Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lawsonella clevelandensis causing spinal subdural empyema

Abstract Lawsonella clevelandensis is a recently described species and genus of bacterium in the Corynebacterineae suborder which is Gram-stain positive, partially acid-fast and anaerobic. Very few cases of human infection due to this organism are described and here we seek to add to the limited medical literature. We report the case of a 2-year-old girl who presented with an infected spinal dermoid cyst secondary to Lawsonella clevelandensis which required surgical drainage and a long course of antibiotics. We encountered diagnostic and therapeutic difficulties because this is a fastidious organism which was difficult to culture and ultimately required molecular detection and identification. To the best of our knowledge, this is only the seventh reported case of Lawsonella clevelandensis causing human infection worldwide and the first in the UK. This is the first reported case of Lawsonella clevelandensis infection in a child and the second reported case of this organism causing spinal infection.
Orthographic Networks in the Developing Mental Lexicon. Insights From Graph Theory and Implications for the Study of Language Processing

In this study, we examine the development of orthographic networks in the mental lexicon using graph theory. According to this view, words are represented by nodes in a network and connected as a function of their orthographic similarity. With a sampling approach based on a language corpus for German school children, we were able to simulate lexical development for children from Grade 1–8. By sampling different lexicon sizes from the corpus, we were able to analyze the content of the orthographic lexicon at different time points and examined network characteristics using graph theory. Results show that, similar to semantic and phonological networks, orthographic networks possess small-word characteristics defined by short average path lengths between nodes and strong local clustering. Moreover, the interconnectivity of the network decreases with growth. Implications for the study of the effect of network measures on language processing are discussed.
Bacterial cohesion predicts spatial distribution in the larval zebrafish intestine

Are there general biophysical relationships governing the spatial organization of the gut microbiome? Despite growing realization that spatial structure is important for population stability, inter-bacterial competition, and host functions, it is unclear in any animal gut whether such structure is subject to predictive, unifying rules, or if it results from contextual, species-specific behaviors. To explore this, we used light sheet fluorescence microscopy to conduct a high-resolution comparative study of bacterial distribution patterns throughout the entire intestinal volume of live, larval zebrafish. Fluorescently tagged strains of seven bacterial symbionts, representing six different species native to zebrafish, were each separately mono-associated with animals that had been raised initially germ-free. The strains showed large differences in both cohesion—the degree to which they auto-aggregate—and spatial distribution. We uncovered a striking correlation between each strain’s mean position and its cohesion, whether quantified as the fraction of cells existing as planktonic individuals, the average aggregate size, or the total number of aggregates. Moreover, these correlations held within species as well; aggregates of different sizes localized as predicted from the pan-species observations. Together, our findings indicate that bacteria within the zebrafish intestine are subject to generic processes that organize populations by their cohesive properties. The likely drivers of this relationship, peristaltic fluid flow, tubular anatomy, and bacterial growth and aggregation kinetics, are common throughout animals. We therefore suggest that the framework introduced here, of biophysical links between bacterial cohesion and spatial organization, should be useful for directing explorations in other host-microbe systems, formulating detailed models that can quantitatively map onto experimental data, and developing new tools that manipulate cohesion to engineer microbiome function.
Periodontal condition in Japanese coronary heart disease patients: A comparison between coronary and non‐coronary heart diseases

OBJECTIVE The aim of this clinical trial was to assess the relationship between periodontal bacterial burden and coronary heart disease (CHD) in Japanese population. BACKGROUND Many epidemiological reports suggest that periodontitis is a risk factor for CHD; however, the influence of each periodontal bacterium and periodontal condition in Japanese CHD patients is unclear. METHODS We studied 897 patients with cardiovascular diseases in Tokyo Medical and Dental University Hospital from May 2012 to August 2015. The subjects were divided into six groups according to age and the existence of CHD (46-60 years with CHD (n = 56): Group YC, 61-70 years with CHD (n = 106): Group MC, over 70 years with CHD (n = 177): Group EC, 46-60 years without CHD (n = 152): Group YN, 61-70 years without CHD (n = 216): Group MN, and over 70 years without CHD (n = 190): Group EN). RESULTS We found that the patients in Groups MC and EC had deeper periodontal pocket compared to the patients in Group YN (P < 0.05), although there was no statistical difference of pocket depth between Group YC and Groups MC and EC. Many subjects in Group EC had high anti-Porphyromonas gingivalis and anti-Prevotella intermedia antibodies in comparison to Group EN (P < 0.05). The CHD patients generally had worse oral condition than the non-CHD patients. Elderly with CHD had a higher level of serum anti-Porphyromonas gingivalis antibody and anti-Prevotella intermedia antibody than those without CHD. CONCLUSION Increased periodontal infection was found in Japanese CHD patients compared to non-CHD patients.
Majority group children expect that ethnic out-group peers feel fewer positive but more negative emotions than in-group peers

