Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Response to Ovarian Stimulation for Urgent Fertility Preservation before Gonadotoxic Treatment in BRCA-Pathogenic-Variant-Positive Breast Cancer Patients

Simple Summary BRCA 1/2 pathogenic variants increase the risk of developing early and aggressive breast cancers. For these patients, fertility potential can be directly affected by oncologic treatments. In order to improve their chances of conception after the completion of cancer treatments, fertility preservation should be proposed before the administration of gonadotoxic drugs. The present investigation aims to assess ovarian response to ovarian hyperstimulation in BRCA 1/2 pathogenic variant carriers. A total of 311 breast cancer patients with known BRCA status were included in this retrospective cohort study. The oocyte maturation rate and the number of mature oocytes obtained were significantly lower in the BRCA-mutated patients. Abstract BRCA 1/2 pathogenic variants increase the risk of developing early and aggressive breast cancers (BC). For these patients, fertility potential can be directly affected by oncologic treatments. In addition, evidence indicates that BRCA-mutated women had a significant reduction in their ovarian reserve. In order to improve their chances of conception after the completion of cancer treatments, fertility preservation should be proposed before the administration of gonadotoxic drugs, ideally by oocyte vitrification after controlled ovarian hyperstimulation (COH). The present investigation aims to assess the ovarian response to COH in BRCA 1/2-pathogenic-variant carriers diagnosed with BC. Patient characteristics and COH outcomes were compared between BRCA-positive (n = 54) and BRCA-negative (n = 254) patients. The number of oocytes recovered did not differ between the two groups. However, the oocyte maturation rate and the number of mature oocytes obtained (7 (4.5–11.5) vs. 9 (5–14) oocytes, p = 0.05) were significantly lower in the BRCA-mutated patients. Although individualized COH protocols should be discussed, BRCA-mutated patients would benefit from FP before BC occurs, in order to cope with the potential accelerated decline of their ovarian reserve, optimize the success rate of FP by repeating COH cycles, and to preserve the feasibility of PGT-M by collecting a large amount of eggs.
Cratering Experiments into Curved Surfaces and Their Implication for Craters on Small Satellites

Abstract Impact craters were produced on mortar targets of cylindrical, spherical, and plane surfaces in order to evaluate the effect of curvature on the shape of large craters on nonplanar surfaces of smaller bodies. As the curvature of the target surface increases, the cross-sectional shape of the crater becomes flatter, and the crater diameter and ejecta mass increase. Diameter and ejecta mass of craters on a convex spherical surface are larger than those on cylindrical surfaces of the same curvature. The crater on the concave spherical surface has a smaller diameter, less ejecta mass, and a deeper bottom. Crater shape rapidly changes as the crater radius grows comparable to the curvature radius of the target surface. Some of these results agree on a cross-sectional shape of a large crater on Phobos. The cross-sectional shape of a large crater observed on Hyperion is also compared to the experiments.
A note on free groups

The object of this note is to point out a theorem of M. Hall, Jr. (Theorem 1), proved, but formulated in a weaker form, as Theorem 5.1 of [2]. We then show that results of Karrass and Solitar [5], and Howson [4], follow as relatively easy corollaries of this stronger statement (Corollaries 2 and 3). Since the terminology is not fixed, we note for definiteness that by a right transversal for a subgroup H in a group G we shall mean a complete set of representatives of cosets Hg, gEFG. Other terms used are defined in [1] and [6]. The strengthened theorem is as follows.
Characterization of Steinernema feltiae (Rhabditida: Steinernematidae) Isolates in Terms of Efficacy against Cereal Ground Beetle Zabrus tenebrioides (Coleoptera: Carabidae): Morphometry and Principal Component Analysis

