Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Algerian Workers’ Exposure to Mycotoxins—A Biomonitoring Study

Mycotoxins, produced by fungi as secondary metabolites, have the potential to induce both short-term and long-term toxic consequences in animals and humans. The present study aimed to determine multi-mycotoxin levels in Algerian workers using urine as the target. A method based on a QuEChERS (quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe) extraction procedure followed by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was optimized and validated for the determination of eleven mycotoxins in 96 urine samples. Different sorbents were tested to be used in the dispersive solid-phase extraction (d-SPE) cleanup step of QuEChERS. The final method was fit-for-purpose and showed good analytical performance in terms of specificity, linearity, and precision. All samples contained at least two mycotoxins, and toxin-2 (T-2) was the most common, being found in 92.7% of the samples, followed by zearalenone (ZEN) in 90.6% of positive samples, and ochratoxin A (OTA) in 86.4%. T-2 levels ranged from 0.3 μg/L to 36.3 μg/L, while OTA ranged from 0.3 μg/L to 3.5 μg/L, and ZEN ranged from 7.6 μg/L to 126.8 μg/L. This was the first mycotoxin biomonitoring study carried out in the Algerian population. The findings highlight the need for accurate data for better risk assessment and for the development of better regulation to manage mycotoxin contamination in this country.
MRI-Guided Salvage Focal Cryoablation: A 10-Year Single-Center Experience in 114 Patients with Localized Recurrent Prostate Cancer

Simple Summary Patients with localized recurrent prostate cancer (PCa) are typically treated with hormonal therapy, surgery (radical prostatectomy), or radiation therapy. These treatments are associated with serious side-effects such as incontinence and impotence. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided focal cryoablation is an emerging treatment for this patient group. This therapy aims to treat the cancer selectively while preserving the rest of the prostatic gland and thereby minimizing the risk of treatment toxicity. Cryoablation promises to delay and potentially avoid the initiation of other salvage treatments. In this article, we investigate the ability to achieve disease control and to avoid the need for other salvage treatments afterwards. Our research provides long-term evidence on oncological and safety outcomes in a large group of patients treated with MRI-guided focal cryoablation. We also investigated the influence of prior treatment on patient outcomes. Abstract Patients with localized recurrent prostate cancer (PCa) are eligible for androgen-deprivation therapy, salvage radical prostatectomy (RP) or radiation therapy. These treatments are associated with serious side-effects, illustrating the need for alternative local treatment options with lower morbidity rates. All patients who underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided salvage focal cryoablation (SFC) with localized recurrent PCa between 2011–2021 (n = 114) were included. Two subgroups were formed: patients without (n = 99) and with prior RP (n = 15). We assessed the recurrence- (RFS) and treatment-free survival (TFS), measured from date of treatment to date of recurrence or initiation of additional salvage treatment, using Kaplan–Meier plots. Complications were reported using the Clavien–Dindo (CD) scale. Overall 1-year and 5-year RFS were 76.0% and 25.1%, and overall 1-year and 5-year TFS were 91.5% and 58.2%, respectively. Patients without prior RP showed a significantly higher 1-year (78.5% vs. 52.5%) and 5-year RFS (28.1% vs. 0.0%; p = 0.03), and a trend towards a higher 1-year (92.6% vs. 79.0%) and 5-year TFS (60.2% vs. 23.0%; p = 0.10) compared to those with prior RP. A total of 46 complications occurred in 37 patients, and the overall complication rate was 32.4% (37/114 patients). The majority (41/46; 89.1%) of complications were minor (CD 1–2). Overall (31.3 vs. 40.0%) and major (3.0 vs. 13.3%) complication rates were lower in patients without compared to those with prior RP, respectively. MRI-guided SFC is an effective and safe therapy for patients with recurrent PCa, and has proved to delay and potentially prevent the initiation of salvage treatments. Patients with locally recurrent PCa after prior RP had an increased risk of recurrence, a shortened time to additional treatment, and more complications compared to those without prior RP, which should be considered when selecting patients for SFC.
Determinant Factors of Personal Innovativeness in Information Technology of Ride-Hailing New Brand: The Role of Gender

