Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Greater early epinephrine rise with head‐up posture: A marker of increased syncope susceptibility in vasovagal fainters

Head‐up tilt (HUT) is widely used for diagnostic evaluation of patients with suspected vasovagal syncope (VVS), but also offers an opportunity to study VVS pathophysiology. In this regard, it is known that plasma epinephrine (Epi) levels and Epi/norepinephrine (NE) ratio are markedly increased from baseline at the time of HUT‐induced VVS. However, whether these changes contribute to VVS susceptibility remains uncertain.
In vivo hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy ameliorates murine thalassemia intermedia

Current thalassemia gene therapy protocols require the collection of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs), in vitro culture, lentivirus vector transduction, and retransplantation into myeloablated patients. Because of cost and technical complexity, it is unlikely that such protocols will be applicable in developing countries, where the greatest demand for a &bgr;-thalassemia therapy lies. We have developed a simple in vivo HSPC gene therapy approach that involves HSPC mobilization and an intravenous injection of integrating HDAd5/35++ vectors. Transduced HSPCs homed back to the bone marrow, where they persisted long-term. HDAd5/35++ vectors for in vivo gene therapy of thalassemia had a unique capsid that targeted primitive HSPCs through human CD46, a relatively safe SB100X transposase–based integration machinery, a micro-LCR–driven &ggr;-globin gene, and an MGMT(P140K) system that allowed for increasing the therapeutic effect by short-term treatment with low-dose O6-benzylguanine plus bis-chloroethylnitrosourea. We showed in “healthy” human CD46–transgenic mice and in a mouse model of thalassemia intermedia that our in vivo approach resulted in stable &ggr;-globin expression in the majority of circulating red blood cells. The high marking frequency was maintained in secondary recipients. In the thalassemia model, a near-complete phenotypic correction was achieved. The treatment was well tolerated. This cost-efficient and “portable” approach could permit a broader clinical application of thalassemia gene therapy.
iTCM: Toward Learning-Based Thermal Comfort Modeling via Pervasive Sensing for Smart Buildings

For decades, ASHRAE Standard 55 has been using the Fanger’s predicted mean vote (PMV) model to evaluate the indoor thermal comfort satisfaction. However, this canonical model has drawbacks in both data inadequacy and lack of inputs from test subjects. In this paper, we propose a learning-based solution for thermal comfort modeling via the emerging machine learning techniques and Internet of Things-based pervasive sensing technologies. First, we build an intelligent thermal comfort management (iTCM) system. It adopts the wireless sensor network to collect environmental data and utilizes the wearable device for vital sign monitoring. In addition, a cloud-based back-end system, with cost-efficient deployment fees, is developed for data management and analysis. Second, we implement a black-box neural network (NN), namely the intelligent thermal comfort NN (ITCNN). To evaluate the performance of ITCNN, we compare it with the PMV model, three traditional white-box machine learning approaches and three classical black-box machine learning methods. Our preliminary results show that four black-box methods achieve better performance than the PMV model and the three white-box approaches. The ITCNN achieves the best performance and outperforms the PMV model by on average 13.1% and up to 17.8%. Third, with the iTCM system, we demonstrate a novel deep reinforcement learning-based application by encouraging human behavioral changes to form energy-saving habits for greener, smarter, and healthier building. Finally, we discuss the limitations of this paper and present the plan for our future research.
Schottky's Barrier Height of T91/Cr2O3 Heterojunction in Dry and Wet Conditions: Effects of WaterVapor Onto Accelerated High Temperature Oxidation

