Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alterations in Body Composition, Resting Metabolic Rate, Muscular Strength, and Eating Behavior in Response to Natural Bodybuilding Competition Preparation: A Case Study.

Schoenfeld, BJ, Alto, A, Grgic, J, Tinsley, G, Haun, CT, Campbell, BI, Escalante, G, Sonmez, GT, Cote, G, Francis, A, and Trexler, ET. Alterations in body composition, resting metabolic rate, muscular strength, and eating behavior in response to natural bodybuilding competition preparation: A case study. J Strength Cond Res XX(X): 000-000, 2020-We carried out a prospective case study in a high-level amateur natural male bodybuilder throughout preparation for 4 competitions and during the ensuing postcontest recovery period. Laboratory testing was conducted monthly over a 1-year period, which included the following assessments: B-mode ultrasound evaluation of muscle thickness (MT), multifrequency bioelectrical impedance analysis, blood pressure and heart rate assessment, resting metabolic rate via indirect calorimetry, skinfold testing, vertical jump height, isometric lower-body strength testing, and a 3-factor eating questionnaire. Blood work (including testosterone, thyroid hormone, sex hormone binding globulin, glomerular filtration rate, blood urea nitrogen, aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, white blood count, albumin to globulin ratio, and lipoprotein A) was obtained separately from an outside laboratory at 4 time points. We also assessed the effectiveness of a carbohydrate (carb) deplete and carb load peaking strategy employed immediately before competition. The subject employed a high-volume, high-frequency, whole-body training program throughout the study period. Average daily nutritional intakes ranged from 1,953 to 3,415 kcal: 104-386 g carb; 253-263 g protein, and; 57-95 g lipid. Body fat was reduced to very low levels (∼5%) immediately before competition, but this corresponded with a loss of lean mass. Alterations in metabolism, hormonal status, explosive strength, and psychological aspects of eating were observed during precontest preparation; however, all of these variables recovered quickly postcompetition. The implementation of a carb depleteand carb load peaking strategy acutely increased MT and thus may be a viable precontest approach to maximize muscular aesthetics.
Temporal changes in the fecal bacterial community in Holstein dairy calves from birth through the transition to a solid diet

The development of a robust microbiome is critical to the health of dairy calves, but relatively little is known about the progression of the microbiome through the weaning transition. In this study, fecal samples were obtained from ten female Holstein calves at 6 timepoints between 2–13 weeks of age. Calves were fed acidified milk until weaning at 8 weeks old and had access to starter grain throughout the study. Fecal samples were extracted for genomic DNA, PCR-amplified for the V1-V2 region of the 16S rRNA bacterial gene, sequenced on the Illumina MiSeq platform, and analyzed using the QIIME2 pipeline. Bacterial richness, estimated by number of observed species, and bacterial diversity, estimated by Shannon diversity index, both differed significantly between timepoints and both increased over time (P <0.05), with the largest increases occurring during weaning. Weighted and unweighted UniFrac analysis showed significant differences (P <0.05) between bacterial communities across timepoints; betadisper analysis revealed that the microbiomes of individual calves became more similar with time. Throughout the study, Firmicutes was the dominant phylum, followed by Bacteroidetes. Thirteen bacterial genera were found to be significantly influenced by time, including Faecalibacterium, Clostridium, unclassified S24-7, Collinsella, Sharpea, and Treponema. Unclassified Ruminococcaceae was the most prevalent genus at timepoints 1, 3, 5, and 6, but different amplicon sequence variants were detected at each timepoint suggesting the presence of different species of Ruminococcaceae at different times. Bacteroides was the most prevalent genus at timepoint 2, and Prevotella was most prevalent at timepoint 4. Our results indicate that there is considerable variation in the calf microbiome pre-weaning, but the microbial community stabilizes and becomes similar to the adult microbiome at weaning. Further studies to describe the phylogeny and functionality of core microbiota through the weaning transition are needed to improve health and reduce diarrhea in the neonatal period.
Counting Bites and Recognizing Consumed Food from Videos for Passive Dietary Monitoring

