Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Subjective Versus Quantitative Methods of Assessing Breast Density

In order to find a consistent, simple and time-efficient method of assessing mammographic breast density (MBD), different methods of assessing density comparing subjective, quantitative, semi-subjective and semi-quantitative methods were investigated. Subjective MBD of anonymized mammographic cases (n = 250) from a national breast-screening programme was rated by 49 radiologists from two countries (UK and USA) who were voluntarily recruited. Quantitatively, three measurement methods, namely VOLPARA, Hand Delineation (HD) and ImageJ (IJ) were used to calculate breast density using the same set of cases, however, for VOLPARA only mammographic cases (n = 122) with full raw digital data were included. The agreement level between methods was analysed using weighted kappa test. Agreement between UK and USA radiologists and VOLPARA varied from moderate (κw = 0.589) to substantial (κw = 0.639), respectively. The levels of agreement between USA, UK radiologists, VOLPARA with IJ were substantial (κw = 0.752, 0.768, 0.603), and with HD the levels of agreement varied from moderate to substantial (κw = 0.632, 0.680, 0.597), respectively. This study found that there is variability between subjective and objective MBD assessment methods, internationally. These results will add to the evidence base, emphasising the need for consistent, simple and time-efficient MBD assessment methods. Additionally, the quickest method to assess density is the subjective assessment, followed by VOLPARA, which is compatible with a busy clinical setting. Moreover, the use of a more limited two-scale system improves agreement levels and could help minimise any potential country bias.
Clinical Prediction Scores for Pediatric Appendicitis

Abstract Introduction The rate of misdiagnosis of appendicitis in children is a challenge and clinical prediction scores could be part of the solution. However, the pediatric appendicitis score (PAS) and the Alvarado score have shown disappointing diagnostic accuracy in pediatric validation studies, while the appendicitis inflammatory response (AIR) score and the novel pediatric appendicitis risk calculator (pARC) have not yet been validated thoroughly. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to evaluate these four prediction scores prospectively in children with suspected appendicitis. Materials and Methods A prospective study was conducted over a 2-year period. All patients <15 years with suspected appendicitis were eligible for inclusion. The four prediction scores were compared regarding predictive values, receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves, decision curve analysis, and clinical outcome. Results Of the 318 patients included, 151 (47 %) patients had appendicitis. The AIR score and the pARC had substantially higher specificity and positive predictive value, and lower rate of false positives (7% and 2%), than the PAS and Alvarado score (36 and 28%, p < 0.001). Across the different gender and age groups, the AIR score and the pARC generally had fewer false positives than the PAS and Alvarado score. There were no significant differences in sensitivity, negative predictive values, rates of missed appendicitis, or ROC curve analysis. In decision curve analysis, the AIR score and the pARC outperformed the PAS and Alvarado score at most threshold probabilities. Conclusion The AIR score and the pARC are superior to the PAS and Alvarado score in diagnosing children with suspected appendicitis.
Nod signal‐induced plasma membrane potential changes in alfalfa root hairs are differentially sensitive to structural modifications of the lipochitooligosaccharide

Lipochitooligosaccharide Nod signals are important determinants of host specificity in the Rhizobium-legume symbiosis. The most rapid response of plant cells to the R. meliloti Nod signal NodRm-IV(C16:2,S) reported so far is the depolarization of the plasma membrane potential in alfalfa root hairs. In order to investigate whether this response may be part of a specific signal transduction cascade involved in the nodulation process, its specificity was studied with respect to host-specific modifications of the lipochitooligosaccharide. Five different Nod factors displaying different degrees of activity in inducing root hair deformation or cortical cell divisions on alfalfa were tested. The ability of the Nod factors to elicit plasma membrane depolarization correlated well with their activity in the bioassays. Removal of the sulfate group (NodRm-IV(C16:2)) led to inactivation of the Nod factor. An increase in the length of the chitooligosaccharide backbone (NodRm-V(C16:2,S)) or saturation of the acyl chain (NodRm-IV(C16:0,S)) resulted in severely reduced activity. In contrast, the O-acetyl group at the non-reducing terminus in NodRm-IV(Ac,C16:2,S), which confers substantially higher activity in long-term bioassays, did not enhance plasma membrane depolarization significantly in comparison with the non-O-acetylated factor. Thus, the rapid plasma membrane response is differentially sensitive to various structural motifs of the lipochitooligosaccharide. These data suggest that the different substituents modifying the basic Nod factor structure may have distinct functions, not all of them contributing to the interaction with a putative receptor in root hair cells. However, the overall specificity of the membrane depolarization for the cognate Nod factors raises the possibility that it is involved in a Nod signal transduction pathway.
Dynamics of canopy‐dwelling arthropods under different weed management options, including glyphosate, in conventional and genetically modified insect‐resistant maize

