Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Responses of apple maggot (Diptera: Tephritidae) to ammonium hydroxide lures

Ammonia has long been known to be an attractant for the apple maggot, Rhagoletis pomonella (Walsh) (Diptera: Tephritidae) (Hodson 1943, 1948). The responses of apple maggot to ammonia release rates, however, have not been adequately determined. Ammonia release rates determined from mass losses of ammonium carbonate, ammonium acetate, and casein hydrolysate lures (e.g., Jones 1988; Reynolds and Prokopy 1997) do not take into account decomposition and release of compounds such as carbon dioxide or volatiles that may be moderately repellent (Bateman and Morton 1981; Mazor et al. 1987) or attractive to some Tephritidae flies (Mazor et al. 1987). In this study, the objectives were to determine the responses of apple maggot females and males in western Washington to ammonium hydroxide lures designed to release a wide range of ammonia. An emphasis was placed on identifying the ammonia release rates that elicit maximum fly responses.
Antioxidant Sulfated Polysaccharide from Edible Red Seaweed Gracilaria birdiae is an Inhibitor of Calcium Oxalate Crystal Formation

The genus Gracilaria synthesizes sulfated polysaccharides (SPs). Many of these SPs, including those synthesized by the edible seaweed Gracilaria birdiae, have not yet been adequately investigated for their use as potential pharmaceutical compounds. Previous studies have demonstrated the immunomodulatory effects of sulfated galactans from G. birdiae. In this study, a galactan (GB) was extracted from G. birdiae and evaluated by cell proliferation and antioxidant tests. GB showed no radical hydroxyl (OH) and superoxide (O2−) scavenging ability. However, GB was able to donate electrons in two further different assays and presented iron- and copper-chelating activity. Urolithiasis affects approximately 10% of the world’s population and is strongly associated with calcium oxalate (CaOx) crystals. No efficient compound is currently available for the treatment of this disease. GB appeared to interact with and stabilize calcium oxalate dihydrate crystals, leading to the modification of their morphology, size, and surface charge. These crystals then acquired the same characteristics as those found in healthy individuals. In addition, GB showed no cytotoxic effect against human kidney cells (HEK-293). Taken together, our current findings highlight the potential application of GB as an antiurolithic agent.
A cross-sectional study of barriers to cervical cancer screening uptake in Ghana: An application of the health belief model

Background The high incidence (32.9, age-standardized per 100,000) and mortality (23.0, age-standardized per 100,000) of cervical cancer (CC) in Ghana have been largely attributed to low screening uptake (0.8%). Although the low cost (Visual inspection with acetic acid) screening services available at various local health facilities screening uptake is meager. Objective The purpose of the study is to determine the barriers influencing CC screening among women in the Ashanti Region of Ghana using the health belief model. Methods A analytical cross-sectional study design was conducted between January and March 2019 at Kenyase, the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The study employed self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data from 200 women. Descriptive statistics were used to examine the differences in interest and non-interest in participating in CC screening on barriers affecting CC screening. Multivariable logistic regression was used to determine factors affecting CC screening at a significance level of p<0.05. Results Unemployed women were less likely to have an interest in CC screening than those who were employed (adjustes odds ratio (aOR) = 0.005, 95%CI:0.001–0.041, p = 0.005). Women who were highly educated were 122 times very likely to be interested in CC screening than those with no or low formal education (aOR = 121.915 95%CI: 14.096–1054.469, p<0.001) and those who were unmarried were less likely to be interested in CC screening than those with those who were married (aOR = 0.124, 95%CI: 0.024–0.647, p = 0.013). Also, perceived threat, perceived benefits, perceived barriers and cues for action showed significant differences with interest in participating in screening with a P-values <0.003. The association was different for long waiting time, prioritizing early morning and late evening screening which showed no significant difference (P-value > 0.003). Conclusions Married women, unemployed and those with no formal education are less likely to participate in CC screening. The study details significant barriers to cervical cancer screening uptake in Ghana. It is recommended that the Ghana health services should develop appropriate, culturally tailored educational materials to inform individuals with no formal education through health campaigns in schools, churches and communities to enhance CC screening uptake.
Minimally Invasive Transforaminal Lumbar Interbody Fusion: Comparison of Isthmic Versus Degenerative Spondylolisthesis

