Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Knowledge of University Athletes about Knowing and Monitoring of Vital Signs of Blood Pressure (BP), Heart Rate (HR) and Body Mass Index (BMI) as Preventive Strategy in Reducing Early and Unsuccessful Ageing Cased at Njala Campus

Aim: To assess the preventive strategy in reducing early and unsuccessful ageing among University Athletes using Njala Campus as a case study, with the significance to measure and evaluate the knowledge of University Athlete about knowing and monitoring of vital signs of blood pressure [BP], heart rate [HR] and body mass index [BMI] as preventive strategy in reducing early and unsuccessful ageing. Method: The modified health risk behavioural survey questionnaire [MHRBSQ] was adopted for testing the parameters. The respondents interviewed were mainly undergraduate athletes with an aggregate of one hundred and fifty [n=150]. However, 55 with 37% were female and 95 with 63% were male, selected using the systematic random sampling. Also sampled were four Schools:25 with 16.6% female and 40 with 26.6% male from the School of Agriculture & Environmental Science;30 with 20% female and 55 with 37% male from the School of Education & Technology, from level [100-200] and from level [300-400], within the age range of [18-30 year]. Results: Analysis of findings from knowing and monitoring of vital signs of blood pressure [BP], heart rate [HR] and body mass index [BMI], show a holistic significant difference in all three variables [t-values of 4.666, 4.711 and 3.368 p<0.05]. Conclusion: Conclusively therefore, the findings show that majority of the University Athletes were experienced holistically in their knowledge about preventive strategy in reducing early and unsuccessful ageing with respect to the evaluated variables. It was recommended that University Athletes be given thoroughly supervised seminars, workshops and screening prior to any intercollegiate competitions held, with special reference to knowledge of vital signs. Bebeley Samuel Joseph Lecturer Department of Human Kinetics and Health Education Njala University, Sierra Leone E-mail: bsaj2004@hotmail.co.uk Laggao Sam Augustine HOD Human Kinetics and Health Education Njala University, Sierra Leone
Epidemiological analysis of COVID‐19 and practical experience from China

The rapid spread of the epidemic has aroused widespread concern in the international community. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐COV‐2) was first reported in China, with bats as the likely original hosts and pangolins as potential intermediate hosts. The current source of the disease is mainly patients infected with SARS‐COV‐2. Patients in the incubation period may also become sources of infection. The virus is mainly transmitted via respiratory droplets and contact, and the population is generally susceptible. The epidemic has progressed through the local outbreak stage and community transmission stage due to exposure at Wuhan's Huanan wholesale seafood market and is now in the stage of large‐scale transmission due to the spread of the epidemic. The basic productive number (R0) at the beginning of the epidemic was 2.2, with an average incubation period of 5.2 days. The proportion of critically ill patients was 23.4%, the mortality rate was lower than those of SARS and Middle East respiratory syndrome, and 96.5% of deaths occurred in Hubei Province, where the outbreak occurred first. Among them, elderly men with underlying diseases had a higher mortality rate. Chinese medical staff have summarized a set of effective strategies and methods in the diagnosis and treatment of this disease that are worthy of reference for their international counterparts. With powerful government intervention and the efforts of Chinese medical staff, China's outbreak has gradually improved.
Long-term trajectories of anxiety and depression in patients with stable coronary heart disease and risk of subsequent cardiovascular events.

