Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation and intermittent theta‐burst stimulation improve deglutition and swallowing reproducibility in elderly patients with dysphagia

Dysphagia in the elderly, known as presbydysphagia, has become a relevant public health problem in several countries. Swallowing disorders may be a consequence of different neurological disorders (secondary presbydysphagia) or the expression of the aging process itself (primary presbydysphagia). We aimed to test the therapeutic potential of two different non‐invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques in subjects with primary or secondary presbydysphagia.
Leishmania dual‐specificity tyrosine‐regulated kinase 1 (DYRK1) is required for sustaining Leishmania stationary phase phenotype

Although the multiplicative and growth‐arrested states play key roles in Leishmania development, the regulators of these transitions are largely unknown. In an attempt to gain a better understanding of these processes, we characterised one member of a family of protein kinases with dual specificity, LinDYRK1, which acts as a stasis regulator in other organisms. LinDYRK1 overexpressing parasites displayed a decrease in proliferation and in cell cycle re‐entry of arrested cells. Parasites lacking LinDYRK1 displayed distinct fitness phenotypes in logarithmic and stationary growth phases. In logarithmic growth phase, LinDYRK1−/− parasites proliferated better than control lines, supporting a role of this kinase in stasis, while in stationary growth phase, LinDYRK1−/− parasites had important defects as they rounded up, accumulated vacuoles and lipid bodies and displayed subtle but consistent differences in lipid composition. Moreover, they expressed less metacyclic‐enriched transcripts, displayed increased sensitivity to complement lysis and a significant reduction in survival within peritoneal macrophages. The distinct LinDYRK1−/− growth phase phenotypes were mirrored by the distinct LinDYRK1 localisations in logarithmic (mainly in flagellar pocket area and endosomes) and late stationary phase (mitochondrion). Overall, this work provides first evidence for the role of a DYRK family member in sustaining promastigote stationary phase phenotype and infectivity.
Thiol–Disulfide Homeostasis and Serum Ischemia Modified Albumin Levels in Patients with Primary Open–Angle Glaucoma

ABSTRACT Aim: Glaucoma is an optic neuropathy causing progressive impairment of visual functions. We aimed to assess the alterations in thiol–disulfide homeostasis and serum ischemia modified albumin (IMA) levels, which are the determinants of antioxidant status, in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG). Material and Method: A total of 140 eyes from 70 patients with POAG and 174 eyes of 87 healthy, control cases were included in the study. All study participants underwent a complete ophthalmic evaluation. Alterations in serum thiol–disulfide homeostasis and IMA levels were measured in all participants. Results: IMA levels were significantly higher in glaucoma group (p:0.001). Native thiol, Total thiol and Native/Total thiol ratio were significantly decreased while Disulfide, Disulfide/Native thiol, and Disulfide/Total thiol ratios were significantly higher in glaucoma group (p:0.001). There was no significant difference regarding central corneal thickness (CCT), iridocorneal angle, albumin, IMA and adjusted IMA levels in patients with different stages of glaucoma. In correlation analysis, there was a negative correlation between Native thiol, Total thiol and Native/Total thiol ratio and disease period, number of daily drops required and stage of the disease in glaucoma patients. There was also a positive correlation between Disulfide, Disulfide/Native thiol and Disulfide/Total thiol levels and the disease activity. Conclusion: In patients with POAG, thiol–disulfide homeostasis is disturbed in the favor of pro-oxidant molecules and IMA levels are increased, indicating the presence of augmented oxidative stress. In that aspect, systemic and local anti-oxidant treatments may be new targets in glaucoma treatment. Larger, prospective studies about the role of anti-oxidants in prevention and treatment of POAG are warranted.
The Extreme Moral Diversity of Men Convicted of Violence Against Their Partners: Four Profiles Based on the Five Moral Foundations

