Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diagnostic study on an immunochromatographic rapid test for schistosomiasis: comparison between use on serum and on blood spot from fingerprick

Background An immunochromatographic rapid test (ICT; Schistosoma ICT IgG-IgM, LDBIO Diagnostics) demonstrated high sensitivity (96%) in the diagnosis of Schistosoma mansoni and S. haematobium. To date, the test has been validated for use on serum only, but in the absence of lab equipment, blood drop from fingerprick could be a useful option. This method is acquiring more interest because of the high flow of migrants rapidly moving across Italy and other European countries. Objective The aim of this prospective study was to evaluate the use of ICT on whole blood obtained from fingerprick. Setting Centre for Tropical Diseases (CTD), Sacro Cuore Don Calabria Hospital, Negrar, Verona, Italy. Participants The inclusion criteria were African migrants aged ≥18 years with epidemiological risk of infection. The exclusion criteria were refusal to participate in the study and impossibility of execution of one of the two study methods, for any reason. Seventy of the 72 eligible patients completed the study, 79% of whom were male. Interventions The ICT was performed twice for each included patient: one on blood drop (by the research nurses, in the ward) and one on serum (by staff of CTD lab). The primary outcome was the concordance between the two methods, assessed by Cohen’s kappa. Results Cohen’s kappa was 0.45 (95% CI 27.0 to 63.6), indicating moderate agreement between the ICT on serum and the ICT on blood drop. Assuming the results on serum as reference standard for diagnosis, the sensitivity and specificity of ICT on blood drop were 55% (95% CI 40 to 69) and 93% (95% CI 79 to 98), respectively. Conclusions The agreement between the two diagnostic methods is too low to support the alternative one. Implementation of the kit for using blood drop instead of the serum and/or further studies aimed to identify easy-to-use tests for schistosomiasis feasible outside referral centres for tropical diseases are needed.
The bone remodelling cycle

The bone remodelling cycle replaces old and damaged bone and is a highly regulated, lifelong process essential for preserving bone integrity and maintaining mineral homeostasis. During the bone remodelling cycle, osteoclastic resorption is tightly coupled to osteoblastic bone formation. The remodelling cycle occurs within the basic multicellular unit and comprises five co-ordinated steps; activation, resorption, reversal, formation and termination. These steps occur simultaneously but asynchronously at multiple different locations within the skeleton. Study of rare human bone disease and animal models have helped to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate the bone remodelling cycle. The key signalling pathways controlling osteoclastic bone resorption and osteoblastic bone formation are receptor activator of nuclear factor-κB (RANK)/RANK ligand/osteoprotegerin and canonical Wnt signalling. Cytokines, growth factors and prostaglandins act as paracrine regulators of the cycle, whereas endocrine regulators include parathyroid hormone, vitamin D, calcitonin, growth hormone, glucocorticoids, sex hormones, and thyroid hormone. Disruption of the bone remodelling cycle and any resulting imbalance between bone resorption and formation leads to metabolic bone disease, most commonly osteoporosis. The advances in understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying bone remodelling have also provided targets for pharmacological interventions which include antiresorptive and anabolic therapies. This review will describe the remodelling process and its regulation, discuss osteoporosis and summarize the commonest pharmacological interventions used in its management.
Impact of Modification of Burn Center Referral Criteria on Primary Patient Outcome

