Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Prospective Investigation of Tumor Hypoxia Imaging with 68Ga-Nitroimidazole PET/CT in Patients with Carcinoma of the Cervix Uteri and Comparison with 18F-FDG PET/CT: Correlation with Immunohistochemistry

Hypoxia in cervical cancer has been associated with a poor prognosis. Over the years 68Ga labelled nitroimidazoles have been studied and have shown improved kinetics. We present our initial experience of hypoxia Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging in cervical cancer with 68Ga-Nitroimidazole derivative and the correlation with 18F-FDG PET/CT and immunohistochemistry. Twenty women with cervical cancer underwent both 18F-FDG and 68Ga-Nitroimidazole PET/CT imaging. Dual-point imaging was performed for 68Ga-Nitroimidazole PET. Immunohistochemical analysis was performed with hypoxia inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α). We documented SUVmax, SUVmean of the primary lesions as well as tumor to muscle ratio (TMR), tumor to blood (TBR), metabolic tumor volume (MTV) and hypoxic tumor volume (HTV). There was no significant difference in the uptake of 68Ga-Nitroimidazole between early and delayed imaging. Twelve patients had uptake on 68Ga-Nitroimidazole PET. Ten patients demonstrated varying intensities of HIF-1α expression and six of these also had uptake on 68Ga-Nitroimidazole PET. We found a strong negative correlation between HTV and immunohistochemical staining (r = −0.660; p = 0.019). There was no correlation between uptake on PET imaging and immunohistochemical analysis with HIF-1α. Two-thirds of the patients demonstrated hypoxia on 68Ga-Nitroimidazole PET imaging.
What’s next in cancer immunotherapy? - The promise and challenges of neoantigen vaccination

ABSTRACT The process of tumorigenesis leaves a series of indelible genetic changes in tumor cells, that when expressed, have the potential to be tumor-specific immune targets. Neoantigen vaccines that capitalize on this potential immunogenicity have shown efficacy in preclinical models and have now entered clinical trials. Here we discuss the status of personalized neoantigen vaccines and the current major challenges to this nascent field. In particular, we focus on the types of antigens that can be targeted by vaccination and on the role that preexisting immunosuppression, and in particular T-cell exhaustion, will play in the development of effective cancer vaccines.
Assessment of Coagulation and Haematological Parameters among Pregnant Women in Port Harcourt

Background: Pregnancy is the fertilization and development of an embryo or fetus in a woman's uterus. It is a critical stage of development during which maternal nutrition can strongly influence obstetric and neonatal outcomes. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of pregnancy on some coagulation and haematological parameters of pregnant women residing in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Method: This case-control study investigated 80 pregnant subjects and 20 non-pregnant controls. Haematological parameters were determined using a fully automated The SysmexXP-300, while the coagulation parameters (PT and INR) were determined with the automated method. Results: The mean PT (s), HB (g/dl), PCV (%), PLT (x109/L), RBC (mcL), LYMPH (%), BASO (%) and EOSIN (%) counts were significantly lower among the pregnant subjects (5.02±5.82, 11.00±1.13 g/dl and 33.81±3.89%, 189.6±52.93 × 109/L, 3.95±0.50, 43.93±10.10 %, 0.9385±1.08 % and 1.12±1.32 %) compared to the non-pregnant controls (1.68±2.37, 12.01±1.29 g/dl, 37.31±3.39 %, 235.6±72.37 × 109/L, 4.45±0.35, 43.24±9.06, 2.11±0.94 and 2.15±1.47) respectively. There were no significant differences in the INR, MONO (%), MPV (fl), MCV (L/C), and MCH (g/c) between the pregnant subjects (0.92±0.11, 5.41±2.59 %, 11.67±4.848, 84.26±3.77 and 28.06±3.54) and non-pregnant controls (0.88±0.11, 5.58±2.65, 11.14±5.45, 82.52±10.45 and 26.96±1.85). The NEUT (%), PDW (%) and WBC (x109/L) were significantly higher among the pregnant subjects (44.90±11.24 %, 13.26±2.56 % and 8.35±2.982 x109/L) compared to the non-pregnant controls (46.63±9.96 %, 10.78±1.80 % and 4.71±0.81 x109/L). Conclusion: This study has shown that pregnancy has a significant effect on some haematological and coagulation parameters of pregnant women in Port Harcourt. The result of this research work indicates the need to routinely monitor the complete blood count, thrombocytopenia and hyper-coagulative activity among pregnant women of African descendant.
The Effect of Vitamin D3 on the Alignment of Mandibular Anterior Teeth: A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial

