Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
“Take an opportunity whenever you get it”: Information sharing among African‐American women with hypertension

Nearly half of African‐American women have hypertension, which increases their risk for cardiovascular disease and stroke. A plethora of consumer health information products and services exist to inform people with hypertension and to promote self‐management among them. Promotion of information sharing by African‐American women represents a promising, culturally applicable strategy for consumer health information services focused on hypertension self‐management. Yet how African‐American women share hypertension information with others is unclear. The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive study was to examine practices of information sharing in African‐American women with hypertension. Thirteen women (mean age = 73, SD = 9.87) participated in one of 2 focus groups held at an urban community health center. Thematic analysis revealed that the women shared information about how they self‐managed their blood pressure i) with female family members and friends, ii) about ways in which they adapted self‐management strategies to work for them, iii) mostly in group settings, and iv) because they wanted to prevent others from suffering and reinforce their own knowledge about hypertension self‐management. New findings emerged regarding assessing “readiness” for information. Study findings will be used to inform the design of an information‐sharing intervention to support self‐management of hypertension in African‐American women.
How Much Chemistry Does a Deep Neural Network Need to Know to Make Accurate Predictions?

The meteoric rise of deep learning models in computer vision research, having achieved human-level accuracy in image recognition tasks is firm evidence of the impact of representation learning of deep neural networks. In the chemistry domain, recent advances have also led to the development of similar CNN models, such as Chemception, that is trained to predict chemical properties using images of molecular drawings. In this work, we investigate the effects of systematically removing and adding localized domain-specific information to the image channels of the training data. By augmenting images with only 3 additional basic information, and without introducing any architectural changes, we demonstrate that an augmented Chemception (AugChemception) outperforms the original model in the prediction of toxicity, activity, and solvation free energy. Then, by altering the information content in the images, and examining the resulting model's performance, we also identify two distinct learning patterns in predicting toxicity/activity as compared to solvation free energy. These patterns suggest that Chemception is learning about its tasks in the manner that is consistent with established knowledge. Thus, our work demonstrates that advanced chemical knowledge is not a pre-requisite for deep learning models to accurately predict complex chemical properties.
Nicotinic acid and related compounds

Background: Studies indicate that nicotinic acid and related compounds may decrease phosphorus concentrations effectively by reducing the absorption in the gastrointestinal tract. However, the efficacy and safety of oral niacin treatments have only been investigated in a limited number of small-scale studies. Methods: We performed this meta-analysis by pooling 12 qualified relevant preclinical and clinical trials to evaluate the association of nicotinic acid (and its related compounds) treatment and hyperphosphatemia among dialysis patients. Baseline and after treatment data were collected from the studies to evaluate drug efficacy, effect on lipid profile, and drug safety. To evaluate drug efficacy, subgroups were created based on different exposure time (i.e., 4 wks, 8 wks, 12 wks, and 24 wks) and each subgroup was compared against baseline data. In the assessment of lipid profile and drug safety, results of 8-week treatment were compared against baseline data. Results: Our study showed that in the efficacy assessment of drug treatment, serum phosphorus concentration was only significantly reduced in the 4-week (SMD, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.40 to 0.97; P = .000; n = 8), and 8-week (SMD, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.68 to 1.42; P = .000; n = 10) treatment groups. The calcium × phosphorus product showed significantly reduced concentration in all the drug exposure time settings, and no rebound was detected (4-wk treatment: SMD, 0.61; 95% CI, 0.18 to 1.04; P = .005; n = 5; 8-wk treatment: SMD, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.32 to 1.18, P = .001; n = 8; and 12-wks treatment: SMD, 0.28, 95% CI, −0.06 to 0.61; P = .103; n = 3). Lipid profile monitoring showed that high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and triglycerides (TG) significantly changed after 8 weeks of treatment (HDL: SMD, −0.63; 95% CI, −1.03 to 0.24; P = .002; n = 5) and TG: SMD, 0.25; 95% CI, 0.02 to 0.49; P = . 033; n = 5). Assessment of drug safety detected significant association for incidence of diarrhea (8% incidence rate; 95% CI, 4% to 12%; P = .001) and total adverse event (41% incidence rate, 95% CI: 12% to 69%, P = .001). Conclusion: Our study concludes that nicotinic acid and related compounds can significantly reduce serum phosphorus concentration with additive antilipemic effects. We also recommend that the safety of this drug be further studied, as our results suggest significant incidence of adverse events.
Expansion on Stromal Cells Preserves the Undifferentiated State of Human Hematopoietic Stem Cells Despite Compromised Reconstitution Ability

