Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of protein content and the inclusion of protein sources with different amino acid release dynamics on the nitrogen utilization of weaned piglets

Objective We aimed to investigate the effect of the differing amino acid (AA) release dynamics of two protein sources on the growth performance, nitrogen deposition, plasma biochemical parameters, and muscle synthesis and degradation of piglets when included in their diets at normal and low concentrations. Methods Forty-eight piglets (Duroc×Landrace×Large White) with initial body weight of 7.45±0.58 kg were assigned to six groups and fed one of 6 diets. The 6 dietary treatments were arranged by 3×2 factorial with 3 protein sources and 2 dietary protein levels. They are NCAS (a normal protein content with casein), NBlend (a normal protein content with blend of casein and corn gluten meal), NCGM (a normal protein content with corn gluten meal), LCAS (a low protein content with casein), LBlend (a low protein content with blend of casein and corn gluten meal), LCGM (a low protein content with corn gluten meal). The release dynamics of AA in these diets were determined by in vitro digestion. The digestibility, utilization and biological value of nitrogen in piglets were determined by micro Kjeldahl method. Plasma insulin was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits. The protein expression of mediators of muscle synthesis and degradation was determined by western blotting. Results Although the consumption of a low-protein diet supplemented with crystalline AA was associated with greater nitrogen digestion and utilization (p<0.05), the final body weight, growth performance, nitrogen deposition, and phosphorylation of ribosomal protein S6 kinase 1 and eIF4E binding protein 1 in the muscle of pigs in the low-protein diet-fed groups were lower than those of the normal-protein diet-fed groups (p<0.05) because of the absence of non-essential AA. Because of the more balanced release of AA, the casein (CAS) and Blend-fed groups showed superior growth performance, final body weight and nitrogen deposition, and lower expression of muscle ring finger 1 and muscle atrophy F-box than the CGM-fed groups (p<0.05). Conclusion We conclude that the balanced release of AA from CAS containing diets and mixed diets could reduce muscle degradation, favor nitrogen retention, % intake and improve growth performance in pigs consuming either a normal- or low-protein diet.
Gut Microbiota and Subclinical Cardiovascular Disease in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The gut microbiota may contribute to the onset and progression of T2D and CVD. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between the gut microbiota and subclinical CVD in T2D patients. This cross-sectional study used echocardiographic data to evaluate the cardiac structure and function in T2D patients. We used a quantitative polymerase chain reaction to measure the abundances of targeted fecal bacterial species that have been associated with T2D, including Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Clostridium leptum group, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Bacteroides, Bifidobacterium, Akkermansia muciniphila, and Escherichia coli. A total of 155 subjects were enrolled (mean age 62.9 ± 10.1 years; 57.4% male and 42.6% female). Phyla Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes and genera Bacteroides were positively correlated with the left ventricular ejection fraction. Low levels of phylum Firmicutes were associated with an increased risk of left ventricular hypertrophy. High levels of both phylum Bacteroidetes and genera Bacteroides were negatively associated with diastolic dysfunction. A high phylum Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes (F/B) ratio and low level of genera Bacteroides were correlated with an increased left atrial diameter. Phyla Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes, the F/B ratio, and the genera Bacteroides were associated with variations in the cardiac structure and systolic and diastolic dysfunction in T2D patients. These findings suggest that changes in the gut microbiome may be the potential marker of the development of subclinical CVD in T2D patients.
Emotion-Attention Interaction in the Right Hemisphere

Hemispheric asymmetries in affective and cognitive functions have been extensively studied. While both cerebral hemispheres contribute to most affective and cognitive processes, neuroscientific literature and neuropsychological evidence support an overall right hemispheric dominance for emotion, attention and arousal. Emotional stimuli, especially those with survival value such as threat, tend to be prioritized in attentional resource competition. Arousing unpleasant emotional stimuli have prioritized access, especially to right-lateralized attention networks. Interference of task performance may be observed when limited resources are exhausted by task- and emotion-related processing. Tasks that rely on right hemisphere-dependent processing, like attending to the left visual hemifield or global-level visual features, are especially vulnerable to interference due to attention capture by unpleasant emotional stimuli. The aim of this review is to present literature regarding the special role of the right hemisphere in affective and attentional brain processes and their interaction. Furthermore, clinical and technological implications of this interaction will be presented. Initially, the effects of focal right hemisphere lesion or atrophy on emotional functions will be introduced. Neurological right hemisphere syndromes including aprosodia, anosognosia and neglect, which further point to the predominance of the intact right hemisphere in emotion, attention and arousal will be presented. Then there will be a brief review of electrophysiological evidence, as well as evidence from patients with neglect that support attention capture by emotional stimuli in the right hemisphere. Subsequently, experimental work on the interaction of emotion, attention and cognition in the right hemispheres of healthy subjects will be presented. Finally, clinical implications for better understanding and assessment of alterations in emotion–attention interaction due to brain disorder or treatment, such as neuromodulation, that impact affective brain functions will be discussed. It will be suggested that measuring right hemispheric emotion–attention interactions may provide basis for novel biomarkers of brain health. Such biomarkers allow for improved diagnostics in brain damage and disorders and optimized treatments. To conclude, future technological applications will be outlined regarding brain physiology-based measures that reflect engagement of the right hemisphere in affective and attentional processes.
Microbial Diversity Profiling of Gut Microbiota of Macropus giganteus Using Three Hypervariable Regions of the Bacterial 16S rRNA