ABSTRACT Across two studies majority group children’s (8–13 years) perception of positive and negative emotions in ethnic in-group and disadvantaged ethnic out-group peers was examined. Study 1 (N = 302) showed that children expected in-group peers to feel better in a positive situation compared to out-group peers. Whereas, in a negative situation, children expected in-group peers to feel less bad compared to out-group peers, particularly when they evaluated the in-group as very positive. Study 2 (N = 201) replicates these findings across multiple positive and negative situations, and additionally shows that in very negative situations children expect in-group and out-group peers to feel equally bad. These results suggest that children’s perception of emotions in others is influenced by ethnic group membership.
Balance and mobility in patients with newly diagnosed Parkinson’s disease – a five-year follow-up of a cohort in northern Sweden

Abstract Background: The presence of early balance impairment in patients with Parkinson’s disease has not been fully investigated. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine balance and mobility, self-perceived unsteadiness, self-reported falls, and effects of medication on balance among patients at their first visit to a neurological clinic and during the ensuing five years. Materials and methods: The participants were collected from a prospective longitudinal study. One hundred and forty-five patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease and 31 healthy controls were included. The outcome measures were the Berg Balance Scale, the Timed Up and Go, the Postural Stability test and a questionnaire. Results: At their first visit to the neurological clinic, the patients performed less well on the Berg Balance Scale (p < 0.001, r = 0.36), the Timed Up and Go (p < 0.001, r = 0.32), and the Postural Stability test (p < 0.001, r = 0.35) compared with the controls. In addition, a higher percentage of the patients reported self-perceived unsteadiness (p < 0.001, phi = 0.47). During the ensuing five years, balance and mobility worsened both with and without medication (p < 0.01, r = 0.24-0.37), although with small median differences. Conclusions: Further studies are needed to confirm that minor balance impairments exist even at the time of diagnosis and worsen during the ensuing five years. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION Impairments in balance and mobility may occur early in Parkinson's disease, especially in the elderly patients, and seem to worsen during the first five years. There is a need to use sensitive outcome measures and to ask the patients about unsteadiness and falls to detect balance impairment in this cohort. Parkinsonian medication has a limited effect on balance and may preferably be complemented with balance exercises to target balance impairment early in Parkinson's disease.
Germline genetic testing for inherited prostate cancer in practice: Implications for genetic testing, precision therapy, and cascade testing

Genetic testing capability and guidelines are rapidly expanding to assess inherited prostate cancer (PCA). Clinical genetic data from multigene testing can provide insights into the germline pathogenic variant (PV) spectrum and correlates in men with PCA unselected for metastatic disease to optimize identification of men for genetic evaluation and management.
Adversarial Deep Reinforcement Learning in Portfolio Management

In this paper, we implement three state-of-art continuous reinforcement learning algorithms, Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG), Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) and Policy Gradient (PG)in portfolio management. All of them are widely-used in game playing and robot control. What's more, PPO has appealing theoretical propeties which is hopefully potential in portfolio management. We present the performances of them under different settings, including different learning rates, objective functions, feature combinations, in order to provide insights for parameters tuning, features selection and data preparation. We also conduct intensive experiments in China Stock market and show that PG is more desirable in financial market than DDPG and PPO, although both of them are more advanced. What's more, we propose a so called Adversarial Training method and show that it can greatly improve the training efficiency and significantly promote average daily return and sharpe ratio in back test. Based on this new modification, our experiments results show that our agent based on Policy Gradient can outperform UCRP.
How does education lead to healthier behaviours? Testing the mediational roles of perceived control, health literacy and social support

Abstract Objectives: Educational attainment is increasingly recognised as a unique dimension of socioeconomic status (SES) and a powerful determinant of health behaviour—and thus physical health and mortality. However, very little is known about the specific pathways through which education influences these health behaviours. Design: The present study used a nationally representative US survey to test three potential psychosocial pathways (perceived control, health literacy and social support) through which education might influence intake of fruits and vegetables (FV), physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour (SB), controlling for other aspects of SES (income, health insurance status) and demographics (age, gender, race/ethnicity). Results: Both aspects of perceived control (locus of control, cancer fatalism) mediated the impact of education on FV and PA while only locus of control mediated the impact of education on SB. Further, only one aspect of health literacy (ability to understand recommendations) mediated education’s effect on any health behaviour (FV). Social support did not mediate any of the effects of education on health behaviors. Conclusion: Future work explicitly assessing and testing these mediational pathways is needed to better understand how education influences people’s health behaviours throughout their lives.
Block Sparse Representation based DOA Estimation for FDA with Unknown Mutual Coupling

