Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficacy and safety of monoclonal antibody therapy in patients with neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder: A systematic review and network meta-analysis

Introduction Neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) is a devastating inflammatory CNS demyelinating disease. Two groups of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are used to prevent disease relapse, i.e., Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved mAbs (e.g., eculizumab satralizumab, inebilizumab), and off-label mAb drugs (e.g., rituximab and tocilizumab). The FDA-approved mAbs have high efficacy but more expensive compared to the off-labels, and thus are less accessible. This systematic review and network meta-analysis (NMA) was to assess the efficacy and safety of both classes of mAbs compared to the current standard treatments. Methods Systematically searches were conducted in MEDLINE and SCOPUS from inception until July 2021. Randomized-controlled trials (RCTs) were eligible if they compared any pair of treatments (mAbs, immunosuppressive drugs, or placebo) in adult patients with NMOSD. Studies with AQP4-IgG positive or negative were used in the analysis. Probability of relapse and time to event were extracted from the Kaplan-Meier curves using Digitizer. These data were then converted into individual patient time-to-event data. A one-stage mixed-effect survival model was applied to estimate the median time to relapse and relative treatment effects using hazard ratios (HR). Two-stage NMA was used to determine post-treatment annualized relapse rate (ARR), expanded disability status score (EDSS) change, and serious adverse events (SAE). Risk of bias was assessed using the revised cochrane risk of bias tool. Results A total of 7 RCTs with 776 patients were eligible in the NMA. Five of the seven studies were rated low risk of bias. Both FDA-approved and off-label mAbs showed significantly lower risk of relapse than standard treatments, with HR (95% CI) of 0.13 (0.07, 0.24) and 0.16 (0.07, 0.37) respectively. In addition, the FDA-approved mAbs had 20% lower risk of relapse than the off-label mAbs, but this did not reach statistical significance. The ARRs were also lower in FDA-approved and off-label mAbs than the standard treatments with the mean-difference of−0.27 (-0.37,−0.16) and−0.31(-0.46,−0.16), respectively. Conclusion The off-label mAbs may be used as the first-line treatment for improving clinical outcomes including disease relapse, ARR, and SAEs for NMOSD in countries where resources and accessibility of the FDA-approved mAbs are limited. Systematic review registration https://www.crd. york.ac. uk/prospero/display_record. php? RecordID=283424, identifier: CRD42021283424.
Responses of hepatic sinusoidal cells to liver ischemia–reperfusion injury

The liver displays a remarkable regenerative capacity in response to acute liver injury. In addition to the proliferation of hepatocytes during liver regeneration, non-parenchymal cells, including liver macrophages, liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSECs), and hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) play critical roles in liver repair and regeneration. Liver ischemia–reperfusion injury (IRI) is a major cause of increased liver damage during liver resection, transplantation, and trauma. Impaired liver repair increases postoperative morbidity and mortality of patients who underwent liver surgery. Successful liver repair and regeneration after liver IRI requires coordinated interplay and synergic actions between hepatic resident cells and recruited cell components. However, the underlying mechanisms of liver repair after liver IRI are not well understood. Recent technological advances have revealed the heterogeneity of each liver cell component in the steady state and diseased livers. In this review, we describe the progress in the biology of liver non-parenchymal cells obtained from novel technological advances. We address the functional role of each cell component in response to liver IRI and the interactions between diverse immune repertoires and non-hematopoietic cell populations during the course of liver repair after liver IRI. We also discuss how these findings can help in the design of novel therapeutic approaches. Growing insights into the cellular interactions during liver IRI would enhance the pathology of liver IRI understanding comprehensively and further develop the strategies for improvement of liver repair.
Comparison of Pre-existing Anti-AAV8 Total Antibody Screening and Confirmatory Assays with a Cell-Based Neutralizing Assay in Normal Human Serum

