Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does the Keele STarT Back Screening Tool Contribute to Effectiveness in Treatment and Cost and Loss of Follow-Up of the Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy for Patients with Low Back Pain?

Background: Mechanical diagnosis and therapy (MDT) and the stratified approach using the Keele STarT Back Screening Tool (SBST) are examples of stratified low back pain (LBP) management. We investigated whether the medium–high risk in SBST can contribute to the time and sessions until discharge from MDT (Question 1) and to the loss of follow-up before identifying a promising management strategy (Question 2). Methods: A retrospective chart study was conducted. Multiple regression modeling was constructed using 10 independent variables, including whether the SBST was medium–high risk or not for Question 1, and the 9/10 independent variables for Question 2. Results: The data of 89 participants for Question 1 and 166 participants for Question 2 were analyzed. SBST was not a primary contributing factor for Question 1 (R2 = 0.17–0.19). The model for Question 2 included SBST as a primary contributing factor and the shortest distance from the patient address to the hospital as a secondary contributing factor (93.4% correct classification). Conclusion: SBST status was not a primary contributing factor for time and sessions until discharge from MDT, but was a critical factor for the loss of MDT follow-up before identifying a promising management strategy.
Insights into the Effect of Curcumin and (–)-Epigallocatechin-3-Gallate on the Aggregation of Aβ(1–40) Monomers by Means of Molecular Dynamics

In this study, we compared the effects of two well-known natural compounds on the early step of the fibrillation process of amyloid-β (1–40), responsible for the formation of plaques in the brains of patients affected by Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The use of extensive replica exchange simulations up to the µs scale allowed us to characterize the inhibition activity of (–)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) and curcumin (CUR) on unfolded amyloid fibrils. A reduced number of β-strands, characteristic of amyloid fibrils, and an increased distance between the amino acids that are responsible for the intra- and interprotein aggregations are observed. The central core region of the amyloid-β (Aβ(1–40)) fibril is found to have a high affinity to EGCG and CUR due to the presence of hydrophobic residues. Lastly, the free binding energy computed using the Poisson Boltzmann Surface Ares suggests that EGCG is more likely to bind to unfolded Aβ(1–40) fibrils and that this molecule can be a good candidate to develop new and more effective congeners to treat AD.
Behavioral Responses of Eastern Gray Squirrels in Suburban Habitats Differing in Human Activity Levels

Abstract We observed the alert responses of Sciurus carolinensis (Eastern Gray Squirrel) to two different approach stimuli (human only and human with a leashed dog) in two suburban habitats differing in the level of human activity. Alert distance in the habitat with higher levels of human activity was significantly shorter than the alert distance in the habitat with lower levels of human activity. Overall, the alert distance did not differ between the approach by a human alone and the approach by a human with a dog; however, in the high human activity sites (but not the low human activity sites), the presence of the dog increased alert distance in the squirrels. In addition, squirrels tended to initially respond by running more in the high human activity sites, but the presence of the dog increased the number of squirrels whose initial responses were to not run. Our results suggest that Eastern Gray Squirrel antipredator behavior, at least in response to humans and human-associated animals, is influenced by the level of human activity in the surrounding habitat.
Review of the Novel Investigational Antifungal Olorofim

The incidence of invasive fungal infections caused by molds and endemic fungi is increasing. There is also concern regarding increased rates of reduced susceptibility or frank resistance among Aspergillus and Coccidioides species, while Scedosporium species, Lomentospora prolificans, and Fusarium species are inherently less susceptible or intrinsically resistant to clinically available antifungals. Olorofim (formerly F901318) is the first member of the orotomide class of antifungals to be evaluated clinically for the treatment of invasive mold infections. This agent inhibits dihydroorotate dehydrogenase, a key enzyme in the biosynthesis of pyrimidines. Olorofim has activity against many molds and thermally dimorphic fungi, including species that are resistant to azoles and amphotericin B, but lacks activity against yeasts and the Mucorales. It is currently being developed for both oral and intravenous administration. Although published clinical outcome data have been limited to case reports to date, the results against invasive and refractory infections are promising. This review describes the mechanism of action of olorofim, its in vitro spectrum of activity, and what is currently known about its pharmacokinetic profile and clinical efficacy.
Molecular Evolution and Characterization of Fish Stathmin Genes

