Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Brachytherapy utilization rate and effect on survival in cervical cancer patients in Korea

Objective External beam radiation therapy (EBRT) with concurrent chemotherapy followed by intracavitary brachytherapy is the standard treatment in locally advanced cervical cancer. This study examined the brachytherapy utilization rate and evaluated the effect of brachytherapy on survival in cervical cancer patients in Korea. Methods In this study, data from the Korea Central Cancer Registry and Korean National Health Insurance Service and data on mortality from Statistics Korea were linked and used. Patients with other cancers, distant metastasis at diagnosis, or unknown stage or who underwent hysterectomy were excluded. A total of 12,721 cervical cancer patients were analyzed in this study. Results The brachytherapy utilization rate (%) was calculated as the proportion of patients who received brachytherapy among those who received curative EBRT. The brachytherapy utilization rate decreased from 84% in 2005 to 78% in 2013 (p<0.001). Brachytherapy utilization rates varied by region, ranging from 72% to 100% except for in Jeju Island, where the rate was 56%. The brachytherapy utilization rate was lower in patients older than 80 years; patients with localized disease, non-squamous cell carcinoma, or Charlson comorbidity index 3 or more; patients diagnosed after 2010; patients from certain regions; patients receiving medical aid; and patients who underwent gynecologic procedures. Multivariable Cox regression analysis showed that brachytherapy when added to curative EBRT was independently associated with better cancer-specific survival (CSS) and overall survival (OS) than curative EBRT only. Conclusion The brachytherapy utilization rate decreased from 2005 to 2013 and varied by region in Korea. Brachytherapy use is independently associated with significantly higher CSS and OS in cervical cancer.
Expanding Benevolent Ageism: Replicating Attitudes of Overaccommodation to Older Men

ABSTRACT Background Older adults are stereotyped in a paternalistic manner (warm, but incompetent), deserving of assistance regardless of their need; however, little is known about how gender contextualizes these attitudes. The purpose of this study was to extend previous work that examined the malleability of the paternalistic older adult stereotype using a two-part experimental vignette. The goals of the current study included: (1) to examine attitudes of benevolent ageist behavior toward a male target, (2) to confirm whether attributions made toward an older male target change if they defy or confirm the paternalistic stereotype, and (3) to examine the distinct roles of age and gender on an act of benevolent ageism. Method In prior work, a female target was offered unnecessary assistance, which is replicated in the current study with a male target. The age (young vs. old), response (accepting vs. declining assistance), and gender (male vs. female) of the target were manipulated and then rated by a young adult sample (N = 698). Results Our findings replicated earlier work in that overaccommodative behaviors were endorsed more so for the older target than the younger target, which corroborates support for the Stereotype Content Model in that older adults are viewed paternalistically. Additionally, the older male target and the older female target were viewed differently when they respectively defied the paternalistic stereotype indicating distinctness between benevolent ageism and benevolent sexism. Conclusions These findings add to the growing body of benevolent ageism literature and highlight the intersection of gender and age.
Randomized phase II trial of a first-in-human cancer cell lysate vaccine in patients with thoracic malignancies

