Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prognostic nutritional index as a novel marker for prediction of prognosis in patients with peripartum cardiomyopathy

Abstract The clinical significance of poor nutritional status in patients with peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM) is not clearly understood. Prognostic nutritional index (PNI) is a simple nutritional assessment tool, which was first demonstrated to be valuable in patients with colorectal surgeries. We aimed to investigate the predictive value of PNI in patients with PPCM. A total of 92 patients diagnosed with PPCM were enrolled in this study. PNI was calculated using the following formula: 10 × serum albumin value (g/dL) + 0.005 × total lymphocyte count. The primary endpoint was defined as composite adverse cardiac events that included cardiac death or hospitalization due to worsening heart failure (HF). Cardiac death, hospitalization due to worsening HF, and persistent left ventricular (LV) systolic dysfunction were evaluated, respectively, as secondary endpoints. Primary composite endpoint was higher in the lower PNI group. After adjusting for other risk factors, PNI was found to be as an independent predictor of primary composite endpoint (odds ratio 0.805; 95% confidence interval 0.729–0.888; P < .001). In addition, PNI was significantly associated with secondary endpoints; persistent LV systolic dysfunction as well as cardiac death. This study identified nutritional status assessed by the PNI seems to be a novel predictor of adverse cardiovascular outcomes in patients with PPCM.
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* See Last Page for Key New 2017 Kessler/Moussa Page 1 Reference Study Type Patients/ Events Study Objective (Purpose of Study) Study Results Study Quality 1. National Institutes of Health. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). Quick Statistics. Available at: http://www.nidcd. nih.gov/health/statistics/ Pages/quick.aspx. Review/OtherDx N/A To present statics regarding deafness and other communication disorders. No results stated in abstract. 4
Retail Food Environment Intervention Planning: Interviews With Owners and Managers of Small- and Medium-Sized Rural Food Stores

Retail food environments are an important setting for promoting healthier diets and reducing the global burden of diet-related disease. The purpose of this 2-year community–university partnership was to develop a health promotion intervention for stores in a rural and remote region of British Columbia, Canada. This article reports on the qualitative interviews that were conducted with retail operators as part of an intervention planning process. Seven in-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with store owners and managers of small- and medium-sized stores in a rural and remote region. Interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify business operations and practices relevant to intervention planning and implementation. Relevant considerations for health promotion planners included the unique business models of rural stores; the prominence of regional travel and “outshopping” in rural and remote regions; challenges balancing between choice, value, and profitability; relationships with suppliers; and using local products to attract and retain customers. Involving retailers in settings-based approaches to improve population nutrition may help to mobilize existing practices and ensure that interventions are responsive to local context.
Recognition and Segmentation of English Long and Short Sentences Based on Machine Translation

With the advent of the information age, long sentences which include many words and have more complex structures. The translation of long sentences in English-Chinese machine translation has always been the focus of research. In this study, 400 long sentences were randomly selected from NTCIR-9 patent corpus for testing the recognition and segmentation effects of regular match method and error-driven method, and the accuracy rate of the translation was compared on Baidu Online Translation Platform. The results demonstrated that the regular matching method was effective in recognizing and segmenting long sentences, nevertheless there were many defects; the error-driven method was more effective in recognizing and segmenting long sentences; the former increased by 4.8% of the BLEU value of the translated text on Baidu Online Translation Platform and the latter increased by 12.1%, which showed that the error-driven method was more effective in machine translation.
Exocytosis and endocytosis: Coordinating and fine-tuning the polar tip growth domain in pollen tubes.

Pollen tubes rapidly elongate, penetrate and navigate through multiple female tissues to reach ovules for sperm delivery by utilizing a specialized form of polar growth known as tip growth. This process requires a battery of cellular activities differentially occurring at the apical growing region of the plasma membrane (PM), such as the differential cellular signaling involving calcium (Ca2+), phospholipids, and ROP-type Rho GTPases, fluctuation of ions and pH, exocytosis and endocytosis, and cell wall construction and remodeling. There is an emerging understanding of how at least some of these activities are coordinated and/or interconnected. The apical active ROP modulates exocytosis to the cell apex for PM and cell wall expansion differentially occurring at the tip. The differentiation of the cell wall involves at least the preferential distribution of deformable pectin polymers to the apex and of non-deformable pectin polymers to the shank of pollen tubes, facilitating the apical cell expansion driven by high internal turgor pressure. Recent studies have generated inroads into how the ROP GTPase-based intracellular signaling spatiotemporally is coordinated with the external wall mechanics to maintain the tubular cell shape and how the apical cell wall mechanics is regulated to allow rapid tip growth while maintaining the cell wall integrity under the turgor pressure. Evidence suggests that exocytosis and endocytosis play crucial but distinct roles in this spatiotemporal coordination. In this review, we summarize some recent advances in the regulation and coordination of the differential pectin distribution and the apical domain of active ROP by exocytosis and endocytosis in pollen tubes.
IDENTIFYING METASTATIC BREAST CANCER USING DEEP TEXTURE REPRESENTATION

