Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A real-world pharmacovigilance analysis of FDA adverse event reporting system database for upadacitinib

Objective: To mine the adverse drug event (ADE) signals of upadacitinib based on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) database to provide a reference for the safe clinical use of the drug. Methods: The ADE data for upadacitinib from Q1 2004 to Q1 2023 in the FAERS database were retrieved, and data mining was performed using the reporting odds ratio and proportional reporting ratio. Results: A total of 21,213 ADE reports for the primary suspect drug upadacitinib were obtained, involving 444 ADEs. Patients aged ≥60 years (21.48%) and female (70.11%) patients were at a higher risk of ADEs with upadacitinib. After data cleaning, 182 ADE signals from 19 system organ classes (SOCs) were obtained. Six of these SOCs that occurred more frequently and were not mentioned in the drug labeling information included renal and urinary system (1.09%), reproductive and breast diseases (1.14%), ear and labyrinth disorders (0.57%), psychiatric disease (0.57%), blood and lymphatic system disorders (0.57%), and endocrine disorders (0.57%). The top ten most frequent ADE signals reported for upadacitinib were mainly related to: infections and infestations (7), investigations (2), and skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders (1). The top 10 ADEs in signal intensity ranking were lip neoplasm, ureteral neoplasm, eczema herpeticum, vulvar dysplasia, mediastinum neoplasm, eosinopenia, herpes zoster cutaneous disseminated, eye ulcer, acne cystic, and Moraxella infection. The top 10 high-frequency events leading to serious adverse events were urinary tract infection (2.74%), herpes zoster (1.63%), diverticulitis (1.19%), bronchitis (0.68%), nasopharyngitis (0.68%), localised infection (0.66%), nephrolithiasis (0.66%), pulmonary thrombosis (0.66%), blood cholesterol increased (0.55%), and Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (0.53%). Conclusion: Clinicians should be vigilant to upadacitinib-induced events in systems not covered in the drug labeling information and to new and highly signaled ADEs to ensure the safe and effective use of upadacitinib.
Oxytocin as a treatment for high-risk psychosis or early stages of psychosis: a mini review

Individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P) present as help-seeking individuals with social deficits as well as cognitive and functional impairment and have a 23–36% risk of transition to first-episode psychosis. The therapeutic role of intranasal oxytocin (ΟΤ) in psychiatric disorders has been widely studied during the last decades, concerning its effects on social behavior in humans. A literature search was conducted via Pubmed and Scopus, using the search terms “oxytocin” and “psychosis. ” Six studies were included in the current review. There were differences in terms of demographics, intervention type, and outcome measures. ΟΤ may affect the social cognition skills of people at prodromal and early stages of psychosis, but its effect on clinical symptoms is ambiguous. Because of the high level of heterogeneity of existing studies, more original studies are needed to examine and clarify whether OT improves high-risk and early psychosis populations.
The Impact of the Test Dissociation on the Binocular Balance of Children

Purpose: this research compared the dissociated phoria at near and distance fixation in free space using the Howell test, alternate Cover test, and Thorington test. Methods: 220 healthy Mexican children (mean age 8.3±2.5 years) participated in this study. Phorias were quantified at both distances using each test, from the least to the most disruptive. The stereopsis degree and near point of convergence (break/recovery) were analyzed to understand their role in the visual system’s sensorimotor balance. Results: statistically significant differences were found among techniques, with a higher congruence for the EF. However, only the Howell and Thorington tests can be interchanged. The break value and near exophoria relate to each other and affect the stereopsis degree, whereas age is associated with the stereopsis degree and break value. Conclusions: the three techniques cannot be interchanged except for the Howell and Thorington test for the EF at far. The differences in the mode of dissociation could relate to the results.
Patients’ adherence to anti-tuberculosis medicines and associated factors for non-adherence at a tertiary teaching hospital, South West Ethiopia

Introduction: Tuberculosis is the global problem, which may infect one third of the world population annually. A major contributor for the re-emergence of TB is lack of adherence to anti-TB drugs. Non-adherence to anti-TB treatment is the persistent problem throughout the world, including the developing and developed countries. The main objective of this study was to determine the rate of non-adherence to anti-TB treatment and associated factors for non-adherence among TB patients in Jimma University Specialized Hospital. Materials and Methods: Prospective cross sectional study was conducted in TB clinic of Jimma University Specialized Hospital using pretested structured questionnaire from February 10, 2013, to February 20, 2013 Results: From a total of 67 patients interviewed during the study period, majority of them (83.58%) were between 18-40 years. About 88% of patients were adherent to their medication and the rest missed doses at least once during the course of their treatment. The main reasons for non-adherence were lack of family support (37.50%) and far distance from hospital (25%). Less education and HIV positive have association with non-adherence (p< 0.001). Conclusion: Generally the adherence to anti-TB treatment among TB patients in Jimma University Specialized Hospital was good, even though some patients were missing their treatments.
Antimicrobial Effect of Low-Fluoride Toothpastes Containing Polyphosphate and Polyols: An In Vitro Assessment of Inhibition Zones

