Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chronobiological factors for compassion satisfaction and fatigue among ambulatory oncology caregivers

ABSTRACT Primary caregivers for victims of chronic illness and or trauma experience both positive and negative emotional consequences. These are broadly classified as compassion satisfaction (CS) and compassion fatigue (CF). Because one of the components of CF, burnout, varies with chronotype and sleep quality, we assessed the influence of chronobiological features on the broader constructs of CS and CF. Responses from primary ambulatory care oncology staff working dayshifts were assessed for potential relationships of chronotype and sleep quality with CS and CF using the professional quality of life scale. These were analyzed further in a multivariate model that included personality and job satisfaction as cofactors. We found that sleep quality was a key contributor to CS development and CF reduction. Morningness was positively linked to CS, but the univariate association was masked in the multivariate model. Job satisfaction (contingent rewards, nature of work and operating procedures) heavily influenced CS and CF development. Agreeableness and openness showed positive correlations with CS and negative with burnout, while emotional stability was linked to reduced CF. While job satisfaction and personality predictably played roles in the development of CS and CF, sleep quality and chronotype contributed significantly to benefits and negative consequences of providing care.
Mechanism of HIV-1 Resistance to an Electronically Constrained α-Helical Peptide Membrane Fusion Inhibitor

ABSTRACT SC29EK is an electronically constrained α-helical peptide HIV-1 fusion inhibitor that is highly effective against both wild-type and enfuvirtide (T20)-resistant viruses. In this study, we focused on investigating the mechanism of HIV-1 resistance to SC29EK by two approaches. First, SC29EK-escaping HIV-1 variants were selected and characterized. Three mutant viruses, which possessed two (N43K/E49A) or three (Q39R/N43K/N126K and N43K/E49A/N126K) amino acid substitutions in the N- and C-terminal repeat regions of gp41 were identified as conferring high resistance to SC29EK and cross-resistance to the first-generation (T20 and C34) and newly designed (sifuvirtide, MT-SC29EK, and 2P23) fusion inhibitors. The resistance mutations could reduce the binding stability of SC29EK, impair viral Env-mediated cell fusion and entry, and change the conformation of the gp41 core structure. Further, we determined the crystal structure of SC29EK in complex with a target mimic peptide, which revealed the critical intra- and interhelical interactions underlying the mode of action of SC29EK and the genetic pathway to HIV-1 resistance. Taken together, the present data provide new insights into the structure and function of gp41 and the structure-activity relationship (SAR) of viral fusion inhibitors. IMPORTANCE T20 is the only membrane fusion inhibitor available for treatment of viral infection, but it has relatively low anti-HIV activity and genetic barriers for resistance, thus calling for new drugs blocking the viral fusion process. As an electronically constrained α-helical peptide, SC29EK is highly potent against both wild-type and T20-resistant HIV-1 strains. Here, we report the characterization of HIV-1 variants resistant to SC29EK and the crystal structure of SC29EK. The key mutations mediating high resistance to SC29EK and cross-resistance to the first and new generations of fusion inhibitors as well as the underlying mechanisms were identified. The crystal structure of SC29EK bound to a target mimic peptide further revealed its action mode and genetic pathway to inducing resistance. Hence, our data have shed new lights on the mechanisms of HIV-1 fusion and its inhibition.
The efficient imputation method for neighborhood-based collaborative filtering

As each user tends to rate a small proportion of available items, the resulted Data Sparsity issue brings significant challenges to the research of recommender systems. This issue becomes even more severe for neighborhood-based collaborative filtering methods, as there are even lower numbers of ratings available in the neighborhood of the query item. In this paper, we aim to address the Data Sparsity issue in the context of the neighborhood-based collaborative filtering. Given the (user, item) query, a set of key ratings are identified, and an auto-adaptive imputation method is proposed to fill the missing values in the set of key ratings. The proposed method can be used with any similarity metrics, such as the Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Cosine-based similarity, and it is theoretically guaranteed to outperform the neighborhood-based collaborative filtering approaches. Results from experiments prove that the proposed method could significantly improve the accuracy of recommendations for neighborhood-based Collaborative Filtering algorithms.
Social capital, collective efficacy and the provision of social support services and amenities by municipalities in the Netherlands