Simple Summary Stathmin is a highly conserved microtubule remodeling protein. Here, 175 putative stathmin genes were identified in 27 species of fish. Gene organization, motif distribution, divergence of duplicated genes, functional divergence, synteny relationship, and protein-protein interaction were performed to investigate their evolutionary history. In addition, expression profiles of some stathmins were examined under dimethoate treatment. The results will provide useful references for further functional analyses. Abstract Stathmin is a highly conserved microtubule remodeling protein, involved in many biological processes such as signal transduction, cell proliferation, neurogenesis and so on. However, little evolutional information has been reported about this gene family in fish. In this study, 175 stathmin genes were identified in 27 species of fish. Conserved exon-intron structure and motif distributions were found in each group. Divergence of duplicated genes implied the species’ adaptation to the environment. Functional divergence suggested that the evolution of stathmin is mainly influenced by purifying selection, and some residues may undergo positive selection. Moreover, synteny relationship near the stathmin locus was relatively conserved in some fish. Network analyses also exhibited 74 interactions, implying functional diversity. The expression pattern of some stathmin genes was also investigated under pesticide stress. These will provide useful references for their functional research in the future.
Systemic racism, chronic health inequities, and COVID‐19: A syndemic in the making?

For a brief moment, in the early days of COVID-19, some reports heralded the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, as a “great equalizer. ” It is unlikely that any anthropologist, human biologist, historian, or public health scientist found this idea tempting. Pandemics always follow the fault lines of society—exposing and often magnifying power inequities that shape population health even in normal times (Wade, 2020). Soon, that stark reality became clear to all. By early April, evidence began to emerge in the United States— first in Milwaukee, then in Detroit, eventually everywhere data were disaggregated by race—that mortality from COVID-19 was disproportionately affecting Black people and communities (Johnson & Buford, 2020). During the entire course of the pandemic so far, data compiled by the non-profit APM Research Lab (2020) has shown that the crude death rate for Black Americans is more than double that for all other racialized groups. When adjusted for age, the risk of death from COVID-19 is as much as nine times higher for African Americans than it is for whites (Bassett, Chen, & Krieger, 2020). This inequity—as appalling as it is—may still underestimate the problem, as data remain woefully incomplete. Despite calls for comprehensive, nationwide data on COVID-19 cases and deaths by race and socioeconomic status, the U.S. federal government has no such system in place, and journalists and scholars have stepped in to collate disaggregated data by race from a patchwork of state health departments. The need for better data remains. But data alone are not enough. We also need an explicit conceptual framework to know what the numbers mean, shape the questions researchers ask, and direct attention to appropriate public health and policy responses. In the absence of such a framework, the legacy of racial-genetic determinism in American medicine makes it likely that excess Black death will be interpreted as intrinsic Black vulnerability—a pattern that has already begun to emerge (Gravlee, 2020). Here I propose that the theory of syndemics may be a useful framework for making sense of the unfolding pandemic and directing future research on COVID-19.
Current Functionality and Potential Improvements of Non-Alcoholic Fermented Cereal Beverages

