native forests. To do this, honey’s physicochemical and isotopic variables (pH, free acidity, lactic acid content, moisture, total sugar content, and honey and extracted protein 13C isotopic composition) were analysed. Discriminant analysis applied to the data revealed that, based on the selected variables, it was impossible to differentiate the three groups of honeys due to the superposition of those produced in grasslands and native forests. For this reason, a group of honeys derived from native and polyfloral environments (grasslands and native forests) was formed and subjected to discriminant analysis (DA), together with the group of honeys derived from a commercial plantation of eucalyptus forest. The model obtained in this case achieved 100% correct allocation both at the training stage and the cross-validation stage.
METTL3-mediated m6A modification is required for cerebellar development

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) RNA methylation is the most abundant modification on mRNAs and plays important roles in various biological processes. The formation of m6A is catalyzed by a methyltransferase complex including methyltransferase-like 3 (METTL3) as a key factor. However, the in vivo functions of METTL3 and m6A modification in mammalian development remain unclear. Here, we show that specific inactivation of Mettl3 in mouse nervous system causes severe developmental defects in the brain. Mettl3 conditional knockout (cKO) mice manifest cerebellar hypoplasia caused by drastically enhanced apoptosis of newborn cerebellar granule cells (CGCs) in the external granular layer (EGL). METTL3 depletion–induced loss of m6A modification causes extended RNA half-lives and aberrant splicing events, consequently leading to dysregulation of transcriptome-wide gene expression and premature CGC death. Our findings reveal a critical role of METTL3-mediated m6A in regulating the development of mammalian cerebellum.
Variability in Springtime Thaw in the Terrestrial High Latitudes: Monitoring a Major Control on the Biospheric Assimilation of Atmospheric CO2 with Spaceborne Microwave Remote Sensing

Abstract Evidence is presented from the satellite microwave remote sensing record that the timing of seasonal thawing and subsequent initiation of the growing season in early spring has advanced by approximately 8 days from 1988 to 2001 for the pan-Arctic basin and Alaska. These trends are highly variable across the region, with North America experiencing a larger advance relative to Eurasia and the entire region. Interannual variability in the timing of spring thaw as detected from the remote sensing record corresponded directly to seasonal anomalies in mean atmospheric CO2 concentrations for the region, including the timing of the seasonal draw down of atmospheric CO2 from terrestrial net primary productivity (NPP) in spring, and seasonal maximum and minimum CO2 concentrations. The timing of the seasonal thaw for a given year was also found to be a significant (P < 0.01) predictor of the seasonal amplitude of atmospheric CO2 for the following year. These results imply that the timing of seasonal thawing.
Home-based nurse practitioners demonstrate reductions in rehospitalizations and emergency department visits in a clinically complex patient population through an academic–clinical partnership

Background and purpose: The purpose of this pilot study was to describe the impact of one aspect of an academic–clinical partnership that showed how assigning nurse practitioner faculty to deliver home-based primary care services to clinically complex patients would decrease rehospitalizations and emergency department visit rates. Methods: Rehospitalizations and emergency department visits of a cohort of 82 patients were recorded from April 15, 2016 to August 25, 2016 and compared with the same cohort during the two pre-home care inception periods (6 months and 1 year) using insurance claims–based data. Conclusions: Compared with the 1-year pre-home care inception period, there was a decrease of 23.7% in emergency department visits and 34.9% decrease in rehospitalizations after the implementation of the home-based primary care program and a decrease of 35.6% in emergency department visits and 59.4% decrease in rehospitalizations compared with 6 months of pre-home care inception. Implications for practice: Allowing nurse practitioners with full practice authority to deliver home-based primary health care services to homebound, chronically ill, recently discharged, and/or disabled patients can decrease costs and promote optimum health care in this population. In addition, these programs provide valuable learning experiences for nurse practitioner students and their preceptors.
Information Seeking Behavior: the Case of Specialists, Residents and Interns at Hospitals of Ahvaz University of Medical Sciences