Simple Summary Zabrus tenebrioides (cereal ground beetle) is one of the main pests of cereals worldwide and is predicted to cause serious damage to Polish crops in the near future. A potentially effective method of biological control of this pest is the parasitism of beetle larvae by entomopathogenic nematodes. This study assessed the effectiveness of local isolates of Steinernema feltiae against Z. tenebrioides larvae under Polish field conditions, with at least 90% persistence of infectivity after 60 days in the soil. The differences in biological activity among the isolates toward the host were evaluated in terms of morphometry through principal component analysis. Abstract One of the most dangerous pests of cereals is Zabrus tenebrioides and, in Poland, it is becoming a serious pest. Entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) seem to be a very promising, biological control agent for this pest. Native EPN populations are well adapted to local environmental conditions. The current study characterized three Polish isolates of the EPN Steinernema feltiae, which differed in their effectiveness against Z. tenebrioides. In the field, isolate iso1Lon reduced the pest population by 37%, compared with 30% by isolate iso1Dan and 0% by the iso1Obl isolate; the number of plants damaged by Z. tenebrioides in the presence of the different isolates reflected the results in terms of the decrease in pest population size. After incubation in the soil for 60 days, recovered EPN juveniles of all three isolates were able to infect 93–100% of the test insects, with isolate iso1Obl again showing the lowest effectiveness. The juveniles of isolate iso1Obl were also morphometrically distinct from the other two isolates, as revealed by principal component analysis (PCA), which helped to distinguish the EPN isolates. These findings showed the value of using locally adapted isolates of EPNs; two of the three isolates randomly selected from Polish soil outperformed a commercial population of S. feltiae.
Motion of a Light Free Sphere and Liquid in a Rotating Vertical Cylinder of Finite Length

The paper is devoted to an experimental study of the fluid motion excited by a light spherical body floating along the axis of a rotating vertical cylinder. The experiments are performed with fast rotation. The high-speed video recording examines the behavior of the body depending on the rotation rate and liquid viscosity. PIV-method is used to investigate the velocity fields of liquid. In the cavity frame, the body excites the motion liquid in the form of a Taylor–Proudman column, the diameter of which is consistent with the body diameter. In the upper column, the liquid performs a retrograde differential rotation, and in the lower, a prograde one. Outside the columns, the differential rotation is practically absent. It is found that the intensity of the retrograde azimuthal motion in the frontal column increases as the body goes up, while the intensity of the prograde rotation in the rear column decreases. As a result, the free body simultaneously with motion along the axis performs differential rotation: in the lower part of the cavity it is prograde, while in the upper one it is retrograde. The intensity of the body differential rotation varies with the longitudinal coordinate linearly and decreases with the dimensionless rotation velocity.
UK Equity Crowdfunding Success: The Impact of Competition, Brexit and Covid‐19

This paper studies the impact of competition, Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic on UK equity crowdfunding success. Using data from Crowdcube, we account for competition from different angles, varying from within the platform and between Crowdcube and its competitors, while controlling for various campaign and firm characteristics. Our sample period, 2011-2020, covers two unprecedented events, Brexit and the Coronavirus outbreak. We find that competition and the pandemic are positively related to crowdfunding success, while Brexit appears to impose a detrimental impact on small and medium enterprises' (SMEs') equity financing via online crowdfunding. Our results highlight the bright-side effect of competition, in which crowdfunding investors could back different campaigns and do not appear to be drawn away by contemporary campaigns in other competitive marketplaces. Investors were also reportedly more active during the pandemic. As SMEs are likely to be most negatively impacted by Brexit, future policy interventions to stimulate capital investment and replace European funding remain crucial to moderate uncertainties.
Dictionaries of Paradoxes for Statistical Tests on k Samples

Abstract A relationship between the Kruskal–Wallis nonparametric statistical test on k samples and the Borda positional method for voting is established and then exploited to gain a complete analysis of the counterintuitive results and statistical orderings that arise when a set of data is restricted to various subsets of the k samples. This is done by introducing and examining the “dictionary” of possible orderings of the samples occurring with the Kruskal-Wallis procedure. It is shown that using ranks, as opposed to any other weights, minimizes the number and kinds of paradoxes that can arise from examining subsets of the data—projection paradoxes. The idea of a dictionary for a statistical procedure is discussed. The dictionaries for the Deshpande class ℒ of statistical procedures (including Bhapkar's V test and Deshpande's L test) are computed. An estimate for the relative sizes of the number of paradoxes for the Kruskal-Wallis test and any other such test—by comparing relative sizes of their dictiona.
Lateralization Judgments and the Nature of Binaural Acoustic Images