Fermentation continues to be the most common biotechnological tool to be used in cereal-based beverages, as it is relatively simple and economical. Fermented beverages hold a long tradition and have become known for their sensory and health-promoting attributes. Considering the attractive sensory traits and due to increased consumer awareness of the importance of healthy nutrition, the market for functional, natural, and non-alcoholic beverages is steadily increasing all over the world. This paper outlines the current achievements and technological development employed to enhance the qualitative and nutritional status of non-alcoholic fermented cereal beverages (NFCBs). Following an in-depth review of various scientific publications, current production methods are discussed as having the potential to enhance the functional properties of NFCBs and their safety, as a promising approach to help consumers in their efforts to improve their nutrition and health status. Moreover, key aspects concerning production techniques, fermentation methods, and the nutritional value of NFCBs are highlighted, together with their potential health benefits and current consumption trends. Further research efforts are required in the segment of traditional fermented cereal beverages to identify new potentially probiotic microorganisms and starter cultures, novel ingredients as fermentation substrates, and to finally elucidate the contributions of microorganisms and enzymes in the fermentation process.
Epidemic Alphaviruses: Ecology, Emergence and Outbreaks

Over the past century, the emergence/reemergence of arthropod-borne zoonotic agents has been a growing public health concern. In particular, agents from the genus Alphavirus pose a significant risk to both animal and human health. Human alphaviral disease presents with either arthritogenic or encephalitic manifestations and is associated with significant morbidity and/or mortality. Unfortunately, there are presently no vaccines or antiviral measures approved for human use. The present review examines the ecology, epidemiology, disease, past outbreaks, and potential to cause contemporary outbreaks for several alphavirus pathogens.
Voice and Stroboscopic Characteristics in Transgender Patients Seeking Gender‐Affirming Voice Care

Understanding transgender voice is in nascent stages. This study describes voice characteristics in treatment‐seeking trans women by comparing two validated questionnaires—Voice Handicap Index‐10 (VHI‐10) and Transsexual Voice Questionnaire (TVQMtF)—and reports incidence of abnormal stroboscopy findings and acoustic characteristics.
Index Networks

We show that existing upsampling operators in convolutional networks can be unified using the notion of the index function. This notion is inspired by an observation in the decoding process of deep image matting where indices-guided unpooling can often recover boundary details considerably better than other upsampling operators such as bilinear interpolation. By viewing the indices as a function of the feature map, we introduce the concept of ‘learning to index’, and present a novel index-guided encoder-decoder framework where indices are learned adaptively from data and are used to guide downsampling and upsampling stages, without extra training supervision. At the core of this framework is a new learnable module, termed Index Network (IndexNet), which dynamically generates indices conditioned on the feature map. IndexNet can be used as a plug-in, applicable to almost all convolutional networks that have coupled downsampling and upsampling stages, enabling the networks to dynamically capture variations of local patterns. In particular, we instantiate and investigate five families of IndexNet. We highlight their superiority in delivering spatial information over other upsampling operators with experiments on synthetic data, and demonstrate their effectiveness on four dense prediction tasks, including image matting, image denoising, semantic segmentation, and monocular depth estimation. Code and models are available at https://git.io/IndexNet.
New Molecular Data on Filaria and its Wolbachia from Red Howler Monkeys (Alouatta macconnelli) in French Guiana—A Preliminary Study

Previous studies have reported filarial parasites of the genus Dipetalonema and Mansonella from French Guiana monkeys, based on morphological taxonomy. In this study, we screened blood samples from nine howler monkeys (Alouatta macconnelli) for the presence of filaria and Wolbachia DNA. The infection rates were 88.9% for filaria and 55.6% for wolbachiae. The molecular characterization, based on the 18S gene of filariids, revealed that A. macconnelli are infected with at least three species (Mansonella sp., Brugia sp. and an unidentified Onchocercidae species.). Since the 18S and cox1 generic primers are not very effective at resolving co-infections, we developed ITS genus-specific PCRs for Mansonella and Brugia genus. The results revealed coinfections in 75% of positives. The presence of Mansonella sp. and Brugia sp. was also confirmed by the 16S phylogenetic analysis of their associated Wolbachia. Mansonella sp. , which close to the species from the subgenus Tetrapetalonema encountered in New World Monkeys, while Brugia sp. was identical to the strain circulating in French Guiana dogs. We propose a novel ITS1 Brugia genus-specific qPCR. We applied it to screen for Brugia infection in howler monkeys and 66.7% were found to be positive. Our finding highlights the need for further studies to clarify the species diversity of neotropics monkeys by combining molecular and morphological features. The novel Brugia genus-specific qPCR assays could be an effective tool for the surveillance and characterization of this potential zoonosis.
Out of Sight, but Not Out of Mind: Aspects of the Avian Oncogenic Herpesvirus, Marek’s Disease Virus

