Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of UGT1A1 Polymorphisms on Febrile Neutropenia in Pancreatic Cancer Patients Receiving FOLFIRINOX: A Single-Center Cohort Study

Simple Summary FOLFIRINOX, which is a first-line chemotherapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer, has become one of the high-risk regimens related to developing febrile neutropenia (FN). Although UGT1A1 polymorphisms are associated with the metabolism of irinotecan, their role as surrogate markers for FOLFIRINOX-induced neutropenia has not been confirmed. In this retrospective study, a total of 154 patients (FN group (n = 31) vs. non-FN group (n = 123)) were divided into three groups based on the predicted UGT1A1 phenotype (extensive metabolizer (EM) vs. intermediate metabolizer (IM) vs. poor metabolizer (PM)). The Cox regression analysis showed that female sex (hazard ratio (HR): 2.20; p = 0.031), ECOG PS = 1 (HR: 2.83; p = 0.008), UGT1A1 IM (HR: 4.30; p = 0.004), and UGT1A1 PM (HR: 4.03; p = 0.028) were independent risk factor of FN. We propose UGT1A1 as the strongest predictive factor for FN and the need for UGT1A1 screening prior to chemotherapy. Abstract FOLFIRINOX (oxaliplatin, leucovorin, irinotecan, and 5-fluorouracil) is a first-line chemotherapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer (PC). Chemotherapy-induced neutropenia is one of the most serious adverse events associated with advanced PC. Although UGT1A1 polymorphisms are associated with the metabolism of irinotecan, their role as surrogate markers for FOLFIRINOX-induced neutropenia has not been confirmed. We investigated risk factors for FN—in particular, UGT1A1 polymorphisms—in PC patients receiving FOLFIRINOX, using a single-center cohort registry. To investigate the association between UGT1A1 polymorphisms and FN, we divided patients into three groups based on the predicted UGT1A1 phenotype: extensive metabolizer (EM) vs. intermediate metabolizer (IM) vs. poor metabolizer (PM). A total of 154 patients (FN group (n = 31) vs. non-FN group (n = 123)) receiving first-line FOLFIRINOX were identified between December 2017 and July 2020. The Cox regression analysis showed that female sex (HR: 2.20; p = 0.031), Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status = 1 (HR: 2.83; p = 0.008), UGT1A1 IM (HR: 4.30; p = 0.004), and UGT1A1 PM (HR: 4.03; p = 0.028) were statistically significant risk factors for FN. We propose that UGT1A1 is the strongest predictive factor for FN and that this gene should be screened prior to the administration of chemotherapy.
“Phony” and “Poshlost” : The Ordinary as Moral Concept in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye

According to philosopher Stanley Cavell, “what philosophy is dissatisfied with is inherently the everyday” (1988: 171). The everyday is also an ambiguous but central concept in Nabokov’s and Salinger’s most famous novels. Their narrators mock and criticize the vulgarity of whatever they associate with everyday life – clichés, stock ideas, routines. This seemingly harmless mindset has serious ethical consequences: Holden and Humbert start associating the concept of the everyday with moral depravity. They become blind to the redeemable qualities of the ordinary, which leads them to consider the Other merely as a product of clichés. Both Nabokov and Salinger imply that one cannot acknowledge the alterity of the Other without making peace with ordinariness of everyday life. However, there is an important difference between the two novels: while Salinger sets out to depict how the everyday can be reclaimed and the Other acknowledged, Lolita employs a narrator who never manages to re-evaluate his approach to the ordinary.
In Silico Exploration of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Metabolic Networks Shows Host-Associated Convergent Fluxomic Phenotypes

