Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Associations among body size across the life course, adult height and endometriosis

STUDY QUESTION Are body size across the life course and adult height associated with endometriosis? SUMMARY ANSWER Endometriosis is associated with lean body size during childhood, adolescence and adulthood; tall total adult height; and tall sitting height. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY The literature suggests that both adult body size and height are associated with endometriosis risk, but few studies have investigated the role of body size across the life course. Additionally, no study has investigated the relationships between components of height and endometriosis. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION We used a nested case-control design within E3N (Etude Epidémiologique auprès de femmes de l'Education Nationale), a prospective cohort of French women. Data were updated every 2-3 years through self-administered questionnaires. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% CIs were computed using logistic regression models adjusted for a priori confounding factors. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS A total of 2416 endometriosis cases were reported as surgically ascertained among the 61 208 included women. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE The odds of endometriosis were lower among women who reported having a large versus lean body size at 8 years (P for trend = 0.003), at menarche (P for trend < 0.0001) and at ages 20-25 years (P for trend < 0.0001). Women in the highest quartiles of height had statistically significantly increased odds of endometriosis compared to those in the lowest (<158 cm) (162-164 cm: OR = 1.28, 95% CI = 1.12-1.46; ≥165 cm: OR = 1.33, 95% CI = 1.18-1.49, P for trend < 0.0001). Statistically significantly increased odds were also observed among women with a taller sitting height (OR = 1.24, 95% CI = 1.05-1.47, P for trend = 0.01). Leg length was not statistically significantly associated with endometriosis. LIMITATIONS REASONS FOR CAUTION Endometriosis cases may be prone to misclassification; however, we restricted our case definition to surgically-confirmed cases, which showed a high validation rate. Body size is based on retrospective self-report, which may be subject to recall bias. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS The results of this study suggest that endometriosis is positively associated with lean body size across the life course and total adult height. They also suggest that components of height are associated with endometriosis, which should be investigated further. STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S) The Mutuelle Générale de l'Education Nationale (MGEN); the European Community; the French League against Cancer (LNCC); Gustave Roussy; the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm). L.V. F. was supported by a T32 grant (#HD060454) in reproductive, perinatal and pediatric epidemiology from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Cancer Institute (3R25CA057711) National Institutes of Health. M.K. was supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship within the seventh European Community Framework Programme (#PIOF-GA-2011-302078). The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Development and Evaluation of Digital Game-Based Training for Managers to Promote Employee Mental Health and Reduce Mental Illness Stigma at Work: Quasi-Experimental Study of Program Effectiveness

Background To counteract the negative impact of mental health problems on business, organizations are increasingly investing in mental health intervention measures. However, those services are often underused, which, to a great extent, can be attributed to fear of stigmatization. Nevertheless, so far only a few workplace interventions have specifically targeted stigma, and evidence on their effectiveness is limited. Objective The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate a digital game-based training program for managers to promote employee mental health and reduce mental illness stigma at work. Methods We describe the empirical development of Leadership Training in Mental Health Promotion (LMHP), a digital game-based training program for leaders. A 1-group pre-post design and a 3-month follow-up were used for training evaluation. We applied multilevel growth models to investigate change over time in the dependent variables knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and intentions to promote employee mental health in 48 managers of a global enterprise in the United Kingdom. Participants were mainly male (44/48, 92%) and ranged in age from 32 to 58 (mean 46.0, SD 7.2) years. Results We found a positive impact of the Web-based training program on managers’ knowledge of mental health and mental illness (P<.001), on attitudes toward people with mental health problems (P<.01), and on their self-efficacy to deal with mental health situations at work (P<.001), with the exception of intentions to promote employee mental health, which was initially high. Conclusions Results provide first evidence of the effectiveness of LMHP to positively affect managers’ skills to promote employee mental health at work. Furthermore, the high rate of participation in LMHP (48/54, 89%) supports the use of digital game-based interventions to increase user engagement and user experience in mental health programs at work.
A 120–420 MHz delay‐locked loop with multi‐band voltage‐controlled delay unit

