Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ketamine Augmentation of Electroconvulsive Therapy: A Scoping Review of Dose-Dependent Effects in Major Depressive Disorder

Intravenous ketamine infusions in subanesthetic doses have been shown to rapidly alleviate depressive symptoms. However, the efficacy of ketamine as an anesthetic during electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for major depression has not yet been answered by a large randomized control trial (RCT). This scoping review aims to examine the available literature to determine whether the dose of ketamine used during ECT influences the response to treatment. A literature search was conducted on PubMed to identify all published RCTs within the last 10 years which compared ketamine anesthesia during ECT for major depression with another anesthetic. Studies using low (<0.8 mg/kg) versus high (≥0.8 mg/kg) doses of ketamine during ECT were evaluated for the differences in outcomes using depression rating scales. Studies that examined ketamine as a standalone treatment for depression or focused primarily on the anesthetic benefits of ketamine were excluded from our review. Fifteen studies were utilized for this literature review. Overall, the studies showed inconsistent results in terms of the speed and magnitude of response to ketamine-assisted ECT in patients with major depression. Limitations of the available literature are discussed, including the lack of head-to-head comparisons, differences in methodology, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and primary and secondary endpoints.
Silicene on Ag(111): A honeycomb lattice without Dirac bands

The discovery of (4x4) silicene formation on Ag(111) raised the question on whether silicene maintains its Dirac fermion character, similar to graphene, on a supporting substrate. Previous photoemission studies indicated that the {\pi}-band forms Dirac cones near the Fermi energy, while theoretical investigations found it shifted at deeper binding energy. By means of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations we show instead that the {\pi}-symmetry states lose their local character and the Dirac cone fades out. The formation of an interface state of free-electron-like Ag origin is found to account for spectral features that were theoretically and experimentally attributed to silicene bands of {\pi}-character.
Serum amyloid A in children and adolescents: association with overweight and carotid intima-media thickness

ABSTRACT Objective To compare serum amyloid A concentrations between overweight and eutrophic children and adolescents and to relate it to lipid profiles, glucose tolerance, and carotid intima-media thickness. Methods One hundred children and adolescents (mean age: 10.8±3.16 years) were included and divided into two groups: overweight and non-overweight. The following were evaluated: Z-score body mass index, carotid intima-media thickness, lipid metabolism biomarkers (lipid profile and apolipoproteins A1 and B), inflammatory biomarkers (ultra-sensitive C-reactive protein and serum amyloid A), and glucose homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance. Results The groups were homogeneous in age, sex, and pubertal stage. Higher levels of triglycerides, apolipoprotein B, homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance, ultrasensitive C-reactive protein, serum amyloid A, and carotid intima-media thickness were observed in the overweight group. In the multivariate analysis, age (OR=1.73; 95%CI: 1.16-2.60, p=0.007), Z-score body mass index (OR=3.76; 95%CI: 1.64-8.59, p=0.002), apolipoprotein-B (OR=1.1; 95%CI: 1.01-1.2, p=0.030), and carotid intima-media thickness (OR=5.00; 95%CI: 1.38-18.04, p=0.014) were independently associated with serum amyloid A levels above the fourth quartile of the studied sample (>9.4mg/dL). Conclusion Overweight children and adolescents had higher serum amyloid A concentrations than eutrophic children. There was an independent association between higher concentrations of serum amyloid A and Z-score, body mass index, apolipoprotein B, and carotid intima-media thickness, indicating the importance of this inflammatory biomarker in identifying the early risk of atherosclerosis.
Smoked Cannabis Effects in Cannabis Users at Clinical High-Risk for Psychosis: A Further Investigation of Cognition and Reward

Objective. Some adverse cannabis effects are greater in individuals on the psychosis spectrum compared to healthy individuals. We have previously reported that smoked cannabis acutely worsened psychotic- like states and reduced cognitive performance selectively in cannabis users at clinical high-risk (CHR) for psychosis. The objective of the present study was to further investigate the acute effects of cannabis on cognition and reward processing in CHR cannabis users. Methods. Six CHR cannabis users and six psychiatrically-healthy cannabis users comparable in intellectual, demographic, and cannabis use characteristics (including nontreatment-seeking status), participated in the study. Objective and subjective measures of cognition and cannabis reward, were completed before and after smoking half of an active (5.5% Δ9tetrahydrocannabinol [Δ9-THC]) or half of a placebo (0.0% Δ9-THC) cannabis cigarette, under randomized/double-blind conditions. Repeated measures ANOVA tested main effects of drug condition (active vs. placebo) and/or the drug condition × time (baseline vs. post-administration) interactions; groups were analyzed separately due to the small sample size. Results. CHR participants exhibited evidence of decreased objective response inhibition and aversive intoxication following active cannabis, relative to placebo. Psychomotor speed and cannabis-related attentional bias were also affected by cannabis intoxication. No such effects were observed in psychiatrically-healthy cannabis users. Conclusion. These findings provide further preliminary evidence of a deleterious cognitive and reward- related response to cannabis in individuals with preexisting risk for psychosis.
Increased importance of cool‐water fish at high latitudes emerges from individual‐level responses to warming