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, is composed of several lineages characterized by a genome identity higher than 99%. Although the majority of the lineages are associated with humans, at least four lineages are adapted to other mammals, including different M. tuberculosis ecotypes. Host specificity is associated with higher virulence in its preferred host in ecotypes such as M. bovis. Deciphering what determines the preference of the host can reveal host-specific virulence patterns. However, it is not clear which genomic determinants might be influencing host specificity. In this study, we apply a combination of unsupervised and supervised classification methods on genomic data of ~27,000 M. tuberculosis clinical isolates to decipher host-specific genomic determinants. Host-specific genomic signatures are scarce beyond known lineage-specific mutations. Therefore, we integrated lineage-specific mutations into the iEK1011 2.0 genome-scale metabolic model to obtain lineage-specific versions of it. Flux distributions sampled from the solution spaces of these models can be accurately separated according to host association. This separation correlated with differences in cell wall processes, lipid, amino acid and carbon metabolic subsystems. These differences were observable when more than 95% of the samples had a specific growth rate significantly lower than the maximum achievable by the models. This suggests that these differences might manifest at low growth rate settings, such as the restrictive conditions M. tuberculosis suffers during macrophage infection.
What Can We Learn from Nighttime Lights for Small Geographies? Measurement Errors and Heterogeneous Elasticities

Nighttime lights are routinely used as a proxy for economic activity when official statistics are unavailable and are increasingly applied to study the effects of shocks or policy interventions at small geographic scales. The implicit assumption is that the ability of nighttime lights to pick up changes in GDP does not depend on local characteristics of the region under investigation or the scale of aggregation. This study uses panel data on regional GDP growth from six countries, and nighttime lights from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) to investigate potential nonlinearities and measurement errors in the light production function. Our results for high statistical capacity countries (the United States and Germany) show that nightlights are significantly less responsive to changes in GDP at higher baseline level of GDP, higher population densities, and for agricultural GDP. We provide evidence that these nonlinearities are too large to be caused by differences in measurement errors across regions. We find similar but noisier relationships in other high-income countries (Italy and Spain) and emerging economies (Brazil and China). We also present results for different aggregation schemes and find that the overall relationship, including the nonlinearity, is stable across regions of different shapes and sizes but becomes noisier when regions become few and large. These findings have important implications for studies using nighttime lights to evaluate the economic effects of shocks or policy interventions. On average, nighttime lights pick up changes in GDP across many different levels of aggregation, down to relatively small geographies. However, the nonlinearity we document in this paper implies that some studies may fail to detect policy-relevant effects in places where lights react little to changes in economic activity or they may mistakenly attribute this heterogeneity to the treatment effect of their independent variable of interest.
Counterurbanisation, demographic change and discourses of rural revival in Australia during COVID-19

ABSTRACT The term ‘counterurbanisation’ is receiving renewed academic attention due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While not in vogue in popular discourse, the concepts invoked by the term counterurbanisation often appear uncritically in popular media as a Covid-19-induced rural renaissance. This article presents four arguments about using ‘counterurbanisation’ as a term and its applicability in the Australian context. I argue that ‘counterurbanisation’ emerged when categories of urban and rural were less theoretically problematic, and that being unidirectional it does not capture the diversity of migration dynamics. Third, in the Australian context, counterurbanisation is inaccurately often associated in the popular imagination with migration to rural productive landscapes. Fourth, the contemporary measurement and representation of counterurbanisation is flawed. While accepting that various forms of counterurbanisation are occurring, which is important in coastal and near-urban locations, the concept has little relevance for many Australian towns whose future will emerge outside the discourse of counterurbanisation.
Visible beyond Violet: How Butterflies Manage Ultraviolet

