Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relative telomere length impact on mortality of COVID‐19: Sex differences

Increasing age is associated with severity and higher mortality of COVID‐19. Telomere shortening is associated with higher risk of infections and may be used to identify those patients who are more likely to die. We evaluated the association between relative telomere length (RTL) and COVID‐19 mortality. RTL was measured in patients hospitalized because of COVID‐19. We used Kaplan–Meier method to analyze survival probabilities, and Cox regression to investigate the association between RTL and mortality (30 and 90 days). Six hundred and eight patients were included in the analysis (mean age =72.5 years, 41.1% women, and 53.8% Caucasic). During the study period, 75 people died from COVID‐19 and 533 survived. Lower RTL was associated with a higher risk of death in women either at 30 (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] (aHR) = 3.33; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.05–10.00; p = 0.040) and at 90 days (aHR = 3.57; 95%CI = 1.23–11.11; p = 0.019). Lower RTL was associated with a higher risk of dying of COVID‐19 in women. This finding suggests that RTL has an essential role in the prognosis of this subset of the population.
Orthorhombic strontium titanate in BaTiO3 –SrTiO3 superlattices

It has been suggested by several authors that SrTiO3 layers in SrTiO3 –BaTiO3 superlattices should be tetragonal and ferroelectric at ambient temperatures, like the BaTiO3 layers, rather than cubic, as in bulk SrTiO3, and that free-energy minimization requires continuity of the polarization direction. A recent ab initio calculation constrained solutions to this structure. Surprisingly, our x-ray study shows that the SrTiO3 layers are orthorhombic with 0.03% in-plane strain, with the BaTiO3 c-axis matching the SrTiO3 a- and b-axis better than the c-axis; strain energy overcomes the cost in electrostatic energy.
A vertically nested regional numerical weather prediction model with second-order closure physics

Abstract The model we describe involves a unique strategy in which a high vertical resolution grid is nested within the coarse vertical resolution grid of a regional numerical weather prediction (NWP) model. Physics computations performed on the high vertical resolution grid involve time-dependent solution of second-order turbulence equations, the transfer equations for long- and shortwave radiation, and moist thermodynamic calculations which include liquid water content and fractional cloudiness. The dynamical computations involving advection, pressure gradient, and Coriolis terms are performed on the regional model grid. The two grids interact fully each model time step. This approach represents an extension into NWP of the general practice of supplying coarse large-scale dynamical forcing to high-resolution boundary layer models. Aside from the computational savings of performing dynamical calculations only at the coarser resolution, we also avoid difficulties which can arise with high vertical-resolut.
Evaluation and updates to the Leggett model for pharmacokinetic modeling of exposure to lead in the workplace – Part II adjustments to the adult exposure model, confirmation of Leggett+, and modeling of workplace exposure

Abstract California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has updated the comprehensive age-specific model of lead metabolism in humans published by Richard W. Leggett in 1993. The updated model, called Leggett+, was introduced in a peer-reviewed report in 2013. The Leggett + model simulates the relationship between blood lead and exposure in the workplace. Leggett + includes a workplace exposure model comprising respiratory tract intake (workplace lead inhaled by a worker) and uptake (lead absorbed into the blood from the respiratory tract plus uptake from ambient air and diet). The latter is calculated as intake times an inhalation transfer coefficient plus background uptake. An adjusted adult systemic model describes the metabolism of the absorbed lead. This paper provides details about the workplace exposure and uptake elements of Leggett+, an updated approach to calibrating an inhalation transfer coefficient, confirmation of the model’s performance in predicting blood lead levels from workplace studies, and predictions of blood lead levels from simulated exposures to workplace airborne lead over a working lifetime. Blood lead relative to airborne lead concentrations in a standard workplace scenario predicted by Leggett + was similar to corresponding relationships from four published workplace studies. Leggett + predictions displayed a good fit to regression equations when other key factors were considered such as pre-employment blood lead and ongoing background intake of lead, workplace air concentration, lead aerosol characteristics, and worker activity levels. The comprehensive Leggett + model can simulate plausible workplace air–blood lead relationships from a broad range of worker exposures. The inhalation transfer coefficient of 0.30, derived from empirical data described in the 2013 report has been reexamined. The original estimate continues to represent a plausible mid-point for a coefficient derived from an expanded range of theoretical particle size distributions deposited in the upper and lower regions of the respiratory tract considering intake during sedentary and outdoor activity breathing scenarios. This coefficient is slightly lower than the value of 0.35 estimated for unknown forms of lead by Leggett in 1993.
Low-Intensity Adjuvant Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer in Older Women: Results From the Prospective Multicenter HOPE Trial

