Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical Significance and Correlation Analysis of Serum Ferritin in Patients with Hepatic Alveolar Echinococcosis

ABSTRACT The serum ferritin (SF) levels of patients with hepatic alveolar echinococcosis (HAE) were compared to the laboratory reference value, and the correlation between SF and associated parameters in patients with HAE was assessed. Hematological and imaging data of 245 patients with HAE were collected. Patients were classified into the LSF group (SF ≤ 204 ng/ml) or HSF group (SF > 204 ng/ml) according to the level of SF. There was no significant difference in the serum iron level between groups (P > 0.05). Significant differences in unsaturated iron-binding capacity (UIBC), liver function, blood coagulation, lipid, blood cell count, and lesion characteristics were observed (P < 0.05). Correlation analysis showed that SF was related to UIBC, γ-glutamyl transferase, total bilirubin (TBIL), direct bilirubin (DBIL), fibrinogen (FIB), neutrophil count, and maximal lesion diameter (all absolute rs ≥ 0.4). The correlation coefficient between SF and UIBC showed the highest absolute value (rs = –0.556, P < 0.001). Single-factor linear regression analysis showed that TBIL and DBIL showed the R2 values were 0.221 and 0.220, and the R2 values of UIBC, FIB, and maximal lesion diameter were 0.157, 0.174, and 0.167, respectively, and those of the remaining indicators were <0.1. Multi-factor binary logistic regression analysis showed that UIBC (P < 0.001, OR = 0.909), FIB (P = 0.020, OR = 1.662), hemoglobin (HGB) (P = 0.002, OR = 1.029), and maximal lesion diameter (P = 0.002, OR = 1.146) were significant factors influencing SF abnormalities. SF levels in some patients with HAE were higher than the laboratory reference value. Correlation and regression analysis of SF suggested that the UIBC, FIB, HGB, and maximal lesion diameter were related to SF and affected the SF level. These results may be helpful for the diagnosis and severity assessment of HAE in the future.
Calibrated Model Criticism Using Split Predictive Checks

: Checking how well a ﬁtted model explains the data is one of the most fun- damental parts of a Bayesian data analysis. However, existing model checking methods suﬀer from trade-oﬀs between being well-calibrated, automated, and computationally eﬃcient. To overcome these limitations, we propose split predictive checks (SPCs), which combine the ease-of-use and speed of posterior predictive checks with the good calibration properties of predictive checks that rely on model-speciﬁc derivations or inference schemes. We develop an asymptotic theory for two types of SPCs: single SPCs and the divided SPCs . Our results demonstrate that they oﬀer complementary strengths: single SPCs provide superior power in the small-data regime or when the misspeciﬁcation is signiﬁcant and divided SPCs provide superior power as the dataset size increases or when the form of misspeciﬁcation is more subtle. We validate the ﬁnite-sample utility of SPCs through extensive simulation experiments in exponential family and hierarchical models, and provide four real-data examples where SPCs oﬀer novel insights and additional ﬂexibility beyond what is available when using posterior predictive checks.
Effectiveness of two coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines (viral vector and inactivated viral vaccine) against severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in a cohort of healthcare workers

Abstract Objective: We investigated real-world vaccine effectiveness for Oxford-AstraZeneca (ChAdOx1) and CoronaVac against laboratory-confirmed severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection among healthcare workers (HCWs). Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study among HCWs (aged ≥18 years) working in a private healthcare system in Brazil between January 1, 2021 and August 3, 2021, to assess vaccine effectiveness. We calculated vaccine effectiveness as 1 − rate ratio (RR), with RR determined by adjusting Poisson models with the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 infection as the outcome and the vaccination status as the main variable. We used the logarithmic link function and simple models adjusting for sex, age, and job types. Results: In total, 13,813 HCWs met the inclusion criteria for this analysis. Among them, 6,385 (46.2%) received the CoronaVac vaccine, 5,916 (42.8%) received the ChAdOx1 vaccine, and 1,512 (11.0%) were not vaccinated. Overall, COVID-19 occurred in 6% of unvaccinated HCWs, 3% of HCWs who received 2 doses of CoronaVac vaccine, and 0.7% of HCWs who received 2 doses of ChAdOx1 vaccine (P < .001). In the adjusted analyses, the estimated vaccine effectiveness rates were 51.3% for CoronaVac, and 88.1% for ChAdOx1 vaccine. Both vaccines reduced the number of hospitalizations, the length of hospital stay, and the need for mechanical ventilation. In addition, 19 SARS-CoV-2 samples from 19 HCWs were screened for mutations of interest. Of 19 samples, 18 were the γ (gamma) variant. Conclusions: Although both COVID-19 vaccines (viral vector and inactivated virus) can significantly prevent COVID-19 among HCWs, CoronaVac was much less effective. The COVID-19 vaccines were also effective against the dominant γ variant.
Chronic airway disease in primary ciliary dyskinesia—spiced with geno–phenotype associations

Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) can be defined as a multiorgan ciliopathy with a dominant element of chronic airway disease affecting the nose, sinuses, middle ear, and in particular, the lower airways. Although most patients with PCD are diagnosed during preschool years, it is obvious that the chronic lung disease starts its course already from birth. The many faces of the clinical picture change, as does lung function, structural lung damage, the burden of infection, and of treatment throughout life. A markedly severe neutrophil inflammation in the respiratory tract seems pervasive and is only to a minimal extent ameliorated by a treatment strategy, which is predominantly aimed at bacterial infections. An ever‐increasing understanding of the different aspects, their interrelationships, and possible different age courses conditioned by the underlying genotype is the focus of much attention. The future is likely to offer personalized medicine in the form of mRNA therapy, but to that end, it is of utmost importance that all patients with PCD be carefully characterized and given a genetic diagnosis. In this narrative review, we have concentrated on lower airways and summarized the current understanding of the chronic airway disease in this motile ciliopathy. In addition, we highlight the challenges, gaps, and opportunities in PCD lung disease research.
Does remaining teeth and dental prosthesis associate with social isolation? A six-year longitudinal study from the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study (JAGES).

OBJECTIVES Social isolation was associated with increased mortality and numerous adverse health outcomes. However, the longitudinal association between oral health and social isolation has not been studied. In this longitudinal prospective cohort study, the association between the number of remaining teeth and dental prosthesis use with social isolation after 6-years follow-up was examined. METHODS Functionally independent adults aged 65 years or older, who were not socially isolated in 2010, were followed up until 2016 in the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study. Data from 26 417 participants were analysed after random forest imputation to address missing data. Logistic regression models were used to calculate the odds ratio (OR) for incident social isolation in 2016 after adjusting for age, sex, educational attainment, income, activities of daily living, living area and having depressive symptoms. RESULTS The mean age of the participants at baseline was 72.3 (SD = 5.0). A total of 1,127 (4.3%) participants were socially isolated at follow-up. Of these, 338 (3.2%) had ≥20 teeth (with or without using dental prosthesis), 171 (3.9%) had 10-19 teeth and used dental prosthesis, 112 (4.2%) had 10-19 teeth and did not use the dental prosthesis, 338 (5.1%) had 0-9 teeth and used dental prosthesis, and 168 (7.6%) had 0-9 teeth and did not use the dental prosthesis. Fully adjusted logistic regression models showed that the OR of incident social isolation was higher for those with fewer teeth; OR = 1.13 (95%CI = 0.96-1.33) for those with 10-19 teeth and OR = 1.36 (95%CI = 1.17-1.58) for those with 0-9 teeth, compared to those with ≥20 teeth. The OR of incident social isolation was lower for those who used a dental prosthesis [OR = 0.90, 95%CI = 0.80-1.02)] compared to those who did not use a dental prosthesis. The interaction between the number of teeth and dental prosthesis use demonstrated that the latter mitigated the incidence of social isolation for participants with tooth loss. Compared to those with ≥20 teeth (with or without prosthesis use), participants with 0-9 teeth that did not use a dental prosthesis were 79% [OR = 1.79, 95%CI = 1.49-2.19] more likely to be socially isolated, whereas participants with 0-9 teeth that used a dental prosthesis were only 23% [OR = 1.23, 95%CI = 1.05-1.45] more likely to be socially isolated. CONCLUSION Tooth loss was the main predictor for social isolation at follow-up, while no dental prostheses use was an additional risk factor. Dental prosthesis use may reduce the risk of social isolation especially in those with severe tooth loss.
Aquaporin 9 regulates Leydig cell steroidogenesis in diabetes

