Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cadmium and Cadmium/BDE (47 or 209) Exposure Affect Mitochondrial Function, DNA Damage/Repair Mechanisms and Barrier Integrity in Airway Epithelial Cells

Heavy metals and Brominated diphenyl ether flame-retardants (BDEs) often coexist in the environment and are capable of inducing injury, cytotoxicity or genotoxicity in human epithelial cells of the lung. We studied the effects of single Cadmium chloride (CdCl2) or CdCl2/BDE (47 or 209) mixtures in airway epithelial cells, using A549 cell line cultured at submerged conditions and air–liquid interface (ALI) (an in vitro model described as physiologically relevant in vivo-like). We evaluated cell viability, oxidative stress, apoptosis, DNA damage/repair (Comet assay, γH2AX phosphorylation ser139), mitochondrial redox balance (NOX-4, Nrf2 and TFAM) and cell barrier integrity (TEER, ZO-1, Claudin-1, E-cadherin-1) in A549 cells exposed to CdCl2 (1 nM to 10 µM), or to CdCl2 (100 nM)/BDEs (47 or 209) (100 nM). CdCl2 (10 μM) reduced cell viability and increased apoptosis. CdCl2 (100 nM) significantly affected DNA-damage/repair (Olive Tail length production), γH2AX phosphorylation and oxidative stress (ROS/JC-1 production) in submerged cell cultures. CdCl2 (100 nM) decreased viability, TEER, ZO-1, Claudin-1 and E-cadherin-1 mRNA expression, and Nrf2 and TFAM while increased NOX-4, in ALI culture of cells. In both cell culture approaches, the cells stimulated with Cadmium/BDEs mixtures did not show a significant increase in the effects observed in the cells treated with CdCl2 alone. CdCl2 inhalation might exert cytotoxicity and genotoxicity, playing a pivotal role in the uncontrolled oxidative stress, damaging DNA and gene expression in airway epithelial cells. No additional or synergistic adverse effects of CdCl2/BDEs mixture were observed in comparison to CdCl2 alone in lung epithelium.
Development of Peptide Targeted PLGA-PEGylated Nanoparticles Loading Licochalcone-A for Ocular Inflammation

Licochalcone-A is a natural compound with anti-inflammatory properties. However, it possesses low water solubility, making its application for the treatment of ocular inflammation difficult. To overcome this drawback, biodegradable nanoparticles incorporating Licochalcone-A have been developed. Additionally, to avoid fast clearance and increase cellular internalization into the ocular tissues, PLGA nanoparticles have been functionalized using PEG and cell penetrating peptides (Tet-1 and B6). To optimize the formulations, a factorial design was carried out and short-term stability of the nanoparticles was studied. Moreover, morphology was also observed by transmission electron microcopy and in vitro drug release was carried out. Ocular tolerance of the formulations was ensured in vitro and in vivo and anti-inflammatory therapeutic efficacy was also assessed. Surface functionalized nanoparticles loading Licochalcone-A were developed with an average size below 200 nm, a positive surface charge, and a monodisperse population. The formulations were non-irritant and showed a prolonged Licochalcone-A release. Despite the fact that both Licochalcone-A Tet-1 and B6 functionalized nanoparticles demonstrated to be suitable for the treatment of ocular inflammation, B6 targeted nanoparticles provided greater therapeutic efficacy in in vivo assays.
Divergences between healthcare-associated infection administrative data and active surveillance data in Canada.

