Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The implementation of expectancy-based strategic processes is delayed in normal aging

The present research examined if the time needed to implement expectancy-based strategic processes is different in younger and healthy older adults. In four experiments participants from both age groups performed different strategic priming tasks. These included a greater proportion of incongruent (or unrelated; 80%) than of congruent (or related; 20%) trials. With this procedure performance is worse for congruent (less frequent) than for incongruent (more frequent) trials, thus demonstrating that the relative frequency information can be used to predict the upcoming target. To explore the time course of these expectancy-based effects, the prime-target SOA was manipulated across experiments through a range of intervals: 400, 1000 and 2000 ms. Participants also performed a change localization and an antisaccade task to assess their working memory and attention control capacities. The results showed that increases in age were associated with (a) a slower processing-speed, (b) a decline in WM capacity, and (c) a decreased capacity for attentional control. The latter was evidenced by a disproportionate deterioration of performance in the antisaccade trials compared to the prosaccade ones in the older group. Results from the priming tasks showed a delay in the implementation of expectancies in older adults. Whereas younger participants showed strategic effects already at 1000 ms, older participants consistently failed to show expectancy-based priming during the same interval. Importantly, these effects appeared later at 2000 ms, being similar in magnitude to those by the younger participants and unaffected by task practice. The present findings demonstrate that the ability to implement expectancy-based strategies is slowed down in normal aging.
Noninvasive Estimation of Electrical Properties From Magnetic Resonance Measurements via Global Maxwell Tomography and Match Regularization

Objective: In this paper, we introduce global Maxwell tomography (GMT), a novel volumetric technique that estimates electric conductivity and permittivity by solving an inverse scattering problem based on magnetic resonance measurements. Methods: GMT relies on a fast volume integral equation solver, MARIE, for the forward path, and a novel regularization method, match regularization, designed specifically for electrical property estimation from noisy measurements. We performed simulations with three different tissue-mimicking numerical phantoms of different complexity, using synthetic transmit sensitivity maps with realistic noise levels as the measurements. We performed an experiment at 7 T using an eight-channel coil and a uniform phantom. Results: We showed that GMT could estimate relative permittivity and conductivity from noisy magnetic resonance measurements with an average error as low as 0.3% and 0.2%, respectively, over the entire volume of the numerical phantom. Voxel resolution did not affect GMT performance and is currently limited only by the memory of the graphics processing unit. In the experiment, GMT could estimate electrical properties within 5% of the values measured with a dielectric probe. Conclusion: This work demonstrated the feasibility of GMT with match regularization, suggesting that it could be effective for accurate in vivo electrical property estimation. GMT does not rely on any symmetry assumption for the electromagnetic field, and can be generalized to estimate also the spin magnetization, at the expense of increased computational complexity. Significance: GMT could provide insight into the distribution of electromagnetic fields inside the body, which represents one of the key ongoing challenges for various diagnostic and therapeutic applications.
The Role of Mineral and Trace Element Supplementation in Exercise and Athletic Performance: A Systematic Review

Minerals and trace elements (MTEs) are micronutrients involved in hundreds of biological processes. Deficiency in MTEs can negatively affect athletic performance. Approximately 50% of athletes have reported consuming some form of micronutrient supplement; however, there is limited data confirming their efficacy for improving performance. The aim of this study was to systematically review the role of MTEs in exercise and athletic performance. Six electronic databases and grey literature sources (MEDLINE; EMBASE; CINAHL and SportDISCUS; Web of Science and clinicaltrials.gov) were searched, in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. Results: 17,433 articles were identified and 130 experiments from 128 studies were included. Retrieved articles included Iron (n = 29), Calcium (n = 11), Magnesium, (n = 22), Phosphate (n = 17), Zinc (n = 9), Sodium (n = 15), Boron (n = 4), Selenium (n = 5), Chromium (n = 12) and multi-mineral articles (n = 5). No relevant articles were identified for Copper, Manganese, Iodine, Nickel, Fluoride or Cobalt. Only Iron and Magnesium included articles of sufficient quality to be assigned as ‘strong’. Currently, there is little evidence to support the use of MTE supplementation to improve physiological markers of athletic performance, with the possible exception of Iron (in particular, biological situations) and Magnesium as these currently have the strongest quality evidence. Regardless, some MTEs may possess the potential to improve athletic performance, but more high quality research is required before support for these MTEs can be given. PROSPERO preregistered (CRD42018090502).
Effects of fossil fuel and total anthropogenic emission removal on public health and climate

