Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New Test for Achilles Tendinopathy Based on Kager’s Fat Pad Clinical Assessment Predictive Values

Background This study aimed to check the diagnostic accuracy of a new test to identify Achilles tendinopathy. Study Design: Observational study. Methods: Seventy patients recruited from a private medical centre met the diagnostic criteria for unilateral Achilles tendinopathy (age, 45.1 ± 12.7 years; weight, 75.00 ± 10 kg; height, 1.75 ± 0.1 m) and were tested based on both Achilles tendons. Seventy patients with a unilateral Achilles tendinopathy ultrasound diagnosis were tested using David’s test. Results: Most (86%) subjects demonstrated Kager’s fat pad asymmetry in relation to the Achilles tendon in the complete passive dorsiflexion in the prone position (David’s sign). No healthy tendons had David’s sign. Conclusions: The presence of asymmetry in Kager’s fat pad in relation to the Achilles tendon during complete passive dorsiflexion is strongly indicative of ultrasound-diagnosed tendinopathy. David’s test demonstrated a sensitivity of 85.71% (95% CI, 77.51% to 93.91%) and a specificity of 100% (95% CI, 100% to 100%), while noting the lack of blinding of the assessors and the uncertainty of the diagnostic measures (95% CI). Asymmetry of the fat pad could potentially serve as a characteristic marker for patients with Achilles tendinopathy.
A metagenomic analysis of gut microbiome phylogeny among four economically important carp species from wild and aquaculture farms

The present study was carried out to compare the gut microbiome of Indian Major Carp and Common carp from wild and aquaculture setting through 16S rDNA sequencing. The library of 16S rDNA V3-V4 hypervariable regions of gut microbiota was amplified, followed by sequencing using Illumina MiSeq. The analysis of sequencing data carried out through the Quantitative Insights into Microbial Ecology pipeline suggests that Proteobacteria , Firmicutes, Cyanobacteria and Actinobacteria are the most dominant phyla. Some microbial phyla were found to be species-specific. Genera such as Bacillus, Sphingomonas , and Clostridium were highly abundant in cultured forms indicating their role in the survival of cultured forms under considerable ecological stress. The α-diversity and β-diversity indicators suggest that the gut microbiome of cultured forms shows more diversity and also resembles a great extent. Absence of Bacillus spp . in wild form, and low abundance of Lactococcus spp. indicates the need of finding alternatives for probiotics. The insights from the present study can be used for further exploring the role of the gut microbiome in aspects such as growth, immunity and other physiological functions of the fish.
Genome Identification and Evolutionary Analysis of LBD Genes and Response to Environmental Factors in Phoebe bournei

Phoebe bournei is nationally conserved in China due to its high economic value and positive effect on the ecological environment. P. bournei has an excellent wood structure, making it useful for industrial and domestic applications. Despite its importance, there are only a few studies on the lateral organ boundary domain (LBD) genes in P. bournei. The LBD gene family contributes to prompting rooting in multiple plant species and therefore supports their survival directly. To understand the LBD family in P. bournei, we verified its characteristics in this article. By comparing the sequences of Arabidopsis and identifying conserved domains and motifs, we found that there were 38 members of the LBD family in P. bournei, which were named PbLBD1 to PbLBD38. Through evolutionary analysis, we found that they were divided into two different populations and five subfamilies in total. The LBD gene family in P. bournei (Hemsl.) Yang species had two subfamilies, including 32 genes in Class I and 6 genes in Class II. It mainly consists of a Lateral Organ Boundary (LOB) conservative domain, and the protein structure is mostly “Y”-shaped. The gene expression pattern of the LBD gene family showed that the LBD genes were mainly expressed in lateral organs of plants, such as flowers and fruits. The response of LBD transcription factors to red and blue light was summarized, and several models of optogenetic expression regulation were proposed. The effect of regulatory mechanisms on plant rooting was also predicted. Moreover, quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) revealed that most PbLBDs were differentially expressed under cold, heat, drought, and salt stresses, indicating that PbLBDs might play different functions depending on the type of abiotic stress. This study provides the foundation for further research on the function of LBD in this tree species in the future.
Taxifolin Reduces Blood Pressure via Improvement of Vascular Function and Mitigating the Vascular Inflammatory Response in Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats

The effect of a 10-day-long treatment with taxifolin (TAX, 20 mg/kg/day p.o.) was investigated on spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs) with a focus on the vascular functions of isolated femoral arteries and thoracic aortas. TAX reduced blood pressure in SHRs. In femoral arteries, TAX increased acetylcholine-induced relaxation, reduced the maximal NA-induced contraction, and reduced acetylcholine-induced endothelium-dependent contraction (EDC); however, TAX had no effect on the vascular reactivity of isolated thoracic aortas. In addition, TAX elevated the total nitric oxide synthase (NOS) activity and iNOS protein expression but reduced cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2) protein expression in the tissue of the abdominal aorta without changes in Nos2 and Ptgs2 gene expressions. TAX also increased the gene expression of the anti-inflammatory interleukin-10 (Il10). In addition, in vitro studies showed that TAX has both electron donor and H atom donor properties. However, TAX failed to reduce superoxide production in the tissue of the abdominal aorta after oral administration. In conclusion, our results show that a decrease in the blood pressure in TAX-treated SHRs might be attributed to improved endothelium-dependent relaxation and reduced endothelium-dependent contraction. In addition, the results suggest that the effect of TAX on blood pressure regulation also involves the attenuation of COX2-mediated pro-inflammation and elevation of anti-inflammatory pathways.
The Influence of Heat Stress on Chicken Immune System and Mitigation of Negative Impacts by Baicalin and Baicalein

Simple Summary Research in the field of heat stress in poultry focusing on additives with immunomodulatory properties is reviewed here. Modulations of the immune system components are strongly associated with the negative impacts of heat stress on poultry production. The research reported the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of baicalin and baicalein to support their benefits for poultry under heat-stress conditions. Therefore, these two flavonoids can mitigate the negative impacts of heat stress on the immune system and improve poultry health and performance under stressful conditions. Abstract Heat stress (HS) in poultry husbandry is an important stressor and with increasing global temperatures its importance will increase. The negative effects of stress on the quality and quantity of poultry production are described in a range of research studies. However, a lack of attention is devoted to the impacts of HS on individual chicken immune cells and whole lymphoid tissue in birds. Oxidative stress and increased inflammation are accompanying processes of HS, but with deleterious effects on the whole organism. They play a key role in the inflammation and oxidative stress of the chicken immune system. There are a range of strategies that can help mitigate the adverse effects of HS in poultry. Phytochemicals are well studied and some of them report promising results to mitigate oxidative stress and inflammation, a major consequence of HS. Current studies revealed that mitigating these two main impacts of HS will be a key factor in solving the problem of increasing temperatures in poultry production. Improved function of the chicken immune system is another benefit of using phytochemicals in poultry due to the importance of poultry health management in today’s post pandemic world. Based on the current literature, baicalin and baicalein have proven to have strong anti-inflammatory and antioxidative effects in mammalian and avian models. Taken together, this review is dedicated to collecting the literature about the known effects of HS on chicken immune cells and lymphoid tissue. The second part of the review is dedicated to the potential use of baicalin and baicalein in poultry to mitigate the negative impacts of HS on poultry production.
A Preliminary Report on the Academic Performance of Pharmacy Students in a Distance Education Program