Background Although Canada has both a national active surveillance system and administrative data for the passive surveillance of healthcare-associated infections (HAI), both have identified strengths and weaknesses in their data collection and reporting. Active and passive surveillance work independently, resulting in results that diverge at times. To understand the divergences between administrative health data and active surveillance data, a scoping review was performed. Method Medline, Embase and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature along with grey literature were searched for studies in English and French that evaluated the use of administrative data, alone or in comparison with traditional surveillance, in Canada between 1995 and November 2, 2020. After extracting relevant information from selected articles, a descriptive summary of findings was provided with suggestions for the improvement of surveillance systems to optimize the overall data quality. Results Sixteen articles met the inclusion criteria, including twelve observational studies and four systematic reviews. Studies showed that using a single source of administrative data was not accurate for HAI surveillance when compared with traditional active surveillance; however, combining different sources of data or combining administrative with active surveillance data improved accuracy. Electronic surveillance systems can also enhance surveillance by improving the ability to detect potential HAIs. Conclusion Although active surveillance of HAIs produced the most accurate results and remains the gold-standard, the integration between active and passive surveillance data can be optimized. Administrative data can be used to enhance traditional active surveillance. Future studies are needed to evaluate the feasibility and benefits of potential solutions presented for the use of administrative data for HAI surveillance and reporting in Canada.
Intra- and Interspecies Wing Venation Variations of Apis cerana and Apis nigrocincta Species in Indonesia

Apis cerana has a wide distribution in Asia, including Sundaland, and is currently found in Wallacea, while the sister species, A. nigrocincta, is native in Sulawesi. The wide geographic distribution and the island isolation led to form morphological differences in the bees. The morph and wing venations are known to have a high genetic inheritance. Therefore, this research aimed to (1) analyze the landmark variation of wing venations of A. cerana from Sundaland and Wallacea, and A. nigrocincta from Sulawesi, (2) determine the relationship between these two bee species. The research was conducted by digitizing 550 wing venations based on nineteen landmarks. Our study on intraspecies showed that A. cerana Sumatra revealed a high variation in bending energy. Overall, the deformation grid of A. cerana from Sundaland has higher displacement than those from Wallacea, meaning higher variations of the Sundaland A. cerana. We found geometric morphometric markers of landmarks 16 and 17 in intraspecies and interspecies bees. Thus, these landmarks known as a cubital index can be used for species identification. The differentiation of interspecies has been shown in the PCA. Apis nigrocincta was separated from the single group of the centroid A. cerana and was supported by the Neighbor-Joining tree.
ENSO‐Driven Fires Cause Large Interannual Variability in the Naturally Emitted, Ozone‐Depleting Trace Gas CH3Br

Methyl bromide (CH3Br) is an ozone depleting trace gas that is now mainly emitted from natural sources. Roughly 80% of anthropogenic production of CH3Br was phased‐out in response to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer beginning in 1999 and atmospheric levels of CH3Br have declined considerably since. Here we use surface measurements of CH3Br from NOAA's global air sampling network, along with a six‐box atmosphere/ocean model to explore interannual variability in atmospheric CH3Br mole fractions. We find that CH3Br mole fractions are strongly correlated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon, but variability in winds, sea surface temperature, and biological production during ENSO are unlikely to drive the observed changes in atmospheric CH3Br directly. Rather, the results indicate that ENSO‐driven changes to biomass burning are an important cause of the observed interannual CH3Br variability.
Aberrant miR-362-3p is Associated with EBV-Infection and Prognosis in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma and Involved in Tumor Progression by Targeting JMJD2A

Background Many microRNAs (miRNAs) are involved in the progression of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). This study aimed to examine the expression and clinical significance of microRNA (miR)-362-3p in NPC, especially in Epstein–Barr virus (EBV)-positive patients, and explore its potential mechanism in NPC progression. Methods miR-362-3p levels and Jumonji C domain 2A (JMJD2A) mRNA levels were detected by quantitative real-time PCR. The diagnostic value of miR-362-3p to distinguish NPC patients and EBV-positive cases was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic analysis. The association of miR-362-3p with NPC survival was assessed by Kaplan–Meier curves and Cox regression analysis. NPC cell proliferation, migration and invasion were determined using Cell Counting Kit-8 and Transwell assays, respectively. A luciferase reporter assay was used to confirm the interaction between miR-362-3p and JMJD2A. Results miR-362-3p expression was decreased in the serum and tissues of NPC patients and had diagnostic value for screening NPC. According to the survival follow-up, NPC survivors had significantly higher miR-362-3p, and miR-326-3p was demonstrated as an independent prognostic indicator of NPC. Interestingly, it is found that EBV-positive NPC patients and cells had significantly lower miR-362-3p compared with EBV-negative NPC patients and cells and had certain ability to distinguish EBV-positive patients. Moreover, miR-362-3p inhibited the proliferation, migration and invasion of both EBV-positive and -negative NPC cells, and these effects might be mediated by targeting JMJD2A. Conclusion Abnormal miR-362-3p expression is related to EBV-infection and prognosis in NPC patients and may be involved in NPC progression by targeting JMJD2A.
The impact of pilgrim tourism on the bilateral diplomacy of India and Nepal and the mediation effect of people-to-people contact