Significance We assessed the effects of air pollution and greenhouse gases on public health, climate, and the hydrologic cycle. We combined a global atmospheric chemistry–climate model with air pollution exposure functions, based on an unmatched large number of cohort studies in many countries. We find that fossil-fuel-related emissions account for about 65% of the excess mortality rate attributable to air pollution, and 70% of the climate cooling by anthropogenic aerosols. We conclude that to save millions of lives and restore aerosol-perturbed rainfall patterns, while limiting global warming to 2 °C, a rapid phaseout of fossil-fuel-related emissions and major reductions of other anthropogenic sources are needed. Anthropogenic greenhouse gases and aerosols are associated with climate change and human health risks. We used a global model to estimate the climate and public health outcomes attributable to fossil fuel use, indicating the potential benefits of a phaseout. We show that it can avoid an excess mortality rate of 3.61 (2.96–4.21) million per year from outdoor air pollution worldwide. This could be up to 5.55 (4.52–6.52) million per year by additionally controlling nonfossil anthropogenic sources. Globally, fossil-fuel-related emissions account for about 65% of the excess mortality, and 70% of the climate cooling by anthropogenic aerosols. The chemical influence of air pollution on aeolian dust contributes to the aerosol cooling. Because aerosols affect the hydrologic cycle, removing the anthropogenic emissions in the model increases rainfall by 10–70% over densely populated regions in India and 10–30% over northern China, and by 10–40% over Central America, West Africa, and the drought-prone Sahel, thus contributing to water and food security. Since aerosols mask the anthropogenic rise in global temperature, removing fossil-fuel-generated particles liberates 0.51(±0.03) °C and all pollution particles 0.73(±0.03) °C warming, reaching around 2 °C over North America and Northeast Asia. The steep temperature increase from removing aerosols can be moderated to about 0.36(±0.06) °C globally by the simultaneous reduction of tropospheric ozone and methane. We conclude that a rapid phaseout of fossil-fuel-related emissions and major reductions of other anthropogenic sources are needed to save millions of lives, restore aerosol-perturbed rainfall patterns, and limit global warming to 2 °C.
Bird response to hydrologic restoration of montane riparian meadows

Montane riparian meadows foster biodiversity and support critical ecosystem services. A history of exploitation has left most riparian meadows throughout the Mountain West of the United States with incised channels, severely compromising their functionality. Hydrologic restoration of riparian meadows aims to increase overbank flow during spring run‐off and elevate groundwater levels in the dry season. Outcome‐based evaluations of the dominant meadow restoration methods are lacking and needed to ensure objectives are being met and to guide modifications where needed. We completed 1,282 point count surveys from 2009 to 2017 at 173 sampling locations across 31 montane riparian meadows in California restored using partial channel fill techniques (e.g. pond‐and‐plug) to evaluate the expected outcome of increased abundance of meadow birds. We analyzed trends in abundance for 12 focal bird species from 1 to 18 years after hydrologic restoration, substituting space for time in our mixed effects Poisson regression models that included covariates for the amount of riparian deciduous vegetation (RDV) before restoration, stream flow, precipitation, and temperature. We found evidence for a positive effect of time since restoration on abundance for 6 of the 12 species. Although pre‐restoration RDV cover was the most frequently supported predictor of abundance, high pre‐restoration cover of RDV slowed response rates for only two species, suggesting other elements of hydrologic function are also important for meadow birds. Drawing on our results, we provide suggestions for enhancing hydrologic restoration efforts in riparian meadows so that benefits may accrue more quickly to more bird species.
Low Antituberculosis Drug Concentrations in HIV-Tuberculosis-Coinfected Adults with Low Body Weight: Is It Time To Update Dosing Guidelines?