Pre-existing adeno-associated viruses (AAV) neutralizing antibodies (NAb) can prevent AAV vectors from transducing target tissues. The immune responses can include binding/total antibodies (TAb) and neutralizing antibodies (NAb). This study is aimed at comparing total antibody assay (TAb) and cell-based NAb assay against AAV8 to help inform the best assay format for patient exclusion criteria. We developed a chemiluminescence-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to analyze AAV8 TAb in human serum. The specificity of AAV8 TAb was determined using a confirmatory assay. A COS-7-based assay was used to analyze anti-AAV8 NAbs. The TAb screening cut point factor was determined to be 2.65, and the confirmatory cut point (CCP) was 57.1%. The prevalence of AAV8 TAb in 84 normal subjects was 40%, of which 24% were NAb positive and 16% were NAb negative. All NAb-positive subjects were confirmed to be TAb-positive and also passed the CCP-positive criteria. All 16 NAb-negative subjects did not pass the CCP criterion for the positive specificity test. There was a high concordance between AAV8 TAb confirmatory assay and NAb assay. The confirmatory assay improved the specificity of the TAb screening test and confirmed neutralizing activity. We proposed a tiered assay approach, in which an anti-AAV8 screening assay should be followed by a confirmatory assay during pre-enrollment for patient exclusions for AAV8 gene therapy. This approach can be used in lieu of developing a NAb assay and can be also implemented as a companion diagnostic assay for post-marketing seroreactivity assessments due to ease of development and use.
Large-scale structure and entrainment in the supersonic mixing layer

Experiments were conducted in a two-stream planar mixing layer at convective Mach numbers, Mc, of 0.28, 0.42, 0.50, 0.62 and 0.79. Planar laser Mie scattering (PLMS) from a condensed alcohol fog and planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) of nitric oxide were used for flow visualization in the side, plan and end views. The PLIF signals were also used to characterize the turbulent mixture fraction fluctuations. Visualizations using PLMS indicate a transition in the turbulent structure from quasi-two-dimensionality at low convective Mach number, to more random three-dimensionality for $M_c\geqslant 0.62$. A transition is also observed in the core and braid regions of the spanwise rollers as the convective Mach number increases from 0.28 to 0.62. A change in the entrainment mechanism with increasing compressibility is also indicated by signal intensity profiles and perspective views of the PLMS and PLIF images. These show that at Mc = 0.28 the instantaneous mixture fraction field typically exhibits a gradient in the streamwise direction, but is more uniform in the cross-stream direction. At Mc = 0.62 and 0.79, however, the mixture fraction field is more streamwise uniform and with a gradient in the cross-stream direction. This change in the composition of the structures is indicative of different entrainment motions at the different compressibility conditions. The statistical results are consistent with the qualitative observations and suggest that compressibility acts to reduce the magnitude of the mixture fraction fluctuations, particularly on the high-speed edge of the layer.
Dative subjects in Germanic

Abstract One of the functions of the dative is to mark non-prototypical subjects, i. e. subjects that somehow deviate from the agentive prototype. The Germanic languages, as all subbranches of Indo-European (cf. Barðdal et al. 2012. Reconstructing constructional semantics: The dative subject construction in Old Norse‐Icelandic, Latin, Ancient Greek, Old Russian and Old Lithuanian. Studies in Language 36(3). 511–547), exhibit structures where the subject or the subject-like argument is not in the nominative case, but in the accusative, dative or genitive, for instance. The focus of this article is on the dative, leaving accusative and genitive subjects aside, in particular homing in on lexical semantic similarities and differences between the individual Germanic languages. We compare Modern Icelandic, Modern Faroese, and Modern German, on the one hand, and the historical Germanic languages, i. e. Gothic, Old English, Old Saxon, Old High German, Middle English, Middle Dutch, Middle German, Old Norse-Icelandic and Old Swedish, on the other. The goal is to document the semantic development of the construction across time. This, in turn, is a part of a more general research program aiming at reconstructing the origin and the development of the Dative Subject Construction in Germanic and Indo-European. As the Germanic languages are both genealogically and areally related, we suggest a computational model aiming at disentangling genealogical and geographical factors, in order to estimate to which degree the two interact with each other across languages and across historical eras.
Orthodontic correction in rodents and hare-like animals: principles and methods of treatment

