Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sensorimotor Impairment of Speech and Hand Movement Timing Processing in Parkinson’s Disease

Abstract Models of motor control have highlighted the role of temporal predictive mechanisms in sensorimotor processing of speech and limb movement timing. We investigated how these mechanisms are affected in Parkinson’s disease (PD) while patients performed speech and hand motor reaction time tasks in response to sensory stimuli with predictable and unpredictable temporal dynamics. Results showed slower motor reaction times in PD vs. control in response to temporally predictable, but not unpredictable stimuli. This effect was driven by faster motor responses to predictable stimuli in control subjects; however, no such effect was observed in the PD group. These findings indicated the relationship between PD pathology and sensorimotor deficits in temporal predictive mechanisms of timing processing during speech production and hand movement.
Wireless Access in Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC)

The future connectivity landscape, and notably, the 5G wireless systems will feature Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC). The coupling of high reliability and low latency requirements in URLLC use cases makes the wireless access design very challenging, in terms of both the protocol design and of the associated transmission techniques. This paper aims to provide a broad perspective on the fundamental tradeoffs in URLLC, as well as the principles used in building access protocols. Two specific technologies are considered in the context of URLLC: massive MIMO and multi-connectivity, also termed interface diversity. This paper also touches on the importance of the proper statistical methodology for designing and assessing extremely high-reliability levels.
Reduction of radiation-related anxiety promoted wellbeing after the 2011 disaster: ‘Fukushima Health Management Survey’

After the Fukushima disaster in 2011, affected residents experienced increased radiation-related anxiety and reduced subjective wellbeing. We investigated whether reduction of radiation-related anxiety promoted wellbeing among evacuees in Fukushima and assessed the role of mental health distress as a mediator. We used data from questionnaire surveys of evacuees in the 2011 and 2012 fiscal years (N = 34 312). We used radiation risk perception as an indicator of radiation-related anxiety and the frequency of laughter as an indicator of wellbeing. We measured changes in radiation risk perception from 2011 and 2012, and the frequencies of laughter and mental health distress (Kessler 6-item scale) in 2012, and investigated associations between radiation risk perception and frequency of laughter with and without covariates of mental health distress. Perceived genetic risk in 2011 had a significant inverse association with the frequency of laughter. Lowering of radiation risk perception was significantly associated with the frequency of laughter in the absence of covariates of mental health distress, but not in their presence. Lowering of radiation risk perception was also significantly associated with low mental health distress. Reduction of radiation-related anxiety promoted wellbeing via alleviation of mental health distress.
Using spatial and temporal variability data to optimize sediment toxicity identification evaluation (TIE) study designs

Toxicity tests are an important aspect of sediment quality assessments, but knowledge of the cause of toxicity is needed to determine effective management actions. Toxicity identification evaluation (TIE) methods were developed to meet this need. While TIE method manuals provide information on the procedures, little information on study design is presented. The level of variability associated with performing TIEs and how to account for it is also not addressed. The goal of this study was to collect data on both the spatial and temporal variability associated with sediment TIEs by use of the amphipod Eohaustorius estuarius 10‐day survival test and then apply that information to make recommendations for designing future TIE studies. Ten stations were sampled at Consolidated Slip in Los Angeles Harbor, California, with samples collected 2 months apart. In the first stage, TIEs were conducted on whole sediment and pore water from 3 of the most toxic stations. In the second stage, focused TIEs were conducted on whole sediment from all stations. Chemical analysis for metals and organic contaminants was also performed. With a weight of evidence approach, it was determined that pyrethroid pesticides were the likely cause of toxicity, with a lesser contribution from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Results of the individual TIEs fell into 3 broad categories: TIEs in which treatments for organic chemicals and pyrethroids were effective; TIEs in which the treatment for pyrethroids was not effective but the treatment for organic contaminants was effective; and TIEs in which the treatment for pyrethroids was effective but the treatment for organic contaminants was not. This variability was used to calculate that at least 3 TIEs were necessary to make a confident assessment of the cause of toxicity. There was not substantial temporal variability in the TIE outcomes. Other recommendations are made regarding effective TIE study design. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2019;15:248–258. © 2018 SETAC
Does Simultaneous Administration of Bivalent (Types 1 and 3) Oral Poliovirus Vaccine and Inactivated Poliovirus Vaccine Induce Mucosal Cross-immunity to Poliovirus Type 2?