A low‐jitter and low‐power dissipation delay‐locked loop (DLL) is presented. A proposed multi‐band voltage control delay unit (MVCDU) is employed to extend the operation frequency of the DLL by controlling the delay cell within the MVCDU. The jitter of DLL is reduced due to MVCDU's low sensitivity. The delay cell in the MVCDU employs a differential configuration to further reduce the noise impact from the fluctuation in the supply and ground voltage. The operating frequency of the proposed DLL ranges from 120 to 420 MHz. The proposed design has been fabricated in a TSMC 0. 18µm CMOS process. The measured RMS and peak‐to‐peak jitters are 4.86 and 34.55 ps, respectively, at an operating frequency of 300 MHz. The power dissipation is below 14.85 mW at an operating frequency of 420 MHz. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
KLAP: Kernel launch aggregation and promotion for optimizing dynamic parallelism

Dynamic parallelism on GPUs simplifies the programming of many classes of applications that generate paral-lelizable work not known prior to execution. However, modern GPUs architectures do not support dynamic parallelism efficiently due to the high kernel launch overhead, limited number of simultaneous kernels, and limited depth of dynamic calls a device can support. In this paper, we propose Kernel Launch Aggregation and Promotion (KLAP), a set of compiler techniques that improve the performance of kernels which use dynamic parallelism. Kernel launch aggregation fuses kernels launched by threads in the same warp, block, or kernel into a single aggregated kernel, thereby reducing the total number of kernels spawned and increasing the amount of work per kernel to improve occupancy. Kernel launch promotion enables early launch of child kernels to extract more parallelism between parents and children, and to aggregate kernel launches across generations mitigating the problem of limited depth. We implement our techniques in a real compiler and show that kernel launch aggregation obtains a geometric mean speedup of 6.58x over regular dynamic parallelism. We also show that kernel launch promotion enables cases that were not originally possible, improving throughput by a geometric mean of 30.44 x.
TRIM11, a direct target of miR-24-3p, promotes cell proliferation and inhibits apoptosis in colon cancer

TRIM11 (tripartite motif-containing protein 11) is an E3 ubiquitin ligase recently identified as an oncogene in malignant glioma and lung cancer. In the present study, we report that expression of TRIM11 was increased in colon cancer (CC) tissue relative to paired normal tissues and that higher TRIM11 levels predicted poor overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) in CC patients. Mechanistically, we showed that miR-24-3p downregulation contributes to TRIM11 upregulation in CC. We also demonstrated that TRIM11 overexpression promotes cell proliferation and colony formation and inhibits apoptosis in CC, while knocking down TRIM11 using CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing inhibited cell proliferation and induced apoptosis. Silencing TRIM11 in vivo decreased tumor growth. These findings indicate that TRIM11 facilitates CC progression by promoting cell proliferation and inhibiting apoptosis and that the novel miR-24-3p/TRIM11 axis may be a useful new target for treating patients with CC.
Representation of Embodied Collaborative Behaviors in Cyber-Physical Human-Robot Interaction with Immersive User Interfaces

Collaborative robots require high intelligence in order to adapt to the widely diversified human partner's behaviors. We have proposed an interactive robot learning of collaborative actions from large datasets of human-robot interactions. This work aims to further our development to incorporate embodied behaviors in human-robot collaboration into the robot learning approach. In this preliminary work, we develop immersive user interfaces with virtual reality devices for the cyber-physical interaction between human and robot, in order to represent embodied collaborative behaviors in our experiment system. We have obtained the human's visual observation in the virtual world by tracking the movement of the head mounted device to determine the observed target, the verbal communication between agents from the spoken speech, and the agent's actions, i.e. the body movements from tracking the avatar's location in the virtual world to determine the traveled path.
iSmaRT: a toolkit for a comprehensive analysis of small RNA‐Seq data

Summary: The interest in investigating the biological roles of small non‐coding RNAs (sncRNAs) is increasing, due to the pleiotropic effects of these molecules exert in many biological contexts. While several methods and tools are available to study microRNAs (miRNAs), only few focus on novel classes of sncRNAs, in particular PIWI‐interacting RNAs (piRNAs). To overcome these limitations, we implemented iSmaRT (integrative Small RNA Tool‐kit), an automated pipeline to analyze smallRNA‐Seq data. Availability and Implementation: iSmaRT is a collection of bioinformatics tools and own algorithms, interconnected through a Graphical User Interface (GUI). In addition to performing comprehensive analyses on miRNAs, it implements specific computational modules to analyze piRNAs, predicting novel ones and identifying their RNA targets. A smallRNA‐Seq dataset generated from brain samples of Huntington's Disease patients was used here to illustrate iSmaRT performances, demonstrating how the pipeline can provide, in a rapid and user friendly way, a comprehensive analysis of different classes of sncRNAs. iSmaRT is freely available on the web at ftp://labmedmolge‐1.unisa.it (User: iSmart ‐ Password: password) Contact: aweisz@unisa.it or ggiurato@unisa.it Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
CSF1 Restores Innate Immunity After Liver Injury in Mice and Serum Levels Indicate Outcomes of Patients With Acute Liver Failure