The International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) held a grand challenge to evaluate computational systems for the automated detection of breast cancer metastasis in whole-slide images of histopathological lymph node sections. To solve the challenge, we train patch-based convolutional neural network (CNN). We assume that extracted features from each patch in WSI should be translationally invariant. Therefore, we focus on extracting the texture information as well as spatial one. We use deep texture representation computed with gram-matrix in layer of GoogLeNet[1]. It can learn multiple resolution or size with the same model and can handle large size of image. After training patch-based model, we create tumor probability heatmaps and perform post-processing to make patient-level predictions.
Arthroscopic Repair of Talar Osteochondral Defects With Umbilical Cord Allograft: A Prospective, Single-Center, Pilot Study

Cryopreserved umbilical cord (UC) allografts have been shown to promote postoperative wound healing by suppressing inflammation and reducing scar formation. The purpose of this study was to determine whether adjunctive use of UC may improve clinical and functional outcomes following arthroscopic repair of talar osteochondral defects (OCDs). A total of 10 patients with talar OCDs that failed nonoperative treatment were enrolled in this single-center, prospective, pilot study. Clinical and functional outcomes were assessed using the Ankle Osteoarthritis Scale (AOS), Foot and Ankle Ability Measure, and Visual Analog Scale (VAS) pain scale at 6, 12, 24, and 52 weeks postoperatively. Results showed a consistent improvement in all outcome measures. VAS pain scores significantly improved from 4.2 ± 2.9 to 1.3 ± 2.2 at 52 weeks (P = .015). AOS difficulty and pain scores nonsignificantly improved from 27.0 ± 24.6 and 33.1 ± 28.3 at baseline to 15.3 ± 20.5 and 14.8 ± 18.7 at 52 weeks, respectively. The clinical outcome improvement was accompanied by significant reduction in OCD defect size and associated bone marrow lesion. This pilot study suggests that adjunctive use of UC during arthroscopic repair of talar OCD may lead to clinical and functional improvement. Levels of Evidence: Level II: Prospective Cohort Study
Translation and validation of the cardiac rehabilitation barriers scale in the Czech Republic (CRBS-CZE)

Abstract Background: Cardiovascular diseases are highly prevalent and represent leading causes of morbidity worldwide, including in Central Europe. Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is an effective method of secondary prevention, but utilization is low. Barriers to CR use in the Czech Republic are not well-characterized, and therefore we propose a protocol to translate and validate the cardiac rehabilitation barriers scale (CRBS). Methods: In this multi-method study, we translated and cross-culturally validated the CRBS to Czech (CRBS-CZE) first through the following main steps: professional translation, reconciliation/harmonization, and cross-cultural adaptation, and piloting in 50 cardiac patients. A prospective study will be undertaken to psychometrically-validate the CRBS-CZE, where 300 to 600 cardiac inpatients eligible for phase II/outpatient CR will be recruited. Consenting participants will be informed about the CR program and their sociodemographic, clinical characteristics, and the CRBS-CZE administered. Factor analysis will be performed with oblique rotation, factors will be extracted based on eigenvalues, the examination of the scree plot, and factor loadings. The internal reliability of the total scale and subscales will be assessed with Cronbach alpha. Overall CRBS scores will be compared by patient characteristics such as sex, socioeconomic indicators, risk factor burden, and travel time to investigate content validity. Their CR enrollment, adherence (% of 24 prescribed sessions attended), and completion will be tracked. The second administration of CRBS-CZE will be undertaken in patients at 3 weeks after enrollment. To test criterion validity, t tests and Pearson correlation (for adherence) will be used to determine the association of these utilization indicators with CRBS scores. Results: The translated version was considered by 2 bilingual CR experts. Some revisions and example additions were made to the items. Upon piloting with patients, some further edits were made. No additional barriers were raised. Discussion: Through this study, a reliable and valid means of assessing patient's CR barriers will be established. Results will be used to identify ways to help patients overcome barriers to CR utilization.
High-resolution combined arterial spin labeling MR for identifying cerebral arterial stenosis induced by moyamoya disease or atherosclerosis.

