Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Association of Myo-Inositol and Selenium Contrasts Cadmium-Induced Thyroid C Cell Hyperplasia and Hypertrophy in Mice

Previous studies have demonstrated that, in addition to inducing structural changes in thyroid follicles, cadmium (Cd) increased the number of C cells. We examined the effects of myo-inositol (MI), seleno-L-methionine (Se), MI + Se, and resveratrol on C cells of mice exposed to cadmium chloride (Cd Cl2), as no data are currently available on the possible protective effects of these molecules. In contrast, we have previously shown this protective effect against CdCl2 on the thyroid follicles of mice. Ninety-eight C57 BL/6J adult male mice were divided into 14 groups of seven mice each: (i) 0.9% NaCl (vehicle; 1 ml/kg/day i.p.); (ii) Se (0.2 mg/kg/day per os); (iii) Se (0.4 mg/kg/day per os); (iv) MI (360 mg/kg/day per os); (v) Se (0.2 mg/kg/day) + MI; (vi) Se (0.4 mg/kg/day) + MI; (vii) resveratrol (20 mg/kg); (viii) CdCl2 (2 mg/kg/day i.p.) + vehicle; (ix) CdCl2 + Se (0.2 mg/kg/day); (x) CdCl2 + Se (0.4 mg/kg/day); (xi) CdCl2 + MI; (xii) CdCl2 + Se (0.2 mg/kg/day) + MI; (xiii) CdCl2 + Se (0.4 mg/kg/day) + MI; (xiv) CdCl2 + resveratrol (20 mg/kg). After 14 days, thyroids were processed for histological, immunohistochemical, and morphometric evaluation. Compared to vehicle, Cd significantly decreased follicle mean diameter, increased CT-positive cells number, area and cytoplasmic density, and caused the disappearance of TUNEL-positive C cells, namely, the disappearance of C cells undergoing apoptosis. Se at either 0.2 or 0.4 mg/kg/day failed to significantly increase follicular mean diameter, mildly decreased CT-positive cells number, area and cytoplasmic density, and was ineffective on TUNEL-positive C cells. Instead, MI alone increased significantly follicular mean diameter and TUNEL-positive cells number, and decreased significantly CT-positive cells number, area and cytoplasmic density. MI + Se 0.2 mg/kg/day or MI + Se 0.4 mg/kg/day administration improved all five indices more markedly. Indeed, follicular mean diameter and TUNEL-positive cells number increased significantly, while CT-positive cells number, area and cytoplasmic density decreased significantly. Thus, all five indices overlapped those observed in vehicle-treated mice. Resveratrol improved significantly all the considered parameters, with a magnitude comparable to that of MI alone. In conclusion, the association Myo + Se is effective in protecting the mouse thyroid from the Cd-induced hyperplasia and hypertrophy of C cells. This benefit adds to that exerted by Myo + Se on thyrocytes and testis.
Dietary Trivalent Chromium Exposure Up-Regulates Lipid Metabolism in Coral Trout: The Evidence From Transcriptome Analysis