Abstract Background Inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) alone does not induce mucosal immunity. However, it was hypothesized that administration of IPV together with bivalent (types 1+3) oral poliovirus vaccine (bOPV) may stimulate mucosal cross-immunity to poliovirus type 2 (PV2). Methods Cuban infants were randomized to receive either one dose of IPV (Arm A); one dose of IPV with bOPV (Arm B) at about 6 months of age or no vaccine (Arm C). Subjects were challenged with one dose of trivalent OPV (tOPV); they were about 7 months old in arms A and B, and about 3 months old in arm C at a time of the tOPV challenge. Sera were collected before vaccination and 30 days after tOPV challenge and tested for presence of poliovirus neutralizing antibodies; stool samples were collected at days 0, 7, 14, 21 and 49 post-challenge and tested for presence of poliovirus. Results We enrolled 333 children. Excretion of PV2 following tOPV challenge was highest on day 7 (75 [CI 95% = 65-82%], 68 [CI 95% = 58-75%] and 73 [CI 95% = 63-80%] for study arms A, B, and C respectively); excretion decreased with every subsequent stool sampling; no significant differences either in proportion of PV2 excretion or in its duration were observed between study arms. Conclusions There was no reduction in excretion of PV2 after tOPV challenge in children who had received IPV with bOPV when compared to those who had received IPV alone or no vaccine. Polio eradication program cannot assume any PV2 mucosal response with the current polio immunization schedule. Clinical Trials Registration The trial was registered with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry and allocated trial number ACTRN12616000169448.
Point Cloud GAN

Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) can achieve promising performance on learning complex data distributions on different types of data. In this paper, we first show a straightforward extension of existing GAN algorithm is not applicable to point clouds, because the constraint required for discriminators is undefined for set data. We propose a two fold modification to GAN algorithm for learning to generate point clouds (PC-GAN). First, we combine ideas from hierarchical Bayesian modeling and implicit generative models by learning a hierarchical and interpretable sampling process. A key component of our method is that we train a posterior inference network for the hidden variables. Second, instead of using only state-of-the-art Wasserstein GAN objective, we propose a sandwiching objective, which results in a tighter Wasserstein distance estimate than the commonly used dual form. Thereby, PC-GAN defines a generic framework that can incorporate many existing GAN algorithms. We validate our claims on ModelNet40 benchmark dataset. Using the distance between generated point clouds and true meshes as metric, we find that PC-GAN trained by the sandwiching objective achieves better results on test data than the existing methods. Moreover, as a byproduct, PC- GAN learns versatile latent representations of point clouds, which can achieve competitive performance with other unsupervised learning algorithms on object recognition task. Lastly, we also provide studies on generating unseen classes of objects and transforming image to point cloud, which demonstrates the compelling generalization capability and potentials of PC-GAN.
Adrenal Incidentaloma: Picking out the High-Risk Patients

Abstract Patients with adrenal incidentalomas and autonomous cortisol secretion (ACS) have been recognized as a category at risk of developing cardiovascular and metabolic co-morbidities. Considering the increasing number of patients affected by this condition, it is important to perform an accurate subtyping of the patients, in the light of a tailored treatment. This review aims to identify the phenotypic characteristics of patients with adrenal incidentalomas and ACS who are at risk of developing severe cortisol-related co-morbidities. ACS has been associated with severe alteration of the cardiovascular profile, including hypertension, diabetes, and atherosclerosis. Moreover, ACS has been identified as a contributing factor to the development of cardiovascular events and related mortality. Patients with ACS are also at risk of incident bone fractures, which occur in half of the patients independently of the bone mass density, and infectious diseases. Severity and persistence of hypercortisolism are among the main contributing factors for cardiovascular diseases and bone fractures. Moreover, progression of hypercortisolism over time and altered circadian cortisol rhythm seem to be important additional factors. The role of potential novel biomarkers is also discussed in this review.
The Airbus Air Traffic Control speech recognition 2018 challenge: towards ATC automatic transcription and call sign detection

In this paper, we describe the outcomes of the challenge organized and run by Airbus and partners in 2018 on Air Traffic Control (ATC) speech recognition. The challenge consisted of two tasks applied to English ATC speech: 1) automatic speech-to-text transcription, 2) call sign detection (CSD). The registered participants were provided with 40 hours of speech along with manual transcriptions. Twenty-two teams submitted predictions on a five hour evaluation set. ATC speech processing is challenging for several reasons: high speech rate, foreign-accented speech with a great diversity of accents, noisy communication channels. The best ranked team achieved a 7.62% Word Error Rate and a 82.41% CSD F1-score. Transcribing pilots' speech was found to be twice as harder as controllers' speech. Remaining issues towards solving ATC ASR are also discussed in the paper.
Fermented dairy foods intake and risk of cancer