Background Although most malignancies express cancer-testis antigens (CTA), immune responses to these proteins are limited in thoracic oncology patients. This trial was undertaken to examine if a cancer cell lysate vaccine could induce immunity to CTA, and to ascertain if metronomic cyclophosphamide and celecoxib enhances vaccine-induced immune responses. Methods Eleven patients with primary thoracic malignancies and 10 patients with extrathoracic neoplasms metastatic to the chest rendered NED by conventional therapies were randomized to receive H1299 lung cancer cell lysates (10 mg protein/vaccine) with Iscomatrix™ adjuvant via deep intradermal injection q 4 weeks ×6 with or without daily oral metronomic cyclophosphamide/celecoxib. The primary endpoint was serologic response to purified CTA assessed 1 month after the 6th vaccination. Secondary endpoints included assessment of the effects of cyclophosphamide and celecoxib on frequency and magnitude of vaccine-induced immune responses to CTA. Exploratory endpoints included evaluation of the effects of the vaccine regimens on peripheral immune subsets. Standard of care imaging studies were obtained at baseline and 1 month after the 3rd and 6th vaccinations. Results All patients exhibited local and systemic inflammatory responses lasting 72–96 hours following vaccinations. There were no dose limiting treatment related toxicities. Fourteen patients (67%) completed all six vaccinations. Eight of 14 patients (57%) exhibited serologic responses to NY-ESO-1. One patient developed antibodies to GAGE7; several patients exhibited reactivity to XAGE and MAGE-C2. Vaccine therapy decreased the percent of Tregs (P=0.0068), PD-1 expression on Tregs (P=0.0027), PD-L1 expression on CD14+ monocytes (P=0.0089), PD-L1 expression on classical monocytes (P=0.016), and PD-L1 expression on intermediate monocytes (P=0.0031). Cyclophosphamide/celecoxib did not appear to increase immune responses or enhance vaccine-induced alterations in peripheral immune subsets. Conclusions H1299 lysate vaccines with Iscomatrix™ induce immune responses to CTA and modulate peripheral immune subsets in a manner that may enhance antitumor immunity in patients with thoracic malignancies.
A phase III randomized, open-label, non-inferiority clinical trial comparing liquid and lyophilized formulations of oral live attenuated human rotavirus vaccine (HRV) in Indian infants

ABSTRACT The human rotavirus vaccine (HRV; Rotarix, GSK) is available as liquid (Liq) and lyophilized (Lyo) formulations, but only Lyo HRV is licensed in India. In this phase III, randomized, open-label trial (NCT02141204), healthy Indian infants aged 6–10 weeks received 2 doses (1 month apart) of either Liq HRV or Lyo HRV. Non-inferiority of Liq HRV compared to Lyo HRV was assessed in terms of geometric mean concentrations (GMCs) of anti-RV immunoglobulin A (IgA), 1-month post-second dose (primary objective). Reactogenicity/safety were also evaluated. Seroconversion was defined as anti-RV IgA antibody concentration ≥20 units [U]/mL in initially seronegative infants (anti-RV IgA antibody concentration <20 U/mL) or ≥2-fold increase compared with pre-vaccination concentration in initially seropositive infants. Of the 451 enrolled infants, 381 (189 in Liq HRV and 192 in Lyo HRV group) were included in the per-protocol set. The GMC ratio (Liq HRV/Lyo HRV) was 0.93 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.65–1.34), with the lower limit of the 95% CI reaching ≥0.5, the pre-specified statistical margin for non-inferiority. In the Liq HRV and Lyo HRV groups, 42.9% and 44.3% (baseline) and 71.4% and 73.4% (1-month post-second dose) of infants had anti-RV IgA antibody concentration ≥20 U/mL, and overall seroconversion rates were 54.5% and 50.0%. Incidences of solicited and unsolicited adverse events were similar between groups and no vaccine-related serious adverse events were reported. Liq HRV was non-inferior to Lyo HRV in terms of antibody GMCs and showed similar reactogenicity/safety profiles, supporting the use of Liq HRV in Indian infants. PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY What is the context? Rotavirus is the most common cause of acute gastronenteritis and contributes to the high number of hospitalizations and deaths in young children worldwide. Vaccination against rotavirus has led to a significant decrease in rotavirus-related infections. The human rotavirus vaccine Rotarix (GSK) is currently used as a liquid or lyophilized formulation. In clinical trials conducted in European and North American infants, the liquid vaccine showed ability to induce immune response and safety comparable to the lyophilized formulation. Only the lyophilized vaccine is currently marketed in india. What is new? We compared the 2-dose liquid and lyophilized human rotavirus vaccines in indian infants in a phase III clinical trial: The ability to induce immune response for thw liquid formulation was not inferior to that observed for the lyophilized vaccine. The safety profiles of the 2 formulations were comparable. Why is this important? This study shows that the liquid human rotavirus vaccine can be administrated to infants from india.
Downstaging and resection of hepatocellular carcinoma in patients with extrahepatic metastases after stereotactic therapy.

