Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Skeletal Paracrine Signals on the Proliferation of Interzone Cells

Objective Articular cartilage in mammals has limited intrinsic capacity to repair structural defects, a fact that contributes to the chronic and progressive nature of osteoarthritis. In contrast, Mexican axolotl salamanders have demonstrated the remarkable ability to spontaneously and completely repair large joint cartilage lesions, a healing process that involves interzone cells in the intraarticular space. Furthermore, interzone tissue transplanted into skeletal defects in the axolotl salamander demonstrates a multi-differentiation potential. Cellular and molecular mechanisms of this repair process remain unclear. The objective of this study was to examine whether paracrine mitogenic signals are an important variable in the interaction between interzone cells and the skeletal microenvironment. Design The paracrine regulation of the proliferation of equine interzone cells was evaluated in an in vitro co-culture system. Cell viability and proliferation were measured in equine fetal interzone cells after exposure to conditioned medium from skeletal and nonskeletal primary cell lines. Steady-state expression was determined for genes encoding 37 putative mitogens secreted by cells that generated the conditioned medium. Results All experimental groups of conditioned media elicited a mitogenic response in interzone cells. Fetal anlage chondrocytes (P < 0.0001) and dermal fibroblasts (P < 0.0001) conditioned medium showed a significantly higher mitogenic potential compared with interzone cells. Conditioned medium from bone marrow–derived cells elicited a significantly higher proliferative response relative to that from young adult articular chondrocytes (P < 0.0001) or dermal fibroblasts (P < 0.0001). Sixteen genes had expression patterns consistent with the functional proliferation assays. Conclusions The results indicate a mitogenic effect of skeletal paracrine signals on interzone cells.
Ultrasound Imaging of Disorders of Small Nerves of the Extremities: Less Recognized Locations

Ultrasound is a well‐proven imaging modality for showing peripheral nerve disorders and guiding perineural injections. The aim of this review is to focus on small peripheral nerve abnormalities, which are usually not recognized by sonologists. In fact, most of these small nerves have a tiny diameter (<2 mm), and their anatomy is less familiar. We describe the most common causes of small peripheral nerve disorders, providing an accurate description of their anatomic locations and relationships with adjacent structures; we also focus on technical hints that may help in their evaluation.
Atypical longitudinal development of speech‐evoked auditory brainstem response in preschool children with autism spectrum disorders

Language impairment is common in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Previous research has shown that this disability may be, in part, due to atypical auditory processing of speech stimuli. However, how speech sounds are processed in children with ASD remains largely unknown. The present study assessed the developmental pattern of auditory information processing at the level of the brainstem in preschool children with ASD using speech‐evoked auditory brainstem response (speech‐ABR). Children with ASD (N = 15) and of typical developing (TD) (N = 20), both of preschool age, were enrolled. The speech‐ABRs recorded at two different time points (T1 and T2; 9.68 months apart on average) were virtually identical in the TD group. However, in the ASD group, the wave V latency of speech‐ABR was significantly shortened and the amplitudes of wave A and C were significantly larger at T2, compared to those recorded at T1 (10.78 months apart on average). Compared to the TD group, the wave V and A latencies were prolonged at T1, whereas the wave E amplitude decreased and wave F latency prolonged at T2. There was a positive partial correlation between the language performance and the wave A amplitude in the ASD group. These results indicate that auditory processing at the subcortical level is well‐developed in the TD preschool children, but is immature and abnormal in the children with ASD at the same ages. Thus, aberrant speech processing at the brainstem level may contribute significantly to the language impairment in children with ASD at preschool ages. Autism Res 2019, 12: 1022–1031. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Is There a Safety Signal for Dolutegravir and Integrase Inhibitors During Pregnancy?

BACKGROUND Dolutegravir, an integrase strand transfer inhibitor (InSTI), is a major antiretroviral agent for HIV infection. Its use is promising, especially in low- and middle-income countries, because of a high resistance barrier and a good safety profile. Very recently, a World Health Organization safety signal has been raised regarding neural tube defects after the first-trimester exposure. Furthermore, to date, the experience is limited regarding the use of the other InSTI drugs (raltegravir and elvitegravir) during pregnancy. Our objective is to analyze the safety of InSTI drugs in pregnant women. SETTING Nation-wide database cohort analysis. METHODS We evaluated the risk of major birth defects according to EUROCAT classification in pregnant women, which had had a first-trimester exposure to dolutegravir, raltegravir, or elvitegravir. RESULTS We found a major birth defect rate of 1.9% in the general population between 2012 and 2016. As InSTI drugs are not used as first-line therapy in pregnant women, we found a very low exposure in this population. Among 49, 240, and 70 pregnancy outcomes exposed to dolutegravir, raltegravir, and elvitegravir, respectively, during the first trimester, there were 2, 3, and 1 major birth defects, respectively. There was no case of neural tube defect. CONCLUSIONS Drug exposure to InSTI is limited in our nation-wide database. Nevertheless, our data do not support a pharmacovigilance signal on neural tube defects in women exposed to dolutegravir, raltegravir or elvitegravir during pregnancy. Owing to a small number of pregnancy outcomes, these results need to be confirmed with further studies.
An Investigation of Brain Functional Connectivity by Form of Craniosynostosis.