Antituberculosis drugs display large pharmacokinetic variability, which may be influenced by several factors, including body size, genetic differences, and drug-drug interactions. We set out to determine these factors, quantify their effect, and determine the dose adjustments necessary for optimal drug concentrations. ABSTRACT Antituberculosis drugs display large pharmacokinetic variability, which may be influenced by several factors, including body size, genetic differences, and drug-drug interactions. We set out to determine these factors, quantify their effect, and determine the dose adjustments necessary for optimal drug concentrations. HIV-infected Ugandan adults with pulmonary tuberculosis treated according to international weight-based dosing guidelines underwent pharmacokinetic sampling (1, 2, and 4 h after drug intake) 2, 8, and 24 weeks after treatment initiation. Between May 2013 and November 2015, we enrolled 268 patients (148 males) with a median weight of 53.5 (interquartile range [IQR], 47.5 to 59.0) kg and a median age of 35 (IQR, 29 to 40) years. Population pharmacokinetic modeling was used to interpret the data and revealed that patients weighing <55 kg achieved lower concentrations than those in higher weight bands for all drugs in the regimen. The models predicted that this imbalance could be solved with a dose increment of one fixed-dose combination (FDC) tablet for the weight bands of 30 to 37 and 38 to 54 kg. Additionally, the concomitant use of efavirenz increased isoniazid clearance by 24.1%, while bioavailability and absorption of rifampin and isoniazid varied up to 30% in patients on different formulations. Current dosing guidelines lead to lower drug exposure in patients in the lower weight bands. Simply adding one FDC tablet to current weight band-based dosing would address these differences in exposure and possibly improve outcomes. Lower isoniazid exposures due to efavirenz deserve further attention, as does the quality of currently used drug formulations of anti-TB drugs. (This study has been registered at ClinicalTrials.gov under identifier NCT01782950.)
Pattern of contraceptive use at a family planning clinic in Southern Nigeria

Background: Contraception is very important in preventing unwanted pregnancies thereby reducing maternal and child mortality as well as improving the lives of women and their families. This paper aims to determine the pattern of contraceptive usage, uptake rates of the contraceptives, the socio-demographic characteristics and sources of information on contraceptive use at the Rivers State University Teaching Hospital (RSUTH) during the study period. Methods: This was a retrospective study of clients’ records in family planning clinic at RSUTH over a period of ten years. Their records were retrieved, reviewed; data extracted, coded and analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) IBM version 25.0. Results: There were 1893 contraceptive acceptors attending family planning clinic between 1st January, 2008 and 31st December, 2017 in the centre. The uptake rate of the contraceptives throughout the study period was on the downward trend. Over half of the clients (60.7%) were within the age range of 30-39years and 6 (0.3%) were below 20 years. Age range for the study was 19-51years. Majority of the users (66.1%) were multipara. Modal parity was para 3 and 1862 clients (98.4%) had formal education. Most of the clients were married 1814 (95.8%) and of Christian religion 1813 (95.7%). Most preferred contraceptive method was the intrauterine contraceptive device (IUCD), 814 (43%). Clinical personnel were the commonest source of information accounting for 1425 (75.3%). Conclusions: There was a downward trend in the use of contraceptives during the study period. Most clients were in their thirties, married, educated and multiparous.
What shapes the cultivation effects from infotaining content? Toward a theoretical foundation for journalism studies

Infotaining formats are gaining rapid popularity over the past decades. So far, studies often attempt either to define what infotainment is, how the technological and economic changes have given rise to the format, or what effects it exerts, but rarely consider all three aspects together. This raises the possibility that the properties of infotaining formats are under-defined, leading to a confusion about the effects from infotaining content. This article explores (1) where infotainment comes from, (2) what its constitutive properties are, and (3) why its potential cultivation effect should differ from other formats. From synthesizing these notions, an integrated model derives that combines insights from journalism studies and cultivation theory in order to explain how the technological and economic forces shape the infotaining content being produced, and its cultivating effects on the public further. Scholars from across multiple subfields can use this framework to make common theoretical and empirical progress.
Cognitive Resilience to Alzheimer's Disease Pathology in the Human Brain.