This study evaluated the antimicrobial effect of toothpastes containing 200 ppm fluoride (200F), xylitol (X, 16%), erythritol (E, 4%), and sodium trimetaphosphate (TMP, 0.25%), alone or in different associations, against Streptococcus mutans (SM), Lactobacillus casei (LC), Actinomyces israelii (AI), and Candida albicans (CA). Suspensions of the micro-organisms were added to a BHI Agar medium. Five wells were made on each plate to receive toothpaste suspensions at different dilutions. Toothpastes containing no actives (placebo) or 1100 ppm F (1100F) were used as negative and positive controls. Two-way ANOVA and Tukey’s HDS test were used (p < 0.05). For SM, the largest halo was for 200F+TMP at all dilutions, followed by the 200F+X+E toothpaste (p < 0.001). For LC, the overall trend showed that the polyols effectively inhibited microbial growth, and the association with the other compounds enhanced such effects (p < 0.001). For AI, a less-defined trend was observed. For CA, the experimental toothpaste (200F+X+E+TMP) was consistently more effective than the other treatments, followed by 200F+X+E (p < 0.001). The association of polyols and TMP in a low-fluoride toothpaste effectively reduced the growth of cariogenic micro-organisms (SM, CA, and LC), suggesting that this formulation could be an interesting alternative for children due to its low fluoride content.
Awareness of medical students about research; current practices and future

The struggle towards evidence based medicine can only be achieved if all the healthcare workers are ready to contribute for research and for best practices. One of the most critical components of learning is the seeking of knowledge through research. There is a need of hour that our youngsters into medical fields participate enthusiastically towards research in order to collect a data of their own population so that their specific health problems could be addressed appropriately. There is general perception that research culture in undergraduate MBBS students is lacking. This study focused on to study the awareness of our young undergraduate medical students towards research. A total of 206 medical students were enrolled of which questionnaire of 200 were found within inclusion criteria. Results: overall less than 40% of the students are aware of basics of the research and less than 5% have participated in research related activity. Majority of the students are motivated for doing research. More than 50% students think that lack of training, lack of guidance by faculty, lack of institutional support and lack of funding are important barriers in doing research
MID-FTIR-PLS Chemometric Analysis of Cr(VI) from Aqueous Solutions Using a Polymer Inclusion Membrane-Based Sensor

A partial least squares (PLS) quantitative chemometric method based on the analysis of the mid-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (MID-FTIR) spectrum of polymer inclusion membranes (PIMs) used for the extraction of Cr(VI) from aqueous media is developed. The system previously optimized considering the variables membrane composition, extraction time, and pH, is characterized in terms of its adsorption isotherm, distribution coefficient, extraction percent, and enrichment factor. A Langmuir-type adsorption behavior with KL = 2199 cm3/mmol, qmax = 0.188 mmol/g, and 0 < RL < 1 indicates that metal adsorption is favorable. The characterization of the extraction reaction is performed as well, showing a 1:1 Cr(VI):Aliquat 336 ratio, in agreement with solvent extraction data. The principal component analysis (PCA) of the PIMs reveals a complex pattern, which is satisfactorily simplified and related to Cr(VI) concentrations through the use of a variable selection method (iPLS) in which the bands in the ranges 3451–3500 cm−1 and 3751–3800 cm−1 are chosen. The final PLS model, including the 100 wavelengths selected by iPLS and 10 latent variables, shows excellent parameter values with root mean square error of calibration (RMSEC) of 3.73115, root mean square error of cross-validation (RMSECV) of 6.82685, bias of −1.91847 × 10−13, cross-validation (CV) bias of 0.185947, R2 Cal of 0.98145, R2 CV of 0.940902, recovery% of 104.02 ± 4.12 (α = 0.05), sensitivity% of 0.001547 ppb, analytical sensitivity (γ) of 3.8 ppb, γ−1: 0.6 ppb−1, selectivity of 0.0155, linear range of 5.8–100 ppb, limit of detection (LD) of 1.9 ppb, and limit of quantitation (LQ) of 5.8 ppb. The developed PIM sensor is easy to implement as it requires few manipulations and a reduced number of chemical compounds in comparison to other similar reported systems.
Who Makes the Call on Goodwill Impairment Charges: CEOs or CFOs?

