Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Food-specific IgGs Are Highly Increased in the Sera of Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Are Clinically Relevant to the Pathogenesis

Objective Dietary antigens are common luminal antigens in the gastrointestinal tract and have been considered to contribute to the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We analyzed the levels of food-specific IgGs against a variety of dietary antigens, explored the clinical relevance of food allergy to the pathogenesis of IBD, and investigated whether or not infliximab (IFX) treatment could regulate the immune responses induced by dietary antigens. Methods A total of 301 IBD patients, including 201 patients with Crohn's disease (CD) and 100 patients with ulcerative colitis (UC), were recruited, and their serum food-specific IgGs against 14 food antigens were detected by a semi-quantitative enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Total serum IgG and IgE levels were measured by immunonephelometry and ﬂuorescent enzyme immunoassay, respectively. Simultaneously, the relevant medical records and clinical data were collected for further analyses. Results Food-specific IgGs against egg, milk, wheat, corn, rice, tomato, codfish, and soybean antigens were found to be significantly increased in the sera of CD patients compared with UC patients and healthy controls (p<0.01). The levels of total serum IgG and IgE were also significantly higher in CD patients than in healthy controls (p<0.01). The titers of corn- and tomato-specific IgGs were found to be significantly correlated with total serum IgG in CD patients (p<0.05), while the titers of egg-, milk-, and wheat-specific IgGs were correlated with total serum IgE (p<0.05). Interestingly, IFX therapy was able to down-regulate the food-specific IgG-mediated immune response markedly in active CD patients. Conclusion Food-specific IgGs against egg, milk, wheat, corn, rice, tomato, codfish, and soybean are highly increased in the sera of CD patients. IFX treatment was able to down-regulate the levels of food-specific IgGs by suppressing intestinal inflammation and promoting mucosal healing. Therefore, food-specific IgGs may serve as an important approach in the diagnosis and management of food allergy in IBD.
Spleen‐derived classical monocytes mediate lung ischemia‐reperfusion injury through IL‐1&bgr;

&NA; Ischemia‐reperfusion injury, a form of sterile inflammation, is the leading risk factor for both short‐term mortality following pulmonary transplantation and chronic lung allograft dysfunction. While it is well recognized that neutrophils are critical mediators of acute lung injury, processes that guide their entry into pulmonary tissue are not well understood. Here, we found that CCR2+ classical monocytes are necessary and sufficient for mediating extravasation of neutrophils into pulmonary tissue during ischemia‐reperfusion injury following hilar clamping or lung transplantation. The classical monocytes were mobilized from the host spleen, and splenectomy attenuated the recruitment of classical monocytes as well as the entry of neutrophils into injured lung tissue, which was associated with improved graft function. Neutrophil extravasation was mediated by MyD88‐dependent IL‐1&bgr; production by graft‐infiltrating classical monocytes, which downregulated the expression of the tight junction‐associated protein ZO‐2 in pulmonary vascular endothelial cells. Thus, we have uncovered a crucial role for classical monocytes, mobilized from the spleen, in mediating neutrophil extravasation, with potential implications for targeting of recipient classical monocytes to ameliorate pulmonary ischemia‐reperfusion injury in the clinic.
Electrochemical trapping of metastable Mn3+ ions for activation of MnO2 oxygen evolution catalysts