Simple Summary Many animals, including insects, evolved sensitivity to ultraviolet light (UV). The presence of UV photoreceptors in the visual systems of many animals shows that UV-reflective traits are as important as other visible cues. Ultraviolet patterns on the surfaces of butterflies are among the most intricate UV-reflecting structures in the animal kingdom and they have been recognised and studied for many years. These patterns are often involved in intraspecific and interspecific interactions as signals of species identity or a cue reflecting the individual’s biological quality. In this review, we summarise the current knowledge about the significance of UV patterns in lepidopteran reproduction, including their role in mate choice and intrasexual competition. We focus on the mechanisms that produce UV colouration, discuss UV pattern variation in response to changing ecological factors, their adaptive function, and generally evaluate the evolutionary significance of communication in the ultraviolet spectrum. Abstract Ultraviolet (UV) means ‘beyond violet’ (from Latin ‘ultra’, meaning ‘beyond’), whereby violet is the colour with the highest frequencies in the ‘visible’ light spectrum. By ‘visible’ we mean human vision, but, in comparison to many other organisms, human visual perception is rather limited in terms of the wavelengths it can perceive. Still, this is why communication in the UV spectrum is often called hidden, although it most likely plays an important role in communicating various kinds of information among a wide variety of organisms. Since Silberglied’s revolutionary Communication in the Ultraviolet, comprehensive studies on UV signals in a wide list of genera are lacking. This review investigates the significance of UV reflectance (and UV absorption)—a feature often neglected in intra- and interspecific communication studies—mainly in Lepidoptera. Although the text focuses on various butterfly families, links and connections to other animal groups, such as birds, are also discussed in the context of ecology and the evolution of species. The basic mechanisms of UV colouration and factors shaping the characteristics of UV patterns are also discussed in a broad context of lepidopteran communication.
Sediment Records Shed Light on Drivers of Decadal Iron Concentration Increase in a Boreal Lake

Increasing iron (Fe) concentrations are found in lakes on a wide geographical scale but exact causes are still debated. The observed trends might result from increased Fe loading from the terrestrial catchment, but also from changes in how Fe distributes between the water column and the sediments. To get a better understanding of the causes we investigated whether there has been any change in the sediment formation of Fe sulfides (FeS) as an Fe sink in response to declining atmospheric sulfur (S) deposition during recent decades. For our study, we chose Lake Bolmen in southern Sweden, a lake for which we confirmed that Fe concentrations in the water column have strongly increased along with water color during 1966–2018. Our investigations showed that Fe accumulation and speciation varied independently of S accumulation patterns in the Lake Bolmen sediment record. Thus, we were not able to relate the positive trend in Fe concentrations to reduced FeS binding in the sediments. Furthermore, we found that Fe accumulation rates increased along with lake water Fe concentrations, indicating that increased catchment loading rather than a change in the distribution between the sediments and the water column has driven the increase in Fe concentrations. The increased loading may be due to land‐use change in the form of an extensive expansion of coniferous forest during the past century. Altered forest management practices and increased precipitation may have led to enhanced weathering and erosion of organic soil layers under aging coniferous forest.
PRETERM LABOR CONDITIONS OF WOMEN WITH HIGH-RISK PREGNANCY AND RELATED FACTORS: A RETROSPECTIVE COHORT STUDY

Objective: High-risk pregnancy is a situation associated with pregnancy involving a real or potential risk for the health and well-being of the mother and the fetus. Our study aimed to examine the preterm labor conditions of pregnant women followed up at a high-risk pregnancy outpatient clinic and related factors. Material and Methods: Designed as a retrospective cohort study, the study was carried out with the participation of 293 pregnant women who presented to a high-risk pregnancy outpatient clinic in the Batman province of Turkey and were followed up between March 2017 and January 2019. Results: The top three high-risk conditions determined in the pregnant women were pregnancy over the age of 35 (n=83, 28.3%), pregnancy in a shorter interval than two years (n=71, 24.2%) and consanguineous marriage (n=60, 20.5%), respectively. Twentypoint-one percent (n=59) of the pregnant women had preterm labor. It was determined that the rates of caesarean section births and births at a private hospital among the pregnant women who had preterm labor were significantly higher in comparison to the pregnant women who gave birth at term (p=0.001, p=0.037, respectively). It was determined that the risk of preterm labor increased OR=5.6 (1.2-25.6) times in the pregnant women with anemia, OR=12.5 (1.3-122.7) times in those with intrauterine fertilization and OR=32.6 (3.2-332.5) times in those with multiple pregnancies. Conclusion: Anemia, multiple pregnancy and intrauterine fertilization increase the risk of preterm labor. Quality prenatal care services are important in terms of protecting the health of the mother and the newborn.
Exercise During Pregnancy: What Do OB/GYNs Believe and Practice? A Descriptive Analysis

