Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
OP-EUJC220162 1..8

OBJECTIVES: Surgery of ascending aortic aneurysms is performed prophylactically or acute. The expected survival after surgery is uncertain. The goal of this study was to compare mortality in people with aortic surgery with matched controls. METHODS: All patients undergoing ascending aortic surgery at Umeå University Hospital from 1988 to 2012, who previously participated in 1 of 3 population-based health surveys, were matched to 2 randomly selected controls from the same health survey and followed until death or until censoring on 24 August 2017, whichever came first. Mortality was calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method and the logrank test. Cox regression analyses were made for all-cause mortality, adjusted for traditional cardiovascular risk factors. Deaths during the first 90 days after surgery and at >90 days postoperatively were studied separately. RESULTS: The median follow-up time was 9.2 years. A total of 61 of 189 patients and 51 of 370 controls died [hazard ratio (HR) 2.77, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.91–4.01]. Mortality was increased during the first 90 days post-surgery (HR 43.4, 95% CI 5.83–323), as well as after the first 90 days (HR 1.90, 95% CI 1.25–2.88) and after acute surgery (HR 6.05, 95% CI 2.92–12.56) as well as after elective surgery (HR 2.10, 95% CI 1.35–3.27). Among 57 surgical patients with information about cause of death, 23 (40%) died of aortic disease. C O N V EN TI O N A L A O R TI C
Meta-analysis of the effectiveness of educational interventions on dental and oral health promotion in Iran

INTRODUCTION: Dental and oral health is a core component of general health and well-being. Few aspects of health are as accessible to personal control as oral hygiene which can be improved by simple behavioral changes. In recent years, dentists in the field of oral and dental health improvement have been research doing for measurement of validity and efficiency of available educational interventions. In this regard, meta-analysis integrates the results of different studies then determines the effect size of educational interventions. This study seeks to investigate the effective educational interventions on improving oral and dental health improvement in Iran by following the meta-analysis model. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present research was a meta-analysis study. This research by using the technique of meta-analysis to integrate the results of different studies, to determine the effect size of an educational intervention on improving oral and dental health improvement in Iran. Seventeen studies accepted in methodology were collected in Iran during 2001–2018, and analyzed through meta-analysis. The research tool was meta-analysis checklist. Effect size for each study was manually calculated. RESULTS: The study findings showed that the rate of the effect size of educational intervention on Improving Oral and Dental Health Improvement in Iran was 0.62 (P ≤ 0.008) which according to Cohen's table was intermediate. CONCLUSION: Findings of this meta-analysis support of the effectiveness of educational interventions on improving oral and dental health improvement in Iran. It seems that the educational interventions on improving dental and oral health can be used as a method for improving oral and dental health in Iran.
Recognizing Actions of Distracted Drivers using Inception v3 and Xception Convolutional Neural Networks

In recent years, Deep Convolutional Neural Networks have shown remarkable success in image classification tasks. In our research, we compare the performance of two competing DCNN architectures, viz. Inception v3 and Xception, and use them to recognize ten unique actions of the drivers in the Kaggle’s State Farm Distracted Driver Detection challenge. We discuss the performance of both architectures in detail (in terms of loss, accuracy and Kaggle test set scores) under two different weight initialization schemes, i.e. random initialization and transfer learning using ImageNet weights, with the training set split on drivers. Additionally, for comparison, we also used a randomly split training set and trained the models using ImageNet weights. By splitting training dataset on drivers, we find that high top-1 validation accuracy of 85.4% is achieved by training the Xception architecture using transfer learning with ImageNet initialized weights. This accuracy is further increased to 99.3% for the same Xception architecture scheme, when we split training data randomly instead of splitting it on subjects. Our best trained model utilizing the Xception architecture with ImageNet initialized weights ranks at 325th position (out of 1440 entries) on Kaggle’s Private Leaderboard with a remarkable test loss of 0.51285.
OP-EUJC220179 1..7