Abstract High latitude ecosystems are experiencing the most rapid warming on earth, expected to trigger a diverse array of ecological responses. Climate warming affects the ecophysiology of fish, and fish close to the cold end of their thermal distribution are expected to increase somatic growth from increased temperatures and a prolonged growth season, which in turn affects maturation schedules, reproduction, and survival, boosting population growth. Accordingly, fish species living in ecosystems close to their northern range edge should increase in relative abundance and importance, and possibly displace cold‐water adapted species. We aim to document whether and how population‐level effects of warming are mediated by individual‐level responses to increased temperatures, shift community structure, and composition in high latitude ecosystems. We studied 11 cool‐water adapted perch populations in communities dominated by cold‐water adapted species (whitefish, burbot, and charr) to investigate changes in the relative importance of the cool‐water perch during the last 30 years of rapid warming in high latitude lakes. In addition, we studied the individual‐level responses to warming to clarify the potential mechanisms underlying the population effects. Our long‐term series (1991–2020) reveal a marked increase in numerical importance of the cool‐water fish species, perch, in ten out of eleven populations, and in most fish communities perch is now dominant. Moreover, we show that climate warming affects population‐level processes via direct and indirect temperature effects on individuals. Specifically, the increase in abundance arises from increased recruitment, faster juvenile growth, and ensuing earlier maturation, all boosted by climate warming. The speed and magnitude of the response to warming in these high latitude fish communities strongly suggest that cold‐water fish will be displaced by fish adapted to warmer water. Consequently, management should focus on climate adaptation limiting future introductions and invasions of cool‐water fish and mitigating harvesting pressure on cold‐water fish.
Genotypes selected for early and late avian lay date differ in their phenotype, but not fitness, in the wild

Global warming has shifted phenological traits in many species, but whether species are able to track further increasing temperatures depends on the fitness consequences of additional shifts in phenological traits. To test this, we measured phenology and fitness of great tits (Parus major) with genotypes for extremely early and late egg lay dates, obtained from a genomic selection experiment. Females with early genotypes advanced lay dates relative to females with late genotypes, but not relative to nonselected females. Females with early and late genotypes did not differ in the number of fledglings produced, in line with the weak effect of lay date on the number of fledglings produced by nonselected females in the years of the experiment. Our study is the first application of genomic selection in the wild and led to an asymmetric phenotypic response that indicates the presence of constraints toward early, but not late, lay dates.
The Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Correlation from Contingency Tables

It is sometimes desirable in practice to estimate the degree of correlation existing in 2 X 2 or 3 X 3 contingency tables. In some instances an underlying bivariate normal distribution can be assumed and the problem reduces to estimating p from the observed frequencies in the table. In the case of the 2 X 2 tables, this may be accomplished with the aid of tetrachoric functions, although this technique does not seem to have been extended to p X q tables in general. It is the purpose of the present paper to show how Maximum Likelihood (M.L.) estimates of p, p, may be obtained from such tables when, in fact, the parent distribution is bivariate normal. A somewhat similar problem has been considered by Mosteller [1946] who investigated the efficiency of estimating p from punch card data. Mosteller considered the case when the cards are sorted with respect to the two co-ordinates, x and y, in a particular manner, and derives the M.L. estimate of p from an order statistics argument. However, his results are not generally applicable to the problem considered here because of the special sorting model which he employs. This topic is part of a wider attempt to develop more satisfactory methods of analysing discrete and continuous data arising in some fields of quantitative genetics. For instance, in the study of heritability and repeatability of birth records of domestic animals, the required correlations are usually calculated by the product-moment or intra-class correlation techniques and hence satisfactory tests of hypotheses are lacking. In the particular case of fertility, a reasonable assumption may be that the potential to produce offspring is normally distributed, but, that, necessarily, phenotypic expression is only possible at distinct threshold values of this potential. Thus, for all potentials below a certain threshold no offspring result; for potentials above this critical value but below a second threshold level one offspring is produced
Analytical Irreducibility of Normal Varieties