The aim of this study is to identify homogeneous profiles based on the five moral foundations in a sample of 376 men undergoing court-mandated treatment for violently abusing their partners. To understand better the meaning of these new profiles as well as their temporal consistency, the profiles were related to different outcomes of the current psychological treatments, before and after a prescribed one, such as self-deception, moral self-concept, benevolent sexism, and hostile sexism. Results from Latent Profile Analysis and Latent Transition Analysis showed good fit for a four-profile solution. This solution was stable from Time 1 to Time 2, both in terms of the scores on the moral foundations and the participants included in each profile. The participants included in each profile were called “Sacralizers”, “All for one”, “Moral outsiders”, and “Purists”. Comparing with standard samples and consistent with the predictions of the moral foundation theory and the sacredness hypothesis, their scores on the moral foundations were clearly different by excess or defect. Those tending to exaggerate or sacralize the moral concerns (“Sacralizers” and “Purists”) were the most self-deceived, the less hostile sexists, and the ones with the highest moral self-conceptualization. Future research will have to test the role of the moral variables in the psychological treatments and think of strategies to change the importance that men convicted of domestic violence give to the five moral foundations, but at least two strategies seem to be needed: one to reduce the exaggerations and another to increase the deficits of the moral foundations.
Recruit Fitness Standards From a Large Law Enforcement Agency: Between-Class Comparisons, Percentile Rankings, and Implications for Physical Training.

Lockie, RG, Dawes, JJ, Orr, RM, and Dulla, JM. Recruit fitness standards from a large law enforcement agency: Between-class comparisons, percentile rankings, and implications for physical training. J Strength Cond Res XX(X): 000-000, 2020-Law enforcement can be a physically demanding profession. Many agencies use a "one-size-fits-all" academy training approach, which may not be optimal for all recruits. There is also little information that benchmarks fitness of law enforcement recruits. The purpose of this study was to analyze between-academy class differences in fitness, as well as produce normative data for the development of strength and conditioning programs. A retrospective analysis of 908 recruits (761 men and 147 women), comprising 11 classes from one agency, was used. Fitness assessment data included push-ups, sit-ups, and mountain climbers in 120 seconds; pull-ups; 201-m run; and 2.4-km run. A one-way analysis of variance with a Bonferroni post hoc adjustment revealed that fitness varied significantly between classes. Class 11 completed less sit-ups than 6 other classes (p ≤ 0.033) and were slower in the 201-m and 2.4-km run than 5 classes (p ≤ 0.005). Class 7 completed less push-ups than 3 classes (p ≤ 0.036) and less mountain climbers and were slower in the 201-m run than 5 classes (p ≤ 0.005). Individual recruit analysis and percentile data indicated a wide spread of all assessment results and the effects upon female recruits. For example, 81% of women completed ≤2 pull-ups and were in the bottom 2 percentile bands; 72-76% of women were in the bottom 3 bands for push-ups and the 201-m run. Fitness varies from class-to-class, and female recruits will generally be less physically fit. Training staff should ideally implement individualized, ability-based programming where appropriate to train their recruits.
Buccinator Re-Repair (Bs + Re: IVVP): A Combined Procedure to Maximize the Palate Form and Function in Difficult VPI Cases

Objectives: To assess the outcome of a modified buccinator flaps’ palatal lengthening combined with radical intravelar veloplasty (Bs + Re: IVVP) for the management of postpalatoplasty velopharyngeal incompetence and report the functional and structural changes occurring in the palate. Design: Prospective cohort study of consecutive cleft patients presenting with velopharyngeal incompetence and managed by buccinator re-repair procedure. Blind assessment of randomized recordings of speech and evaluation of velar form and function with nasoendoscopy and lateral videofluoroscopy were done. Patients’ demographic data were also collected. Patients: Among 30 consecutive cases who had Bs + Re: IVVP, 24 had adequate pre- and postoperative records of speech outcome data. Setting: Multidisciplinary cleft team in a tertiary referral center. Results: There were significant improvements in hypernasality, nasal emission, facial grimace and weak consonants, and overall intelligibility of speech. Endoscopy and lateral videofluoroscopy showed significant improvement in total and functional velar length, closure ratio, velopharyngeal gap at closure, palatal thickness, palatal convexity, and mobility. Regarding the procedure complications, no flap ischemia, fistula, or obstructive sleep apnea reported, but there were one cheek hematoma and two minor oral mucosal dehiscence which healed spontaneously. Conclusions: Buccinator re-repair (Bs + Re: IVVP) has been shown to be an effective and safe procedure in treating difficult postpalatoplasty velopharyngeal incompetence. It was also shown that it is still a physiological nonobstructive procedure with low morbidity.
Response to "Comment On the Effect of Minimally Invasive Esophagectomy Versus Open Esophagectomy for Esophageal Cancer".