PURPOSE Long-term neurocognitive sequelae of nonsyndromic craniosynostosis (NSC) patients are just beginning to be clarified. This study uses functional MRI (fMRI) to determine if there is evidence of altered brain functional connectivity in NSC, and whether these aberrations vary by form of synostosis. METHODS Twenty adolescent participants with surgically treated NSC (10 sagittal synostosis, 5 right unilateral coronal synostosis [UCS], 5 metopic synostosis [MSO]) were individually matched to controls by age, gender, and handedness. A subgroup of MSO was classified as severe metopic synostosis (SMS) based on the endocranial bifrontal angle. Resting state fMRI was acquired in a 3T Siemens TIM Trio scanner (Erlangen, Germany), and data were motion corrected and then analyzed with BioImage Suite (Yale School of Medicine). Resulting group-level t-maps were cluster corrected with nonparametric permutation tests. A region of interest analysis was performed based on the left Brodmann's Areas 7, 39, and 40. RESULTS Sagittal synostosis had decreased whole-brain intrinsic connectivity compared to controls in the superior parietal lobules and the angular gyrus (P = 0.071). Unilateral coronal synostosis had decreased intrinsic connectivity throughout the prefrontal cortex (P = 0.031). The MSO cohort did not have significant findings on intrinsic connectivity, but the SMS subgroup had significantly decreased connectivity among multiple subcortical structures. CONCLUSION Sagittal synostosis had decreased connectivity in regions associated with visuomotor integration and attention, while UCS had decreased connectivity in circuits crucial in executive function and cognition. Finally, severity of metopic synostosis may influence the degree of neurocognitive aberration. This study provides data suggestive of long-term sequelae of NSC that varies by suture type, which may underlie different phenotypes of neurocognitive impairment.
Effects of Neurotrophic Factors in Glial Cells in the Central Nervous System: Expression and Properties in Neurodegeneration and Injury

Astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and microglia are abundant cell types found in the central nervous system and have been shown to play crucial roles in regulating both normal and disease states. An increasing amount of evidence points to the critical importance of glia in mediating neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases (AD, PD), and in ischemic stroke, where microglia are involved in initial tissue clearance, and astrocytes in the subsequent formation of a glial scar. The importance of these cells for neuronal survival has previously been studied in co-culture experiments and the search for neurotrophic factors (NTFs) initiated after finding that the addition of conditioned media from astrocyte cultures could support the survival of primary neurons in vitro. This led to the discovery of the potent dopamine neurotrophic factor, glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF). In this review, we focus on the relationship between glia and NTFs including neurotrophins, GDNF-family ligands, CNTF family, and CDNF/MANF-family proteins. We describe their expression in astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and their precursors (NG2-positive cells, OPCs), and microglia during development and in the adult brain. Furthermore, we review existing data on the glial phenotypes of NTF knockout mice and follow NTF expression patterns and their effects on glia in disease models such as AD, PD, stroke, and retinal degeneration.
800× Non-Distortion Magnified Visualization of Deep Sub-Nanometer MEMS Vibrations Using a Camera

Dynamic visualization of the small motions in Micro-Electro-Mechanical systems (MEMS) in the presence of external disturbances and noise is facing great challenges. The measurement of MEMS in-plane motion has particularly faced limitations due to imaging resolution constraints in the nanometer range. This paper presents a novel imaging approach by introducing a deep sub-nanometer motion detection and magnification technique based on gradient-based spectral optical flow method together with stroboscopic video microscopy, achieving a root mean square (RMS) noise floor of 0.087 nm. The experimental results demonstrate the capability to recover and magnify in-plane motions as small as 0.27 nm, with an 890 × magnification and minimal distortion. This shows outstanding performance in imaging deep sub-nanometer motions, surpassing the capabilities of currently popular commercial tools by more than an order of magnitude.
A comparison of bibliometric indicators in occupational therapy journals published in English

