Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recognition of Facial Emotion and Affective Prosody in Children at High Risk of Criminal Behavior

Abstract Objective: Emotion recognition is an important aspect of emotion processing, which is needed for appropriate social behavior and normal socialization. Previous studies in adults with antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy, in those convicted of criminal behavior, or in children with conduct disorder show impairments in negative emotion recognition. The present study investigated affective facial and prosody recognition in a sample of children at high risk of developing future criminal behavior. Methods: Participants were 8- to 12-year-old children at high risk of developing criminal behavior (N=219, 83.1% boys) and typically developing controls (N=43, 72.1% boys). The high-risk children were recruited through an ongoing early intervention project of the city of Amsterdam, that focuses on the underage siblings or children of delinquents, and those failing to attend school. Facial and vocal recognition of happy, sad, angry, and fear was measured with the Facial Emotion Recognition (FER) test and the prosody test of the Amsterdam Neuropsychological Tasks (ANT), respectively. Results: The high-risk group was significantly worse in facial affect recognition and had particular problems with fear and sadness recognition. No hostile attribution bias was found. The high-risk group did not differ from controls in affective prosody recognition but needed significantly more time to recognize emotions. Conclusions: The emotion-specific deficits found in forensic and clinical populations are already present in a sample of children at high risk of developing future criminal behavior. These findings help us understand a possible underlying mechanism of antisocial behavior that could provide directions for tailored interventions. (JINS, 2019, 25, 57–64)
Dermatophytosis: Prevalence of Dermatophytes and Non-Dermatophyte Fungi from Patients Attending Arsho Advanced Medical Laboratory, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Background Dermatophytosis is a disease of major public health problem around the globe causing a considerable morbidity. Objective To study the prevalence of dermatophytosis and the spectrum of fungi implicated in causing the infection. Methods Nail, skin, and scalp scrapings were collected from 318 patients and were used for microscopy and culture study. Fungal pathogens were identified by studying the macroscopic and microscopic characteristics of their colonies. Result Tinea capitis was the predominant clinical manifestation consisting of 48.1% of the cases. Among 153 patients with tinea capitis, 73.2% were in the age group of 1-14 years. Of 318 study participants, 213 (67.98%) were found to be positive for dermatophytosis microbiologically. Out of 164 fungal isolates, 86 were dermatophytes and 78 were non-dermatophyte fungi. Among 86 dermatophytes, T. violaceum represented 38.4% of dermatophyte isolates and 89.7% of the isolates were recovered from tinea capitis. Of 76 non-dermatophyte molds, Aspergillus spp. , Scytalidium dimidiatum, and Cladosporium spp. were the most common isolates, respectively. Conclusions Failure to detect or isolate fungal pathogens in a large number of clinical samples revealed the limitation of clinical diagnosis in differentiating dermatophytosis from other skin infections demonstrating that clinical diagnosis should be coupled with laboratory methods. Recovery of large number of non-dermatophyte fungi along with dermatophytes in our study showed that non-dermatophyte fungi are emerging as important causes of dermatophytosis, warranting the implementation of intensive epidemiological studies of dermatophytosis across the country.
Smoking Status Among Patients With Newly Diagnosed Lung Cancer in Taiwan

ABSTRACT Background Continued smoking after receiving a diagnosis of cancer seriously affects disease prognosis and survival. The prevalence and risk factors of continued smoking among patients with newly diagnosed lung cancer are unknown in Taiwan. Purpose The aims of this study were to assess the smoking status of patients with newly diagnosed lung cancer and to identify the characteristics that are associated with different smoking statuses. Methods Baseline data of a longitudinal study on smoking behaviors after lung cancer diagnosis were analyzed in this study. Patients were consecutively recruited from three medical centers in northern Taiwan. A structured questionnaire and medical chart reviews were used to collect data. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to examine the factors associated with continuing to smoke after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Results Among the 406 patients with newly diagnosed lung cancer who were recruited, 47.0% were never-smokers and 53.0% were ever-smokers. Among the second group, 38% were former smokers, 18% were recent quitters, and 44% were current smokers. Compared with former smokers, current smokers were more likely to be younger (OR = 1.05), to not exercise regularly (OR = 2.74), to currently live with smokers (OR = 2.48), and to have lower self-efficacy for refusing to smoke (OR = 0.95). Compared with recent quitters, current smokers were more likely to have lower self-efficacy for refusing to smoke. Conclusions/Implications for Practice A significant proportion of ever-smoker lung cancer patients in Taiwan will continue to smoke after receiving their diagnosis. Variables known to modify the risk factors associated with continued smoking such as regular exercise and better refusal self-efficacy should be considered and incorporated into future smoking cessation programs for patients with lung cancer.
Cross-cultural translation and validation of the ‘gut feelings’ questionnaire into Spanish and Catalan