Introduction: Although regular exercise is recommended during non-complicated pregnancies to promote maternal and fetal/infant health, estimates suggest that only 15% of expectant mothers achieve current exercise recommendations. Although lack of motivation and fear related to potential fetal injury are often cited as reasons for not engaging in regular physical activity/exercise during pregnancy, less is understood about individual attitudes and practice habits of obstetrician and gynecologists (OB/GYNs) regarding exercise recommendations that may influence patient engagement in exercise during pregnancy. Purpose: To describe the attitudes, knowledge, and clinical practice of OB/GYNs regarding exercise during pregnancy. Methods: Surveys were sent via U.S. mail to 950 practicing OB/GYNs identified via publicly available databases. The survey included 11 questions regarding demographic information, exercise physiology knowledge, as well as their attitudes and clinical practice recommendations regarding exercise during pregnancy. Results: One hundred thirty-nine completed surveys were returned (14.6% response rate). Ninety-four percent of physicians surveyed agreed that there are benefits of exercise during pregnancy and/or the benefits of exercise during pregnancy outweigh the risks. Ninety-eight percent of physicians surveyed reported that they (or their medical staff) routinely advise their patients to exercise during pregnancy and 46% reported discussing exercise guidelines related to time, intensity, and type of exercise. Only 13% of physicians surveyed reported taking a semester-long exercise physiology course, yet 27% of physicians surveyed reported developing personalized exercise prescriptions for all (6%) or some (21%) of their patients. Conclusions: Low exercise engagement among expectant mothers does not appear to be due to a lack of guidance or negative views of OB/GYNs regarding exercise during pregnancy.
Periodic Event-Triggered Terminal Sliding Mode Speed Control for Networked PMSM System: A GA-Optimized Extended State Observer Approach

This article proposes a novel periodic event-triggered terminal sliding mode speed regulation scheme for the networked permanent-magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). The novel speed regulation strategy combines advantages of both terminal sliding mode control (TSMC) and periodic event-triggered mechanism. The satisfied speed regulation performance can be guaranteed by using TSMC to compensate the external disturbances and parameter uncertainties. The communication burden between the central controller and the remote motor is reduced by the periodic event-triggered protocol. To reduce the chattering in the TSMC signal, an extended state observer (ESO) is further introduced to estimate all possible perturbations, in which the upper bound of the estimation error is analyzed explicitly. Then, a binary-based genetic algorithm (GA) is adopted to find the optimal observer parameters. A key challenge here is how to estimate the actual bound of the triggering error under the periodic event-triggered mechanism. To this end, an explicit selection criterion of the periodic sampling period is developed by utilizing the known constrained information of the PMSM. It is proven that the proposed novel periodic event-triggered TSMC with a proper selection of the control gain can guarantee the reachability of the sliding region and the ultimate boundedness of the regulation errors simultaneously. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed novel periodic event-triggered TSMC via a GA-optimized ESO is demonstrated in both simulation and experiment results for a real PMSM platform.
Patients with hypothermic sepsis have a unique gene expression profile compared to patients with fever and sepsis

The pathophysiology of hypothermia during sepsis is unclear. Using genomic profiling of blood leukocytes, we aimed to determine if hypothermia is associated with a different gene expression profile compared to fever during sepsis. Patients with sepsis and either hypothermia or fever within 24 hours after ICU admission were included in the study (n = 168). Hypothermia was defined as body temperature below 36 °C. Fever was defined as body temperature equal to or above 38.3°C. We compared blood gene expression (whole‐genome transcriptome in leukocytes) in hypothermic septic compared to febrile septic patients in an unmatched analysis and matched for APACHE IV score and the presence of shock. In total, 67 septic patients were hypothermic and 101 patients were febrile. Hypothermia was associated with a distinct gene expression profile in both unmatched and matched analyses. There were significant differences related to the up‐ and downregulation of canonical signalling pathways. In the matched analysis, the top upregulated gene was cold‐inducible mRNA binding protein (CIRBP) which plays a role in cold‐induced suppression of cell proliferation. In addition, we found three signalling pathways significantly upregulated in hypothermic patients compared to febrile patients; tryptophan degradation X, phenylalanine degradation IV and putrescine degradation III. In conclusion, there are distinct signalling pathways and genes associated with hypothermia, including tryptophan degradation and CIRBP expression, providing a possible link to the modulation of body temperature and early immunosuppression. Future studies may focus on the canonical signalling pathways presented in this paper to further investigate spontaneous hypothermia in sepsis.
Eruption Timing and Sequence of Primary Teeth in a Sample of Romanian Children