Animal faecal contamination of surface waters poses a human health risk, as they may contain pathogenic bacteria or viruses. Of the numerous animal species residing along surface waterways in Australia, macropod species are a top contributor to wild animals’ faecal pollution load. We characterised the gut microbiota of 30 native Australian Eastern Grey Kangaroos from six geographical regions (five kangaroos from each region) within South East Queensland in order to establish their bacterial diversity and identify potential novel species-specific bacteria for the rapid detection of faecal contamination of surface waters by these animals. Using three hypervariable regions (HVRs) of the 16S rRNA gene (i.e., V1–V3, V3–V4, and V5–V6), for their effectiveness in delineating the gut microbial diversity, faecal samples from each region were pooled and microbial genomic DNA was extracted, sequenced, and analysed. Results indicated that V1-V3 yielded a higher taxa richness due to its larger target region (~480 bp); however, higher levels of unassigned taxa were observed using the V1-V3 region. In contrast, the V3–V4 HVR (~569 bp) attained a higher likelihood of a taxonomic hit identity to the bacterial species level, with a 5-fold decrease in unassigned taxa. There were distinct dissimilarities in beta diversity between the regions, with the V1-V3 region displaying the highest number of unique taxa (n = 42), followed by V3–V4 (n = 11) and V5–V6 (n = 8). Variations in the gut microbial diversity profiles of kangaroos from different regions were also observed, which indicates that environmental factors may impact the microbial development and, thus, the composition of the gut microbiome of these animals.
In Vitro Effect of Replicated Porous Polymeric Nano-MicroStructured Biointerfaces Characteristics on Macrophages Behavior

In the last decades, optimizing implant properties in terms of materials and biointerface characteristics represents one of the main quests in biomedical research. Modifying and engineering polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) as scaffolds becomes more and more attractive to multiples areas of bio-applications (e.g., bone or cochlear implants). Nevertheless, the acceptance of an implant is affected by its inflammatory potency caused by surface-induced modification. Therefore, in this work, three types of nano-micro squared wells like PVDF structures (i.e., reversed pyramidal shape with depths from 0.8 to 2.5 microns) were obtained by replication, and the influence of their characteristics on the inflammatory response of human macrophages was investigated in vitro. FTIR and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis confirmed the maintaining chemical structures of the replicated surfaces, while the topographical surface characteristics were evaluated by AFM and SEM analysis. Contact angle and surface energy analysis indicated a modification from superhydrophobicity of casted materials to moderate hydrophobicity based on the structure’s depth change. The effects induced by PVDF casted and micron-sized reversed pyramidal replicas on macrophages behavior were evaluated in normal and inflammatory conditions (lipopolysaccharide treatment) using colorimetric, microscopy, and ELISA methods. Our results demonstrate that the depth of the microstructured surface affects the activity of macrophages and that the modification of topography could influence both the hydrophobicity of the surface and the inflammatory response.
HMGB1-TIM3-HO1: A New Pathway of Inflammation in Skin of SARS-CoV-2 Patients? A Retrospective Pilot Study

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has completely disrupted the health systems of the entire planet. From the earliest months, it became increasingly clear that in addition to affecting the upper airways and lungs, there were other organs that could be affected. Among these, the skin became a real “sentinel signal” to be able to even suspect COVID-19. Background: this study deals with a little-explored issue for now: the study of skin immunopathology in SARS-CoV-2 positive subjects ascertained using the most reliable methods available. Methods: we used skin biopsy samples from SARS-CoV-2 positive and negative patients, studying morphology (Hematoxylin-Eosin), T lymphocyte population (CD4 and CD8), three markers such as HMGB-1, TIM-3 and HO-1 by immunohistochemistry. Results: although the presence of the CD4 and CD8 T population did not differ statistically significantly, we found greater activation and release of HMGB-1 in skin samples from SARS-CoV-2 positive patients, greater immunolabeling for TIM-3 at the level of CD4 and CD8 and a reduced expression of Heme oxygenase 1. Conclusions: these results support the possibility that there is immune deregulation in SARS-CoV-2 positive patients who develop skin manifestations of various kinds.
Subexponential and Linear Subpacketization Coded Caching via Projective Geometry

