Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regulation of IGF1R by MicroRNA-15b Contributes to the Anticancer Effects of Calorie Restriction in a Murine C3-TAg Model of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

Simple Summary Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide. The risk of developing postmenopausal breast cancer is exacerbated by obesity (BMI > 30 kg/m2), and growing evidence suggests that obesity increases the risk of developing triple-negative breast cancer. Calorie restriction (CR), a reduction of calorie intake by 20–40% without causing malnutrition, is associated with decreasing an individual’s risk of developing cancer, enhancing the responses to cancer treatment, and reducing the risk of breast cancer recurrence. The negative impact of CR on breast cancer growth may result from lowering bioavailable levels of IGF1. In this study, we suggest that CR’s antitumor effects are partly mediated by the upregulation of miR-15b, which downregulates IGF1R and other target genes involved in cell cycle control. Our findings suggest that miR-15b could mediate CR’s regulation of IGF1/IGF1R signaling that contributes to the anticancer properties of this dietary intervention. Abstract Calorie restriction (CR) inhibits triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) progression in several preclinical models in association with decreased insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) signaling. To investigate the impact of CR on microRNAs (miRs) that target the IGF1/IGF1R pathway, we used the spontaneous murine model of TNBC, C3(1)/SV40 T-antigen (C3-TAg). In C3-TAg mice, CR reduced body weight, IGF1 levels, and TNBC progression. We evaluated the tumoral expression of 10 miRs. CR increased the expression of miR-199a-3p, miR-199a-5p, miR-486, and miR-15b. However, only miR-15b expression correlated with tumorigenicity in the M28, M6, and M6C C3-TAg cell lines of TNBC progression. Overexpressing miR-15b reduced the proliferation of mouse (M6) and human (MDA-MB-231) cell lines. Serum restriction alone or in combination with low levels of recombinant IGF1 significantly upregulated miR-15b expression and reduced Igf1r in M6 cells. These effects were reversed by the pharmacological inhibition of IGFR with BMS754807. In silico analysis using miR web tools predicted that miR-15b targets genes associated with IGF1/mTOR pathways and the cell cycle. Our findings suggest that CR in association with reduced IGF1 levels could upregulate miR-15b to downregulate Igf1r and contribute to the anticancer effects of CR. Thus, miR-15b may be a therapeutic target for mimicking the beneficial effects of CR against TNBC.
Development of Great Lakes algorithms for the Nimbus-G coastal zone color scanner

A series of experiments in the Great Lakes designed to evaluate the application of the Nimbus G satellite Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) were conducted. Absorption and scattering measurement data were reduced to obtain a preliminary optical model for the Great Lakes. Available optical models were used in turn to calculate subsurface reflectances for expected concentrations of chlorophyll-a pigment and suspended minerals. Multiple nonlinear regression techniques were used to derive CZCS water quality prediction equations from Great Lakes simulation data. An existing atmospheric model was combined with a water model to provide the necessary simulation data for evaluation of the preliminary CZCS algorithms. A CZCS scanner model was developed which accounts for image distorting scanner and satellite motions. This model was used in turn to generate mapping polynomials that define the transformation from the original image to one configured in a polyconic projection. Four computer programs (FORTRAN IV) for image transformation are presented.
Mapping of Amery Ice Shelf, Antarctica, Surface Features by Satellite Altimetry

Ice shelves are important regions to observe because they are likely to be sensitive indicators of climatic change. The satellite-borne radar altimetry is highly suited to ice-shelf monitoring; experience with Seasat, which flew in 1978, has demonstrated that a height-measurement precision of the order of 1 m can be obtained over ice surfaces (Brooks and Others 1983). We identify subtle changes in altimeter wave forms associated with crevassed zones and the grounding line. Normal retracking procedures are shown to be inadequate in detecting such changes, and so methods which provide sensitive indication of the presence of these features in the sampled areas are devised. By ranging to the first return in the echo, the grounding line is identified, and by differencing this measurement with the half-peak power range, a measure of surface roughness is obtained which can be used to detect crevassed zones. Detection of crevassed shear zones allows delimitation of distinct zones of flow in the ice shelf which can be monitored by future altimeter missions. Monitoring of the grounding-line position can provide sensitive indication of mass-balance conditions over the grounded part of the drainage basin.
The effect of COVID-19 anxiety and awareness on smoking urges: the moderator effect of demographic factors