Background A combination of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) and anti-PD-1 antibodies with local regional therapy has elicited yield substantial clinical benefits in patients who have hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with extrahepatic metastases. Using this treatment strategy to convert HCC patients with extrahepatic metastases from unresectable to resectable has not yet been reported. Methods Consecutive hepatocellular carcinoma patients with extrahepatic metastases who received first-line therapy with a combination of TKIs and anti-PD-1 antibodies and at least one local regional therapy were analysed. Results Nine patients with localized disease who received first-line systemic therapy were enrolled. At baseline, all of them had oligometastatic disease, namely, Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer stage C (or Chinese Liver Cancer stage IIIB). The most common treatment administered was lenvatinib plus anti-PD-1 antibody and transarterial chemoembolization, and the median time span from systemic therapy to surgery was 3.2 (IQR, 2.8-6.2) months. Three patients achieved a pathological complete response. Six patients underwent laparoscopic surgery, and the other 3 patients underwent open surgery. After a median follow-up of 10.2 (IQR, 8.6-20.0) months, 7 patients survived without disease recurrence, and 2 experienced tumour recurrence. All patients had any-grade AEs, and 55.6% of the patients experienced grade 3 AEs. Fatigue was the most common AE, followed by elevated aminotransferase levels and hypertension. Conclusions Stereotactic therapy is a feasible conversion therapy for HCC patients with extrahepatic metastases to become resectable. This is the first study to analyse therapeutic outcomes of patients receiving these therapies for HCC with extrahepatic metastases.
When the independence of syntactic representation meets the sentence processing of Mandarin: Evidence from syntactic priming

There is no consensus on whether syntactic representation is independent of semantic representation in Mandarin. In four experiments, we adopted the syntactic priming paradigm to investigate the independence of syntactic representation in Mandarin. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated the priming effects of double object construction (DO) and prepositional object construction (PO) with the ditransitive verb being repeated across the prime and target. Experiment 1 showed two-way priming effects of DO and PO. Experiment 2 showed that the syntactic priming effects persisted regardless of whether the semantic features (animacy of the Theme) matched across the prime and target or not. Furthermore, such effects persisted in Experiments 3 and 4 where the ditransitive verb across the prime and target was not repeated. Taken together, these findings provide evidence that syntactic/semantic independence is universal and favoured over the traditional Chinese grammar account, which claims that the syntactic representation of Mandarin is not independent of the semantic representation.
Deep Discriminative Feature Learning for Accent Recognition

Accent recognition with deep learning framework is a similar work to deep speaker identification, they're both expected to give the input speech an identifiable representation. Compared with the individual-level features learned by speaker identification network, the deep accent recognition work throws a more challenging point that forging group-level accent features for speakers. In this paper, we borrow and improve the deep speaker identification framework to recognize accents, in detail, we adopt Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network as front-end encoder and integrate local features using Recurrent Neural Network to make an utterance-level accent representation. Novelly, to address overfitting, we simply add Connectionist Temporal Classification based speech recognition auxiliary task during training, and for ambiguous accent discrimination, we introduce some powerful discriminative loss functions in face recognition works to enhance the discriminative power of accent features. We show that our proposed network with discriminative training method (without data-augment) is significantly ahead of the baseline system on the accent classification track in the Accented English Speech Recognition Challenge 2020, where the loss function Circle-Loss has achieved the best discriminative optimization for accent representation.
How people perceive influence of fake news and why it matters