Increasing the operating temperature in thermal power plant will further accelerate the high temperature oxidation with the presence of water vapor. It is hypothesized that water vapor provides hydrogen that dissolves into the ferritic alloy susbstrate, hence altering their electronic state at the metal-semiconductor (oxide) interface. This study aims to quantitatively prove above postulation by comparing their Schottky's Barrier Height (SBH) in dry and wet environment. The Schottky's barrier was prepared by sputtering $\mathbf{c}_{\Gamma 2}\mathbf{o}_{3}$ onto the T91 boiler tube in high vacuum condition using RF power 150W for an hour. The $\mathbf{T}91/\mathbf{c}_{\mathbf{r}2}\mathbf{o}_{3}$ junction was then connected with platinum wire for capacitance-voltage, C-$V$ test at high temperature. The value of $V_{\mathbf{b}1}$ was used to calculate the SBH, which increase proportionately with built in voltage. It is clearly shown that the SBH value in wet condition is higher than that in dry condition by 10.3%. This is explained by the formation of space charge layer at metal/oxide interface due to dissolved hydrogen in metal, thus may change the transport property and accelerate the oxidation rate in water vapor.
The Effect of Oral Date Syrup on Severity of Labor Pain in Nulliparous

Background: Labor is painful phenomenon and management of labor pain has particular importance. For labor pain management pharmacological and non-pharmacological methods are used, but today there is a tendency for using alternative and complementary medicine. Consumption of nutrients and hydration is also one of the ways of pain management during labor. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the effect of oral administration of palm syrup on the labor pain of nulliparous women. Methods: This study was a randomized clinical trial. In this study, 80 healthy nulliparous women were enrolled and randomly divided into two groups of the control group and palm syrup. The intervention group received palm syrup while the control group received only water routinely. Interventions in both groups continued during the active phase until the transitional phase. Data were collected by four main parts of the demographic questionnaire, controls carried out in labor, recording the fluid intake rate, and recording the pain using a ruler as 10 - 0 cm. Results: The mean pain intensity was significantly lower in intervention group of the palm syrup than the control group. Conclusions: The use of palm syrup had a significant impact on labor pain. Given the importance of evidence-based research and its usage in practice, conducting more studies are necessary in these areas.
Denoising Speech for MFCC Feature Extraction Using Wavelet Transformation in Speech Recognition System

Mel frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) is a popular feature extraction method for a speech recognition system. However, this method is susceptible to noise even though it generates a high accuracy. The conventional MFCC method has a degraded performance when the input signal has noises. This paper presents the implementation of denoising wavelet on speech input of MFCC feature extraction method. The addition of denoising process using wavelet transformation was expected to improve the MFCC performance on noisy signals. The study used 120 speech data, with 30 data were used as the reference, and the other 90 were used as the testing data. The testing data were mixed with white Gaussian noise and then tested to the speech recognition system that already had the reference data. Parameters used in the wavelet denoising process were soft thresholding with the Minimaxi thresholding rule. Eleven wavelet methods on decomposition level 10 were tested on the denoising process. The classification process used K-nearest neighbor (KNN) method. The Fejer-Korovkin 6 wavelet was the best denoising speech signal method that achieved the highest accuracy on input signals with SNR of 5-15dB. Meanwhile, the Daubechies 5 method had a high accuracy on input signal with SNR of 3 dB. All of the tested denoising methods using wavelet transformation were able to improve the accuracy of the speech recognition system on input signals with SNR of 0-10 dB compared to the system without denoising method.
A Conditional Random Fields Approach to Clinical Name Entity Recognition

Clinic named entity recognition (CNER) is an initial step in understanding and using electronic medical record clinical free-text. The CCKS committee sets up a task for CNER for recognizing five types of entities including body part, independent symptom, symptom description, operation and drug. For this task, we develop a conditional random fields (CRF) model with char embedding, POS, radical, PinYin, dictionary and rule features. Our best model on the test dataset achieves the strict F1-Measure of 0.8926 which ranked the first place.
Prognostic value of pretreatment serum lactate dehydrogenase level in pancreatic cancer patients