Significance Manganese oxide films are desirable oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts due to their stability in acidic solutions and viability as earth-abundant materials. Enhanced catalytic activity of MnO2 incorporated with Mn3+ provides an imperative for understanding the structural and electronic effects giving rise to the superior OER catalysis. We show that (i) Mn3+ is stabilized kinetically in tetrahedral sites and (ii) its presence strains the oxide lattice, leading to a favorable disposition of oxide-based vs. metal-based energy levels that favors enhanced OER activity. The results herein offer a design concept of exploiting ion-induced lattice strain for creating superior metal oxide OER catalysts. Electrodeposited manganese oxide films are promising catalysts for promoting the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), especially in acidic solutions. The activity of these catalysts is known to be enhanced by the introduction of Mn3+. We present in situ electrochemical and X-ray absorption spectroscopic studies, which reveal that Mn3+ may be introduced into MnO2 by an electrochemically induced comproportionation reaction with Mn2+ and that Mn3+ persists in OER active films. Extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectra of the Mn3+-activated films indicate a decrease in the Mn–O coordination number, and Raman microspectroscopy reveals the presence of distorted Mn–O environments. Computational studies show that Mn3+ is kinetically trapped in tetrahedral sites and in a fully oxidized structure, consistent with the reduction of coordination number observed in EXAFS. Although in a reduced state, computation shows that Mn3+ states are stabilized relative to those of oxygen and that the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) is thus dominated by oxygen states. Furthermore, the Mn3+(Td) induces local strain on the oxide sublattice as observed in Raman spectra and results in a reduced gap between the HOMO and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO). The confluence of a reduced HOMO–LUMO gap and oxygen-based HOMO results in the facilitation of OER on the application of anodic potentials to the δ-MnO2 polymorph incorporating Mn3+ ions.
CHEMICAL AND ISTOPIC STUDY OF LAB-FORMED CARBONATES UNDER CRYOGENIC AND

Aqueous environments on early Mars were probably relatively short-lived and local-ized, as evidenced by the lack of abundant secondary minerals detected by the TES instrument [1]. In order to better understand the aqueous history of early Mars we need to be able to interpret the evidence preserved in secondary minerals formed during these aqueous events. Carbonate minerals, in particular, are important secondary minerals for interpreting past aqueous envi-ronments as illustrated by the carbonates preserved in ALH84001[2, 3]. Carbonates formed in short-lived, dynamic aqueous events often preserve kinetic rather than equilibrium chemical and isotopic processes, and predicting the behavior of such systems is facilitated by empirical data. Although many authors have suggested possible formation environments for carbonates on Mars, de-tailed analysis of the properties of carbonates likely to form under martian analog conditions remain scarce. Data from such experiments will be vital to interpret-ing analyses of martian meteorites, in situ data from future missions such as MSL, and data on returned martian samples. This laboratory study focuses on two potential martian carbonate formation environments that may have been significant during early martian history: a cryogenic and a hydrothermal environment. In the cryogenic environment, carbonates precipitate during the freezing of CO
Butterfly-Net: Optimal Function Representation Based on Convolutional Neural Networks

Deep networks, especially Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), have been successfully applied in various areas of machine learning as well as to challenging problems in other scientific and engineering fields. This paper introduces Butterfly-net, a low-complexity CNN with structured and sparse across-channel connections, which aims at an optimal hierarchical function representation of the input signal. Theoretical analysis of the approximation power of Butterfly-net to the Fourier representation of input data shows that the error decays exponentially as the depth increases. Due to the ability of Butterfly-net to approximate Fourier and local Fourier transforms, the result can be used for approximation upper bound for CNNs in a large class of problems. The analytical results are validated by numerical experiments on the approximation of a 1D Fourier kernel and of the energy of 1D and 2D Poisson's equations. Butterfly-net with trained parameters outperforms the hard-coded Butterfly-net and achieves similar accuracy as the trained CNN but with much less parameters. In addition, better robustness of Butterfly-net against CNN is demonstrated when the distribution of the input data has domain shift.
Gestational dyslipidaemia and adverse birthweight outcomes: a systematic review and meta‐analysis

Low and high birthweight is known to increase the risk of acute and longer‐term adverse outcomes, such as stillbirth, infant mortality, obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Gestational dyslipidaemia is associated with a numbers of adverse birth outcomes, but evidence regarding birthweight is still inconsistent to reliably inform clinical practice and treatment recommendations.
Identification and Avoidance of DDoS Attack for Secured Data Communication in Cloud