The objective of this study is to examine the influence of electronic word of mouth (E-WOM), social influence (SI), and perceived system and service quality (PSSQ) on personal innovativeness in information technology (PIIT) with respect to the adoption of a novel ride-hailing application brand. The research object selected for this study is the MAXIM and InDriver application, which represents a new brand in the market. The present study employed a questionnaire-based survey to gather data from a sample of 553 individuals who identified as users of either MAXIM or InDriver and who belong to the Z generation. The study employed the use of structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques, specifically utilizing the SMART-PLS software version 3. The findings of the study indicate that electronic word-of-mouth (E-WOM), social influence, and perceived system and service quality have a positive impact on an individual's inclination to adopt a new brand of ride-hailing application. Furthermore, the findings indicate that gender impacts the propensity to adopt a new brand of ride-hailing application, with men exhibiting a greater inclination towards innovative experimentation than women.
Towards Reference Speech Characterization for Health Applications

Speech has been used as a biomarker for the binary classification of multiple diseases, with promising results. However these speech affecting diseases often co-exist in the same individual and produce similar manifestations in the speech signal. Thus we propose to characterize normative speech using reference intervals for interpretable speech features (acoustic and linguistic), as a first step towards the adoption of speech analysis for multidisease screening in health applications. We discuss the impact of demographics and speech tasks. Finally, we compare the reference intervals with subjects suffering from Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and depression
Crowdsource-based Validation of the Audio Cocktail as a Sound Browsing Tool

We conduct two crowdsourcing experiments designed to examine the usefulness of audio cocktails to quickly find out information on the contents of large audio data. Several thousand crowd workers were engaged to listen to audio cocktails with systematically varied composition. They were then asked to state either which sound out of four categories (Children, Women, Men, Or-chestra) they heard the most of, or if they heard anything of a specific category at all. The results show that their responses have high reliability and provide information as to whether a specific task can be performed using audio cocktails. We also propose that the combination of crowd workers and audio cock-tails can be used directly as a tool to investigate the contents of large audio data
Synergistic Halide- and Ligand-Exchanges of All-Inorganic Perovskite Nanocrystals for Near-Unity and Spectrally Stable Red Emission

All-inorganic perovskite nanocrystals (NCs) of CsPbX3 (X = Cl, Br, I) are promising for displays due to wide color gamut, narrow emission bandwidth, and high photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY). However, pure red perovskite NCs prepared by mixing halide ions often result in defects and spectral instabilities. We demonstrate a method to prepare stable pure red emission and high-PLQY-mixed-halide perovskite NCs through simultaneous halide-exchange and ligand-exchange. CsPbBr3 NCs with surface organic ligands are first synthesized using the ligand-assisted reprecipitation (LARP) method, and then ZnI2 is introduced for anion exchange to transform CsPbBr3 to CsPbBrxI3−x NCs. ZnI2 not only provides iodine ions but also acts as an inorganic ligand to passivate surface defects and prevent ion migration, suppressing non-radiative losses and halide segregation. The luminescence properties of CsPbBrxI3−x NCs depend on the ZnI2 content. By regulating the ZnI2 exchange process, red CsPbBrxI3−x NCs with organic/inorganic hybrid ligands achieve near-unity PLQY with a stable emission peak at 640 nm. The CsPbBrxI3−x NCs can be combined with green CsPbBr3 NCs to construct white light-emitting diodes with high-color gamut. Our work presents a facile ion exchange strategy for preparing spectrally stable mixed-halide perovskite NCs with high PLQY, approaching the efficiency limit for display or lighting applications.
Transcuticular calcium imaging as a tool for the functional study of insect odorant receptors