PURPOSE Older women with high-risk early breast cancer (EBC) benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy, but their treatment is frequently complicated by toxic side effects, resulting in dose reductions and delays. This makes it challenging for oncologists to maintain a relative dose intensity (RDI) ≥ 85%, as recommended for optimal curative-intent treatment. Understanding which women are at risk of receiving suboptimal RDI may inform treatment discussions and guide early, targeted supportive care or geriatric comanagement interventions. METHODS This was a prespecified secondary analysis of the HOPE trial, which enrolled women age ≥ 65 years with EBC initiating neoadjuvant or adjuvant chemotherapy. RDI was calculated as the ratio of delivered to planned chemotherapy dose intensity. The primary outcome was low RDI, defined as RDI < 85%. Multivariable logistic regression with stepwise selection was used to evaluate the association between baseline variables (demographic, clinical, and geriatric assessment) and low RDI. Survival probability was estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method, and the log-rank test was used to compare overall survival. RESULTS Three hundred twenty-two patients (median age at diagnosis, 70 years; range, 65-86 years) were included. The median follow-up was 4 years. Sixty-six patients (21%) had a low RDI. Age ≥ 76 years (odds ratio [OR], 2.57; 95% CI, 1.12 to 5.91; P = .03), lower performance status (OR, 4.32; 95% CI, 1.98 to 9.42; P < .001), and use of anthracycline-based or cyclophosphamide, methotrexate, and fluorouracil regimens (OR, 3.47; 95% CI, 1.71 to 7.05; P < .001) were associated with low RDI. The 5-year overall survival probability was 0.80 versus 0.91 in patients with RDI < 85 versus ≥ 85%, respectively (log-rank P = .02). CONCLUSION One in five older patients with EBC treated with standard chemotherapy received low RDI and had inferior survival outcomes. Older patients at risk for low RDI should be identified and targeted upfront before initiating chemotherapy.
Effects of nutrient supply on leaf stoichiometry and relative growth rate of three stoloniferous alien plants

Different nutrient supply brings about changes in leaf stoichiometry, which may affect growth rate and primary production of plants. Invasion of alien plants is a severe threat to biodiversity and ecosystem worldwide. A pot experiment was conducted by using three stoloniferous alien plants Wedelia trilobata, Alternanther philoxeroides and Hydrocotyle vulgaris to investigate effects of nutrient supply on their leaf stoichiometry and relative growth rate. Different nitrogen or phosphorus supply was applied in the experiment (N1:1 mmol L-1, N2:4 mmol L-1, and N3:8 mmol L-1, P1:0.15 mmol L-1, P2:0.6 mmol L-1 and P3:1.2 mmol L-1). Nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in leaves of the three alien plants significantly increased with increase of nitrogen supply. With increase of phosphorus supply, nitrogen or phosphorus concentration of leaf was complex among the three alien plants. N:P ratio in leaf of the three alien plants subjected to different levels of nutrient supply was various. A positive correlation between relative growth rate and N:P ratio of the leaf is observed in W. trilobata and A. philoxeroides suffering from N-limitation. A similar pattern was not observed in Hydrocotyle vulgaris. We tentatively concluded that correlations between relative growth rate and N: P ratio of the leaf could be affected by species as well as nutrient supply. It is suggested that human activities, invasive history, local abundance of species et al maybe play an important role in the invasion of alien plants as well as relative growth rate.
The Common LncRNAs of Neuroinflammation-Related Diseases

