Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Emotion-Inducing Imagery Versus Motor Imagery for a Brain-Computer Interface

Neural correlates of intentionally induced human emotions may offer alternative imagery strategies to control brain-computer interface (BCI) applications. In this paper, a novel BCI control strategy i.e., imagining fictional or recalling mnemonic sad and happy events, emotion-inducing imagery (EII), is compared to motor imagery (MI) in a study involving multiple sessions using a two-class electroencephalogram (EEG)-based BCI paradigm with 12 participants. The BCI setup enabled online continuous visual feedback presentation in a game involving one-dimensional control of a game character. MI and EII are compared across different signal-processing frameworks which are based on neural-time-series-prediction-preprocessing (NTSPP), filter bank common spatial patterns (FBCSP) and hemispheric asymmetry (ASYM). Online single-trial classification accuracies (CA) results indicate that MI performance across all participants is 77.54% compared to EII performance of 68.78% ( ${p} < 0.05$ ). The results show that an ensemble of the NTSPP, FBCSP and ASYM frameworks maximizes performance for EII with average CA of 71.64% across all participants. Furthermore, the participants’ subjective responses indicate that they preferred MI over emotion-inducing imagery (EII) in controlling the game character, and MI was perceived to offer most control over the game character. The results suggest that EII is not a viable alternative to MI for the majority of participants in this study but may be an alternative imagery for a subset of BCI users based on acceptable EII performance (CA >70%) observed for some participants.
Antimicrobial resistance and genetic relationships of enterococci from siblings and non-siblings Heliconius erato phyllis caterpillars

Background Studies evaluating bacteria in insects can provide information about host–microorganism–environment interactions. The gut microbial community has a profound effect on different physiological functions of insects. Enterococcus spp. are part of the gut community in humans and other animals, as well as in insects. The presence and antimicrobial resistance profile of enterococci are well studied in different animals; however, data for Heliconius erato phyllis (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) do not yet exist. Therefore, the aims of this study were to evaluate the distribution of enterococcal species, their antimicrobial resistance profile and virulence genes, and the genetic relationships between enterococci isolated from fecal samples from sibling and non-sibling H. erato phyllis caterpillars collected from different sites in South Brazil. Methods Three H. erato phyllis females were captured (two from a forest fragment and one from an urban area), and kept individually in open-air insectaries. Eggs were collected and caterpillars (siblings and non-siblings) were fed daily with Passiflora suberosa leaves. Fecal samples (n = 12) were collected from fifth-instar caterpillars, inoculated in selective medium, and 15 bacterial colonies were randomly selected from each sample. Enterococci were identified by PCR and MALDI-TOF, analyzed by disk diffusion antimicrobial susceptibility tests, and screened for resistance and virulence genes by PCR. The genetic relationships between the strains were determined using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Results A total of 178 enterococci strains were identified: E. casseliflavus (74.15%; n = 132), E. mundtii (21.34%; n = 38), E. faecalis (1.12%; n = 2) and Enterococcus sp. (3.37%; n = 6). High rates of resistance to rifampicin (56%) and erythromycin (31%) were observed; 120 (67.41%) of the isolates showed resistance to at least one antibiotic and six (3.37%) were multidrug-resistant.None of the erythromycin-resistant strains was positive for the erm(B) and msrC genes. The virulence genes esp, ace, and gelE were observed in 35%, 7%, and 1% of the strains, respectively. PFGE separated the enterococci into 22 patterns, four being composed of strains from sibling caterpillars. Conclusion Enterococcus casseliflavus was the dominant species in fecal samples of fifth-instar caterpillars. Resistant enterococci strains may be related to environmental pollution or the resistome. The PFGE analysis showed genetic relationships between some strains, suggesting that the enterococci isolated from fecal samples of the sibling caterpillars might have come from common sources, e.g., via diet (herbivory) and/or vertical transmission (through the egg surface). Further studies will be conducted to better understand the role of Enterococcus in the microbial community of the gastrointestinal tract of these insects, and the mechanisms involved in acquisition and maintenance of enterococci.
Bias in Cross-Entropy-Based Training of Deep Survival Networks