Large gains in the rate of cache-aided broadcast communication are obtained using coded caching, but to obtain this most existing centralized coded caching schemes require that the files at the server be divisible into a large number of parts (this number is called subpacketization). In fact, most schemes require the subpacketization to be growing asymptotically as exponential in <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sqrt [\leftroot {-1}\uproot {1}{r}]{{K}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> for some positive integer <italic>r</italic> and <italic>K</italic> being the number of users. On the other extreme, few schemes having subpacketization linear in <italic>K</italic> are known; however, they require large number of users to exist, or they offer only little gain in the rate. In this work, we propose two new centralized coded caching schemes with low subpacketization and moderate rate gains utilizing projective geometries over finite fields. Both the schemes achieve the same asymptotic subpacketization, which is exponential in <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${O}((\log {K})^{2})$ </tex-math></inline-formula> (thus improving on the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sqrt [\leftroot {-1}\uproot {1}{r}]{{K}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> exponent). The first scheme has a larger cache requirement but has at most a constant rate (with increasing <italic>K</italic>), while the second has small cache requirement but has a larger rate. As a special case of our second scheme, we get a new linear subpacketization scheme, which has a more flexible range of parameters than the existing linear subpacketization schemes. Extending our techniques, we also obtain low subpacketization schemes for other multi-receiver settings such as distributed computing and the cache-aided interference channel. We validate the performance of all our schemes via extensive numerical comparisons. For a special class of symmetric caching schemes with a given subpacketization level, we propose two new information theoretic lower bounds on the optimal rate of coded caching.
Molecular Dynamics Study of Orientation-dependent Tensile Properties of Si Nanowires with Native Oxide: Surface Stress and Surface Energy Effects

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are employed to investigate the influence of native oxide layer on the mechanical properties of Si nanowires (NWs) through analyzing surface stress and surface energy effect. This work studies the tensile response of Si NWs along <100> and <110> crystal orientations. MD results are compared with the traditional core-shell model on the estimation of the modulus of elasticity of Si NWs with a native oxide layer. Density functional theory (DFT) methods are used to verify MD results on the surface energy calculations. Surface stress and surface elastic constants are studied for native oxide surface using MD simulations and compared with unreconstructed surfaces. In this work, the role of native oxide is addressed to understand the difference between experimental and computational findings on the modulus of elasticity of Si NWs.
Evaluation of Failure Modes for Photovoltaic Modules in Arid Climatic Zones in Brazil

This paper evaluates the degradation in early-generation photovoltaic (PV) silicon and thin-film modules in arid and semi-arid regions in Brazil. Monocrystalline (c-Si) and thin-film (a-Si and CdTe) modules installed in North of Minas Gerais, a semi-arid climate region, were used to investigate the degradation modes and average degradation rates. Initial visual inspection of the modules was performed in order to document the conditions leading to degradation modes for these devices that had been operating in the field for periods of 7 to 15 years. Thermographic and electrical tests were subsequently performed to identify possible hot spots or faults visible to the thermography process. The module I-V and P-V characteristics were used to evaluate the degradation rates for each technology. The c-Si module visual inspection identified browning and delamination that could be correlated with hot spots. In addition, degradation of the transparent conductive oxide (TCO) in thin-film modules was identified. This compromised their electro-optical properties, particularly resulting in losses of optical TCO transmission. The measured average annual degradation rates for these modules ranged from: (1) 3.19%/year to 5.14%/year for c-Si modules; (2) 5.5%/year for a-Si modules; and (3) 5.6%/ year for CdTe modules.
A NEW VALIDATED SIMULTANEOUS REVERSED-PHASE HIGH-PERFORMANCE LIQUID CHROMATOGRAPHY ASSAY METHOD FOR ESTIMATION OF TWO FLAVONES (BAICALEIN AND CHRYSIN) IN API DRUGS

Objective: The scope of the present work is a reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) assay method developed for the simultaneous determination of baicalein and Chrysin in API drugs. Methods: The RP-HPLC method employed a Hypersil BDS C18 reversed-phase column (150×4.6 mm×5.0 μm) with an isocratic mixture of water and acetonitrile in the ratio of 55:45; v/v as the mobile phase. The column temperature was kept at 25°C. The flow rate was 1.0 mL/min, and detection was by means of a photodiode array detector at wavelength of 268 nm and validated for various parameters such as specificity, system suitability, method precision, linearity, accuracy, solution stability, ruggedness, and robustness. Results: The system suitability parameters were evaluated from standard chromatograms by calculating the % relative standard deviation (RSD) from six replicate injections for baicalein and Chrysin peak areas. The % RSD for the peak area of the principal peak from six replicate injections of each standard solution was <2.0%. The linearity and correlation coefficient of baicalein and Chrysin was found to be 0.999. Method precision was performed, and % RSD from six different preparations for baicalein and Chrysin were found to be <2.0. The % recovery for each level was found to be the range of 98.0–102%. In ruggedness and robustness, the % RSD of the peak area of all peaks for six replicate injections should be not more than 2.0. Conclusion: Hence, the chromatographic assay method developed for baicalein and chrysin is said to be rapid, simple, specific, sensitive, precise, accurate, and reliable that can be effectively applied for routine analysis in research institutions, quality control department in industries, approved testing laboratories, bio-pharmaceutics, and bio-equivalence studies and in clinical pharmacokinetic studies.
“I’ve Seen Things You People Wouldn’t Believe”: Hallucinating Entities in GuessWhat?!

