Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Novel agonist of α4β2* neuronal nicotinic receptor with antinociceptive efficacy in rodent models of acute and chronic pain

Objective To demonstrate the antinociceptive and antihypersensitivity mechanisms of Cris-104 (1-{2-[5-(4-fluorophenyl)–1H-pyrazol-4-yl]ethyl}piperidine), a novel selective α4β2* nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) agonist, in rodent acute/inflammatory and chronic pain models. Materials and methods Hot-plate and formalin tests in mice were used to examine Cris-104-induced antinociceptive effects on thermal/inflammatory pain. Cris-104 effects on hypersensitivity, norepinephrine (NE) release in the spinal dorsal horn, and neuronal activity in the locus coeruleus (LC) were examined in rats with lumbar spinal nerve ligation using behavioral, microdialysis, and extracellular recording methods. Cris-104 effects on spontaneous locomotion were examined in an open-field test. Results Cris-104 induced dose-dependent antinociception effects in hot-plate and formalin tests, and these effects were blocked by the general nAChR antagonist mecamylamine, the selective α4β2* nAChR antagonist dihydro-beta-erythroidine, and the α2-adrenoceptor antagonist yohimbine, but not by the α1-adrenoceptor antagonist prazosin. Systemic and spinally perfused Cris-104 increased NE concentrations in microdialysates from the spinal cord in both normal and SNL rats. Systemic Cris-104 increased neuronal activity in the LC of normal rats. Mecamylamine blocked the effects of Cris-104 on spinal NE release and LC neuronal activity. Systemic Cris-104 did not affect locomotor activity significantly. Conclusion The α4β2 neuronal nAChR agonist, Cris-104, was effective for treatment of pain via descending noradrenergic inhibition of pain signaling.
Simulated intention-to-treat analysis based on clinical parameters of patients at high risk for sleep apnea derivated to respiratory polygraphy

Purpose Obstructive Sleep Apnea-Hypopnea Syndrome (OSAS) is a public health problem. We designed a pilot study to validate empiric indication of CPAP therapy in a population with moderate-to-high pre-test probabilities who underwent self-administered home-based respiratory polygraphy (RP). Methods A cross-sectional simulation study was performed. CPAP therapy could be indicated by two independent blind observers. Observer 1´s decision was based on the results of STOP-BANG (SBQ) and Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) and Observer 2 used all objective data provided by RP + SBQ + ESS. Results We evaluated 1763 patients; 1060 men and 703 women (39.2%) with a mean age of 53.6±13.8 and a body mass index (BMI) of 32.8±7.5 kg/m2. We found evidence of mild (34.1%), moderate (26.6%), and severe (18.3%) There were Apnea-Hypopnea Index (AHI) relationship between > 5 or < 5 SBQ and RP AHI ( p <0.05). BMI > 25 kg/m 2 + snoring (S) + observed apnea (O) + 1 of the following: ESS > 11, hypertension (HT) or > 5 SBQ components showed sensitivity of 40% (CI95%:37.3-43) and specificity of 95.1% (CI93.4-96.4). The performance of 5 SBQ components with regard to gender and empirical CPAP therapy was; (women vs. men): AUC-ROC 0.625 (CI95%: 0.599-0.651) vs . 0.70 (CI95%:0.68-0.72), p <0.01, respectively. Conclusions STOP-BANG and ESS made it possible to indicate CPAP reliably (low rate of false-positive results) in 20-40% of patients who needed such therapy according to clinical history and RP results. These clinical criteria performed better in male.
Executive functioning is preserved in healthy young adults under acute sleep restriction

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate if a partial morning or evening sleep restriction protocol could affect executive functioning in healthy young adults. Methods: Participants were assigned to one of three groups: control (n=18), in which participants maintained their habitual sleep/wake cycle; morning restriction (n=17), in which volunteers terminated sleep approximately three hours earlier than the usual on the experimental night, and evening restriction (n=13), in which volunteers initiated sleep approximately three hours later than the usual on the experimental night. On the day of the experiment, they performed the Stroop Test, the Go-NoGo Test and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Results: When compared to the control group, neither morning nor evening sleep-restricted individuals displayed any significant deficits in: a) selective attention as assessed by the interference index (H=3.38; p =0.18) and time to performed the interference card (H=2.61; p =0.27) on the Stroop test; b) motor response inhibition as assessed by number of false alarms (H=0.8; p =0.67) on the Go-NoGo Test; and c) in decision-making as assessed by total won (H=2.64; p =0.26) and number of selected advantageous cards (H=4.43; p =0.11) on the IGT. Conclusion: These findings suggest that the ability to pay attention, inhibit a motor response and make decisions is preserved following approximately 3 hours of sleep restriction, regardless of its timing (in the morning or in the evening).
An Interpretable Model for Scene Graph Generation