Background & Aims Liver regeneration requires functional liver macrophages, which provide an immune barrier that is compromised after liver injury. The numbers of liver macrophages are controlled by macrophage colony-stimulating factor (CSF1). We examined the prognostic significance of the serum level of CSF1 in patients with acute liver injury and studied its effects in mice. Methods We measured levels of CSF1 in serum samples collected from 55 patients who underwent partial hepatectomy at the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh between December 2012 and October 2013, as well as from 78 patients with acetaminophen-induced acute liver failure admitted to the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh or the University of Kansas Medical Centre. We studied the effects of increased levels of CSF1 in uninjured mice that express wild-type CSF1 receptor or a constitutive or inducible CSF1-receptor reporter, as well as in chemokine receptor 2 (Ccr2)-/- mice; we performed fate-tracing experiments using bone marrow chimeras. We administered CSF1-Fc (fragment, crystallizable) to mice after partial hepatectomy and acetaminophen intoxication, and measured regenerative parameters and innate immunity by clearance of fluorescent microbeads and bacterial particles. Results Serum levels of CSF1 increased in patients undergoing liver surgery in proportion to the extent of liver resected. In patients with acetaminophen-induced acute liver failure, a low serum level of CSF1 was associated with increased mortality. In mice, administration of CSF1-Fc promoted hepatic macrophage accumulation via proliferation of resident macrophages and recruitment of monocytes. CSF1-Fc also promoted transdifferentiation of infiltrating monocytes into cells with a hepatic macrophage phenotype. CSF1-Fc increased innate immunity in mice after partial hepatectomy or acetaminophen-induced injury, with resident hepatic macrophage as the main effector cells. Conclusions Serum CSF1 appears to be a prognostic marker for patients with acute liver injury. CSF1 might be developed as a therapeutic agent to restore innate immune function after liver injury.
Language, Deals and Standards: The Future of XML Contracts

eXtensible Markup Language (XML) structures information in documentary systems ranging from financial reports to medical records and business contracts. XML standards for specific applications are developed spontaneously by self-appointed technologists or entrepreneurs. XML's social and economic stakes are considerable, especially when developed for the private law of contracts. XML can reduce transaction costs but also limit the range of contractual expression and redefine the nature of law practice. So reliance on spontaneous development may be sub-optimal and identification of a more formal public standard setting model necessary. To exploit XML's advantages while minimizing risks, this Article envisions creating a publicly oriented foundation to set XML-based standards for the private law of corporate contracts. The Article's specific inquiry concerning corporate contracts illuminates XML's broader implications, making the standard-setting model it contributes adaptable to other contexts.
Expansion of mesenchymal stem cells on electrospun scaffolds maintains stemness, mechano‐responsivity, and differentiation potential

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) hold great promise for regenerative therapies and tissue engineering applications given their multipotential differentiation capacity. However, MSC isolation and expansion are typically performed on super‐physiologically stiff tissue culture plastic (TCP), which may alter their behavior and lead to unintended consequences upon implantation. In contrast, electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds possess physical and mechanical properties that are similar to that of native tissue. In this study, we investigated whether isolation and expansion of juvenile bovine MSCs directly onto electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds better preserves MSC phenotype and stemness compared to TCP. Our data show that culture of MSCs on electrospun scaffolds reduces proliferation, decreases cellular senescence, and better maintains stemness compared to cells isolated and expanded on TCP, likely due to a reduction in cell contractility. Furthermore, in contrast to electrospun scaffolds, TCP biased MSCs towards a fibrotic phenotype that persisted even after the cells were reseeded onto a different substrate. Cells pre‐cultured on electrospun scaffolds exhibited a heightened response to mechanical stimuli and greater chondrogenesis in methacrylated hyaluronic acid hydrogels. These data suggest that alternative substrates that better approximate the native cell environment should be used to preserve endogenous MSC behavior and may improve their success in tissue engineering applications. © 2017 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 36:808–815, 2018.
A Novel Millet-Based Probiotic Fermented Food for the Developing World