: Cloud is turning into a prevalent computing platform. Certainly, a question arises on the off chance that we can crush the scandalous DDoS attacks in a cloud environment. A DDoS attack can collapse the whole system in a Cloud Server environment, however in case of cloud it is not that powerful but still to some extend disturbs the normal activity of the system. At the point when a DDoS attack occurs in a client environment, we devote the idle resources of the cloud to clone adequate Intrusion Prevention Systems for the exploited client in order to rapidly channel out attack packets and ensure the QoS (Quality of Service) for benign users simultaneously. In the proposed model we deploy multiple Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) to screen client activity and filter the requests in light of the conduct and forward to the corresponding servers through cloud server. Each server would have certain space designated in the cloud server. The IPS’s continually monitor the activity of the users to counteract DDoS attacks.
Multitaper Spectral Estimation HDP-HMMs for EEG Sleep Inference

Electroencephalographic (EEG) monitoring of neural activity is widely used for sleep disorder diagnostics and research. The standard of care is to manually classify 30-second epochs of EEG time-domain traces into 5 discrete sleep stages. Unfortunately, this scoring process is subjective and time-consuming, and the defined stages do not capture the heterogeneous landscape of healthy and clinical neural dynamics. This motivates the search for a data-driven and principled way to identify the number and composition of salient, reoccurring brain states present during sleep. To this end, we propose a Hierarchical Dirichlet Process Hidden Markov Model (HDP-HMM), combined with wide-sense stationary (WSS) time series spectral estimation to construct a generative model for personalized subject sleep states. In addition, we employ multitaper spectral estimation to further reduce the large variance of the spectral estimates inherent to finite-length EEG measurements. By applying our method to both simulated and human sleep data, we arrive at three main results: 1) a Bayesian nonparametric automated algorithm that recovers general temporal dynamics of sleep, 2) identification of subject-specific "microstates" within canonical sleep stages, and 3) discovery of stage-dependent sub-oscillations with shared spectral signatures across subjects.
Heat Stress among Traffic Police Officers at North Khartoum Locality, Sudan

Thermal stress is an important factor in many work situations; it can seriously affect the health and productivity of the individual. Underlying the effects of thermal environment are the feelings of discomfort and physiological responses to heat. Sudan is subject to severe thermal conditions during the summer months. One of the most direct outcomes of excessive exposure to heat is a rise in core body temperature. Aims: The aim of this study was to evaluate thermal stress based on the WBGT index among Traffic Police Officers at North Khartoum Locality. Material and Methods: This is across sectional study conducted in April 2013.The data on thermal stress was collected using a heat stress monitor (Heat Stress Meter HT30, Made in China) with digital read out was used; Wet Bulb Globe Temperature was chosen to represent the thermal environment. The study cover 17workstations and 18 traffic police officers at main road cross at North Khartoum Locality. The outdoor scale was used in this research, as the jobs studied were located outdoors. Results: WBGT values at the five sites ranged from 23.15to 26.40 Co with values 26.40 Co being consistently recorded, particularly at site five. Heat stress exceeded the national and international recommended limits based on the WBGT index in 33.3% of cases of workstations, 88.9% of Police Traffic Officers have Knowledge of health effects of hot environment, First aid for heat-related disorders training among Police Traffic Officers was 38.9%. Conclusion: All Traffic Police Officers (33.3%) were under heat stress risk because WBGT above 25 °C. Frist aid for heat-related disorders training among Police Traffic Officers was low. Our findings indicate that the majority of Police Traffic Officers 88.9% have Knowledge of health effects of hot environment.
Multi-View Stereo with Asymmetric Checkerboard Propagation and Multi-Hypothesis Joint View Selection

In computer vision domain, how to fast and accurately perform multiview stereo (MVS) is still a challenging problem. In this paper we present a fast yet accurate method for 3D dense reconstruction, called AMHMVS, built on the PatchMatch based stereo algorithm. Different from the regular symmetric propagation scheme, our approach adopts an asymmetric checkerboard propagation strategy, which can adaptively make effective hypotheses expand further according to the confidence of current neighbor hypotheses. In order to aggregate visual information from multiple images better, we propose the multi-hypothesis joint view selection for each pixel, which leverages a cost matrix based on the multiple propagated hypotheses to robustly infer an appropriate aggregation subset parallel. Combined with the above two steps, our approach not only has the capacity of massively parallel computation, but also obtains high accuracy and completeness. Experiments on extensive datasets show that our method achieves more accurate and robust results, and runs faster than the competing methods.
Multi-Task Deep Learning for User Intention Understanding in Speech Interaction Systems