We propose an efficient and interpretable scene graph generator. We consider three types of features: visual, spatial and semantic, and we use a late fusion strategy such that each feature's contribution can be explicitly investigated. We study the key factors about these features that have the most impact on the performance, and also visualize the learned visual features for relationships and investigate the efficacy of our model. We won the champion of the OpenImages Visual Relationship Detection Challenge on Kaggle, where we outperform the 2nd place by 5\% (20\% relatively). We believe an accurate scene graph generator is a fundamental stepping stone for higher-level vision-language tasks such as image captioning and visual QA, since it provides a semantic, structured comprehension of an image that is beyond pixels and objects.
GroundNet: Segmentation-Aware Monocular Ground Plane Estimation with Geometric Consistency

We focus on the problem of estimating the orientation of the ground plane with respect to a mobile monocular camera platform (e.g., ground robot, wearable camera, assistive robotic platform). To address this problem, we formulate the ground plane estimation problem as an inter-mingled multi-task prediction problem by jointly optimizing for point-wise surface normal direction, 2D ground segmentation, and depth estimates. Our proposed model -- GroundNet -- estimates the ground normal in two streams separately and then a consistency loss is applied on top of the two streams to enforce geometric consistency. A semantic segmentation stream is used to isolate the ground regions and are used to selectively back-propagate parameter updates only through the ground regions in the image. Our experiments on KITTI and ApolloScape datasets verify that the GroundNet is able to predict consistent depth and normal within the ground region. It also achieves top performance on ground plane normal estimation and horizon line detection.
Subnormothermic short‐term cultivation improves the vascularization capacity of adipose tissue‐derived microvascular fragments

Adipose tissue‐derived microvascular fragments (ad‐MVFs) are promising vascularization units for tissue engineering. In this study, we analysed the effects of normothermic (37°C) and subnormothermic (20°C) short‐term cultivation on their viability and network forming capacity. Ad‐MVFs from green fluorescent protein (GFP)+ and GFP− C57BL/6 mice were cultivated for 24 hr at 37°C or 20°C. Freshly isolated, noncultivated ad‐MVFs served as controls. Number, length, viability, proliferation, and angiogenic activity of the ad‐MVFs were assessed by microscopic analysis and proteome profiling. GFP+ ad‐MVFs were seeded onto collagen‐glycosaminoglycan matrices, which were implanted into dorsal skinfold chambers of GFP− mice to analyse their vascularization by means of intravital fluorescence microscopy, histology, and immunohistochemistry. Depending on the temperature, short‐term cultivation of ad‐MVFs markedly changed their expression of multiple proangiogenic and antiangiogenic factors. Moreover, cultivation at 37°C significantly increased the number of apoptotic cells within ad‐MVFs, whereas 20°C preserved the viability of ad‐MVFs and even promoted the proliferation of endothelial and perivascular cells. Accordingly, ad‐MVFs cultivated at 20°C also exhibited an enhanced in vivo vascularization capacity when compared with normothermically cultivated ad‐MVFs and noncultivated controls. This was indicated by an accelerated network formation, an increased microvascular remodelling, and a higher density of GFP+ microvessels within implanted matrices. Thus, if ad‐MVFs require short‐term storage before in vivo application, subnormothermic cultivation should be preferred to normothermic cultivation.
A Real-Time Autonomous Dashboard for the Emergency Department: 5-Year Case Study