Background: Several studies were conducted to investigate the prognostic value of pretreatment serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) level in pancreatic cancer (PC), but the results were inconsistent. This study aims to comprehensively assess the prognostic value of pretreatment serum LDH level in PC patients by combining the data of the published literatures on this topic. Methods: Embase, PubMed, and Web of Science were completely retrieved until June, 2018. The observational studies focusing on the prognostic value of pretreatment serum LDH level in PC patients were eligible. STATA version 12.0 was used to undertake the statistical analysis. Results: Eighteen studies with a total of 3345 patients were included in this meta-analysis. The meta-analysis was conducted to generate pooled hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for overall survival (OS). Our analysis results suggested that high serum LDH level predicted worse OS (HR 1.57, 95% CI 1.30–1.90, P < .001) in PC patients. Moreover, for patients with advanced PC, the prognostic relevance of pretreatment serum LDH level not only existed in those receiving palliative chemotherapy (HR 1.72, 95% CI 1.35–2.18, P < .001), but also in those who were precluded from chemotherapy (HR 1.91, 95% CI 1.4219–2.58, P < .001). Conclusion: The meta-analysis results demonstrated that pretreatment serum LDH level is closely associated with OS, and it may be a useful biomarker for assessing the prognosis of PC patients.
Wonderland and the rabbit hole: A commentary on university students’ alcohol use during first year and the early transition to university

For new students, university can be a wonderland of opportunity. But the first few weeks of the university experience are also typified by change, stress and uncertainty. From a health promotion perspective, the first few weeks of the university experience present an important yet understudied opportunity for alcohol misuse prevention. In this narrative review, we distinguish students' alcohol use during their first year at university from what is known about their use in the first few weeks on campus. First, we outline the developmental context of the first year experience and the descriptive epidemiology of alcohol use and consequences. Second, we highlight how distinctly different the first few weeks of the university experience are relative to the rest of the academic year and overview the limited research on alcohol use and consequences during the first few weeks. Third, we overview the limited number of strategies that have focused on reducing alcohol use during the transition to university. Finally, we offer a number of suggestions for future research. A better understanding of the nature and determinants of alcohol use and consequences during the transition to university is critical to designing effective prevention and intervention strategies.
High Throughput Multiplierless Architecture for VP9 Fractional Motion Estimation

This paper presents a dedicated hardware design for the Fractional Motion Estimation (FME) of VP9 encoders. The presented hardware was designed to reach real-time when processing high definition videos. The designed FME filters use pure combinational logic. The multiplications were designed through shift-adds and the common sub-expressions were shared to reduce the hardware area and to increase the architecture throughput. Two architectural versions were designed, targeting two video resolutions. These architectural versions have distinct levels of parallelism and reach different throughputs. The synthesis was targeted to 45nm Nangate standard-cells technology, and the results show that the architecture with the highest parallelism has the performance to process Full HD videos (1920×1080 pixels) at 30 frames per second with a power dissipation of 569.9mW. To the best of our knowledge, there is no other published work with dedicated hardware for a complete VP9 FME design.
Metabolic programming a lean phenotype by deregulation of RNA polymerase III

