Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rational design of Striga hermonthica-specific seed germination inhibitors

Abstract The obligate hemiparasitic weed Striga hermonthica grows on cereal roots and presents a severe threat to global food security by causing enormous yield losses, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The rapidly increasing Striga seed bank in infested soils provides a major obstacle in controlling this weed. Striga seeds require host-derived strigolactones (SLs) for germination, and corresponding antagonists could be used as germination inhibitors. Recently, we demonstrated that the common detergent Triton X-100 is a specific inhibitor of Striga seed germination by binding noncovalently to its receptor, S. hermonthica HYPO-SENSITIVE TO LIGHT 7 (ShHTL7), without blocking the rice (Oryza sativa) SL receptor DWARF14 (OsD14). Moreover, triazole ureas, the potent covalently binding antagonists of rice SL perception with much higher activity toward OsD14, showed inhibition of Striga but were less specific. Considering that Triton X-100 is not suitable for field application and by combining structural elements of Triton and triazole urea, we developed two hybrid compounds, KK023-N1 and KK023-N2, as potential Striga-specific germination inhibitors. Both compounds blocked the hydrolysis activity of ShHTL7 but did not affect that of OsD14. Binding of KK023-N1 diminished ShHTL7 interaction with S. hermonthica MORE AXILLARY BRANCHING 2, a major component in SL signal transduction, and increased ShHTL7 thermal specificity. Docking studies indicate that KK023-N1 binding is not covalent but is caused by hydrophobic interactions. Finally, in vitro and greenhouse tests revealed specific inhibition of Striga seed germination, which led to a 38% reduction in Striga infestation in pot experiments. These findings reveal that KK023-N1 is a potential candidate for combating Striga and a promising basis for rational design and development of further Striga-specific herbicides.
Effect of different soil amendments on soil buffering capacity

The buffering capacity of the soil is a very important property of the soil, which determines the ability of the soil to resist external influences, especially changes in pH and thus create good living conditions for plants and microorganisms in the soil. The buffering capacity thus significantly contributes to maintaining the health and quality of the soil. Buffering capacity is an important indicator of soil quality, because it is related to the overall condition of the soil ecosystem and other soil properties. The goal of this paper is to determine the effect of applying different soil amendments on the soils, 10 years after application. We compared the effect of 6 different treatments in closed plots: Natural conditions (N = control); Bare soil (B); Straw mulching (S); Pine mulch (P); TerraCottem hydroabsorbent polymers (H); Prescribed burn (F); and Sewage sludge (M). Our results have shown that the application of different amedments leads to an effect on the plowing capacity of the soil. While in the case of the control variant (Natural conditions, N) the buffering capacity of the soil was measured at 144.93 ± 0.25, the addition of different amendments decreased the buffering capacity in the following order: Bare soil (B) 142.73±0.21 > TerraCotem hydroaborbent polymer (H) 142.23±. 15 > Pine mulch (P) 140.40±0.30, Prescribed burn (F) 138.20±0.30, Sludge (S) 127.47±0.15. In the case of all variants, these are statistically significant differences (p ≤ 0.05). Thus, soil amendments have been shown to have a statistically significant effect on soil buffering capacity.
Optimizing environmental safety and cell-killing potential of oncolytic Newcastle Disease virus with modifications of the V, F and HN genes

Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) is an avian RNA virus, which was shown to be effective and safe for use in oncolytic viral therapy for several tumour malignancies. The presence of a multi basic cleavage site (MBCS) in the fusion protein improved its oncolytic efficacy in vitro and in vivo. However, NDV with a MBCS can be virulent in poultry. We aimed to develop an NDV with a MBCS but with reduced virulence for poultry while remaining effective in killing human tumour cells. To this end, the open reading frame of the V protein, an avian specific type I interferon antagonist, was disrupted by introducing multiple mutations. NDV with a mutated V gene was attenuated in avian cells and chicken and duck eggs. Although this virus still killed tumour cells, the efficacy was reduced compared to the virulent NDV. Introduction of various mutations in the fusion (F) and hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) genes slightly improved this efficacy. Taken together, these data demonstrated that NDV with a MBCS but with abrogation of the V protein ORF and mutations in the F and HN genes can be safe for evaluation in oncolytic viral therapy.
Depressive symptoms in a European comparison – Results from the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) 2