Background The task of monitoring and managing the entire emergency department (ED) is becoming more important due to increasing pressure on the ED. Recently, dashboards have received the spotlight as health information technology to support these tasks. Objective This study aimed to describe the development of a real-time autonomous dashboard for the ED and to evaluate perspectives of clinical staff on its usability. Methods We developed a dashboard based on three principles—“anytime, anywhere, at a glance;” “minimal interruption to workflow;” and “protect patient privacy”—and 3 design features—“geographical layout,” “patient-level alert,” and “real-time summary data. ” Items to evaluate the dashboard were selected based on the throughput factor of the conceptual model of ED crowding. Moreover, ED physicians and nurses were surveyed using the system usability scale (SUS) and situation awareness index as well as a questionnaire we created on the basis of the construct of the Situation Awareness Rating Technique. Results The first version of the ED dashboard was successfully launched in 2013, and it has undergone 3 major revisions since then because of geographical changes in ED and modifications to improve usability. A total of 52 ED staff members participated in the survey. The average SUS score of the dashboard was 67.6 points, which indicates “OK-to-Good” usability. The participants also reported that the dashboard provided efficient “concentration support” (4.15 points), “complexity representation” (4.02 points), “variability representation” (3.96 points), “information quality” (3.94 points), and “familiarity” (3.94 points). However, the “division of attention” was rated at 2.25 points. Conclusions We developed a real-time autonomous ED dashboard and successfully used it for 5 years with good evaluation from users.
Gliomasphere marker combinatorics: multidimensional flow cytometry detects CD44+/CD133+/ITGA6+/CD36+ signature

Glioblastoma is the most dangerous brain cancer. One reason for glioblastoma's aggressiveness are glioblastoma stem‐like cells. To target them, a number of markers have been proposed (CD133, CD44, CD15, A2B5, CD36, CXCR4, IL6R, L1CAM, and ITGA6). A comprehensive study of co‐expression patterns of them has, however, not been performed so far. Here, we mapped the multidimensional co‐expression profile of these stemness‐associated molecules. Gliomaspheres – an established model of glioblastoma stem‐like cells – were used. Seven different gliomasphere systems were subjected to multicolor flow cytometry measuring the nine markers CD133, CD44, CD15, A2B5, CD36, CXCR4, IL6R, L1CAM, and ITGA6 all simultaneously based on a novel 9‐marker multicolor panel developed for this study. The viSNE dimensionality reduction algorithm was applied for analysis. All gliomaspheres were found to express at least five different glioblastoma stem‐like cell markers. Multi‐dimensional analysis showed that all studied gliomaspheres consistently harbored a cell population positive for the molecular signature CD44+/CD133+/ITGA6+/CD36+. Glioblastoma patients with an enrichment of this combination had a significantly worse survival outcome when analyzing the two largest available The Cancer Genome Atlas datasets (MIT/Harvard Affymetrix: P = 0.0015, University of North Carolina Agilent: P = 0.0322). In sum, we detected a previously unknown marker combination – demonstrating feasibility, usefulness, and importance of high‐dimensional gliomasphere marker combinatorics.
The Search for a Practical Method for Colistin Susceptibility Testing: Have We Found It by Going Back to the Future?

Polymyxins are relied upon for the treatment of carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infections, but polymyxin resistance is increasing. Only broth microdilution is recommended for polymyxin susceptibility testing, but this method is impractical for most clinical microbiology laboratories. ABSTRACT Polymyxins are relied upon for the treatment of carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infections, but polymyxin resistance is increasing. Only broth microdilution is recommended for polymyxin susceptibility testing, but this method is impractical for most clinical microbiology laboratories. An article in this issue of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology (P. J. Simner, Y. Bergman, M. Trejo, A. A. Roberts, R. Marayan, T. Tekle, S. Campeau, A. Kazmi, D. Bell, S. Lewis, P. D. Tamma, R. Humphries, and J. A. Hindler, J Clin Microbiol 57:e01163-18, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1128/JCM.01163-18) found that colistin broth disk elution, a method that requires only colistin disks and broth, had excellent performance compared to broth microdilution for all strains except mcr-positive Escherichia coli strains.
Visualizing atomic sizes and molecular shapes with the classical turning surface of the Kohn–Sham potential