The present article aims to analyse the impact of pilgrim tourism on bilateral relations and to identify the mediating effect of people-to-people contact. It further proposes to test the framework empirically in the neighbouring context of India and Nepal. To achieve the objective, random sampling is used, and 380 usable questionnaires are taken for testing the theoretical framework. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is used to assess the framework's fit and analyse the impact of pilgrim tourism on bilateral diplomatic relations while using people-to-people contact as a mediating variable. The study findings reveal that pilgrim tourism has a direct impact on improving the bilateral diplomatic relationship between India and Nepal. It also shows that people-to-people contact between India and Nepal acts as a mediating variable between pilgrim tourism and bilateral diplomacy. In a vast country like India, which shares a border with many nations, pilgrim tourism and people-to-people contact have great potential to remove barriers and increase bilateral treaties for better development of the nation. The present research developed a measurement instrument about bilateral relations from the stakeholder's perspective. It also proposed a structural model to elucidate the relationships between pilgrim tourism, people-to-people contact and bilateral diplomacy.
Learning to Optimize User Association and Spectrum Allocation with Partial Observation in mmWave-Enabled UAV Networks

To support large-scale unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks with both payload communication (PC) packets and control and non-payload communication (CNPC) packets, millimeter wave (mmWave) communication is convinced to be a promising solution. However, efficient user association and spectrum allocation are still challenging in mmWave-enabled UAV networks considering that the network state is dynamic and the status information of each UAV is incomplete. In this paper, we investigate a joint UAV association and spectrum allocation problem under a hybrid mmWave sharing paradigm, where PC packets are transmitted over both licensed and pooled bands in a shared manner to achieve high throughput and CNPC packets are transmitted over licensed band in an exclusive manner to guarantee high reliability. To this end, we introduce a strategic form game that can characterize network stochastic states and individual partial observations to reformulate the problem, and then propose a counterfactual regret minimization scheme to achieve its correlated equilibrium (CE). Benefited from the updating mechanism on random observation-action pairs, the designed scheme can converge to the corresponding CE solutions for the two types of packets with partial observation. Finally, our simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed scheme over the baseline schemes.
Joint Reason Generation and Rating Prediction for Explainable Recommendation

Most recommendation systems focus on predicting rating or finding aspect information in reviews to understand user preferences and item properties. However, these methods ignore the effectiveness and persuasiveness of recommendation results. Consequently, explainable recommendation, namely providing recommendation results with recommendation reasons at the same time, has attracted increasing attention of researchers due to its ability in fostering transparency and trust. It is lucky that some E-commerce websites provide a kind of new interaction box called Tips and users can express their comments on items with a simple sentence. This brings us an opportunity to realize explainable recommendation. Under the supervision of two explicit feedbacks, namely rating and textual tips, we can implement a multi-task learning model which can provide recommendation results and generate recommendation reasons at the same time. In this paper, we propose an Encoder-Decoder and Multi-Layer Perception (MLP) based Explainable Recommendation model named EMER to simultaneously implement reason generation and rating prediction. Item’s title contains significant product-related information and plays an important role in grabbing user’s attention, so we fuse it in our model to generate recommendation reasons. Numerous experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate that our model is superior to the state-of-the-art models.
High Number of Medical Conditions Detected in Elite Athlete Periodic Health Evaluations, But Only Mild Consequences