Abstract Background: The gut feelings questionnaire (GFQ) is the only tool developed to assess the presence of a ‘sense of alarm’ or a ‘sense of reassurance’ in the diagnostic process of general practitioners (GPs). It was created in Dutch and English and has validated versions in French, German and Polish. Objectives: To obtain a cross-cultural translation of the GFQ into Spanish and Catalan and to assess the structural properties of the translated versions. Methods: A six-step procedure including forward and backward translations, consensus, and cultural and linguistic validation was performed for both languages. Internal consistency, factor structure, and content validity were assessed. Results: Internal consistency was high for both questionnaires (Cronbach’s alpha for GFQ-Spa = 0.94 and GFQ-Cat = 0.95). The principal component analysis identified one factor with the sense of alarm and the sense of reassurance as two opposites, explaining 76% of the total variance for the GFQ-Spa, and 77% for the GFQ-Cat. Conclusion: Spanish and Catalan versions of the GFQ were obtained. Both have been cross-culturally adapted and showed good structural properties.
Significance of hemogram on diagnosis of acute appendicitis during pregnancy.

BACKGROUND Acute appendicitis (AA) is the most common emergency surgical condition during pregnancy after obstetric and gynecological pathologies. Urgent and accurate diagnosis of AA in pregnant patients reduces maternal and fetal morbidity/mortality rates. This study evaluated the significance of hemogram to diagnose AA during pregnancy. METHODS Forty-seven pregnant patients operated for AA in the Ordu or Ondokuz Mayis University Medical School Hospitals between January 2007 and December 2017 were compared with 47 healthy pregnant women in terms of hemogram parameters, including the white blood cell (WBC) count, neutrophil count, lymphocyte count, platelet count, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), mean platelet volume (MPV), and red cell distribution width (RDW) values. The operated group was evaluated based on post-operative pathologic results and subclassified into appendicitis positive (Group A) and appendicitis negative (Group B) groups. The subgroups were compared to the control group. RESULTS The WBC and neutrophil count and mean NLR and PLR values were significantly higher in Group A compared to Group B and the control group (p<0.001). The mean lymphocyte count was significantly lower in Group A compared to other groups (p<0.001). The MPV and RDW values and mean platelet count showed no significant difference between groups (p>0.05). When cutoff values for WBC, neutrophil count, NLR, PLR, and lymphocyte counts were set to >10300, >7950, >5.50, >155.2, and ≤1330, respectively, the sensitivity rates were 72.5%, 80%, 90%, 77.5% and 85%, whereas specificity rates were 72.3%, 79.7%, 89.4%, 74.5%, and 82.5%, respectively. CONCLUSION When comparing pregnant women diagnosed with AA to patients operated for suspected AA and healthy pregnant women, the WBC and neutrophil count and NLR and PLR values were found to be significantly higher, whereas lymphocyte counts were lower. In addition to medical history, physical examination and imaging techniques, hemogram parameters should be considered to diagnose AA in pregnant women.
Arterial stiffness is associated with target organ damage in subjects with pre-hypertension

Introduction Present study was to evaluate whether increased arterial stiffness was associated with target organ damage in pre-hypertensive subjects. Material and methods Pre-hypertensive subjects enrolled and echocardiography was used to evaluate left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and the first morning urine was collected to evaluate albumin and creatinine ratio (ALB/Cr ratio). Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cf-PWV) was measured. Results A total of 420 subjects were recruited and mean age was 42.6 years. Mean systolic/diastolic blood pressure (SBP/DBP) were 130 ±9 mm Hg and 85 ±4 mm Hg. The prevalence of albuminuria and left ventricular hypertrophy was 8.6 % and 11.7 %. Mean cf-PWV was 9.2 ±1.0 m/s, with arterial stiffness prevalence was 8.8%. Subjects with arterial stiffness had higher cf-PWV value (10.6 ±0.4 m/s vs. 8.7 ±0.6 m/s, p < 0.05), and ALB/Cr ratio (28.3 ±13.2 µg/mg vs. 23.1 ± 11.4 µg/mg, p < 0.05). Overall, with multivariate regression analysis, aging and arterial stiffness were significantly associated with pre-hypertension. With stepwise adjusted for potential covariates including age, male gender, fasting plasma glucose, presence of current cigarette smoking, dyslipidemia, statins and SBP, increased cf-PWV remained independently associated with left ventricular hypertrophy and albuminuria, with an increased odds of 41 % and 24 % (p < 0.05), respectively. Conclusions In pre-hypertensive subjects, arterial stiffness is independently associated with LVH and albuminuria and cf-PWV may be a useful marker to identify target organ damage in pre-hypertensive subjects.
Representation Learning by Reconstructing Neighborhoods