Abstract Diabetes mellitus induced hyperglycemia increases oxidative stress, which contributes to impairment of male reproductive function. Aquaporins (AQPs) belong to a transmembrane protein superfamily containing 13 isoforms (AQP0-12), differentially expressed in various organs, and play a pivotal role in male reproductive function. In the current study, we investigated the relationship between AQPs and testicular steroidogenesis under hyperglycemia in vivo and in vitro. The effect of high glucose on the role of AQPs in Leydig cell steroidogenesis was analyzed in diabetic rats (in-vivo) and LC540 rat Leydig cells (in vitro) via enzyme assays, quantitative RT-PCR, siRNA knock down and western blotting. AQP 9 was significantly up-regulated in STZ-induced diabetic rat testis and high glucose treated LC540 cells. Further, oxidative stress marker nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) expression was decreased with impaired testicular steroidogenesis under hyperglycemia. Knock-down of AQP 9 resulted in increased Nrf2 expression and thus increased testicular steroidogenesis in hyperglycemia. Diabetes-associated hyperglycemia induced oxidative stress is a widely proven cause for diabetes-related male infertility. Our results collectively suggest that AQP 9 impairs testicular steroidogenesis via the regulation of oxidative stress in diabetes.
A European pharmacotherapeutic agent roflumilast exploring integrated preclinical and clinical evidence for SARS CoV‐2 mediated inflammation to organ damage

COVID‐19 has spread globally, affecting almost 160 million individuals. Elderly and pre‐existing patients (such as diabetes, heart disease and asthma) seem more susceptible to severe illness with COVID‐19. Roflumilast was licensed for usage in the European Union in July 2010 as a phosphodiesterase‐4 (PDE4) inhibitor. Under preclinical studies, roflumilast has been shown to decrease bleomycin‐induced lung fibrosis, lung hydroxyproline and right heart thickening. The current study reviewed existing data that the PDE‐4 inhibitor, a roflumilast, protects renal tissues and other major organ systems after COVID‐19 infection by decreasing immune cell infiltration. These immune‐balancing effects of roflumilast were related to a decrease in oxidative and inflammatory burden, caspase‐3 suppression and increased protein kinase A (PKA)/cyclic A.M.P. (cAMP) levels in renal and other organ tissue.
Semantics between customers and providers: The relation between product descriptions, reviews, and customer satisfaction in E-commerce

In social commerce, users dialogue with each other on the topics related to the providers’ products. However, the language customers use may vary from the language vendors use on their e-commerce websites and product descriptions. This situation can lead to possible misunderstandings in the social dialogue between customers, and incidental costs in the dialogue between customers and vendors. One possible reason for this diﬀerence is that words used by customers may have diﬀerent meanings compared to those used by product description writers. We present a novel approach to measure this potential lexical-semantic gap for various e-commerce domains using an information-theoretical approach based on a large corpus of user reviews and product descriptions. Additionally, we use neural word embeddings to identify words with the highest semantic drift between reviews and descriptions as a tool to construct a ground truth for the task. We found that low levels of lexical-semantic gap are related to better customer satisfaction. Besides, this work is a step towards a better understanding of the eﬀect of the use of language in e-commerce and social commerce. Potential applications of this technology could lead to better communication between customers and improvements in customer satisfaction, services, and revenue. Furthermore, this study opens up perspectives for applications in other domains with relationships beyond client-vendor, such as citizen-government and patient-healthcare system.
LinkBERT: Pretraining Language Models with Document Links