ABSTRACT Background: Minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (MIS TLIF) is a common surgical procedure for treatment of degenerative spondylolisthesis (DS) but remains controversial for treatment of isthmic spondylolisthesis (IS). Few studies have compared IS and DS outcomes after MIS TLIF. Therefore, the objective of the current study was to compare outcomes of patients with IS and DS after MIS TLIF. Methods: A retrospective cohort analysis was performed on a prospectively maintained database of patients who underwent a primary, 1-level MIS TLIF for grade I or II IS or DS. Grade I and II DS and grade I IS patients were treated with MIS TLIF via a unilateral tubular approach, whereas the grade II IS patients were treated via a bilateral tubular approach. Differences in patient demographics and preoperative characteristics were assessed using independent sample t tests and χ2 tests. The type of spondylolisthesis and its effect on postoperative outcomes was analyzed using Poisson regression with robust error variance (binary outcomes) or linear regression (continuous outcomes) adjusted for preoperative characteristics. Subgroup analysis comparing grade I IS versus DS and grade II IS versus DS was performed. Results: A total of 223 patients were included (IS: 62 [27.8%]; DS: 161 [72.2%]). IS patients were younger (P < .001), had a lower comorbidity burden (P < .001), and a greater incidence of grade II spondylolisthesis (P < .001) at L5–S1 (P < .001) than the DS cohort. Patients with IS experienced longer operative times (P < .001) and lower, but not statistically significant, arthrodesis rates compared to the DS cohort. No differences were observed in the remaining preoperative patient characteristics, perioperative or postoperative outcomes. Conclusions: Despite being younger and having a lower comorbidity burden than the DS cohort, similar outcomes were observed after MIS TLIF for IS patients. Level of Evidence: 3. Clinical Relevance: These results suggest MIS TLIF is an appropriate treatment option for IS patients despite the increased instability inherent with IS.
Avaliação da trajetória média de crescimento de caprinos em modelos de regressão aleatória

Polynomial functions for modeling growth curves of 946 Anglo-Nubiano goats, born from 1980 to 2005, and their effect on genetic parameter estimates were evaluated. Growth trajectories were fitted by fixed regression of weights on orthogonal polynomial of age, considering polynomials from second to seventh orders. For fixed regression, polynomial models were compared using the following criteria: mean square errors, absolute average residual error, square percent bias and goodness of fit. Akaike"s information criterion, Bayesian information criterion and likelihood ratio test criteria were used to evaluate the effect of different polynomial order of fixed regression on genetic parameters estimates. An expressive improvement was found using higher order polynomials and those of fourth order were sufficient for modeling the average growth curve of goats. No influences on genetic parameter estimates were observed adopting higher than cubic order polynomial functions. The direct heritability showed an increasing pattern until 84th day of age, while the maternal one had a constant pattern for the whole period. Polynomial functions are efficient tools for modeling growth curve and polynomials of at least fourth order should be used for modeling the average growth curve of goat in random regression models.
Misidentification of freshwater mussel species (Bivalvia:Unionidae): contributing factors, management implications, and potential solutions