BACKGROUND Anxiety and depression seem to be under-recognized in their importance and are often not incorporated in subsequent prevention strategies in routine clinical care of coronary heart disease. METHODS The KAROLA cohort included coronary heart disease patients participating in an in-patient rehabilitation program (years 1999/2000) and followed after 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 13, and 15 years. We identified anxiety and depression trajectories based on the hospital anxiety and depression scale subdomains using joint latent class mixture time-to-event models. We included cardiovascular (CV) events and non-CV mortality as competing endpoints. RESULTS We included 1,109 patients (15.4% female; mean age, 59.4 (standard deviation [SD] = 8.0) years) with baseline covariate data. Over a median follow-up of 14.8 years, participants experienced 324 subsequent CV events. We identified four anxiety and depression trajectory classes, a low-stable class (52.2% and 69.6% of patients for anxiety and depression, respectively), moderate-stable class (37.6% and 23.8%), increasing class (2.3% and 3.3%), and high-stable/high-decreasing class (7.9% and 3.3%). The hazard ratio (HR) for subsequent CV events for the increasing anxiety class was 2.13 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.61; 7.45) compared with the low-stable class after covariate adjustment. Patients following the high-decreasing anxiety trajectory showed an HR of 1.72 (95% CI, 1.11; 2.68) and patients following the high-stable depression trajectory an HR of 2.47 (95% CI, 1.35; 4.54). CONCLUSIONS Chronic high anxiety and depression trajectory classes were associated with increased risk of subsequent CV events. Assessments of both symptoms of anxiety and depression during long-term routine medical care are recommended to identify patients who would benefit from appropriate interventions.
Design of Reconfigurable Time-to-Digital Converter Based on Cascaded Time Interpolators for Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy †

This paper presents a reconfigurable time-to-digital converter (TDC) used to quantize the phase of the impedance in electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The TDC in the EIS system must handle a wide input-time range for analysis in the low-frequency range and have a high resolution for analysis in the high-frequency range. The proposed TDC adopts a coarse counter to support a wide input-time range and cascaded time interpolators to improve the time resolution in the high-frequency analysis without increasing the counting clock speed. When the same large interpolation factor is adopted, the cascaded time interpolators have shorter measurement time and smaller chip area than a single-stage time interpolator. A reconfigurable time interpolation factor is adopted to maintain the phase resolution with reasonable measurement time. The fabricated TDC has a peak-to-peak phase error of less than 0.72° over the input frequency range from 1 kHz to 512 kHz and the phase error of less than 2.70° when the range is extended to 2.048 MHz, which demonstrates a competitive performance when compared with previously reported designs.
High expression in maize pollen correlates with genetic contributions to pollen fitness as well as with coordinated transcription from neighboring transposable elements

In flowering plants, gene expression in the haploid male gametophyte (pollen) is essential for sperm delivery and double fertilization. Pollen also undergoes dynamic epigenetic regulation of expression from transposable elements (TEs), but how this process interacts with gene expression is not clearly understood. To explore relationships among these processes, we quantified transcript levels in four male reproductive stages of maize (tassel primordia, microspores, mature pollen, and sperm cells) via RNA-seq. We found that, in contrast with vegetative cell-limited TE expression in Arabidopsis pollen, TE transcripts in maize accumulate as early as the microspore stage and are also present in sperm cells. Intriguingly, coordinate expression was observed between highly expressed protein-coding genes and their neighboring TEs, specifically in mature pollen and sperm cells. To investigate a potential relationship between elevated gene transcript level and pollen function, we measured the fitness cost (male-specific transmission defect) of GFP-tagged coding sequence insertion mutations in over 50 genes identified as highly expressed in the pollen vegetative cell, sperm cell, or seedling (as a sporophytic control). Insertions in seedling genes or sperm cell genes (with one exception) exhibited no difference from the expected 1:1 transmission ratio. In contrast, insertions in over 20% of vegetative cell genes were associated with significant reductions in fitness, showing a positive correlation of transcript level with non-Mendelian segregation when mutant. Insertions in maize gamete expressed2 (Zm gex2), the sole sperm cell gene with measured contributions to fitness, also triggered seed defects when crossed as a male, indicating a conserved role in double fertilization, given the similar phenotype previously demonstrated for the Arabidopsis ortholog GEX2. Overall, our study demonstrates a developmentally programmed and coordinated transcriptional activation of TEs and genes in pollen, and further identifies maize pollen as a model in which transcriptomic data have predictive value for quantitative phenotypes.
Cancer cell‑specific anticancer effects of Coptis chinensis on gefitinib‑resistant lung cancer cells are mediated through the suppression of Mcl‑1 and Bcl‑2.