Lack of HLA-matched hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) limits the number of patients with life-threatening blood disorders that can be treated by HSC transplantation. So far, insufficient understanding of the regulatory mechanisms governing human HSC has precluded the development of effective protocols for culturing HSC for therapeutic use and molecular studies. We defined a culture system using OP9M2 mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) stroma that protects human hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPC) from differentiation and apoptosis. In addition, it facilitates a dramatic expansion of multipotent progenitors that retain the immunophenotype (CD34+CD38−CD90+) characteristic of human HSPC and proliferative potential over several weeks in culture. In contrast, transplantable HSC could be maintained, but not significantly expanded, during 2-week culture. Temporal analysis of the transcriptome of the ex vivo expanded CD34+CD38−CD90+ cells documented remarkable stability of most transcriptional regulators known to govern the undifferentiated HSC state. Nevertheless, it revealed dynamic fluctuations in transcriptional programs that associate with HSC behavior and may compromise HSC function, such as dysregulation of PBX1 regulated genetic networks. This culture system serves now as a platform for modeling human multilineage hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell hierarchy and studying the complex regulation of HSC identity and function required for successful ex vivo expansion of transplantable HSC.
Preserved processing of musical structure in a person with agrammatic aphasia

ABSTRACT Evidence for shared processing of structure (or syntax) in language and in music conflicts with neuropsychological dissociations between the two. However, while harmonic structural processing can be impaired in patients with spared linguistic syntactic abilities (Peretz, I. (1993). Auditory atonalia for melodies. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 10, 21–56. doi:10.1080/02643299308253455), evidence for the opposite dissociation–preserved harmonic processing despite agrammatism–is largely lacking. Here, we report one such case: HV, a former musician with Broca’s aphasia and agrammatic speech, was impaired in making linguistic, but not musical, acceptability judgments. Similarly, she showed no sensitivity to linguistic structure, but normal sensitivity to musical structure, in implicit priming tasks. To our knowledge, this is the first non-anecdotal report of a patient with agrammatic aphasia demonstrating preserved harmonic processing abilities, supporting claims that aspects of musical and linguistic structure rely on distinct neural mechanisms.
Ebola US Patient Zero: lessons on misdiagnosis and effective use of electronic health records

Abstract On September 30th, 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first travel-associated case of US Ebola in Dallas, TX. This case exposed two of the greatest concerns in patient safety in the US outpatient health care system: misdiagnosis and ineffective use of electronic health records (EHRs). The case received widespread media attention highlighting failures in disaster management, infectious disease control, national security, and emergency department (ED) care. In addition, an error in making a correct and timely Ebola diagnosis on initial ED presentation brought diagnostic decision-making vulnerabilities in the EHR era into the public eye. In this paper, we use this defining “teachable moment” to highlight the public health challenge of diagnostic errors and discuss the effective use of EHRs in the diagnostic process. We analyze the case to discuss several missed opportunities and outline key challenges and opportunities facing diagnostic decision-making in EHR-enabled health care. It is important to recognize the reality that EHRs suffer from major usability and inter-operability issues, but also to acknowledge that they are only tools and not a replacement for basic history-taking, examination skills, and critical thinking. While physicians and health care organizations ultimately need to own the responsibility for addressing diagnostic errors, several national-level initiatives can help, including working with software developers to improve EHR usability. Multifaceted approaches that account for both technical and non-technical factors will be needed. Ebola US Patient Zero reminds us that in certain cases, a single misdiagnosis can have widespread and costly implications for public health.
Modeling Biology using Generic Reactive Animation

Complex biological systems involve incorporated behaviors of numerous processes, mechanisms and objects. However, experimental analysis, by its nature, divides biological systems into static interactions with little dynamics. To bridge the gap between experimental data and the underlying behavior, our group has been formalizing biological findings into mathematically and algorithmically rigorous specifications, which are then compiled into reactive models. To realistically animate our models, we designed a generic architecture for the earlier idea of reactive animation, in a way that allows it to link up reactive models with animation tools. Here, we describe the reactive animation approach and some of the benefits of employing it to simulate and analyze complex biological systems. We illustrate our approach with a model of pancreatic development, a highly complex system with a unique 3D structure, and also mention more recent work on adding animation to the generic cell project (GemCell).
Data and Statistical Methods To Analyze the Human Microbiome

The Waldron lab for computational biostatistics bridges the areas of cancer genomics and microbiome studies for public health, developing methods to exploit publicly available data resources and to integrate -omics studies. ABSTRACT The Waldron lab for computational biostatistics bridges the areas of cancer genomics and microbiome studies for public health, developing methods to exploit publicly available data resources and to integrate -omics studies.
Mineralogical quantification of iron ore sinter