Over the last years, utilizing deep learning for the analysis of survival data has become attractive to many researchers. This has led to the advent of numerous network architectures for the prediction of possibly censored time-to-event variables. Unlike networks for cross-sectional data (used e.g., in classification), deep survival networks require the specification of a suitably defined loss function that incorporates typical characteristics of survival data such as censoring and time-dependent features. Here, we provide an in-depth analysis of the cross-entropy loss function, which is a popular loss function for training deep survival networks. For each time point <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$t$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi>t</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="schmid-ieq1-2979450.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>, the cross-entropy loss is defined in terms of a binary outcome with levels “event at or before <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$t$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi>t</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="schmid-ieq2-2979450.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>” and “event after <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$t$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi>t</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="schmid-ieq3-2979450.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>”. Using both theoretical and empirical approaches, we show that this definition may result in a high prediction error and a heavy bias in the predicted survival probabilities. To overcome this problem, we analyze an alternative loss function that is derived from the negative log-likelihood function of a discrete time-to-event model. We show that replacing the cross-entropy loss by the negative log-likelihood loss results in much better calibrated prediction rules and also in an improved discriminatory power, as measured by the concordance index.
Norvaline Reduces Blood Pressure and Induces Diuresis in Rats with Inherited Stress-Induced Arterial Hypertension

Growing evidence suggests that increased arginase activity affects vital bioprocesses in various systems and universally mediates the pathogenesis of numerous metabolic diseases. The adverse effects of arginase are associated with a severe decline in L-arginine bioavailability, which leads to nitric oxide synthase substrate insufficiency, uncoupling, and, eventually, to superoxide anion generation and substantial reduction of nitric oxide (NO) synthesis. In cooperation, it contributes to chronic oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunction, which might lead to hypertension and atherosclerosis. Recent preclinical investigations point to arginase as a promising therapeutic target in ameliorating metabolic and vascular dysfunctions. In the present study, adult rats with inherited stress-induced arterial hypertension (ISIAH) were used as a model of hypertension. Wistar rats served as normotensive controls. Experimental animals were intraperitoneally administered for seven days with non-proteinogenic amino acid L-norvaline (30 mg/kg/day), which is a potent arginase inhibitor, or with the vehicle. Blood pressure (BP), body weight, and diuresis were monitored. The changes in blood and urine levels of creatinine, urea, and NO metabolites were analyzed. We observed a significant decline in BP and induced diuresis in ISIAH rats following the treatment. The same procedure did not affect the BP of control animals. Remarkably, the treatment had no influence upon glomerular filtration rate in two experimental groups, just like the daily excretion of creatinine and urea. Conversely, NO metabolites levels were amplified in normotonic but not in hypertensive rats following the treatment. The data indicate that L-norvaline is a potential antihypertensive agent, and deserves to be clinically investigated. Moreover, we suggest that changes in blood and urine are causally related to the effect of L-norvaline upon the BP regulation.
Elective Sonolucent Cranioplasty for Real-Time Ultrasound Monitoring of Flow and Patency of an Extra- to Intracranial Bypass

Abstract Cross-sectional imaging studies or catheter angiogram are the imaging modalities of choice to evaluate bypass patency after extra- to intracranial (EC-IC) bypass surgery. Although providing accurate results, these imaging modalities are time-consuming and/or present radiation risk for the patient. Ultrasound imaging is a fast and widely available imaging modality, but is limited in this setting due to the non-sonolucent autologous bone flap covering the bypass after surgery. The recently FDA approved clear polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) cranioplasty implant overcomes this limitation by its sonolucent characteristic, but has not yet been used in the setting of EC-IC bypass surgery. Here, the authors describe for the first time the feasibility of an elective sonolucent cranioplasty to monitor flow and patency of an EC-IC bypass in real time using ultrasound. This moyamoya patient underwent a direct superficial temporal artery to middle cerebral artery (STA-MCA) bypass, after which a PMMA implant was used to close the craniotomy defect, instead of reimplanting the autologous bone flap. Immediate postoperative bedside transcranioplasty ultrasound confirmed bypass patency and allowed for quantitative flow measurements as well as for exclusion of postoperative hemorrhage. Postoperative CTA and catheter angiogram confirmed patency of the bypass without complications. This report shows for the first time that this technique is feasible and permits bedside transcranioplasty ultrasound assessment of bypass flow in real time, confirmed with angiography. This technique may permit easy comparison of baseline findings with follow up assessments and facilitate less invasive monitoring of bypass patency.
Lesion Segmentation in Ultrasound Using Semi-Pixel-Wise Cycle Generative Adversarial Nets