Supplemental Digital Content is Available in the Text. Objective: To evaluate the number of medical conditions detected by periodic health evaluations (PHEs) in elite athletes, and their consequences for management and medical clearance. Design: Retrospective design. Participants: Elite athletes of various sports in a high-performance program in The Netherlands, in the period between 2009 and 2020. Interventions: The PHEs consisted of a questionnaire, general and musculoskeletal physical examination, laboratory blood test, electrocardiogram, pulmonary function testing, and (cardiopulmonary) exercise test. Main Outcome Measures: We extracted and analyzed the medical conditions that led to advice, clinical follow-up, further diagnostic investigation or treatment, and the medical clearance status of the athlete (clearance, temporarily no clearance, or permanently no clearance). Results: We included 721 PHEs of 451 elite athletes. We found 1389 medical conditions that led to advice (n = 923, 66%), clinical follow-up (n = 124, 9%), further diagnostic investigation (n = 190, 14%), treatment (n = 132, 10%), or sports restriction (n = 20, 1%). Only 20 cases (3%) led to temporarily no medical clearance. After further investigation or treatment, no permanent sports restriction was imposed on any of the athletes. Conclusions: We found a high number of medical conditions detected with a PHE in elite athletes. However, the vast majority of detected conditions were mild, with consequences limited to preventive advice and follow-up. The yield of PHE to detect (potentially) severe pathological conditions seems low. Clinical relevance of PHE in elite athletes and potential future health benefits remain unclear.
Urban Recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic in Beijing, China

This study documented the geography of the recovery of human activity in Beijing, China, after the city successfully brought the COVID-19 pandemic under control at the end of spring 2020. By using mobile phone network data at fine spatial and temporal scales, we compared the levels of human activity in the morning, afternoon, and evening on weekdays and weekends at the microlevel (1 km × 1 km) before and after the pandemic. Both our descriptive and modeling analyses showed more recovery on weekdays than on weekends. The recovery was faster in the areas that were further away from the city center. Residence-oriented areas recovered faster than non-residence-oriented areas, particularly in the early stages of recovery. The areas with large-scale parks recovered faster, confirming the importance of parks in urban health. The presence of a university campus was a strong predictor of slow recovery in Beijing. Although people avoided using public transit during the pandemic, the level of transit service did not seem to predict urban recovery after the pandemic was under control.
The Effectiveness of a Parent Involvement-Child Behavioral Management Program on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms among Thai School-age Children

Objective: This study examined effect of a new Parent Involvement-Child Behavioral Management Program (PICBMP) on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms (inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity) among school-age children with ADHD in a regional psychiatric hospital in Thailand.Material and Methods: In this pretest-posttest control group study, 60 children between 6 and 12 years of age diagnosed with ADHD and their parents were equally and randomly assigned to either the PICBMP or usual care group. The individuals assigned to the PICBMP group attended an 8-week of behavior management program for parents of ADHD children, which was in addition to a usual care program, while usual care was provided to individuals only provided to the control group. The Swanson, Nolan, and Pelham-IV tool was used to evaluate the ADHD symptoms in all children before and after the PICBMP intervention. Descriptive statistics and t-test were used for data analysis (p-value<0.050). Results: Most of the children were male -75.0%, and -88.4% of the parents in the study were female. The average age of the children was 8.9 years (S.D.=1.67), and that of the parents was 40 years (S.D.=6.17). Significantly lower ADHD symptoms were found in the children who received the PICBMP compared to the children who received the usual care at pretest and posttest (t=-5.065, p-value<0.050). The ADHD symptoms in the children in the intervention experimental group significantly decreased after their parents attended the PICBMP (t=14.986, p-value<0.050). Conclusion: The findings of this study support the effectiveness of the PICBMP in reducing ADHD symptoms.
Laughing All the Way to the Bank: The Joint Roles of Shared Coping Humor and Entrepreneurial Team-Efficacy in New Venture Performance