Objectives. Specific objectives were to (1) compare the academic performance of students attending the founding versus distance campuses of one college of pharmacy and (2) investigate whether the campus attended was associated with first professional year academic performance. Methods. Data regarding students' academic performance in specific courses and fall semester and cumulative first-professional-year grade point averages (GPAs) were retrieved. Campus attended, prepharmacy science and math GPA, pharmacy college admissions test (PCAT) composite score, highest prepharmacy academic degree, age, and gender were used to predict academic performance. Results. Campus attended did not predict fall semester GPA (p = 0.44) or cumulative GPA (p = 0.95). Significant predictors were prepharmacy science and math GPA, PCAT composite score, and highest prepharmacy academic degree. Conclusions. After the first academic year, students on the founding campus and distance campuses performed equally well after considerin.
Underwater versus conventional endoscopic mucosal resection for colorectal lesions: An updated meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Abstract Background and study aims Colorectal malignancy is a leading cause of death. Conventional endoscopic mucosal resection (CEMR) is a strategy used to resect precancerous lesions that involves injecting fluid beneath a polyp to create a gap for resection. Underwater endoscopic mucosal resection (UEMR) is a newer method that forgoes injection, instead filling the intestinal cavity with water to facilitate polyp resection. Our aim was to compare the safety and efficacy of these approaches by synthesizing the most contemporary evidence. Methods PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane libraries were searched from inception through November 11, 2022 for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing UEMR and CEMR for resection of colorectal lesions. The primary outcome was the rate of en bloc resection and secondary outcomes included recurrence, procedure time, and adverse events (AEs). Results A total of 2539 studies were identified through our systematic literature search. After screening, seven RCTs with a total of 1581 polyps were included. UEMR was associated with significantly increased rates of en bloc resection (RR 1.18 [1.03, 1.35]; I 2 = 76.6%) versus conventional approaches. No significant differences were found in procedure time, recurrence, or AEs. Conclusions UEMR is a promising effective technique for removal of colorectal lesions. The most contemporary literature indicates that it improves en bloc resection rate without increasing procedure time, recurrence, or AEs (PROSPERO ID CRD42022374935).
GREEN SYNTHESIS OF HALOGEN SUBSTITUTED CHALCONE AGAINST CERVICAL CANCER (HeLa) CELL LINES

Cervical cancer is the second leading cause of death in women. Many cancer treatments currently provide toxic effects on normal cells. Therefore, alternative treatment using chalcone derivatives has potent anticancer properties that can help reduce cancer side effects. Chalcone derivatives with halogen and methoxy groups in ring B can potentially inhibit cancer cells. This research aimed to synthesize halogen-substituted chalcone by a green chemistry approach and determine activity against cervical cancer (HeLa) cell lines. The Claisen-Schmidt reaction was used to synthesize 2'-hydroxy-2-bromo-4,5-dimethoxychalcone using a grinding technique. The purity of the synthesized compound was determined using thin-layer chromatography and melting range. The compounds' structures were characterized using FTIR, MS 1H, and 13C-NMR. The result showed that the synthesized compound was yielded in 53% as a yellow solid. In vitro cytotoxicity of the synthesized chalcone was evaluated by the MTT assay method. The IC50 of the compound was 67,23 μg/mL as a moderate activity inhibiting cervical cancer (HeLa) cell lines. Based on the IC50 value, this compound can be a candidate for anticancer against Cervical cancer (HeLa) cell lines.
Origine, devenir et contrôle de la matière particulaire dans les élevages de poissons marins en système recyclé

La matiere particulaire joue un role essentiel dans le fonctionnement des systemes aquacoles en recirculation. Riche en substances organiques, elle presente des conditions ideales pour un developpement bacterien qui contribue a sa mineralisation. La comprehension de l'etroite interaction entre les cycles bio-geochimiques du carbone et de l'azote qui interviennent dans ces processus est determinante pour definir des regles de gestion adaptees aux installations aquacoles. Une methode utilisant la mesure des isotopes stables naturels (13C et 15N) et l'analyse du carbone et de l'azote elementaires qui composent la matiere particulaire permet de caracteriser son origine et de quantifier ses flux. Son application a montre que le muscle dorsal des poissons eleves est enrichi en 13C par rapport a l'aliment, alors que leur foie presente la meme signature isotopique que l'aliment. Le 13C de la matiere particulaire est conserve lors du recyclage et de la fragmentation mecanique, par contre les variations en 15N indiquent des transformations biochimiques sur ces particules. La matiere particulaire est constituee d'un melange de matiere detritique (restes d'aliment et feces) et de matiere vivante (agregats bacteriens). Les changements isotopiques indiquent que la contribution des trois sources depend: 1) du metabolisme des poissons, 2) des dispositifs de traitement de l'eau et 3) de l'activite bacterienne. Ces facteurs, combines au regime hydraulique, determinent la distribution des particules dans le circuit. L'utilisation d'aditifs pour augmenter la collecte des feces et la filtration sur diatomee ont diminue significativement le carbone organique particulaire disponible dans le circuit, sans affecter notablement l'efficacite de la filtration biologique.
Predictors of Time to First Line Antiretroviral Treatment Failure among Adult Patients Living with HIV in Public Health Facilities of Arba Minch Town, Southern Ethiopia