Significance Can quantum mechanics predict a well-defined and chemically intuitive size and shape for an atom or a molecule? We show that the bounding surface of a chemical species can be naturally defined as the classical turning surface of the Kohn–Sham potential—an effective potential that, acting on noninteracting electrons, yields the ground-state density of the real system. The atomic and ionic radii defined in this manner display all expected periodic trends, while the ratio of a bond length to the sum of atomic or ionic radii identifies the type of the bond (covalent, ionic, hydrogen, or van der Waals). The proposed approach permits a visual representation of chemical species that is intuitive and quantum-mechanically rigorous at the same time. The Kohn–Sham potential veff(r) is the effective multiplicative operator in a noninteracting Schrödinger equation that reproduces the ground-state density of a real (interacting) system. The sizes and shapes of atoms, molecules, and solids can be defined in terms of Kohn–Sham potentials in a nonarbitrary way that accords with chemical intuition and can be implemented efficiently, permitting a natural pictorial representation for chemistry and condensed-matter physics. Let ϵmax be the maximum occupied orbital energy of the noninteracting electrons. Then the equation veff(r)=ϵmax defines the surface at which classical electrons with energy ϵ≤ϵmax would be turned back and thus determines the surface of any electronic object. Atomic and ionic radii defined in this manner agree well with empirical estimates, show regular chemical trends, and allow one to identify the type of chemical bonding between two given atoms by comparing the actual internuclear distance to the sum of atomic radii. The molecular surfaces can be fused (for a covalent bond), seamed (ionic bond), necked (hydrogen bond), or divided (van der Waals bond). This contribution extends the pioneering work of Z. -Z. Yang et al. [Yang ZZ, Davidson ER (1997) Int J Quantum Chem 62:47–53; Zhao DX, et al. (2018) Mol Phys 116:969–977] by our consideration of the Kohn–Sham potential, protomolecules, doubly negative atomic ions, a bond-type parameter, seamed and necked molecular surfaces, and a more extensive table of atomic and ionic radii that are fully consistent with expected periodic trends.
Lagrangian Duality with ELM for Word Sense Multiprototype Discovery

ABSTRACT Homonymy and polysemy are major issues in word sense disambiguation. Combining with multilayer neural network, word sense multiprototyping tackles the issues by defining multiple feature embedding representations for each word which are based on the average feature weight of the word’s different context windows called prototypes. The complexity of parameter estimation of neural network regression as well as the fixed context window size are the restrictions on the implementation of word sense multiprototyping. We propose approximating the least absolute deviation (LAD) between pair-wise word frequency covariance and pair-wise word semantic relatedness by Extreme Machine Learning (ELM) with less-constraint parameter estimation. Lagrangian duality proves the method’s feasibility. An in-cluster closeness calculation is performed to extract a variable context window to contextually identify multiprototypes of word senses based on Kmeans clustering. The higher accuracy of the discovered multiprototypes is verified by our experiments.
Error Performances for a 12-QAM STBC with Two-Space Dimensions

The space-time block coding scheme was developed to reduce the bit error rate for the receiver by transmitting multiple copies of the data during several symbol times. Recently, the 12-QAM scheme with two-time dimensions was proposed to reduce PAPR for the transmitter by removing corner signal points in the constellation. This paper proposes an efficient method to apply the 12-QAM scheme with two-space dimensions including error correction on the constellation to the Alamouti space-time block coding for reliable communications. In the performance results, the error performance of the Alamouti space-time block coding using the proposed QAM is compared with the one using the existing QAM. In addition, it is shown that the performance of 12-QAM with two receiving antennas and error correction on constellation is the best one except 4-QAM with two antennas.
How Reliable Is My Software-Defined Network? Models and Failure Impacts

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a fundamental paradigm shift in communication networks, separating the network control and data planes. This separation enables the dynamic reconfiguration of the data plane at run-time through control plane software. The logically centralized control plane - the network brain - is typically realized in a distributed fashion to avoid a single point of failure, to provide redundancy of key control plane functions vis-a-vis the data plane and to provide horizontal scale-out. As SDN begins to be adopted as the underlying paradigm and platform for carrier-grade networks through the advent of open-source SDN controllers, a deep understanding of the reliability of SDNs is essential to satisfying carrier-grade requirements and fulfilling service-level agreements. To this end, we present a model of SDN reliability under control and data plane failures, that encompasses the distributed nature of the SDN control plane.
Cochlear Implant Device Failure in the Postoperative Period: An Institutional Analysis

