Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Are parents aware of their children's hearing complaints?

The accuracy of parents’ impressions about their child’s hearing status is variable and may not correspond to the child’s complaints. Aim: To investigate children’s self-reported hearing symptoms and parents’ impressions about it. Methods: 477 children (2nd to 5 th grades of elementary schools) were interviewed and parents answered a survey at home. There were 393 matches between the children’s interview and the parent’s survey. Results: 29% of the children reported trouble in understanding what people said, 36.1% had history of 1-3 ear infections, 12.7% had four or more ear infections, 21.7% had continuous tinnitus (positive association with history of exposure to loud sounds, p = 0.0007), 3.8% had pulsatile tinnitus and 2.9% had auditory hallucinations. 28.5% of the children were annoyed by loud sounds (associated with tinnitus, p = 0.0142, and gender, p = 0.0029) 10.4% had had audiological tests, and the determinant factors were history of ear infections (p < 0.001) and parents’ concern about their child’s hearing (p = 0.043). Parents and their own child’s responses were significantly different. Conclusions: Children’s auditory complaints were prevalent and relevant, but most of them had never had an audiological evaluation and most parents were not aware of their child’s complaints. Sound intolerances and auditory hallucinations should be considered in clinical and audiological examinations.
Acute mitragynine administration suppresses cortical oscillatory power and systems theta coherence in rats

Background: Mitragynine is the major alkaloid of Mitragyna speciosa (kratom) with potential as a therapeutic in pain management and in depression. There has been debate over the potential side effects of the drug including addiction risk and cognitive decline. Aims: To evaluate the effects of mitragynine on neurophysiological systems function in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), cingulate cortex (Cg), orbitofrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens (NAc), hippocampus (HIP), thalamus (THAL), basolateral amygdala (BLA) and ventral tegmental area of rats. Methods: Local field potential recordings were taken from animals at baseline and for 45 min following mitragynine administration (10 mg/kg, intraperitoneally). Drug-induced changes in spectral power and coherence between regions at specific frequencies were evaluated. Mitragynine-induced changes in c-fos expression were also analyzed. Results: Mitragynine increased delta power and reduced theta power in all three cortical regions that were accompanied by increased c-fos expression. A transient suppression of gamma power in PFC and Cg was also evident. There were no effects of mitragynine on spectral power in any of the other regions. Mitragynine induced a widespread reduction in theta coherence (7–9 Hz) that involved disruptions in cortical and NAc connectivity with the BLA, HIP and THAL. Conclusions: These findings show that mitragynine induces frequency-specific changes in cortical neural oscillatory activity that could potentially impact cognitive functioning. However, the absence of drug effects within regions of the mesolimbic pathway may suggest either a lack of addiction potential, or an underlying mechanism of addiction that is distinct from other opioid analgesic agents.
Economic Evaluation of Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy by Site of Care Among Patients With Relapsed or Refractory Large B-Cell Lymphoma

Key Points Question Is the cost of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy administration associated with the site of care and the safety profile of the therapy? Findings In this economic evaluation, a decision-tree model was used to document the clinical outcomes and costs of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma. After excluding the chimeric antigen receptor T-cell acquisition cost, hospitalization and office visits comprised 65.3% of the costs in inpatient settings and 48.4% of the costs in outpatient settings; the outpatient administration of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy was associated with a $32 987 (40.4%) reduction in total costs. Meaning The administration of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy in the outpatient setting of nonacademic specialty oncology networks was associated with lower estimated overall costs.
Maternal and neonatal outcomes of pregnant women with COVID-19 pneumonia: a case-control study

Background The ongoing epidemics of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have caused serious concerns about its potential adverse effects on pregnancy. There are limited data on maternal and neonatal outcomes of pregnant women with COVID-19 pneumonia. Methods We conducted a case-control study to compare clinical characteristics, maternal and neonatal outcomes of pregnant women with and without COVID-19 pneumonia. Results During January 24 to February 29, 2020, there were sixteen pregnant women with confirmed COVID-19 pneumonia and eighteen suspected cases who were admitted to labor in the third trimester. Two had vaginal delivery and the rest took cesarean section. Few patients presented respiratory symptoms (fever and cough) on admission, but most had typical chest CT images of COVID-19 pneumonia. Compared to the controls, COVID-19 pneumonia patients had lower counts of white blood cells (WBC), neutrophils, C-reactive protein (CRP), and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) on admission. Increased levels of WBC, neutrophils, eosinophils, and CRP were found in postpartum blood tests of pneumonia patients. There were three (18.8%) and two (10.5%) of the mothers with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 pneumonia had preterm delivery due to maternal complications, which were significantly higher than the control group. None experienced respiratory failure during hospital stay. COVID-19 infection was not found in the newborns and none developed severe neonatal complications. Conclusion Severe maternal and neonatal complications were not observed in pregnant women with COVID-19 pneumonia who had vaginal delivery or caesarean section. Mild respiratory symptoms of pregnant women with COVID-19 pneumonia highlight the need of effective screening on admission.
Food security among people living with HIV: a review of programs and evidence in resource-limited settings