Objectives To investigate the effect of vitamin D3 level on the alignment of mandibular anterior teeth in adults and explore the associated root resorption and pain perception. Trial Design. Multicentre, double blinded randomized clinical trial. Subjects and Methods. Adult patients aged 18–30 years, with moderate mandibular incisor crowding [Little's Irregularity index (LII) 3–6 mm], needing nonextraction treatment with fixed orthodontic appliance, were randomly allocated into two groups with 1 : 1 allocation ratio. In the 1st group (normal vitamin D3 level group [ND3G]), vitamin D level was measured and corrected to normal before starting orthodontic treatment, while in the 2nd group [control group (CG)] the vitamin D level was kept unknown until completion of the alignment phase. Outcome measures included mandibular incisor crowding using LII, orthodontically induced root resorption (OIRR), and pain perception. Independent sample t-test was used to compare the duration of treatment, the effectiveness of alignment, and OIRR between groups, while differences in pain perception were analysed by Mann–Whitney U-test (P < 0.05). Results Out of 87 patients recruited from four centres, 33 patients were randomly allocated into two groups (17 patients to ND3G and 16 patients to CG). Time elapsed for the complete alignment of the mandibular incisor crowding was one month shorter in ND3G (23.532% faster), and the improvement percentage was significantly higher in all periods when compared to the CG. The amount of OIRR was not significantly different between groups; however, pain during the first three days of alignment was significantly less in ND3G. Conclusions Having optimal vitamin D3 level reduced the alignment time and pain associated with orthodontic treatment, but it had no role in reducing OIRR. Registration. The trial was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov on 12th April 2021 (registration number: NCT04837781).
Patients' Knowledge and Information Needs about Isotretinoin Therapy Use in Jordan

Background Despite being the first-line treatment for severe or moderate acne, isotretinoin has several serious side effects that necessitate the evaluation of patients' knowledge about isotretinoin side effects and its proper use. Objective The current study aim was to explore information needs about isotretinoin by evaluating patients' knowledge about the appropriate use of isotretinoin and its associated side effects. Methods In addition to the sociodemographic variables, a validated online questionnaire was adopted from the literature to evaluate patients' knowledge about isotretinoin use and its potential side effects. Independent t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test were implemented to find the correlation between the study variables and the knowledge score. Results The most recognized side effect of isotretinoin therapy was dryness (98.1%). The study patients showed good knowledge about isotretinoin use with a mean knowledge score of 8.1 (SD = 0.7). However, more than half of them (61.0%) mistakenly thought that isotretinoin therapy should be taken continuously for more than 6 months without stop, and some of them did not know that isotretinoin is recommended to be taken with fatty meal (24%) and sunblock (24.6%). Female gender (8.2 (SD = 0.8)) and using isotretinoin for more than 6 months (8.3 (SD = 1.2)) were significantly associated with a higher knowledge score of isotretinoin use (p=0.01), when compared with male patients (7.8 (SD = 0.7)) and less than 6-month use of isotretinoin (7.7 (SD = 0.7)). Conclusions The lack of patients' information about the potential side effects, duration of therapy, and some instructions on isotretinoin use, such as taking the medication with fatty meal and sunblock, shed the light on the necessity to prepare leaflets, educational brochures, and educational posts via social media in order to improve patients' knowledge about isotretinoin therapy and its optimal use.
Heterogeneous Heat Absorption Is Complementary to Radiotherapy

Simple Summary This review shows the advantages of heterogeneous heating of selected malignant cells in harmonic synergy with radiotherapy. The main clinical achievement of this complementary therapy is its extreme safety and minimal adverse effects. Combining the two methods opens a bright perspective, transforming the local radiotherapy to the antitumoral impact on the whole body, destroying the distant metastases by “teaching” the immune system about the overall danger of malignancy. Abstract (1) Background: Hyperthermia in oncology conventionally seeks the homogeneous heating of the tumor mass. The expected isothermal condition is the basis of the dose calculation in clinical practice. My objective is to study and apply a heterogenic temperature pattern during the heating process and show how it supports radiotherapy. (2) Methods: The targeted tissue’s natural electric and thermal heterogeneity is used for the selective heating of the cancer cells. The amplitude-modulated radiofrequency current focuses the energy absorption on the membrane rafts of the malignant cells. The energy partly “nonthermally” excites and partly heats the absorbing protein complexes. (3) Results: The excitation of the transmembrane proteins induces an extrinsic caspase-dependent apoptotic pathway, while the heat stress promotes the intrinsic caspase-dependent and independent apoptotic signals generated by mitochondria. The molecular changes synergize the method with radiotherapy and promote the abscopal effect. The mild average temperature (39–41 °C) intensifies the blood flow for promoting oxygenation in combination with radiotherapy. The preclinical experiences verify, and the clinical studies validate the method. (4) Conclusions: The heterogenic, molecular targeting has similarities with DNA strand-breaking in radiotherapy. The controlled energy absorption allows using a similar energy dose to radiotherapy (J/kg). The two therapies are synergistically combined.
Assessing the effect of complex ground types on ground‐dwelling arthropod movements with video monitoring: Dealing with concealed movements under a layer of plant residues