Differential provision of local services and amenities has been proposed as a mechanism behind the relationship between social capital and health. The aim of this study was to investigate whether social capital and collective efficacy are related to the provision of social support services and amenities in Dutch municipalities, against a background of decentralisation of long-term care to municipalities. We used data on neighbourhood social capital, collective efficacy (the extent to which people are willing to work for the common good), and the provision of services and amenities in 2012. We included the services municipalities provide to support informal caregivers (e.g. respite care), individual services and support (e.g. domiciliary help), and general and collective services and amenities (e.g. lending point for wheelchairs). Data for social capital were collected between May 2011 and September 2012. Social capital was measured by focusing on contacts between neighbours. A social capital measure was estimated for 414 municipalities with ecometric measurements. A measure of collective efficacy was constructed based on information about the experienced responsibility for the liveability of the neighbourhood by residents in 2012, average charity collection returns in municipalities in 2012, voter turnout at the municipal elections in 2010 and the percentage of blood donors in 2012. We conducted Poisson regression and negative binomial regression to test our hypotheses. We found no relationship between social capital and the provision of services and amenities in municipalities. We found an interaction effect (coefficient = 3.11, 95% CI = 0.72-5.51, P = 0.011) of social capital and collective efficacy on the provision of support services for informal caregivers in rural municipalities. To gain more insight in the relationship between social capital and health, it will be important to study the relationship between social capital and differential provision of services and amenities more extensively and in different contexts.
Challenges and barriers for implementation of the World Health Organization Global Disability Action Plan in low- and middle- income countries.

OBJECTIVE To identify potential barriers and facilitators for implementation of the World Health Organization Global Disability Action Plan (GDAP) in Nigeria and compare these with other low- and middle-income countries. METHODS A rehabilitation team from the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville, Australia, conducted intensive workshops at medical/academic institutions in Nigeria for healthcare professionals from various local Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation facilities. A modified Delphi method identified challenges for person with disability, using 3 GDAP objectives. Findings were compared with similar exercises in Madagascar, Pakistan and Mongolia. RESULTS Despite differences in the healthcare system and practice, the challenges reported in Nigeria were similar to those in other 3 low- and middle-income countries, at both macro (governmental/policymakers) and micro levels (community/social/individual). Common challenges identified were: limited knowledge of disability services, limited Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation workforce, guidelines and accreditation standards; coordination amongst healthcare sectors; social issues; data and research; legislation and political commitment. Common potential facilitators included: need for strong leadership; advocacy of disability-inclusive development; investment in infrastructure/human resources; coordination/partnerships in healthcare sector; and research. CONCLUSION Disability care is an emerging priority in low- and middle-income countries to address the needs of people with disability. The challenges identified in Nigeria are common to most low- and middle-income countries. The GDAP framework can facilitate access and strengthen Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation services.
Thermodynamic properties and explosion energy analysis of carbon dioxide blasting systems

A carbon dioxide (CO2) blasting system is a reusable non-explosive blasting product that can be used in many engineering applications. To investigate the influences of thermodynamic properties of liquid CO2 and its explosion energy during the phase transition, the pressure within the blasting tube was measured in a laboratory for a liquid CO2 blasting system. Based on the measured pressure curve, the CO2 blasting process can be divided into three stages: pressure rising stage, pressure release stage and pressure recovery stage. The evolutions of temperature, pressure, phase transition and explosion energy of the CO2 blasting system were analysed in detail in this work. The results show that the variation rate of temperature increases as the initial density of CO2 decreases. The effect of initial CO2 density on its isochoric heat capacity is also significant as the lower the initial density, the higher the peak specific heat capacity at the critical temperature. Based on the Span and Wagner CO2 equation of state and the thermodynamics of explosions, a method is proposed to calculate the explosion energy of CO2 blasting systems. This method produces more accurate and realistic results.
Hiding in the Mobile Crowd: LocationPrivacy through Collaboration

Location-aware smartphones support various location-based services (LBSs): users query the LBS server and learn on the fly about their surroundings. However, such queries give away private information, enabling the LBS to track users. We address this problem by proposing a user-collaborative privacy-preserving approach for LBSs. Our solution does not require changing the LBS server architecture and does not assume third party servers; yet, it significantly improves users' location privacy. The gain stems from the collaboration of mobile devices: they keep their context information in a buffer and pass it to others seeking such information. Thus, a user remains hidden from the server, unless all the collaborative peers in the vicinity lack the sought information. We evaluate our scheme against the Bayesian localization attacks that allow for strong adversaries who can incorporate prior knowledge in their attacks. We develop a novel epidemic model to capture the, possibly time-dependent, dynamics of information propagation among users. Used in the Bayesian inference framework, this model helps analyze the effects of various parameters, such as users' querying rates and the lifetime of context information, on users' location privacy. The results show that our scheme hides a high fraction of location-based queries, thus significantly enhancing users' location privacy. Our simulations with real mobility traces corroborate our model-based findings. Finally, our implementation on mobile platforms indicates that it is lightweight and the cost of collaboration is negligible.
Epigenetic dysregulation of ID4 predicts disease progression and treatment outcome in myeloid malignancies