Patients who have been involved in a burn incident in the Netherlands generally are transported to a hospital near the site of the incident where initial resuscitation and stabilization are performed. If the patient meets one or more of the criteria for admission into a burn center as described in the Emergency Management of Severe Burns (EMSB) protocol, one of the three burn centers is consulted, and a secondary referral is usually arranged. This sequence of events is widely accepted, both in the Netherlands and internationally. In recent years, the risk of a mass casualty burn incident has increased because of expanding population, crowded metropolitan areas, and expansion of industries. In a mass casualty situation, the number of patients who meet the admission criteria generally outnumbers the available beds in burn centers. This situation occurred after the Volendam fire accident with more than 200 victims. Because the standard criteria for admission into a burn center were met by almost all casualties, a team of burn specialists substantially modified the criteria to overcome the shortage of available beds at burn centers. On the basis of this modified set of criteria, patients were reallocated. This reallocation might have had a negative effect on outcome because consensus exists that burn patients benefit from care in specialized burn centers. However, it is also thought that patients with a moderate TBSA occasionally can be treated in nonburn facilities without a substantial decrease in quality of treatment when regular consultation of burn specialists takes place. There are hardly any data about the outcome in these situations, and a quantitative comparison has never been made. The aim of the present study was to compare the results of treatment of burn patients at noncategorical hospitals with a historical control group consisting of similar patients treated at a burn center.
Temporal Noise Analysis of Charge-Domain Sampling Readout Circuits for CMOS Image Sensors

This paper presents a temporal noise analysis of charge-domain sampling readout circuits for Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors. In order to address the trade-off between the low input-referred noise and high dynamic range, a Gm-cell-based pixel together with a charge-domain correlated-double sampling (CDS) technique has been proposed to provide a way to efficiently embed a tunable conversion gain along the read-out path. Such readout topology, however, operates in a non-stationery large-signal behavior, and the statistical properties of its temporal noise are a function of time. Conventional noise analysis methods for CMOS image sensors are based on steady-state signal models, and therefore cannot be readily applied for Gm-cell-based pixels. In this paper, we develop analysis models for both thermal noise and flicker noise in Gm-cell-based pixels by employing the time-domain linear analysis approach and the non-stationary noise analysis theory, which help to quantitatively evaluate the temporal noise characteristic of Gm-cell-based pixels. Both models were numerically computed in MATLAB using design parameters of a prototype chip, and compared with both simulation and experimental results. The good agreement between the theoretical and measurement results verifies the effectiveness of the proposed noise analysis models.
A head-neck-system to walk without thinking

Most of the time, humans do not watch their steps when walking, especially on even grounds. They walk without thinking. How robust is this strategy? How rough can the terrain be to walk this way? Walking performance depends on the dynamical contribution of each part of the body. While it is well known that the head is stabilized during the motions of humans and animals, its contribution to walking equilibrium remains unexplored. To address the question we operate, in simulation, a simplified walking model. We show that the introduction of a stabilized head-neck system drastically improves the robustness to ground perturbations. It significantly influences the dynamics of walking and hence to the balance. Our study is a starting point of a wider research on the involvement of vertebral limbs in the mechanics and control of the human steady gait. It also studies the benefits of such simple control schemes capable to produce complex behaviors.
Space in Monoidal Categories

The category of Hilbert modules may be interpreted as a naive quantum field theory over a base space. Open subsets of the base space are recovered as idempotent subunits, which form a meet-semilattice in any firm braided monoidal category. There is an operation of restriction to an idempotent subunit: it is a graded monad on the category, and has the universal property of algebraic localisation. Spacetime structure on the base space induces a closure operator on the idempotent subunits. Restriction is then interpreted as spacetime propagation. This lets us study relativistic quantum information theory using methods entirely internal to monoidal categories. As a proof of concept, we show that quantum teleportation is only successfully supported on the intersection of Alice and Bob's causal future.
Predictors and Clinical Impact of Incident Lacunes in Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Arteriopathy With Subcortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy

Background and Purpose— Previous studies in cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy showed that accumulation of lacunes strongly relate to clinical severity. However, the potential predictors of incident lacunes and their clinical consequences over a short time frame have not been investigated. This study aimed to determine the predictors and clinical impact of such lesions in a large cohort of patients. Methods— Two hundred and six NOTCH3 mutation carriers (mean age, 49.5±10.6 years) were followed up over 3 years. Incident lacunes were identified using difference imaging from 3-dimensional T1 images. Clinical events and change in different clinical scores such as the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale, Modified Rankin Scale, Barthel index, and time to complete part A and part B of Trail Making Test were recorded. Associations were analyzed with multivariable logistic regression analysis and ANCOVA. Results— Over a mean period of 3.4±0.7 years, incident lacunes occurred in 51 of 206 patients. Both the number of lacunes (P<0.0001) and systolic blood pressure at baseline (P<0.01) were independent predictors of incident lacunes during follow-up. The results were still significant after excluding patients with systolic blood pressure >140 mm Hg. Incident lacunes were also associated with incident stroke and with change in time to complete Trail Making Test part B, initiation/perseveration subscale of the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale and Barthel Index over the study period. Conclusions— Systolic blood pressure and the number of prevalent lacunes are independent predictors of incident lacunes in cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy. These lesions mainly impact executive performances and functional independence over 3 years.
Atrial Fibrillation in Transient Ischemic Attack Versus Ischemic Stroke: A Swedish Stroke Register (Riksstroke) Study

Background and Purpose— Compared with ischemic stroke (IS), the association of atrial fibrillation (AF) with transient ischemic attack (TIA) is less well established. We aimed to assess the proportion of AF in patients with TIA, and these patients’ characteristics and secondary preventive treatment in comparison to patients with IS. Methods— Hospital-based data on TIA and IS events, registered from July 2011 to June 2013, were obtained from the Swedish Stroke Register (Riksstroke). A time-based TIA definition (duration of symptoms <24 hours) was applied. AF was registered as present when previously known or diagnosed at the time of assessment. Results— AF was present in 2779 of 14 980 (18.6%) patients with TIA and 13 258 of 44 173 (30.0%) patients with IS. The proportion of AF increased with age, reaching 32.9% in TIA and 46.6% in IS patients ≥85 years. Both in TIA and IS, age, hypertension, a history of stroke, and TIA, and being a nonsmoker were associated with the presence of AF. In contrast to IS, AF was less common in female than in male patients with TIA. At discharge, 64.2% of TIA and 50.0% of IS patients with AF were treated with oral anticoagulants. Proportions of AF patients treated with oral anticoagulants decreased substantially with increasing age. Conclusions— AF is highly prevalent not only in IS but also in TIA patients, with proportions steeply increasing with age. In both TIA and IS, a substantial proportion of patients with AF were discharged without anticoagulant therapy.
Microbial strain-level population structure and genetic diversity from metagenomes

Among the human health conditions linked to microbial communities, phenotypes are often associated with only a subset of strains within causal microbial groups. Although it has been critical for decades in microbial physiology to characterize individual strains, this has been challenging when using culture-independent high-throughput metagenomics. We introduce StrainPhlAn, a novel metagenomic strain identification approach, and apply it to characterize the genetic structure of thousands of strains from more than 125 species in more than 1500 gut metagenomes drawn from populations spanning North and South American, European, Asian, and African countries. The method relies on per-sample dominant sequence variant reconstruction within species-specific marker genes. It identified primarily subject-specific strain variants (<5% inter-subject strain sharing), and we determined that a single strain typically dominated each species and was retained over time (for >70% of species). Microbial population structure was correlated in several distinct ways with the geographic structure of the host population. In some cases, discrete subspecies (e.g., for Eubacterium rectale and Prevotella copri) or continuous microbial genetic variations (e.g., for Faecalibacterium prausnitzii) were associated with geographically distinct human populations, whereas few strains occurred in multiple unrelated cohorts. We further estimated the genetic variability of gut microbes, with Bacteroides species appearing remarkably consistent (0.45% median number of nucleotide variants between strains), whereas P. copri was among the most plastic gut colonizers. We thus characterize here the population genetics of previously inaccessible intestinal microbes, providing a comprehensive strain-level genetic overview of the gut microbial diversity.
Differential visual ornamentation between brood parasitic and parental cuckoos