This study attempts to investigate the information-seeking behavior of specialists, residents and interns at the hospitals of Ahvaz University of Medical Sciences, Iran. The data were collected through a questionnaire completed by 114 respondents. The research findings revealed that the three groups used informal channels (i.e. conferences) in order to obtain specific as well as general information to keep abreast with progress in medicine. Though specialists, residents and interns reported similar information seeking behaviors, their experiences vary significantly. Personal problems in keeping abreast with progress in medicine were related to time constrain and lack of familiarity with using information sources. Moreover, for all three groups, organizational or non-personal problems involved poor quality of collections and inadequate number of books as well as their out-of-dateness.
A 7-year study on the prevalence of congenital hypothyroidism in northern Iran

Background Congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is one of the most common congenital endocrine disorders. The present study determined the prevalence and demographic characteristics of congenital hypothyroidism in the north of Iran. Objective To determine the prevalence of congenital hypothyroidism based on transient and permanent types with demographic characteristics in Mazandaran province in northern Iran. Methods This retrospective descriptive survey analyzed the medical records of children with primary diagnosis of CH in health centers in all cities of Mazandaran Province between June 2009 and March 2016. To compare the study groups (CH type) in terms of quantitative and qualitative variables, the t-test and Chi-square test were used, respectively using the SPSS22. P-value <0.05 was considered as significant. Results Of 269,088 infants screened during the study period, 548 infants with primary congenital hypothyroidism were identified (a prevalence of 1 per 491 births) and congenital hypothyroidism was definitively diagnosed in 389 children (a prevalence of 1 per 453 births); of them, 169 had permanent CH (a prevalence of 1 per 1043 births) and 220 had transient CH (a prevalence of 1 per 801 births). The female to male ratio in the permanent congenital hypothyroidism group was higher than that in the transient congenital hypothyroidism group (p=0.08). The family relationship between mother and father was stronger in the permanent congenital hypothyroidism group than in the transient congenital hypothyroidism group (p=0.03). Conclusion These findings show that congenital hypothyroidism is more prevalent in the north of Iran than in other areas of Iran; the prevalence of transient CH is particularly higher than permanent CH.
Open-Ended Coaxial Probe Technique for Dielectric Measurement of Biological Tissues: Challenges and Common Practices

Electromagnetic (EM) medical technologies are rapidly expanding worldwide for both diagnostics and therapeutics. As these technologies are low-cost and minimally invasive, they have been the focus of significant research efforts in recent years. Such technologies are often based on the assumption that there is a contrast in the dielectric properties of different tissue types or that the properties of particular tissues fall within a defined range. Thus, accurate knowledge of the dielectric properties of biological tissues is fundamental to EM medical technologies. Over the past decades, numerous studies were conducted to expand the dielectric repository of biological tissues. However, dielectric data is not yet available for every tissue type and at every temperature and frequency. For this reason, dielectric measurements may be performed by researchers who are not specialists in the acquisition of tissue dielectric properties. To this end, this paper reviews the tissue dielectric measurement process performed with an open-ended coaxial probe. Given the high number of factors, including equipment- and tissue-related confounders, that can increase the measurement uncertainty or introduce errors into the tissue dielectric data, this work discusses each step of the coaxial probe measurement procedure, highlighting common practices, challenges, and techniques for controlling and compensating for confounders.
Genetic Association with Subgingival Bacterial Colonization in Chronic Periodontitis