Goodwill impairment involves subjective estimations and a high degree of managerial discretion. However, it remains unclear whether CEOs or CFOs have more influence on goodwill valuation. We address the question by investigating the relation between executives’ equity incentives and goodwill impairments. We find that firms with higher CEO or CFO equity incentives report lower annual goodwill impairments. Interestingly, the negative relation is stronger for CFO equity incentives. Further, we conjecture and find that the relative influence of CEOs and CFOs on goodwill impairments differs in a setting involving executive turnovers. Specifically, we find that a new CFO has no significant effect on impairment decisions. In contrast, a new CEO is associated with a higher probability of recording a large goodwill impairment, presumably to engage in “big bath” accounting. Taken together, our results suggest that, while incumbent CFOs are in charge of routine review of goodwill valuation, new CEOs have the final authority on large-impairment decisions.
Multi-View Consistency Contrastive Learning With Hard Positives for Sleep Signals

Contrastive learning has successfully addressed the scarcity of large-scale labeled datasets, especially in the physiological time series field. Existing methods construct easy positive pairs as substitutes for ground truth based on temporal dynamics or instance consistency. Despite the potential of hard positive samples to provide richer gradient information and facilitate the acquisition of more discriminative representations, they are frequently overlooked in sampling strategies, thus constraining the classification capacity of models. In this letter, we focus on multi-view physiological signals and propose a novel hard positive sampling strategy based on the view consistency. Multi-view signals are recorded from sensors attached to different organs of human body. Additionally, we propose a Multi-View Consistency Contrastive (MVCC) learning framework to jointly extract intra-view temporal dynamics and inter-view consistency features. Experiments have been carried out on two public datasets and our method demonstrates state-of-the-art performance, achieving 83.25% and 73.37% accuracy on SleepEDF and ISRUC, respectively.
Ice Avalanche Activity and Mass Balance of a High-Altitude Hanging Glacier in the Swiss Alps

An estimation of average mass balance of a high hanging glacier in the Swiss Alps was made by measuring volumes of ice avalanches originating from this glacier. Ice avalanches are this glacier’s predominant form of ablation. Since the volume of the glacier has not noticeably changed over the past few years, the annual ice loss due to ice avalanches can be taken as an indication of average total net acumulation above the ice cliff where the avalanches originate. The mass balance value, as determined by recording ice avalanches, compares well with values obtained by independent methods (measurements of firn stratigraphy in the cliff, direct accumulation measurements in the vicinity). No seasonal variation in the frequency of ice avalanche occurence was detected.
Pediatric infection with the Omicron variant increases the risks of febrile seizures among COVID-19 infected children

Background The Omicron variant of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is less likely to cause severe disease in children than the other variants but has become an increasing cause of febrile seizures (FS) among children. In this case-control study, we aimed to examine the risk factors associated with FS in children infected with the COVID-19 Omicron variant and related treatment modalities. Methods This retrospective case-control study includes 113 subjects infected with the COVID-19 Omicron variant, grouped into 45 cases (those with FS) and 68 controls (those without FS). Data on clinical features, laboratory parameters, and treatment modalities were collected and analyzed. Results Approximately 5.74% of COVID-19 infected children developed COVID-19-associated FS. Children with COVID-19 and high body temperatures [RR 1.474; (95% CI: 1.196–1.818), p < 0.001], previous history of FS [RR 1.421; (95% CI: 1.088–1.855), p = 0.010], high procalcitonin levels [RR 1.140; (95% CI: 1.043–1.246), p = 0.048] and high neutrophil counts [RR 1.015; (95% CI: 1.000–1.029), p = 0.048] were more likely to experience FS than the controls. In contrast, children with COVID-19 and low eosinophil counts, low hemoglobin levels, and cough had a lower risk of developing FS [RR 0.494; (95% CI: 0.311–0.783), p = 0.003], [RR 0.979; (95% CI: 0.959–0.999), p = 0.044]; and [RR 0.473 (95% CI 0.252–0.890), p = 0.020]; respectively. Children with FS received more anti-flu medications than those without. Conclusion A significant increase in FS was observed in children with Omicron SARS-CoV-2 infection. A higher body temperature, a history of FS, a higher procalcitonin level, and a high neutrophil count were all associated with an increased risk of FS in children with COVID-19. The risk of developing FS was lower in children with COVID-19 and low eosinophil counts and hemoglobin levels than in those without.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING IN SOUTHEAST ASIA : CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

AbstractThis paper attempts to show how continuity and change characterize English language teaching in a number of the Southeast Asian countries, i.e. while there is continuity in some areas of English language teaching (ELT) in Southeast Asia, there have also been many changes over the last five or six years. However, the juxtaposition of continuity vs. change becomes a dilemma.The paper is structured in three parts. The first section takes a much larger view of the ELT terrain, as it were, in Southeast Asia, in that it describes in some detail the situation of English teaching in several of the Southeast Asian countries, namely, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao P.D. R. , Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. On the basis of the role of English in these ten countries and of the status of English language teaching, it is possible, for the sake of convenience, to group the ten countries into two categories — one in which English is regarded and taught as a second langua.
The analgesic efficacy of erector spinae plane block versus paravertebral block in thoracic surgeries: a meta-analysis

