Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lack of association between low vitamin E levels and retentio secudinarum in Belgian Draught Horses (BDH) and Warmblood (WB) mares

Methods Blood samples were collected from 10 BDH mares and 9 Warm Blood (WB) mares, foaling without any complications. All mares were housed in boxes for at least one month before foaling and were without known history of RP. They were fed with grass silage and hay and WB mares were supplemented with concentrates. All mares foaled between March 1 st and the 1 st of May. Blood samples were obtained from the jugular vein within 1 h of foaling (Vacutainer Systems; Becton Dickinson & Co, Franklin Lakes, NY, USA) and were centrifuged at 2000g. Serum was stored at -18°C to be processed for α tocopherol (high performance liquid chromatography, HPLC). The mares were diagnosed as suffering from hypovitaminosis when serum levels were below 3 mg/ml vitamin E. RP was defined as the failure to expel all or a part of the foetal membranes within 3h after delivery of the foal (Sevinga et al. 2002). Statistic analysis was done using the Mann-Whitney U test.
Baptism of fire: Modeling the effects of prescribed fire on tick-borne disease

Recently, tick-borne illnesses have been trending upward and are an increasing source of risk to people's health in the United States. This is due to range expansion in tick habitats as a result of climate change. Thus, it is imperative to find a practical and cost-efficient way of managing tick populations. Prescribed burns are a common form of land management that can be cost efficient if properly managed and can be applied across large amounts of land. In this study, we present a compartmental model for ticks carrying Lyme disease and uniquely incorporate the effects of prescribed fire using an impulsive system to investigate the effects of prescribed fire intensity (high and low) and the duration between burns. Our study found that fire intensity has a larger impact in reducing tick population than the frequency between burns. Furthermore, burning at high intensity is preferable to burning at low intensity whenever possible, although high intensity burns may be unrealistic due to environmental factors. Annual burns resulted in the most significant reduction of infectious nymphs, which are the primary carriers of Lyme disease.
Predicting concurrent structural mechanical mechanisms during microstructure evolution

The interdependence between structural mechanics and microstructure solidification has been widely observed experimentally as a factor leading to undesirable macroscopic properties and casting defects. Despite this, numerical modelling of microstructure solidification often neglects this interaction and is therefore unable to predict key mechanisms such as the development of misoriented grains. This paper presents a numerical method coupling a finite volume structural mechanics solver to a cellular automata solidification solver, where gravity or pressure-driven displacements alter the local orientation and thereby growth behaviour of the solidifying dendrites. Solutions obtained using this model are presented which show fundamental behaviours observed in experiments. The results show that small, localized deformations can lead to significant changes in the crystallographic orientation of a dendrite and ultimately affect the overall microstructure development. This article is part of the theme issue 'Transport phenomena in complex systems (part 2)'.
Antecedents of career success of African migrant workers in Europe: A 2011–2019 systematic literature review and future research agenda

Although a significant portion of African migrants resides in Europe and contribute significantly to European economies, they are underrepresented in social sciences research. As a result, our understanding of the antecedents of their career success is limited. To address this gap, we aim to perform a systematic literature review of the antecedents of the career success of African migrants in Europe. We build upon the Career Resources Framework to organize and synthesize our findings drawn from 22 peer-reviewed articles published between 2011 and 2019 selected following the PRISMA method. Results revealed education, the host country's language skills, belonging to diverse social networks, stronger cultural competencies, and higher career clarity are positively associated with career success. However, African migrants experience the most severe labor market discrimination in terms of employment and career prospects in Europe which dramatically calls for further scholarly attention. We discuss the findings and outline future research agenda.
The Added Value of 18F-FDG PET/CT Compared with 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT in Patients with Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer

Visual Abstract 68Ga-prostate-specific membrane antigen (68Ga-PSMA) PET/CT is a commonly used imaging modality in prostate cancers. However, few studies have compared the diagnostic efficiency between 68Ga-PSMA and 18F-FDG PET/CT and evaluated whether a heterogeneous metabolic phenotype (especially 68Ga-PSMA–negative [−], 18F-FDG–positive [+] lesions) exists in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). We determined the added value of 18F-FDG PET/CT compared with 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT in CRPC patients and identified CRPC patients who may benefit from additional 18F-FDG PET/CT. Methods: The data of 56 patients with CRPC who underwent both 68Ga-PSMA and 18F-FDG PET/CT from May 2018 to February 2021 were retrospectively analyzed. The patients were classified into 2 groups: with or without 68Ga-PSMA−, 18F-FDG+ lesions. The differences in patient characteristics between the 2 groups and predictors of patients who have at least 1 68Ga-PSMA−, 18F-FDG+ lesion were analyzed. Results: Although both the detection rate (75.0% vs. 51.8%, P = 0.004) and the number of positive lesions (135 vs. 95) were higher for 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT than for 18F-FDG PET/CT, there were still 13 of 56 (23.2%) patients with at least 1 68Ga-PSMA−, 18F-FDG+ lesion. Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and the Gleason score were both higher in patients with 68Ga-PSMA−, 18F-FDG+ lesions than in those without (P = 0.04 and P < 0.001, respectively). Multivariate regression analysis showed that the Gleason score (≥8) and PSA (≥7.9 ng/mL) were associated with the detection rate of patients who had 68Ga-PSMA−, 18F-FDG+ lesions (P = 0.01 and P = 0.04, respectively). The incidences of having 68Ga-PSMA−, 18F-FDG+ lesions in low-probability (Gleason score < 8 and PSA < 7.9 ng/mL), medium-probability (Gleason score ≥ 8 and PSA < 7.9 ng/mL or Gleason score < 8 and PSA ≥ 7.9 ng/mL), and high-probability (Gleason score ≥ 8 and PSA ≥ 7.9 ng/mL) groups were 0%, 21.7%, and 61.5%, respectively (P < 0.001). Conclusion: Gleason score and PSA are significant predictors of 68Ga-PSMA−, 18F-FDG+ lesions, and CRPC patients with a high Gleason score and PSA may benefit from additional 18F-FDG PET/CT.
Classification of Human Movements with Motion Capture Data in a Motor Rehabilitation Context

Augmented and virtual reality can be used in motor or neuromotor rehabilitation clinics to make patients become more motivated and engaged with the treatment. The interaction with the applications stimulates the patient to exercise the impaired limb while enjoying the experience. This work takes the real-time tracking data generated from optical and wearable motion capture devices and uses it to feed machine learning algorithms. The data processing makes the movements with different durations consistent and enables the convergence of the models. Also, the data format is independent of the camera position and user. One of the experiments presented recognizes eight movements being executed in the system.
A Virtual Reality Exergame with a Low-cost 3D Motion Tracking for At-Home Post-Stroke Rehabilitation

Stroke is one of the main causes of long-term disability worldwide. Conventional upper limb physiotherapy can be tedious, expensive and require physical transportation. Virtual Reality (VR) video games can help solve these problems. In fact, recent studies show that health professionals are increasingly interested in using VR games for post-stroke rehabilitation. However, commercial possibilities can be inaccessible, in terms of time, space and cost, and also inadequate to the needs of patients and therapists. Thus, in this work, a VR video game with an innovative alternative for tracking the 3D movement of the upper limb is proposed. As a result, a system that uses optical capture with a regular camera and colored sphere markers, while maintaining lightweight real-time processing on mobile devices was done. The fact that the controller can be handcrafted by the users makes the game very low-cost, possible to be distributed worldwide, reaching a large number of people, and possible to be played and monitored remotely. This new form of motion capture can make the VR exergame interaction more intuitive, therefore increasing the user's immersion in his therapy exercises. The proposed system was tested in order to find out how accurate it can be, compared to a gold standard system (a goniometer). It has been found that the system has limitations, such as low accuracy in obtuse angles and camera distortions. Still, it seems promising, due to its accessibility, very low cost, customization to the needs of patients and therapists and good tests results, as a complementary alternative for VR post-stroke rehabilitation.
Proposal for the Design and Implementation of Miranda: A Chatbot-Type Recommender for Supporting Self-Regulated Learning in Online Environments

The use of virtual platforms as a new space where online learning occurs has experienced a progressive increase in recent years. These platforms, also known as learning management systems (LMS), bring many benefits, not only the intrinsic ones due to their virtual modality: the ease of access and availability, but also due to the large amount of data that they store with respect to student interactions. At present, these data have not yet been processed or exploited in their entirety and if they do so they could provide various indicators that would be oriented to understand the way in which knowledge is acquired, the behavior of students in order to further improve the experience of student learning on online platforms. Fortunately, platforms like Moodle are characterized by storing a large amount of data, for that reason several plugins are developed, which add extra functionalities to the platform and use learning analytics (LA) to monitor and describe the learning process. However, most plugins do not reach a prescription level, that is, they do not delve into specific actions to improve the learning process. Thus, this study proposes the design and implementation of a chatbot-type recommendation system, the proposed tool will help students in self-regulation of their learning, providing recommendations for time and sessions, resources and actions within the platform to obtain better results.
In Vivo Motility Patterns Displayed by Immune Cells Under Inflammatory Conditions