Spatio-temporal specific long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important regulatory roles not only in the growth and development of the brain but also in the occurrence and development of neurologic diseases. Generally, the occurrence of neurologic diseases is accompanied by neuroinflammation. Elucidation of the regulatory mechanisms of lncRNAs on neuroinflammation is helpful for the clinical treatment of neurologic diseases. This paper focuses on recent findings on the regulatory effect of lncRNAs on neuroinflammatory diseases and selects 10 lncRNAs that have been intensively studied to analyze their mechanism action. The clinical treatment status of lncRNAs as drug targets is also reviewed. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Gene therapies such as clustered regularly interspaced short palindrome repeats technology, antisense RNA technology, and RNAi technology are gradually applied in clinical treatment, and the development of technology is based on a large number of basic research investigations. This paper focuses on the mechanisms of lncRNAs regulation of neuroinflammation, elucidates the beneficial or harmful effects of lncRNAs in neurosystemic diseases, and provides theoretical bases for lncRNAs as drug targets.
Escalating schedules of incentives increase physical activity with no differences between deposit and no‐deposit groups: A systematic replication

Physical inactivity has increasingly affected public health in the United States during the COVID‐19 pandemic as it is associated with chronic diseases such as arthritis, cancer, and heart disease. Contingency management has been shown to increase physical activity. Therefore, the present study sought to evaluate the effects of an escalating schedule of monetary reinforcement with a reset contingency on physical activity, as compared between 2 counterbalanced groups in which a monetary deposit of $25 was either required (deposit group) or not (no‐deposit group). Twenty‐five adults wore Fitbit accelerometers to monitor step counts. An ABA reversal design was used; in the 2 baseline phases, no programmed contingencies were in place for step counts. During intervention, step goals were set using a modified 70th percentile schedule with a 7‐day window: Reaching the first goal would result in $0.25, and incentives increased by $0.25 for each subsequent day in which the goal was met. Failure to reach a goal resulted in a reset of the monetary incentive value to $0.25. Ten out of 12 participants from the deposit group were determined to be responders to intervention, whereas 8 out of 13 participants from the no‐deposit group were determined to be responders to intervention. Overall, there were no significant differences between the groups' step counts. However, the deposit group's intervention was cheaper to implement, which suggests that deposit contracts are a viable modification for physical activity interventions.
Towards a unified vision on animal navigation

The study of animal navigation is a complex and fertile field of research: Several questions regarding how animals relate to external stimuli, integrating them to perform their everyday movement routine, have been or are being addressed in different organisms and taxa, both from the behavioural and the neuronal activity point of view. Several invertebrate model organisms are the object of studies aimed at unravelling how they navigate and their ability to precisely return to a starting point and also how navigational information is communicated to conspecifics when precise social structures are present. Also, vertebrates are studied because of the interest in their orientation abilities while migrating, homing over impressive distances and studying exploration, orientation and space recognition. Last, research on the navigation capabilities of humans pursues a better understanding of the neural architecture involved in these processes in the remarkable effort to find answers and possible solutions to impairments, lesions and diseases. However, an ‘all‐inclusive’ vision of navigation still appears to be in its embryonic state: A better perspective could (and should) shift from a paradigm where single research teams are centred on studying navigation in a single genus or species towards a more comprehensive evolutionary‐centred view, searching systematically for behavioural analogies, and possibly for homologies in neural architecture between different taxa. In this review, we introduce examples of relevant topics in animal navigation from distinct animal groups, highlighting the similar approaches of those studies, and why, in our opinion, this research field could profit from a ‘new’ perspective.
Solid-state decomposition of silicon carbide for growing ultra-thin heteroepitaxial graphite films