We would like to thank Dr Yonekawa et al for their interest in our study. Following are our responses to their questions to clarify our study design and results. They stated that our study was compromised by 2 critical methodological issues arising from lack on accounting for potential cluster effects. First, as they mentioned, propensity score (PS) matching within clusters or PS matching with a mixed-effect model are means of adjusting for clustering. In fact, we considered using these methods; however, we concluded that they did not offer benefits and were unsuited to our study design. One of the disadvantages of PS matching is the discarding of unmatched observations. PS matching within a cluster can result in many more unmatched treated units than with the pooled dataset. We chose not to use cluster matching because many patients who had undergone minimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE) in a hospital in which few patients underwent open esophagectomy (OE) would be unmatched, or vice versa. For example, in the National Cancer Center East, one of the highest volume hospitals for esophageal cancer, 153 esophagectomies were performed in 2015, 114 of which were MIE. Regarding PS matching with a mixed effect model with random intercept, PS is calculated using random intercepts for each hospital and patients who undergo surgery in a hospital where MIE is preferred have higher PS than do patients in a hospital where OE is preferred. Implementation of this method would also eliminate a large number of unmatched patients who underwent surgery in hospitals with a high-volume of MIE. Thus, both of these methods create highly selected PS matched cohorts, resulting in difficulty in interpreting the results. Yonekawa et al insist that the difference in outcomes among hospitals is attributable to differences in hospital volume. The purpose of PS matching is to balance
Electrophysiological and Anatomical Correlates of Sites With Postpacing Intervals Shorter Than Tachycardia Cycle Length in Atypical Atrial Flutter

Background Although entrainment mapping is an established approach to atypical atrial flutter ablation, postpacing intervals shorter than tachycardia cycle length (difference between postpacing interval and tachycardia cycle length [dPPI] <0 ms) remain of unknown significance. We sought to compare anatomic and electrophysiological properties of sites with dPPI <0, dPPI=0–30, and dPPI >30 ms. Methods We studied 24 noncavotricuspid isthmus–dependent macroreentrant atypical atrial flutter in 19 consecutive patients. Ultra high-density electroanatomic activation maps were acquired with a 64-electrode basket catheter. Entrainment mapping was performed at multiple candidate sites. Ablation was performed at the narrowest accessible slow-conducting critical isthmuses. Results Of 102 entrainment mapping sites, dPPI <30 was observed at 72 sites on complete maps of 24 atypical atrial flutter. Compared with dPPI=0–30 sites (N=45), dPPI<0 sites (N=27) were more commonly located within isthmuses <15 mm wide (67% versus 6.7%, P<0.00001; odds ratio, 28.0; 95% CI, 6.8–115.7), more frequently located within 5 mm of the leading wavefront (93% versus 64%, P=0.008), exhibited slower local conduction velocity (0.49±0.43 versus 0.93±0.57 m/s, P=0.0005), lower voltages (0.48±0.79 versus 0.92±0.97 mV, P=0.04), and more frequently fractionated electrograms (67% versus 24%, P=0.0004). High rates of arrhythmia termination or cycle length increase >15 ms by ablation were observed in both dPPI groups (94% versus 86%, P=0.53). Compared with all dPPI <30, dPPI >30 sites (N=30) were less commonly observed within isthmuses (3.3%, P<0.001) or within 5 mm of the leading wavefront (30%, P<0.0001); conduction velocity (1.0±0.7 m/s, P=0.002) and voltage (1.1±1.4 mV, P=0.049) were higher compared with dPPI<0 but similar to dPPI=0–30 sites. Conclusions In atypical atrial flutter, sites with dPPI <0 are markers of limited width critical isthmuses with slower conduction velocity, whereas sites with dPPI=0–30 ms are often not in close proximity to the reentry circuit. Virtual electrode simultaneous down and upstream (antidromic) capture of a confined isthmus of slow conduction can explain a dPPI <0. Identifying these sites may improve selective and efficient ablation strategies compared with the standard 30-ms threshold.
Human hippocampal CA3 damage disrupts both recent and remote episodic memories