Language model (LM) pretraining captures various knowledge from text corpora, helping downstream tasks. However, existing methods such as BERT model a single document, and do not capture dependencies or knowledge that span across documents. In this work, we propose LinkBERT, an LM pretraining method that leverages links between documents, e.g., hyperlinks. Given a text corpus, we view it as a graph of documents and create LM inputs by placing linked documents in the same context. We then pretrain the LM with two joint self-supervised objectives: masked language modeling and our new proposal, document relation prediction. We show that LinkBERT outperforms BERT on various downstream tasks across two domains: the general domain (pretrained on Wikipedia with hyperlinks) and biomedical domain (pretrained on PubMed with citation links). LinkBERT is especially effective for multi-hop reasoning and few-shot QA (+5% absolute improvement on HotpotQA and TriviaQA), and our biomedical LinkBERT sets new states of the art on various BioNLP tasks (+7% on BioASQ and USMLE). We release our pretrained models, LinkBERT and BioLinkBERT, as well as code and data.
Unseen Classes at a Later Time? No Problem

Recent progress towards learning from limited supervision has encouraged efforts towards designing models that can recognize novel classes at test time (generalized zero-shot learning or GZSL). GZSL approaches assume knowledge of all classes, with or without labeled data, beforehand. However, practical scenarios demand models that are adaptable and can handle dynamic addition of new seen and unseen classes on the fly (i.e continual generalized zero-shot learning or CGZSL). One solution is to sequentially retrain and reuse conventional GZSL methods, however, such an approach suffers from catastrophic forgetting leading to suboptimal generalization performance. A few recent efforts towards tackling CGZSL have been limited by difference in settings, practicality, data splits and protocols followed - inhibiting fair comparison and a clear direction forward. Motivated from these observations, in this work, we firstly consolidate the different CGZSL setting variants and propose a new Online-CGZSL setting which is more practical and flexible. Secondly, we introduce a unified feature-generative framework for CGZSL that leverages bi-directional incremental alignment to dynamically adapt to addition of new classes, with or without labeled data, that arrive over time in any of these CGZSL settings. Our comprehensive experiments and analysis on five benchmark datasets and comparison with baselines show that our approach consistently outperforms existing methods, especially on the more practical Online setting.
Popliteal artery branching variations on computed tomography angiography of 1542 lower limbs and its associated factors

Background The identification of popliteal artery branching variation is of anatomical importance for surgical and endovascular procedures in the posterior region of the knee and below. Purpose To evaluate the variations and associated factors of popliteal artery branching by computed tomography angiography (CTA). Material and Methods CTA of the lower extremities of 1542 lower limbs in 771 patients (513 men and 258 women) were retrospectively reviewed to assess the popliteal artery branching patterns. The patient's sex, side of lower limbs, and population were recorded and evaluated for their association with popliteal artery branching patterns. P < 0.05 was considered to indicate statistical significance. Results Variations in the branching of the popliteal artery were recorded in 9.3% of patients. The three most common variations were found to be hypoplastic-aplastic posterior tibial artery (PT) (3.6%), trifurcation (2.0%), and hypoplastic-aplastic anterior tibial artery (0.8%). A new pattern was detected in 2 (0.1%) cases, which were described as double PTs. Statistically significant differences were noted in the proportion of variation branching between the male and female groups (odds ratio = 1.52; 95% confidence interval = 1.07–2.16; P = 0.02). Conclusion The findings on popliteal variational branching patterns in the present study were in conformance to previous reports. Our study identified a novel variation of popliteal artery branching, which has not been mentioned in the literature so far. Sex was found to be an associated factor of branching variation.
Does Surgical Treatment Affect the Degree of Anxiety or Depression in Patients With Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy?