The use of genetically modified varieties tolerant to herbicides (HT varieties) and resistant to insects (Bt varieties) in combination with application of a broad‐spectrum herbicide such as glyphosate could be an effective option for the simultaneous control of weeds and pests in maize. Nevertheless, the possible impact of these tools on nontarget arthropods still needs to be evaluated. In a field study in central Spain, potential changes in populations of canopy‐dwelling arthropods in Bt maize under different weed management options, including glyphosate application, were investigated. Canopy‐dwelling arthropods were sampled by visual inspection and yellow sticky traps. The Bt variety had no effect on any group of studied arthropods, except for the expected case of corn borers—the target pests of Bt maize. Regarding the effects of herbicide regimes, the only observed difference was a lower abundance of Cicadellidae and Mymaridae on yellow sticky traps in plots not treated with pre‐emergence herbicides. This effect was especially pronounced in a treatment involving two glyphosate applications. The decrease in Cicadellidae and Mymaridae populations was associated with a higher density of weeds in plots, which may have hindered colonization of the crop by leafhoppers. These differences, however, were only significant in the last year of the study. The low likelihood of the use of glyphosate‐ and herbicide‐tolerant varieties for weed control triggering important effects on the nontarget arthropod fauna of the maize canopy is discussed.
Training community psychiatric nurses in schizophrenia family work: A study of clinical and economic outcomes for patients and relatives

The purpose of the study was to evaluate whether community psychiatric nurses trained in family work skills could effectively alter the emotional environment in families caring for a person with schizophrenia, and what the cost implications were. Thirty families entered the trial and were randomised to the complete package of family work (16 subjects) or to a control group (14 subjects) receiving education alone. All relatives scored highly on Expressed Emotion (EE) initially. Of the 12 experimental relatives followed up, seven changed to low EE, compared with only two of the 11 control relatives (Fishers exact p =0.053). The relapse rates for the patients over one year were 25% in the experimental group and 36% in the control group, a non-significant difference. However, two other control patients spent the whole year in hospital. The cost of the training and of working with one family was more than covered by the savings in hospital costs.
Effect of Ozone on the Lichen Cladonia arbuscula and the Trebouxia Phycobiont of Cladina stellaris

The chlorophyll content of Cladonia arbuscula (Wallr.) Rabenh. thalli and of a Trebouxia phycobiont isolated from Cladina stellaris (Opiz) Brodo increased after the organisms were exposed for one week to an ozone concentration of 0.1 ppm. Concentrations of ozone above 0.1 ppm did not significantly affect the chlorophyll content relative to those of the controls. There were no discernible morphological effects that could be attributed to
An Ecologically Valid, Longitudinal, and Unbiased Assessment of Treatment Efficacy in Alzheimer Disease (the EVALUATE-AD Trial): Proof-of-Concept Study

Background The current clinical trial assessment methodology relies on a combination of self-report measures, cognitive and physical function tests, and biomarkers. This methodology is limited by recall bias and recency effects in self-reporting and by assessments that are brief, episodic, and clinic based. Continuous monitoring of ecologically valid measures of cognition and daily functioning in the community may provide a more sensitive method to detect subtle, progressive changes in patients with cognitive impairment and dementia. Objective This study aimed to present an alternative trial approach using a home-based sensing and computing system to detect changes related to common treatments employed in Alzheimer disease (AD). This paper introduces an ongoing study that aims to determine the feasibility of capturing sensor-based data at home and to compare the sensor-based outcomes with conventional outcomes. We describe the methodology used in the assessment protocol and present preliminary results of feasibility measures and examples of data related to medication-taking behavior, activity levels, and sleep. Methods The EVALUATE-AD (Ecologically Valid, Ambient, Longitudinal and Unbiased Assessment of Treatment Efficacy in Alzheimer’s Disease) trial is a longitudinal naturalistic observational cohort study recruiting 30 patients and 30 spouse coresident care partners. Participants are monitored continuously using a home-based sensing and computing system for up to 24 months. Outcome measures of the automated system are compared with conventional clinical outcome measures in AD. Acceptance of the home system and protocol are assessed by rates of dropout and protocol adherence. After completion of the study monitoring period, a composite model using multiple functional outcome measures will be created that represents a behavioral-activity signature of initiating or discontinuing AD-related medications, such as cholinesterase inhibitors, memantine, or antidepressants. Results The home-based sensing and computing system has been well accepted by individuals with cognitive impairment and their care partners. Participants showed good adherence to the completion of a weekly web-based health survey. Daily activity, medication adherence, and total time in bed could be derived from algorithms using data from the sensing and computing system. The mean monitoring time for current participants was 14.6 months. Medication adherence, as measured with an electronic pillbox, was 77% for participants taking AD-related medications. Conclusions Continuous, home-based assessment provides a novel approach to test the impact of new or existing dementia treatments generating objective, clinically meaningful measures related to cognition and everyday functioning. Combining this approach with the current clinical trial methodology may ultimately reduce trial durations, sample size needs, and reliance on a clinic-based assessment. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) DERR1-10.2196/17603
Diagnostic performance of a SARS-CoV-2 IgG/IgM lateral flow immunochromatography assay in symptomatic patients presenting to the emergency department