Food insecurity, which is prevalent among people living with human immunodeficiency virus (PLHIV), predicts poor treatment and health outcomes. In resource-limited settings, various programs have been implemented to improve access to food and mitigate adverse effects. This study aims to review existing food security programs and assess their evidence of effectiveness in improving food security, medication adherence, and other health outcomes of PLHIV in resource-limited settings. We conducted a review of the published literature on food security and HIV. We narrowed our review of food security programs to interventions that had been implemented in resource-limited settings. Programs can be classified into three categories – food assistance, livelihood development, and combined food assistance and livelihood support. Programs have varying degrees of feasibility and sustainability. The three programs also differ in terms of available empirical evidence to support effectiveness. Of the three categories, food assistance is the most evaluated program, followed by livelihood development and combined food and livelihood support. Current programs offer promising results in increasing access to food and improving key treatment and health outcomes, including adherence to antiretroviral therapy and nutrition. Future programmatic interventions should be appropriate and relevant to the needs and characteristics of PLHIV and their local contexts. Future programs, particularly those that provide livelihood assistance, also need to be rigorously evaluated to increase what we know about impacts on food security, medication adherence, and other health outcomes. HIV AIDS Rev 2018; 17, 1: 1-7 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5114/hivar.2018. 73977
Telemetry as a Method for Measuring the Impact of Housing Conditions on Rats' Welfare

Various tools have been developed over previous years to study the welfare of laboratory animals. These include preference tests, which are commonly used to evaluate housing environments. Preference tests, however, have some pitfalls: they supply information only on the animals’ present preferences, and they allow the animal the choice only between the options offered. Other methods based upon the collection of clinico-chemical data require handling of the animals, which can be stressful in itself. An alternative may be to use telemetry to measure the changes in physiological parameters caused by different environmental conditions. The aim of this study was to use telemetry to evaluate the short-term impact of housing conditions on rodents. We monitored heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature in rats kept on three different types of flooring — bedding, grid floors and plastic floors. The study revealed significant differences in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature between rats housed in the three conditions, indicating that both grid floors and plastic floors are more stressful for the animals than bedding. The observed differences did not diminish over the two-week observation period. The grid-floor housing induced elevations in blood pressure and heart rate. Blood pressure remained elevated even when the animals were returned to standard bedding, whereas the heart rate declined back to its original value immediately in response to this shift. This study shows that telemetry is a very effective tool but that it needs integrating with other methods: in addition, a greater understanding of the biological significance of the changes in cardiovascular parameters is required before the hypothesis that these changes represent an indication of distress can be accepted.
A community based cross sectional study on menstrual hygiene among 18-45 years age women in a rural area of Delhi

Context: Menstruation is the process that needs to be managed socially. If it is not managed properly it may interrupt the social expectations. Aims: To study knowledge, attitude, and practices regarding menstrual hygiene among women of 18-45 years age residing in a rural area. Settings and Design: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted among 350 women of 18-45 years age residing in rural area of Delhi, Barwala. Methods and Material: Study was conducted by house-to-house visit using systematic random sampling. A pre-tested semi- structured questionnaire containing seven questions regarding knowledge and eight questions each pertaining to attitude and practices regarding menstrual hygiene was used. A five point Likert scale was used to assess responses regarding attitude questions. Statistical analysis used: Data was collected, compiled, processed and analysed by SPSS software version 17. Results: Largest proportion of women belonged to the age group of 21-30 years. Primary informant regarding menstruation was mother for 46.6% women. More than two-thirds of women were scared at time of their first menstruation. Only 53.7% women were using sanitary pads. All personal hygiene practices were found to be satisfactory in almost 90% of women. Statistically significant association was seen between knowledge and socio-economic status and literacy status of the study participants. Similarly significant association was also seen between womens socio-economic status and their attitude and practices. Conclusions: Women need to be educated about MHM, significance of menstruation and use of satisfactory absorbent material so as to enable them to lead a healthy reproductive life.
Antibacterial and Antibiofilm Activity of Biosynthesized Silver Nanoparticles Coated With Exopolysaccharides Obtained From Rhodotorula mucilaginosa