Assessing dietary intake in epidemiological studies are predominantly based on self-reports, which are subjective, inefficient, and also prone to error. Technological approaches are therefore emerging to provide objective dietary assessments. Using only egocentric dietary intake videos, this work aims to provide accurate estimation on individual dietary intake through recognizing consumed food items and counting the number of bites taken. This is different from previous studies that rely on inertial sensing to count bites, and also previous studies that only recognize visible food items but not consumed ones. As a subject may not consume all food items visible in a meal, recognizing those consumed food items is more valuable. A new dataset that has 1,022 dietary intake video clips was constructed to validate our concept of bite counting and consumed food item recognition from egocentric videos. 12 subjects participated and 52 meals were captured. A total of 66 unique food items, including food ingredients and drinks, were labelled in the dataset along with a total of 2,039 labelled bites. Deep neural networks were used to perform bite counting and food item recognition in an end-to-end manner. Experiments have shown that counting bites directly from video clips can reach 74.15% top-1 accuracy (classifying between 0-4 bites in 20-second clips), and a MSE value of 0.312 (when using regression). Our experiments on video-based food recognition also show that recognizing consumed food items is indeed harder than recognizing visible ones, with a drop of 25% in F1 score.
Gold-Deposited Nickel Foam as Recyclable Plasmonic Sensor for Therapeutic Drug Monitoring in Blood by Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy

A sensitive and recyclable plasmonic nickel foam sensor has been developed for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). A simple electrochemical method was used to deposit flower-shaped gold nanostructures onto nickel foam substrate. The high packing of the gold nanoflowers onto the nickel foam led to a high enhancement factor (EF) of 1.6 × 1011. The new SERS sensor was utilized for the direct determination of the broad-spectrum β-lactam carbapenem antibiotic meropenem in human blood plasma down to one pM. The sensor was also used in High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC)-SERS assembly to provide fingerprint identification of meropenem in human blood plasma. Moreover, the SERS measurements were reproducible in aqueous solution and human blood plasma (RSD = 5.5%) and (RSD = 2.86%), respectively at 200 µg/mL (n = 3), and successfully recycled using a simple method, and hence, used for the repeated determination of the drug by SERS. Therefore, the new sensor has a strong potential to be applied for the therapeutic drug monitoring of meropenem at points of care and intensive care units.
Sequence Analysis of Egyptian Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Field and Vaccine Strains: Intertypic Recombination and Evidence for Accidental Release of Virulent Virus

In spite of annual mass vaccination programs with polyvalent inactivated vaccines, the incidence and economic impact of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Egypt is high. Viruses of the A, O and SAT 2 serotypes are endemic and repeated incursions of new lineages from other countries lead to an unstable situation that makes the selection of appropriate vaccine antigens very difficult. In this study, whole genome sequencing of a 2016 serotype A isolate from Egypt revealed a recombination event with an African serotype O virus. Based on available vaccine matching data, none of the vaccines currently used in Egypt are expected to sufficiently protect against this virus or other viruses of this lineage (A/AFRICA/G-IV) circulating there since 2012. In addition to the risk of vaccine failure caused by strain mismatch, the production of inactivated FMD vaccines is dangerous if adequate biosafety cannot be maintained. Using a high-throughput sequencing protocol optimized for short nucleic acid fragments, the composition of a local inactivated vaccine was analyzed in depth. The serotype O strain identified in the vaccine was genetically identical to viruses found in recent FMD outbreaks in Egypt.
Long non-coding RNA MEG3 suppresses epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition by inhibiting the PSAT1-dependent GSK-3β/Snail signaling pathway in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the main subtype of esophageal cancer in China, and the prognosis of patients remains poor mainly due to the occurrence of lymph node and distant metastasis. The long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) maternally expressed gene 3 (MEG3) has been shown to have tumor-suppressive properties and to play an important role in epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in some solid tumors. However, whether MEG3 is involved in EMT in ESCC remains unclear. In the present study, the MEG3 expression level and its association with tumorigenesis were determined in 43 tumor tissues of patients with ESCC and in ESCC cells using reverse transcription-quantitative PCR analysis. Gene microarray analysis was performed to detect differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Based on the functional annotation results, the effects of ectopic expression of MEG3 on cell growth, migration, invasion and EMT were assessed. MEG3 expression level was found to be markedly lower in tumor tissues and cells. Statistical analysis revealed that MEG3 expression was significantly negatively associated with lymph node metastasis and TNM stage in ESCC. Fluorescence in situ hybridization assay demonstrated that MEG3 was expressed mainly in the nucleus. Ectopic expression of MEG3 inhibited cell proliferation, migration, invasion and cell cycle progression in EC109 cells. Gene microarray results demonstrated that 177 genes were differentially expressed ≥2.0 fold in MEG3-overexpressing cells, including 23 upregulated and 154 downregulated genes. Functional annotation revealed that the DEGs were mainly involved in amino acid biosynthetic process, mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling, and serine and glycine metabolism. Further experiments indicated that the ectopic expression of MEG3 significantly suppressed cell proliferation, migration, invasion and EMT by downregulating phosphoserine aminotransferase 1 (PSAT1). In pathological tissues, PSAT1 and MEG3 were significantly negatively correlated, and high expression of PSAT1 predicted poor survival. Taken together, these results suggest that MEG3 may be a useful prognostic biomarker and may suppress EMT by inhibiting the PSAT1-dependent glycogen synthase kinase-3β/Snail signaling pathway in ESCC.
New Taxa of the Family Amniculicolaceae (Pleosporales, Dothideomycetes, Ascomycota) from Freshwater Habitats in Spain