By a local domain we mean an integral domain which is at the same time a local ring in the sense of Krull [4]. If m is the ideal of non-units in a local domain o and if o* denotes the completion of o (with respect to the powers of m), we say that o is analytically unramified if the zero ideal in o* is an intersection of prime ideals. In other words: o is analytically unramified if o* has no nilpotent elements. If , is a prime ideal in an arbitrary local ring o, we say that p is analytically unramified if the local domain o/p is analytically unramified. It is well known that if o* is the completion of o then o*/o*p is the completion of o/P (Chevalley rl], Proposition 5). It follows that a prime ideal p in a local ring o is analytically unramified if and only if the extended ideal o*p in the completion o* of o is an intersection of prime ideals. The following theorem has been conjectured by the author and proved by Chevalley ([2], Lemma 9 on p. 9, last sentence, and Theorem 1 on p. 11): The local ring of a point P of an irreducible algebraic variety V is analytically unramifiedt It follows that any prime ideal , in such a ring is also analytically unramified, because p defines an irreducible subvariety W of V, and the residue class ring o/p is the local ring of the point P, this point now being regarded as a point of W. Note the following special case: V is the affine n-space over k, and P is the origin. In this case the completion of the local ring of the point P is the ring k (x ) of formal power series in n independent variables xi, X2, . ,Xn, with coefficients in k, and therefore it follows that every prime ideal in the polynomial ring k[x] splits into prime ideals in the power series ring k (x). In informal geometric language this result signifies that an irreducible algebraic variety V can decompose in the neighborhood of a point P only into "simple" analytical branches (i.e., none of the branches has to be "counted" more than once). At any rate, it is true in the complex domain that the analytical reducibility of V in the neighborhood of a point can be no worse ideal-theoretically than it is set-theoretically. We say that a local domain is analytically irreducible if its completion has no zero divisors, and that a variety V is analytically irreducible at a point P of V if the local ring of P is analytically irreducible. We recall that V is said to be locally normal at P if the local ring of P is integrally closed. The object of this paper is to prove the following theorem: If an irreducible algebraic variety V is locally normal at a point P, then it is analytically irreducible at P. In the course of the proof of this Theorem we shall arrive incidentally at another proof of Chevalley's result.
Range of rotation of thoracolumbar vertebrae in Japanese macaques

In humans, the range of thoracic vertebral rotation is known to be greater than that of the lumbar vertebrae due to their zygapophyseal orientation and soft tissue structure. However, little is known regarding vertebral movements in non‐human primate species, which are primarily quadrupedal walkers. To understand the evolutionary background of human vertebral movements, this study estimated the range of axial rotation of the thoracolumbar spine in macaque monkeys. First, computed tomography (CT) was performed while passively rotating the trunk of whole‐body cadavers of Japanese macaques, after which the motion of each thoracolumbar vertebra was estimated. Second, to evaluate the influence of the shoulder girdle and surrounding soft tissues, specimens with only bones and ligaments were prepared, after which the rotation of each vertebra was estimated using an optical motion tracking system. In both conditions, the three‐dimensional coordinates of each vertebra were digitized, and the axial rotational angles between adjacent vertebrae were calculated. In the whole‐body condition, the lower thoracic vertebrae had a greater range of rotation than did the other regions, similar to that observed in humans. In addition, absolute values for the range of rotation were similar between humans and macaques. However, in the bone–ligament preparation condition, the upper thoracic vertebrae had a range of rotation similar to that of the lower thoracic vertebrae. Contrary to previous speculations, our results showed that the mechanical restrictions by the ribs were not as significant; rather, the shoulder girdle largely restricted the rotation of the upper thoracic vertebrae, at least, in macaques.
Increasing the Robustness of Deep Learning Models for Object Segmentation: A Framework for Blending Automatically Annotated Real and Synthetic Data

Recent problems in robotics can sometimes only be tackled using machine learning technologies, particularly those that utilize deep learning (DL) with transfer learning. Transfer learning takes advantage of pretrained models, which are later fine-tuned using smaller task-specific datasets. The fine-tuned models must be robust against changes in environmental factors such as illumination since, often, there is no guarantee for them to be constant. Although synthetic data for pretraining has been shown to enhance DL model generalization, there is limited research on its application for fine-tuning. One limiting factor is that the generation and annotation of synthetic datasets can be cumbersome and impractical for the purpose of fine-tuning. To address this issue, we propose two methods for automatically generating annotated image datasets for object segmentation, one for real-world and another for synthetic images. We also introduce a novel domain adaptation approach called filling the reality gap (FTRG), which can blend elements from real-world and synthetic scenes in a single image to achieve domain adaptation. We demonstrate through experimentation on a representative robot application that FTRG outperforms other domain adaptation techniques, such as domain randomization or photorealistic synthetic images, in creating robust models. Furthermore, we evaluate the benefits of using synthetic data for fine-tuning in transfer learning and continual learning with experience replay using our proposed methods and FTRG. Our findings indicate that fine-tuning with synthetic data can produce superior results compared to solely using real-world data.
Recurrence-free Survival After Liver Transplantation Versus Surgical Resection for Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Role of High-risk MRI Features