The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)‑tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), gefitinib, is an effective therapeutic drug used in the treatment of non‑small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs) harboring EGFR mutations. However, acquired resistance significantly limits the efficacy of EGFR‑TKIs and consequently, the current chemotherapeutic strategies for NSCLCs. It is, therefore, necessary to overcome this resistance. In the present study, the anticancer potential of natural extracts of Coptis chinensis (ECC) against gefitinib‑resistant (GR) NSCLC cells were investigated in vitro and in vivo. ECC inhibited the viability, migration and invasion, and effectively induced the apoptosis of GR cells. These effects were associated with the suppression of EGFR/AKT signaling and the expression of anti‑apoptotic proteins, Mcl‑1 and Bcl‑2, which were overexpressed in GR NSCLC cells. Combination treatment with ECC and gefitinib enhanced the sensitivity of GR cells to gefitinib in vitro, but not in vivo. However, ECC increased the survival of individual zebrafish without affecting the anticancer effect to cancer cells in vivo, which indicated a specific cytotoxic effect of ECC on cancer cells, but not on normal cells; this is an important property for the development of novel anticancer drugs. On the whole, the findings of the present study indicate the potential of ECC for use in the treatment of NSCLC, particularly in combination with EGFR‑TKI therapy, in EGFR‑TKI‑resistant cancers.
NADPH oxidase mediated endothelial injury in HIV and opioid induced pulmonary arterial hypertension.

We previously demonstrated that the combined exposure of human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells (HPMECs) to morphine and viral protein(s) results in the oxidative stress mediated induction of autophagy leading to shift in the cells from early apoptotic to apoptosis-resistant proliferative status associated with the angio-proliferative remodeling observed in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). In this study, we tried to delineate the major source of HIV-1 protein Tat and morphine induced oxidative burst in HPMECs and its consequences on vascular remodeling and PAH in an in-vivo model. We observed switch from the initial increased expression of NADPH oxidase (NOX)2 in response to acute treatment of morphine and HIV-Tat to later increased expression of NOX4 on chronic treatment in the endoplasmic reticulum of HPMECs without any alterations in the mitochondria. Furthermore, NOX dependent induction of autophagy was observed to play a pivotal role in regulating the endothelial cell-survival. Our in-vivo findings showed significant increase in pulmonary vascular remodeling, right ventricular systolic pressure and Fulton index in HIV-transgenic rats on chronic administration of morphine. This was associated with increased oxidative stress in lung tissues as well as in rat pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells. Additionally, endothelial cells from morphine treated HIV-Tg rats demonstrated increased expression of NOX2 and NOX4 proteins; inhibition of which ameliorated their increased survival upon serum starvation. In conclusion, this study describes NADPH oxidases as one of the main players in the oxidative stress mediated endothelial dysfunction on the dual hit of HIV-viral protein(s) and opioids.
The Role of Emergency Radiology in COVID-19: From Preparedness to Diagnosis

Emergency trauma radiology, although a relatively new subspecialty of radiology, plays a critical role in both the diagnosis/triage of acutely ill patients, but even more important in providing leadership and taking the lead in the preparedness of imaging departments in dealing with novel highly infectious communicable diseases and mass casualties. This has become even more apparent in dealing with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, first emerged in late 2019. We review the symptoms, epidemiology, and testing for this disease. We discuss characteristic imaging findings of COVID-19 in relation to other modern coronavirus diseases including SARS and MERS. We discuss roles that community radiology clinics, outpatient radiology departments, and emergency radiology departments can play in the diagnosis of this disease. We review practical methods to reduce spread of infections within radiology departments.
Design and Optimization of the Local Laser Treatment to Improve the Formability of Age Hardenable Aluminium Alloys