Antibacterial resistance is one of the biggest threats to health and economy worldwide. In the present work, we evaluated the antibacterial and antibiofilm properties of silver nanoparticles produced by green synthesis with exopolysaccharides produced by Rhodotorula mucilaginosa UANL-001L, against pathogens of clinical importance. The extraction of exopolysaccharides produced by Rhodotorula mucilaginosa was performed according to a previously described method. Synthesis of the nanobiocomposite was performed by mixing silver nitrate, Acacia rigidula, and Rhodotorula mucilaginosa-produced exopolysaccharides. The newly synthesized nanobiocomposite was lyophilized and kept frozen for further analysis. The characterization of the nanobiocomposite was carried out by UV-visible spectroscopic, Fourier transform infrared analysis and the surface morphology was analyzed by Transmission Electron Microscopy. The antibacterial and antibiofilm activity was tested in 96-well plates for different concentrations of the nanobiocomposite against Escherichia. coli ATCC 11229, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 6538, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853. The Rhodotorula mucilaginosa- produced exopolysaccharides were useful in the silver nanoparticle synthesis and the resulting nanobiocomposite had antibacterial and antibiofilm activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria at lower concentrations than previously reported. Due to these properties, the nanobiocomposite seems to be a promising biocide against pathogens of clinical relevance. In addition, the nanobiocomposite proved to be advantageous in the formulation of hybrid metal-polymer coatings for medical devices or industrial settings.
Dynamic activity patterns in the anterior temporal lobe represents object semantics

ABSTRACT The anterior temporal lobe (ATL) is considered a crucial area for the representation of transmodal concepts. Recent evidence suggests that specific regions within the ATL support the representation of individual object concepts, as shown by studies combining multivariate analysis methods and explicit measures of semantic knowledge. This research looks to further our understanding by probing conceptual representations at a spatially and temporally resolved neural scale. Representational similarity analysis was applied to human intracranial recordings from anatomically defined lateral to medial ATL sub-regions. Neural similarity patterns were tested against semantic similarity measures, where semantic similarity was defined by a hybrid corpus-based and feature-based approach. Analyses show that the perirhinal cortex, in the medial ATL, significantly related to semantic effects around 200 to 400 ms, and were greater than more lateral ATL regions. Further, semantic effects were present in low frequency (theta and alpha) oscillatory phase signals. These results provide converging support that more medial regions of the ATL support the representation of basic-level visual object concepts within the first 400 ms, and provide a bridge between prior fMRI and MEG work by offering detailed evidence for the presence of conceptual representations within the ATL.
Multi-Granularity Canonical Appearance Pooling for Remote Sensing Scene Classification

Recognising remote sensing scene images remains challenging due to large visual-semantic discrepancies. These mainly arise due to the lack of detailed annotations that can be employed to align pixel-level representations with high-level semantic labels. As the tagging process is labour-intensive and subjective, we hereby propose a novel Multi-Granularity Canonical Appearance Pooling (MG-CAP) to automatically capture the latent ontological structure of remote sensing datasets. We design a granular framework that allows progressively cropping the input image to learn multi-grained features. For each specific granularity, we discover the canonical appearance from a set of pre-defined transformations and learn the corresponding CNN features through a maxout-based Siamese style architecture. Then, we replace the standard CNN features with Gaussian covariance matrices and adopt the proper matrix normalisations for improving the discriminative power of features. Besides, we provide a stable solution for training the eigenvalue-decomposition function (EIG) in a GPU and demonstrate the corresponding back-propagation using matrix calculus. Extensive experiments have shown that our framework can achieve promising results in public remote sensing scene datasets.
Falling Down the Rabbit Hole: Child and Family Experiences of Pediatric Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant

Pediatric hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) is an intensive treatment that can be life-threatening. All family members experience distress. We conducted a grounded theory study using a family systems-expressive arts framework to develop a theoretical understanding of the family experience of HSCT. Six families (15 family members) participated in two interviews, drew an image, and were guided through a “dialoguing with images” process. Participants did not always perceive HSCT as an experience they had lived as a family and were surprised to hear other family members’ experiences. While one mother drew, she suddenly understood it was not only her ill child, but the entire family who had “fallen down the rabbit hole. ” The family experience of HSCT is described across (a) the pre-HSCT trajectory, (b) family fragmentation (hospitalization), and (c) family reintegration. We identified a critical need for targeted family intervention during the transition into HSCT, throughout and following hospitalization.
Decriminalizing severe mental illness by reducing risk of contact with the criminal justice system, including for forensic patients