OBJECTIVES: The adoption of robot-assisted thoracic surgery (RATS) has helped to overcome some of the challenges associated with surgeons performing conventional video-assisted thoracic surgery. The Versius Surgical System (CMR Surgical, Cambridge, UK) has been developed iteratively in line with surgical team feedback to improve the surgeon’s experience and patient outcomes. The goal of this study was to assess the use of the device in RATS in a preclinical setting and to fulfil Idea, Development, Exploration, Assessment, Long-Term Follow Up–Devices stage 1 (Idea). Meeting Presentation: N/A Trial registration: N/A TH O R A C IC VC The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery 2022, 62(3), ezac178 ORIGINAL ARTICLE https://doi.org/10.1093/ejcts/ezac178 Advance Access publication 12 April 2022 METHODS: Four cadaveric sessions were conducted between November 2018 and December 2020, during which device performance in a range of thoracic operations was assessed. Procedures were categorized as either completed or not completed, and surgeons evaluated the device’s ability to successfully complete necessary surgical steps. Port and bedside unit positions were recorded. RESULTS: In total, 22/24 (91.7%) thoracic procedures were successfully completed, including 17/18 lobectomies, 2/3 thymectomies and 3/3 diaphragm plications, in 9 cadaver specimens. One thymectomy could not be completed due to cadaver anatomy and 1 lobectomy was not completed due a console system fault. Port and bedside unit configurations were successfully validated for all procedures, and lead surgeons deemed the device to be well-suited for thoracic surgery. CONCLUSIONS: This preclinical study demonstrated the successful use of the device in RATS in cadaveric models and supports progression to small-scale clinical studies, as part of Idea, Development, Exploration, Assessment, Long-Term Follow Up–Devices stage 2a (Development).
Excess mortality in Mountain Areas of Emilia Romagna Region during the first months of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: a “canary in the coal mine”?

Background. Because of their remoteness, Mountain Communities (MC) have been considered at advantage when dealing with infectious diseases. However, earlier reports have identified MC among the hotspots for early spreading of COVID-19 pandemic. Methods. Crude mortality rates (CMR) and Excess mortality rates (EMR) were calculated for 97 municipalities from MC in the Emilia Romagna Region (North-Eastern Italy), and resulting estimates were compared to the Parent Provinces. Notification and mortality rates for COVID-19 were also retrieved, and correlated with EMR estimates. Results. During 2020, a CMR of 150.3/100,000 (95% Confidence Interval [95%CI] 117-185.4) was identified, with substantial heterogeneities between the 8 provinces of Emilia Romagna Region that were included in the analyses. A pooled EMR of +20.3% (95%CI 10.6-30.1) for MC and 19.9% (95%CI 9.5-30.3) was identified. The monthly estimates were quite heterogenous across the various provinces, ranging between -79.7% and +307.4% during the assessed timeframe. Higher estimates were identified in the months of March and April in MC, and during the months of April and May for Parent Provinces. In bivariate analysis, EM in MC was loosely but positively correlated with estimates in the parent province (Spearman’s r = 0.201, p = 0.049), and also with notification rates for COVID- (i.e. Piacenza, Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna, Ravenna, Rimini, and Forlì Cesena) (r = 0.225, p = 0.045), and particularly with mortality rates for COVID-19 at provincial level (r = 0.372, p < 0.001). Conclusions. In summary, the study highlights that small geographical and population size, along with remoteness, did not play a substantial advantage for MC against the spread and mortality rate of COVID-19. On the other hand, as the surge of EM in MC anticipated a similar habit in Parent Provinces of several weeks, improved surveillance interventions are also urgently in need. (www.actabiomedica.it)
Clarifying the evidence for microbial‐ and plant‐derived soil organic matter, and the path toward a more quantitative understanding

Predicting and mitigating changes in soil carbon (C) stocks under global change requires a coherent understanding of the factors regulating soil organic matter (SOM) formation and persistence, including knowledge of the direct sources of SOM (plants vs. microbes). In recent years, conceptual models of SOM formation have emphasized the primacy of microbial‐derived organic matter inputs, proposing that microbial physiological traits (e.g., growth efficiency) are dominant controls on SOM quantity. However, recent quantitative studies have challenged this view, suggesting that plants make larger direct contributions to SOM than is currently recognized by this paradigm. In this review, we attempt to reconcile these perspectives by highlighting that variation across estimates of plant‐ versus microbial‐derived SOM may arise in part from methodological limitations. We show that all major methods used to estimate plant versus microbial contributions to SOM have substantial shortcomings, highlighting the uncertainty in our current quantitative estimates. We demonstrate that there is significant overlap in the chemical signatures of compounds produced by microbes, plant roots, and through the extracellular decomposition of plant litter, which introduces uncertainty into the use of common biomarkers for parsing plant‐ and microbial‐derived SOM, especially in the mineral‐associated organic matter (MAOM) fraction. Although the studies that we review have contributed to a deeper understanding of microbial contributions to SOM, limitations with current methods constrain quantitative estimates. In light of recent advances, we suggest that now is a critical time to re‐evaluate long‐standing methods, clearly define their limitations, and develop a strategic plan for improving the quantification of plant‐ and microbial‐derived SOM. From our synthesis, we outline key questions and challenges for future research on the mechanisms of SOM formation and stabilization from plant and microbial pathways.
Multiple hospital organisational factors are associated with adverse patient outcomes post-hip fracture in England and Wales: the REDUCE record-linkage cohort study