Background Antiretroviral therapy is a proven medication given for Human Immunodeficiency Virus positive individuals. However, first-line antiretroviral treatment failure becomes a public health issue and early detection of treatment failure is crucial for timely actions. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the predictors of time to first-line antiretroviral treatment failure among adult patients living with HIV in public health facilities of Arba Minch Town. Methods Institution-based retrospective cohort study was employed among 396 adult patients that were selected using simple random sampling. The data on relevant variables were extracted from patient medical cards. Bi-variable and multi-variable Cox proportional hazard regression analyses were used to identify predictors. Results The median survival time was 21 months. Substance use (AHR=2.94, 95% CI=1.62 to 5.32), disclosure status (AHR=1.98, 95% CI=1.03 to 3.79), time since HIV diagnosis (AHR=2.19 95% CI=1.01 to 4.79), WHO clinical stage (AHR=2.02, 95% CI=1.02 to 4.00), opportunistic infection (AHR=2.27, 95% CI=1.23 to 4.19), nutritional status (AHR=3.78, 95% CI=1.99 to 7.17), functional status (AHR=2.71 95% CI=1.33 to 5.51), CD4 count (AHR=1.99, 95% CI=1.05 to 3.75), and adherence level (AHR=1.99, 95% CI=1.05 to 3.76) were independent predictors of time to first line ART treatment failure. Conclusion History of substance use, lack of disclosure status, time since HIV diagnosis, advanced WHO clinical staging, low CD4 counts, opportunistic infection, functional status, poor adherence to ART and under-nutrition affect the time to first-line treatment failure among adult patients living with HIV. Therefore, preventive interventions, and information and counseling focusing on high risk groups of HIV infected adult are very important.
Topic Modeling on Document Networks With Dirichlet Optimal Transport Barycenter

Text documents are often interconnected in a network structure, e.g., academic papers via citations, Web pages via hyperlinks. On the one hand, though Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have shown promising ability to derive effective embeddings for such networked documents, they do not assume a latent topic structure and result in uninterpretable embeddings. On the other hand, topic models can infer semantically interpretable topic distributions for documents by associating each topic with a group of understandable key words. However, most topic models mainly focus on plain text within documents and fail to leverage network structure across documents. Network connectivity reveals topic similarity between linked documents, and modeling it could uncover meaningful semantics. Motivated by above two challenges, in this paper, we propose a GNN-based neural topic model that both captures network connectivity and derives semantically interpretable topic distributions for networked documents. For network modeling, we build the model based on the theory of Optimal Transport Barycenter, which captures network structure by allowing the topic distribution of a document to generate the content of its linked neighbors. For semantic interpretability, we extend optimal transport by incorporating semantically related words in the embedding space. Since Dirichlet prior in Latent Dirichlet Allocation successfully improves topic quality, we also analyze Dirichlet as an optimal transport prior distribution to improve topic interpretability. We design rejection sampling to simulate Dirichlet distribution. Extensive experiments on document classification, clustering, link prediction, and topic analysis verify the effectiveness of our model.
High-resolution rainfall maps from commercial microwave links for a data-scarce region in West Africa