ABSTRACT Objective This study aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19 awareness and COVID-19 anxiety on smoking urges, while considering the potential moderating effects of socio-demographic factors. Methods A cross-sectional analysis was conducted to assess the relationships between COVID-19 awareness, COVID-19 anxiety, and smoking urges. The study also explored how factors such as age, income level, and chronic disease might moderate these relationships. Statistical analysis included regression modeling to determine the strength and significance of the associations. Results The findings indicate that COVID-19 anxiety has a negative impact on smoking urges at a low level (β = -0.135; p < 0.01), while COVID-19 awareness moderately and negatively influences smoking urges (β = -0.558; p < 0.001). Furthermore, the study identified that age, income level, and chronic disease act as moderators in the relationship between COVID-19 anxiety, COVID-19 awareness, and smoking urges. Specifically, the effects of COVID-19 anxiety and awareness on smoking urges are amplified among individuals who are older, have a higher income, and experience chronic illness. Conclusion The study highlights the significance of COVID-19 awareness in reducing smoking urges among individuals. It also emphasizes that while COVID-19 anxiety diminishes smoking urges to a certain extent, it might paradoxically trigger stress-related smoking behaviors. Importantly, the impact of both awareness and anxiety on smoking urges is more pronounced in individuals who are older, have a higher income, and suffer from chronic diseases. These findings underscore the complex interplay between psychological factors, awareness, and socio-demographic characteristics in influencing smoking behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Global aging and challenges to families

The recent explosion in population ageing across the globe represents one of the most remarkable demographic changes in human history. Population ageing will profoundly affect families. Who will care for the growing numbers of tomorrows very old members of societies? Will it be state governments? The aged themselves? Their families? The purpose of this book is to examine consequences of global aging for families and intergenerational support, and for nations as they plan for the future.
The Drivers of Innovation at Universities: A Case of South African Universities

Purpose: The study is aimed to contribute to an understanding of the drivers of innovation that lead to practical solutions at South African Universities. Theoretical Framework: This article borrows from both Institutional Theory and organizational Theory’s perspectives on innovation. Those theories are crucial in exploring the views of employees and leaders on what they deemed to be drivers of innovation at their respective universities with the view to suggest a sustainable conceptual model for public universities’ innovativeness. Design/methodology/approach: A mixed method approach was adopted, entailing an online survey and semi-structured interviews, to explore innovation from both an employee's and senior leaders' perspective. The population for the study included employees from two Universities, and random sampling and purposive sampling were applied respectively, for the survey and semi-structured interviews. Survey data were analysed using SPSS and semi-structured interviews data were analysed using Nvivo 12. Results: Several drivers for innovation were found, including the need to respond to societal challenges, the drive for collaborative knowledge exchange, global rankings, individual employee drive, a nurturing environment, leadership, students, and government. Research, Practical & Social implications: Careful reflections must be entered into by all relevant internal and external stakeholders (see figure 1) so that Universities can define the scope of innovation they wish to pursue based on their resources and contexts since Universities differ. Originality/value: The original contribution to knowledge of this study lies in the suggested conceptual model for South African universities as they position themselves to innovatively address local and global socio-economic challenges.
THE IDENTIFICATION AND PRIORITIZATION OF SUCCESS FACTORS FOR ONLINE EGYPTIAN FASHION RETAILERS USING THE ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS

The rapid changes in the behavior of Egyptian online consumers, influenced by the increasing adoption of e-commerce since the COVID-19 pandemic, especially shopping for apparel online, have made it essential for online fashion retailers to identify criteria that are crucial for their growth. This research attempts to discover the main factors and sub-factors that influence consumers' preference for online fashion e-stores. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methodology was used to determine the criteria along with their weights and priorities. The study began by conducting a thorough literature review in electronic retail to identify the significant elements (keys) mentioned in earlier studies. Based on these studies, as well as input from Egyptian experts in the online fashion field, five main factors, and twenty sub-factors were identified. The AHP results revealed that "website design" is the most influential factor on consumers, particularly in terms of navigation and responsiveness. Website facilities ranked second in priority, with multi-payment methods and search engine as sub-factors. The third most important factor was post-order services, including order tracking and customer support. These results provide significant insights that can be utilized by online fashion retailers to improve their e-store performance by effectively managing their resources based on the relative importance of these factors. Additionally, the findings contribute to the existing literature on factors that influence online consumer preferences, which is limited, particularly in the online fashion field in Egypt.
Seeding African Forest and Landscape Restoration: Evaluating Native Tree Seed Systems in Four African Countries

Commitments to Forest and Landscape Restoration are rapidly growing and being implemented globally to tackle the climate and biodiversity crises. Restoration initiatives largely based on tree planting necessitate an increased supply of high-quality and suitably adapted tree planting material. We evaluated the native tree seed supply systems in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, and Kenya, four countries with large commitments to increase tree cover. We applied an established indicator framework to assess the adequacy of any current tree seed system to meet national needs. The study aimed to analyse (i) how well-established the native tree seed supply systems are, (ii) how public and non-public actors differ regarding the perception of existing seed systems, and (iii) the main barriers to strengthening current seed systems. Our findings identified significant gaps in the native tree seed supply systems of the four countries, arising particularly from shortfalls in the enabling environment. We found a lack of involvement of local community members in the seed systems, with a crucial need for strengthening policy, capacity building and investment in seed systems. We propose a multi-stakeholder approach and the application of online tools to improve seed systems to meet the demand for high-quality native tree seeds.
Polarized Image Translation From Nonpolarized Cameras for Multimodal Face Anti-Spoofing