The research of innovative methodologies to improve the Aluminium alloys formability at room temperature still remains an open question: the local modification of the material properties via short-term heat treatments followed by the stamping at room temperature is reported to be an effective alternative to the forming in warm conditions. In the present work, such a methodology has been applied to the deep drawing of an age-hardenable Aluminium alloy (AA6082-T6) using an experimental/numerical approach. A preliminary extensive material characterization was aimed at investigating the material behaviour: (i) in the as-received condition (peak hardening), (ii) in the supersaturated condition (obtained by physical simulation) and (iii) after being locally solutioned via laser heating. A Finite Element based approach (Abaqus CAE, v. 6.17) was then used to design the laser treatment of the blanks to be subsequently deep drawn at room temperature: a 2D axisymmetric model of the deep drawing process was coupled with the optimization platform modeFRONTIER in order to define the radial extent of the laser heat treated area able to maximize the Limit Drawing Ratio. The experimental tests were finally conducted for validation purposes and revealed the effectiveness of the adopted approach which allowed to improve the drawability of more than 20% with respect to the as received condition (T6).
Quantification of the HIV‐1 virus‐like particle production process by super‐resolution imaging: From VLP budding to nanoparticle analysis

Virus‐like particles (VLPs) offer great promise in the field of nanomedicine. Enveloped VLPs are a class of these nanoparticles and their production process occurs by a budding process, which is known to be the most critical step at intracellular level. In this study, we developed a novel imaging method based on super‐resolution fluorescence microscopy (SRFM) to assess the generation of VLPs in living cells. This methodology was applied to study the production of Gag VLPs in three animal cell platforms of reference: HEK 293‐transient gene expression (TGE), High Five‐baculovirus expression vector system (BEVS) and Sf9‐BEVS. Quantification of the number of VLP assembly sites per cell ranged from 500 to 3,000 in the different systems evaluated. Although the BEVS was superior in terms of Gag polyprotein expression, the HEK 293‐TGE platform was more efficient regarding the assembly of Gag as VLPs. This was translated into higher levels of non‐assembled Gag monomer in BEVS harvested supernatants. Furthermore, the presence of contaminating nanoparticles was evidenced in all three systems, specifically in High Five cells. The SRFM‐based method here developed was also successfully applied to measure the concentration of VLPs in crude supernatants. The lipid membrane of VLPs and the presence of nucleic acids alongside these nanoparticles could also be detected using common staining procedures. Overall, a complete picture of the VLP production process was achieved in these three production platforms. The robustness and sensitivity of this new approach broaden the applicability of SRFM toward the development of new detection, diagnosis and quantification methods based on confocal microscopy in living systems.
Overexpression of Platelet-Derived Growth Factor and Its Receptor Are Correlated with Oral Tumorigenesis and Poor Prognosis in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is a cancerous disease with poor prognosis. According to the statistics, the 5-year survival rate has not improved significantly over the past 20 years. The platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) and its signaling pathway is a key regulator of angiogenesis and tumorigenesis. High level of PDGF and its receptor (PDGFR) have been reported in several types of malignancies. In this study, we investigated the relationship of the molecular expression levels of PDGF and PDGFR with clinicopathological parameters in OSCC. To this end, we measured the mRNA and protein levels of PDGF and PDGFR by real-time quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR), immunohistochemistry, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), respectively. We found positive correlations of the mRNA levels of PDGFA, PDGFB, and PDGFRB with lymph node metastasis and poor overall survival (OS). High expression of PDGF, PDGFRA, and PDGFRB were remarkably associated with lymph node metastasis and poor OS, as determined by immunohistochemistry. Preoperative serum levels of PDGF-AA and PDGF-BB had a positive correlation with preoperative platelet count. Elevated serum levels of PDGF-AA. PDGF-BB, and platelet count correlated with lymph node metastasis and an unfavorable outcome. In multivariate Cox regression analysis, PDGFA mRNA, PDGFB mRNA, PDGFRB mRNA, PDGF immunoexpression, PDGFRB immunoexpression, serum PDGF-AA, serum PDGF-BB, and platelet count emerged as significant independent prognostic factors for OS. In vitro, we found that elevated PDGF promotes colony formation, migration, and invasiveness of SAS and OECM-1 cancer cell lines. Our results suggest that the expression level of serum PDGF has the potential to become a useful diagnostic marker for the prognosis of OSCC. In addition, PDGFR should be considered as a potential therapeutic target for OSCC. Furthermore, research should be undertaken to elucidate the role of PDGF and PDGFR regarding the behavior of tumor cells in OSCC.
Clinical Presentations and Outcome Studies of Cranial Nerve Involvement in Herpes Zoster Infection: A Retrospective Single-Center Analysis