The aim: Our particular interest in this study is not only the ability to extrapolate the experience of orthodontics of humane medicine for effective orthodontic correction in representatives of the animal world, but also the possibility of using teleroentgenometry and craniometry to study the skull of rodents and hare-like animals for the early preclinical diagnosis of dental disease. Materials and methods. The data of teleroentgenography (TRG), cranio- and gnatometry, biochemistry of connective tissue (GAG, GP, HST), fluoroscopy, densitometric parameters for early subclinical detection of dental disease in chinchillas (Chinchilla lanigera (n=20)), guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus (n=48)) and rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus(n=52)) are presented. All stages of the effective correction of mesial occlusion of incisors in rabbits (N=5) and dystropia of premolars in guinea pigs (N=5) are described. The camputation of efforts and points of their application that are necessary to move the tooth of the ellodont type is carried out. There are given the sequential stages of creating a dental imprint or 3D models, as well as the manufacture of fixed orthodontic structures, including an elastophore, orthodontic buttons with an Enlight Ormco fixation for incisors; and individual extraoral devices with expanding screws for premolars are presented. Results. Namely, among animals with dental disease, the following anatomical characteristics reliably took place. The basal angle of inclination of the base of the jaws to each other characterizing the vertical position of the jaws increased by 11 %; the body of the lower jaw shortened by 18 %; the height of the branches of the jaw increased by 17.5, and the mandibular angle, which is measured between the tangents to the lower edge of the lower jaw and the back surface of its branches, increased by 6 %. These data must be considered together with a reliable densitometric decrease in bone density and changes of biochemical components of the connective tissue in the blood serum. An analysis of bone strength of rabbits and guinea pigs is given in Tab. 2, which shows that the bone marrow of animals with dental history is statistically significantly different from the strength of animal bones without such among patients of rabbits and guinea pigs (p = 0.012 and p = 0.024, respectively). Thus, the method of program densitometry can be used to quantify the severity of metabolic disorders in the bone tissue to predict the further course of the reparative process, to appoint adequate pharmacological correction and to control the evaluation of therapeutic measures. Conclusions. The study of dental pathology of rodents and hare-like animals using densitometric, craniometric and biochemical methods allows detection of disorders in the early preclinical stage. And the extrapolation of the experience of humane orthodontics solves the issue of correcting the occlusion of these types of animals to restore the possibility of self-feeding
Semi-supervised learning made simple with self-supervised clustering

Self-supervised learning models have been shown to learn rich visual representations without requiring human annotations. However, in many real-world scenarios, labels are partially available, motivating a recent line of work on semi-supervised methods inspired by self-supervised principles. In this paper, we propose a conceptually simple yet empirically powerful approach to turn clustering-based self-supervised methods such as SwAV or DINO into semi-supervised learners. More precisely, we introduce a multi-task framework merging a supervised objective using ground-truth labels and a self-supervised objective relying on clustering assignments with a single cross-entropy loss. This approach may be interpreted as imposing the cluster centroids to be class prototypes. Despite its simplicity, we provide empirical evidence that our approach is highly effective and achieves state-of-the-art performance on CI-FAR100 and ImageNet.
Trimming of aqueous chemically grown ZnO nanorods into ZnO nanotubes and their comparative optical properties

Highly oriented ZnO nanotubes were fabricated on a silicon substrate by aqueous chemical growth at low temperature (<100 °C) by trimming of ZnO nanorods. The yield of nanotubes in the sample was 100%. Photoluminescence spectroscopy of the nanotubes reveals an enhanced and broadened ultraviolet (UV) emission peak, compared with the initial nanorods. This effect is attributed to whispering gallery mode resonance. In addition, a redshift of the UV emission peak is also observed. Enhancement in the deep defect band emission in the nanotubes compared to nanorods was also manifested as a result of the increased surface area.
A THEOREM ON COMMON FIXED POINTS OF EXPANSION TYPE MAPPINGS IN CONE METRIC SPACES