Frequency diverse array (FDA) capable of diversity in both frequency and phase domain can improve range and angle resolution, which is attractive in Direction of Angle (DOA) estimation. But in practical realization, DOA estimation performance will be degraded by the mutual coupling effect between antennas. In this paper, a block sparse representation based mutual coupling calibration method is proposed for FDA DOA estimation. Steering vector parameterization method for effective block sparse representation utilize the inherent structure of received signals. And $l_{1}$-SVD (singular value decomposition) method are adopted to make full use of the Toeplitz structure of the mutual coupling matrix and the whole array information of FDA. Simulation results show that the proposed method is effective for FDA with unknown mutual coupling.
Chinese version of the Recovery Self-Assessment scale: psychometric evidence from Rasch analysis and reliability estimates

Abstract Background: The Recovery Self-Assessment (RSA) is a popular and well-validated instrument for assessing recovery-oriented service around the world. Aims: This study aims to develop a Chinese version of the RSA, which assesses the recovery orientation of hospital-based mental health services. Methods: We conducted forward and backward translations of the RSA and modify the translated Chinese based on comments by content experts. We recruited 350 people with mental illnesses who regularly attend hospital and community mental health services. The participants completed the Chinese Recovery Self-Assessment Service User version (CRSA-SU) and convergent measures on hope and mental well-being. Results: The Rasch analysis supported five of the six factors in the instrument and suggests that the “Life Goal” factor could be further split into two factors. We identified three misfit items (items 6, 12 and 17) that could be considered for removal. Both the internal consistency and test–retest reliability are between satisfactory and very good within each subscale, with the exception of the Choice subscale. The seven subscales had low positive correlations with measures of hope and mental well-being, which supported the convergent validity of CRSA-SU. Conclusions: The results supported the factor structure, reliability and validity of the CRSA-SU.
ACT001 can prevent and reverse tamoxifen resistance in human breast cancer cell lines by inhibiting NF‐κB activation

Endocrine therapy is one of the main treatments for estrogen receptor–positive breast cancers. Tamoxifen is the most commonly used drug for endocrine therapy. However, primary or acquired tamoxifen resistance occurs in a large proportion of breast cancer patients, leading to therapeutic failure. We found that the combination of tamoxifen and ACT001, a nuclear factor‐κB (NF‐κB) signaling pathway inhibitor, effectively inhibited the proliferation of both tamoxifen‐sensitive and tamoxifen‐resistant cells. The tamoxifen‐resistant cell line MCF7R/LCC9 showed active NF‐κB signaling and high apoptosis‐related gene transcription, especially for antiapoptotic genes, which could be diminished by treatment with ACT001. These results demonstrate that ACT001 can prevent and reverse tamoxifen resistance by inhibiting NF‐κB activation.
Management of chronic central serous chorioretinopathy

New treatment modalities for the management of central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC) now exist. While acute CSC generally resolves without the requirement for intervention, chronic CSC has been associated with persistent disruption in visual function. Current treatment approaches include photodynamic therapy, oral aldosterone antagonism and subthreshold multifocal laser. There has also been further investigation into a number of new treatments including antivascular endothelial growth factor treatment. Further investigation using developing optical coherence tomography imaging is helping to determine biomarkers of CSC activity, potential indicators of treatment response and indications of chronicity of disease activity. Further comparative study is required to determine the effectiveness of different forms of treatment in a range of patients with varied demographics, aetiology and chronicity of disease.
Spiking Neurons Integrating Visual Stimuli Orientation and Direction Selectivity in a Robotic Context

Visual motion detection is essential for the survival of many species. The phenomenon includes several spatial properties, not fully understood at the level of a neural circuit. This paper proposes a computational model of a visual motion detector that integrates direction and orientation selectivity features. A recent experiment in the Drosophila model highlights that stimulus orientation influences the neural response of direction cells. However, this interaction and the significance at the behavioral level are currently unknown. As such, another objective of this article is to study the effect of merging these two visual processes when contextualized in a neuro-robotic model and an operant conditioning procedure. In this work, the learning task was solved using an artificial spiking neural network, acting as the brain controller for virtual and physical robots, showing a behavior modulation from the integration of both visual processes.
Antioxidative protection of haemoglobin microparticles (HbMPs) by PolyDopamine

Abstract Clinically applicable haemoglobin-based oxygen carriers (HBOCs) should neither induce immunological nor toxic reactions. Additionally, Hb should be protected against oxidation. In the absence of protective enzymes (superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT)) Hb is oxidized to MetHb and thus losing its function of oxygen delivery. Alternatively, polydopamine (PD), a scavenger of free radicals, could be used for Hb protection against oxidation Therefore, we synthetized HbMPs modified with PD. The content of functional haemoglobin in these PD-HbMPs was twice higher than that in the control HbMPs due to the protective antioxidant effect of PD. In addition, the PD-HbMPs exhibited a high scavenging activity of free radicals including H2O2 and excellent biocompatibility. In contrast to monomeric dopamine, which has been shown to produce toxic effects on neurons due to formation of H2O2, hydroxyl radicals and superoxide during the process of auto-oxidation, PD-HbMPs are not neurotoxic. Consequently, the results presented here suggest a great potential of PD-HbMPs as HBOCs.
What does Brexit mean for the UK social care workforce? Perspectives from the recruitment and retention frontline