Using grazing-incidence x-ray diffraction and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), we show that the thermal decomposition of an electronic-grade wafer of 6H-SiC after annealing at increasing temperatures TA between 1080 and 1320 °C leads to the layer-by-layer growth of unconstrained, heteroepitaxial single-crystalline graphite. The limited width of the in-plane diffraction rod profiles of graphite reveals large terraces, with an average size larger than 200 A and a very small azimuthal disorientation. The overlayer is unstrained and adopts the crystalline parameter of bulk graphite even at the smallest coverage studied, which corresponds to a single graphene plane, as inferred from the flat out-of-plane diffraction profile. By increasing TA, additional graphene planes can be grown below this graphite layer from the solid-state decomposition of SiC, forming the AB stacking of Bernal graphite. A C-rich precursor is evidenced in STM by an intrinsic (6×6) reconstruction made of ordered ring or starlike struct.
The spatial distribution of 10 micron luminosity in spiral galaxies

The present ground-based 10-micron observations of 133 nearby luminous, noninteracting IR galaxies indicate that about 40 percent of the early-type barred spirals are associated with enhanced 10-micron luminosity in the central (about 1-kpc diameter) region. The luminosity source may be either Seyfert activity or star formation, or both. The difference in bar-central luminosity association in early- and late-type spirals indicates that the bulge/disk ratio may be an important parameter in the determination of central IR luminosity in barred spirals. 34 references.
p-Value Adjustments for Asymptotic Control of the Generalized Familywise Error Rate

This paper introduces a computationally efficient bootstrap procedure for obtaining multiplicity-adjusted p-values in situations where multiple hypotheses are tested simultaneously. This new testing procedure accounts for the mutual dependence of the individual statistics, and is shown under weak conditions to maintain asymptotic control of the generalized familywise error rate. Moreover, the estimated critical values (p-values) obtained via our procedure are less sensitive to the inclusion of true hypotheses and, as a result, our test has greater power to identify false hypotheses even as the collection of hypotheses under test increases in size. Another attractive feature of our test is that it leads naturally to balance among the individual hypotheses under test. This feature is especially attractive in settings where balance is desired but alternative approaches, such as those based on studentization, are difficult or infeasible.
Host acid signal controls Salmonella flagella biogenesis through CadC-YdiV axis

ABSTRACT Upon entering host cells, Salmonella quickly turns off flagella biogenesis to avoid recognition by the host immune system. However, it is not clear which host signal(s) Salmonella senses to initiate flagellum control. Here, we demonstrate that the acid signal can suppress flagella synthesis and motility of Salmonella, and this occurs after the transcription of master flagellar gene flhDC and depends on the anti-FlhDC factor YdiV. YdiV expression is activated after acid treatment. A global screen with ydiV promoter DNA and total protein from acid-treated Salmonella revealed a novel regulator of YdiV, the acid-related transcription factor CadC. Further studies showed that CadCC, the DNA binding domain of CadC, directly binds to a 33 nt region of the ydiV promoter with a 0.2 μM KD affinity. Furthermore, CadC could separate H-NS-ydiV promoter DNA complex to form CadC-DNA complex at a low concentration. Structural simulation and mutagenesis assays revealed that H43 and W106 of CadC are essential for ydiV promoter binding. No acid-induced flagellum control phenotype was observed in cadC mutant or ydiV mutant strains, suggesting that flagellum control during acid adaption is dependent on CadC and YdiV. The intracellular survival ability of cadC mutant strain decreased significantly compared with WT strain while the flagellin expression could not be effectively controlled in the cadC mutant strain when surviving within host cells. Together, our results demonstrated that acid stress acts as an important host signal to trigger Salmonella flagellum control through the CadC-YdiV-FlhDC axis, allowing Salmonella to sense a hostile environment and regulate flagellar synthesis during infection.
Rheology of Rod‐like Polymers in the Liquid Crystalline State