In this paper, we present a common fixed point theorem for expansion type mappings in complete cone metric spaces. This result generalizes and extends the theorem of S. Z. Wang, B. Y. Li and Z. M. Gao and K. Iseki [8, Theorem 4] for a pair of mappings to cone metric spaces.
Qualitative assessment of Aloe vera as natural tissue fixative: An institutional study

Objectives: The art of microscopy is only appreciable in well-fixed tissues. We conducted this study to determine the effectiveness of Aloe vera as a tissue fixative and compare its results with the natural fixatives already studied in the literature. Materials and Methods: A pilot study was tried out using commercially available fresh chicken and fish with Aloe vera, and then after getting the promising results similar study protocol was carried out using 10-autopsied human tissue. Four natural fixatives-30% jaggery solution, 20% honey solution, 20% sugar solution, 20% Aloe vera solution and 10% formalin were used for fixation in the study. Fixation of tissues was carried out at room temperature for 24 h. All pre- and postfixation measurements were recorded using stereomicroscope and its software. The difference between pre-and postfixation was calculated and later, all pieces were kept for routine tissue processing followed by routine staining. The tissue sections were assessed for quality, and the whole procedure was blinded among three oral pathologists who scored them. Results: The mean percentage of shrinkage in each bit with different reagents was calculated. The shrinkage seen with 10% formalin and 20% Aloe vera were more likely similar. Among all the natural fixatives, qualitatively also Aloe vera excelled and its results were comparable to that of formalin. Conclusion: The use of Aloe vera in the present study as fixative is the first of its kind, as exhaustive search of the literature shows only its use as transport media in dentistry.
Epidemiologic and histopathological evaluation of unclassified gingival papules in Urmia, Iran

Objectives: Unclassified gingival papules might be mistaken with other malignant lesions as they resemble some other oral lesions. The present study demonstrates epidemiologic and histopathological characteristics of the gingival unclassified papules in the patients referred to Urmia Dental School, Iran. Materials and Methods: A cross sectional descriptive study design was conducted among 500 pateints in Urmai university of medical sciences, Iran. The participant's demographic data and medical history were obtained using clinical examinations and a questionnaire. Histopathological assessments were done in two specimens. The effect of the possible factors on the incidence of gingival papules was statistically assessed by Fisher's exact test. Results: Among 500 participants, 340 (68%) demonstrated unclassified gingival papules (40.9% males, 59.1% females; mean age of 34.9 years). No significant differences were found regarding the effect of gender, smoking, mouth breathing, history of skin disease or pregnancy on the incidence of gingival papules. However, the breastfeeding females (P < 0.004) or those using contraceptive pills (P < 0.02) showed lower frequency of papules' incidence. Among 340 papules, 332 (97.6%) were white in color, 337 (99.1%) were well defined and 331 (97.3%) were observed in the keratinized gingiva. 207 (60.9%) were multiple and 133 (39.1%) were single lesions. The papules showed healthy tissues similar to gingival tissue; however, abundant collagen bundles were irregular and close to the surface, which was covering by stratified squamous epithelium. Conclusion: Gingival papules are common findings in patients referring to Urmia Dental School; the lesions were almost white in color, well defined and appeared in the keratinized gingiva. The lesions were a variation of normal oral structures with no treatment requirements.
Effects of a Bearing Strut on the Performance of a Turbopump Inducer

Experimental and computational studies on an inducer with and without a bearing strut are performed to evaluate the effects of a strut on the performance of an inducer. Global performance data such as head rise and efficiency, and detail flow characteristics such as surface static pressures are measured and compared with computational results. Generally a good agreement is observed between experimental and computational results, but some discrepancies are observed due to complex flow features such as backflows at the inlet and strut/inducer interactions. For the flow rates where the backflow region is large, installing a strut enhances the hydraulic performance of the inducer by diminishing the size of the backflows. The result also shows that the strut has negligible effects on the suction performance of the inducer.
Association of periodontal disease with oral lichen planus: A systematic review and meta analysis