Fermented dairy foods are known to be nutrient‐rich and probiotic content, which gather optimism due to their potential in prevention and management of cancer. We searched the PubMed, Embase and CNKI databases for all available studies through July 2018 on the association between fermented dairy foods intake and cancer risk. The odds ratio (OR) corresponding to the 95% confidence interval (95% CI) was used to assess the association using a random‐effect meta‐analysis. Finally, 61 studies met the inclusion criteria for our study, with 1,962,774 participants and 38,358 cancer cases. Overall, statistical evidence of significantly decreased cancer risk was found to be associated with fermented dairy foods intake (OR = 0.86, 95% CI = 0.80–0.92) in cohort studies. Yogurt consumption was significantly with decreased cancer risk in the overall comparison (OR = 0.87, 95% CI = 0.80–0.95) and in the cohort studies (OR = 0.81, 95% CI = 0.74–0.88). In terms of subgroup analyses by cancer type, fermented dairy foods intake significantly decreased bladder cancer, colorectal cancer and esophageal cancer risk. In stratified analyses, significantly decreased colorectal cancer risk was found to be associated with cheese intake. Yogurt consumption was significantly decreased bladder cancer and colorectal cancer risk. Our meta‐analysis indicated that fermented dairy foods intake was associated with an overall decrease in cancer risk.
State-Dependent Memory: Neurobiological Advances and Prospects for Translation to Dissociative Amnesia

In susceptible individuals, overwhelming traumatic stress often results in severe abnormalities of memory processing, manifested either as the uncontrollable emergence of memories (flashbacks) or as an inability to remember events (dissociative amnesia, DA) that are usually, but not necessarily, related to the stressful experience. These memory abnormalities are often the source of debilitating psychopathologies such as anxiety, depression and social dysfunction. The question of why memory for some traumatic experiences is compromised while other comparably traumatic experiences are remembered perfectly well, both within and across individuals, has puzzled clinicians for decades. In this article, we present clinical, cognitive, and neurobiological perspectives on memory research relevant to DA. In particular, we examine the role of state dependent memory (wherein memories are difficult to recall unless the conditions at encoding and recall are similar), and discuss how advances in the neurobiology of state-dependent memory (SDM) gleaned from animal studies might be translated to humans.
Childhood Trauma and Neurocognition in Adults With Psychotic Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Background Characterizing the link between childhood trauma and adult neurocognitive function in psychosis is crucial for improving the fields understanding of how early environmental risk factors impact the presentation of the disorder. To date, the literature has been inconsistent: meta-analytic synthesis is lacking, and it is unclear whether specific cognitive functions are affected. Methods A meta-analysis was performed on a total of 3315 subjects with a psychotic disorder. The links between childhood trauma, overall neurocognitive function, and four cognitive subdomains (working memory, executive function, verbal/visual memory, and attention/processing speed) were examined. Relevant sample characteristics and methodological moderators were tested. The strength of the association between trauma and overall neurocognition in individuals with psychotic disorders was also compared to that of healthy controls. Results Among individuals with psychotic disorders, there was a significant association between overall cognition and childhood trauma, r = -. 055; 95% CI = -0.09, -0.02, P = . 002. There was also a modest, negative relationship between childhood trauma and working memory, r = -. 091; 95% CI = -0.15, -0.03, P = . 002. Moderators did not have a significant effect on these analyses. Further, the association between childhood trauma and neurocognition was significantly stronger in healthy controls compared to patients with a psychotic disorder. Conclusion A small negative association was found between overall cognition and childhood trauma in individuals with psychotic disorders. Results suggest the association is less strong for individuals with a psychotic disorder compared to healthy populations. Findings are informative for prominent etiological models of psychosis.
Phenomic Selection Is a Low-Cost and High-Throughput Method Based on Indirect Predictions: Proof of Concept on Wheat and Poplar

Genomic selection - the prediction of breeding values using DNA polymorphisms - is a disruptive method that has widely been adopted by animal and plant breeders to increase productivity. It was recently shown that other sources of molecular variations such as those resulting from transcripts or metabolites could be used to accurately predict complex traits. These endophenotypes have the advantage of capturing the expressed genotypes and consequently the complex regulatory networks that occur in the different layers between the genome and the phenotype. However, obtaining such omics data at very large scales, such as those typically experienced in breeding, remains challenging. As an alternative, we proposed using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) as a high-throughput, low cost and non-destructive tool to indirectly capture endophenotypic variants and compute relationship matrices for predicting complex traits, and coined this new approach ”phenomic selection” (PS). We tested PS on two species of economic interest (Triticum aestivum L. and Populus nigra L.) using NIRS on various tissues (grains, leaves, wood). We showed that one could reach predictions as accurate as with molecular markers, for developmental, tolerance and productivity traits, even in environments radically different from the one in which NIRS were collected. Our work constitutes a proof of concept and provides new perspectives for the breeding community, as PS is theoretically applicable to any organism at low cost and does not require any molecular information.
Disease Severity in Treatment Resistant Schizophrenia Patients Is Mainly Affected by Negative Symptoms, Which Mediate the Effects of Cognitive Dysfunctions and Neurological Soft Signs