With the exception of the so-called Ingoldian fungi, the diversity and distribution of the freshwater aero-aquatic or facultative fungi are not well known in Spain. In view of that, we collected and placed into wet chambers 105 samples of submerged and decomposing plant debris from various places in Spain, looking for individuals belonging to these latter two morpho-ecological groups of fungi. As a result, we found and isolated in pure culture several fungi, the morphology of some of them belonging to the family Amniculicolaceae (order Pleosporales, class Dothideomycetes). After a careful phenotypic characterization and a phylogenetic tree reconstruction using a concatenated sequence dataset of D1-D2 domains of the 28S nrRNA gene (LSU), the internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) of the nrDNA, and a fragment of the translation elongation factor 1-alpha (tef1) gene, we report the finding of three new species of the genus Murispora: Murispora navicularispora, which produces cinnamon-colored, broadly fusiform to navicular ascospores; Murispora fissilispora, which has as a remarkable characteristic the production of both sexual and asexual morphs in vitro; and Murispora asexualis, the unique species of the genus that lacks a sexual morph. As a consequence of the phylogenetic study, we introduce the new aero-aquatic genus Fouskomenomyces, with a new combination (Fouskomenomyces cupreorufescens, formerly Spirosphaera cupreorufescens as the type species of the genus) and a new species, Fouskomenomyces mimiticus; we propose the new combinations Murispora bromicola (formerly Pseudomassariosphaeria bromicola) and Murispora triseptata (formerly Pseudomassariosphaeria triseptata); and we resurrect Massariosphaeria grandispora, which is transferred to the family Lopiostomataceae.
Photodynamic Diagnosis and Therapy for Peritoneal Carcinomatosis: Emerging Perspectives