Why are some new venture teams (NVTs), but not others, able to effectively cope with the demands of environmental uncertainty? Addressing this question from an intrateam dynamics perspective, we draw from the transactional theory of stress to delineate when NVTs’ use of shared coping humor and level of entrepreneurial team-efficacy might conditionally influence the relationship of perceived environmental uncertainty with new venture performance. Results from a national (USA) sample of startups found shared coping humor to positively moderate the relationship of environmental uncertainty with firm performance. Moreover, this moderated relationship was enhanced when entrepreneurial team-efficacy was high.
A Novel Symmetric Stacked Autoencoder for Adversarial Domain Adaptation Under Variable Speed

At present, most of the fault diagnosis methods with extensive research and good diagnostic effect are based on the premise that the sample distribution is consistent. However, in reality, the sample distribution of rotating machinery is inconsistent due to variable working conditions, and most of the fault diagnosis algorithms have poor diagnostic effects or even invalid. To dispose the above problems, a novel symmetric stacked autoencoder (NSSAE) for adversarial domain adaptation is proposed. Firstly, the symmetric stacked autoencoder network with shared weights is used as the feature extractor to extract features which can better express the original signal. Secondly, adding domain discriminator that constituting adversarial with feature extractor to enhance the ability of feature extractor to extract domain invariant features, thus confusing the domain discriminator and making it unable to correctly distinguish the features of the two domains. Finally, to assist the adversarial training, the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) is added to the last layer of the feature extractor to align the features of the two domains in the high-dimensional space. The experimental results show that, under the condition of variable speed, the NSSAE model can extract domain invariant features to achieve the transfer between domains, and the transfer diagnosis accuracy is high and the stability is strong.
Assistive Devices Analysis for Visually Impaired Persons: A Review on Taxonomy

Visually impaired persons (VIPs) comprise a significant portion of the population and they are present in all corners of the world. In recent times, technology proved its presence in every domain of the life and innovative devices are assisting humans in all fields especially, artificial intelligence has dominated and outperformed rest of the trades. VIPs need assistance in performing daily life tasks like object/obstacle detection and recognition, navigation, and mobility, particularly in indoor and outdoor environments. Moreover, the protection and safety of these people are of prime concern. Several devices and applications have been developed for the assistance of VIPs. Firstly, these devices take input from the surrounding environment through different sensors e.g. infrared radiation, ultrasonic, imagery sensor, etc. In the second stage, state of the art machine learning techniques process these signals and extract useful information. Finally, feedback is provided to the user through auditory and/or vibratory means. It is observed that most of the existing devices are constrained in their abilities. The paper presents a comprehensive comparative analysis of the state-of-the-art assistive devices for VIPs. These techniques are categorized based on their functionality and working principles. The main attributes, challenges, and limitations of these techniques have also been highlighted. Moreover, a score based quantitative analysis of these devices is performed to highlight their feature enrichment capability for each category. It may help to select an appropriate device for a particular scenario.
An Object Detection Algorithm for Rotary-Wing UAV Based on AWin Transformer

The increasing use of rotary-wing UAVs poses security risks, which makes image detection of rotary-wing UAVs a critical issue. This paper proposes an object detection algorithm for rotary-wing UAVs based on a transformer network. A self-attention mechanism is used to utilize the local contextual information to extract the features of the rotary-wing UAV more effectively, which improves the accuracy of object detection. Meanwhile, a new self-attention mechanism is designed, in which the query vector and the key vector of the surrounding annular area are calculated separately and then concatenated by different heads of attention. Experimental results show that, compared with existing algorithms, the proposed algorithm improves the mean average precision by 1.7% on the proposed rotary-wing UAV dataset.