Simple Summary Often tumors are eventually observed at poultry slaughter, leading to condemnation, not of zoonotic, but because of esthetic reasons. Most avian tumors are caused by infection with oncogenic viruses, where the most prominent is a herpesvirus, Marek’s disease virus (MDV). MDV-infections are economically important in the poultry industry as they cause immunosuppression, decreases in productivity and profitability and increased morbidity, mortality, and condemnation at slaughter. MDV was discovered about 50 years ago, and still its study is ongoing until now. This review is presenting the MDV biology, and protection by vaccination, but also topics that were less brought to wider knowledge, like the vaccine and virulent virus presence in feathers, and their use in assessing the efficacy of vaccines application in commercial settings. In addition, two relatively novel topics are reviewed, like the meq MDV oncogene and its recent implication in molecular epidemiology and MDV virulence determination, and second, the importance of native, three-dimensional conformational epitopes of the immunodominant glycoprotein B and the molecular recombination between DNA-DNA and DNA-RNA viruses. Our studies were particular, as they were originally describing how the native virion is activating the chicken immune response to create virus-neutralizing antibodies. The topic might shed light on items to be focused on in future searches for effective vaccines. Abstract Marek’s disease virus is an economically important avian herpesvirus that causes tumors and immunosuppression in chickens and turkeys. The virus, disease, and vaccines have been known for more than 50 years, but as knowledge gaps still exists, intensive research is still ongoing. The understanding of MDV complexity can provide scientific insight in topics that cannot be experimented in humans, providing a unique model that is dually useful for the benefit of the poultry industry and for studying general herpesvirology. The present review presents the following topics: the MDV biology, the vaccine’s and virulent virus’ peculiar presence in feathers, protection by vaccination. In addition, two relatively behind the scenes topics are reviewed; first, the meq MDV oncogene and its recent implication in molecular epidemiology and in the MDV virulence determination, and second, the functionality of conformational epitopes of the MDV immunodominant protein, glycoprotein B. Our studies were particular, as they were the only ones describing three-dimensional MDV gB oligomers. MDV gB (glycoprotein B) continuous and discontinuous epitopes were shown to possess distinctive neutralization activities. In contrast, the significance of oligomerization of the viral membrane proteins for the creation of discontinuous epitopes in other herpesviruses was explored extensively.
Rapid Recolonization of Agricultural Soil by Microarthropods After Steam Disinfestation

ABSTRACT Steam disinfestation of soil is attracting growing interest in intensive agriculture, because of the increasing demand of reduced use of fumigants. In this study, we assessed the effect of steam application on the microarthropod community, a fundamental component of soil environment. We conducted steam disinfestation treatments in experimental parcels, where we sampled for edaphic microarthropods on one date before and on four dates after the treatments. Our results showed that edaphic fauna quickly recolonized the disinfested soil, re-establishing dense and rich communities after 45 days. These results support the low environmental impact of this technique and thus could be used for certification of the eco-biological sustainability of steam treatment in organic farming.
Weather Classification Using an Automotive LIDAR Sensor Based on Detections on Asphalt and Atmosphere