Varicella-zoster virus (VZV) infection can cause chickenpox and herpes zoster. It sometimes involves cranial nerves, and rarely, it can involve multiple cranial nerves. We aimed to study clinical presentations of cranial nerve involvement in herpes zoster infection. We included patients who had the diagnosis of herpes zoster infection and cranial nerve involvement. The diagnosis was confirmed by typical vesicles and a rash. We excluded patients who had cranial neuralgias or neuropathies but without typical skin lesions (zoster sine herpete or post-herpetic neuralgia). We included 330 patients (mean age, 55.0 ± 17.0 years) who had herpes zoster with cranial nerve involvement, including 155 men and 175 women. Most frequently involved cranial nerves were the trigeminal nerve (57.9%), facial nerve (52.1%), and vestibulocochlear nerve (20.0%). Other involved cranial nerves included the glossopharyngeal nerve (0.9%), vagus nerve (0.9%), oculomotor nerve, trochlear nerve, and abducens nerve (each 0.3%, respectively). One hundred and seventy patients (51.5%) had only sensory symptoms/signs; in contrast, 160 patients (48.5%) had both sensory and motor symptoms/signs. Of those 160 patients, sensory preceded motor symptoms/signs in 64 patients (40.0%), sensory and motor symptoms/signs occurred simultaneously in 38 patients (23.8%), and motor preceded sensory symptoms/signs in 20 patients (12.5%). At one month after herpes zoster infection, vesicles and rash disappeared in 92.6% of patients; meanwhile facial palsy showed a significant improvement in 81.4% of patients (p < 0.05). Cranial motor neuropathies are not infrequent in herpes zoster infections. Multiple cranial nerve involvement frequently occurred in Ramsay Hunt syndrome. We found a significantly increased seasonal occurrence of cranial nerve zoster in spring rather than summer. Cranial motor nerves were affected while the hosts sometimes had a compromised immune system.
Lipid profile and growth of black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens, Stratiomyidae) reared on by-products from different food chains.

BACKGROUND The total amount of bio-waste produced annually in the EU by the food and beverage chains is estimated at 37 Mtons. The possibility to use insects for the valorization of by-products from these value chains may represent a sustainable solution. This study aims at investigating the by-products obtained from different food chains for the rearing of black soldier fly prepupae to evaluate lipid content and profile and outline its possible applications. The substrates used in this experiment were: (i) industrial by-products (brewery spent grains, cow's milk whey, grape stalks, and tomato peels and seeds) and (ii) by-products from retailers (bread dough, fish scraps, and spent coffee ground). Fat extracted from prepupae using an adjusted Folch method was utilized for total lipid content and fatty acids profile. RESULTS Best larval performances were obtained from beer (0.22 gweight per prepupa), tomato (0.19 gweight per prepupa), and cheese (0.14 gweight per prepupa) food-chain by-products. The extremely different composition of the substrate was reflected in the differentiated lipid profile of black soldier fly prepupae and in a range of ratios between unsaturated and saturated fatty acids comprised from 0.37 for cow's milk way to 1.34 for tomato peels and seeds. CONCLUSION The high content and type of lipids, together with the proteins, and chitin extracted from prepupae are high-value bio-based products that could be used in the feed/food industry or for the development of innovative biomaterials, such as biodiesel. These results suggest that food chain by-products are the best candidate for insect-bioconversion purposes. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.