Chronic periodontitis is the most prevalent form of inflammatory destructive bone disease and has been affecting humans since antiquity. Evidence suggest that genetic factors can highly influence periodontitis risk, modulating disease elements such as the susceptibility to microbial colonization and the nature of subsequent host-microbe interaction. Several single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been associated with the occurrence of periodontitis, but the full range of genetic influence in periodontitis outcomes remains to be determined. In this context, this study comprises an analysis of possible correlation between periodontitis-related genetic variants with changes in the subgingival microbiological pattern performed in a Brazilian population (n = 167, comprising 76 chronic periodontitis patients and 91 healthy subjects). For the genetic characterization, 19 candidate SNPs were selected based on the top hits of previous large genome wide association studies (GWAS), while the subgingival microbiota was characterized for the presence and relative quantity of 40 bacterial species by DNA-DNA checkerboard. The case/control association test did not demonstrate a significant effect of the target SNPs with the disease phenotype. The polymorphism rs2521634 proved significantly associated with Tannerella forsythia, Actinomyces gerencseriae, Fusobacterium periodonticum, and Prevotella nigrescens; rs10010758 and rs6667202 were associated with increased counts of Porphyromonas gingivalis; and rs10043775 proved significantly associated with decreased counts of Prevotella intermedia. In conclusion, we present strong evidence supporting a direct connection between the host’s genetic profile, specifically rs2521634, rs10010758, rs6667202, and rs10043775 polymorphisms, and the occurrence of chronic periodontitis-associated bacteria.
Violence and aggression in the emergency department is under-reported and under-appreciated.

AIM To examine levels of reporting of violence and aggression within a tertiary level emergency department in New Zealand, and to explore staff attitudes to violence and reporting. METHOD A one-month intensive, prospective audit of the emergency department's violence and aggression reporting was undertaken and compared with previously reported data. RESULTS There was a significant mismatch between the number of events identified during the campaign month and previously reported instances of violence and aggression. The findings identified that failure to report acts of violence was common. CONCLUSIONS Reports of violence and aggression in the emergency department underestimate the true incidence. Failure to report has potential impacts on organisational recognition of risk and the ability to develop appropriate policy responses.
Exploring Demographics and Health as Predictors of Risk-Taking in UK Help-Seeking Veterans

Risk-taking amongst veterans has severe consequences, yet few studies have examined factors that may predict risk-taking in help-seeking veteran populations. This paper presents a cross-sectional study involving a random sample of 667 UK help-seeking veterans, investigating the role of demographics, mental health and physical health presentations on the propensity for risk-taking. Out of 403 (73.4%) veterans, 350 (86.8%) reported risk-taking in the past month. We found that younger age, being in a relationship, probable PTSD, common mental health difficulties and traumatic brain injury were significantly associated with risk-taking. Additionally, a direct association was found between increased risk-taking and PTSD symptom clusters, including higher hyperarousal, elevated negative alterations in mood and cognition. Our findings provide initial evidence for demographic and mental health presentations as predictors of risk-taking in help-seeking veterans. Further research and longitudinal studies are needed to facilitate valid risk assessments, and early intervention for veteran services.
A User-Adaptive Algorithm for Activity Recognition Based on K-Means Clustering, Local Outlier Factor, and Multivariate Gaussian Distribution

Mobile activity recognition is significant to the development of human-centric pervasive applications including elderly care, personalized recommendations, etc. Nevertheless, the distribution of inertial sensor data can be influenced to a great extent by varying users. This means that the performance of an activity recognition classifier trained by one user’s dataset will degenerate when transferred to others. In this study, we focus on building a personalized classifier to detect four categories of human activities: light intensity activity, moderate intensity activity, vigorous intensity activity, and fall. In order to solve the problem caused by different distributions of inertial sensor signals, a user-adaptive algorithm based on K-Means clustering, local outlier factor (LOF), and multivariate Gaussian distribution (MGD) is proposed. To automatically cluster and annotate a specific user’s activity data, an improved K-Means algorithm with a novel initialization method is designed. By quantifying the samples’ informative degree in a labeled individual dataset, the most profitable samples can be selected for activity recognition model adaption. Through experiments, we conclude that our proposed models can adapt to new users with good recognition performance.
Cross-Urban Point-of-Interest Recommendation for Non-Natives