BACKGROUND Past research has focused on risk factors for developing dementia, with increasing recognition of "resilient" people who live to old age with intact cognitive function despite pathological features of Alzheimer's disease (AD). OBJECTIVE To evaluate demographic factors, mid-life characteristics, and non-AD neuropathology findings that may be associated with cognitive resilience to AD pathology. METHODS We analyzed data from 276 autopsy cases with intermediate or high levels of AD pathology from the Adult Changes in Thought study. We defined cognitive resilience as having Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument scores ≥86 within two years of death and no clinical dementia diagnosis; non-resilient people had dementia diagnoses from AD or other causes before death. We compared mid-life characteristics, demographics, and additional neuropathology findings between resilient and non-resilient people. We used multivariable logistic regression to estimate odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for being resilient compared to not being resilient adjusting for demographic and neuropathology factors. RESULTS We classified 68 (25%) people as resilient and 208 (75%) as not resilient. A greater proportion of resilient people had a college degree (50%) compared with non-resilient (32%, p = 0.01). The odds of being resilient were significantly increased among people with a college education (OR = 2.01, 95% CI = 1.01-3.99) and significantly reduced among people with additional non-AD neuropathology findings such as hippocampal sclerosis (OR = 0.28, 95% CI = 0.09-0.89) and microinfarcts (OR = 0.34, 95% CI = 0.15-0.78). CONCLUSION Increased education and absence of non-AD pathology may be independently associated with cognitive resilience, highlighting the importance of evaluating co-morbid factors in future research on mechanisms of cognitive resilience.
Real-time gastric polyp detection using convolutional neural networks

Computer-aided polyp detection in gastric gastroscopy has been the subject of research over the past few decades. However, despite significant advances, automatic polyp detection in real time is still an unsolved problem. In this paper, we report on a convolutional neural network (CNN) for polyp detection that is constructed based on Single Shot MultiBox Detector (SSD) architecture and which we call SSD for Gastric Polyps (SSD-GPNet). To take full advantages of feature maps’ information from the feature pyramid and to acquire higher accuracy, we re-use information that is abandoned by Max-Pooling layers. In other words, we reuse the lost data from the pooling layers and concatenate that data as extra feature maps to contribute to classification and detection. Meanwhile, in the feature pyramid, we concatenate feature maps of the lower layers and feature maps that are deconvolved from upper layers to make explicit relationships between layers and to effectively increase the number of channels. The results show that our enhanced SSD for gastric polyp detection can realize real-time polyp detection with 50 frames per second (FPS) and can improve the mean average precision (mAP) from 88.5% to 90.4%, with only a little loss in time-performance. And the further experiment shows that SSD-GPNet has excellent performance in improving polyp detection recalls over 10% (p = 0.00053), especially in small polyp detection. This can help endoscopic physicians more easily find missed polyps and decrease the gastric polyp miss rate. It may be applicable in daily clinical practice to reduce the burden on physicians.
Antiplasmodial Lycorane Alkaloid Principles of the Plant Family Amaryllidaceae