Diet quality greatly affects an animal’s performance and metabolism. Despite the fact that trivalent chromium [Cr(III)] is considered an essential element and is widely used in nutritional supplements for animals and humans, the potential toxicity of Cr(III) is unclear. Here, liver transcriptome sequencing was performed on coral trout (Plectropomus leopardus) exposed to 200 mg kg–1 of dietary organic Cr(III) [as chromium picolinate (CrPic)] for 8 weeks. One-hundred-and thirteen differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in response to Cr(III) stress, in comparison to the control, including 31 up-regulated and 82 down-regulated DEGs. Clusters of Orthologous Groups of proteins (COG) classifies DEGs into 15 functional categories, with the predominant category being related to lipid transport and metabolism (9.73%). The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) assigned DEGs to six major categories with robust DEGs as part of the lipid metabolism pathway (18.58%). Moreover, KEGG functional enrichment analysis showed that these DEGs are primarily related to steroid biosynthesis, terpenoid backbone biosynthesis, and steroid hormone biosynthesis pathways, of which steroid biosynthesis was the most significant pathway, and 12 key up-regulated DEGs (dhcr7, dhcr24, ebp, lss, msmo1, sqle, cyp51, tm7sf2, sc5dl, fdft1, nsdhl, and hsd17b7) were found for steroid biosynthesis pathways. To validate the RNA sequencing data using quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR), qRT-PCR results indicate that the expression of genes encoding HMGCR, TM7SF2, TRYP2, CTRL, EBP, LSS, and CYP51 were induced, while those encoding THRSP, LCE, and MCM5 were reduced, consistent with RNA-seq results. This findings provides the first evidence that a long-term high dose of Cr(III) intake causes lipid metabolism disorder and potential toxicity in fish. Cautious health risk assessment of dietary Cr(III) intake is therefore highly recommended for the commercial and/or natural diets of aquatic animals, which has previously largely been ignored.
The Effectiveness of Different Treatment Modalities of Cutaneous Angiosarcoma: Results From Meta-Analysis and Observational Data From SEER Database

Introduction Cutaneous angiosarcoma (cAS) is an aggressive vascular tumor that originates from vascular or lymphatic epithelial cells. To date, the cAS literature has been limited in a small number with single-center experiences or reports due to its rarity and the optimal treatment strategy is still in dispute. This study aimed to conduct a systematic review and compare the effect of available treatments retrieved from observational studies and Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program. Methods The authors performed a systematic review in the PubMed, Embase and MEDLINE database identifying the researches assessing the treatment for cAS patients. Clinical and treatment information of patients who had been diagnosed with a primary cAS were also obtained from the SEER program. Results Thirty-two studies were eligible but only 5 of which with 276 patients were included in meta-analysis since the unclear or unavailable information. The risk ratio of 5-year death for surgery, surgery with radiotherapy and surgery with chemotherapy were 0.84, 0.96, and 0.69. Meanwhile, in SEER database, there are 291 metastatic and 437 localized patients with cAS. The localized patients receiving surgery showed a significantly worse overall survival result when compared with the surgery combined with RT: hazard ratio: 1.6, 95% confidential interval: 1.05, 2.42, P = 0.03. Conclusion In conclusion, our study provided a detailed picture of the effectiveness of present treatments for localized and metastatic cAS patients. The CT could be inappropriate in localized patients. For metastatic patients, the surgery combined RT was recommended compared with surgery alone since its enhanced OS prognosis. Yet, more novel-designed clinical trials with specific targeted populations and rigorous conducting are needed for a solid conclusion on which would be a better treatment strategy.
Positron Emission Tomography-Based Short-Term Efficacy Evaluation and Prediction in Patients With Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treated With Hypo-Fractionated Radiotherapy

Background Positron emission tomography is known to provide more accurate estimates than computed tomography when staging non–small cell lung cancer. The aims of this prospective study were to contrast the short-term efficacy of the two imaging methods while evaluating the effects of hypo-fractionated radiotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer, and to establish a short-term efficacy prediction model based on the radiomics features of positron emission tomography. Methods This nonrandomized-controlled trial was conducted from March 2015 to June 2019. Thirty-one lesions of 30 patients underwent the delineation of the regions of interest on positron emission tomography and computed tomography 1 month before, and 3 months after hypo-fractionated radiotherapy. Each patient was evaluated for the differences in local objective response rate between the two images. The Kaplan Meier method was used to analyze the local objective response and subsequent survival duration of the two imaging methods. The 3D Slicer was used to extract the radiomics features based on positron emission tomography. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression was used to eliminate redundant features, and logistic regression analysis was used to develop the curative-effect-predicting model, which was displayed through a radiomics nomogram. Receiver operating characteristic curve and decision curve were used to evaluate the accuracy and clinical usefulness of the prediction model. Results Positron emission tomography-based local objective response rate was significantly higher than that based on computed tomography [70.97% (22/31) and 12.90% (4/31), respectively (p<0.001)]. The mean survival time of responders and non-responders assessed by positron emission tomography was 28.6 months vs. 11.4 months (p=0.29), whereas that assessed by computed tomography was 24.5 months vs. 26 months (p=0.66), respectively. Three radiomics features were screened to establish a personalized prediction nomogram with high area under curve (0.94, 95% CI 0.85–0.99, p<0.001). The decision curve showed a high clinical value of the radiomics nomogram. Conclusions We recommend positron emission tomography for evaluating the short-term efficacy of hypo-fractionated radiotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer, and that the radiomics nomogram could be an important technique for the prediction of short-term efficacy, which might enable an improved and precise treatment. Registration number/URL ChiCTR1900027768/http://www.chictr. org.cn/showprojen.aspx? proj=46057
Synthesis of MnO2 Nanoparticles Confined in Ordered Mesoporous Carbon Using a Sonochemical Method