The mineralogy and microstructure of sinter play an important role in determining the physical and metallurgical properties of iron ore sinter. Characterisation of sinter phases is, therefore, a cost-effective and complementary tool to conventional physical and metallurgical testing of iron ore sinter in evaluating and predicting sinter quality. Over the years, CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) has developed a scheme for characterising iron ore sinter which classifies primary sinter phases, such as un-reacted and partially reacted haematite, magnetite and remnant fluxes, and secondary phases including silico-ferrite of calcium and aluminium (SFCA), secondary haematite and magnetite, glass and larnite. Quantification of these phases has traditionally been carried out by manual point counting under a petrographic microscope. However, new technologies based on automated optical image analysis, quantitative X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy are now available for evaluation. In this study, two sinter samples of varying chemistry were prepared and characterised using both point counting and automated optical image analysis. Quantification of sinter phases is a complementary tool for comparing the physical properties of sinter obtained from various sinter blends, and sinter phase quantification results can be used for comparing pot-grate sinter with different metallurgical properties.
Duplication of chicken defensin7 gene generated by gene conversion and homologous recombination

Significance Copy number variation is an important source of genetic variation in animal genomes and an evolutionary intermediate in gene family expansion. In this study, we report the presence of a tandem duplication of β-defensin 7 (BD7) among multiple breeds of chickens and a resulting chimeric promoter that appears to result from gene conversion followed by nonallelic homologous recombination. These findings contribute to the understanding of gene family expansion in animals and the role of large gene families in host-defense mechanisms. Defensins constitute an evolutionary conserved family of cationic antimicrobial peptides that play a key role in host innate immune responses to infection. Defensin genes generally reside in complex genomic regions that are prone to structural variation, and defensin genes exhibit extensive copy number variation in humans and in other species. Copy number variation of defensin genes was examined in inbred lines of Leghorn and Fayoumi chickens, and a duplication of defensin7 was discovered in the Fayoumi breed. Analysis of junction sequences confirmed the occurrence of a simple tandem duplication of defensin7 with sequence identity at the junction, suggesting nonallelic homologous recombination between defensin7 and defensin6. The duplication event generated two chimeric promoters that are best explained by gene conversion followed by homologous recombination. Expression of defensin7 was not elevated in animals with two genes despite both genes being transcribed in the tissues examined. Computational prediction of promoter regions revealed the presence of several putative transcription factor binding sites generated by the duplication event. These data provide insight into the evolution and possible function of large gene families and specifically, the defensins.
Sequencing of circulating tumor DNA for dynamic monitoring of gene mutations in advanced non-small cell lung cancer

Lung cancer is the most commonly occurring type of cancer worldwide and also has the highest mortality rate. Although targeted therapy of non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) has become common, the majority of patients receiving first-line epithelial growth factor receptor (EGFR)-TKI treatment develop drug resistance. The EGFR T790M (NM_005228.4(EGFR):c.2369C>T (p.Thr790Met)) mutation accounts for half of all reported resistance cases; however, the molecular mechanism resulting in the drug resistance remains to be characterized. Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) isolated from plasma has great potential for identification of gene mutations in NSCLC. Collection of ctDNA is relatively non-invasive and can avoid the inherent disadvantages of tissue biopsy. In the present study, next-generation sequencing technology was used to detect the variation of ctDNA in the peripheral blood of patients administered with EGFR-TKI. The patients were monitored serially to establish a dynamic resistance gene detection system, with the rationale being to alter the treatment strategy as soon as the emergence of drug resistance gene mutations. A mutation spectrum of the group of patients was constructed. A driver gene mutation was identified in the ctDNA of each patient, and certain patients had clinically targetable gene mutations like EGFR, ROS proto-oncogene receptor tyrosine kinase and B-Raf proto-oncogene serine/threonine kinase. The dynamic monitoring of EGFR status indicated that the EGFR mutation rate was consistent with the tumor burden of patients. Overall, ctDNA detection is a useful method for the molecular genotyping of patients with cancer. The dynamic resistance gene detection system described in the present study is a sensitive and useful tool for the monitoring of gene status, which has potential to be used for direction of treatment strategy by detecting the emergence of drug resistance gene mutations.
Hydrothermal growth of ZnO nanoparticles under different conditions

Abstract In this study, a simple low-temperature hydrothermal method was used to synthesize ZnO nanoparticles. The structural, morphological and optical characterizations of the nanoparticles were evaluated with regard to the zinc content. To achieve this, the molar ratios of the precursors were changed from 0.05 to 0.1 M. The structural and morphological analyses showed that all samples had a polycrystalline hexangular wurtzite crystal structure and the shape of the ZnO nanoparticles changed with increasing zinc content. A possible growth mechanism of the ZnO nanoparticles is explained in terms of the zinc content. Optical measurement revealed that the shape of the nanoparticles affects the position of the band-edge emission as well as the shape of the luminescence spectrum.
International fusion material irradiation facility (IFMIF): neutron source term simulation and neutronics analyses of the high flux test module