Depression is associated with a significant individual and social burden of disease. The European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) provides data that can be used to compare the situation in Germany to that of other European countries. Data was evaluated from 254,510 interviewees from Germany and 24 additional Member States of the European Union (EU). Depressive symptoms as defined by the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-8) were used as an indicator of depression. The prevalence in Germany (9.2%) is higher than the European average (6.6%). However, when the severity of depression is taken into account, only the prevalence of mild depressive symptoms is higher (6.3% versus 4.1%). In Germany, young people display depressive symptoms more frequently (11.5% versus 5.2%) than older people (6.7% versus 9.1%). These results should be discussed against the backdrop of differences in age and social structure and point toward a need for prevention and provision of care targeting younger people in Germany, in particular.
The role of allochrony in influencing interspecific differences in foraging distribution during the non-breeding season between two congeneric crested penguin species

Mechanisms promoting coexistence between closely related species are fundamental for maintaining species diversity. Mechanisms of niche differentiation include allochrony which offsets the peak timing of resource utilisation between species. Many studies focus on spatial and temporal niche partitioning during the breeding season, few have investigated the role allochrony plays in influencing interspecific segregation of foraging distribution and ecology between congeneric species during the non-breeding season. We investigated the non-breeding migrations of Snares (Eudyptes robustus) and Fiordland penguins (Eudyptes pachyrhynchus), closely related species breeding between 100–350 km apart whose migration phenology differs by two months. Using light geolocation tracking, we examined the degree of overlap given the observed allochrony and a hypothetical scenario where the species commence migration simultaneously. We found that Fiordland penguins migrated to the Sub-Antarctic Frontal Zone and Polar Frontal Zone in the austral autumn whereas Snares penguins disperse westwards staying north of the Sub-Tropical Front in the austral winter. Our results suggest that allochrony is likely to be at the root of segregation because the relative profitability of the different water masses that the penguins forage in changes seasonally which results in the two species utilising different areas over their core non-breeding periods. Furthermore, allochrony reduces relatively higher levels of spatiotemporal overlap during the departure and arrival periods, when the close proximity of the two species’ colonies would cause the birds to congregate in similar areas, resulting in high interspecific competition just before the breeding season. Available evidence from other studies suggests that the shift in phenology between these species has arisen from adaptive radiation and phenological matching to the seasonality of local resource availability during the breeding season and reduced competitive overlap over the non-breeding season is likely to be an incidental outcome.
Understanding self-report and neurocognitive assessments of cognitive flexibility in people with and without lifetime anorexia nervosa

ABSTRACT Objective: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a serious eating disorder associated with several cognitive difficulties including poor cognitive flexibility (i.e. difficulties in effectively adapting to changes in the environment and/or changing task demands). AN research has primarily assessed cognitive flexibility using neurocognitive tests, and little is known about the differences or similarities between self-report and neurocognitive assessments of cognitive flexibility. This study investigated the relationship between self-report and neurocognitive assessments of cognitive flexibility in people with no history of an eating disorder (n = 207) and people with a self-reported lifetime diagnosis of AN (n = 19). Methods: Participants completed self-report and neurocognitive assessments of cognitive flexibility through an online study. Results: No significant correlations were found between self-report and neurocognitive assessments of cognitive flexibility for either group of the sample, suggesting that these assessments may evaluate different aspects of cognitive flexibility. Further, negative mood and self-reported eating disorder symptoms were found to significantly relate to self-reported cognitive flexibility, but were not associated with performance on neurocognitive tests of cognitive flexibility. Conclusions: To provide a comprehensive understanding of perceived and objective cognitive flexibility in AN, future research and clinical assessments should include both self-report and neurocognitive assessments.
Identifying person-specific coping responses to suicidal urges: A case series analysis and illustration of the idiographic method.