The primary actors in the detection of olfactory information in insects are odorant receptors (ORs), transmembrane proteins expressed at the dendrites of olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs). In order to decode the insect olfactome, many studies focus on the deorphanization of ORs (i.e., identification of their ligand), using various approaches involving heterologous expression coupled to neurophysiological recordings. The “empty neuron system” of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is an appreciable host for insect ORs, because it conserves the cellular environment of an OSN. Neural activity is usually recorded using labor-intensive electrophysiological approaches (single sensillum recordings, SSR). In this study, we establish a simple method for OR deorphanization using transcuticular calcium imaging (TCI) at the level of the fly antenna. As a proof of concept, we used two previously deorphanized ORs from the cotton leafworm Spodoptera littoralis, a specialist pheromone receptor and a generalist plant odor receptor. We demonstrate that by co-expressing the GCaMP6s/m calcium probes with the OR of interest, it is possible to measure robust odorant-induced responses under conventional microscopy conditions. The tuning breadth and sensitivity of ORs as revealed using TCI were similar to those measured using single sensillum recordings (SSR). We test and discuss the practical advantages of this method in terms of recording duration and the simultaneous testing of several insects.
Predictive Coding Light: learning compact visual codes by combining excitatory and inhibitory spike timing-dependent plasticity*

It is widely believed that the brain uses predictive coding schemes to represent sensory inputs in an efficient manner. However, it is still debated how networks of spiking neurons can learn such coding schemes in an unsupervised fashion. Here we present a hierarchical spiking neural network architecture that learns an efficient encoding of visual input from an event-based vision sensor by combining excitatory and inhibitory spike timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). The network develops receptive fields and exhibits surround suppression effects reminiscent of biological findings. We show that inhibitory STDP which aims to suppress predictable (and therefore redundant) spikes in neurons strongly reduces neural activity (and therefore energy costs) with only moderate reductions in coding fidelity.
An Intra-BRNN and GB-RVQ Based END-TO-END Neural Audio Codec

Recently, neural networks have proven to be effective in performing speech coding task at low bitrates. However, under-utilization of intra-frame correlations and the error of quantizer specifically degrade the reconstructed audio quality. To improve the coding quality, we present an end-to-end neural speech codec, namely CBRC (Convolutional and Bidirectional Recurrent neural Codec). An interleaved structure using 1D-CNN and Intra-BRNN is designed to exploit the intra-frame correlations more efficiently. Furthermore, Group-wise and Beam-search Residual Vector Quantizer (GB-RVQ) is used to reduce the quantization noise. CBRC encodes audio every 20ms with no additional latency, which is suitable for real-time communication. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed codec when comparing CBRC at 3kbps with Opus at 12kbps.
Lipid Process Markers of Durum Wheat Debranning Fractions

At present, whole grains are usually obtained by adding bran and middlings to refined flours, and this recombination leads to certain variations in the ratio of endosperm, bran and germ, resulting in flours with very different compositional characteristics and rheological properties. Therefore, this study focuses on the identification of specific lipid markers in different debranning fractions of Italian and Canadian durum wheat blends. The by-products obtained from five different debranning levels (3, 6, 9, 12 and 15%) had a high content of monounsaturated fatty acids and a higher concentration of tocopherols and sterols than the corresponding debranned grains. The Italian and Canadian durum wheat samples did not show significant differences in the content of these bioactive lipid compounds. In particular, palmitic acid, oleic acid, tocopherol isomers and total sterols could be useful biomarkers for evaluating the grain-to-tissue ratio in recombined flours.
Microhabitat use by breeding Southwestern Willow Flycatchers on the Gila River, New Mexico

The endangered Southwestern Willow Flycatcher (Empidonax traillii extimus) breeds at numerous sites throughout its range that vary greatly in floristics, vegetation structure, and the extent of human alteration of the habitat. Here we present information on nesting habitat characteristics of Willow Flycatchers in the largest extant population of the subspecies along the upper Gila River in New Mexico. We compared 19 habitat variables between nest sites and sites not included in flycatcher territories. A logistic regression model identified three variables as significant predictors of flycatcher use: foliage density in the subcanopy, percent canopy cover, and number of boxelder (Acer negundo) stems. In mature riparian woodland, flycatchers displayed a significant preference for nesting in boxelder, and used two willow species less than expected by chance. Flycatchers in the Gila Valley tended to place nests rather high (mean = 7.6 m). The relative nest height, preference for dense foliage, and proximity to water were typical for the subspecies.
Insulinoma in Patient With Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis

An insulinoma is a rare neuroendocrine tumor characterized by inappropriate secretion of insulin with resultant hypoglycemia and concomitant symptoms. Symptoms include diaphoresis, tremor, palpitations, tachycardia, visual disturbances, weakness, confusion, syncope, seizures, and even coma. Enteropancreatic neoplasms are rare in general but among them, insulinomas are among the more common neuroendocrine tumors though they still have a very low incidence. They can be benign or malignant, however, the latter is exceptionally rare. In the case of malignancy, such spread usually includes metastasis to the liver and surrounding nodes. They can also be sporadic or occur in association with other inherited conditions. Herein, we present a case of insulinoma in a 51-year-old female.
Demographic responses to short-term economic stress in north east Italy (Friuli, 18 th-19th century)

Friuli is a region of Northeastern Italy characterized by profound geographic and climatic differences. The role of agriculture was strictly connected with the geographic characteristics, getting more and more important going from north to south. In the plain, mixed agriculture was common, based partly on the binomium wheat-maize, partly on the cultivation of mulberry and vine. On the other hand, in the mountains the most common activity was cattle-breeding, while corn production was rather poor. Environmental context, forms of land tenure, types of cultivation, dependence or independence from the market of primary goods were all key factors in determining the complex relationship between population and resources. As we have demonstrated in a previous work, the most fragile populations in years of crisis were those with high levels of maize production and also consumption. Mountain populations were conversely the less affected in terms of mortality. A strong preventive check operated to limit access to marriage, which in turn brought to a drastic drop of births, therefore re-balancing the relationship between population and resources. This paper aims at analyzing the interdependence between economic crisis and demographic behaviors in Friuli. Our approach is here based on individual-level data. We have reconstructed the life-histories of the inhabitants of two communities of Friuli― one belonging to a maize-production area, the other situated on the mountains―for the period 1834-1900. We have therefore the opportunity to study much more in depth the consequences of economic crises on individuals and families. In this work we use two new historical time series: weekly series of price of indispensable goods, and daily series of meteorological data.
PIAVE: A Pose-Invariant Audio-Visual Speaker Extraction Network

It is common in everyday spoken communication that we look at the turning head of a talker to listen to his/her voice. Humans see the talker to listen better, so do machines. However, previous studies on audio-visual speaker extraction have not effectively handled the varying talking face. This paper studies how to take full advantage of the varying talking face. We propose a Pose-Invariant Audio-Visual Speaker Extraction Network (PIAVE) that incorporates an additional pose-invariant view to improve audio-visual speaker extraction. Specifically, we generate the pose-invariant view from each original pose orientation, which enables the model to receive a consistent frontal view of the talker regardless of his/her head pose, therefore, forming a multi-view visual input for the speaker. Experiments on the multi-view MEAD and in-the-wild LRS3 dataset demonstrate that PIAVE outperforms the state-of-the-art and is more robust to pose variations.
Associação entre autopercepção de saúde, marcadores de alimentação e estado nutricional: inquérito Vigitel do estado de São Paulo

Objetivo: Avaliar prevalência de autopercepção de saúde em adultos (18 a 59 anos) e pessoas idosas (≥60 anos) do estado de São Paulo; e analisar associação entre autopercepção negativa da saúde e marcadores de padrões de alimentação saudável e não saudável e estado nutricional. Métodos: Estudo transversal com 8.420 indivíduos (4.723 adultos e 3.697 pessoas idosas) do Sistema de Vigilância de Fatores de Risco e Proteção para Doenças Crônicas por Inquérito Telefônico (Vigitel) 2020 do estado de São Paulo. Autopercepção de saúde foi categorizada em positiva e negativa. Foram considerados marcadores de padrões saudáveis e não saudáveis de alimentação, e estado nutricional segundo Índice de Massa Corporal. Utilizou-se regressão logística, com nível de significância de 5%. Resultados: No total, 74,2% e 25,8% relataram autopercepção positiva e negativa, respectivamente. Autopercepção negativa foi superior entre pessoas idosas do que entre adultos (34,9% vs. 23,4%, p<0,001). Adultos que consumiram regularmente frutas e hortaliças (OR=0,5; IC95%:0,3-0,7) e cinco ou mais grupos de alimentos minimamente processados (OR=0,7; IC95%:0,5-0,9) tinham menor chance de autopercepção negativa, mas os que consumiram refrigerantes cinco ou mais dias da semana (OR=1,4; IC95%:1,0-1,9) tinham maior chance de autopercepção negativa. Adultos obesos apresentaram maior chance de autopercepção negativa (OR=1,9; IC95%:1,4-2,5). Entre as pessoas idosas, nenhuma variável permaneceu associada à autopercepção negativa. Conclusões: Considerável percentual de adultos e de pessoas idosas relataram autopercepção negativa, e os fatores associados foram distintos entre esses grupos. entre esses grupos populacionais. Recomenda-se a necessidade de análises estratificadas que considerem as particularidades das faixas etárias.
Hepatitis B virus serum RNA transcript isoform composition and proportion in chronic hepatitis B patients by nanopore long-read sequencing