Abstract Objectives Despite established standards and guidelines, substantial variation remains in the delivery of hip fracture care across the United Kingdom. We aimed to determine which hospital-level organisational factors predict adverse patient outcomes in the months following hip fracture. Methods We examined a national record-linkage cohort of 178,757 patients aged ≥60 years who sustained a hip fracture in England and Wales in 2016–19. Patient-level hospital admissions datasets, National Hip Fracture Database and mortality data were linked to metrics from 18 hospital-level organisational-level audits and reports. Multilevel models identified organisational factors, independent of patient case-mix, associated with three patient outcomes: length of hospital stay (LOS), 30-day all-cause mortality and emergency 30-day readmission. Results Across hospitals mean LOS ranged from 12 to 41.9 days, mean 30-day mortality from 3.7 to 10.4% and mean readmission rates from 3.7 to 30.3%, overall means were 21.4 days, 7.3% and 15.3%, respectively. In all, 22 organisational factors were independently associated with LOS; e.g. a hospital’s ability to mobilise >90% of patients promptly after surgery predicted a 2-day shorter LOS (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.2–2.6). Ten organisational factors were independently associated with 30-day mortality; e.g. discussion of patient experience feedback at clinical governance meetings and provision of prompt surgery to >80% of patients were each associated with 10% lower mortality (95%CI: 5–15%). Nine organisational factors were independently associated with readmissions; e.g. readmissions were 17% lower if hospitals reported how soon community therapy would start after discharge (95%CI: 9–24%). Conclusions Receipt of hip fracture care should be reliable and equitable across the country. We have identified multiple, potentially modifiable, organisational factors associated with important patient outcomes following hip fracture.
How Do Women and Men Negotiate Sex in Later Life Relationships? A Qualitative Analysis of Data from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging

ABSTRACT Later life relationships and in particular the role of sex within them, have often been neglected in research due to assumptions of decline and sexlessness. We contribute to a growing body of work which counters these stereotypes by examining sexual scripts within the socio-cultural context of later life relationships. We analyzed open-text comments from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA) collected as part of a self-completion questionnaire. In Wave 6, 1065 participants (M age 67.5, SD 9.6 years) and in Wave 8, 922 participants (M age 69.1, SD 9.01 years) responded to an open-text box question. Across both waves, 38% of respondents were men and 62% were women. The analysis used a coding template developed from existing literature and adjusted to accommodate emerging topics. A gendered analysis of the interrelated topics of relationships, sex and sexuality resulted in themes which illustrate similarities and differences in how men and women negotiate sex in later life relationships. The findings confirm that sex remains integral to intimacy in later life relationships for many men and women. However, they also demonstrate that norms of age and gender interact to shape sex and relationship practices in later life. These norms limit some people’s experiences, for example, preventing them from seeking new relationships, as well as creating challenges for intimacy in partnerships. These findings extend the theoretical understanding of relationships and sex in later life.
Retraction: MicroRNA-424 Is Down-Regulated in Hepatocellular Carcinoma and Suppresses Cell Migration and Invasion through c-Myb

The corresponding author stated that their article [1] may be similar to others [2–6] because they believe their data may have been used by others without their knowledge or permission as it was not stored securely. They provided data files which do not resolve the concerns regarding similarities between the published articles [1–6]. The unresolved concerns call into question the validity and provenance of the reported results, and the adherence of this article to the PLOS Authorship policy. Therefore, the PLOS ONE Editors retract this article [1]. LZ did not agree with the retraction. All other authors either did not respond directly or could not be reached.
Association between use of systemic and inhaled glucocorticoids and changes in brain volume and white matter microstructure: a cross-sectional study using data from the UK Biobank

Objective To test the hypothesis that systemic and inhaled glucocorticoid use is associated with changes in grey matter volume (GMV) and white matter microstructure. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting UK Biobank, a prospective population-based cohort study of adults recruited in the UK between 2006 and 2010. Participants After exclusion based on neurological, psychiatric or endocrinological history, and use of psychotropic medication, 222 systemic glucocorticoid users, 557 inhaled glucocorticoid users and 24 106 controls with available T1 and diffusion MRI data were included. Main outcome measures Primary outcomes were differences in 22 volumetric and 14 diffusion imaging parameters between glucocorticoid users and controls, determined using linear regression analyses adjusted for potential confounders. Secondary outcomes included cognitive functioning (six tests) and emotional symptoms (four questions). Results Both systemic and inhaled glucocorticoid use were associated with reduced white matter integrity (lower fractional anisotropy (FA) and higher mean diffusivity (MD)) compared with controls, with larger effect sizes in systemic users (FA: adjusted mean difference (AMD)=−3.7e-3, 95% CI=−6.4e-3 to 1.0e-3; MD: AMD=7.2e-6, 95% CI=3.2e-6 to 1.1e-5) than inhaled users (FA: AMD=−2.3e-3, 95% CI=−4.0e-3 to −5.7e-4; MD: AMD=2.7e-6, 95% CI=1.7e-7 to 5.2e-6). Systemic use was also associated with larger caudate GMV (AMD=178.7 mm3, 95% CI=82.2 to 275.0), while inhaled users had smaller amygdala GMV (AMD=−23.9 mm3, 95% CI=−41.5 to −6.2) than controls. As for secondary outcomes, systemic users performed worse on the symbol digit substitution task (AMD=−0.17 SD, 95% CI=−0.34 to −0.01), and reported more depressive symptoms (OR=1.76, 95% CI=1.25 to 2.43), disinterest (OR=1.84, 95% CI=1.29 to 2.56), tenseness/restlessness (OR=1.78, 95% CI=1.29 to 2.41), and tiredness/lethargy (OR=1.90, 95% CI=1.45 to 2.50) compared with controls. Inhaled users only reported more tiredness/lethargy (OR=1.35, 95% CI=1.14 to 1.60). Conclusions Both systemic and inhaled glucocorticoid use are associated with decreased white matter integrity and limited changes in GMV. This association may contribute to the neuropsychiatric side effects of glucocorticoid medication, especially with chronic use.
Susceptibility to a sexually transmitted disease in a wild koala population shows heritable genetic variance but no inbreeding depression