We present high-resolution rainfall maps from commercial microwave link (CML) data in the city of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Rainfall was quantified based on data from 100 CMLs along unique paths and interpolated to achieve rainfall maps with a 5-minute temporal and 0.55km spatial resolution for the monsoon season of 2020. Established processing methods were combined with newly developed filtering methods, minimizing the loss of data availability. The rainfall maps were analyzed qualitatively both at a five-minute and aggregated daily scale. We observed high spatio-temporal variability on the five-minute scale which cannot be captured with any existing measurement infrastructure in West Africa. For the quantitative evaluation only one rain gauge with a daily resolution was available. Comparing the gauge data with the corresponding CML rainfall map pixel showed a high agreement with a Pearson correlation coefficient of over 0.95 and an underestimation of the CML rainfall maps of around ten percent. Because the CMLs closest to the gauge have the largest influence on the map pixel at the gauge location, we thinned out the CML network around the rain gauge synthetically in several steps and repeated the interpolation. The performance of these rainfall maps dropped only when a radius of 5 km was reached and around half of all CMLs were removed. We further compared ERA5 and GPM-IMERG data to the rain gauge and found that they show much lower correlation than data from the CML rainfall maps. This clearly highlights the large benefit that CML data can provide in the data scarce but densely populated African cities.
Magnetospheric sawtooth events during the solar cycle 23

The Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere have a variety of responses to different solar activities. As a result, there are several types of magnetosphere response modes; one of which is termed sawtooth injection events. Currently, it is still unclear whether sawtooth events occurrence has a solar cycle dependence. Partially, this is due to a lack of an event list which covers a full solar cycle. In this research, we have extended our original event list to cover the solar cycle 23, which now includes 126 events from 1996 to 2007. Sawtooth events have been grouped into three categories based on their solar wind drivers: interplanetary coronal mass ejections, stream interaction regions, and others. Then we examine in detail whether sawtooth events occurrence has dependencies on solar cycle and season. We also test a hypothesis that sawtooth events occurrence is related to a threshold of total eroded magnetic flux at the magnetopause regardless of solar wind structures. This paper suggests understanding sawtooth events and other convection modes from solar wind magnetic flux or energy aspect rather than from structure aspect, which is an important idea to understand the complicated magnetosphere dynamics.
SENILE FRUIT-BEARING TREES AS POSSIBLE TIMBER ALTERNATIVE: PHYSICAL AND MECHANICAL PROPERTIES

The physico-mechanical properties of five senile fruit-bearing trees, i.e., caimito ( Chrysophyllum cainito ), durian ( Durio zibethinus ), kalumpit ( Terminalia microcarpa ) rambutan, ( Nephelium ramboutan-ake ) and sampalok ( Tamarindus indica ) were tested using ASTM D143-52 (2014) standard, and their end-uses were determined. The samples were obtained from Laguna, Batangas and Butuan cities. Results showed that the C. cainito and T. indica had the lowest moisture content (MC) (64.7 and 55.1%, respectively) and highest relative density (RD) (0.737 and 0.747, respectively). On the other hand , N. ramboutan-ake and T. indica had the highest radial shrinkage (6.78 and 6.52%, respectively). Tamarindus indica also exhibited the highest longitudinal (2.01%) and volumetric shrinkage (16.7%). As for the mechanical properties, in green condition and at 12% MC, C. cainito had the highest modulus of rupture (MOR) (72.40 and 109.0 MPa, respectively), modulus of elasticity (MOE) (9.91 and 14.20 GPa, respectively), compression perpendicular-to-grain (6.37 and 11.10 MPa, respectively), shear (7.92 and 12.40 MPa, respectively), and hardness: end (7.42 kN in green condition). Nephelium ramboutan-ake showed the highest SPL (42.40 and 56.80 MPa, respectively) and compression parallel-to-grain (29.30 MPa, green condition). Tamarindus indica showed the highest hardness values: side (7.20 and 11.20 kN, respectively) and toughness (59.70 and 59.70 J/spec, respectively). Based on the properties obtained, the senile fruit-bearing tree species are suitable as alternative raw materials for various end-uses.