Neocortical-hippocampal interactions support new episodic (event) memories, but there is conflicting evidence about the dependence of remote episodic memories on the hippocampus. In line with systems consolidation and computational theories of episodic memory, evidence from model organisms suggests that the cornu ammonis 3 (CA3) hippocampal subfield supports recent, but not remote, episodic retrieval. In this study, we demonstrated that recent and remote memories were susceptible to a loss of episodic detail in human participants with focal bilateral damage to CA3. Graph theoretic analyses of 7.0-Tesla resting-state fMRI data revealed that CA3 damage disrupted functional integration across the medial temporal lobe (MTL) subsystem of the default network. The loss of functional integration in MTL subsystem regions was predictive of autobiographical episodic retrieval performance. We conclude that human CA3 is necessary for the retrieval of episodic memories long after their initial acquisition and functional integration of the default network is important for autobiographical episodic memory performance.
Association between Knowledge of Sexually Transmitted Infections and Sources of the Previous Point of Care among Nigerians: Findings from Three National HIV and AIDS Reproductive Health Surveys

Background. Adequate knowledge of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) is critical for effective control of disease. Health education/counselling at the point of care provides ample opportunities to improve knowledge of patient seeking treatment. There is no study from Nigeria that investigates association between sources of previous point of care of STI and quality of knowledge of people on STI. We hypothesised that previous treatment of STI will be associated with better knowledge of STI and HIV infection. Methods. Three consecutives nationally representative cross-sectional surveys on HIV and AIDS Reproductive Health in Nigeria, conducted in 2005, 2007, and 2012 were analysed. Outcome measures were knowledge of STI only, and a combined knowledge of STI and HIV transmission and prevention. We designed a knowledge scale of 14-item questions for STI and 41-item questions for STI and HIV. Logistic regression was used to identify risk factors at 5% significance level. Results. Knowledge of STI increased from 13.4% in 2005 to 15.0% in 2007 to 26.5% in 2012. Respondents that received treatment from pharmacy and patient medicine vendors had higher odds of good knowledge of STI than those who did not receive any treatment (aOR = 2.55) in 2005. In 2012, respondents treated at health facilities were over two times likely to have good knowledge of STI and HIV transmission and prevention (aOR = 2.35). STI positive individuals in the highest economic class were two times likely to have good knowledge of STI and HIV transmission and prevention than those in the lowest class. Conclusion. Participants that previously sought care from health facilities, pharmacy, and patient medicine vendors had better knowledge of STIs and HIV infection prevention and transmission than those who sought care from unorthodox sources. We recommend a national awareness creation on STI prevention including provision of information on safe point of care for STIs in Nigeria.
All You Need Is a Few Shifts: Designing Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Image Classification