Background: Gingival lesions in oral lichen planus can indirectly increase the risk of plaque-induced periodontal disease when symptoms associated with such lesions hamper the proper oral hygiene maintenance by the patients and can increase the risk of periodontal tissue destruction. This systematic review analyses the existing evidence on the association between oral lichen planus and periodontal disease. Aim: This systematic review of case-control studies aimed to analyse the association between periodontal disease and oral lichen planus. Material and Methods: An electronic database search for randomised controlled trials, experimental studies, case-control studies, and cohort studies published in peer-reviewed Journals in the English language was conducted from the following databases: PubMed, EBSCOHost, Science Open, EMBASE, and Google Scholar. Results: A total of 12,507 were identified on an electronic database search. Only eight studies fulfilled the eligibility criteria and were included for quantitative analysis. A data extraction sheet was prepared, and studies were analysed. Conclusion: Bleeding on Probing and Probing depth were seen to be significantly associated with Oral Lichen Planus. The symptoms in Oral Lichen Planus impede efficient oral hygiene maintenance by a patient and predispose them to the occurrence of long-term Periodontal Disease.
Clinical Profile and Predictors of Early Outcome in Patients with Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury in Jos, North-Central Nigeria

Background/Objectives: Spinal cord injury is a devastating condition and has been recognised so since antiquity with evolving pattern of presentation and outcome. This study aimed to review the clinical profile and determinants of early outcome in patients with traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) in Jos, Nigeria. Materials and Methods: This retrospective cohort study, reviewed the health records of all patients with TSCI that were managed, based on the neurosurgical unit protocol for the management of TSCI in our institution from 2011 to 2021. Relevant data were retrieved into a preformed pro forma, analysis was done for determinants of outcome using SPSS and presented in tables and figure. Results: A total of 296 patients, aged 20–39 years, with male to female ratio of 5.2:1 were studied. The median time from injury to presentation was 96 h, and the cervical spine was the most (139, 47.0%) affected region. Most of the patients (183, 61.8%) had complete injury (ASIA A) at presentation, the average, first week mean arterial blood pressure (MAP) of 89.98 ± 8.86. Mortality was 73 (24.7%) at 6 weeks post injury and complete TSCI, cervical spinal cord segment and the average “first week” MAP were, independent predictors of mortality. The admission ASIA impairment scale (AIS) and injury to presentation interval were predictive of AIS improvement at 6 weeks and length of hospital stay (LOHs). Conclusions: We also found that AIS at admission, level of spinal cord affected and the average first week MAP were early predictors of mortality, while the injury to presentation interval and admission AIS, predicted improvement of AIS at 6 weeks. The LOHs was seen more in patients with severe AIS at admission and those who had delayed presentation.
Analysis of Inheritance patterns, gender dimorphism and their correlation in lip and palm prints – A cross-sectional study

Background: Forensic sciences deal with key areas to be included in judicial makeup that has been approved by both the court and the scientific community, which distinguishes truth from counterfeit. Lip and palmprints are one of a kind and do not change during the lifetime of a person unless any pathologies. Objectives: To evaluate the heritability, and gender dimorphism of lip and palm prints among parents and their offspring. Methods: A total of 280 participants were included in the study. Lip and palm prints were collected from participants using a digital camera. The photographic data obtained is subjected to Adobe Photoshop and analysed for inheritance. Gender dimorphism is evaluated by the predominant lip pattern and palm ridge count in four designated areas. Results: A positive resemblance of 28.4% was found between parents and offspring in lips, and for the right palm, it was 60.2% and 55.12% for the left palm (principal lines) which are statistically insignificant. In all six quadrants, the most predominant lip pattern found in males is type 5, and in females, type 11. The mean palm ridge density was significantly higher among females than males in all designated areas. Conclusion: The digital method of analysing lip and palm print images with Adobe Photoshop 7 software is a convenient method that allows for better visualisation and easier lip and palm print recording and identification. Considerable inheritance patterns and gender dimorphism were observed that aid in personal identification.