INTRODUCTION Suicide is a leading cause of death. One challenge to prevention efforts is the wide phenomenological heterogeneity in suicidal urges, thoughts, and behaviors across individuals at risk. Despite this heterogeneity, most suicide research estimates group-level effects by averaging across people as if they were the same, preventing detection of person-specific factors that may modulate risk and be key to effective prevention. The goal of the present study is to illustrate the idiographic (i.e., person-specific) approach and highlight its utility for suicide research. METHODS We implemented a case series approach using three cases from a subset of psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents who provided intensive longitudinal data on daily urges and coping behavior after discharge following a suicide attempt. For illustration, person-specific, bidirectional links between suicidal urges and coping behavior were modeled across a series of cases using a vector autoregression approach. RESULTS The relationship between suicidal urges and coping differed across the three individuals, who were presented to exhibit the range of this variability in the presence/absence and magnitude of effects. CONCLUSIONS Individuals who report similar suicidal risk levels likely respond in individualized ways to suicidal urges (e.g., use different coping strategies), necessitating personalized assessment and treatment. We discuss implications for future suicide research.
Cortical lesion hotspots and association of subpial lesions with disability in multiple sclerosis

Background: Dramatic improvements in visualization of cortical (especially subpial) multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions allow assessment of impact on clinical course. Objective: Characterize cortical lesions by 7 tesla (T) T2*-/T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); determine relationship with other MS pathology and contribution to disability. Methods: Sixty-four adults with MS (45 relapsing–remitting/19 progressive) underwent 3 T brain/spine MRI, 7 T brain MRI, and clinical testing. Results: Cortical lesions were found in 94% (progressive: median 56/range 2–203; relapsing–remitting: 15/0–168; p = 0.004). Lesion distribution across 50 cortical regions was nonuniform (p = 0.006), with highest lesion burden in supplementary motor cortex and highest prevalence in superior frontal gyrus. Leukocortical and white matter lesion volumes were strongly correlated (r = 0.58, p < 0.0001), while subpial and white matter lesion volumes were moderately correlated (r = 0.30, p = 0.002). Leukocortical (p = 0.02) but not subpial lesions (p = 0.40) were correlated with paramagnetic rim lesions; both were correlated with spinal cord lesions (p = 0.01). Cortical lesion volumes (total and subtypes) were correlated with expanded disability status scale, 25-foot timed walk, nine-hole peg test, and symbol digit modality test scores. Conclusion: Cortical lesions are highly prevalent and are associated with disability and progressive disease. Subpial lesion burden is not strongly correlated with white matter lesions, suggesting differences in inflammation and repair mechanisms.
Intra- and Inter-Slice Contrastive Learning for Point Supervised OCT Fluid Segmentation

OCT fluid segmentation is a crucial task for diagnosis and therapy in ophthalmology. The current convolutional neural networks (CNNs) supervised by pixel-wise annotated masks achieve great success in OCT fluid segmentation. However, requiring pixel-wise masks from OCT images is time-consuming, expensive and expertise needed. This paper proposes an Intra- and inter-Slice Contrastive Learning Network (ISCLNet) for OCT fluid segmentation with only point supervision. Our ISCLNet learns visual representation by designing contrastive tasks that exploit the inherent similarity or dissimilarity from unlabeled OCT data. Specifically, we propose an intra-slice contrastive learning strategy to leverage the fluid-background similarity and the retinal layer-background dissimilarity. Moreover, we construct an inter-slice contrastive learning architecture to learn the similarity of adjacent OCT slices from one OCT volume. Finally, an end-to-end model combining intra- and inter-slice contrastive learning processes learns to segment fluid under the point supervision. The experimental results on two public OCT fluid segmentation datasets (i.e., AI Challenger and RETOUCH) demonstrate that the ISCLNet bridges the gap between fully-supervised and weakly-supervised OCT fluid segmentation and outperforms other well-known point-supervised segmentation methods.
Clinical significance and applications of oscillometry