In face antispoofing, it is desirable to have multimodal images to demonstrate liveness cues from various perspectives. However, in most face recognition scenarios, only a single modality, namely visible lighting (VIS) facial images is available. This paper first investigates the possibility of generating polarized (Polar) images from VIS cameras without changing the existing recognition devices to improve the accuracy and robustness of Presentation Attack Detection (PAD) in face biometrics. A novel multimodal face antispoofing framework is proposed based on the machine-learning relationship between VIS and Polar images of genuine faces. Specifically, a dual-modal central differential convolutional network (CDCN) is developed to capture the inherent spoofing features between the VIS and the generated Polar modalities. Quantitative and qualitative experimental results show that our proposed framework not only generates realistic Polar face images but also improves the state-of-the-art face anti-spoofing results on the VIS modal database (i.e. CASIA-SURF). Moreover, a polar face database, CASIA-Polar, has been constructed and will be shared with the public at https://biometrics.idealtest. org to inspire future applications within the biometric anti-spoofing field.
Evaluation of the Effects of Radiation Therapy on Muscle Contractibility and Skin Healing: An Experimental Study of the Cancer Treatment Implications

Background: Radiotherapy can affect healthy cells, resulting in side effects. This study aimed to assess the impact of radiotherapy on soft tissue in surgical wounds in rats. Methods: The animals were divided into four groups: control (S) group without irradiation, immediate irradiation (S-IIr) group receiving irradiation right after surgery, late irradiation (S-LIr) group receiving irradiation four weeks after surgery, and early irradiation (Ir-S) group receiving irradiation before surgery. The irradiated groups underwent two fractional stages of 15 Gy. Muscle contractibility (EMG) was evaluated at two different time points, and after 2 and 7 weeks, the animals were euthanized for histological analysis of the muscles and skin. Results: There was no significant difference between the EMG1 and EMG2 values of the S and S-LIr groups, but both S-IIr and Ir-S groups exhibited a statistically significant difference. The S group demonstrated a larger diameter of muscle fiber compared to other groups, showing a significant difference. In terms of skin analysis, the S-IIr group had the least inflammatory infiltrate and the highest amount of red fibers, differing significantly from the other groups. Conclusions: Regardless of the duration, radiotherapy was found to have effects on the surrounding soft tissues, as concluded by this study.
Firm performance in sub-Saharan Africa: What role do electricity shortages play?

Abstract Electricity outages affect the performance of firms in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) through a reduction in production capacity and over-reliance on backup generators, which raises the cost of production and render them uncompetitive. Based on this, we estimated the joint effect of electricity outage frequency and duration of outages on the performance of firms in SSA through the method of instrumental variable (IV). Employing firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey for 28 SSA countries from 2007 to 2018, the study found a unit increase in outage frequency and its duration combine to reduce yearly sales of firms in SSA by $114.9. Also, the study revealed that small-size firms in SSA incur $408.894 losses relative to large firms for every joint increase in outage frequency and outage duration largely because they cannot cope with electricity outages. Since electricity shortages persist in SSA, mitigation policies must target small firms as they are the worst affected by electricity outages.
Virtually Accompanied Eating in the Outpatient Therapy of Anorexia Nervosa

Background: Normalizing the eating pattern and weight recovery are the main objectives in treating anorexia nervosa (AN). Eating accompaniment through shared mealtimes is a common strategy in eating disorder management programs. This study aims to examine the impact on weight gain of an internet-delivered meal support group on patients with AN who were under ambulatory treatment with the Eating Disorders Unit of the UC Christus Health Network, Chile. Methods: An observational study of 54 female patients with AN diagnosis who participated in Online Meal Support Groups (OMSGs) three times a week was performed. Their weight, BMI and BMI%, was reviewed at the beginning of the sessions and at 45- and 90-day follow-up. Results: Patients showed significant weight gain during follow-up. At the 90-day follow-up, patients had gained 4.41 (SD ± 2.82) kg with an effect size of −1.563. Conclusions: Statistically significant differences were found between the weight at the beginning of the intervention and at the 45- and 90-day follow-up, meaning that eating support online groups may be an effective intervention for weight gain and maintenance in patients with AN. These findings highlight the viability of developing cost-effective and more accessible interventions for AN and thus help reduce the duration of untreated disease and its consequences.
Risk Factors for Lower Extremity Amputation in Patients with End-Stage Kidney Disease: A Nationwide Cohort Study

