Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microbe-derived short chain fatty acids butyrate and propionate are associated with protection from chronic GVHD.

Studies of the relationship between the gastrointestinal microbiota and outcomes in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HCT) have, thus far, largely focused on early complications, predominantly infection and acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). We examined the potential relationship of the microbiome with chronic GVHD (cGVHD) by analyzing stool and plasma samples collected late after allo-HCT using a case-control study design. We found lower circulating concentrations of the microbe-derived short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) propionate and butyrate in day 100 plasma samples from patients who developed cGVHD, compared with those who remained free of this complication in the initial case-control cohort of transplant patients, and in a further cross-sectional cohort from an independent transplant center. An additional cross-sectional patient cohort from a third transplant center was analyzed, however serum was available - rather than plasma - and the differences in SCFA observed in the plasma samples were not recapitulated. In sum, our findings from the primary case-control cohort, and one of two cross-sectional cohorts explored, suggest that the gastrointestinal microbiome may exert immunomodulatory effects in allo-HCT patients at least in part due to control of systemic concentrations of microbe-derived short chain fatty acids.
Distinct Oscillatory Dynamics Underlie Different Components of Hierarchical Cognitive Control

Hierarchical cognitive control enables us to execute actions guided by abstract goals. Previous research has suggested that neuronal oscillations at different frequency bands are associated with top-down cognitive control; however, whether distinct neural oscillations have similar or different functions for cognitive control is not well understood. The aim of the current study was to investigate the oscillatory neuronal mechanisms underlying two distinct components of hierarchical cognitive control: the level of abstraction of a rule, and the number of rules that must be maintained (set-size). We collected EEG data in 31 men and women who performed a hierarchical cognitive control task that varied in levels of abstraction and set-size. Results from time-frequency analysis in frontal electrodes showed an increase in theta amplitude for increased set-size, whereas an increase in δ was associated with increased abstraction. Both theta and δ amplitude correlated with behavioral performance in the tasks but in an opposite manner: theta correlated with response time slowing when the number of rules increased, whereas δ correlated with response time when rules became more abstract. Phase-amplitude coupling analysis revealed that δ phase-coupled with β amplitude during conditions with a higher level of abstraction, whereby beta band may potentially represent motor output that was guided by the δ phase. These results suggest that distinct neural oscillatory mechanisms underlie different components of hierarchical cognitive control. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Cognitive control allows us to perform immediate actions while maintaining more abstract, overarching goals in mind and to choose between competing actions. We found distinct oscillatory signatures that correspond to two different components of hierarchical control: the level of abstraction of a rule and the number of rules in competition. An increase in the level of abstraction was associated with δ oscillations, whereas theta oscillations were observed when the number of rules increased. Oscillatory amplitude correlated with behavioral performance in the task. Finally, the expression of β amplitude was coordinated via the phase of δ oscillations, and theta phase-coupled with γ amplitude. These results suggest that distinct neural oscillatory mechanisms underlie different components of hierarchical cognitive control.
Allelopathic effects of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) on germination and seedling growth of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

The allelopathic influence of water extracts of sunflower on wheat’s germination and seedlings growth have been evaluated. It was observed that sunflower water extracts at a concentration of 25, 50, 75 and 100% showed inhibitory effect on wheat germination and the effect differed significantly in all the treatments. The growth of wheat seedlings was found significant in terms of root and shoot lengths and non-significant for fresh and dry weights in comparison to the control. Chemical composition of wheat seedlings influenced by four sunflower water extracts indicated a significant change in the starch contents in all the treatments in comparison to the control. A similar trend was also found in the protein and phosphorus contents. Potassium contents of wheat seedlings were decrease gradually except at 75% concentration. Whereas ash contents increased in 25 and 75% concentration and decreased in 50% and 100% concentrations suggesting the stimulatory and inhibitory potencies of sunflower water extracts at different concentrations. It is concluded that the degree of inhibition was dependent upon the concentration of the extract. The chemical parameters like starch, protein, phosphorus, potassium and ash were also reduced confirming the influence of water extracts of sunflower at various concentrations.
Distribution of Living Larger Foraminifera NW of Sesoko‐Jima, Okinawa, Japan