Speech interaction systems have been gaining popularity in recent years. The main purpose of these systems is to generate more satisfactory responses according to users' speech utterances, in which the most critical problem is to analyze user intention. Researches show that user intention conveyed through speech is not only expressed by content, but also closely related with users' speaking manners (e.g. with or without acoustic emphasis). How to incorporate these heterogeneous attributes to infer user intention remains an open problem. In this paper, we define Intention Prominence (IP) as the semantic combination of focus by text and emphasis by speech, and propose a multi-task deep learning framework to predict IP. Specifically, we first use long short-term memory (LSTM) which is capable of modeling long short-term contextual dependencies to detect focus and emphasis, and incorporate the tasks for focus and emphasis detection with multi-task learning (MTL) to reinforce the performance of each other. We then employ Bayesian network (BN) to incorporate multimodal features (focus, emphasis, and location reflecting users' dialect conventions) to predict IP based on feature correlations. Experiments on a data set of 135,566 utterances collected from real-world Sogou Voice Assistant illustrate that our method can outperform the comparison methods over 6.9-24.5% in terms of F1-measure. Moreover, a real practice in the Sogou Voice Assistant indicates that our method can improve the performance on user intention understanding by 7%.
A Position-Biased PageRank Algorithm for Keyphrase Extraction

Given the large amounts of online textual documents available these days, e.g., news articles and scientific papers, effective methods for extracting keyphrases, which provide a high-level topic description of a document, are greatly needed.We propose PositionRank, an unsupervised graph-based approach to keyphrase extraction that incorporates information from all positions of a word's occurrences into a biased PageRank to extract keyphrases. Our model obtains remarkable improvements in performance over strong baselines.
Low Urine pH Is Associated with Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: A Community-based Cross-sectional Study

Objective Low urine pH is associated with several metabolic diseases, such as dyslipidemia, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. However, the association between low urine pH and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) remains unknown. Therefore, we conducted a community-based cross-sectional study to investigate this association. Methods Between April 2013 and March 2014, the records of 4,945 Japanese subjects who had undergone annual health checkups were reviewed to identify subjects who met the diagnostic criteria for NAFLD. Patients Based on urine pH, the participants were classified into four groups; a low urine pH was defined as ≤5.5. Of the 3,411 subjects who qualified for enrollment, 1,028 met the diagnostic criteria for NAFLD. Results The prevalence of NAFLD was significantly increased with decreasing urine pH in both men and women (p<0.01 and p=0.02, respectively). A multivariate analysis, including adjustments for age, metabolic markers, and the renal function, showed a significant association between low urine pH and NAFLD in men and women (odds ratio, 1.37; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-1.85, p=0.04 and odds ratio, 1.73; 95% confidence interval, 1.15-2.62, p<0.01, respectively). Conclusion Our study indicates that NAFLD is associated with a low urine pH in both sexes, findings that might help clinicians identify patients at high risk for NAFLD.
Vitamins B2 and B6 as determinants of kynurenines and related markers of interferon-γ-mediated immune activation in the community-based Hordaland Health Study