Individuals with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) on dialysis are at a high risk of developing foot ulcerations and undergoing subsequent lower extremity amputation (LEA), which can exert significant impacts on their quality of life and contribute to rising healthcare costs. We aimed to identify risk factors associated with LEA in patients with ESKD to predict LEA progression and eventually prevent it. We used 18 years (2002–2019) of data from the Korean National Health Insurance Service (KNHIS). Data were collected from patients with ESKD who underwent renal replacement therapy (RRT) and had no history of amputation caused by trauma or toxins. The risk factors were compared between patients with or without LEA. We collected data from 220,838 patients newly diagnosed with ESKD, including 6348 in the LEA group and 214,490 in the non-LEA group. The total incidence of LEA was 2.9%. Older age, male gender, lower income, non-metropolitan residence, diabetes mellitus, dialysis treatment (compared to kidney transplantation), microvascular disease, peripheral vascular disease, endovascular procedure, and endovascular operation were associated with an increased risk of LEA. Thus, individuals with ESKD who are at a higher risk for LEA should be closely monitored, and kidney transplantation should be considered as a preventative measure.
Digital Twin-Driven Collaborative Scheduling for Heterogeneous Task and Edge-End Resource via Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning

With the interdisciplinary advances of mobile communication and edge computing, massive heterogeneous tasks are accessing wireless networks and competing for the edge-end computing and communication resources. Digital twin (DT), which establishes the digital models of physical objects for simulation, analysis and optimization, provides a promising method for network scheduling and management. This paper proposes a DT-driven edge-end collaborative scheduling algorithm for heterogeneous tasks and heterogeneous computing/communication resources. Specifically, multiple end devices (EDs) cooperate with each other to accomplish a complex job, where each ED can offload individual task to multiple edge servers (ESs) for parallel computing. By fully considering deadline requirements of heterogeneous tasks, maximum computing capabilities of ESs and EDs, computing resource estimation deviations of DT, maximum transmit powers of EDs and tolerable peak interference powers to coexisting EDs, we formulate a job completion time minimization problem to jointly optimize the edge-end task division, transmit power control, computing resource type matching and allocation. To solve this non-convex problem, we first reformulate it by multi-agent Markov decision process, where a compound reward leveraging latency reward and deadline reward according to the task criticality is designed. Then, we propose a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning-based scheduling algorithm, where Actor-Critic framework with estimation and target networks is designed for policy and value iterations. Meanwhile, a step-by-step $\epsilon $ -greedy algorithm is proposed to balance exploration and exploitation, avoiding local optimal trap. Through offline centralized training by DT and online distributed execution by EDs, we realize edge-end collaborative computing for heterogeneous tasks. Experimental results demonstrate that, comparing with typical benchmark algorithms, the proposed algorithm converges with the highest reward and achieves the smallest job completion time, where the deadlines of heterogeneous tasks can be well satisfied respectively.
Prognostic value of platelet combined with serum procalcitonin in patients with sepsis

Sepsis, a common and life-threatening condition in critically ill patients, is a leading cause of death in intensive care units. Over the past few decades, there has been significant improvement in the understanding and management of sepsis. However, the mortality rate remains unacceptably high, posing a prominent challenge in modern medicine and a significant global disease burden. A total of 295 patients with sepsis admitted to the hospital from January 2021 to December 2022 were collected and divided into survival group and death group according to their 28-day survival status. The differences in general clinical data and laboratory indicators between the 2 groups were compared. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was used to evaluate the predictive value of platelet (PLT) and procalcitonin (PCT) for the prognosis of sepsis patients within 28 days. A total of 295 patients were diagnosed with sepsis, and 79 died, with a mortality rate of 26.78%. The PLT level in the death group was lower than that in the survival group; the PCT level in the death group was higher than that in the survival group. The receiver operating characteristic curve showed that the area under the curve of PCT and PLT for evaluating the prognosis of sepsis patients were 0.808 and 0.804, respectively. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis showed that the 28-day survival rate of the low PLT level group was 19.0% and that of the high PLT level group was 93.1% at the node of 214.97 × 109/L, and the difference between the 2 groups was statistically significant (χ2 = 216.538, P < .001). The 28-day survival rate of the low PCT level group was 93.4% and that of the high PCT level group was 51.7% at the node of 2.85 ng/mL, and the difference between the 2 groups was statistically significant (χ2 = 63.437, P < .001). There was a negative correlation between PCT level and PLT level (r = −0.412, P < .001). Platelet combined with serum procalcitonin detection has high predictive value for judging the 28-day prognosis of sepsis, and it can be used as an index for evaluating the patient’s condition and prognosis, and is worthy of clinical promotion and application.