Since its introduction, unsupervised representation learning has attracted a lot of attention from the research community, as it is demonstrated to be highly effective and easy-to-apply in tasks such as dimension reduction, clustering, visualization, information retrieval, and semi-supervised learning. In this work, we propose a novel unsupervised representation learning framework called neighbor-encoder, in which domain knowledge can be easily incorporated into the learning process without modifying the general encoder-decoder architecture of the classic autoencoder.In contrast to autoencoder, which reconstructs the input data itself, neighbor-encoder reconstructs the input data's neighbors. As the proposed representation learning problem is essentially a neighbor reconstruction problem, domain knowledge can be easily incorporated in the form of an appropriate definition of similarity between objects. Based on that observation, our framework can leverage any off-the-shelf similarity search algorithms or side information to find the neighbor of an input object. Applications of other algorithms (e.g., association rule mining) in our framework are also possible, given that the appropriate definition of neighbor can vary in different contexts. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of our framework in many diverse domains, including images, text, and time series, and for various data mining tasks including classification, clustering, and visualization. Experimental results show that neighbor-encoder not only outperforms autoencoder in most of the scenarios we consider, but also achieves the state-of-the-art performance on text document clustering.
Maggot protein ameliorates dextran sulphate sodium-induced ulcerative colitis in mice

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a common chronic remitting disease but without satisfactory treatment. Maggots are known as a traditional Chinese medicine named as ‘wu gu chong’. The aim of the present study was to investigate the therapeutic effect of the maggot protein on dextran sulphate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis in C57BL/6 mice. In the present study, female C57BL/6 mice were given sterile water containing 3% DSS to establish the model of UC. Mice were randomly divided into five groups: control group (sterile water), model group (DSS), treatment group (DSS + maggot protein), mesalazine group (DSS + mesalazine), and maggot protein group (sterile water + maggot protein). The mental state, defecate traits, and changes in body weights were recorded daily. The disease activity index (DAI) as a disease severity criterion was calculated based on body weights and stool consistency and bleeding. All the mice were killed on the 12th day. Colon length, colon histological changes, and other inflammatory factors were analyzed and evaluated. The results showed that colitis models of mice were established successfully. Administration of maggot protein markedly suppressed the severity of UC compared with the DSS model group. Furthermore, maggot protein potently ameliorated DSS-induced weight loss, colon shortening, and colon histological injury. Moreover, the maggot protein exerted anti-inflammatory effects via inhibition of the activation of the nuclear factor κB (NFκB) signaling pathway. In summary, treatment by maggot protein was able to improve not only the symptoms of colitis, but also the microscopic inflammation in mice with DSS-induced colitis. The present study may have implications for developing an effective therapeutic strategy for inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs).
9th Challenge on Question Answering over Linked Data (QALD-9) (invited paper)

Recent years have seen a growing amount of research on question answering (QA) over Semantic Web data, shaping an interaction paradigm that allows end users to profit from the expressive power of Semantic Web standards. At the same time, QA systems hide their complexity behind an intuitive and easy-touse interface. However, the growing amount of data available on the Semantic Web has led to a heterogeneous data landscape where QA systems struggle to keep up with the volume, variety and veracity of the underlying knowledge. The Question Answering over Linked Data (QALD) challenges aim to provide up-to-date benchmarks for assessing and comparing state-of-the-art systems that mediate between a user, expressing his or her information need in natural language, and RDF data. In the past few years, more than 40 research groups and their systems have taken part in the last nine QALD challenges. The QALD challenge targets all researchers and practitioners working on querying Linked Data, natural language processing for question answering, multilingual information retrieval and related topics. The main goal is to gain insights into the strengths and shortcomings of different approaches and into possible solutions for coping with the large, heterogeneous and distributed nature of Semantic Web data. QALD has a 8-year history. The challenge began in 2011 and is developing benchmarks that are increasingly being used as a standard evaluation venue for question answering over Linked Data. Overviews of past instantiations of the challenge are available from the CLEF Working Notes, CEUR workshop notes as well as ESWC proceedings, see Table 1. This article will give a technical overview of the task and results of the 9th Question Answering over Linked Data challenge.
The use of infrared thermography in the measurement and characterization of brown adipose tissue activation

ABSTRACT Interest in brown adipose tissue has increased in recent years as a potential target for novel obesity, diabetes and metabolic disease treatments. One of the significant limitations to rapid progress has been the difficulty in measuring brown adipose tissue activity, especially in humans. Infrared thermography (IRT) is being increasingly recognized as a valid and complementary method to standard imaging modalities, such as positron emission tomography–computed tomography (PET/CT). In contrast to PET/CT, it is non-invasive, cheap and quick, allowing, for the first time, the possibility of large studies of brown adipose tissue (BAT) on healthy populations and children. Variations in study protocols and analysis methods currently limit direct comparison between studies but IRT following appropriate BAT stimulation consistently shows a change in supraclavicular skin temperature and a close association with results from BAT measurements from other methods.
Comparison of unilateral pedicle screw fixation and interbody fusion with PEEK cage vs. standalone expandable fusion cage for the treatment of unilateral lumbar disc herniation

