Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-term outcomes of patients with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia who commenced treatment with imatinib: a 20-year single-centre experience

Abstract We report on long-term outcomes of 267 patients (pts) with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) treated with imatinib administered as initial therapy. The median follow-up time was 11.4 years. 38 (14.2%) pts attempted to discontinue imatinib therapy after achieving sustained deep molecular response (≥MR4), 15 of them achieved treatment-free remission (TFR). 144 pts (53.9%) have been switched to other TKI during the follow-up period. The estimated OS for 267 pts for 10, 15 and 18 years was 98.8%, 75.6% and 52.1%. According to prognostic scores (Sokal, Euro, ELTS), OS and PFS were significantly better in low-risk pts than in high-risk pts. According to ELTS, low-risk pts have a better chance of achieving MR4 than both intermediate (p = 0.03) and high-risk (p = 0.04) groups. It suggests that a specific ELTS-adapted treatment could help to optimize treatment results. In the study population, imatinib has demonstrated sustained efficacy and an acceptable rate of late toxic effects.
Transbronchial Lung Cryobiopsy in Patients with Interstitial Lung Disease: A Systematic Review.

RATIONALE In 2018, a systematic review evaluating transbronchial lung cryobiopsy (TBLC) in patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) was performed to inform American Thoracic Society (ATS), European Respiratory Society (ERS), Japanese Respiratory Society (JRS), and Asociación Latinoamericana del Tórax (ALAT) clinical practice guidelines on the diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). OBJECTIVE To perform a new systematic review to inform updated guidelines. METHODS Medline, EMBASE and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CCTR) were searched through June 2020. Studies that enrolled patients with ILD and reported the diagnostic yield or complication rates of TBLC were selected for inclusion. Data was extracted and then pooled across studies via meta-analysis. The quality of the evidence was appraised using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) approach. RESULTS Histopathologic diagnostic yield (number of procedures that yielded a histopathologic diagnosis divided by the total number of procedures performed) of TBLC was 80% (95% CI 76-83%) in patients with ILD. TBLC was complicated by bleeding and pneumothorax in 30% (95% CI 20-41%) and 8% (95% CI 6-11%) of patients, respectively. Procedure-related mortality, severe bleeding, prolonged air leak, acute exacerbation, respiratory failure, and respiratory infection were rare. The quality of the evidence was very low due to the uncontrolled study designs, lack of consecutive enrollment, and inconsistent results. CONCLUSION Very low-quality evidence indicated that TBLC has a diagnostic yield of approximately 80% in patients with ILD, with manageable complications.
Airflow Characteristics At The Breathing Zone of a Seated Person: Interaction of the Free Convection Flow and an Assisting Locally Supplied Flow From Below for Personalized Ventilation Application

A workstation with Personalized Ventilation (PV) unit and a thermal manikin with realistic body and temperature distribution were set in a test room (4.70 m x 1.62 m x 2.6 m). Airflow at 15 L/s was supplied from a ceiling diffuser to ventilate the room and keep the temperature at 26 o C. The PV consisted of two plenum boxes nested in each other and placed below the desk top, with discharge slots 0.06 m x 0.5 m (W x L). The PV unit was pressed against the abdomen of the thermal manikin. Each box had a separate supply fan. The airflow supplied isothermally and upwards from the inner and outer box was the same: 4, 6, 8 and 10 L/s. The mean velocity field at the breathing zone was obtained by Particle Image Velocimetry: a dual cavity laser ( λ = 532 nm) and two CCD cameras with 35 and 60 mm lenses. Seeding, glycerol droplets, was added to the total volume supply. The maximum absolute mean velocity measured near the mouth was 0.1 m/s, when the boxes were installed but not working. When the two slots supplied equal amount of air, the measured absolute mean velocity increased with increasing the supplied air with a maximum of 0.35 m/s at 10 L/s.
LINC00173 promotes Wilms’ tumor progression through MGAT1-mediated MUC3A N-glycosylation