Living, symbiont-bearing, larger foraminiferids restricted to the photic zone incorporate mechanisms blocking solar radiation and water current transportation. They can be divided in two groups according to their wall structure: 1, Families with opaque test walls, reducing light penetration: Peneroplids inhabit shallow-water environments from the intertidal (Peneroplis in large numbers) down to 40 m (Dendritina, preferring sandy substrates). Soritids are restricted to subtidal environments with less water turbulence and range from the reef moat down to 60 m. Amphisorus and Marginopora are common down to 30 m, whereas Parasorites is restricted to deeper parts of the reef slope. Alveolinella can be found in the upper 40 m of the reef slope. 2. Families with hyaline test walls, adjusted for light penetration: amphisteginids inhabit the whole photic zone, demonstrating a correlation of test flattening with increasing depth. Calcarinids cling with their spines to firm substrates such as algal thalli or macroids. Baculogypsina is restricted to high energetic regions on the reef flat. Calcarina inhabits similar environments, extending its distribution range within fore reefs down to 80 m. Baculogypsinoides is a dominant calcarinid genus from 30 to 70 m depth. Within nummulitids, Heterostegina prefers hard substrates on the reef slope, while Assilina (= Operculina) is frequent in deeper parts and is independent of substrates. Sandy bottoms from 30 to 60 m are inhabited by the last living representative of the genus Nummulites, N. venosus. The giant foraminifer Cycloclypeus, with test sizes up to 7 cm, is restricted to fore reef areas below 50 m down to the base of the photic zone.
Reduced Petal Size and Color Associated with Transitions from Outcrossing to Selfing in Camissoniopsis Cheiranthifolia (Onagraceae)

Floral traits used to attract and reward pollinators should become vestigial during the evolution of self-fertilization from outcrossing due to the reduced fitness benefits of investing in pollinator attraction. However, few traits have been studied, and covariation with outcrossing is rarely evaluated using genetic estimates of the mating system. We examined covariation between petal size and color and genetic estimates of outcrossing among populations of the yellow-flowered, bee-pollinated Camissoniopsis cheiranthifolia that exhibit striking variation in the mating system. We measured brightness, chroma, and hue, using a spectrophotometer, and petal size, using image analysis for flowers sampled in the field from 25 populations across the species’ geographic range. Petals were brighter with higher chroma and lower hue (less red) in large-flowered populations than in small-flowered populations. Petal size, brightness, and chroma also correlated positively with the proportion of seeds outcrossed estimated from marker-gene analysis for a subsample of 11 populations. Parallel changes in petal size and color in selfing populations from two climatically different regions plus the maintenance of differences in flower size and color between large- and small-flowered populations when grown in a common glasshouse environment suggests genetic differentiation in these traits associated with mating system evolution.
Characterization of a new scintillation imaging system for proton pencil beam dose rate measurements

The goal of this work was to create a technique that could measure all possible spatial and temporal delivery rates used in pencil-beam scanning (PBS) proton therapy. The proposed system used a fast scintillation screen for full-field imaging to resolve temporal and spatial patterns as it was delivered. A fast intensified CMOS camera used continuous mode with 10 ms temporal frame rate and 1 × 1 mm2 spatial resolution, imaging a scintillation screen during clinical proton PBS delivery. PBS plans with varying dose, dose rate, energy, field size, and spot-spacing were generated, delivered and imaged. The captured images were post processed to provide dose and dose rate values after background subtraction, perspective transformation, uniformity correction for the camera and the scintillation screen, and calibration into dose. The linearity in scintillation response with respect to varying dose rate, dose, and field size was within 2%. The quenching corrected response with varying energy was also within 2%. Large spatio-temporal variations in dose rate were observed, even for plans delivered with similar dose distributions. Dose and dose rate histograms and maximum dose rate maps were generated for quantitative evaluations. With the fastest PBS delivery on a clinical system, dose rates up to 26.0 Gy s−1 were resolved. The scintillation imaging technique was able to quantify proton PBS dose rate profiles with spot weight as low as 2 MU, with spot-spacing of 2.5 mm, having a 1 × 1 mm2 spatial resolution. These dose rate temporal profiles, spatial maps, and cumulative dose rate histograms provide useful metrics for the potential evaluation and optimization of dose rate in treatment plans.
Butterfly spatial distribution and habitat requirements in a tropical forest: impacts of selective logging

Summary 1. Spatial distribution, abundance and habitat requirements of Ragadia makuta (Satyrinae) were studied in Sabah (Borneo) in 1997, in unlogged forest and forest that had been selectively logged 8–9 years ago. 2. Measurement of vegetation structure showed that unlogged forest had significantly larger trees and greater canopy cover than logged forest. A principal components analysis extracted two factors related to forest density and tree size that were also significantly higher in unlogged forest. However, there was significant spatial heterogeneity in vegetation structure within logged forest. 3. In undisturbed forest, a logistic regression model identified suitable habitat for R. makuta as areas of less dense forest close to streams. There were no differences between logged and unlogged habitats in spatial distribution and abundance of R. makuta. Availability of suitable habitat and habitat requirements of butterflies also did not differ between habitats. There was, however, significant heterogeneity in butterfly abundance within logged forest, corresponding with availability of suitable habitat. 4. Fieldwork in 1997 coincided with a severe drought on Borneo, and butterfly spatial distribution and abundance were significantly reduced compared with a year of more normal rainfall (1996); populations in 1997 contracted to areas around streams and to areas with high cover of host-plant. 5. Selectively logged areas can be highly heterogeneous in relation to levels of disturbance. Quantifying the effects of selective logging on forest structure and the availability of suitable habitat was crucial to understanding the responses of R. makuta to habitat disturbance.
Nonpharmacological treatment approach in trichotillomania (hair‐pulling disorder)