ABSTRACT Employing theoretical frameworks regarding people’s perception of media effects (e.g. third-person effect), this study examines how people perceive the effects of fake news, what may lead to these perceptions, and how people act on them. Findings from an online survey provide evidence that people perceive fake news to have negative influence on themselves and others, with greater influence on others than themselves. This study revealed that the extended internal political efficacy scale – the conventional internal political efficacy scale with a measure specific to fake news – serves as an antecedent of the perceived influence of fake news on oneself, others, and the self-other perceptual disparity. Further, the perceptions of fake news effects on oneself and others, separately and jointly, were significantly associated with several likely behaviors including support for fake news regulation, social media withdrawal, and information sharing on social media.
Event-triggered based adaptive neural network control of a robotic manipulator with output constraints and disturbance

This paper studies event-triggered based adaptive neural network (NN) tracking control of a robotic manipulator with output constraints and disturbance. First, a novel asymmetric tan-type barrier Lyapunov function (BLF) is developed to satisfy the requirement of time-varying output constraints. Then, a fixed threshold event triggering is proposed to reduce the energy consumption, which avoids the happening of Zeno behaviour after analysis. Further, a disturbance observer (DO) and an adaptive neural network are devised to estimate the bounded disturbance and the unknown dynamics of the robotic manipulator. The proposed controller can achieve uniform boundness of the solution and adjustment of transient performance. Finally, the effectiveness of the presented methods is verified by related simulation results.
Design, synthesis and anticancer evaluation of structurally modified substituted aryl-quinazoline derivatives as anticancer agents

Abstract A new library of structurally modified aryl quinazoline-isoxazole (12a–j) derivatives have been designed, synthesized and characterized by 1HNMR, 13CNMR and mass spectral data. Further these compounds were evaluated for anticancer applications against four human cancer cell lines including PC3, DU-145 (prostate cancer), A549 (lung cancer) and MCF-7 (breast cancer) by utilizing the MTT assay. The results were compared with etoposide which was used as positive control. Most of the compounds showed good to moderate anticancer activities against the four cancer cell lines. Among them, compounds 12a, 12b, 12c, 12d and 12j exhibited more potent activities. Further, molecular docking studies were carried out for all synthesized compounds against the cancer targets Selective Human Androgen Receptor (PDB ID: 3V49) and Abl-Tyrosine kinase (PDB ID: 1IEP). All the docked ligands have exhibited good binding interactions with the targeted protein. Graphical Abstract
A Quadrilogy for (Big) Data Reliabilities

ABSTRACT This paper responds to the challenge of testing the reliabilities of really big data and proposes a quadrilogy of four measures of the reliability of data, applicable quite generally. These measures grew out of the recognition that crowd coded data contest big data scientists’ conviction that the social contexts and meanings of data become irrelevant in the face of their sheer volumes. Bigness has also challenged available inter–coder agreement coefficients and available software, which are either too restricted regarding the forms of data they accept or exceed computational limits when data become very large. In the course of tailoring Krippendorff’s alpha to very large data, the possibility emerged of dividing the concept of reliability into four separate kinds, serving different methodological aims in social research. They respectively assess the replicability of the process of generating data, the accuracy of generating data, the surrogacy of proposed theories, coders, formulas, or algorithms to serve as a substitute for human coders, and the decisiveness among several human judgements. Their mathematical relationships assure comparability. The paper develops this quadrilogy of agreement measures first for binary data, provides a link to software for computing it, but then extends it to nominal data – a first step towards further generalizations. It also proposes a computational path to estimate the confidence limits for each of these measures and the probabilities of accepting data as reliable when there is a chance of being below a tolerable level. It ends with a discussion of how to select reliability benchmarks appropriate for the quadrilogy of agreement measures.
Different pathways to identify moral framing from media content: A response to Hopp and Weber