The evolution of brood parasitism should affect adult phenotypic traits due to sexual selection as well as the parasite–host interactions, although it is rarely focused on. Sexual selection theory predicts extravagant secondary sexual characteristics in brood parasites whereas immature‐like modest sexual characteristics in parental species. This is because juvenile‐like immature traits can attract mates by exploiting parental care for young (i.e. attraction to young), and because the good parent process, which favours traits that signal parental care ability, would constrain the evolution of costly secondary sexual characteristics due to evolutionary trade‐offs between parental investment and sexually selected traits. Using a phylogenetic comparative approach, we studied plumage and bare‐part characteristics of adults in relation to brood parasitism in cuckoos (family Cuculidae), in which brood parasitism together with loss of parental care has evolved three times. As predicted, we found that nonparasitic cuckoos had plumage more similar to the juveniles than did brood parasitic cuckoos. Furthermore, nonparasitic cuckoos had a higher probability of having additional bare skin, that is a seemingly less costly, hatchling‐like trait, than did brood parasitic cuckoos. This finding further supports the link between parental care and sexual selection, although the influence of a parasite–host interaction cannot be excluded. The analysis of evolutionary pathways suggested interdependent evolution of additional bare skin and brood parasitism. Brood parasitism together with the loss of parental care may prevent the maintenance of a modest phenotype similar to the young, and vice versa in some cases.
Learning Knowledge Graph Embeddings with Type Regularizer

Learning relations based on evidence from knowledge repositories rely on processing the available relation instances. Many relations, however, have clear domain and range, which we hypothesize could help learn a better, more generalizing, model. We include such information in the RESCAL model in the form of a regularization factor added to the loss function that takes into account the types (categories) of the entities that appear as arguments to relations in the knowledge base. Tested on Freebase, a frequently used benchmarking dataset for link/path predicting tasks, we note increased performance compared to the baseline model in terms of mean reciprocal rank and hits@N, N = 1, 3, 10. Furthermore, we discover scenarios that significantly impact the effectiveness of the type regularizer.
Regulation of S-formylglutathione hydrolase by the anti-aging gene klotho

Klotho is an aging-suppressor gene. The purpose of this study is to investigate the binding sites (receptors) and function of short-form Klotho (Skl). We showed that Skl physically bound to multiple proteins. We found physical and functional interactions between Skl and S-formylglutathione hydrolase (FGH), a key enzyme in the generation of the major cellular anti-oxidant GSH, using co-immunoprecipitation-coupled mass spectrometry. We further confirmed the colocalization of Skl and FGH around the nucleus in kidney cells using immunofluorescent staining. Skl positively regulated FGH gene expression via Kid3 transcription factor. Overexpression of Skl increased FGH mRNA and protein expression while silencing of Skl attenuated FGH mRNA and protein expression. Klotho gene mutation suppressed FGH expression in red blood cells and kidneys resulting in anemia and kidney damage in mice. Overexpression of Skl increased total GSH production and the GSH/GSSG ratio, an index of anti-oxidant capacity, leading to a decrease in intracellular H2O2 and superoxide levels. The antioxidant activity of Skl was eliminated by silencing of FGH, indicating that Skl increased GSH via FGH. Interestingly, Skl directly interacted with FGH and regulated its function. Site-directed mutagenesis of the N-glycan-modified residues in Skl abolished its antioxidant activity, suggesting that these N-glycan moieties are important features that interact with FGH. Specific mutation of Asp to Ala at site 285 resulted in a loss of anti-oxidant activity of Skl, suggesting that N-glycosylation at site 285 is the key mechanism that determines Skl activity. Therefore, this study demonstrates, for the first time, that Skl regulates anti-oxidant GSH generation via interaction with FGH through N-glycosylation.
The Practical Procedure of Tumescent Technique in Burn Surgery for Excision of Burn Eschar