Risk of contact with the criminal justice system (CJS) is greater among those with mental illness, including severe mental illness—an observation that many argue reflects a process of “criminalizing” mental illness. Forensic patients represent a subgroup at one end of a spectrum of such criminalization, typically with histories of serious violence and psychotic illness. Strategies for decriminalizing mental illness in this context should consider a range of approaches, including intervening to prevent CJS contact in those with severe mental illness, particularly in the early or emerging stages of psychosis. However, it may be that even gold standard mental healthcare applied universally is insufficient to address CJS contact risks. While there is now an extensive literature documenting the relatively low rates of repeat CJS contact for forensic patients released from secure care, appropriate comparison groups are lacking and the key ingredients of any benefits of treatment are unknown. The CJS may well have something to learn from forensic mental health systems and services given the abject failure to stem rates of prison-release reoffending internationally. Understanding how to best identify risk and effectively intervene to prevent CJS contact in those with mental illness, whether early in the course of psychosis or following release from secure care, remains a priority for those seeking to address the criminalization of mentally illness in our communities.
Patient size matters: Effect of tube current modulation on size‐specific dose estimates (SSDE) and image quality in low‐dose lung cancer screening CT

Abstract Purpose We compare the effect of tube current modulation (TCM) and fixed tube current (FTC) on size‐specific dose estimates (SSDE) and image quality in lung cancer screening with low‐dose CT (LDCT) for patients of all sizes. Methods Initially, 107 lung screening examinations were performed using FTC, which satisfied the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' volumetric CT dose index (CTDIvol) limit of 3.0 mGy for standard‐sized patients. Following protocol modification, 287 examinations were performed using TCM. Patient size and examination parameters were collected and water‐equivalent diameter (Dw) and SSDE were determined for each patient. Regression models were used to correlate CTDIvol and SSDE with Dw. Objective and subjective image quality were measured in 20 patients who had consecutive annual screenings with both FTC and TCM. Results CTDIvol was 2.3 mGy for all FTC scans and increased exponentially with Dw (range = 0.96–4.50 mGy, R2 = 0.73) for TCM scans. As patient Dw increased, SSDE decreased for FTC examinations (R2 = 1) and increased for TCM examinations (R2 = 0.54). Image quality measurements were superior with FTC for smaller sized patients and with TCM for larger sized patients (R2 > 0.5, P < 0.005). Radiologist graded all images acceptable for diagnostic evaluation of lung cancer screening. Conclusion Although FTC protocol offered a consistently low CTDIvol for all patients, it yielded unnecessarily high SSDE for small patients and increased image noise for large patients. Lung cancer screening with LDCT using TCM produces radiation doses that are appropriately reduced for small patients and increased for large patients with diagnostic image quality for all patients.
Phytogenic feed additives mixture enhances the lactational performance, feed utilization and ruminal fermentation of Friesian cows

Abstract The assay aimed to evaluate the effect of feeding a recently developed phytogenic feed additives mixture in diets of lactating Friesian cows (n = 30; 514 ± 10.1 kg body weight) for 3 months. Cows were stratified into three groups of 10 cows each and fed a control diet alone or the control diet supplemented with the additives mixture at 3 g (PHY3) or 6 g (PHY6)/cow daily. Menthol, levomenthol, β-linaloolm, anethole, hexadecanoic acid and p-menthane were the principle compounds identified in the additives mixture. The PHY3 increased (p < 0.01) intake and nutrient digestibility. PHY3 and PHY6 increased (p < 0.01) ruminal pH, total volatile fatty acids, propionate and acetate. PHY3 and PHY6 improved serum total protein and antioxidant capacity and decreased the concentrations of serum urea-N, triglycerides, total lipids, cholesterol and malondialdehyde (p < 0.05). PHY3 increased milk production and milk content of total solids, protein, lactose and fat. Both PHY3 and PHY6 did not affect mineral concentrations in blood or milk. It is concluded that the inclusion of 3 g/cow/d of feed additives mixture in the lactating Friesian cows diet enhanced milk production and feed utilization, with negative effects observed with increasing the dose of additives mixture to 6 g/cow daily.
Robust prediction of individual personality from brain functional connectome

Abstract Neuroimaging studies have linked inter-individual variability in the brain to individualized personality traits. However, only one or several aspects of personality have been effectively predicted based on brain imaging features. The objective of this study was to construct a reliable prediction model of personality in a large sample by using connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM), a recently developed machine learning approach. High-quality resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 810 healthy young participants from the Human Connectome Project dataset were used to construct large-scale brain networks. Personality traits of the five-factor model (FFM) were assessed by the NEO Five Factor Inventory. We found that CPM successfully and reliably predicted all the FFM personality factors (agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism) other than extraversion in novel individuals. At the neural level, we found that the personality-associated functional networks mainly included brain regions within default mode, frontoparietal executive control, visual and cerebellar systems. Although different feature selection thresholds and parcellation strategies did not significantly influence the prediction results, some findings lost significance after controlling for confounds including age, gender, intelligence and head motion. Our finding of robust personality prediction from an individual’s unique functional connectome may help advance the translation of ‘brain connectivity fingerprinting’ into real-world personality psychological settings.