Recently, “Technical standards for respiratory oscillometry” was published, which reviewed the physiological basis of oscillometric measures and detailed the technical factors related to equipment and test performance, quality assurance and reporting of results. Here we present a review of the clinical significance and applications of oscillometry. We briefly review the physiological principles of oscillometry and the basics of oscillometry interpretation, and then describe what is currently known about oscillometry in its role as a sensitive measure of airway resistance, bronchodilator responsiveness and bronchial challenge testing, and response to medical therapy, particularly in asthma and COPD. The technique may have unique advantages in situations where spirometry and other lung function tests are not suitable, such as in infants, neuromuscular disease, sleep apnoea and critical care. Other potential applications include detection of bronchiolitis obliterans, vocal cord dysfunction and the effects of environmental exposures. However, despite great promise as a useful clinical tool, we identify a number of areas in which more evidence of clinical utility is needed before oscillometry becomes routinely used for diagnosing or monitoring respiratory disease. This paper provides a current review of the interpretation, clinical significance and application of oscillometry in respiratory medicine, with special emphasis on limitations of evidence and suggestions for future research. https://bit.ly/3GQPViA
Effect of laser photocoagulation, antiangiogenic therapy or a combined treatment on refractive outcomes of newborns with ROP

Purpose To determine the refractive outcome after treatment with laser photocoagulation, intravitreal antiangiogenic injection or both, for the treatment of type 1 ROP and/or aggressive posterior ROP using defocus equivalent terms. These results will be compared with the spherical equivalent (SE) notation in an initial refraction (during the first 3 years after treatment) and in a final evaluation (three years after treatment). Methods Clinical charts review of preterm patients who developed type 1 ROP and/or aggressive posterior ROP who were treated with laser photocoagulation, intravitreal antiangiogenic injection, or both, between January 2007 and December 2014 at Fundación Oftalmológica de Santander were reviewed. Refractive error was evaluated at two different time points in three different treatment groups. Results Seventy-seven eyes (56 patients) with ROP diagnosis treated with laser, antiangiogenics or in a combined scheme were included. Median gestational age was 29 weeks (IQR = 3), median birth weight was 1100 (IQR = 335) and mean corrected age at the time of treatment was 37.3 weeks (SD 2.2). Refractive outcomes in SE terms for the first refraction had a median of −0.50 diopters and in defocus terms, 4.00 diopters (D). For the second refraction, −3.00 diopters and 4.00 diopters (D), respectively. Pearson correlation test result for the first measurement was 93% (p = 0.000) and for the second evaluation was 99% (p = 0.000). Conclusions Low birth weight had a statistically significant association to the increase of the refractive outcome. The high correlation between SE and DE for refractive errors allows us to confirm that DE is an appropriate metric to report refractive outcomes in this group of patients due to the presence of combined refractive ametropias.
Effects of Aerodynamic Drag and Drafting on Propulsive Force and Oxygen Consumption in Double Poling Cross-Country Skiing

ABSTRACT Purpose This study aimed to investigate the effects of aerodynamic drag and drafting on propulsive force (FPROP), drag area (CDA), oxygen cost (V˙O2), metabolic rate (E˙), and heart rate (HR) during roller skiing on a treadmill in a wind tunnel using the double poling technique. A secondary aim was to investigate the effects of wind versus no-wind test conditions on the same physiological parameters. Methods Ten subjects of each gender participated in the experiments. One pair of skiers of the same gender roller skied simultaneously in line with the air flow; the distance between the skiers was ~2.05 m. Each pair was tested as follows: I) with wind, leading; II) with wind, drafting; and III) without wind. The treadmill inclination was 0° throughout the tests. For the wind conditions, the air velocity was similar to the treadmill belt speed: 3 to 7 m·s−1 for men and 3 to 6 m·s−1 for women. Results Drafting resulted in significantly (P < 0.05) lower FPROP,CDA, V˙O2, and E˙, compared with leading, for both genders at racing speed but not at lower speeds, whereas HR was only affected for the male skiers at racing speed. The test without wind resulted in significantly lower FPROP, V˙O2, and E˙ at all tested speeds compared with the tests with wind present, whereas HR was lower only at higher speeds. Conclusions At racing speed, but not at lower speeds, the positive effects of drafting behind a skier during double poling were obvious and resulted in a lower FPROP, CDA, V˙O2, E˙, and HR. Tests without wind present put even lower demands on the skiers’ physiology, which was also evident at lower speeds.
High local failure rates despite high margin‐negative resection rates in a cohort of borderline resectable and locally advanced pancreatic cancer patients treated with stereotactic body radiation therapy following multi‐agent chemotherapy

Stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) for patients with borderline resectable and locally advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma (BRPC/LAPC) remains controversial. Herein, we report on surgical, pathologic, and survival outcomes in BRPC/LAPC patients treated at a high‐volume institution with induction chemotherapy (CTX) followed by 5‐fraction SBRT.
Real‐world eligibility for vericiguat in decompensated heart failure with reduced ejection fraction

Aims In 2021, vericiguat was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Commission (EC) for reducing cardiovascular mortality and heart failure (HF) hospitalizations in patients with HF with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) based on the Vericiguat Global Study in Subjects with Heart Failure with Reduced Ejection Fraction (VICTORIA) trial. However, there has been no report for characterizing the generalizability of vericiguat to real‐world clinical practice.
Desiccation of the leaf mesophyll and its implications for CO2 diffusion and light processing

Abstract Leaves balance CO2 and radiative absorption while maintaining water transport to maximise photosynthesis. Related species with contrasting leaf anatomy can provide insights into inherent and stress‐induced links between structure and function for commonly measured leaf traits for important crops. We used two walnut species with contrasting mesophyll anatomy to evaluate these integrated exchange processes under non‐stressed and drought conditions using a combination of light microscopy, X‐ray microCT, gas exchange, hydraulic conductance, and chlorophyll distribution profiles through leaves. Juglans regia had thicker palisade mesophyll, higher fluorescence in the palisade, and greater low‐mesophyll porosity that were associated with greater gas‐phase diffusion (g IAS), stomatal and mesophyll (g m) conductances and carboxylation capacity. More and highly‐packed mesophyll cells and bundle sheath extensions (BSEs) in Juglans microcarpa led to higher fluorescence in the spongy and in proximity to the BSEs. Both species exhibited drought‐induced reductions in mesophyll cell volume, yet the associated increases in porosity and g IAS were obscured by declines in biochemical activity that decreased g m. Inherent differences in leaf anatomy between the species were linked to differences in gas exchange, light absorption and photosynthetic capacity, and drought‐induced changes in leaf structure impacted performance via imposing species‐specific limitations to light absorption, gas exchange and hydraulics.
Impact of extracorporeal photopheresis on blood and coagulation parameters

Extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) is considered a safe treatment modality. We aimed to assess blood parameters including coagulation during ECP over time. We performed a long‐term retrospective single‐center chart review (laboratory parameters) of adult patients (n = 172) who had received ECP for any indication. We observed a significant decrease (p < 0.05) in erythrocytes, hemoglobin, and leukocytes compared to baseline levels after only one ECP procedure. This decrease persisted after 3‐, 6‐, 9‐, and 12‐months of ECP. A significant pathological decline of hemoglobin was observed in a higher proportion (26.4% and 25.2%, respectively) of patients after 6 (p = 0.0007) and 12 (p = 0.012) months of ECP. Mean corpuscular volume as well as hematocrit was significantly decreased at 3‐, 6‐, 9‐, and 12‐months of evaluation compared to baseline (p < 0.05). After 9 and 12 months of ECP we observed a further decline in lymphocyte counts (p < 0.05). Various coagulation parameters did not change significantly during ECP treatment. Even though not all alterations observed in peripheral blood of ECP patients in the present study were of clinical significance, risk for developing persistent anemia must be considered in patients undergoing ECP.