Breast cancer is the most common invasive cancer with the highest cancer occurrence in females. Handheld ultrasound is one of the most efficient ways to identify and diagnose the breast cancer. The area and the shape information of a lesion is very helpful for clinicians to make diagnostic decisions. In this study we propose a new deep-learning scheme, semi-pixel-wise cycle generative adversarial net (SPCGAN) for segmenting the lesion in 2D ultrasound. The method takes the advantage of a fully convolutional neural network (FCN) and a generative adversarial net to segment a lesion by using prior knowledge. We compared the proposed method to a fully connected neural network and the level set segmentation method on a test dataset consisting of 32 malignant lesions and 109 benign lesions. Our proposed method achieved a Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of 0.92 while FCN and the level set achieved 0.90 and 0.79 respectively. Particularly, for malignant lesions, our method increases the DSC (0.90) of the fully connected neural network to 0.93 significantly (p<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$<$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mo><</mml:mo></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="li-ieq1-2978470.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>0.001). The results show that our SPCGAN can obtain robust segmentation results. The framework of SPCGAN is particularly effective when sufficient training samples are not available compared to FCN. Our proposed method may be used to relieve the radiologists’ burden for annotation.
Discovery of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Receptor‐2 (VEGFR‐2) Inhibitors by Ligand‐based Virtual High Throughput Screening

Virtual screening has become one of the important tools in the discovery of novel hits for the given target. The present study reports the successful application of ligand‐based virtual screening method for the discovery of novel vascular endothelial growth factor receptor‐2 (VEGFR‐2) inhibitors. We generated a ligand query model with pharmacophore features from the reported VEGFR‐2 inhibitors using vROCS tool and performed virtual screening. Among the 2.4 million lead like molecules of ZINC database screened, nineteen prioritized compounds were purchased from Enamine and ChemBridge and tested for VEGFR‐2 inhibitory activity using Promega's ADP‐Glo™ kinase assay. Experimental validation led to the discovery of four compounds 3, 7, 10, and 13. Compound 10 exhibited moderate inhibitory activity with the IC50 value of 19.3 μM. Molecular docking was performed for these compounds and the predicted binding modes reported in this paper may further guide to explore the possible structural changes to get more potent VEGFR‐2 inhibitors
Heavy Episodic Drinking in Early Adulthood: How Parents’ Education Contextualizes the Effects of College Status

ABSTRACT Young adults who transition to college are at particular risk of heavy episodic drinking (HED), as they consume more alcohol than their same-aged peers who do not attend college. Yet the link between college attendance and HED during young adulthood may vary depending on social class origins. Building on life course and socio-structural perspectives that suggest that status characteristics give meaning to role transitions in ways that shape young adults’ drinking behavior, this study situates the risk of HED within the sociological context of educational attainment, and examines how parents’ education conditions the relationship between young adults’ college status and HED. We suggest that the odds of HED are higher when a young adult’s college status is “off-diagonal” – incongruent with their parents’ educational attainment. Using data from Waves I and III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health for a sample of 13,526 young adults, stratified by sex, results indicate that being off-diagonal increases the odds of HED, but not for everyone. Females whose parents have higher levels of education but who themselves do not attend college, and those whose parents have low levels of education but who themselves attend four-year colleges, have higher odds of HED. The results for males show no significant interactions between parents’ education and own college status. For both females and males, there are pronounced racial/ethnic differences in HED odds, after controlling for educational mismatch. Findings suggest that HED policies targeting the archetypal four-year-college attending male should be expanded to other groups.
Long-acting injectable vs oral antipsychotics: Adherence, persistence and switching over three years of real-life analysis.

BACKGROUND Persistence and adherence to treatment are considered efficacy outcomes in psychiatric disorders. One of the best ways to improve these values in patients with psychiatric disorders is to prefer long-acting injectable (LAI) drugs to oral AP. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study is to evaluate adherence, persistence and switching of antipsychotics and compare in real life long-acting with oral formulations. MATERIALS AND METHODS This pharmacological, observational, retrospective, non-interventional study involved all patients of the ASL of Pescara treated in the front-line with AP in the period between January 2011 and February 2019. Adherence was measured using the ratio between received daily dose and prescribed daily dose. Persistence to treatment with antipsychotics was calculated as the daily difference between start and end of treatment. RESULTS We examined 840 patients treated with Aripiprazole, 130 patients treated with Paliperidone and 925 patients treated with Risperidone. Adherence was significantly better in long-acting formulations with values of 0.89 (Aripiprazole) and 0.82 (Paliperidone and Risperidone) than in oral formulations with values of 0.78, 0.70 and 0.58, respectively. Persistence curves over three years of therapy have not shown a statistically significant difference (p = 0.3314). Persistence curves based on formulation have not shown a statistically significant difference. 7% of patients treated with Aripiprazole, 12% of patients treated with Risperidone and 28% of patients treated with Paliperidone switched therapy. CONCLUSIONS In all drugs of the present study, adherence values were better in LAI than in OA, whereas no statistically significant difference was found in persistence values.
Intravital imaging of host‐parasite interactions in organs of the thoracic and abdominopelvic cavities