Vitamins B2 and B6 are cofactors in the kynurenine pathway. Many of the kynurenines are neuroactive compounds with immunomodulatory effects. In the present study, we aimed to investigate plasma concentrations of vitamins B2 and B6 as determinants of kynurenines and two markers of interferon-γ-mediated immune activation (kynurenine:tryptophan ratio (KTR) and neopterin). We measured the concentrations of vitamins B2 and B6 vitamers, neopterin, tryptophan and six kynurenines (i.e. kynurenine, anthranilic acid, kynurenic acid, 3-hydroxykynurenine, 3-hydroxyanthranilic acid and xanthurenic acid) in plasma from 7051 individuals. Dietary intake of vitamins B2 and B6 was assessed using a validated FFQ. Associations were investigated using partial Spearman's correlations, generalised additive models, and segmented or multiple linear regression. The B2 vitamer, riboflavin, was positively associated with 3-hydroxyanthranilic acid and xanthurenic acid, with correlation coefficients, as obtained by segmented regression, of 0·20 (95 % CI 0·16, 0·23) and 0·24 (95 % CI 0·19, 0·28), at riboflavin concentrations below the median value (13·0 nmol/l). The vitamin B6 vitamer, pyridoxal 5′-phosphate (PLP), was positively associated with most kynurenines at PLP concentrations < 39·3–47·0 nmol/l, and inversely associated with 3-hydroxykynurenine with the association being more prominent at PLP concentrations < 18·9 nmol/l. Riboflavin and PLP were associated with xanthurenic acid only at relatively low, but normal concentrations of both vitamers. Lastly, PLP was negatively correlated with neopterin and KTR. These results demonstrate the significant and complex determination of kynurenine metabolism by vitamin status. Future studies on B-vitamins and kynurenines in relation to chronic diseases should therefore integrate data on relevant biomarkers related to B-vitamins status and tryptophan metabolism.
SN38-loaded <100 nm targeted liposomes for improving poor solubility and minimizing burst release and toxicity: in vitro and in vivo study

Background SN38 (7-ethyl-10-hydroxycamptothecin) is a camptothecin derivative acts against various tumors. However, SN38 is hydrolyzed in the physiological environment (pH 7.4), and this instability interferes with its potential therapeutic effect. Our objective was to investigate SN38-loaded liposomes to overcome the poor solubility of SN38 and its biodistribution, which further diminish its toxicity. Materials and methods The sub-100 nm targeted liposomes was employed to deliver SN-38 and evaluate the characterization, release behaviors, cytotoxicity, in vivo pharmacokinetics and biochemical assay. Results The SN38-loaded targeted liposomes consisted of small (100.49 nm) spherical nanoparticles with negative charge (−37.93 mV) and high entrapment efficiency (92.47%). The release behavior of the SN38-loaded targeted liposomes was fitted with Higuchi kinetics (R2=0.9860). Free SN38 presented initial burst release. The IC50 for the SN38-loaded targeted liposomes (0.11 μM) was significantly lower than for the SN38 solution (0.37 μM) in the MCF7 cell line (P<0.01). Confocal laser scanning microscopy also confirmed highly efficient accumulation in the MCF7 cells. Pharmacokinetics demonstrated that the SN38-loaded targeted liposomes had a slightly increased half-life and mean residence time and decreased area under the concentration–time curve and maximum concentration. The results suggested that retention was achieved while the exposure of SN38 was significantly decreased. A noninvasive in vivo imaging system also showed that the targeted liposomes selectively targeted MCF7 tumors. In vivo toxicity data demonstrated that the decrease in platelets was significantly improved by SN38-loaded targeted liposomes, and diarrhea was not observed in BALB/c mice. Conclusion In summary, SN38-loaded targeted liposomes could be a good candidate for application in human breast cancer.
Centesimal composition and bioactive compounds in African mustards used as condiments in Ivory Coast

The aim of this research was to evaluate the potential of African locust bean mustard, produced with fermented Parkia biglobosa seed and Glycine max seed, as functional food, focusing on its incorporation into the diet. These mustards contained in iron and zinc are respectively 12.16±0.63 mg/100 g and 8.38±0.3 mg/100 g in African locust bean mustard, and respectively 7 87±0.45 mg/100 g and 4.26±1.07 mg/100 g in soy mustard. Polyphenols and flavonoids were contained in large amounts. Ascorbic acid content was, respectively, 19.31 mg/100g of African locust bean mustard and 13.26 mg/100 g of soybean mustard. However, total carotenoids were 60.72±5.06 mg/100 g of African locust bean mustard and 100.86±8.45 mg/100g of soybean mustard. The lipid fraction contained unsaturated fatty acids in large amounts. Based on the results obtained, it can be said that West African mustards are excellent sources of vegetable proteins, iron, zinc, ascorbic acid, total carotenoids and oils rich in unsaturated fatty acids. These condiments may contain bioactive compounds with functional activities, but further research is needed to assess such potential. Key words: Mustard, functional food; bioactive compounds.