The migration of immune cells plays a key role in inflammation. This is evident in the fact that inflammatory stimuli elicit a broad range of migration patterns in immune cells. Since these patterns are pivotal for initiating the immune response, their dysregulation is associated with life-threatening conditions including organ failure, chronic inflammation, autoimmunity, and cancer, amongst others. Over the last two decades, thanks to advancements in the intravital microscopy technology, it has become possible to visualize cell migration in living organisms with unprecedented resolution, helping to deconstruct hitherto unexplored aspects of the immune response associated with the dynamism of cells. However, a comprehensive classification of the main motility patterns of immune cells observed in vivo, along with their relevance to the inflammatory process, is still lacking. In this review we defined cell actions as motility patterns displayed by immune cells, which are associated with a specific role during the immune response. In this regard, we summarize the main actions performed by immune cells during intravital microscopy studies. For each of these actions, we provide a consensus name, a definition based on morphodynamic properties, and the biological contexts in which it was reported. Moreover, we provide an overview of the computational methods that were employed for the quantification, fostering an interdisciplinary approach to study the immune system from imaging data.
Editorial Research Topic: Non-coding RNA as Therapeutic Target: A Game Changer in Cardiac Regenerative Strategies?

Cardiovascular diseases are themost common cause of death worldwide (Roth et al., 2017). Though recent advances in therapeutic drug treatments made it possible to better manage the disease and increase the life span of heart failure patients, there is still no option to cure the patient’s heart after a myocardial infarction (MI). This results mainly from a lack of cardiac regeneration after massive cardiomyocyte loss due toMI. Adult cardiomyocytes aremostly inable to divide. Their proliferation capacity gets lost after birth when maturation takes place and the cardiomyocyte become quiescent (Tzahor and Poss, 2017). Recent research is focused on deciphering of the molecular switches from neonatal to adult cardiomyocytes, i.e., regenerative vs. post-mitotic states of cardiomyocytes. Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) account for the vast majority of mammalian transcripts and it has been shown in the last two decades that this class of molecules is involved in the regulation of many, if not all, physiological and pathological settings, including cardiac disease and regeneration (Bär et al., 2016; Beermann et al., 2016; Hunkler et al., 2021). Due to their involvement in many different pathological settings, ncRNAs serve as attractive therapeutic targets. Synthetic ncRNA mimics can be used to restore decreased function, whereas anti-sense oligonucleotides can be used to inhibit disease-promoting functions. Several ncRNAbased drugs are already in clinical trials, including those to target pathological heart conditions (Huang et al., 2020). This Frontiers Research Topic entitled “Non-coding RNA as Therapeutic Target: A Game Changer in Cardiac Regenerative Strategies? ” has collected nine contributions from experts who showcase recent findings of different aspects of cardiac regeneration and provide novel insights into themajor subtypes of ncRNAs, particularly, long non-coding RNA (lncRNA),microRNA (miRNA), and circular RNA (circRNA) biology and their regulation in cardiovascular disease.
Altered Effective Brain Connectivity During Habituation in First Episode Schizophrenia With Auditory Verbal Hallucinations: A Dichotic Listening EEG Study

Background: Habituation is considered to have protective and filtering mechanisms. The present study is aim to find the casual relationship and mechanisms of excitatory–inhibitory (E/I) dysfunctions in schizophrenia (SCZ) via habituation. Methods: A dichotic listening paradigm was performed with simultaneous EEG recording on 22 schizophrenia patients and 22 gender- and age-matched healthy controls. Source reconstruction and dynamic causal modeling (DCM) analysis were performed to estimate the effective connectivity and casual relationship between frontal and temporal regions before and after habituation. Results: The schizophrenia patients expressed later habituation onset (p < 0.01) and hyper-activity in both lateral frontal–temporal cortices than controls (p = 0.001). The patients also showed decreased top-down and bottom-up connectivity in bilateral frontal–temporal regions (p < 0.01). The contralateral frontal–frontal and temporal–temporal connectivity showed a left to right decreasing (p < 0.01) and right to left strengthening (p < 0.01). Conclusions: The results give causal evidence for E/I imbalance in schizophrenia during dichotic auditory processing. The altered effective connectivity in frontal–temporal circuit could represent the trait bio-marker of schizophrenia with auditory hallucinations.
The Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome-Quality of Life Scale (GTS-QOL): A Validation in Japanese Patients