Introduction Serum hepatitis B virus (HBV) RNA is a promising new biomarker to manage and predict clinical outcomes of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection. However, the HBV serum transcriptome within encapsidated particles, which is the biomarker analyte measured in serum, remains poorly characterized. This study aimed to evaluate serum HBV RNA transcript composition and proportionality by PCR-cDNA nanopore sequencing of samples from CHB patients having varied HBV genotype (gt, A to F) and HBeAg status. Methods Longitudinal specimens from 3 individuals during and following pregnancy (approximately 7 months between time points) were also investigated. HBV RNA extracted from 16 serum samples obtained from 13 patients (73.3% female, 84.6% Asian) was sequenced and serum HBV RNA isoform detection and quantification were performed using three bioinformatic workflows; FLAIR, RATTLE, and a GraphMap-based workflow within the Galaxy application. A spike-in RNA variant (SIRV) control mix was used to assess run quality and coverage. The proportionality of transcript isoforms was based on total HBV reads determined by each workflow. Results All chosen isoform detection workflows showed high agreement in transcript proportionality and composition for most samples. HBV pregenomic RNA (pgRNA) was the most frequently observed transcript isoform (93.8% of patient samples), while other detected transcripts included pgRNA spliced variants, 3′ truncated variants and HBx mRNA, depending on the isoform detection method. Spliced variants of pgRNA were primarily observed in HBV gtB, C, E, or F-infected patients, with the Sp1 spliced variant detected most frequently. Twelve other pgRNA spliced variant transcripts were identified, including 3 previously unidentified transcripts, although spliced isoform identification was very dependent on the workflow used to analyze sequence data. Longitudinal sampling among pregnant and post-partum antiviral-treated individuals showed increasing proportions of 3′ truncated pgRNA variants over time. Conclusions This study demonstrated long-read sequencing as a promising tool for the characterization of the serum HBV transcriptome. However, further studies are needed to better understand how serum HBV RNA isoform type and proportion are linked to CHB disease progression and antiviral treatment response.
Simultaneous Assessment of mTORC1, JAK/STAT, and NLRP3 Inflammasome Activation Pathways in Patients with Sarcoidosis

The unknown etiology of sarcoidosis, along with the variability in organ involvement and disease course, complicates the effective treatment of this disease. Based on recent studies, the cellular inflammatory pathways involved in granuloma formation are of interest regarding possible new treatment options, such as the mechanistic (formerly mammalian) target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) pathway, the Janus kinase/signal transducers and activators of transcription (JAK/STAT) pathway, and the nucleotide-binding domain, leucine-rich-containing family, pyrin domain-containing-3 (NLRP3) inflammasome pathway. The aim of this study was to explore the potential coexpression of these three inflammatory pathways in patients with sarcoidosis and see whether possible differences were related to disease outcome. The tissue of 60 patients with sarcoidosis was used to determine the activity of these three signaling pathways using immunohistochemistry. The activation of NLRP3 was present in 85% of all patients, and the activation of mTORC1 and JAK/STAT was present in 49% and 50% of patients, respectively. Furthermore, the presence of NLRP3 activation at diagnosis was associated with a chronic disease course of sarcoidosis. Our finding of different new conceptual inflammatory tissue phenotypes in sarcoidosis could possibly guide future treatment studies using the available inhibitors of either NLRP3, JAK-STAT, and mTORC1 inhibitors in a more personalized medicine approach.