ABSTRACT Recent studies have unveiled that LINC00173 promotes small cell lung cancer progression. However, LINC00173 has not been studied in Wilms’ tumor (WT). N-glycosylation is a complex post-translational protein modification, and alterations of protein glycosylation have been identified to affect the development of multiple tumors, including WT. MGAT1, known as N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase I (GlcNAcT-1), could initiate synthesis of complex N-glycans, but it has never been related to LINC00173 in WT. This study aimed to explore if LINC00173 could impact WT progression via MGAT1. RT-qPCR and western blot were done to measure the expression and protein levels. Functional assays, as well as animal experiments were conducted to evaluate the function of genes in vivo and in vitro. Additionally, RNA pull-down, RIP, and dual-luciferase reporter assays were carried out to determine the molecular bindings. In vitro experiments proved that sh-LINC00173 inhibited WT cell invasion and promoted WT cell apoptosis, while in vivo experiments indicated sh-LINC00173 restrained WT progression. LINC00173 stabilized MGAT1 mRNA by recruiting HNRNPA2B1. Meanwhile, MGAT1 was verified to stabilize MUC3A protein by inducing N-glycosylation. In summary, our study first discovered that LINC00173 promoted WT progression through MGAT1-mediated MUC3A N-glycosylation, giving new clues to further understanding the mechanism underlying WT progression.
Suppression of lysosomal-associated protein transmembrane 5 ameliorates cardiac function and inflammatory response by inhibiting the nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) pathway after myocardial infarction in mice

Myocardial infarction (MI) as the remarkable presentation of coronary artery disease is still a reason for morbidity and mortality in worldwide. Lysosomal-associated protein transmembrane 5 (LAPTM5) is a lysosomal-related protein found in hematopoietic tissues and has been confirmed as a positive regulator of pro-inflammatory pathways in macrophages. However, the role of LAPTM5 in MI remains unknown. In this study, we found that both mRNA and protein expression levels of LAPTM5 were significantly elevated in MI mice. Suppression of LAPTM5 in myocardial tissues decreased cardiac fibrosis and improved cardiac function after MI. At the molecular level, downregulated LAPTM5 dramatically suppressed the macrophage activation and inflammatory response via inhibiting the activation of the nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) pathway. Collectively, suppression of LAPTM5 in myocardial tissues inhibits the pro-inflammatory response and the cardiac dysfunction caused by MI. This study indicated that LAPTM5 as a pro-inflammatory factor plays a crucial role in MI disease.
Modeling transport of extended interacting objects with drop-off phenomenon

We study a deterministic framework for important cellular transport phenomena involving a large number of interacting molecules called the excluded flow of extended interacting objects with drop-off effect (EFEIOD). This model incorporates many realistic features of biological transport process including the length of biological “particles” and the fact that they can detach along the biological ‘tracks’. The flow between the consecutive sites is unidirectional and is described by a “soft” simple exclusion principle and by repelling or attracting forces between neighboring particles. We show that the model admits a unique steady-state. Furthermore, if the parameters are periodic with common period T, then the steady-state profile converge to a unique periodic solution of period T. Simulations of the EFEIOD demonstrate several non-trivial effects of the interactions on the system steady-state profile. For example, detachment rates may help in increasing the steady-state flow by alleviating traffic jams that can exist due to several reasons like bottleneck rate or interactive forces between the particles. We also analyze the special case of our model, when there are no forces exerted by neighboring particles, and called it as the ribosome flow model of extended objects with drop-off effect (RFMEOD), and study the sensitivity of its steady-state to variations in the parameters.
Effects of Stimulation Position and Frequency Band on Auditory Spatial Perception with Bilateral Bone Conduction