Significance As a repressor of transcription by RNA polymerase (Pol) III, Maf1 is thought to play an important role in the energetic economy of cells by controlling the synthesis of highly abundant tRNAs and 5S rRNA. Accordingly, Maf1 knockout mice are lean, resist weight gain on normal and high fat diets, and up-regulate catabolic processes to meet their increased demand for cellular energy. The origin of this energy demand is proposed to reside in a futile cycle of RNA synthesis and turnover that is enhanced by constitutive Pol III transcription. We present metabolomic evidence supporting this mechanism. We find that central metabolic pathways are reprogrammed in the liver of Maf1 knockout mice to direct substrates toward energy generation and nucleotide synthesis. As a master negative regulator of RNA polymerase (Pol) III, Maf1 modulates transcription in response to nutrients and stress to balance the production of highly abundant tRNAs, 5S rRNA, and other small noncoding RNAs with cell growth and maintenance. This regulation of Pol III transcription is important for energetic economy as mice lacking Maf1 are lean and resist weight gain on normal and high fat diets. The lean phenotype of Maf1 knockout (KO) mice is attributed in part to metabolic inefficiencies which increase the demand for cellular energy and elevate catabolic processes, including autophagy/lipophagy and lipolysis. A futile RNA cycle involving increased synthesis and turnover of Pol III transcripts has been proposed as an important driver of these changes. Here, using targeted metabolomics, we find changes in the liver of fed and fasted Maf1 KO mice consistent with the function of mammalian Maf1 as a chronic Pol III repressor. Differences in long-chain acylcarnitine levels suggest that energy demand is higher in the fed state of Maf1 KO mice versus the fasted state. Quantitative metabolite profiling supports increased activity in the TCA cycle, the pentose phosphate pathway, and the urea cycle and reveals changes in nucleotide levels and the creatine system. Metabolite profiling also confirms key predictions of the futile RNA cycle hypothesis by identifying changes in many metabolites involved in nucleotide synthesis and turnover. Thus, constitutively high levels of Pol III transcription in Maf1 KO mice reprogram central metabolic pathways and waste metabolic energy through a futile RNA cycle.
View-Consistent MeshFlow for Stereoscopic Video Stabilization

This paper presents a method to stabilize shaky stereoscopic videos captured by hand-held stereo cameras. It is often problematic to apply a traditional monocular video stabilization techniques directly to the stereoscopic views independently. This is mainly because some undesirable vertical disparities and inaccurate horizontal disparities are produced, which violates the original stereoscopic disparity constraint, leading to erroneous depth perceptions. In this paper, we show that the MeshFlow stabilization method for monocular videos can be extended for stereoscopic videos by taking additional disparity constraints during the stabilization. In particular, we first estimate disparities between two views. Then, we compute camera motions by the MeshFlow motion model, in which the camera paths can be extracted from the meshes at each view. Next, we smooth these paths of two views separately. After path optimization, we adjust the meshes of one view by our proposed joint the disparity and stability mesh warp, so that the temporal stability and the correct depth perception can be achieved simultaneously. We evaluate our method on various challenging stereoscopic videos with different camera motions and scene types. In the experiment, we adapt the objective quality assessment of single videos to evaluate our stereoscopic video stabilization. We further propose an objective evaluation method to assess the quality of the disparities in terms of the spatial and temporal coherence after the stabilization. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method both quantitatively and qualitatively.
On the Robustness of Information-Theoretic Privacy Measures and Mechanisms

Consider a data publishing setting for a dataset composed by both private and non-private features. The publisher uses an empirical distribution, estimated from <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$ </tex-math></inline-formula> i.i. d. samples, to design a privacy mechanism which is applied to new fresh samples afterward. In this paper, we study the discrepancy between the privacy-utility guarantees for the empirical distribution, used to design the privacy mechanism, and those for the true distribution, experienced by the privacy mechanism in practice. We first show that, for any privacy mechanism, these discrepancies vanish at speed <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O(1/\sqrt {n})$ </tex-math></inline-formula> with high probability. These bounds follow from our main technical results regarding the Lipschitz continuity of the considered information leakage measures. Then we prove that the optimal privacy mechanisms for the empirical distribution approach the corresponding mechanisms for the true distribution as the sample size <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$ </tex-math></inline-formula> increases, thereby establishing the statistical consistency of the optimal privacy mechanisms. Finally, we introduce and study <italic>uniform privacy mechanisms</italic> which, by construction, provide privacy to all the distributions within a neighborhood of the estimated distribution and, thereby, guarantee privacy for the true distribution with high probability.
Influence of bradykinin B2 receptor and dopamine D2 receptor on the oxidative stress, inflammatory response, and apoptotic process in human endothelial cells