Background Acute postoperative pain after thoracic surgery might lead to chronic postsurgical pain (PSP), which lowers quality of life. The literature suggests thoracic paravertebral block (PVB) as a pain management approach. The ESPB (erector spinae plane block) is regarded to be an effective PVB alternative. The analgesic efficacy of the two analgesic therapies is controversial. The purpose of this study is to compare the analgesic efficacy of ESPB and PVB in preventing acute PSP. Methods We searched relevant articles in PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, Web of Science, and Google Scholar databases. The primary outcome was postoperative pain score, with secondary outcomes including analgesic consumption, the frequency of rescue analgesia, and postoperative nausea and vomiting. Results This meta-analysis included ten RCTs with a total of 670 patients. PVB significantly lowered the pain scores at movement at 12 h following surgery as compared to the ESPB. The PVB group used much less opioids within 24 h after surgery compared to the ESPB group. However, there were no significant differences between the groups in terms of postoperative rescue analgesia or in the incidence of postoperative nausea and vomiting (p > 0.05). Conclusion PVB produced superior analgesia than ESPB in patients who underwent thoracic surgeries. In addition, PVB demonstrated greater opioid sparing effect by consuming much less opioids. Systematic review registration This trial is registered on PROSPERO, number CRD42023412159.
Cross-regulation between SOX9 and the canonical Wnt signalling pathway in stem cells

SOX9, a member of the SRY-related HMG-box transcription factors, has been reported to critically regulate fetal development and stem cell homeostasis. Wnt signalling is a highly conserved signalling pathway that controls stem cell fate decision and stemness maintenance throughout embryonic development and adult life. Many studies have shown that the interactions between SOX9 and the canonical Wnt signalling pathway are involved in many of the physiological and pathological processes of stem cells, including organ development, the proliferation, differentiation and stemness maintenance of stem cells, and tumorigenesis. In this review, we summarize the already-known molecular mechanism of cross-interactions between SOX9 and the canonical Wnt signalling pathway, outline its regulatory effects on the maintenance of homeostasis in different types of stem cells, and explore its potential in translational stem cell therapy.
The risk factors analysis of diabetes mellitus and hypertension in the population of district Swabi, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Diabetes is the major non-contagious, long-lasting epidemic disease caused by abnormal blood glucose levels resulting from the disablement in insulin action and secretion. The objective of the study is to estimate diabetes mellitus and risk factors of diabetes mellitus in the population of district Swabi, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. A total of 150 blood samples are collected from March-July 2021. All diabetic patients are screened randomly using a spectrophotometer (Micro Lab 300). At the same time, data regarding subjective information, socioeconomic status, and behavioural risk factors are collected by personal interviews, which are further statistically analysed. Results show that the frequency distribution of diabetes is n= 107 (71.3%) while n= 43 (28.7%) of the total n=150 are normal. Mean±sd of the data is 1.29±0.45. There is a significant association between diabetes mellitus and hypertension (n= 95, 63%, Cl 95%, and P-value 0.041). Hyperglycaemia is n= 109 (72.7% and P-value 0.00), and anxiety/depression is n= 95 (63% and P-value 0.004). Gender, age, education, and smoking (p-value > 0.05) are non-significant risk factors for diabetes. The findings show a significant association among diabetes mellitus, hypertension, hyperglycaemia, and depression.
English as Foreign Language (EFL) Teachers’ Efficacy and Positive Achievement Emotions: Relations to Instructional Changes After Attending a Study Abroad Program

Due to government policy, the number of study abroad professional development program for EFL teachers increased greatly in China during recent years. Study abroad program aims to help EFL teachers improve their knowledge and teaching practices, which requires them to make adjustments to their traditional teaching styles accordingly. Hence, teachers may experience strong emotional reactions when they are faced with different modes of teaching methods. From the perspective of “emotion”, this study used control-value theory of achievement emotions as the theoretical framework to examine the relationship between teacher efficacy, positive achievement emotions, and instructional changes among 386 Chinese EFL teachers who attended study abroad programs. Purposive sampling was used in data collection. Data analysis was conducted using Structural Equation Model (SEM). The results showed that teacher efficacy correlated positively with positive achievement emotions (enjoyment, hope, and pride) and instructional changes. Positive achievement emotions mediated the relationship between teacher efficacy and instructional changes. Findings showed the impact of teacher efficacy and positive achievement emotions on changes in teachers’ thinking and instructional practices. Based on the findings and limitations of this study, implications on teacher education and professional development program, directions and suggestions for future studies are discussed.