Background Distinguishing moyamoya disease (MMD) from intracranial atherosclerotic stenosis (IAS) is critical for its treatment and outcome evaluation. This study aimed to use the combined sequences of high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (HRMRI) and arterial spin labeling MR (ASL-MR) to identify the two entities accurately. Methods This prospective study enrolled 58 patients with middle cerebral artery (MCA) steno-occlusion identified by digital subtraction angiography (DSA), including 27 cases of MMD and 31 cases of IAS. All patients underwent MRA, HRMRI and ASL-MR prior to DSA. Two radiologists blinded to DSA results analyzed the MR images. The inner and outer diameters of the target arteries, the wall thickness of the stenotic segment, and the perfusion status in the territories of the target arteries [cerebral blood flow (CBF), cerebral blood volume (CBV) and arterial transit time (ATT)] were measured quantitatively. The differences between MMD and IAS regarding the aspects of HRMRI and Pseudo-continuous ASLMR (PCASL-MR) maps were analyzed based on both visual characteristics and data information. Results Regarding the HRMRI images, MMD tended to have homogeneous and concentric vessel-wall thickening as well as collaterals adjacent to the stenotic vessels; while IAS showed eccentric and heterogeneous vessel-wall thickening. For the CBF maps of PCASL-MR, abnormal hyper-perfused spots embedded inside the hypo-perfused regions were observed in MMD instead of IAS. Quantitative analysis revealed that MMD displayed smaller inner and outer diameters, and smaller maximum wall thickness, higher average value of CBF, CBV and ATT, and higher maximum value of CBF and CBV, when compared to IAS (all P<0.01). The average wall thickness and the maximum value of ATT showed no significant difference between MMD and IAS (P>0.01). Conclusions HRMRI combined with PCASL-MR may help distinguish MMD and IAS induced cerebral arterial stenosis and cerebral perfusion disorder accurately and non-invasively.
Application of isotope techniques to study groundwater resources in the unconsolidated aquifers along the Ping River (Thailand)*

ABSTRACT Severe droughts during the dry season and floodings during the rainy season are among the major problems encountered in the valleys along the Ping River in Thailand. Improving our understanding of the groundwater resources in this agricultural area is an important issue for the sustainable development of the region. Hence, in order to gain understanding on the groundwater flow dynamics in the unconsolidated shallow aquifers along the Ping River, stable (13C, 18O, 2H, noble gases) and radioactive (3H, 14C) isotope techniques were combined with hydrogeochemical tools. The comprehensive interpretation of the chemical and isotope data consistently showed different origins for groundwater in the northern and southern areas of the investigated aquifers. Groundwaters in the northern part have younger 3H/3He ages, are less mineralized, and have suffered a stronger evaporation than groundwaters in the southern part of the aquifer. Overall, our results are consistent with the hydrogeological situation of the investigated area, namely shallow groundwaters and a spatially extended recharge. 3H/3He apparent ages indicated that young groundwater (<50 years) is present in all the investigated wells. Elevated concentrations of some pollutants (nitrate and phosphate) in parts of the aquifer evidenced a relatively high vulnerability of the aquifer to surface pollution.
Molecular Cytogenetic Analysis and Meiotic Pairing Behavior of Progenies Originating from a Hexaploid Triticale (×Triticosecale, Wittmack) and Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum, L.) Cross

The chromosomal constitution of 9 dwarf (D) and 8 semidwarf (SD) lines derived by crossing hexaploid Triticale line NA-75 (AABBRR, 2n = 6x = 42) with Triticumaestivum (AABBDD, 2n = 6x = 42) cv. Chinese Spring was investigated using molecular cytogenetic techniques: fluorescence in situ hybridization and genomic in situ hybridization. A wheat-rye translocation (T4DS.7RL), 8 substitution lines, and a ditelosomic addition line (7RSdt) were identified. In the substitution lines, 1, 2, or 4 pairs of wheat chromosomes, belonging to the A, B, or D genome, were replaced by rye chromosomes. Substitutions between chromosomes belonging to different wheat genomes [5B(5A), 1D(1B)] also occurred. The lines were genetically stable, each carrying 42 chromosomes, except the wheat-rye ditelosomic addition line, which carried 21 pairs of wheat chromosomes and 1 pair of rye telocentric chromosomes (7RS). The chromosome pairing behavior of the lines was studied during metaphase I of meiosis. The chromosome pairing level and the number of ring bivalents were different for each line. Besides rod bivalents, univalent and multivalent associations (tri- and quadrivalents) were also detected. The main goal of the experiment was to develop genetically stable wheat/Triticale recombinant lines carrying chromosomes/chromatin fragments originating from the R genome of Triticale line NA-75. Introgression of rye genes into hexaploid wheat can broaden its genetic diversity, and the newly developed lines can be used in wheat breeding programs.
Personalized eHealth Program for Life-style Change: Results From the “Do Cardiac Health Advanced New Generated Ecosystem (Do CHANGE 2)” Randomized Controlled Trial