Background. The use of bibliometrics to evaluate the quality and impact of refereed journals has increased along with access to electronic databases and citation counts. Purpose. This analysis compared and contrasted the range of publication metrics available for English-language occupational therapy journals. Method. Bibliometric data were sourced for 23 English-language occupational therapy journals, including data from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 2- and 5-year impact factor, JCR Immediacy Index, Eigenfactor Score, Article Influence Score, Scopus Source Normalized Impact per Paper, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) score, and ResearchGate journal impact score. H-indexes for journals were also sourced. Findings. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy had the highest publication metrics. SJR-based scores included a larger number of journals, whereas JCR-based metrics were more restrictive in the number of journals included. Implications. Multiple metrics should be used to comprehensively understand occupational therapy journal performance.
Angiotensin II and TGF-β1 Induce Alterations in Human Amniotic Fluid-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells Leading to Cardiomyogenic Differentiation Initiation

Background and Objectives Human amniotic fluid-derived mesenchymal stem cells (AF-MSCs) may be a valuable source for cardiovascular tissue engineering and cell therapy. The aim of this study is to verify angiotensin II and transforming growth factor-beta 1 (TGF-β1) as potential cardiomyogenic differentiation inducers of AF-MSCs. Methods and Results AF-MSCs were obtained from amniocentesis samples from second-trimester pregnant women, isolated and characterized by the expression of cell surface markers (CD44, CD90, CD105 positive; CD34 negative) and pluripotency genes (OCT4, SOX2, NANOG, REX1). Cardiomyogenic differentiation was induced using different concentrations of angiotensin II and TGF-β1. Successful initiation of differentiation was confirmed by alterations in cell morphology, upregulation of cardiac genes-markers NKX2-5, TBX5, GATA4, MYH6, TNNT2, DES and main cardiac ion channels genes (sodium, calcium, potassium) as determined by RT-qPCR. Western blot and immunofluorescence analysis revealed the increased expression of Connexin43, the main component of gap junctions, and Nkx2.5, the early cardiac transcription factor. Induced AF-MSCs switched their phenotype towards more energetic and started utilizing oxidative phosphorylation more than glycolysis for energy production as assessed using Agilent Seahorse XF analyzer. The immune analysis of chromatin-modifying enzymes DNMT1, HDAC1/2 and Polycomb repressive complex 1 and 2 (PRC1/2) proteins BMI1, EZH2 and SUZ12 as well as of modified histones H3 and H4 indicated global chromatin remodeling during the induced differentiation. Conclusions Angiotensin II and TGF-β1 are efficient cardiomyogenic inducers of human AF-MSCs; they initiate alterations at the gene and protein expression, metabolic and epigenetic levels in stem cells leading towards cardiomyocyte-like phenotype formation.
VeilGraph: Streaming Graph Approximations

Graphs are found in a plethora of domains, including online social networks, the World Wide Web and the study of epidemics, to name a few. With the advent of greater volumes of information and the need for continuously updated results under temporal constraints, it is necessary to explore novel approaches that further enable performance improvements. In the scope of stream processing over graphs, we research the trade-offs between result accuracy and the speedup of approximate computation techniques. We see this as a natural path towards these performance improvements. Herein we present \name, through which we conducted our research. We showcase an innovative model for approximate graph processing, implemented in \texttt{Apache Flink}. We analyze our model and evaluate it with the case study of the PageRank algorithm \cite{pageRank}, perhaps the most famous measure of vertex centrality used to rank websites in search engine results. %In light of our model, we discuss the challenges driven by relations between result accuracy and potential performance gains. Our experiments, even when set up for favoring \texttt{Flink} for comparability, show that \name can improve performance up to 3X speedups, while achieving result quality above 95\% when compared to results of the traditional version of PageRank without any summarization or approximation techniques.
Barriers and incentives to recruitment in mental health clinical trials

Research provides valuable information that improves patients’ outcomes and should inform clinical decision-making.1 There are many research methodologies2 and randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are at the top of the hierarchy, providing the most robust results when efficacy of interventions is concerned.3 RCTs are considered the gold standard because randomisation is the best method we have to remove selection bias between two groups of patients. However, to randomise participants in a trials, there has to be genuine uncertainty in the clinicians over whether a treatment will be beneficial.4 This is called clinical equipoise, which provides the ethical basis for medical research that involves assigning patients to different treatment arms of a clinical trial.5 Notwithstanding all these considerations, it is well recognised that many RCTs struggle to recruit an adequate sample size, with large, collaborative studies often not being able to meet the targets as originally planned. Difficulty …
E-book in Indonesia: Reason to use and usability evaluation