Abstract Understanding the effect of ground types on foraging movements of ground‐dwelling arthropods is a key step to managing their spatial distribution as required for successful conservation biological control. Indeed, fine movements at the centimeter scale can strongly influence the foraging ability of pest predators. However, because radio frequency identification or harmonic tracking techniques are not yet suitable for small species and video tracking focuses on uniform and light backgrounds, foraging movements have rarely been studied in relation to ground types. We present a method to track a ground‐dwelling arthropod (the earwig Euborellia caraibea) at night, walking on two contrasted ground types: bare soil and soil partly covered with a stratum of banana plant residues allowing individuals to hide periodically. The tracking of individuals within these ground types was achieved by infrared light, tagging individuals, video treatments, and semi‐automatic cleaning of trajectories. We tested different procedures to obtain segments with identical durations to quantify speeds and sinuosities. These procedures were characterized by the junction time gap between trajectory fragments, the rediscretization time of trajectories, and whether or not to use interpolation to fill in missing points in the trajectories. Earwigs exhibited significantly slower and more sinuous movements on soil with banana plant residues than on bare soil. Long time gaps for trajectory junction, extended rediscretization times, and interpolation were complementary means to integrate concealed movements in the trajectories. The highest slowdown in plant residues was detected when the procedure could account for longer periods under the residues. These results suggest that earwigs spent a significant amount of time concealed by the residues. Additionally, the residues strongly decreased the earwigs' movement. Since the technical solutions presented in this study are inexpensive, easy to set up, and replicate, they represent valuable contributions to the emerging field of video monitoring.
Lipoprotein(a), Immune Cells and Cardiovascular Outcomes in Patients with Premature Coronary Heart Disease

The detection of lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)] in the artery wall at the stage of lipid-bands formation may indicate that it participates in the atherosclerosis local nonspecific inflammatory process. Innate immune cells are involved in atherogenesis, with monocytes playing a major role in the initiation of atherosclerosis, while neutrophils can contribute to plaque destabilization. This work studies the relationship between Lp(a), immune blood cells and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) in patients with the early manifestation of coronary heart disease (CHD). The study included 200 patients with chronic CHD, manifested up to the age of 55 in men and 60 in women. An increased Lp(a) concentration [hyperLp(a)] was shown to predict cardiovascular events in patients with premature CHD with long-term follow-up. According to the logistic regression analysis results, an increase in the monocyte count with OR = 4.58 (95% CI 1.04–20.06) or lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio with OR = 0.82 (0.68–0.99), (p < 0.05 for both) was associated with MACE in patients with early CHD, regardless of gender, age, classical risk factors, atherogenic lipoproteins concentration and statin intake. The combination of an increased monocyte count and hyperLp(a) significantly increased the proportion of patients with early CHD with subsequent development of MACE (p = 0.02, p trend = 0.003). The odds of cardiovascular events in patients with early CHD manifestation were highest in patients with an elevated lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio and an elevated Lp(a) level. A higher neutrophil blood count and an elevated neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio determined the faster development of MACE in patients with a high Lp(a) concentration. The data obtained in this study suggest that the high atherothrombogenicity of Lp(a) is associated with the “inflammatory” component and the innate immune cells involvement in this process. Thus, the easily calculated immunological ratios of blood cells and Lp(a) concentrations can be considered simple predictors of future cardiovascular events.
A casualty network analysis in non-major combat operations

Understanding the causes, types and locations of military casualties likely to be incurred during non-major combat operations is essential to effectively plan for medical resources required to support those operations, yet the threats posed are varied and complex. The dynamic environment that sustains non-major combat operations creates a challenge to diagnose the factors leading to casualties in these operations. We employ a network analytic approach to discover and explore the underlying casualty incident patterns in this complex, real-world operating environment. The aim of this study is to better understand the medical effect of health and irregular general threats. Discovery of these casualty incident patterns proves insightful to military medical planners and commanders.
Intelligent Load-Balancing Framework for Fog-Enabled Communication in Healthcare

The present technological era significantly makes use of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices for offering and implementing healthcare services. Post COVID-19, the future of the healthcare system is highly reliant upon the inculcation of Artificial-Intelligence (AI) mechanisms in its day-to-day procedures, and this is realized in its implementation using sensor-enabled smart and intelligent IoT devices for providing extensive care to patients relative to the symmetric concept. The offerings of such AI-enabled services include handling the huge amount of data processed and sensed by smart medical sensors without compromising the performance parameters, such as the response time, latency, availability, cost and processing time. This has resulted in a need to balance the load of the smart operational devices to avoid any failure of responsiveness. Thus, in this paper, a fog-based framework is proposed that can balance the load among fog nodes for handling the challenging communication and processing requirements of intelligent real-time applications.
A Comparative Study of Visualizations for Multiple Time Series