Abstract Surveys of freshwater mussel populations are used frequently to inform conservation decisions by providing information about the status and distribution of species. It is generally accepted that not all mussels or species are collected during surveys, and incomplete detection of individuals and species can bias data and can affect inferences. However, considerably less attention has been given to the potential effects of species misidentification. To evaluate the prevalence of and potential reasons for species misidentification, we conducted a laboratory-based identification exercise and quantified the relationships between mussel species characteristics, observer experience, and misidentification rate. We estimated that misidentification was fairly common, with rates averaging 27% across all species and ranging from 0 to 56%, and was related to mussel shell characteristics and observer experience. Most notably, species with shell texturing were 6.09× less likely than smooth-shelled species to be misidentified. Misidentification rates declined with observer experience, but for many species the risk of misidentification averaged >10% even for observers with moderate levels of experience (5–6 y). In addition, misidentification rates among observers showed substantial variability after controlling for experience. Our results suggest that species misidentification may be common in field surveys of freshwater mussels and could potentially bias estimates of population status and trends. Misidentification rates possibly could be reduced through use of regional workshops, testing and certification programs, and the availability of archived specimens and tissue samples in museum collections.
lncRNA Neat1 Stimulates Osteoclastogenesis Via Sponging miR‐7

Increasing evidence uncover the essential role of long noncoding RNA (lncRNAs) in bone metabolism and the association of lncRNA with genetic risk of osteoporosis. However, whether lncRNA nuclear paraspeckle assembly transcript 1 (Neat1) is involved remains largely unknown. In the present study, we found that Neat1 is induced by osteoclastic differentiation stimuli. Knockdown of Neat1 attenuates osteoclast formation whereas overexpression of Neat1 accelerates osteoclast formation. In vivo evidence showed that enhanced Neat1 expression stimulates osteoclastogenesis and reduces bone mass in mice. Mechanically, Neat1 competitively binds with microRNA 7 (miR‐7) and blocks its function for regulating protein tyrosine kinase 2 (PTK2). Intergenic SNP rs12789028 acts as allele‐specific long‐range enhancer for NEAT1 via chromatin interactions. We establish for the first time that Neat1 plays an essential role in osteoclast differentiation, and provide genetic mechanism underlying the association of NEAT1 locus with osteoporosis risk. These results enrich the current knowledge of NEAT1 function, and uncover the potential of NEAT1 as a therapeutic target for osteoporosis. © 2020 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
Rapid computations of spectrotemporal prediction error support perception of degraded speech

Human speech perception can be described as Bayesian perceptual inference but how are these Bayesian computations instantiated neurally? We use magnetoencephalographic recordings of brain responses to degraded spoken words as a function of signal quality and prior knowledge to demonstrate that spectrotemporal modulations in speech are more clearly represented in neural responses than alternative speech representations (e.g. spectrogram or articulatory features). We found an interaction between speech signal quality and expectations from prior written text on the quality of neural representations; increased signal quality enhanced neural representations of speech that mismatched with prior expectations, but led to greater suppression of speech that matched prior expectations. This interaction is a unique neural signature of prediction error computations and already apparent in neural responses within 250 ms of speech input. Our findings contribute towards the detailed specification of a computational model of speech perception based on predictive coding frameworks.
Antimicrobial Resistance and Pathogenicity Determination of Community-Acquired Hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae.

Hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae (hvKp) can cause severe invasive infections in healthy and immunocompromised individuals. However, there is still lack of a consensus definition of hvKp. In this study, we solely focused on the clinical isolates cultured from subcutaneous drainage of community-acquired liver abscess cases, and an hvKp strain was defined on the basis of co-harboring virulence gene regulator of mucoid phenotype A (rmpA)/rmpA2, iucA, iroB, and peg-344. A total of 47 nonrepetitive hvKp isolates were collected from January 2015 to December 2017 in a tertiary teaching hospital in Shanghai, China. All isolates were susceptible to the commonly used antibiotics. Only one strain (RJ-Kp24) had the positive detection of blaCTX-M-14 and was resistant to ceftazidime, cefotaxime, and cefepime. S1-pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and southern hybridization confirmed the presence of a roughly 90 kb blaCTX-M-14-carrying plasmid and a roughly 240 kb virulence plasmid. Further analysis revealed that ST23 (n = 17) sequence type and K1 (n = 20) and K2 (n = 9) serotypes were dominant in hvKp, while only 31.9% (15/47) and 46.8% (22/47) of hvKp isolates displayed hypermucoviscosity and resistance to serum killing, respectively. For further evaluation of the pathogenicity of hvKp, six representative strains were randomly selected. Three strains, RJ-Kp10, RJ-Kp28, and RJ-Kp31, displayed a remarkable resistance to serum killing and neutrophil phagocytosis. Mouse lethality assay revealed that these strains had the 50% lethal dose (LD50) of 102-103 cell forming unit (CFU), while others had the LD50 of 104-105 CFU. These results demonstrated that strain virulence differed significantly within these defined hvKp. The convergence of multidrug resistance and enhanced virulence in K. pneumoniae has presented a major infection control challenge.
Novel factor Xa inhibitor, maslinic acid, with antiplatelet aggregation activity