Abstract The spread of malaria is thought to have followed human expansion out of Africa some 60 – 80 thousand years ago. With its prevalence in pantropical countries of the world and epicenter localized in Africa, malaria is now considered an unnecessary burden to overworked and under-resourced healthcare structures. Plants have long afforded a fertile hunting ground for the search and identification of structurally diverse antimalarial agents, such as quinine and artemisinin. This survey examines the antiparasitic properties of the family Amaryllidaceae via the antiplasmodial activities demonstrated for its lycorane alkaloid principles. Of these, 24 were natural compounds identified in 20 species from 11 genera of the Amaryllidaceae family, whilst the remaining 28 were synthetically derived entities based on the lycorane skeleton. These were screened against ten different strains of the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum, wherein the parent compound lycorine was shown to be the most potent with an IC50 of 0.029 µg/mL in the FCR-3 strain seen to be the best. Structure-activity relationship studies revealed that good activities were detectable across both the natural compounds as well as the synthetically accessed derivatives. Such studies also highlighted that there are several inherent structural features that define the lycorane alkaloid antiplasmodial pharmacophore, such as the nature of its ring systems and properties of its substituents. Mechanistically, a limited number of studies confirmed that lycorane alkaloids manifest their action by targeting enzymes associated with the plasmodial FAS-II biosynthetic pathways. Overall, these alkaloids have provided useful, convenient, and accessible scaffolds for antimalarial-based drug discovery.
A Novel Capsule Network Based on Wide Convolution and Multi-Scale Convolution for Fault Diagnosis

In the prognostics health management (PHM) of rotating machinery, the accurate identification of bearing fault is critical. In recent years, various deep learning methods can well identify bearing fault based on monitoring data. However, facing changing operating conditions and noise pollution, the accuracy of these algorithms decreases significantly, which makes the algorithms difficult in practical applications. To solve this problem, a novel capsule network based on wide convolution and multi-scale convolution (WMSCCN) is proposed for fault diagnosis. The proposed WMSCCN algorithm takes one-dimensional vibration signal as an input and no additional manual processing is required. In addition, the adaptive batch normalization (AdaBN) algorithm is introduced to further enhance the adaptability of WMSCCN under noise pollution and load changes. On generalization experiments under different loads, the proposed WMSCCN and WMSCCN-AdaBN algorithms achieve average accuracy rates of 96.44% and 97.44%, respectively, which is superior to other advanced algorithms. In the noise resistance experiment, the proposed WMSCCN-AdaBN can maintain a 92.3% diagnostic accuracy in a strong noise environment with a signal to noise ratio (SNR) = −4 dB, showing a very strong anti-noise ability. When the SNR exceeds 4 dB, the accuracy reaches 100%, indicating that the proposed algorithm has a very good accuracy at low noise levels. Two experiments have effectively verified the validity and generalizability of the proposed model.
Relative thermodynamic stability of the [C,N,O] linkages as an indication of the most abundant structures in the ISM

Context. Most of the compounds detected in the interstellar medium (ISM) that possess isomers correspond to the thermodynamically most stable isomer of a given chemical formula. Using the minimun energy principle (MEP) as a pragmatic tool is particularly efficient for less than six atoms, but for larger systems combinatorial analysis gives an intractable numbers of isomers. Aims. To make the MEP more applicable, we look for a chemical sieve to filter the thermodynamic data needed to determine which isomers of complex organic molecules (COMs) have higher chances of being present in the ISM. To do so, we investigate whether the nature of the [C,N,O] elementary fragment can be determinant for the stabilization of COMs, taking C2H3NO as a case study. Methods. We employed standard quantum chemistry methods to determine the ordering of fragments and derivatives on the energy scale. Density functional theory treatments were systematically performed, together with high-level coupled cluster calculations to refine relative energies. Results. For C2H3NO we find methylisocyanate CH3NCO, which is a compound that was very recently detected in the ISM, to be the most stable isomer in a corpus of 40 isomers of lowest energy. In neutral form we find the stability ordering of NCO > ONC; the same is true for the negative ion. Attachments of R=H, CH3, C2H5, HC2, H2CCH, and C6H5 and metals Al and Mg to the nitrogen atom of the NCO fragment provide the most stable isomers. The energy differences between the successive isomers on the energy scale R-NCO, R-OCN, R-CNO, and R-ONC are of the same order of magnitude for all carbonaceous R. Conclusions. Combining the criterion of most stable linkage with the MEP concept should greatly reduce the window of potential targets to be searched for in the ISM. Compounds containing the NCO linkage should be preferential targets of future research.