Background: Though Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome (GTS) has significant impact on the quality of life of its patients, measures of health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) specific to adolescents and adults with GTS were not developed until recently. The present study provides evidence on the validity of the Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome-Quality of Life Scale (GTS-QOL), the first disease-specific HR-QOL instrument for GTS patients, for the first time in an East Asian sample. Methods: One hundred and two Japanese individuals aged 13 and above with GTS were included in our study. Internal consistency was evaluated using Cronbach's alpha. The 4-factor structure of the GTS-QOL was assessed using confirmatory factor analysis, using goodness of fit indices, factor loadings of each questionnaire item, and covariances between factors. Validity was assessed using interscale correlations. Convergent and discriminate construct validity was evaluated using correlations with other scales such as the 28-item General Health Questionnaire, the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale, and the short version of the Padua Inventory. Results: Scaling assumptions were met. Internal consistency reliability was high, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.96. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed sufficient factor loadings and goodness of fit. All measures of goodness of fit corroborated the fit of the 4-factor model. Standardized covariances between factors in the confirmatory factor analysis were >0.8. There were significant correlations with other well-validated scales, and thus convergent and discriminate construct validity was sufficient. Conclusion: The GTS-QOL is a valid and reliable instrument to measure disease-specific HR-QOL of GTS patients in Japan.
Adverse Childhood Experience Is Associated With Disrupted White Matter Integrity in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have an increased risk of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) than typically developed (TD) children. Since multiple lines of studies have suggested that ACEs are related to myelination in the frontal lobe, an exposure to ACEs can be associated with white matter microstructural disruption in the frontal lobe, which may be implicated in subsequential psychological deficits after the adulthood. In this study, we investigated the relationship between ACEs and microstructural integrity on frontal lobe-related white matter tracts using diffusion tensor imaging in 63 individuals with ASD and 38 TD participants. Using a tractography-based analysis, we delineated the uncinate fasciculus (UF), dorsal cingulum (Ci), and anterior thalamic radiation (ATR), which are involved in the neural pathology of ASD, and estimated each diffusion parameter. Compared to the TD participants, individuals with ASD displayed significantly lower fractional anisotropy (FA) and higher radial diffusivity (RD) in the left ATR. Then, ASD individuals exposed to severe ACEs displayed higher RD than those exposed to mild ACEs and TD participants in the left ATR. Moreover, the severity of ACEs, particularly neglect, correlated with lower FA and higher RD in the left UF and ATR in individuals with ASD, which was not observed in TD participants. These results suggest that an exposure to ACEs is associated with abnormality in the frontal lobe-related white matter in ASD.
Identification of Survival-Associated Hub Genes in Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma Based on WGCNA

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death worldwide. Since little clinical symptoms were shown in the early period of pancreatic adenocarcinoma, most patients were found to carry metastases when diagnosis. The lack of effective diagnosis biomarkers and therapeutic targets makes pancreatic adenocarcinoma difficult to screen and cure. The fundamental problem is we know very little about the regulatory mechanisms during carcinogenesis. Here, we employed weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) to build gene interaction network using expression profile of pancreatic adenocarcinoma from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). STRING was used for the construction and visualization of biological networks. A total of 22 modules were detected in the network, among which yellow and pink modules showed the most significant associations with pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Dozens of new genes including PKMYT1, WDHD1, ASF1B, and RAD18 were identified. Further survival analysis yielded their valuable effects on the diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Our study pioneered network-based algorithm in the application of tumor etiology and discovered several promising regulators for pancreatic adenocarcinoma detection and therapy.
The High Ratio of the Plasma miR-96/miR-99b Correlated With Poor Prognosis in Patients With Metastatic Colorectal Cancer

Object: This study aims to clarify the expression of plasma miRNA in CRC patients, and to clarify the potential use of these miRNAs in diagnosis and prognosis, and to establish a prognostic model to initially explore its clinical value. Methods: We detected the expression of 6 miRNAs in normal colon epithelial cell lines and colorectal cancer cell lines by qRT-PCR and they were validated in the tissues of three subtypes: 20 healthy subjects, 41 pCRC and 49 mCRC patients. COX regression and ROC analyses use to evaluate the diagnostic and prognostic efficacy of candidate miRNAs. Subsequently, we initially established a nomogram prognostic model. MiRNA is also used to construct miRNA-mRNA interaction network and PPI network modules. Results: Five miRNAs showed significant differential expression in pCRC, mCRC patients and normal groups. ROC analysis showed that CEA, miR-96, miR-99b and miR-96/miR-99b are distinguishable from pCRC and mCRC patients, with AUC ranging from 0.65 to 0.91; among them, the ratio of miR-96/miR-99b is stronger than any diagnostic indicators, such as CEA and CA125. Multivariate survival analysis identified miR-96, miR-99b, N stage, M stage and clinical stage as independent prognostic indicators of mCRC. The nomogram based on these 5 characteristics has satisfactory prognostic values. Conclusion: Our data indicate that plasma miR-96/miR-99b can be used as a promising biomarker for early detection of mCRC patients; our nomogram has a promising evaluation value.