This post-hoc study was aimed at assessing whether disease severity was higher in a sample of Treatment Resistant Schizophrenia patients (TRS) compared to schizophrenia patients responsive to antipsychotics (non-TRS). Determinants of disease severity were also investigated in these groups. Eligible patients were screened by standardized diagnostic algorithm to categorize them as TRS or non-TRS. All patients underwent the following assessments: CGI-S; PANSS; DAI; NES; a battery of cognitive tests. Socio-demographic and clinical variables were also recorded. TRS patients exhibited significantly higher disease severity and psychotic symptoms, either as PANSS total score or subscales' scores. A preliminary correlation analysis ruled out clinical and cognitive variables not associated with disease severity in the two groups. Hierarchical linear regression showed that negative symptoms were the clinical variable explaining the highest part of variation in disease severity in TRS, while in non-TRS patients PANSS-General Psychopathology was the variable explaining the highest variation. Mediation analysis showed that negative symptoms mediate the effects of verbal fluency dysfunctions and high-level neurological soft signs (NSS) on TRS' disease severity. These results show that determinants of disease severity sharply differ in TRS and non-TRS patients, and let hypothesize that TRS may stem from cognitive disfunctions and putatively neurodevelopmental aberrations.
Drosophila Models of Sporadic Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the most common cause of movement disorders and is characterized by the progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. It is increasingly recognized as a complex group of disorders presenting widely heterogeneous symptoms and pathology. With the exception of the rare monogenic forms, the majority of PD cases result from an interaction between multiple genetic and environmental risk factors. The search for these risk factors and the development of preclinical animal models are in progress, aiming to provide mechanistic insights into the pathogenesis of PD. This review summarizes the studies that capitalize on modeling sporadic (i.e., nonfamilial) PD using Drosophila melanogaster and discusses their methodologies, new findings, and future perspectives.
Use of cariprazine in psychiatric disorders: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND Cariprazine was approved for treating schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and currently is being evaluated for treating depression in clinical trials in the United States. We systematically reviewed the literature on the efficacy and safety of cariprazine. METHODS We performed a literature search of the PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, EMBASE, and Cochrane collaboration databases through August 31, 2016. The search was not restricted by patient age. Articles published in English or official English translations were included. RESULTS Eleven articles that evaluated the use of cariprazine in the treatment of psychiatric disorders were identified. Four trials evaluated the safety and efficacy of cariprazine in bipolar disorder. One trial investigated its use as an adjunct to antidepressants in major depressive disorder. Three trials evaluated its use in the treatment of acute exacerbations of schizophrenia. Two studies used risperidone or aripiprazole as comparators. Both low- and high-dose cariprazine were more effective than placebo in the treatment of acute mania, mixed episodes, and acute psychosis. Additionally, cariprazine showed efficacy as an adjunctive treatment for depression. CONCLUSIONS Our review indicates that cariprazine demonstrates superior efficacy and good tolerability, both at low and high doses, in the treatment of individuals with psychosis, mania, and depression.
Profiles of peptide YY and ghrelin, levels of hunger and satiety, and ad libitum intake in obese and non-obese Indonesian women

Abstract Introduction. The current study aimed to assess profiles of peptide YY and ghrelin, visual analog scales (VAS) for hunger and satiety, and ad libitum intake in obese and non-obese women. Methods. This open-label non-randomized interventional study involved obese (BMI ≥ 25–35 kg/m2) and non-obese (BMI 18.5–23.0 kg/m2) women subjects. Levels of peptide YY and ghrelin were determined by radioimmunoassay and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), respectively, while the degrees of hunger and satiety were measured using visual analog scale (VAS) questionnaires. The results were compared in fasting condition and in 15, 60, 120, and 180 minutes after breakfast with balance composition formulation. This study also compared the ad libitum intake within 4 hours after breakfast. Results. As compared to the non-obese group, the obese group have significantly lower levels of peptide YY in fasting, and in 15, 60, 120, and 180 minutes post-prandial, and smaller AUC (Area Under the Curve) of fasting peptide YY. Furthermore, the obese group showed significantly higher ad libitum intake. The obese group also have lower levels of ghrelin and lower VAS for hunger and higher in VAS for satiety as compared to the non-obese group. Conclusions. There were significant differences in peptide YY level, 4 hours after breakfast ad libitum intake, ghrelin level, and VAS for hunger and satiety, between obese group and non-obese one.