Introduction This study was conducted to compare the clinical effects of unilateral pedicle screw fixation and interbody fusion with PEEK cage (UPSFC) and standalone expandable fusion cage (SAEFC) on unilateral lumbar disc herniation. Material and methods From September 2011 to July 2014, a respective investigation was performed on 130 lumbar disc herniation patients treated with SAEFC or UPSFC. The hospital stay, operating time, blood loss, Japanese orthopaedic association scores (JOA), and visual analogue score (VAS) in the two groups were compared using Student’s t-test. Results The average of follow-up time was 25.6 ±6.4 and 25.2 ±5.8 months, respectively. No significant difference in the postoperative hospitalizsation, intraoperative blood loss, operative time, and postoperative fusion rate was detected between the two groups. VAS score in the UPSFC group was significantly lower than in the SAEFC group at 6 and 12 months after operation (p = 0.014, p = 0.004). X-ray images indicated that the subsidence rate was 8.1% (5/62) in the SAEFC group, while no subsidence was detected in UPSFC group 12 month after operation. Conclusions Both SAEFC and UPSFC are effective techniques. UPSFC may be a better choice for patients with lumbar disc herniation and unilateral limb symptoms of nerve root in view of the advantages of better low back pain relief and low subsidence rate.
Effect of a Habitual Late-Evening Physical Task on Sleep Quality in Neither-Type Soccer Players

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate objective and subjective sleep quality, daytime tiredness and sleepiness in response to a late-evening high intensity interval training (HIIT) session in neither-type soccer players that habitually trained late in the day. This is the first study that considered both athletes’ chronotype and habitual training time as crucial factors when assessing sleep quality in relation to an evening physical task. Methods: In this longitudinal, prospective, observational study, 14 Italian soccer players were recruited (mean age: 26.1 ± 4.5 years; height: 1.81 ± 0.06 m; weight: 78.9 ± 6.1 kg) and performed an extra-routine 4 × 4-min HIIT session at 09:00 p.m. Players used to train always between 09:00 and 11:00 p.m during the competitive season. All subjects wore an actigraph to evaluate their objective sleep parameters and a sleep diary was used to record subjective values of sleep quality, daytime tiredness, and daytime sleepiness. All data were analyzed as: the mean of the two nights before (PRE), the night after (POST 1), and the mean of the two nights after (POST 2) the extra-routine HIIT session. The subjects’ chronotype was assessed by the morningness-eveningness questionnaire (MEQ). Results: All players were classified as N-types (mean MEQ score: 49.4 ± 3.7). None of the actigraph parameters nor the subjective values of sleep quality, tiredness, and sleepiness showed significant changes in PRE, POST 1, and POST 2. Conclusion: The results of our study added more information regarding sleep quality outcomes in response to a late-evening HIIT session. Athletic trainers and medical staff should always control for chronotype and habitual training time when assessing variations to sleep quality in athletes.
Chronic restraint stress impairs sociability butnot social recognition and spatial memoryin C57BL/6J mice

Chronic stress has been associated with impairment of memory, learning, and social cognition. In animal studies, chronic stress has been shown to impair rodent sociability behaviour which mimics social withdrawal as observed in depression patients. The effect of chronic stress on social recognition, however, is uncertain. Moreover, with reference to spatial learning and memory, the effect of chronic stress is dependent on the type of behavioural task: an appetitively or aversively motivated tasks. The effect of chronic stress was consistent in impairing spatial learning and memory in the appetitive task; however, the effect was inconsistent in an aversive task like the Morris water maze. Thus, we aimed to investigate the effect of chronic restraint stress on sociability and social recognition by using a modified protocol of the three-chamber paradigm and the effect of chronic restraint stress on spatial learning and memory by using the Morris water maze test in young adult C57BL/6J male mice. The present report also describes a modified protocol of the three-chamber paradigm. Our modification is based on measurement of sniffing behaviour, which is a direct social interaction that represents sociability. We used the chronic restraint stress paradigm for 6 h/day for 21 days to induce depression-like symptoms in male C57BL/6J mice which were validated by forced-swim test. We observed that the stressed group had impairments in their sociability behaviour but that social recognition was not affected. Furthermore, we confirmed that chronic stress produced no significant impairment in spatial learning and memory of the mice in the water maze.