The tumescent technique, which involves injection of large volumes of dilute epinephrine solution into subcutaneous fat, has been shown to markedly increase the safety of liposuction surgery, which is associated with risks of blood loss. The authors use this technique during burn surgery and developed a practical method of determining the amount of solution injected. The authors have applied the tumescent technique consisting of subeschar infiltration of dilute epinephrine (1 mg/L) in thermoneutral (37°C) saline. Preoperatively, a 5 × 5 cm square grid pattern is drawn on the burn wound, which facilitates estimation of the amount of infiltrated solution. The authors injected 20 ml of solution per square in the grid. Ten consecutive patients underwent 15 surgical procedures for tangential excision and split-thickness skin grafting. There were no complications during the intraoperative or postoperative period. Their method using a grid pattern drawn on the tissue being treated by the tumescent technique in burn surgery facilitates the excision of burn eschar.
Cross-Bridge Group Ensembles Describing Cooperativity in Thermodynamically Consistent Way

The aim of this work is to incorporate cooperativity into Huxley-type cross-bridge model in thermodynamically consistent way. While the Huxley-type models assume that cross-bridges act independently from each other, we take into account that each cross-bridge is influenced by its neighbors and cooperativity is induced by tropomyosin movement. For that, we introduce ensembles of cross-bridge groups connected by elastic tropomyosin. By taking into account that the mechanical displacement of tropomyosin induces free energy change of the cross-bridge group ensemble, we develop the formalism for thermodynamically consistent description of the cooperativity in muscle contraction. An example model was composed to test the approach. The model parameters were found by optimization from the linear relation between oxygen consumption and stress-strain area as well as experimentally measured stress dynamics of rat trabecula. We have found a good agreement between the optimized model solution and experimental data. Simulations also showed that it is possible to study cooperativity with the approach developed in this work.
Data Mining for Detecting Bitcoin Ponzi Schemes

Soon after its introduction in 2009, Bitcoin has been adopted by cyber-criminals, which rely on its pseudonymity to implement virtually untraceable scams. One of the typical scams that operate on Bitcoin are the so-called Ponzi schemes. These are fraudulent investments which repay users with the funds invested by new users that join the scheme, and implode when it is no longer possible to find new investments. Despite being illegal in many countries, Ponzi schemes are now proliferating on Bitcoin, and they keep alluring new victims, who are plundered of millions of dollars. We apply data mining techniques to detect Bitcoin addresses related to Ponzi schemes. Our starting point is a dataset of features of real-world Ponzi schemes, that we construct by analysing, on the Bitcoin blockchain, the transactions used to perform the scams. We use this dataset to experiment with various machine learning algorithms, and we assess their effectiveness through standard validation protocols and performance metrics. The best of the classifiers we have experimented can identify most of the Ponzi schemes in the dataset, with a low number of false positives.
User-Centered Robot Head Design: a Sensing Computing Interaction Platform for Robotics Research (SCIPRR)

We developed and evaluated a novel humanoid head, SCIPRR (Sensing, Computing, Interacting Platform for Robotics Research). SCIPRR is a head shell that was iteratively created with additive manufacturing. SCIPRR contains internal scaffolding that allows sensors, small form computers, and a back-projection system to display an animated face on a front-facing screen. SCIPRR was developed using User Centered Design principles and evaluated using three different methods. First, we created multiple, small-scale prototypes through additive manufacturing and performed polling and refinement of the overall head shape. Second, we performed usability evaluations of expert HRI mechanics as they swapped sensors and computers within the the SCIPRR head. Finally, we ran and analyzed an experiment to evaluate how much novices would like a robot with our head design to perform different social and traditional robot tasks. We made both major and minor changes after each evaluation and iteration. Overall, expert users liked the SCIPRR head and novices wanted a robot with the SCIPRR head to perform more tasks (including social tasks) than a more traditional robot.