Virtual sound localization tests were conducted to examine the effects of stimulation position (mastoid, condyle, supra-auricular, temple, and bone-anchored hearing aid implant position) and frequency band (low frequency, high frequency, and broadband) on bone-conduction (BC) horizontal localization. Non-individualized head-related transfer functions were used to reproduce virtual sound through bilateral BC transducers. Subjective experiments showed that stimulation at the mastoid gave the best performance while the temple gave the worst performance in localization. Stimulation at the mastoid and condyle did not differ significantly from that using air-conduction (AC) headphones in localization accuracy. However, binaural reproduction at all BC stimulation positions led to similar levels of front-back confusion (FBC), which were also comparable to that with AC headphones. Binaural BC reproduction with high-frequency stimulation led to significantly higher localization accuracy than with low-frequency stimulation. When transcranial attenuation (TA) was measured, the attenuation became larger at the condyle and mastoid, and increased at high frequencies. The experiments imply that larger TAs may improve localization accuracy but do not improve FBC. The present study indicates that the BC stimulation at the mastoid and condyle can effectively convey spatial information, especially with high-frequency stimulation.
Randomized Trial of Ultralow vs Standard Pneumoperitoneum during Robotic Prostatectomy

Purpose: Laparoscopic and robotic surgery have traditionally been performed with pneumoperitoneum of 12–15 mmHg. Based upon our previous retrospective study showing an advantage to using ultralow pneumoperitoneum during robotic prostatectomy (RP), we performed a randomized, double-blinded, controlled trial of RP at 6 mmHg vs 15 mmHg to assess postoperative pain and opioid use. Materials and Methods: Patients undergoing RP with lymphadenectomy by a single surgeon were randomized to pneumoperitoneum pressures of 6 mmHg vs 15 mmHg. Pain scores and opioid use were recorded every 2 hours until discharge. Groups underwent intention-to-treat analysis on the primary outcome of pain scores up to 8 hours after post-anesthesia care unit. Results: A total of 138 patients were randomized to RP at 6 mmHg or 15 mmHg (67 and 71, respectively). Mean console time was 7 minutes longer at 6 mmHg (135 vs 128 minutes, p=0.02). Mean estimated blood loss was similar (p=0.4) with no transfusions in either group. Most patients were discharged on the same day as surgery (88% vs 84%, p=0.5). There was no statistically significant difference observed in morphine equivalents administered during surgery or used postoperatively, yet 6 mmHg patients had lower immediate (0–4 hours) mean pain scores (2.1 vs 3.5, p <0.01) and lower maximum pain scores (3.0 vs 5.2, p <0.01). Shoulder pain was lower in 6 mmHg patients (0.03 vs 0.15, p=0.01), as was groin pain (0.6 vs 1.2 p=0.01). Patients reported flatus earlier with 6 mmHg (mean 1.0 day vs 1.3 days, p <0.01). Conclusions: Pneumoperitoneum pressure of 6 mmHg during RP has several advantages over the commonly used level of 15 mmHg without any identified disadvantages. Surgeons should consider using lower insufflation pressures.
A cytokine panel and procalcitonin in COVID-19, a comparison between intensive care and non-intensive care patients

Objectives Procalcitonin (PCT) is an acute-phase reactant with concentrations ≥0.5 μg/L indicative of possible bacterial infection in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19). Some with severe COVID-19 develop cytokine storm secondary to virally driven hyper-inflammation. However, increased pro-inflammatory cytokines are also seen in bacterial sepsis. This study aimed to assess the clinical utility of a cytokine panel in the assessment of COVID-19 with bacterial superinfections along with PCT and C-reactive protein (CRP). Methods The retrospective analysis included serum cytokines (interleukins; IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8 and tumour necrosis factor (TNFα)) measured using Ella™ (Bio-Techne, Oxford, UK) and PCT measured by Roche Cobas (Burgess Hill, UK) in patients admitted with COVID-19 between March 2020 and January 2021. Patients enrolled into COVID-19 clinical trials, treated with Remdesivir/IL-6 inhibitors were excluded. The cytokine data was compared between intensive care unit (ICU) patients, age matched non-ICU patients and healthy volunteers as well as ICU patients with high and normal PCT (≥0.5 vs. <0.5 μg/L). Results Cytokine concentrations and CRP were higher in COVID-19 patients (76; ICU & non-ICU) vs. healthy controls (n = 24), all p<0.0001. IL-6, IL-8, TNFα and were higher in ICU patients (n = 46) vs. non-ICU patients (n = 30) despite similar CRP. Among 46 ICU patients, the high PCT group (n = 26) had higher TNFα (p<0.01) and longer ICU stay (mean 47 vs. 25 days, p<0.05). There was no difference in CRP and blood/respiratory culture results between the groups. Conclusions Pro-inflammatory cytokines and PCT were higher in COVID-19 patients requiring ICU admission vs. non-ICU admissions despite no difference in CRP. Furthermore, TNFα was higher in those with high PCT and requiring longer ICU admission despite no difference in CRP or rate of bacterial superinfection.
Experimental and numerical investigation of moving loads on hull structures