A semi-/autonomous driving car requires local weather information to identify if it is working inside its operational design domain and adapt itself accordingly. This information can be extracted from changes in the detections of a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) sensor. These changes are caused by modifications in the volumetric scattering of the atmosphere or surface reflection of objects in the field of view of the LIDAR. In order to evaluate the use of an automotive LIDAR as a weather sensor, a LIDAR is placed outdoor in a fixed position for a period of 9 months covering all seasons. As target, an asphalt region from a parking lot is chosen. The collected sensor raw data is labeled depending on the occurring weather conditions as: clear, rain, fog and snow, and the presence of sunlight: with or without background radiation. The influence of different weather types and background radiations on the measurement results is analyzed and different parameters are chosen in order to maximize the classification accuracy. The classification is done per frame in order to provide fast update rates while still keeping an F1 score higher than 80%. Additionally, the field of view is divided into two regions: atmosphere and street, where the influences of different weather types are most notable. The resulting classifiers can be used separately or together increasing the versatility of the system. A possible way of extending the method for a moving platform and alternatives to virtually simulate the scene are also discussed.
Growth and Water Use of Petunia as Affected by Substrate Water Content and Daily Light Integral

More efficient irrigation practices are needed in ornamental plant production to reduce the amount of water used for production as well as runoff of fertilizers and pesticides. The objective of this study was to determine how different substrate volumetric water contents (u) affected petunia (Petunia ·hybrida) growth and to quantify the daily water use of the plants. A soil moisture sensor-controlled irrigation system was used to maintain u within '0.02 m 3 m -3 of the u threshold values for irrigation, which ranged from 0.05 to 0.40 m 3 m -3 . Shoot dry weight increased as the u threshold increased from 0.05 to 0.25 m 3 m -3 and was correlated with the total amount of irrigation water applied over the 3-week course of the experiment. The daily water use of the petunias grown with a u threshold of 0.40 m 3 m -3 was 12 to 44 mL/plant and was positively correlated with both plant age and daily light integral. Lower u thresholds resulted in a decrease in both leaf water (c) and osmotic potential (cS). A decrease in turgor pressure (P) at lower u was seen at 11, but not 20 days after the start of the treatments. There were no significant effects of u on c, cS, or P on fully rehydrated plants at the end of the study. Plants were able to survive and grow at all us, although water at a u less than 0.20 m 3 m -3 is generally considered to be unavailable to the plants. Results show that it is possible to automatically irrigate plants with the use of soil moisture sensors, and this approach to irrigation may have applications in controlling the growth of ornamental plants.
Pubic hair grooming practices in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: prevalence, side effects and association with sexually transmitted infections

Pubic hair grooming is common in many countries, but little is known about this practice in Africa. Grooming has been positively associated with self-reported sexually transmitted infections (STIs). This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and safety of pubic hair grooming in two South African settings. In KwaZulu-Natal province, 1218 women participating in the Evidence for Contraceptive Options and HIV Outcomes Trial completed an interviewer-administered questionnaire on pubic hair grooming practices, and were tested for Chlamydia trachomatis (CT), Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG) and herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2). Pubic hair removal was reported by 705 (58.2%) of women. Common areas for grooming were the pubis (n = 616, 99.4%), vagina/perineum (n = 529, 85.3%) and inner thigh (n = 255, 41.1%). Half (n= 361, 51.4%) removed some or all of their pubic hair at least monthly and 59 (8.4%) once a week or more often. Common side effects reported included itching (n = 439, 77.1%) and pimples and blisters (n = 249, 43.9%). A quarter (n = 173, 24.5%) of groomers had a positive result for either or both of CT and NG compared to a fifth (n = 98, 19.4%) of non-groomers (p-value < 0.033). There was no difference between the groups for HSV-2. After adjusting for age and having more than one sex partner, groomers were significantly more likely to have CT or NG than non-groomers (OR: 1.31; 95% CI: 1.19–1.45). Similarly, those who experienced hair removal-related complications had 1.26 times the odds of testing positive for CT or NG (95% CI: 1.03–1.54). The practice of pubic hair removal is common and reporting of side effects is high in this population. These injuries could put women at a higher risk of STIs.
Stimulation of Posterior Thalamic Nuclei Induces Photophobic Behavior in Mice

A hallmark of migraine is photophobia. In mice, photophobia‐like behavior is induced by calcitonin gene‐related peptide (CGRP), a neuropeptide known to be a key player in migraine. In this study, we sought to identify sites within the brain from which CGRP could induce photophobia.