Teething is considered a significant event in the growth and development of the child by parents and especially by paediatric dentists and forensic scientists. They constantly need an “up-to-date mirror” of its variability for different geographic regions. The aims of the current study were to determine the timing and sequence of primary tooth emergence, and to establish a correlation between tooth eruption and general growth and external parameters in a sample of Romanian children. This study included 70 healthy children (53% girls and 47% boys), and the analysed data resulted from the questionnaires completed by parents during the whole process. General and specific data on primary teeth eruption were obtained. The differences between sexes were insignificant, except for the maxillary and mandibular canines (p = 0.047 and p = 0.018) and lower temporary second molars (p < 0.001), which were significantly increased in boys. The differences found between the two hemiarches were insignificant (p = 0.197). The mean age of eruption of the first tooth erupted was 7.07 ± 1.990 months. The unpaired t-test was used for comparison of the timings of eruption of the first primary teeth, according to the number of previous births and type of diet, and it was insignificant (p = 0.665 and p = 0.983 respectively).
Gate Driver Circuit Based on Depletion-Mode Indium-Gallium-Zinc Oxide Thin-Film Transistors Using Capacitive Coupling Effect

This article proposes a highly reliable gate driver circuit based on amorphous indium–gallium–zinc oxide (a-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs). The proposed circuit adopted an additional boosted-down structure to maintain the control node (Q-node) of the output TFTs at a low voltage level using the capacitive coupling effect instead of the TFT structure. Consequently, the proposed circuit exhibited stable operation for depletion-mode TFTs with a threshold voltage (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{\text {TH}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) of −3 V. The boosted-down structure improved the operation reliability because it reduced the current flow from Q-node to low-level voltage node by removing the continuously degraded TFTs. The drain–source voltage (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{\text {DS}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) stress on the TFTs connected to the Q-node was reduced by separating these TFTs from the Q-node during bootstrapping. The <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{\text {DS}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> value during Q-node bootstrapping was reduced from 44.3 to 27.3 V. A pull-down TFT was designed to operate with a 50% duty ratio to ensure reliability against the bias stress. The output node was discharged by the Q-node discharging TFTs in the next stage during the remaining 50% period. Therefore, the output node was discharged with a total duty ratio of 100%. The proposed circuit operated stably as a shift register with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{\text {TH}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> varying from −3 to 9 V. Consequently, using capacitive coupling effect, the proposed circuit exhibited reliable operation with depletion- and enhancement-mode a-IGZO TFTs.
Harvest time in the seed quality of soybean genotypes

With the objective to evaluate the seeds quality of soybean genotypes at different harvest times, it was conducted a field experiment at the experimental farm at Universidade Federal do Tocantins in Gurupi – TO, in the season 2010/2011. The experimental design was completely randomized blocks with fifty treatments and three repetitions. The treatments were arranged in a factorial design and they were represented by ten cultivars (BRS ValiosaRR, M8527RR, P98Y51, TMG103RR, P98Y70, M8867RR, M8925RR, TMG115RR, M9056RR and M9144RR) and five harvest times (R8, R8+7, R8+14, R8+21 and R8+28 days). They were realized the following tests: standard germination and germination in sand, with four repetitions of 50 seed for each treatment, that were obtained from the field experiment, and the experimental design was completely randomized. With the delay in the harvest was verified the progressive reduction of germination in all cultivars, from seven days after the R8 stage. The cultivar M9056RR has shown the higher quality seeds.