As antithrombotic effects of maslinic acid (MA) have not yet been studied, MA‐mediated downregulation of coagulation factor Xa (FXa) and platelet aggregation was studied. We show that MA inhibited the enzymatic activity of FXa and platelet aggregation, induced by adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and a thromboxane A2 (TXA2) analog, U46619 with a similar antithrombotic efficacy to rivaroxaban, a direct FXa inhibitor used as a positive control. Mechanistically, MA suppressed U46619‐ or ADP‐induced phosphorylation of myristoylated alanine‐rich C kinase substrate, and the expression of P‐selectin, and activated PAC‐1 in platelets. MA increased generation of nitric oxide, but downregulated excessive secretion of endothelin‐1 in ADP‐ or U46619‐treated human umbilical vein endothelial cells. In arterial and pulmonary thrombosis mouse model, MA showed prominent anticoagulant and antithrombotic effects. Our data suggest MA as a candidate molecule for a new class of drugs targeting anti‐FXa and antiplatelet.
Association of folic acid, vitamin B12, and intelligence scores in epileptic children

Abstract Epilepsy is a serious childhood disease associated with cognitive impairment. Our aim was to investigate the possible association of serum folic acid, vitamin B12, and intelligence scores in epileptic children. A group of 30 children with established diagnosis of idiopathic epilepsy for at least one year as well as another group of 30 nonepileptic healthy children as the control group were recruited for analysis. Cognitive performance was assessed by a battery of psychological tests that covers verbal and nonverbal intelligence. Serum B12 level was significantly lower in patients than the control group (264.17 ± 58.07, 450.55 ± 134.9, respectively). No significant difference was detected between patients and the control group regarding serum folic acid level. Verbal, performance, and total IQ were significantly lower in patients than the control group (83.2 ± 3.08 vs. 95.8 ± 6.22, 78.4 ± 10.68 vs. 91.3 ± 2.45, and 180.6 ± 6.58 vs. 93.5 ± 3.02, respectively). However, no significant correlation was detected in folic acid, vitamin B 12, and cognitive scores. Epileptic children were five times more at risk of having low IQ (verbal, performance, and total) < 85 than the control group (OR = 4.754, 95% CI 13.047–1031.316, p = .000). In conclusion, children with epilepsy might be at higher risk for cognitive dysfunction than normal children. No significant association was detected between cognitive performance and either folic acid or vitamin B12 in epileptic children receiving sodium valproate. Supplementation of those vitamins should be restricted to those with documented deficiency.
Cold extremities in migraine: a marker for vascular dysfunction in women

Migraine is recognized as a vascular risk factor, especially in women. Presumably, migraine, stroke and cardiovascular events share pathophysiological mechanisms. Self‐reported cold extremities were investigated as a marker for vascular dysfunction in migraine. Secondly, it was hypothesized that suffering from cold extremities affects sleep quality, possibly exacerbating migraine attack frequency.
Dinâmica sazonal de carrapatos (Acari: Ixodidae) na mata ciliar de uma área endêmica para febre maculosa na região de Campinas, São Paulo, Brasil