Different visualization techniques are suited for visualizing data of multiple time series. Choosing an appropriate visualization technique depends on data characteristics and tasks. Previous work has explored such combinations of data and visualization techniques in lab-based studies to find the most suited technique for a task. Using these previous findings, we performed an online study with 51 participants, during which we compare line charts, stream graphs, and aligned area charts based on completion time and accuracy regarding three common discrimination tasks. Our online study includes a novel combination of visualization techniques for time-dependent data and indicates that there are certain differences and trends regarding the suitability of the visualizations for different tasks. At the same time, we can confirm results presented in previous work.
Alcohol Consumption and the Risk of Incident Atrial Fibrillation: A Meta-Analysis

Alcohol consumption is a known, modifiable risk factor for incident atrial fibrillation (AF). However, it remains unclear whether the protective effect of moderate alcohol consumption-that has been reported for various cardiovascular diseases also applies to the risk for new-onset AF. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the role of different drinking patterns (low: <14 grams/week; moderate: <168 grams/week; and heavy: >168 grams/week) on the risk for incident AF. Major electronic databases were searched for observational cohorts examining the role of different drinking behaviors on the risk for incident AF. We analyzed 16 studies (13,044,007 patients). Incident AF rate was 2.3%. Moderate alcohol consumption significantly reduced the risk for new-onset AF when compared to both abstainers (logOR: −0.20; 95%CI: −0.28–−0.12; I2: 96.71%) and heavy drinkers (logOR: −0.28; 95%CI: −0.37–−0.18; I2: 95.18%). Heavy-drinking pattern compared to low also increased the risk for incident AF (logOR: 0.14; 95%CI: 0.01–0.2; I2: 98.13%). Substantial heterogeneity was noted, with more homogeneous results documented in cohorts with follow-up shorter than five years. Our findings suggest a J-shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and incident AF. Up to 14 drinks per week seem to decrease the risk for developing AF. Because of the substantial heterogeneity observed, no robust conclusion can be drawn. In any case, our results suggest that the association between alcohol consumption and incident AF is far from being a straightforward dose-response effect.
Influence of Urban Agglomeration Expansion on Fragmentation of Green Space: A Case Study of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration

Loss of green space habitats and landscape fragmentation are important reasons for the decline in environmental quality, degradation of ecosystem functions, and decline in biodiversity. Quantifying the spatio-temporal characteristics of landscape fragmentation of green space and its relationship with urban expansion mode is an important basis for improving urban development mode and enhancing urban ecological functions. For this paper, we took the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration as the research object, a typical rapidly urbanizing area. Through multi-scale landscape pattern analysis and statistical analysis, the spatial–temporal evolution characteristics of green space fragmentation in the BTH urban agglomeration from 2000 to 2020 and the influence of urban expansion were analyzed, and the land-use situation in 2030 was predicted by the Future Land Use Simulation (FLUS) model. The main conclusions are as follows: The BTH urban agglomeration has developed rapidly in the last 20 years, showing the characteristics of diffusion and corridor development. The intensity and pattern of urban expansion have significantly affected the pattern of green space, leading to the intensification of domestic green space fragmentation. Among them, urban expansion exerts most severe effects on the fragmentation of farmland, followed by grassland and water. The influence of urban expansion on the scale and fragmentation of forestland is limited. The forecast results in 2030 show that built-up areas may continue to occupy green space. The rate of occupation of farmland will slow down while that of grassland will intensify.
Pose Guided Feature Learning for 3D Object Tracking on RGB Videos

In this work we propose a new approach to 3D object pose tracking in sequences of RGB images acquired by a calibrated camera. A single hourglass neural network that has been trained to detect fiducial keypoints on a set of objects delivers heatmaps representing 2D locations of the keypoints. Given a calibrated camera model and a sparse object model consisting of 3D locations of the keypoints, the keypoints in hypothesized object poses are projected onto 2D plane and then matched with the heatmaps. A quaternion particle filter with a probabilistic observation model that uses such a matching is employed to maintain 3D object pose distribution. A single Siamese neural network is trained for a set of objects on keypoints from the current and previous frame in order to generate a particle in the predicted 3D object pose. The filter draws particles to predict the current pose using its a priori knowledge about the object velocity and includes the predicted 3D object pose by the neural network in a priori distribution. Thus, the hypothesized 3D object poses are generated using both a priori knowledge about the object velocity in 3D and keypoint-based geometric reasoning as well as relative transformations in the image plane. In an extended algorithm we combine the set of propagated particles with an optimized particle, whose pose is determined by Levenberg-Marguardt.