Infections with protozoan and helminthic parasites affect multiple organs in the mammalian host. Imaging pathogens in their natural environment takes a more holistic view on biomedical aspects of parasitic infections. Here, we focus on selected organs of the thoracic and abdominopelvic cavities most commonly affected by parasites. Parasitic infections of these organs are often associated with severe medical complications or have health implications beyond the infected individual. Intravital imaging has provided a more dynamic picture of the host–parasite interplay and contributed not only to our understanding of the various disease pathologies, but has also provided fundamental insight into the biology of the parasites.
Prognostic Implication of First‐Degree Atrioventricular Block in Patients With Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Background The association between first‐degree atrioventricular block (AVB) and life‐threatening cardiac events in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) remains unclear. This study sought to investigate whether presence of first‐degree AVB was associated with HCM‐related death in patients with HCM. Methods and Results We included 414 patients with HCM (mean age, 51±16 years; 64.5% men). The P‐R interval was measured at the time of the initial evaluation and patients were classified into those with and without first‐degree AVB, which was defined as a P‐R interval ≥200 ms. HCM‐related death was defined as a combined end point of sudden death or potentially lethal arrhythmic events, heart failure–related death, and stroke‐related death. First‐degree AVB was noted in 96 patients (23.2%) at time of enrollment. Over a median (interquartile range) follow‐up period of 8.8 (4.9–12.9) years, a total of 56 patients (13.5%) experienced HCM‐related deaths, including 47 (11.4%) with a combined end point of sudden death or potentially lethal arrhythmic events. In a multivariable analysis that included first‐degree AVB and risk factors for life‐threatening events, first‐degree AVB was independently associated with an HCM‐related death (adjusted hazard ratio, 2.41; 95% CI, 1.27–4.58; P=0.007), and this trend also persisted for the combined end point of sudden death or potentially lethal arrhythmic events (adjusted hazard ratio, 2.60; 95% CI, 1.28–5.27; P=0.008). Conclusions In this cohort of patients with HCM, first‐degree AVB may be associated with HCM‐related death, including the combined end point of sudden death or potentially lethal arrhythmic events.
Graphene and Rice Straw Fibre Based 3D Photothermal Aerogels for Highly Efficient Solar Evaporation.

Solar steam generation is one of the most promising technologies to mitigate the issue of clean water shortage using sustainable solar energy. Photothermal aerogels, especially the 3D graphene-based aerogels have shown unique merits for solar steam generation, such as light weight, high flexibility, and superior evaporation rate and energy efficiency. However, 3D aerogels require much more raw materials of graphene which limits their large-scale applications. In this study, 3D photothermal aerogels composed of reduced graphene oxide (RGO) nanosheets, rice straw derived cellulose fibres, and sodium alginate (SA) are prepared for solar-steam generation. The use of rice straw fibres as skeletal support significantly reduces the need for the more expensive RGO by 43.5%, turning the rice straw biomass waste into value-added materials. The integration of rice straw fibres and RGO significantly enhances the flexibility and mechanical stability of the obtained photothermal RGO-SA-cellulose aerogel. The photothermal aerogel shows a strong broadband light absorption of 96-97%. During solar-steam generation, the 3D photothermal aerogel effectively decreases radiation and convection energy loss while enhancing energy harvesting from the environment, leading to an extremely high evaporation rate of 2.25 kg m-2 h-1, corresponding to an energy conversion efficiency of 88.9% under 1.0 sun irradiation. The salinity of clean water collected during evaporation of real seawater is only 0.37 ppm. The materials are environmentally friendly and cost effective, showing great potential for real-world desalination applications.
Adjustment to College in the United States: Perceptions of Qatari Students

Given the rapid growth of Qatar's economy over recent decades, workforce demand for highly-skilled Qatari nationals has increased (Berrebi, Martorell, & Tanner, 2009; Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning, 2008). There is therefore a great deal of interest in supporting Qatari student success at high-quality post-secondary educational institutions, both in Qatar and abroad. An increasing number of Qatari post-secondary students, particularly males, are specifically choosing to attend college in the United States, with 1,191 Qatari college students studying abroad in the US (Institute of International Education, 2014). Because these Qatari students are earning degrees abroad for the purpose of fulfilling critical jobs when they return, it is important to understand factors contributing to the academic persistence and performance of Qatari students in the US. This qualitative study is part of a collaborative research effort undertaken by investigators based in the United States and Qatar to bet.