Trichotillomania (TTM) is a fairly common psychodermatological disorder. This is characterized by recurrent urges to pull hair from hair‐containing parts of the body and produces bald patches on scalp. Besides scalp, eye lashes, eyebrows, and pubic area may be involved. Clinically two types are recognized, the automatic and focused types. Currently, this is classified into obsessive‐ and compulsive‐related disorder. Most common psychiatric manifestations include anxiety, depression, and low self‐esteem. It has bimodal distribution in children and adolescents and adults. No recognized treatment is available. Pharmacological treatment is based on limited trials and case reports. Psychotherapies are mainstay of treatment. This review mainly focuses on evidence‐based psychotherapeutic techniques used in the treatment of TTM.
Isolation and inheritance of microsatellite loci for the oily bittering (Acheilognathus koreensis): applications for analysis of genetic diversity of wild populations

Abstract The oily bittering Acheilognathus koreensis is a freshwater species that is endemic to Korea and is experiencing severe declines in natural populations as a result of habitat fragmentation and water pollution. For the conservation and restoration of this species, it is necessary to assess its genetic diversity at the population level. We developed 13 polymorphic microsatellite loci that were used to analyze the genetic diversity of two populations collected from the Kum River and the Tamjin River in Korea. All loci exhibited Mendelian inheritance patterns when examined in controlled crosses. Both populations revealed high levels of variability, with the number of alleles ranging from 3 to 20 and observed and expected heterozygosities ranging from 0.500 to 0.969 and from 0.529 to 0.938, respectively. None of the loci showed significant deviation from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium, and one pair of loci showed significant linkage disequilibrium after Bonferroni correction. Pairwise F ST and genetic distance estimation showed significant differences between two populations. These results suggest that the microsatellites developed herein can be used to study the genetic diversity, population structure and conservation measure of A. koreensis.
Targeting macrophage checkpoint inhibitor SIRPa for anticancer therapy.

The SIRPα-CD47 interaction provides a macrophage immune checkpoint pathway that plays a critical role in cancer immune evasion across multiple cancers. Here, we report the engineering of a humanized anti-SIRPα monoclonal antibody (1H9) for antibody target cancer therapy. 1H9 has broad activity across a wide range of SIRPα variants. Binding of 1H9 to SIRPα blocks its interaction with CD47, thereby promoting macrophage-mediated phagocytosis of cancer cells. Pre-clinical studies in vitro and in vivo demonstrate that 1H9 synergizes with other therapeutic antibodies to promote phagocytosis of tumor cells and inhibit tumor growth in both syngeneic and xenograft tumor models, leading to survival benefit. Thus, 1H9 can potentially act as a universal agent to enhance therapeutic efficacy when used in combination with most tumor-targeting antibodies. We report for the first time, a comparison of anti-SIRPα and anti-CD47 antibodies in CD47/SIRPα double humanized mice, and found that 1H9 exhibits a substantially reduced antigen-sink effect due to the limited tissue distribution of SIRPα expression. Toxicokinetic studies in non-human primates show that 1H9 is well tolerated with no treatment-related adverse effects noted. These data highlight the clinical potential of 1H9 as a pan-therapeutic with the desired properties when used in combination with tumor-targeting antibodies.
Influence of different extraction conditions on the detection of glycinin and β-conglycinin in model processed foods by ELISA

ABSTRACT The presence of undeclared soy proteins in food can cause severe reactions in soy allergic individuals. The extraction of target proteins from processed foods is a crucial step in allergen detection by immunoassays, as only successfully extracted target proteins can be detected by the specific antibodies. The effectiveness was studied of different conditions (type of buffer, temperature and time of incubation) on the extraction of total protein, and concentration of glycinin and β-conglycinin from different food matrices. The yields were determined using a soy protein isolate and three processed foods (sausage, bread and pâté) incurred with soy proteins. The yields were affected by the processing of analysed products and the composition and pH of the extraction buffers. Neutral and alkaline buffers (pH from 7.4 to 10.6) exhibited good protein extraction capacity and detectability of the specific target proteins. Denaturing additives and highly alkaline buffer (pH 12) extracted more crude protein but they were incompatible with the ELISA assay. Overall, the best results were obtained using phosphate (pH 7.4) and Tris/HCl (pH 8.5) buffers in the presence of 0.5 M NaCl. Crude protein yield of food extracts did not correlate with that of glycinin and β-conglycinin, whereas a good relationship was found between the yields of the two proteins. Graphical Abstract
Multi-to-binary network (MTBNet) for automated multi-organ segmentation on multi-sequence abdominal MRI images