Regulations and design codes for ships and offshore structures operating in ice infested waters consider only stationary loads for hull structural design. This implies that the effects of movement of a load along the hull are negligible. Real hull structures most often experience operational ice loads in a way that would be better modelled as a moving load. Previous work (Quinton 2008) predicted a significant decrease in the structural capacity of a steel grillage (hull) structure subjected to moving loads that cause plastic damage, when compared with similar stationary loads. In particular, the previous work predicted a decrease in the structural capacity of both hull plating and hull frames. For hull frames, it was noticed that plastic buckling of the frame webs occurred at a much lower load level for moving loads, than for stationary loads. This thesis explores the effects of moving loads causing plastic damage on hull structures using experiments and subsequent numerical models. The results of this work identify a loss of hull structural capacity directly attributable to plastic damage caused by lateral load movement for both plates and frames. It explores the structural response phenomena underlying the observed capacity loses. In particular, this thesis presents: results of laboratory experiments carried out using a novel moving load apparatus involving steel and ice indenters acting on steel plates and frames; a discussion of the design and capabilities of the novel moving load apparatus; a discussion of the structural response phenomena present during moving loads based on a calibrated numerical model of the moving load experiments; and general guidelines for conducting numerical models of moving loads.
Diurnal Variation of Specific Tests’ Performance and Related Psychological Aspects in Young Judo Athletes

ABSTRACT Purpose: This study investigated the effects of time-of-day on judo athletes’ performances and the associated psychological variables and perceived exertion following judo-specific tests. Methods: Twelve male judo athletes (age: 16 ± 1 years) performed in a randomized and counterbalanced order the special judo fitness test (SJFT), the judo physical fitness test (JPFT), the dynamic and isometric judogi chin-up tests in the morning (8:00 a.m), midday (12:00 p.m), and afternoon (5:00 p.m). Oral temperature and psychological variables [profile of mood state (POMS), Hooper questionnaire, total quality of recovery (TQR)] were assessed before and after the tests, and ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) and the physical activity enjoyment scale (PACES) were assessed only after the tests. Results: RPE score was higher in the morning compared to the afternoon after the JPFT (d = 0.38, p = .045). PACES after JPFT was higher in the morning compared to midday (d = 0.85, p < .001). The isometric and dynamic performances during chin-up tests were higher in the afternoon compared to the morning (d = 0.38, p = .048 and 0.047, respectively). Also, oral temperature was higher in the afternoon compared to the morning (d = 0.41, p = .050) and the midday (p = .047) for dynamic test, while TQR, well-being indices, and POMS did not differ according to time-of-day (p > .05). Conclusions: These results suggest that dynamic and isometric judo chin-up tests are time-of-day dependent with higher performance recorded in the afternoon than in the morning. However, performances in the JPFT and SJFT were not time-of-day dependent.
Considerations for Robustness in the Design of Steel and Composite Frame Structures

Abstract The topic of progressive collapse of structures has increasingly received particular consideration over recent years, with numerous studies of various forms seeking to explore the complex mechanics of the problem and define ways of minimising its effects. Through a continuing research programme at Imperial College London, considerable advance has been made in understanding the physical features of the progressive collapse response of frame structures, identifying the role of the several different controlling parameters and compiling simplified methods for simulating particular effects. Knowledge of the subject has therefore improved to a considerable extent, that it is now possible to make quantitatively justified assessments of structural robustness by specifying the reasons why a structure might be susceptible to progressive collapse as well as to identify potential methods for enhancing performance. The present paper reviews previous developments at Imperial, evaluates information obtained from relevant experimental studies conducted by other research groups and assesses the progress made both in developing a scientific understanding of the subject and establishing improved ways of tackling the problem in practice. Several factors that should be considered in the robustness design of steel and composite frame structures are defined, and needs for further research into specific aspects of the problem are identified.
Balanced Performance Between Energy-Delay and Bit Error Rate in UAV Relay Networks