Simple Summary Peritoneal carcinomatosis, the formation of wide-spread metastases throughout the abdominal cavity, remains challenging to diagnose and treat. Photodynamic diagnosis and photodynamic therapy are promising approaches for the diagnosis and treatment of peritoneal carcinomatosis, which use photosensitizers for fluorescence detection or photochemical treatment of (micro) metastases. With the aim of highlighting the potential of this theranostic approach, this review outlines the clinical state of the art in the use of photodynamic diagnosis and therapy for peritoneal carcinomatosis, identifies the major challenges, and provides emerging perspectives from preclinical studies to address these challenges. We conclude that the development of novel illumination strategies and targeted photonanomedicines may aid in achieving more efficient cytoreductive surgery. In addition to combination treatments with chemo-, and radiotherapy, such approaches hold significant promise to improve the outlook of patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis. Abstract Peritoneal carcinomatosis occurs frequently in patients with advanced stage gastrointestinal and gynecological cancers. The wide-spread peritoneal micrometastases indicate a poor outlook, as the tumors are difficult to diagnose and challenging to completely eradicate with cytoreductive surgery and chemotherapeutics. Photodynamic diagnosis (PDD) and therapy (PDT), modalities that use photosensitizers for fluorescence detection or photochemical treatment of cancer, are promising theranostic approaches for peritoneal carcinomatosis. This review discusses the leading clinical trials, identifies the major challenges, and presents potential solutions to advance the use of PDD and PDT for the treatment of peritoneal carcinomatosis. While PDD for fluorescence-guided surgery is practically feasible and has achieved clinical success, large randomized trials are required to better evaluate the survival benefits. Although PDT is feasible and combines well with clinically used chemotherapeutics, poor tumor specificity has been associated with severe morbidity. The major challenges for both modalities are to increase the tumor specificity of the photosensitizers, to efficiently treat peritoneal microtumors regardless of their phenotypes, and to improve the ability of the excitation light to reach the cancer tissues. Substantial progress has been achieved in (1) the development of targeted photosensitizers and nanocarriers to improve tumor selectivity, (2) the design of biomodulation strategies to reduce treatment heterogeneity, and (3) the development of novel light application strategies. The use of X-ray-activated PDT during whole abdomen radiotherapy may also be considered to overcome the limited tissue penetration of light. Integrated approaches that take advantage of PDD, cytoreductive surgery, chemotherapies, PDT, and potentially radiotherapy, are likely to achieve the most effective improvement in the management of peritoneal carcinomatosis.
Prediction of Oxidative Stability Based on Various Chemical Properties for Refined Vegetable Oils

Study was made of the oxidative stability of refined vegetable oils using chemical properties for unoxidized vegetable oils. Oxidative stability was found to be determined considerably by fatty acid composition, tocopherol contents and carbonyl value. Carbonyl compound was also noted to be an important factor which to date has been little considered.Data for prediction were expressed in terms of coefficients based on various chemical properties for unoxidized vegetable oils. And the results obtained using multiple regression equations for oxidative stability were found quite accurate.
Diverse Subblock-Level Motion Derivation Schemes for AVS3

AVS3 is the third generation audio video coding standard (AVS) developed by the AVS working group from 2018 and its base profile achieves roughly 20% bit rate saving compared to H.265/HEVC. In this paper, two subblock-level motion derivation methods, including enhanced temporal motion vector prediction (ETMVP) and planar mode based motion vector prediction (PMMVP), are proposed to diversify the motion derivation scheme and enhance the prediction efficiency of skip/direct mode in the AVS3 structure. Different from the traditional temporal motion vector prediction (TMVP), subblock-level motion vectors in ETMVP are derived by combining the traditional TMVP and motion vector difference predictor (MVDP). In PMMVP, the motion of each subblock is generated by interpolation from spatially neighboring blocks in a manner of intra planar mode. The newly introduced motions are developed as the additional motion candidates in skip/direct mode. The proposed method is implemented on top of the AVS3 reference software (HPM-3.2), and the experimental result shows that a 1.65% BD-rate reduction (up to -3.13%) is achieved under Random Access configuration.
Performance Analysis of Direction of Arrival Estimation Based on Deep Learning

In this paper, a new efficient direction of arrival (DOA) estimation approach based on the deep neural networks (DNN) is proposed, in which a nonlinear mapping that relates the outputs of the receiving antennas with its associated DOA is learning by using the DNN-based network. The novel network architecture is divided into two stages, the detection phase and the DOA estimation phase. Additional detection network attached in our structure dramatically reduces the size of the training set. It has been shown that the proposed method not only can achieve reasonably high DOA estimation accuracy, but also can reduce the computational complexity required by traditional superresolution DOA estimation algorithms such as multiple signal classification (MUSIC). The computer simulation results are performed to investigate the generalization and effectiveness of the proposed approach in different scenarios.
Speech Enhancement Based on Adaptive Harmonic Model Using Maximum Likelihood Method