The koala, one of the most iconic Australian wildlife species, is facing several concomitant threats that are driving population declines. Some threats are well known and have clear methods of prevention (e.g., habitat loss can be reduced with stronger land‐clearing control), whereas others are less easily addressed. One of the major current threats to koalas is chlamydial disease, which can have major impacts on individual survival and reproduction rates and can translate into population declines. Effective management strategies for the disease in the wild are currently lacking, and, to date, we know little about the determinants of individual susceptibility to disease. Here, we investigated the genetic basis of variation in susceptibility to chlamydia using one of the most intensively studied wild koala populations. We combined data from veterinary examinations, chlamydia testing, genetic sampling and movement monitoring. Out of our sample of 342 wild koalas, 60 were found to have chlamydia. Using genotype information on 5007 SNPs to investigate the role of genetic variation in determining disease status, we found no evidence of inbreeding depression, but a heritability of 0.11 (95% CI: 0.06–0.23) for the probability that koalas had chlamydia. Heritability of susceptibility to chlamydia could be relevant for future disease management, as it suggests adaptive potential for the population.
When codas trump onsets: an English-speaking child with atypical phonological development before and after intervention

ABSTRACT This case study presents an English-speaking preschooler with severely protracted phonological development (PPD) before and after two six-week blocks of intervention (36 sessions). Pre-treatment (3;8), he showed very low whole word, singleton consonant, vowel, and word shape matches. He had two major uncommon patterns: (1) higher accuracy for word-final consonants compared with word-initial (WI) and word-medial (WM); and (2) frequent substitution of onset consonants with glottals [h] or [ʔ]. Goals and treatment strategies were selected using a nonlinear phonological approach. Post-treatment, there was a notable decrease in frequency of glottal substitutions and concomitant increase in word shape, consonant, and vowel match. Pre- and post-treatment data are presented and discussed in terms of theoretical and clinical implications.
Dual Consistency Enabled Weakly and Semi-Supervised Optic Disc and Cup Segmentation With Dual Adaptive Graph Convolutional Networks

Glaucoma is a progressive eye disease that results in permanent vision loss, and the vertical cup to disc ratio (vCDR) in colour fundus images is essential in glaucoma screening and assessment. Previous fully supervised convolution neural networks segment the optic disc (OD) and optic cup (OC) from color fundus images and then calculate the vCDR offline. However, they rely on a large set of labeled masks for training, which is expensive and time-consuming to acquire. To address this, we propose a weakly and semi-supervised graph-based network that investigates geometric associations and domain knowledge between segmentation probability maps (PM), modified signed distance function representations (mSDF), and boundary region of interest characteristics (B-ROI) in three aspects. Firstly, we propose a novel Dual Adaptive Graph Convolutional Network (DAGCN) to reason the long-range features of the PM and the mSDF w.r. t. the regional uniformity. Secondly, we propose a dual consistency regularization-based semi-supervised learning paradigm. The regional consistency between the PM and the mSDF, and the marginal consistency between the derived B-ROI from each of them boost the proposed model’s performance due to the inherent geometric associations. Thirdly, we exploit the task-specific domain knowledge via the oval shapes of OD & OC, where a differentiable vCDR estimating layer is proposed. Furthermore, without additional annotations, the supervision on vCDR serves as weakly-supervisions for segmentation tasks. Experiments on six large-scale datasets demonstrate our model’s superior performance on OD & OC segmentation and vCDR estimation. The implementation code has been made available.https://github.com/smallmax00/Dual_Adaptive_Graph_Reasoning