—This paper presents a new strategy for simultaneously reducing energy consumption, transmission delays, and bit error rate in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) networks. A UAV is ﬁtted with a wireless Bidirectional Relay (BR) to enable coverage network extension and increase transmission throughput. The downside of the BR advantages is the delay in data transmission caused by the UAV’s movement. A consequence of this delay is increased total energy consumption, causing further degradation in bit error rate performance, especially at high SNR levels. In wireless communication, the trade-o ﬀ between delay and energy consumption is, fortunately, possible to improve performance. Therefore, this study aims to enhance UAV network performance by reducing energy consumption, data transmission delay, and bit error rate. A multi-objective algorithm is employed to generate an adaptive optimal energy allocation strategy based on the balance between energy consumption and transmission delays. The results of theoretical analysis are illustrated with several examples. As herein demonstrated, the proposed solution e ﬀ ectively balances delay and energy e ﬃ ciency in a customised system design and improves the bit error rate in UAV networks.
Seed-Guided Topic Discovery with Out-of-Vocabulary Seeds

Discovering latent topics from text corpora has been studied for decades. Many existing topic models adopt a fully unsupervised setting, and their discovered topics may not cater to users’ particular interests due to their inability of leveraging user guidance. Although there exist seed-guided topic discovery approaches that leverage user-provided seeds to discover topic-representative terms, they are less concerned with two factors: (1) the existence of out-of-vocabulary seeds and (2) the power of pre-trained language models (PLMs). In this paper, we generalize the task of seed-guided topic discovery to allow out-of-vocabulary seeds. We propose a novel framework, named SeeTopic, wherein the general knowledge of PLMs and the local semantics learned from the input corpus can mutually benefit each other. Experiments on three real datasets from different domains demonstrate the effectiveness of SeeTopic in terms of topic coherence, accuracy, and diversity.
Detecting COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories with Transformers and TF-IDF

The sharing of fake news and conspiracy theories on social media has wide-spread negative effects. By designing and applying different machine learning models, researchers have made progress in detecting fake news from text. However, existing research places a heavy emphasis on general, common-sense fake news, while in reality fake news often involves rapidly changing topics and domain-specific vocabulary. In this paper, we present our methods and results for three fake news detection tasks at MediaEval benchmark 2021 that specifically involve COVID-19 related topics. We experiment with a group of text-based models including Support Vector Machines, Random Forest, BERT, and RoBERTa. We find that a pre-trained transformer yields the best validation results, but a randomly initialized transformer with smart design can also be trained to reach accuracies close to that of the pre-trained transformer. Copyright 2021 for this paper by its authors.
On Negative Sampling for Audio-Visual Contrastive Learning from Movies

The abundance and ease of utilizing sound, along with the fact that auditory clues reveal a plethora of information about what happens in a scene, make the audio-visual space an intuitive choice for representation learning. In this paper, we explore the efficacy of audio-visual self-supervised learning from uncurated long-form content i.e movies. Studying its differences with conventional short-form content, we identify a non-i.i. d distribution of data, driven by the nature of movies. Specifically, we find long-form content to naturally contain a diverse set of semantic concepts (semantic diversity), where a large portion of them, such as main characters and environments often reappear frequently throughout the movie (reoccurring semantic concepts). In addition, movies often contain content-exclusive artistic artifacts, such as color palettes or thematic music, which are strong signals for uniquely distinguishing a movie (non-semantic consistency). Capitalizing on these observations, we comprehensively study the effect of emphasizing within-movie negative sampling in a contrastive learning setup. Our view is different from those of prior works who consider within-video positive sampling, inspired by the notion of semantic persistency over time, and operate in a short-video regime. Our empirical findings suggest that, with certain modifications, training on uncurated long-form videos yields representations which transfer competitively with the state-of-the-art to a variety of action recognition and audio classification tasks.