The literature on the rheology of liquid crystals formed from rod‐like molecules is reviewed in this article. After a brief introduction to liquid crystals in general and their rheology in particular, the types of polymers that form liquid crystal phases and the conditions for liquid crystal formation are summarized. The framework for the discussion of the rheology of polymeric liquid crystals is based on the three‐region flow curve proposed by Onogi and Asada. The plateau viscosity region is the one best understood, with general agreement among various studies and with theory. The data for onset of shear thinning at high shear rates and for other viscoelastic phenomena are not consistent among different investigators. Many liquid crystal polymers have an initial shear thinning region and appear to have a yield stress. Rheo‐optical data suggest that this is the result of the domain texture which commonly exists in liquid crystal systems. In many cases, this behavior is confounded by chemical effects such .
Differential cross sections for elastic and inelastic n=2 excitation of ground-state helium at 29.6 and 40.1 eV

Differential cross sections have been measured for elastic and inelastic (23S, 21S, 23P and 21P) scattering of electrons by ground-state helium at 29.6 and 40.1 eV. The normalisation of the cross sections is discussed. Theoretical cross sections have been obtained using a ten-state coupled-channels-optical calculation. In general, there is good agreement between theory and experiment for singlet states but not for triplet.
Graph Neural Pre-training for Recommendation with Side Information

Leveraging the side information associated with entities (i.e., users and items) to enhance recommendation systems has been widely recognized as an essential modeling dimension. Most of the existing approaches address this task by the integration-based scheme, which incorporates the entity side information by combining the recommendation objective with an extra side information-aware objective. Despite the growing progress made by the existing integration-based approaches, they are largely limited by the potential conflicts between the two objectives. Moreover, the heterogeneous side information among entities is still under-explored in these systems. In this article, we propose a novel pre-training scheme to leverage the entity side information by pre-training entity embeddings using the multi-graph neural network. Instead of jointly training with two objectives, our pre-training scheme first pre-trains two representation models under the entity multi/single relational graphs constructed by their side information and then fine-tunes their embeddings under an existing general representation-based recommendation model. Our proposed multi-graph and single-graph neural networks can generate within-entity knowledge-encapsulated embeddings, while capturing the heterogeneity from the entity side information simultaneously, thereby improving the performance of the underlying recommendation model. An extensive evaluation of our pre-training scheme fine-tuned under four general representation-based recommender models, namely, MF, NCF, NGCF, and LightGCN, shows that effectively pre-training embeddings with both the user’s and item’s side information can significantly improve these original models in terms of both effectiveness and stability.
Obesity and related comorbidities in a large population-based cohort of subjects with type 1 diabetes in Catalonia

Introduction Obesity, an increasing global health problem, can affect people with other disease conditions. The prevalence of obesity in people with type 1 diabetes (T1D) is not well known. The aim of this study was to describe extensively the characteristics and prevalence of different classes of obesity according to BMI (body mass index) categories in a large cohort of patients with T1D. Material and methods This was a retrospective, cross-sectional study in Catalonia. We reviewed all patients with T1D diagnosis, ≥ 18 years old and with BMI data from the SIDIAP database. Sociodemographic and clinical data, cardiovascular risk factors, laboratory parameters and concomitant medications were collected. Results A total of 6,068 patients with T1D were analyzed. The prevalence of obesity in the total sample was 18% (13.8% with class 1 obesity [BMI 30-34.9 kg/m2]). Patients with obesity had a higher prevalence of other cardiovascular risk factors (i.e. hypertension was 61.4% vs. 37.5%; dyslipidemia 63.6% vs 44%, and chronic kidney disease 38.4% vs. 24.4%; p<0.001 in all cases) and poorer control of them. The higher prevalence was regardless of sex, age and duration of diabetes. The increase in these comorbidities was noticeable from a BMI > 25 kg/m2. Patients with obesity did not have poorer glycemic control. Conclusion The presence of obesity in people with T1D is frequent and cardiovascular risk factors are more common and more poorly controlled in T1D patients with obesity.