This article describes how understanding human mobility behavior is of great significance for predicting a broad range of socioeconomic phenomena in contemporary society. Although many studies have been conducted to uncover behavioral patterns of intra-urban and inter-urban human mobility, a fundamental question remains unanswered: To what degree is human mobility behavior predictable in new cities—a person has never visited before? Location-based social networks with a large volume of check-in records provide an unprecedented opportunity to investigate cross-urban human mobility. The authors' empirical study on millions of records from Foursquare reveals the motives and behavioral patterns of non-natives in 59 cities across the United States. Inspired by the ideology of transfer learning, the authors also propose a machine learning model, which is designed based on the regularities that they found in this study, to predict cross-urban human whereabouts after non-natives move to new cities. The experimental results validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed model, thus allowing us to predict and control activities driven by cross-urban human mobility, such as mobile recommendation, visual (personal) assistant, and epidemic prevention.
The anatomical pathway from the mesodiencephalic junction to the inferior olive relays perioral sensory signals to the cerebellum in the mouse

Perioral tactile signals are transmitted via the infraorbital nerve (ION) to trigeminal nuclei. Each cerebellar Purkinje cell (PC) receives this signal as complex spikes (CSs) via a climbing fibre (CF) emerging from the inferior olive (IO). The anatomical pathway from trigeminal nuclei to the IO is not clearly identified. In the present study, we examined candidate anatomical pathways for perioral sensory signalling by analysing CSs recorded from PCs in male mice by single unit recording. CS generation by ION stimulation was inhibited by injection of a GABAA receptor agonist, muscimol, into the contralateral mesodiencephalic junction, which is referred to as the area parafascicularis prerubralis (PfPr). The number of CSs evoked by mechanical whisker stimulation was also decreased by contralateral PfPr inhibition. These results suggest the existence of a sensory signalling pathway to the IO via the PfPr in mice.
Lung Cancer Risk and Low (≤50 μg/L) Drinking Water Arsenic Levels for US Counties (2009–2013)—A Negative Association

While epidemiologic studies clearly demonstrate drinking water with high levels of arsenic as a significant risk factor for lung cancer, the evidence at low levels (≤50 μg/L) is uncertain. Therefore, we have conducted an ecological analysis of recent lung cancer incidence for US counties with a groundwater supply of <50 μg/L, the historical limit for both the EPA and WHO. Data sources used included USGS for arsenic exposure, NCI for lung cancer outcome, and CDC and US Census Bureau forcovariates. Poisson log-linear models were conducted for male, female, and total populations using for exposure median county arsenic level, maximum arsenic level ≤50 μg/L, and ≥80% population groundwater dependency. Statistically significant negative associations were found in each of the six models in which the exposure was limited to those who had major exposure (≥80% dependency) to low-levels of arsenic (≤50 μg/L). This is the first large ecological study of lung cancer risk from drinking water arsenic levels that specifically examined the dose-response slope for populations whose exposure was below the historical limit of ≤50 μg/L. The models for each of the three populations (total; male; female) demonstrated an association that is both negative and statistically significant.
Thoracolumbar transitional vertebrae: stages of osteological transition, mechanism of changes in zygapophyseal loading and orientation, and assimilation of mammillary processes

Dear Editor, The author has read with great interest an article recently published in the Journal of Anatomy titled ‘Differentiation and classification of thoracolumbar transitional vertebrae’(Du Plessis et al., 2018), a topic that warrants proper attention and evaluation, given the clinical implications of anatomical variations found at the thoracolumbar spine. The three principal ‘qualitative’ observations highlighted by the authors characterizing thoracolumbar transitions are: (i) the pattern of change in the orientation of the superior articular (zygapophyseal facets) processes (SP) in the vertebrae at this transitional zone, (ii) the ‘irregularity’ of mammillary processes (MP) positions present close to the SP on transitioning thoracic vertebrae, and lastly, (iii) the comparative hypoplastic nature of the transverse process (TP) seen on these transitional vertebrae. The authors also suggest that their findings on transitional morphology were new in the literature. The article does not discuss any mechanism explaining these transitional changes, but it observes that ‘there is no published literature available that describes the morphology of transitional thoracolumbar vertebrae (TTLV) or identifies various TLTV subtypes that may exist’. As the author of this letter is interested in the morphological study of transitional variations in the spine, this letter to the editor will attempt to find whether existent literature in this field: (i) already presents qualitative or quantitative reports on thoracolumbar transitional vertebrae, (ii) describes different forms/stages of anatomical