The report describes the new results of the development work performed at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe on the neutronics of the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF). An important step forward has been done in the simulation of neutron production of the deuteron-lithium source using the Li(d,xn) reaction cross sections from evaluated data files. The developed Monte Carlo routine and d-Li reaction data newly evaluated at INPE Obninsk have been verified against available experimental data on the differential neutron yield from deuteron-bombarded thick lithium targets. With the modified neutron source three-dimensional distributions of neutron and photon fluxes, displacement and gas production rates and nuclear heating inside the high flux test module (HFTM) were calculated. In order to estimate the uncertainty resulting from the evaluated data, two independent libraries, recently released by INPE and LANL, have been used in the transport calculations. The proposal to use a reflector around the HFTM to get higher dpa rate and lower spatial gradients was thoroughly investigated. The IFMIF neutronics parameters at different deployment stages regarding variation of beam intensity, footprint and energy have been estimated.
Fast Shadow Detection from a Single Image Using a Patched Convolutional Neural Network

In recent years, various shadow detection methods from a single image have been proposed and used in vision systems; however, most of them are not appropriate for the robotic applications due to the expensive time complexity. This paper introduces a fast shadow detection method using a deep learning framework, with a time cost that is appropriate for robotic applications. In our solution, we first obtain a shadow prior map with the help of multi-class support vector machine using statistical features. Then, we use a semantic-aware patch-level Convolutional Neural Network that efficiently trains on shadow examples by combining the original image and the shadow prior map. Experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate the proposed method significantly decreases the time complexity of shadow detection, by one or two orders of magnitude compared with state-of-the-art methods, without losing accuracy.
Radio bearing of sources with directional antennas in urban environment

Abstract This paper focuses on assessing the limitations in the direction-finding process of radio sources with directional antennas in an urbanized environment, demonstrating how signal source antenna parameters, such as beamwidth and maximum radiation direction affect bearing accuracy in non-line-of-sight conditions. These evaluations are based on simulation studies, which use measurement-tested signal processing procedures. These procedures are based on a multi-elliptical propagation model, the geometry of which is related to the environment by the power delay profile or spectrum. The probability density function of the angle of arrival for different parameters of the transmitting antenna is the simulation result. This characteristic allows assessing the effect of the signal source antenna parameters on bearing error. The obtained results are the basis for practical correction bearing error and these show the possibility of improving the efficiency of the radio source location in the urbanized environment.
Large-area, high-quality organic–inorganic hybrid perovskite thin films via a controlled vapor–solid reaction

A new vapor–solid reaction (VSR) method is demonstrated, in which two parallel hot plates were used to synthesize high-quality organic–inorganic hybrid perovskite thin films over an area of 8 × 8 cm2. We first probed the VSR process in detail, and found side reactions between methylammonium iodide (MAI) vapor and lead iodide (PbI2) occurring, which could be largely suppressed by inserting a PEDOT:PSS layer beneath. Furthermore, we employed an in situ resistance measurement method to monitor the evolution of perovskite thin films, which provided valuable insights for precise control of film growth. Inverted planar perovskite solar cells with a decent efficiency of 12.2% have been achieved. Our work provides not only a strategy to fabricate high-quality perovskite thin films over a large area, but also a reliable way to optimize the reaction parameters of perovskite. In addition, our finding reveals that both the precise control of the ratio of MAI to PbI2 and the proper choice of substrates are decisive for achieving high-performance devices during the VSR process.
Phycoerythrin Peptide from Pyropia yezoensis Alleviates Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress Caused by Perfluorooctane Sulfonate-Induced Calcium Dysregulation

Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), a stable fluorosurfactant, causes endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in the brain. This study was designed to investigate whether a phycoerythrin-derived peptide of Pyropia yezoensis (PYP) reduces PFOS-induced ER stress associated with calcium dysregulation. The protective effects of PYP were determined by cell viability, immunoblotting for ER stress response protein glucose-regulated protein 78 (GRP78) and calcium-dependent protein kinases in rat frontal cortical neurons. PFOS-induced decrease in cell viability was attenuated by PYP pretreatment (1 µg/mL) for 24 h, which was downregulated by inhibiting tropomyosin-receptor kinase B (TrkB). PYP pretreatment downregulated the increase in intracellular calcium levels and phosphorylation of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II and c-Jun N-terminal kinase which are associated with a PFOS-induced increase in GRP78. The PFOS-induced increase in GRP78 was downregulated via activation of TrkB receptor-linked extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1/2 (ERK1/2) by PYP pretreatment. Moreover, PYP microinjections (1 µg/kg, 0.54 nmol) attenuated the GRP78 expression in rat prefrontal cortex caused by PFOS (10 mg/kg) exposure for 2 weeks. These findings demonstrate that PYP enhances frontal cortical neuron viability via activation of TrkB receptor-ERK1/2 signaling and attenuation of ER stress in rat prefrontal cortex against PFOS exposure, suggesting that PYP might prevent neuronal dysfunctions caused by PFOS-induced ER stress.