Spotted fever is recognized worldwide as a reemerging public health problem. In Campinas region, state of Sao Paulo, the transmission area has expanded and the number of positive cases has increased in the lastest years. In these region most cases are usually related to the increased number of capybaras, which are one of the main primary hosts for the tick Amblyomma cajennense. The main objective of this study was to determine the seasonal dynamic of larvaes, nymphs and adults of Amblyomma species in a gallery forest. From November 2000 to October 2002 free-living ticks were collected using carbon dioxid traps. Larvae of Amblyomma spp were abundant during almost all months. Nymphs of Amblyomma spp occurred during the whole year and were more abundants from July to December. Adults of A.cajennense were more abundants during the spring-summer months. Adults of A. dubitatum showed higher populational peaks from August to February.
MKD: a Multi-Task Knowledge Distillation Approach for Pretrained Language Models

Pretrained language models have led to significant performance gains in many NLP tasks. However, the intensive computing resources to train such models remain an issue. Knowledge distillation alleviates this problem by learning a light-weight student model. So far the distillation approaches are all task-specific. In this paper, we explore knowledge distillation under the multi-task learning setting. The student is jointly distilled across different tasks. It acquires more general representation capacity through multi-tasking distillation and can be further fine-tuned to improve the model in the target domain. Unlike other BERT distillation methods which specifically designed for Transformer-based architectures, we provide a general learning framework. Our approach is model agnostic and can be easily applied on different future teacher model architectures. We evaluate our approach on a Transformer-based and LSTM based student model. Compared to a strong, similarly LSTM-based approach, we achieve better quality under the same computational constraints. Compared to the present state of the art, we reach comparable results with much faster inference speed.
Spectrin Cosenza: a novel β chain variant associated with Sp αI/74 hereditary elliptocytosis

A Calabrian family (Southern Italy) with Sp αI/74 hereditary elliptocytosis (HE) in the heterozygous state was studied. Sp αI/74 HE is associated with asymptomatic elliptocytosis, a defect in spectrin dimer self association and an increase of the αI/74 kD fragment from the α chain after partial tryptic digestion of spectrin. To identify the underlying molecular defect, we analysed exons V, W, X, Y, Z of the β gene and exon 2 of the α gene by single‐strand conformational polymorphism (SSCP) of the amplification products. Direct DNA sequencing of the mutant exon showed a C →G substitution at position 6284 of the β gene. The corresponding substitution at the protein level was Arg → Pro in the 2064 position of the β‐spectrin chain.
Body mass index trajectories and adiposity rebound during the first 6 years in Korean children: Based on the National Health Information Database, 2008–2015

Purpose We analyzed the nationwide longitudinal data to explore body mass index (BMI) growth trajectories and the time of adiposity rebound (AR). Methods Personal data of 84,005 subjects born between 2008 and 2012 were obtained from infant health check-ups which were performed at 5, 11, 21, 33, 45, 57, and 69 months. BMI 00trajectories of each subject were made according to sex and birth weight (Bwt) and the timing of AR was defined as the lowest BMI occurred. Subjects were divided according to Bwt and AR timing as follows: very low birth weight (VLBW), 0.5 kg ≤ Bwt ≤ 1.5 kg; low birth weight (LBW), 1.5 kg < Bwt ≤ 2.5 kg; non-LBW, 2.5 kg < Bwt ≤ 5.0 kg; early AR, before 45 months; moderate AR, at 57 months; and late AR, not until 69 months. Main results Median time point of minimum BMI was 45 months, and the prevalence rates of early, moderate, and late AR were 63.0%, 16.6%, and 20.4%, respectively. BMI at the age of 57 months showed a strong correlation with AR timing after controlling for Bwt (P < 0.001). Sugar-sweetened beverage intake at 21 months (P = 0.02) and no-exercise habit at 57 months (P < 0.001) showed correlations with early AR. When VLBW and LBW subjects were analyzed, BMI at 57 months and breastfeeding at 11 months were correlated with rapid weight gain during the first 5 months (both P < 0.001). Conclusions Based on this first longitudinal study, the majority of children showed AR before 57 months and the degree of obesity at the age of 57 months had a close correlation with early AR or early weight during infancy.