Promoter hypermethylation‐mediated inactivation of ID4 plays a crucial role in the development of solid tumours. This study aimed to investigate ID4 methylation and its clinical relevance in myeloid malignancies. ID4 hypermethylation was associated with higher IPSS scores, but was not an independent prognostic biomarker affecting overall survival (OS) in myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). However, ID4 hypermethylation correlated with shorter OS and leukaemia‐free survival (LFS) time and acted as an independent risk factor affecting OS in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). Moreover, ID4 methylation was significantly decreased in the follow‐up paired AML patients who achieved complete remission (CR) after induction therapy. Importantly, ID4 methylation was increased during MDS progression to AML and chronic phase (CP) progression to blast crisis (BC) in chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML). Epigenetic studies showed that ID4 methylation might be one of the mechanisms silencing ID4 expression in myeloid leukaemia. Functional studies in vitro showed that restoration of ID4 expression could inhibit cell proliferation and promote apoptosis in both K562 and HL60 cells. These findings indicate that ID4 acts as a tumour suppressor in myeloid malignancies, and ID4 methylation is a potential biomarker in predicting disease progression and treatment outcome.
Minimizing Supervision for Free-Space Segmentation

Identifying "free-space," or safely driveable regions in the scene ahead, is a fundamental task for autonomous navigation. While this task can be addressed using semantic segmentation, the manual labor involved in creating pixel-wise annotations to train the segmentation model is very costly. Although weakly supervised segmentation addresses this issue, most methods are not designed for free-space. In this paper, we observe that homogeneous texture and location are two key characteristics of free-space, and develop a novel, practical framework for free-space segmentation with minimal human supervision. Our experiments show that our framework performs better than other weakly supervised methods while using less supervision. Our work demonstrates the potential for performing free-space segmentation without tedious and costly manual annotation, which will be important for adapting autonomous driving systems to different types of vehicles and environments.
In vitro bio-stability screening of novel implantable polyurethane elastomers

Abstract A series of novel biomedical TPCUs with different percentages of hard segment and a silicone component in the soft segment were synthesized in a multi-stage one-pot method. The kinetic profiles of the urethane formation in TPCU-based copolymer systems were monitored by rheological, in line FTIR spectroscopic (React IR) and real-time calorimetric (RC1) methods. This process-analytically monitored multi step synthesis was successfully used to optimize the production of medical-grade TPCU elastomers on preparative scale (in lots of several kg) with controlled molecular structure and mechanical properties. Various surface and bulk analytical methods as well as systematic studies of the mechanic response of the elastomer end-products towards compression and tensile loading were used to estimate the bio-stability of the prepared TPCUs in vitro after 3 months. The tests suggested that high bio-stability of all polyurethane formulations using accelerating in vitro test can be attributed to the synthetic design as well as to the specific techniques used for specimen preparation, namely: (i) the annealing for reducing residual polymer surface stress and preventing IES, (ii) stabilization of the morphology by long-time storage of the specimens after processing bevor being immersed in the test liquids, (iii) purification by extraction to remove the shot chain oligomers which are the most susceptible to degradation. All mechanical tests were performed on cylindrical and circular disc specimens for modelling the thickness of the meniscus implants under application-relevant stress conditions.
On computing, storing and querying frequent patterns

Extensive efforts have been devoted to developing efficient algorithms for mining frequent patterns. However, frequent pattern mining remains a time-consuming process, especially for very large datasets. It is therefore desirable to adopt a "mining once and using many times" strategy. Unfortunately, there has been little work reported on managing and organizing a large set of patterns for future use. In this paper, we propose a disk-based data structure, CFP-tree (Condensed Frequent Pattern Tree), for organizing frequent patterns discovered from transactional databases. In addition to an efficient algorithm for CFP-tree construction, we also developed algorithms to efficiently support two important types of queries, namely queries with minimum support constraints and queries with item constraints, against the stored patterns, as these two types of queries are basic building blocks for complex frequent pattern related mining tasks. Comprehensive experimental study has been conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of CFP-tree and efficiency of related algorithms.
Neural predictors of alcohol use and psychopathology symptoms in adolescents