Chemistry and Immunology Laboratory, Institute of Laboratory Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau AG, Tellstrasse 25, 5001 Aarau, Switzerland, Phone: +41 62 838 53 15, E-mail: luca.bernasconi@ ksa.ch. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6647-6448 Michael Oberle, Cornelia Ottiger, Hans Fankhauser and Angelika Hammerer-Lercher: Institute of Laboratory Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau AG, Aarau, Switzerland Valentin Gisler: Institute of Laboratory Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau AG, Aarau, Switzerland; and Department for Infectious Diseases and Hospital Hygiene, Kantonsspital Aarau AG, Aarau, Switzerland Philipp Schuetz: University Department of Medicine, Kantonsspital Aarau and Faculty of Medicine, University of Basel, Aarau, Switzerland Christoph A. Fux: Department for Infectious Diseases and Hospital Hygiene, Kantonsspital Aarau AG, Aarau, Switzerland Letter to the Editor
Epidemiologic Characteristics of Imported and Domestic Chikungunya Cases in Taiwan: A 13-Year Retrospective Study

Background: Chikungunya fever is caused by the chikungunya virus. Numerous factors affect the risk of chikungunya transmission. This study explored the epidemiological characteristics, differences, and trends in domestic and imported cases of chikungunya fever in Taiwan in terms of patient sex, age, month of confirmation, and area of residence from 2007 to 2019. Methods: Public annual chikungunya data from Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) were analyzed. In total, 21 confirmed domestic and 198 imported cases of chikungunya were reported. Of the domestic cases, one was sporadic and reported in July 2019, and 20 were attributed to a cluster event during August and September 2019. Results: In a comparison between domestic and imported cases reported from July to October 2019, differences in sex were nonsignificant (p = 0.555), whereas significant differences were observed for age (p < 0.001), month of confirmation (p = 0.005), and place of residence (p = 0.001). An age of 69–69 years (odds ratio (OR) = 6.66, 95% confidence interval (95%CI) = 2.15–20.65), month of confirmation of September (OR = 5.25, 95%CI = 1.89–14.61) and place of residence of New Taipei City (OR = 48.70, 95%CI = 6.17–384.44) were identified as potential risk factors. Additionally, domestic cases in August and September 2019 increased in proportion to the increase in imported cases during July and August 2019. Increased domestic patients may have been caused by the domestic mosquitoes that transmitted the virus by biting the imported patients to Taiwan. This is the first report comparing domestic and imported cases of chikungunya from surveillance data from the Taiwan CDC from 2007 to 2019. Conclusion: This study highlights the importance of longitudinal and geographically extended studies to understand the implications of zoonotic disease transmission on Taiwan’s population. Critical data were identified to inform future surveillance and research efforts in Taiwan.
Quantile regression for survival data with covariates subject to detection limits

With advances in biomedical research, biomarkers are becoming increasingly important prognostic factors for predicting overall survival, while the measurement of biomarkers is often censored due to instruments' lower limits of detection. This leads to two types of censoring: random censoring in overall survival outcomes and fixed censoring in biomarker covariates, posing new challenges in statistical modeling and inference. Existing methods for analyzing such data focus primarily on linear regression ignoring censored responses or semiparametric accelerated failure time models with covariates under detection limits (DL). In this paper, we propose a quantile regression for survival data with covariates subject to DL. Comparing to existing methods, the proposed approach provides a more versatile tool for modeling the distribution of survival outcomes by allowing covariate effects to vary across conditional quantiles of the survival time and requiring no parametric distribution assumptions for outcome data. To estimate the quantile process of regression coefficients, we develop a novel multiple imputation approach based on another quantile regression for covariates under DL, avoiding stringent parametric restrictions on censored covariates as often assumed in the literature. Under regularity conditions, we show that the estimation procedure yields uniformly consistent and asymptotically normal estimators. Simulation results demonstrate the satisfactory finite‐sample performance of the method. We also apply our method to the motivating data from a study of genetic and inflammatory markers of Sepsis.
Colonization of Scots, red, and jack pine logs by Tomicus piniperda (Coleoptera: Scolytidae) in Michigan pine stands