Abstract The UK's departure from the European Union (Brexit) is likely to result in greater immigration and employment restrictions on European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) nationals within the United Kingdom. EU/EEA citizens constitute a significant proportion of the current social care workforce. Research evaluating the impact of Brexit on social care has highlighted potentially severe future workforce shortfalls, but has not engaged in detail with the experiences of social care personnel involved in day‐to‐day recruitment and retention activities. This article explores how social care managers evaluate Brexit's prospects for future workforce sustainability, through the prism of their organisation's workforce requirements. This qualitative study incorporated in‐depth semi‐structured interviews and questionnaire surveys with domiciliary and residential care managers. Data collection focused on an urban conurbation in south‐west England, with demographic characteristics likely to make post‐Brexit recruitment and retention in social care particularly challenging. A key finding is that, irrespective of whether they employ EU/EEA workers or not, research participants have deep concerns about Brexit's potential impact on the social care labour market. These include apprehensions about future restrictions on hiring EU/EEA nurses, as well as fears about increased competition for care staff and their organisation's future financial viability. This article amplifies the voices of managers as an under‐researched group, bringing their perspectives on Brexit to bear on wider debates on social care workforce sustainability.
Clinical and genetic determinants of chronic visual pathway changes after methanol - induced optic neuropathy: four-year follow-up study

Abstract Context: Methanol poisoning induces acute optic neuropathy with possible long-term visual damage. Objective: To study the dynamics and key determinants of visual pathway functional changes during 4 years after acute methanol poisoning. Methods: A total of 42 patients with confirmed methanol poisoning (mean age 45.7 ± 4.4 years) were examined 4.9 ± 0.6, 25.0 ± 0.6, and 49.9 ± 0.5 months after discharge. The following tests were performed: visual evoked potential (VEP), retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) measurement, brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), complete ocular examination, biochemical tests, and apolipoprotein E (ApoE) genotyping. Results: Abnormal VEP P1 latency was registered in 18/42 right eyes (OD) and 21/42 left eyes (OS), abnormal N1P1 amplitude in 10/42 OD and OS. Mean P1 latency shortening during the follow-up was 15.0 ± 2.0 ms for 36/42 (86%) OD and 14.9 ± 2.4 ms for 35/42 (83%) OS, with maximum shortening up to 35.0 ms. No significant change of mean N1P1 amplitude was registered during follow-up. A further decrease in N1P1 amplitude ≥1.0 mcV in at least one eye was observed in 17 of 36 patients (47%) with measurable amplitude (mean decrease −1.11 ± 0.83 (OD)/−2.37 ± 0.66 (OS) mcV versus −0.06 ± 0.56 (OD)/−0.83 ± 0.64 (OS) mcV in the study population; both p < . 001). ApoE4 allele carriers had lower global and temporal RNFL thickness and longer initial P1 latency compared to the non-carriers (all p < .05). The odds ratio for abnormal visual function was 8.92 (3.00–36.50; 95%CI) for ApoE4 allele carriers (p < .001). The presence of ApoE4 allele was further associated with brain necrotic lesions (r = 0.384; p = .013) and brain hemorrhages (r = 0.395; p = .011). Conclusions: Improvement of optic nerve conductivity occurred in more than 80% of patients, but evoked potential amplitude tended to decrease during the 4 years of observation. ApoE4 allele carriers demonstrated lower RNFL thickness, longer P1 latency, and more frequent methanol-induced brain damage compared to non-carriers.
Exploring Different Types of Inhibition During Bilingual Language Production

Multilinguals have to control their languages constantly to produce accurate verbal output. They have to inhibit possible lexical competitors not only from the target language, but also from non-target languages. Bilinguals’ training in inhibiting incongruent or irrelevant information has been used to endorse the so-called bilingual advantage in executive functions, assuming a transfer effect from language inhibition to domain-general inhibitory skills. Recent studies have suggested that language control may rely on language-specific inhibitory control mechanisms. In the present study, unbalanced highly proficient bilinguals completed a rapid naming multi-inhibitory task in two languages. The task assessed three types of inhibitory processes: inhibition of the non-target language, inhibition of lexical competitors, and inhibition of erroneous auditory feedback. The results showed an interaction between lexical competition and erroneous auditory feedback, but no interactions with the inhibition of the non-target language. The results suggested that different subcomponents of language inhibition are involved during bilingual language production.