Shift operation is an efficient alternative over depthwise separable convolution. However, it is still bottlenecked by its implementation manner, namely memory movement. To put this direction forward, a new and novel basic component named Sparse Shift Layer (SSL) is introduced in this paper to construct efficient convolutional neural networks. In this family of architectures, the basic block is only composed by 1x1 convolutional layers with only a few shift operations applied to the intermediate feature maps. To make this idea feasible, we introduce shift operation penalty during optimization and further propose a quantization-aware shift learning method to impose the learned displacement more friendly for inference. Extensive ablation studies indicate that only a few shift operations are sufficient to provide spatial information communication. Furthermore, to maximize the role of SSL, we redesign an improved network architecture to Fully Exploit the limited capacity of neural Network (FE-Net). Equipped with SSL, this network can achieve 75.0% top-1 accuracy on ImageNet with only 563M M-Adds. It surpasses other counterparts constructed by depthwise separable convolution and the networks searched by NAS in terms of accuracy and practical speed.
Integrated, multi-cohort analysis reveals unified signature of systemic lupus erythematosus.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a complex autoimmune disease that follows an unpredictable disease course and affects multiple organs and tissues. We performed an integrated, multi-cohort analysis of 7,471 transcriptomic profiles from 40 independent studies to identify robust gene expression changes associated with SLE. We identified a 93-gene signature (SLE MetaSignature) that is differentially expressed in the blood of SLE patients compared to healthy volunteers; distinguishes SLE from other autoimmune, inflammatory, and infectious diseases; and persists across diverse tissues and cell types. The SLE MetaSignature correlated significantly with disease activity and other clinical measures of inflammation. We prospectively validated the SLE MetaSignature in an independent cohort of pediatric SLE patients using a microfluidic RT-qPCR array. We found that 14 of the 93 genes in the SLE MetaSignature were independent of interferon-induced and neutrophil-related transcriptional profiles that have previously been associated with SLE. Pathway analysis revealed dysregulation associated with nucleic acid biosynthesis and immunometabolism in SLE. We further refined a neutropoeisis signature and identified novel transcripts related to immune cells and oxidative stress. Our multi-cohort, transcriptomic analysis has uncovered novel genes and pathways associated with SLE pathogenesis, with the potential to advance clinical diagnosis, biomarker development, and targeted therapeutics for SLE.
Phase Locking of Auditory-Nerve Fibers Reveals Stereotyped Distortions and an Exponential Transfer Function with a Level-Dependent Slope

Phase locking of auditory-nerve-fiber (ANF) responses to the fine structure of acoustic stimuli is a hallmark of the auditory system's temporal precision and is important for many aspects of hearing. Period histograms from phase-locked ANF responses to low-frequency tones exhibit spike-rate and temporal asymmetries, but otherwise retain an approximately sinusoidal shape as stimulus level increases, even beyond the level at which the mean spike rate saturates. This is intriguing because apical cochlear mechanical vibrations show little compression, and mechanoelectrical transduction in the receptor cells is thought to obey a static sigmoidal nonlinearity, which might be expected to produce peak clipping at moderate and high stimulus levels. Here we analyze phase-locked responses of ANFs from cats of both sexes. We show that the lack of peak clipping is due neither to ANF refractoriness nor to spike-rate adaptation on time scales longer than the stimulus period. We demonstrate that the relationship between instantaneous pressure and instantaneous rate is well described by an exponential function whose slope decreases with increasing stimulus level. Relatively stereotyped harmonic distortions in the input to the exponential can account for the temporal asymmetry of the period histograms, including peak splitting. We show that the model accounts for published membrane-potential waveforms when assuming a power-of-three, but not a power-of-one, relationship to exocytosis. Finally, we demonstrate the relationship between the exponential transfer functions and the sigmoidal pseudotransducer functions obtained in the literature by plotting the maxima and minima of the voltage responses against the maxima and minima of the stimuli. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Phase locking of auditory-nerve-fiber responses to the temporal fine structure of acoustic stimuli is important for many aspects of hearing, but the mechanisms underlying phase locking are not fully understood. Intriguingly, period histograms retain an approximately sinusoidal shape across sound levels, even when the mean rate has saturated. We find that neither refractoriness nor spike-rate adaptation is responsible for this behavior. Instead, the peripheral auditory system operates as though it contains an exponential transfer function whose slope changes with stimulus level. The underlying mechanism is distinct from the comparatively weak cochlear mechanical compression in the cochlear apex, and likely resides in the receptor cells.