We investigated host preference of the pine shoot beetle, Tomicus piniperda (L.) (Coleoptera: Scolytidae), in a large-scale field study in 1997 and 1998. This Eurasian pest, first discovered in North America in 1992, is capable of developing and shoot-feeding in many North American pines. We hypothesized, however, that T. piniperda would preferentially colonize Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.), a Eurasian species, more frequently than North American red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) and jack pine (Pinus banksiana Lamb.). We placed freshly cut Scots, red, and jack pine logs in Scots, red, and jack pine forest stands each year in southwestern Michigan, where T. piniperda populations have been established for several years, and in central and northern Michigan, where T. piniperda populations were low to rare. Following T. piniperda progeny emergence, logs were retrieved and debarked and T. piniperda attack density was determined for each log. Tomicus piniperda colonized 80%90% of the pine logs in the southwest.
Genetic variation for seed yield and its components in alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) populations.

Genetic variation in seed yield and its components was investigated in alfalfa ( Medicago sativaL.) in two experiments established in a spaced plant design. The first experiment evaluated the among-population genetic variation in a set of 45 cultivated populations. It showed a significant population effect for all the characters evaluated with a different behavior among the Mediterranean and the Nordic materials while the population × year interaction was only significant for the seed yield per plant. A second experiment evaluated the genetic variation among and within-populations in a set of 11 populations. The amongand within-population effects were significant for almost all the components. The among-population variance accounted for 5 to 31% of the total genetic variance for seed yield components, while the within-population variance explained 69 to 95%. In both experiments, the broad-sense heritabilities of characters varied from 0.27 to 0.43. The number of inflorescences, seed number per plant and seed weight per inflorescence showed high phenotypic and genetic correlations with seed yield per plant. The possibility of using the seed weight per inflorescence as a selection criterion is discussed. alfalfa / seed yield / population / genetic variation / selection criterion Résumé – Variabilité génétique intraet inter-population pour le rendement grainier et ses composantes chez la luzerne. Deux essais ont été implantés, en plantes isolées, pour évaluer la variabilité génétique pour le rendement grainier et ses composantes chez la luzerne ( M dicago sativaL.). Le premier essai a mis en évidence une variabilité génétique inter-population au sein d’un ensemble de 45 populations cultivées pour toutes les composantes évaluées avec un comportement différent des types nordiques et des types méditerranéens. L’interaction année × population n’est significative que pour le rendement et le nombre de graines par plante. Le deuxième essai a évalué la variabilité génétique interet intra-population dans un ensemble de 11 populations. Les effets interet intra-population ont été significatifs pour toutes les composantes. La variance inter-population représente de 5 à 31 % de la variance génétique totale, et la variance intra-population de 69 à 95 % pour les différentes composantes. Les héritabilités au sens large des Agronomie 20 (2000) 333–345 333 © INRA, EDP Sciences 2000 Communicated by Mervyn Humphreys (Aberystwyth, UK) * Correspondence and reprints huyghe@lusignan.inra. fr P la nt G en et ic s an d B re ed in g E. -D. Bolaños-Aguilar et al. 334
Improving Neural Network Detection Accuracy of Electric Power Bushings in Infrared Images by Hough Transform

To improve the neural network detection accuracy of the electric power bushings in infrared images, a modified algorithm based on the You Only Look Once version 2 (YOLOv2) network is proposed to achieve better recognition results. Specifically, YOLOv2 corresponds to a convolutional neural network (CNN), although its rotation invariance is poor, and some bounding boxes (BBs) exhibit certain deviations. To solve this problem, the standard Hough transform and image rotation are utilized to determine the optimal recognition angle for target detection, such that an optimal recognition effect of YOLOv2 on inclined objects (for example, bushing) is achieved. With respect to the problem that the BB is biased, the shape feature of the bushing is extracted by the Gap statistic algorithm, based on K-means clustering; thereafter, the sliding window (SW) is utilized to determine the optimal recognition area. Experimental verification indicates that the proposed rotating image method can improve the recognition effect, and the SW can further modify the BB. The accuracy of target detection increases to 97.33%, and the recall increases to 95%.