Speech enhancement is a hot topic in the modern society due to its extensive applications such as automatic speech recognition, mobile communication, etc. Spectral subtraction is a very valid and direct denoising algorithm, but it is still needed to be further developed due to complex application. In this paper, we firstly assume adaptive harmonic model to model the speech signal. Speech enhancement is then achieved by spectral subtraction. To further enhance the speech intelligibility, we attempt to estimate the harmonic model. Maximum likelihood method is considered to derive the phase and amplitude update formulae of the modelled harmonic signal, which are aimed to depress the distortion due to spectral subtraction. Different from convention spectral subtraction, both the amplitude and phase parameters of adaptive harmonic model are combined to be updated. We assume the additive noise is correlated along the time sequence. By the optimal solution of maximum likelihood method, we obtain the updated version of speech enhancement. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the new algorithm, and further improvement of spectral subtraction.
Comparing MAV, Frequency Spectrum, and Wavelet Spectrum of sEMG Signals as Features for Simple CNN in Finger Motion Estimation

This paper presents the comparison of image features between the mean absolute values (MAVs) of amplitudes, the frequency spectra of Fourier transform, and the wavelet spectra for classifying surface electromyography (sEMG) signals with a simple convolutional neural network (CNN) in finger motion estimation. By using CNNs in the high-density sEMG method, high accuracy of gesture recognition was achieved; however, prohibitively high cost of sensor devices makes the method too expensive for a widespread use. We used a low-cost commercially available device to estimate finger motion with the sparse multichannel sEMG method. Experiments of classifying sEMG signals into four types, thumb opened, thumb closed, fingers (excluding the thumb) opened, and fingers (excluding the thumb) closed, showed that the frequency spectra and the wavelet spectra used as feature sets improved the accuracy compared to the MAVs under the condition of turning the sensor device gradually around the forearm. It is considered that the wavelet spectrum keeps well the feature information for estimating finger motions with CNNs.
Affective Classification Method Based on Movie 5.1 Sound

In this paper, a method using the 5.1 surround sound format to classify the affective scenes of a movie was introduced. The affective types were decided by a web survey and several subjective listening tests, then a movie scene library with labeled affective types was obtained. The content and characteristic of the 5.1 surround sound format was analyzed, and feature parameters of the main left channel and the low-frequency effect channel were extracted as the materials for the prediction calculation. Several classic models have been used and the prediction results were compared among five frame lengths of the audio signals, and 2s used Bagged Trees model got the highest predicting accuracy.
Probabilistic functions and statistical equivalence of binary shift registers with random Markov input

We consider a binary non-autonomous shift register with a sequence of random variables connected into a simple homogeneous stationary Markov chain at the input. The expression is obtained for the probability function in the output sequence in the form of a fractional rational function, the arguments of which are the transition probabilities of the Markov chain. An equivalence relation arising in the case of the identical equality of the probability functions of the registers is described. The results known earlier for the case when the input sequence is a sequence of independent random variables are generalized.
Genetic Characterization and Mapping of Anthracnose Resistance of Common Bean Landrace Cultivar Corinthiano

The objectives of this study were to characterize the genetic resistance in the Andean common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) cultivar Corinthiano to races 8, 65, 89, and 2047 of Colletotrichum lin - demuthianum (Sacc. & Magnus) Briosi & Cavara through inheritance and allelism tests and to map the source of resistance. Corinthiano was crossed with cultivars Michelite, Michigan Dark red Kidney (MDrK), Cornell 49-242, Mexico 222, pI 207262, To, TU, AB 136, G 2333, Jalo Listras pretas (JLp), Jalo Vermelho (JV), BAT 93, ouro Negro, AND 277, p itanga, SEL 1308,
Centrifugation

Centrifugation is a ubiquitous technique in the life science laboratory that uses specialized equipment (centrifuges) to spin, or centrifuge, samples in rotors, generating centrifugal force for a range of applications that include pelleting of precipitates, isolating organelles, and protein and DNA purification. The unit describes basic applications, definitions, and references, and provides up‐to‐date tables for rotor specifications from major suppliers. © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.