Natural language generation systems have witnessed important progress in the last years, but they are shown to generate tokens that are unrelated to the source input. This problem affects computational models in many NLP tasks, and it is particularly unpleasant in multimodal systems. In this work, we assess the rate of object hallucination in multimodal conversational agents playing the GuessWhat? referential game. Better visual processing has been shown to mitigate this issue in image captioning; hence, we adapt to the GuessWhat? task the best visual processing models at disposal, and propose two new models to play the Questioner agent. We show that the new models generate few hallucinations compared to other renowned models available in the literature. Moreover, their hallucinations are less severe (affect task-accuracy less) and are more human-like. We also analyse where hallucinations tend to occur more often through the dialogue: hallucinations are less frequent in earlier turns, cause a cascade hallucination effect, and are often preceded by negative answers, which have been shown to be harder to ground.
The Etiology of Pneumonia in HIV-infected Zambian Children

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Background: Despite recent declines in new pediatric HIV infections and childhood HIV-related deaths, pneumonia remains the leading cause of death in HIV-infected children under 5. We describe the patient population, etiology and outcomes of childhood pneumonia in Zambian HIV-infected children. Methods: As one of the 9 sites for the Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health study, we enrolled children 1–59 months of age presenting to University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia, with World Health Organization–defined severe and very severe pneumonia. Controls frequency-matched on age group and HIV infection status were enrolled from the Lusaka Pediatric HIV Clinics as well as from the surrounding communities. Clinical assessments, chest radiographs (CXR; cases) and microbiologic samples (nasopharyngeal/oropharyngeal swabs, blood, urine, induced sputum) were obtained under highly standardized procedures. Etiology was estimated using Bayesian methods and accounted for imperfect sensitivity and specificity of measurements. Results: Of the 617 cases and 686 controls enrolled in Zambia over a 24-month period, 103 cases (16.7%) and 85 controls (12.4%) were HIV infected and included in this analysis. Among the HIV-infected cases, 75% were <1 year of age, 35% received prophylactic trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, 13.6% received antiretroviral therapy and 36.9% of caregivers reported knowing their children’s HIV status at time of enrollment. A total of 35% of cases had very severe pneumonia and 56.3% had infiltrates on CXR. Bacterial pathogens [50.6%, credible interval (CrI): 32.8–67.2], Pneumocystis jirovecii (24.9%, CrI: 15.5–36.2) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (4.5%, CrI: 1.7–12.1) accounted for over 75% of the etiologic fraction among CXR-positive cases. Streptococcus pneumoniae (19.8%, CrI: 8.6–36.2) was the most common bacterial pathogen, followed by Staphylococcus aureus (12.7%, CrI: 0.0–25.9). Outcomes were poor, with 41 cases (39.8%) dying in hospital. Conclusions: HIV-infected children in Zambia with severe and very severe pneumonia have poor outcomes, with continued limited access to care, and the predominant etiologies are bacterial pathogens, P. jirovecii and M. tuberculosis.
Prevention of HIV Transmission from Mother to Child: Challenges to the Successful Program Implementation and Practice in Indonesia

Introduction: The level of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission from mother to child in Indonesia ranks first worldwide. Newborn babies in Indonesia are at greater risk of experiencing the burden of HIV infection than babies born in other countries. Objectives: To explore the full extent of Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) in South Sulawesi Province in 2020 and to discuss program and policy implications for PMTCT. Methods: This is a health system analysis study with a qualitative approach using focus group discussion, in-depth interviews, and observations in primary health centers and hospitals. Results: There is no local policy and guidelines for PMTCT programs and services; the coverage of HIV testing in pregnant women has not achieved 100% according to the target. There are limitations to human resources in public and private services to conduct the program. The assistance’s activities to ensure antiretroviral (ARV) adherence are limited, and HIV-positive women faced stigma and discrimination, not only from the community but also from health workers. Recommendations: Some recommendations are to improve the HIV test coverage to 100% in pregnant women as well as the coverage and quality of ARV treatment.