Study Design Retrospective cohort study Objectives Preoperative mental state has been reported as one of the factors affecting the surgical outcomes of spine surgery, but few studies have examined in detail how patients’ mental state is affected by spine surgery. The purpose of this study was to investigate using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) whether surgery improves preoperative depression and anxiety in patients with degenerative cervical myelopathy. Methods We investigated patient-reported outcomes (Mental Component Summary, Physical Component Summary of SF-12 Health Survey, and EQ-5D, Neck Disability Index, JOACMEQ, satisfaction with treatment) and HADS one year after surgery, comparing them before and after surgery between April 2017 and February 2020. Among the cases diagnosed as preoperative anxiety and depression, we additionally compared the patient-reported outcomes based on the presence or absence of postoperative improvement in mental state, having also investigated the correlation between patient-reported outcomes and HADS for sub-analysis. Results Among the 99 patients eligible for inclusion in the present study, we found that patient-reported outcomes and the HADS scores improved significantly after surgery. There was a moderate correlation between the amount of change in HADS-D score before and after surgery and the amount of change in NDI (moderate, r = .41), NRS of neck (moderate, r = .46), and JOACMEQ (cervical spine function; moderate, r = .43, upper extremity function; moderate, r = .41, QOL; moderate, r = .41). Conclusions We found that surgical treatment for patients with degenerative cervical myelopathy may improve postoperative anxiety and depression as well as other patient-reported outcomes.
Self-consistent Equation of State for water behind the strong shockwave front

The Mi-Gruneisen self-consistent analytical form of the equation of state (EOS) for water behind the strong shock front is obtained using virial theorem. Explicit forms for the shock adiabatic, Gruneisen’s coefficient and parameter, depending on the temperature, the water compression and on an exponent of the intermolecular interaction potential are presented. In addition, the dependence of the exponent of the Tait-Murnagham isothermal EOS of water on the intermolecular force and on Gruneisen’s parameter is obtained.
On a geometrical notion of dimension for partially ordered sets

The well-known notion of dimension for partial orders by Dushnik and Miller allows to quantify the degree of incomparability and, thus, is regarded as a measure of complexity for partial orders. However, despite its usefulness, its definition is somewhat disconnected from the geometrical idea of dimension, where, essentially, the number of dimensions indicates how many real lines are required to represent the underlying partially ordered set. Here, we introduce a variation of the Dushnik-Miller notion of dimension that is closer to geometry, the Debreu dimension, and show the following main results: (i) how to construct its building blocks under some countability restrictions, (ii) its relation to other notions of dimension in the literature, and (iii), as an application of the above, we improve on the classification of preordered spaces through real-valued monotones.
Featural vs. Holistic processing and visual sampling in the influence of social category cues on emotion recognition

ABSTRACT Past research demonstrates that emotion recognition is influenced by social category cues present on faces. However, little research has investigated whether holistic processing is required to observe these influences of social category information on emotion perception, and no studies have investigated whether different visual sampling strategies (i.e. differences in the allocation of attention to different regions of the face) contribute to the interaction between social cues and emotional expressions. The current study aimed to address this. Participants categorised happy and angry expressions on own- and other-race faces, and male and female faces. In Experiments 1 and 2, holistic processing was disrupted by presenting inverted faces (Experiment 1) or part faces (Experiment 2). In Experiments 3 and 4 participants’ eye-gaze to eye and mouth regions was also tracked. Disrupting holistic processing did not alter the moderating influence of sex and race cues on emotion recognition (Experiments 1, 2, 4). Gaze patterns differed as a function of emotional expression, and social category cues, however, eye-gaze patterns did not reflect response time patterns (Experiments 3 and 4). Results indicate that the interaction between social category cues and emotion does not require holistic processing and is not driven by differences in visual sampling.
A Re-study on the Evaluation Criteria of Table Tennis Technique

To diagnose and compare technique between Chinese table tennis players and their foreign opponents,we put forward "3 sections evaluation criteria of table tennis technique in 1987.It was accepted by coaches of Chinese table tennis team and got good results.Since the year of 2000,some changes of table tennis law have been made by ITTF,namely big ball,11 points of a game,service without hidden from receiver and inorganic glue.Should "3 sections evaluation criteria of table tennis technique" be changed also? We follow it for 6 years and make a study on it.The conclusion is as following: The criteria of section of attack after service and of section of stalemate are not changed,but the section of receiving service changed.The rate of utilization of 3 sections between pen holder and shakehand holder is different.