ABSTRACT Moral framing is a mobilizing strategy in digital activism to raise awareness of a social issue. This essay discussed the strengths and weaknesses of multiple methods of extracting moral framing from media content. Two issues were highlighted from crowd-coding and automated coding using computational approaches: context sensitivity and the handling of coding discrepancies. We compared results from manual content coding and automated analysis using the eMFD, urging scholars to incorporate multiple methods to uncover the meanings behind each moral value. We argued that crowdcoding, computational approaches and manual coding are not exclusive of one another, and encouraged scholars to diversify their methodological toolbox and choose what to use based on the research context.
ICP-MS determination of Zn, Cu, Fe and Mn in muscle cells as potential markers of oxidative stress

Oxidative stress is imbalance between oxidant and antioxidant levels in living systems. Human cells are protected from reactive oxygen species by endogenous enzymatic antioxidants. Most of these compounds require particular redox metals in their structures as cofactors to allow them to scavenge the free radicals such as Cu, Zn-SOD, Mn-SOD and catalase (Fe). The aim of this study was to quantify these metals in human cells to evaluate their effectiveness as novel biomarkers for measuring oxidative stress. The metals (Zn, Cu, Fe, Mn) were measured in vitro in skeletal muscle cells (C2C12) which were incubated under hypoxia/hyperoxia conditions generated by varying oxygen level from 1%-60% for 24 and 48 hours. Two methods were used to perform the analysis. ICP-MS was applied to liquid samples to quantify Zn, Cu, Fe and Mn in cell populations. And LA-ICP-MS was employed to solid samples to measure their intensity in individual cells. The data acquired from both techniques are positively correlated confirming the reliability of the two approaches. All elements of interest were successfully measured except Mn which was not detected in single cells using LA-ICP-MS due to the limit of detection. Interestingly, the results showed that their concentration increased dramatically in cells grown at 25%-60% O2, the most significant increase was in Cu at 60%O2. None showed any increase at 5%-15% O2 indicating normoxia states. At 1%O2, all elements except Fe showed a significant increase and the most remarkable growth was in Mn. More interestingly, increasing incubation to 48 hours for liquid samples had differing effects on the elements. Zn and Cu concentrations were unaffected by increasing incubation time except at 60%O2 where they showed further growth. In contrast, Mn concentration grew sharply over oxygen levels of 30%-50% with no further effect at 1%, while Fe concentration decreased at 1%O2 and grew steadily over oxygen levels of 5%-60%. It can be concluded that all four elements were significantly affected by stress conditions applied to cells, but at different rates. Importantly, a novel analytical method was introduced in this current study since there have been no previous reported investigations measuring changes in concentration of redox-active elements in human cells subjected to different controlled oxidative stress conditions in vitro.
Selective Oviposition by Oriental Fire-bellied Toads in Temporally Fluctuating Environments

Abstract: Selective oviposition is widespread in anurans because it significantly affects the survivorship of their offspring, especially when environmental conditions are heterogeneous and potentially unfavorable. In the present study, we aimed to determine whether female oriental fire-bellied toads (Bombina orientalis) selectively lay eggs to increase their progeny's survival. We studied the Jeju Island population because the streams on this island are ephemeral, so the timing and site of egg-laying can be important for the survival of their progeny. We surveyed all pools in a specific area of an ephemeral stream for two years to determine whether female B. orientalis selectively lay eggs in certain pools to increase their progeny's survival. The characteristics of pools in our study sites varied especially in size that ranged from 0.01 to 36 m2 in surface area. We found that female B. orientalis avoid laying eggs in very small pools where the risk of desiccation or over-heating of water is high. However, unexpectedly, they also avoided large pools and primarily laid eggs in the pools that are not very small or large. In terms of timing, egg-laying took place in association with the timing of rain: the number of pools with egg clutches decreased as the number of days since the last rainfall increased. Females also avoided laying eggs in pools that were already occupied by tadpoles. Field experiments demonstrated that the degree of cannibalism on eggs by conspecific tadpoles is intense in this species. These findings collectively indicate that B. orientalis that live in a fluctuating environment show complicated oviposition behavior that mediate both desiccation and cannibalism risks.