ABSTRACT Objective Unhealthy life-style factors have adverse outcomes in cardiac patients. However, only a minority of patients succeed to change unhealthy habits. Personalization of interventions may result in critical improvements. The current randomized controlled trial provides a proof of concept of the personalized Do Cardiac Health Advanced New Generation Ecosystem (Do CHANGE) 2 intervention and evaluates effects on a) life-style and b) quality of life over time. Methods Cardiac patients (n = 150; mean age = 61.97 ± 11.61 years; 28.7% women; heart failure, n = 33; coronary artery disease, n = 50; hypertension, n = 67) recruited from Spain and the Netherlands were randomized to either the “Do CHANGE 2” or “care as usual” group. The Do CHANGE 2 group received ambulatory health-behavior assessment technologies for 6 months combined with a 3-month behavioral intervention program. Linear mixed-model analysis was used to evaluate the intervention effects, and latent class analysis was used for secondary subgroup analysis. Results Linear mixed-model analysis showed significant intervention effects for life-style behavior (Finteraction(2,138.5) = 5.97, p = . 003), with improvement of life-style behavior in the intervention group. For quality of life, no significant main effect (F(1,138.18) = . 58, p = . 447) or interaction effect (F(2,133.1) = 0.41, p = . 67) was found. Secondary latent class analysis revealed different subgroups of patients per outcome measure. The intervention was experienced as useful and feasible. Conclusions The personalized eHealth intervention resulted in significant improvements in life-style. Cardiac patients and health care providers were also willing to engage in this personalized digital behavioral intervention program. Incorporating eHealth life-style programs as part of secondary prevention would be particularly useful when taking into account which patients are most likely to benefit. Trial Registration: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03178305.
Ultrahigh-loading of Ir single atoms on NiO matrix to dramatically enhance oxygen evolution reaction.

Engineering single-atom electrocatalysts with high-loading amount hold great promise in energy conversion and storage application. Herein, we report a facile and economical approach to achieve an unprecedented high-loading of single Ir atoms, up to ~18wt%, on the nickel oxide (NiO) matrix as the electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). It exhibits an overpotential of 215 mV at 10 mA cm-2 and a remarkable OER current density in alkaline electrolyte, surpassing NiO and commercial IrO2 by 57 times and 24 times at 1.49 V vs. RHE, respectively. Systematic characterizations, including X-ray absorption spectroscopy and aberration-corrected Z-contrast imaging, demonstrates that the Ir-atoms are atomically dispersed at the outermost surface of NiO and are stabilized by covalent Ir-O bonding, which induces the isolated Ir atoms at a favorable over 4+ oxidation state. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the substituted single Ir atom not only serves as the active site for OER but also activates the surface reactivity of NiO, which thus leads to the dramatically improved OER performance. This synthesis method of developing high-loading single-atom catalysts can be extended to other oxide supports and paves the way for industrial application of single-atom catalysts.
Reliability and validity of the five-repetition sit-to-stand test in adult kidney transplant recipients

Background/Aims: To investigate the reliability and validity of the five-repetition sit-to-stand test (FRSTST) to assess lower-limb muscle strength and physical function in adult kidney transplant recipients. Methods: A cross-sectional, observational study was conducted in a secondary care centre. A convenience sample of 56 adult kidney transplant recipients were recruited following a 6-week post-transplantation recovery period. The participants were within their first 18 months of kidney transplantation. The measurements included FRSTST times, myometer measurements of isometric quadriceps muscle strength, 60-second sit-to-stand test (STS60) scores, and Duke Activity Status Index (DASI) scores. Findings: Inter- and intratester reliability of the FRSTST were excellent (intraclass correlation coefficients 0.997 and 0.970, respectively). The standard error of measurement and the minimal detectable change at 95% confidence level were 0.9 and 2.5 seconds, respectively. The best FRSTST scores by the two testers.
Differentiating Hypoglycemia Awareness Status from Hypoglycemia Experience in Tools for Measuring Impaired Awareness of Hypoglycemia

Background: Developing technologies in real-time continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) are successfully reducing severe hypoglycemia (SH) in trials and clinical practice. Their impact on impaired awareness of hypoglycemia, a major risk factor for SH, is uncertain. Methods: The present study examined two scales for assessing hypoglycemia awareness status, the Gold score and the eight-item Minimally Modified Clarke Hypoglycemia Survey (MMCHS), commonly used in trials of CGM, in Portuguese-speaking adults with type 1 diabetes and conducted an exploratory factor analysis on MMCHS. Results: A bifactorial structure in MMCHS was revealed, with a clear distinction between items that measure SH experience and those that measure hypoglycemia awareness status. The latter is associated with the same risk for SH as the Gold score. Conclusions: We conclude that improvement in awareness scores by the MMCHS may reflect only a reduction in SH with no restoration of endogenous awareness, making the current literature consistent in evidence that CGM does not improve endogenous awareness and nonsensor supported protection from SH. This has implications for risk of SH when CGM is not being worn.