Lateralization‐judgment trajectories with interaural time delay of acoustic images arising binaurally are reported for certain multicomponent signals such as multiple tones and repetitive transients. It is shown that certain multiple sound images simultaneously perceived may be independently lateralized and the characteristic judgment trajectories manipulated predictably in various ways. With repetitive binaural transients, the dominant, impulsive, image is shown to be accompanied by tonal images due to harmonics but it is argued that the impulsive image does not arise as a synthesis of the harmonic tonal images. High‐ and low‐pitched impulsive images appear to be related to individual acoustic transients and apparently arise by virtue of neural activity in two different regions of the cochlea.
Tumour Growth Models of Breast Cancer for Evaluating Early Detection—A Summary and a Simulation Study

Simple Summary Advanced statistical methods can be useful for understanding the roles of breast cancer risk factors in cancer progression and detection, and for assessing impacts of early detection of breast cancer in populations with implemented breast cancer screening programmes. In this article, we summarise approaches for estimating, from observational data, tumour progression models that are inspired by biological arguments. These models have the potential to be used in studies of personalised screening. We describe a simulation study that explores the impact of extending the age of screening invitation, which is currently being considered by Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare. Abstract With the advent of nationwide mammography screening programmes, a number of natural history models of breast cancers have been developed and used to assess the effects of screening. The first half of this article provides an overview of a class of these models and describes how they can be used to study latent processes of tumour progression from observational data. The second half of the article describes a simulation study which applies a continuous growth model to illustrate how effects of extending the maximum age of the current Swedish screening programme from 74 to 80 can be evaluated. Compared to no screening, the current and extended programmes reduced breast cancer mortality by 18.5% and 21.7%, respectively. The proportion of screen-detected invasive cancers which were overdiagnosed was estimated to be 1.9% in the current programme and 2.9% in the extended programme. With the help of these breast cancer natural history models, we can better understand the latent processes, and better study the effects of breast cancer screening.
A Systematic Review of Machine Learning Models in Mental Health Analysis Based on Multi-Channel Multi-Modal Biometric Signals

Review question / Objective: A systematic review of Mental health diagnosis/prognoses of mental disorders using Machine Learning techniques with information from biometric signals. A review of the trend and status of these ML techniques in mental health diagnosis and an investigation of how these signals are used to help increase the efficiency of mental health disease diagnosis. Using Machine learning techniques to classify mental health diseases as against using only expert knowledge for diagnosis. Feature Extraction from signal gotten from biometric signals that help classify sleep disorders. Rationale: To review the application of ML techniques on multimodal and multichannel PSG datasets got from biosensors typically used in the Hospital. To help professionals grasp the steps of using machine learning to classify mental health diseases.
Evaluation of immunological abnormalities in patients with rare syndromes