Fully convolutional neural network (FCN) has achieved great success in semantic segmentation. However, the performance of the FCN is generally compromised for multi-object segmentation. Multi-organ segmentation is very common while challenging in the field of medical image analysis, where organs largely vary with scales. Different organs are often treated equally in most segmentation networks, which is not quite optimal. In this work, we propose to divide a multi-organ segmentation task into multiple binary segmentation tasks by constructing a multi-to-binary network (MTBNet). The proposed MTBNet is based on the FCN for pixel-wise prediction. Moreover, we build a plug-and-play multi-to-binary block (MTB block) to adjust the influence of the feature maps from the backbone. This is achieved by parallelizing multiple branches with different convolutional layers and a probability gate (ProbGate). The ProbGate is set up for predicting whether the class exists, which is supervised clearly via an auxiliary loss without using any other inputs. More reasonable features are achieved by summing branches’ features multiplied by the probability from the accompanying ProbGate and fed into a decoder module for prediction. The proposed method is validated on a challenging task dataset of multi-organ segmentation in abdominal MRI. Compared to classic medical and other multi-scale segmentation methods, the proposed MTBNet improves the segmentation accuracy of small organs by adjusting features from different organs and reducing the chance of missing or misidentifying these organs.
Effect of a grazing ban on restoring the degraded alpine meadows of Northern Tibet, China

Banning of grazing is a widely used means of restoring degraded rangeland in China. However, little is known about the time required to restore degraded alpine meadows through the use of a grazing ban. Height and cover of individual plant species and total cover, herbage mass and root mass of each plot of a grazing ban and communal free-grazing alpine meadows in Northern Tibet were examined. Soil samples were also collected and total organic carbon, microbial biomass carbon, total phosphorus and ammonium nitrogen contents were measured. The results showed that both the level of plant species diversity and herbage mass were higher in areas of a grazing ban than in communal free-grazing land without a grazing ban. No significant differences in root mass and soil nutrient contents were observed. There was a higher plant species diversity and herbage mass in the early years of a grazing ban but there was a subsequent decline. It is suggested that some grazing after a grazing ban may be necessary according to the dynamics of ecosystem responses with time.
Effects of Montmorency Tart Cherry Juice Consumption on Cardiometabolic Biomarkers in Adults with Metabolic Syndrome: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial.

Greater than one-third of adults in the United States have metabolic syndrome (MetS), a cluster of risk factors highly associated with the development of cardiovascular diseases. Premature vascular dysfunction in MetS may lead to accelerated age-related atherogenesis and arterial stiffening, thereby increasing cardiovascular risk. Montmorency tart cherries (Prunus cerasus L.) are rich in bioactive compounds, such as anthocyanins, known to exert cardiovascular protective effects. Previous research suggests that tart cherry juice consumption may improve cardiovascular health. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of daily consumption of tart cherry juice on hemodynamics, arterial stiffness, and blood biomarkers of cardiovascular and metabolic health in men and women with MetS. In a randomized, single-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-arm pilot clinical trial, 19 men and women 20 to 60 years of age with MetS consumed 240 mL of tart cherry juice (Tart Cherry; n = 5 males, 4 females) or an isocaloric placebo-control drink (Control; n = 5 males, 5 females) twice daily for 12 weeks. Arterial stiffness (pulse wave velocity), brachial and aortic blood pressures, wave reflection (augmentation index), and blood biomarkers of cardiovascular and metabolic health were assessed at baseline and 6 and 12 weeks. Oxidized low-density lipoprotein and soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 were significantly lower (P = .047 and P = .036, respectively) in Tart Cherry than Control at 12 weeks, but were not significantly lower than baseline values. There was a trend for total cholesterol to be lower (P = .08) in Tart Cherry than Control at 12 weeks. No significant changes were observed in hemodynamics, arterial stiffness, or other blood biomarkers assessed. These results suggest that daily tart cherry consumption may attenuate processes involved in accelerated atherogenesis without affecting hemodynamics or arterial stiffness parameters in this population. The pilot nature of this study warrants interpreting these findings with caution, and future clinical trials with a larger sample size are needed to confirm these findings.