Endothelial dysfunction is a hallmark of a wide range of cardiovascular diseases and is often linked to oxidative stress and inflammation. Our earlier study reported the formation of a functional heterodimer between bradykinin receptor 2 (B2R) and dopamine receptor 2 (D2R) that may modulate cell responses, dependent on intracellular signaling. Here, for the first time, we showed a cooperative effect of these receptors on the modulation of processes involved in oxidative stress, inflammation, and apoptosis in endothelial cells. Sumanirole, a specific D2R agonist, was shown to diminish the excessive production of reactive oxygen species induced by bradykinin, a proinflammatory B2R-activating peptide. This effect was accompanied by modified activities of antioxidant enzymes and increased phosphorylation of endothelial nitric oxide synthase, leading to enhance NO production. In turn, endothelial cell co-stimulation with B2R and D2R agonists inhibited the release of interleukin-6 and endothelin-1 and modulated the expression of apoptosis markers, such as Bcl-2, Bcl-xL, Bax, and caspase 3/7 activity. All these observations argue that the D2R agonist counteracts the pro-oxidative, pro-inflammatory, and pro-apoptotic effects induced through B2R, finally markedly improving endothelial functions.
Generation of Mesenchymal Stem Cells from Human Embryonic Stem Cells in a Complete Serum-free Condition

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) have been derived from a variety of tissues, and cultured either in animal serum-containing (SC) or serum-free (SF) media. We have previously derived MSC from human embryonic stem cells via an intermediate trophoblast step (named EMSC), which also have immunosuppressive and therapeutic effects on animal models of autoimmune disease. To promote the clinical application of this new source of MSC, we report here EMSC derived and cultured in a SF medium MesenCult (SF-EMSC) in comparison with a SC medium (SC-EMSC). SF-EMSC derived in MesenCult also expressed typical MSC markers CD73, CD90, and CD105, and manifested multipotency to differentiate to osteocytes, chondrocytes, and adipocytes. Comparably, CD105+ cells reached 90% about one week slower in the SF than SC conditions, and the proliferation rate was slightly faster for SF-EMSC than SC-EMSC at later passages. Both SF- and SC-EMSC responded similarly to the inflammatory stimulus IFNγ. However, the inflammatory cytokines IL-6 and IL-8 were expressed much less in SF-EMSC than SC-EMSC. Furthermore, knockdown of P16INK4A in both SF- and SC-EMSC reduced replicative senescence. Together, our results suggest that EMSC can be generated in a complete SF condition, and SF-EMSC are largely similar to SC-EMSC. However, it takes longer time to derive EMSC in the SF than SC conditions, and the SF-EMSC proliferate faster at later passages and produce less of the inflammatory cytokines IL-6 and IL-8 than SC-EMSC. This study provides important information for production of clinically applicable EMSC.
Essential oils as natural preservatives for bakery products: Understanding the mechanisms of action, recent findings, and applications

Abstract Bakery products, as an important part of a healthy diet, are characterized by their limited shelf-life. Microbiological spoilage of these products not only affects the quality characteristics and result in the economic loss but also threatens consumer’s health. Incorporation of chemical preservatives, as one of the most conventional preserving techniques, lost its popularity due to the increasing consumer’s health awareness. Therefore, the bakery industry is seeking alternatives to harmful antimicrobial agents that can be accepted by health-conscious customers. In this regard, essential oils have been previously used as either a part of product ingredient or a part of the packaging system. Therefore, the antimicrobial aspect of essential oils and their ability in delaying the microbiological spoilage of bakery products have been reviewed. Several types of essential oils, including thyme, cinnamon, oregano, and lemongrass, can inhibit the growth of harmful microorganisms in bakery products, resulting in a product with extended shelf-life and enhanced safety. Research revealed that several bioactive compounds are involved in the antimicrobial activity of essential oils. However, some limitations, such as the possible negative effects of essential oils on sensory parameters, may limit their applications, especially in high concentrations. In this case, they can be used in combination with other preservation techniques such as using appropriate packaging materials. Further research regarding the commercial production of the bakery products formulated with essential oils is required in this area.