Abstract Adolescence is a period marked by increases in risk taking, sensation seeking, and emotion dysregulation. Neurobiological models of adolescent development propose that lagging development in brain regions associated with affect and behavior control compared to regions associated with reward and emotion processing may underlie these behavioral manifestations. Cross-sectional studies have identified several functional brain networks that may contribute to risk for substance use and psychopathology in adolescents. Determining brain structure measures that prospectively predict substance use and psychopathology could refine our understanding of the mechanisms that contribute to these problems, and lead to improved prevention efforts. Participants (N = 265) were healthy substance-naïve adolescents (ages 12–14) who underwent magnetic resonance imaging and then were followed annually for up to 13 years. Cortical thickness and surface area measures for three prefrontal regions (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and orbitofrontal cortex) and three cortical regions from identified functional networks (anterior cingulate cortex, insular cortex, and parietal cortex) were used to predict subsequent binge drinking, externalizing symptoms, and internalizing symptoms. Thinner dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior frontal cortex in early adolescence predicted more binge drinking and externalizing symptoms, respectively, in late adolescence (ps < .05). Having a family history of alcohol use disorder predicted more subsequent binge drinking and externalizing symptoms. Thinner parietal cortex, but not family history, predicted more subsequent internalizing symptoms (p < .05). This study emphasizes the temporal association between maturation of the salience, inhibition, and executive control networks in early adolescence and late adolescent behavior outcomes. Our findings indicate that developmental variations in these brain regions predate behavioral outcomes of substance use and psychopathology, and may therefore serve as prospective biomarkers of vulnerability.
Functioning of Fluorescent Proteins in Aggregates in Anthozoa Species and in Recombinant Artificial Models

Despite great advances in practical applications of fluorescent proteins (FPs), their natural function is poorly understood. FPs display complex spatio-temporal expression patterns in living Anthozoa coral polyps. Here we applied confocal microscopy, specifically, the fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) technique to analyze intracellular localization and mobility of endogenous FPs in live tissues. We observed three distinct types of protein distributions in living tissues. One type of distribution, characteristic for Anemonia, Discosoma and Zoanthus, is free, highly mobile cytoplasmic localization. Another pattern is seen in FPs localized to numerous intracellular vesicles, observed in Clavularia. The third most intriguing type of intracellular localization is with respect to the spindle-shaped aggregates and lozenge crystals several micrometers in size observed in Zoanthus samples. No protein mobility within those structures was detected by FRAP. This finding encouraged us to develop artificial aggregating FPs. We constructed “trio-FPs” consisting of three tandem copies of tetrameric FPs and demonstrated that they form multiple bright foci upon expression in mammalian cells. High brightness of the aggregates is advantageous for early detection of weak promoter activities. Simultaneously, larger aggregates can induce significant cytostatic and cytotoxic effects and thus such tags are not suitable for long-term and high-level expression.
ESD CYCLOPS: A New Robotic Surgical System for GI Surgery

Gastrointestinal (GI) cancers account for 1.5 million deaths worldwide. Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection (ESD) is an advanced therapeutic endoscopy technique with superior clinical outcome due to the minimally invasive and en bloc removal of tumours. In the western world, ESD is seldom carried out, due to its complex and challenging nature. Various surgical systems are being developed to make this therapy accessible, however, these solutions have shown limited operational workspace, dexterity, or low force exertion capabilities. The current paper shows the ESD CYCLOPS system, a bimanual surgical robotic attachment that can be mounted at the end of any flexible endoscope. The system is able to achieve forces of up to 46N, and showed a mean error of 0.217mm during an elliptical tracing task. The workspace and instrument dexterity is shown by pre-clinical ex vivo trials, in which ESD is succesfully performed by a GI surgeon. The system is currently undergoing pre-clinical in vivo validation.
CD133 Protein N-Glycosylation Processing Contributes to Cell Surface Recognition of the Primitive Cell Marker AC133 Epitope*

Background: Cell surface recognition of the AC133 epitope on CD133 marks many stem cell and cancer stem cell types. Results: A large scale RNA interference screen identifies genes involved in N-glycosylation that regulate cell surface AC133 recognition. Conclusion: CD133 N-glycosylation and its processing contribute to cell surface AC133 recognition. Significance: Glycobiological differences between primitive and differentiated cells may be responsible for regulating cell surface AC133. The AC133 epitope expressed on the CD133 glycoprotein has been widely used as a cell surface marker of numerous stem cell and cancer stem cell types. It has been recently proposed that posttranslational modification and regulation of CD133 may govern cell surface AC133 recognition. Therefore, we performed a large scale pooled RNA interference (RNAi) screen to identify genes involved in cell surface AC133 expression. Gene hits could be validated at a rate of 70.5% in a secondary assay using an orthogonal RNAi system, demonstrating that our primary RNAi screen served as a powerful genetic screening approach. Within the list of hits from the primary screen, genes involved in N-glycan biosynthesis were significantly enriched as determined by Ingenuity Canonical Pathway analyses. Indeed, inhibiting biosynthesis of the N-glycan precursor using the small molecule tunicamycin or inhibiting its transfer to CD133 by generating N-glycan-deficient CD133 mutants resulted in undetectable cell surface AC133. Among the screen hits involved in N-glycosylation were genes involved in complex N-glycan processing, including the poorly characterized MGAT4C, which we demonstrate to be a positive regulator of cell surface AC133 expression. Our study identifies a set of genes involved in CD133 N-glycosylation as a direct contributing factor to cell surface AC133 recognition and provides biochemical evidence for the function and structure of CD133 N-glycans.