Introduction: As the cochlear implant (CI) surgeries are on rise, there is a compelling need to understand its long-term complications and revision surgery protocols. Our experience in the management of CI devices failure is shared in this paper. Aim: To review the experience in patients who underwent CI device manipulation/explanation in terms of failure rate, etiology, surgical considerations, and preoperative and postoperative auditory and speech outcome. Study Design: This was a retrospective study. Materials and Methods: A retrospective study of 250 patients (201 children and 49 adults) with normal cochlea at a tertiary care center from June 2004 to June 2014 was done. All cases were implanted multichannel devices via Veria technique of CI surgery. Preoperative assessment, surgical considerations, and postoperative auditory and speech outcomes were analyzed. Preoperative and postoperative auditory/speech outcomes were analyzed using Category of Auditory Perception (CAP) and Speech Intelligibility Rating (SIR) scores. Results: Reimplantation rate was 4%. The causes of revision CI surgery were hard device failure (n = 3), surgical site infection (n = 3), magnet displacement (n = 2), and electrode extrusion (n = 2). In one patient, recurrent cutaneous infection on the implanted site ultimately resulted in reimplantation in the opposite ear after multiple surgical interventions on the same side. The preoperative and postoperative CAP and SIR scores showed improvement in the postoperative period with P < 0.05 as compared with the paired t- test. Conclusions: Preoperative counseling for device failure should always be emphasized. The success rate is high in revision surgery with good performance in the postoperative audiological outcome. There is a compelling need for an agreed international definition of CI failure and the adoption of uniform reporting protocols.
Acute effect of taping on plantar pressure characteristics in athletes with exercise-induced leg pain: a description and comparison of groups

ABSTRACT Objectives: Foot pronation is considered as a potential risk factor of lower leg overuse injury. This study aimed to identify plantar pressure characteristics of elite athletes with exercise-induced leg pain in throwing athletic disciplines, and to verify the acute effect of taping for restricting foot pronation by analyzing the plantar pressure characteristics. Methods: This study was designed as a description and comparison of throwing athletic athletes. Participants were divided into exercise-induced leg pain (ELP group, n = 17) and control groups (CON group, n = 14). Plantar pressure variables (contact area, maximum force, and peak pressure) at eight-foot regions in athletes’ supporting leg were recorded during standing on one leg and a natural walk before and after applying anti-pronation or sham taping techniques. Results: There are significant difference of contact area, maximal force, and peak pressure in some regions of their foot between the ELP and CON groups. But the anti-pronation taping decreased only the peak pressure in lateral midfoot of CON group during a natural walk (p = 0.002). Conclusion: The anti-pronation taping technique may not be effective preventive strategy from the exercise-induced leg pain, such as shin splints.
Prevalence of resistance-associated substitutions to direct-acting antiviral agents in hemodialysis and renal transplant patients infected with hepatitis C virus

Background Direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs) permit the use of interferon (IFN)-free regimens to treat hepatitis C (HCV) in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) on hemo-dialysis (HD) or renal transplant (RTx) recipients, with excellent response rates and safety. However, the occurrence of basal or therapy-induced resistance-associated substitutions (RASs) to DAAs can result in treatment failure. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of RASs to NS3A, NS5A and NS5B inhibitors, and particularly the Q80K polymorphism, in CKD patients on HD and RTx recipients infected with HCV. Patients and methods HD and RTx patients infected with HCV-genotype 1 (GT1) were subjected to sequencing of the NS3, NS5A and NS5B regions. Results Direct sequencing of NS3 protease, NS5A and NS5B was performed in 76 patients (HD, n=37; RTx, n=39). The overall prevalence of RASs was 38.2%, but only 5.3% of the patients had mutations in more than one region. Substitutions were detected in NS3A (17.8%), NS5A (21.9%) and NS5B (8.4%). Q80K was detected in 1.5 % of the patients. Highly inhibitory RASs were uncommon (L31M, 2.6%; L159F+C316N, 2.6%). RASs were more prevalent in HCV-GT1a (42.9%) than in HCV-GT1b (32.4%), P=0.35. RASs were detected in 52.4% of treatment-naive patients and 27.8% of peg-IFN/ribavirin-experienced patients (P=0.12). The presence of RASs was associated with time of RTx (P=0.01). Conclusion The Q80K polymorphism was uncommon in our sample of HD and RTx patients. Despite the high prevalence of naturally occurring RASs, most of the substitutions detected were associated with a low level of resistance to DAAs.