Introduction Recurrent infections are important problems in syndromic patients. This study aimed to evaluate immunological abnormalities in patients who presented with recurrent infections and were diagnosed with rare syndromes. Material and methods This retrospective analysis included 14 patients with complaints of recurrent infections, all of whom were diagnosed with a rare syndrome. Results The study group consisted of patients with Aicardi syndrome, Brugada syndrome, Phelan- McDermid syndrome, trichothiodystrophy, LEOPARD syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, Seckel syndrome, trisomy 18 (Edwards’ syndrome), Wiedemann-Steiner syndrome, West syndrome, Williams syndrome, 47,XYY syndrome, 16p13 deletion syndrome, and 13q1.3 deletion syndrome. Seven patients (50%) were girls and seven (50%) were boys (mean age, 56.7 ±32.9 months; median [range] age: 45.5 [27-153] months). There were high rates of consanguinity (50%), cesarean section delivery (71%), and hospitalization in the intensive care unit (78.5%). No patients had a family history of immunodeficiency. On admission, all patients exhibited humoral and/or cellular immune system abnormalities. During the follow-up period, all T-cell abnormalities were improved after immunoglobulin replacement therapy (IGRT), while B-cell abnormalities persisted. These findings suggested that the patients predominantly had antibody deficiencies associated with mild T-cell abnormalities because of recurrent infections. The rates of infections and hospitalizations were significantly reduced after IGRT (p < 0.001); the rate of intensive care unit admission also significantly decreased (from 78.5% to 21.4%). Two of the three oxygen-dependent patients exhibited improvement therein. IGRT was discontinued in two patients with significant clinical improvement during follow-up. Conclusions An immunological evaluation should be considered in pediatric patients with rare syndromes and recurrent infections. IGRT may help to improve the prognoses of these patients.
The Italian Validation of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory and Its Comparison with Three Time Perspective Inventories

The Zimbardo time perspective inventory (ZTPI) is the most well-known and widely used measure of time perspective. However, the assessment of the psychometric properties of the ZTPI reveals several problems, and various short versions have been proposed to overcome these problems. In a large Italian sample (N = 2295; 1326 women; age range 18–74 years), the present study aimed to test a short version of the ZTPI (ZTPI-16) defined by high frequency items (i.e., “good” items), reviewing the items composition of previous alternative short versions of the scale. Beyond the assessment of the factorial structure of this new short ZTPI, we compared the ZTPI-16 to the original ZTPI (ZTPI-56) and another already validated version of the ZTPI in the Italian context, such as Zimbardo’s Stanford time perspective inventory (ZTPI-22), the short version of the ZTPI (ZTPI-30), and the ZTPI-36 proposed analyzing the data from 24 countries. The results confirmed the psychometric problems of the ZTPI-56, whereas the ZTPI-16 reported adequate structural validity and reliability. Moderate-to-strong correlations between same temporal subscales in different ZTPI versions were also found. These data suggest that the review of the “good” items is a new direction in the development of ZTPI versions with good psychometric properties and comparable data among cultures.
Generalized singular value decomposition analysis of helioseismic inversions

We present the generalized singular value decomposition (GSVD) as a powerful tool for the analysis of ill-conditioned inversion problems, such as arise in helioseismology and other areas of astronomy. The GSVD provides rather natural bases with which to express the various properties of the inversion, in particular the solution, the inversion coefficients (which relate the solution to the data) and the averaging kernels (which relate the solution to the underlying unknown function). These facilitate an analysis of resolution and error properties. We apply the theory to a helioseismic example and find inter alia that, for our prototypical problem, there is an effective limit to the information content of the mode set in the presence of reasonable data errors which is much less than might have been expected from the number of modes
Fatigue of an Aluminum Foam Sandwich Formed by Powder Metallurgy

In this paper, an aluminum foam sandwich (AFS) was prepared by the rolling composite-powder metallurgy method, and its fatigue properties were studied. It was compared with an AFS made by the adhesive method to study its fatigue properties more directly. In this experiment, the fatigue performance was investigated by studying the microscopic interface, fatigue life, deflection curve, and failure mode. The results show that the fatigue life of an AFS with the rolling composite-powder metallurgy method is much longer than that with the adhesive method. The failure mode of an AFS made by the rolling composite-powder metallurgy method is shear failure, and that of an AFS made by the adhesive method is shear failure and interface debonding. An AFS with the rolling composite-powder metallurgy method has better fatigue properties. This paper also explored the fatigue damage model using the fatigue modulus method, and the polynomial fitting method has a higher fitting degree.
Food-Derived Uremic Toxins in Chronic Kidney Disease

Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) have a higher cardiovascular risk compared to the average population, and this is partially due to the plasma accumulation of solutes known as uremic toxins. The binding of some solutes to plasma proteins complicates their removal via conventional therapies, e.g., hemodialysis. Protein-bound uremic toxins originate either from endogenous production, diet, microbial metabolism, or the environment. Although the impact of diet on uremic toxicity in CKD is difficult to quantify, nutrient intake plays an important role. Indeed, most uremic toxins are gut-derived compounds. They include Maillard reaction products, hippurates, indoles, phenols, and polyamines, among others. In this review, we summarize the findings concerning foods and dietary components as sources of uremic toxins or their precursors. We then discuss their endogenous metabolism via human enzyme reactions or gut microbial fermentation. Lastly, we present potential dietary strategies found to be efficacious or promising in lowering uremic toxins plasma levels. Aligned with current nutritional guidelines for CKD, a low-protein diet with increased fiber consumption and limited processed foods seems to be an effective treatment against uremic toxins accumulation.
Development and evaluation of an autonomous and portable solar water disinfection reactor based on TiO2 supported films

The lack of drinkable water in rural areas or in places affected by natural disasters, motivated us to develop an efficient way to obtain drinking water. In this work we will present the development of an autonomous and portable water purification plant, based on a supported TiO2 film reactor, to promote the photocatalytic disinfection of bacteria in water. It is concluded that the supported TiO2 film onto a polyethylene based reactor shows good photocatalytic disinfect water under laboratory conditions and land field experiments. At the laboratory, up to 6 orders of magnitude of E-coli were reduced in less than 30 min, whereas under real conditions, water contaminated with 3480 CFU/100 mL of wild bacteria colonies, the disinfection was reached in less than 15 min. This System could be used in places in which safe drinking water is not available, like in rural areas, or under situations in which access to water through centralized public services are temporarily suspended, as for example after a natural disaster.
Current Updates on the Role of Microbiome in Endometriosis: A Narrative Review

Endometriosis affects approximately 6 to 10% of reproductive-age women globally. Despite much effort invested, the pathogenesis that promotes the development, as well as the progression of this chronic inflammatory disease, is poorly understood. The imbalance in the microbiome or dysbiosis has been implicated in a variety of human diseases, especially the gut microbiome. In the case of endometriosis, emerging evidence suggests that there may be urogenital-gastrointestinal crosstalk that leads to the development of endometriosis. Researchers may now exploit important information from microbiome studies to design endometriosis treatment strategies and disease biomarkers with the use of advanced molecular technologies and increased computational capacity. Future studies into the functional profile of the microbiome would greatly assist in the development of microbiome-based therapies to alleviate endometriosis symptoms and improve the quality of life of women suffering from endometriosis.
Association Between Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Within lncRNA NONHSAT102891 and Depression Susceptibility in a Chinese Population

Background Depression is among the most common psychiatric disorders, and is a leading cause of the global disease burden. Its pathophysiological mechanism is unclear, which limits the development of therapeutic strategies. Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPS) may be related. In this study, we aimed to determine the effects of the rs2242385, rs155979, rs3762983, and rs3762984 polymorphisms in the lncRNA NONHSAT102891 on depression susceptibility in a Chinese population. Methods We conducted a case-control study in a cohort of 480 patients with depression and 329 healthy controls, and performed genotyping by gene sequencing ii. Results The rs155979 GC genotype was significantly associated with increased risk of depression compared with healthy controls. Stratified analysis showed a 2.08-fold increased risk of suicide in patients with rs155979 GC or GG genotype. The rs2242385, rs3762983, and rs3762984 polymorphisms were not significantly associated with the risk of depression. Haploid analysis showed linkage disequilibrium between rs155979, rs3762983, and rs3762984, and the CCG haplotype reduced the risk of depression. Limitations The study sample was relatively small, and was restricted to patients from central and southern China. Further, only peripheral blood was used for DNA extraction. Conclusion The rs155979 polymorphism may be associated with the occurrence of depression in the Chinese population. However, further studies are needed to verify the reliability of our results in large populations and different ethnic groups.