Probiotic yogurt, comprised of a Fiti sachet containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus GR-1 and Streptococcus thermophilus C106, has been used in the developing world, notably Africa, to alleviate malnutrition and disease. In sub-Saharan African countries, fermentation of cereals such as millet, is culturally significant. The aim of this study was to investigate the fermentation capability of millet when one gram of the Fiti sachet consortium was added. An increase of 1.8 and 1.4 log CFU/mL was observed for S. thermophilus C106 and L. rhamnosus GR-1 when grown in 8% millet in water. Single cultures of L. rhamnosus GR-1 showed the highest μmax when grown in the presence of dextrose, galactose and fructose. Single cultures of S. thermophilus C106 showed the highest μmax when grown in the presence of sucrose and lactose. All tested recipes reached viable counts of the probiotic bacteria, with counts greater than 106 colony-forming units (CFU)/mL. Notably, a number of organic acids were quantified, in particular phytic acid, which was shown to decrease when fermentation time increased, thereby improving the bioavailability of specific micronutrients. Millet fermented in milk proved to be the most favorable, according to a sensory evaluation. In conclusion, this study has shown that sachets being provided to African communities to produce fermented milk, can also be used to produce fermented millet. This provides an option for when milk supplies are short, or if communities wish to utilize the nutrient-rich qualities of locally-grown millet.
Moderating Effects of Board and Managerial Incentive on the Relationship between R&D Investment and Firm Performance- Evidence from Listed Manufacturing Firms in China

Several studies based on US and UK data have tested the moderating effects of corporate governance on R&D investment and firm performance . However, there have been no investigations for China, in part because of data unavailability and the complicated analysis involved. In this paper we take a first step towards filling this gap using a hand collected R&D data of Chinese listed manufacturing firms. We demonstrated how board of director and managerial ownership influence the relationship between R&D and firm performance. Based on Chinese listed manufacturing firm’s data, we examine the moderating effects of board of directors and managerial stock ownership on the relationship between R&D spending and firm performance by hierarchical regression and subgroup analysis. Results show that board size has no moderating effect on the R&D-firm performance relationship, while this relationship is negatively associated with board stock ownership, frequency of board meeting and managerial stock
Optimising the Meta-Optimiser in Machine Learning Problems

The improvement of machine learning algorithm performance can be achieved via the search across the algorithm's parameter space by a number of meta-heuristic based optimisation techniques or meta-optimisers. These meta-optimisers vary in their approach and have been shown to perform differently on various optimisation problems. This paper takes the concept of meta-optimisation further and explores the potential of fine tuning the meta-optimiser itself in order to improve the optimisation process. The study is centered around the use of a Simple Genetic Algorithm (SGA) based meta-optimisation approach and the measurement of the effect of changing its mutation and crossover rates on a set of machine learning algorithms and standard datasets. Although the results did not evidence any significant effect on the overall performance of the SGA as a machine learner meta-optimiser they showed significant effects on the SGA's efficiency. This discovery is beneficial for machine learning optimisation problems, particularly those that require high processing costs, have low computational budgets or both.
Lymph Node Metastasis in Patients With Endometrioid Endometrial Cancer: Overtreatment Is the Main Issue

Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of histological grade, depth of myometrial invasion, and tumor size to identify lymph node metastasis (LNM) in patients with endometrioid endometrial cancer (EC). Methods A retrospective computerized database search was performed to identify patients who underwent comprehensive surgical staging for EC between January 1993 and December 2015. The inclusion criterion was endometrioid type EC limited to the uterine corpus. The associations between LNM and surgicopathological factors were evaluated by univariate and multivariate analyses. Results In total, 368 patients were included. Fifty-five patients (14.9%) had LNM. Median tumor sizes were 4.5 cm (range, 0.7–13 cm) and 3.5 cm (range, 0.4–33.5 cm) in patients with and without LNM, respectively (P = 0.005). No LMN was detected in patients without myometrial invasion, whereas nodal spread was observed in 7.7% of patients with superficial myometrial invasion and in 22.6% of patients with deep myometrial invasion (P < 0.0001). Lymph node metastasis tended to be more frequent in patients with grade 3 disease compared with those with grade 1 or 2 disease (P = 0.131). Conclusions The risk of lymph node involvement was 30%, even in patients with the highest-risk uterine factors, that is, those who had tumors of greater than 2 cm, deep myometrial invasion, and grade 3 disease, indicating that 70% of these patients underwent unnecessary lymphatic dissection. A precise balance must be achieved between the desire to prevent unnecessary lymphadenectomy and the ability to diagnose LNM.