Background. This study aimed to evaluate recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) after liver transplantation (LT) or liver resection (LR) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and perform subgroup analysis for HCC with high-risk imaging findings for recurrence on preoperative liver magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; high-risk MRI features). Methods. We included patients with HCC eligible for both LT and LR and received either of the treatments between June 2008 and February 2021 from 2 tertiary referral medical centers after propensity score-matching. RFS and OS were compared between LT and LR using Kaplan-Meier curves with the log-rank test. Results. Propensity score-matching yielded 79 patients in the LT group and 142 patients in the LR group. High-risk MRI features were noted in 39 patients (49.4%) in the LT group and 98 (69.0%) in the LR group. The Kaplan-Meier curves for RFS and OS were not significantly different between the 2 treatments among the high-risk group (RFS, P = 0.079; OS, P = 0.755). Multivariable analysis showed that treatment type was not a prognostic factor for RFS and OS (P = 0.074 and 0.937, respectively). Conclusions. The advantage of LT over LR for RFS may be less evident among patients with high-risk MRI features.
Application of Markov Chains to Stock Trends

Problem statement: Modeling of the Dow Jones Industrial Average is frequently attempted in order to determine trading strategies with maximum payoff. Changes in the DJIA are important since movements may affect both individuals and corporations profoundly. Previous work showed that modeling a market as a random walk was valid and that a market may be viewed as having the Markov property. Approach: The aim of this research was to determine the relationship between a diverse portfolio of stocks and the market as a whole. To that end, the DJIA was analyzed using a discrete time stochastic model, namely a Markov Chain. Two models were highlighted, where the DJIA was considered as being in a state of (1) gain or loss and (2) small, moderate, or large gain or loss. A portfolio of five stocks was then considered and two models of the portfolio much the same as those for the DJIA. These models were used to obtain transitional probabilities and steady state probabilities. Results: Our results indicated that the portfolio behaved similarly to the entire DJIA, both in the simple model and the partitioned model. Conclusion: When treated as a Markov process, the entire market was useful in gauging how a diverse portfolio of stocks might behave. Future work may include different classifications of states to refine the transition matrices.
“My Biggest Fear Is She’ll Die Alone”: Care Partner Perspectives of Institutional COVID-19 Visitor Restrictions in Ontario, Canada

Abstract In March 2020, the Government of Ontario, Canada implemented public health measures, including visitor restrictions in institutional care settings, to protect vulnerable populations, including older adults (> 65 years), against COVID-19 infection. Prior research has shown that visitor restrictions can negatively influence older adults’ physical and mental health and can cause increased stress and anxiety for care partners. This study explores the experiences of care partners separated from the person they care for because of institutional visitor restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. We interviewed 14 care partners between the ages of 50 and 89; 11 were female. The main themes that emerged were changing public health and infection prevention and control policies, shifting care partner roles as a result of visitor restrictions, resident isolation and deterioration from the care partner perspective, communication challenges, and reflections on the impacts of visitor restrictions. Findings may be used to inform future health policy and system reforms.
Physiological characteristics and performance of a world-record breaking tower runner

ABSTRACT This study reports the physiological and performance profiles of a world-class tower runner during a 6-week period surrounding a successful Guinness World Record (WR) attempt, and discusses the efficacy of a tower running specific field test. The world-ranked number 2 tower runner completed four exercise tests [laboratory treadmill assessment (3 weeks before the WR attempt), familiarisation to a specific incremental tower running field test (1 week before), tower running field test (1 week after), and tower running time trial (TT) (3 weeks after)] and the WR attempt within 6-week period. Peak oxygen consumption (VO2peak) during the laboratory test, field test, and TT were 73.3, 75.5 and 78.3 mL·kg−1·min−1, respectively. The VO2 corresponding to the second ventilatory threshold was 67.3 mL·kg−1·min−1 (89.1% of VO2peak), identified at stage 4 (tempo; 100 b·min−1), during the field test. The duration of the TT was 10 min 50 s, with an average VO2 of 71.7 mL·kg−1·min−1 (91.6% of VO2peak), HR of 171 b·min−1 (92% of peak HR), vertical speed of 0.47 m·s−1, and cadence was 117 steps·min−1. A world-class tower runner possesses a well-developed aerobic capacity. A specific, field-based test revealed greater VO2peak than a laboratory test, indicating a need for sport-specific testing procedures.