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the usability of electronic books (e-books) in Indonesia. Thirty-two college students, who were eighteen to twenty-one years old, participated in the study. Usability evaluation is done by measuring the effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction through experiments. Participants were asked to read novels in the form of e-books and conventional books. Response measures included reading performance and Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT). 135 students also filled the Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction (QUIS) to measure their user satisfaction of e-books. The results indicate that reading a conventional book have a higher level of effectiveness and efficiency. Reading an e-book causes higher eye fatigue than reading a conventional book. But, participants have already felt satisfied with e-books.
Work-related discomfort among floor-sitting sedge weavers: a cross-sectional survey

Purpose. This cross-sectional survey aimed to evaluate and identify risk factors of work-related discomfort among floor-sitting Thai sedge handicraft weavers. Materials and methods. Sedge weavers (N = 285) were interviewed face to face using a modified standardized Nordic questionnaire. Data were subjected to weighted analysis and risk factors identified using logistic regression models based on a pre-compiled directed acyclic graph. Results. Most sedge weavers were elderly (65.9% ≥ 50 years) with >20 years’ experience. Mats were the most common product. Buttocks (72.7%) and lower back (67.3%) were the commonest regions for discomfort. Neck, shoulders and upper back were less commonly involved (56.9, 56.7 and 52.6% respectively). Higher body mass index and lack of exercise were positively associated with buttock discomfort, and shorter sleep duration, not using a cushion, older age and having dyslipidaemia associated with lower back discomfort. Conclusions. The majority of sedge weavers experienced work-related discomfort. Taking regular exercise, having sufficient sleep and sitting on a cushion may reduce the discomfort experienced by these sedge-weavers.
The Childhood Maltreatment Modulates the Impact of Negative Emotional Stimuli on Conflict Resolution

It has been reported that negative emotional stimuli could facilitate conflict resolution. However, it remains unclear about whether and how the impact of negative emotional stimuli on conflict resolution varies depending on childhood maltreatment. To clarify this issue, seventy-nine subjects were required to perform an arrow Eriksen Flanker Task which was presented in the center of emotional pictures. The present study found a significant interaction effect of childhood maltreatment and emotion on executive attention scores in reaction times (RTs) that reflect conflict resolution speed. For subjects in high childhood maltreatment, negative pictures elicited smaller executive attention scores in RTs than neutral and positive pictures, while neutral and positive pictures elicited similar executive attention scores in RTs. By contrast, for subjects in low childhood maltreatment, executive attention scores in RTs were similar across three conditions. These results suggest that the speed of conflict resolution is enhanced in high, instead of low, childhood maltreatment in situations of negative stimuli. This finding extends our understanding of the interaction among emotion, childhood maltreatment and conflict resolution.
Background Modeling for HEVC Compressed Videos using Radial Basis Network

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) or H.265 is a successor of H.264/AVC, which is designed to gain performance, ease parallel processing and achieve better compression ratio over the latter. We present a compressed domain background modelling technique utilizing residual information from inter predicted motion compensated coding blocks at HEVC encoder. We employ machine learning techniques to model the dynamic background using training sequence and test it on target video sequences with highly dynamic background content. Rather than operating on a pixel level granularity, the proposed method operates on 8x8 data blocks from residual frames. The method classifies each 8x8 block of the input frame as foreground or background. After block level segmentation, conventional background subtraction methods can be used on the foreground blocks for pixel level segmentation, resulting in reduced computation time and effective utilization of resources.
Information source localization with protector diffusion in networks

Recently, the problem of detecting the information source in a network has been much studied, where it has been shown that the detection probability cannot be beyond 31% even for regular trees if the number of infected nodes is sufficiently large. In this paper, we study the impact of an anti-information spreading on the original information source detection. We first show a negative result: the anti-information diffusion does not increase the detection probability under Maximum-Likelihood-Estimator (MLE) when the number of infected nodes are sufficiently large by passive diffusion that the anti-information starts to be spread by a special node, called the protector, after is reached by the original information. We next consider the case when the distance between the information source and the protector follows a certain type of distribution, but its parameter is hidden. Then, we propose the following learning algorithm: a) learn the distance distribution parameters under MLE, and b) detect the information source under Maximum-A-Posterior-Estimator (MAPE) based on the learnt parameters. We provide an analytic characterization of the source detection probability for regular trees under the proposed algorithm, where MAPE outperforms MLE by up to 50% for 3-regular trees and by up to 63% when the degree of the regular tree becomes large. We demonstrate our theoretical findings through numerical results, and further present the simulation results for general topologies (e.g., Facebook and US power grid networks) even without knowledge of the distance distribution, showing that under a simple protector placement algorithm, MAPE produces the detection probability much larger than that by MLE.