A sonochemical method has been successfully used in order to incorporate MnO2 nanoparticles inside the pore channels of CMK‐3 ordered mesoporous carbon. Modification of the intrachannel surfaces of CMK‐3 to make them hydrophilic enables KMnO4 to readily penetrate the pore channels. At the same time, the modification changes the surface reactivity, enabling the formation of MnO2 nanoparticles inside the pores of CMK‐3 by the sonochemical reduction of metal ions. The resultant structures were characterized by X‐ray diffraction (XRD), nitrogen adsorption, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). CMK‐3 with 20 wt. ‐% loading of MnO2 inside CMK‐3 delivered an improved discharge performance of 223 mA h g–1 at a relatively high rate of 1 A g–1. Almost no decrease in specific capacity is observed for the second cycle, and a discharge capacity of more than 165 mA h g–1 is retained after 100 cycles. This is attributed to the nanometer‐sized MnO2 formed inside CMK‐3 and the high surface area of the mesopores (3.1 nm) in which the MnO2 nanoparticles are formed.
The value of the polypill in cardiovascular disease: an Italian multidisciplinary Delphi panel consensus

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text The purpose of this work was to reach the consensus of a multidisciplinary and multistakeholder Italian panel on the value of polypill in cardiovascular disease, with respect to the clinical, technological, economic and organizational dimension. A three-step modified Delphi method was used to establish consensus. Eleven experts in the area of cardiology, pharmaceutical technology, general practice, hospital pharmacy, pharmacology, and health economics participated in the expert panel. To identify existing evidence concerning the value of polypill in the prevention of patients with cardiovascular disease, a systematic literature review was carried out according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses statement guidelines. In the first round, 22 statements were distributed to the panel. Panel members were asked to mark ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ for each statement and provide any comments. The same voting method was again used for the second round. In the first round nine statements met consensus. In the second round, 10 statements reached consensus. Overall, consensus was reached for 19 statements representing five value polypill domains: clinical, technological, economic and organizational. During a final web meeting with all panel members consensus document open points were discussed. Panel members agreed to recognize polypill as effective in reducing cardiovascular events, blood pressure and lipids, cardiovascular risk and the weight of therapy, in therapeutic adherence improvement, in the absence of differences in bioavailability between drugs administered in fixed or free combinations and the better cost-effectiveness profile compared with standard care. This document represents a knowledge framework to inform decision makers of the value of polypill in cardiovascular prevention.
Feature Extraction via Joint Adaptive Structure Density for Hyperspectral Imagery Classification

Feature extraction is known to be an effective way in both reducing computational complexity and increasing accuracy in hyperspectral imagery (HSI) classification. In this article, we propose a novel HSI feature extraction based on joint adaptive structure density (JASD), which can make full use of the texture feature of feature level and effectively utilize the spatial structure feature of pixel level. Specifically, the proposed JASD method considers two weak assumptions when exploiting the structure information contained in the HSI: 1) close pixels in spectral space have the same label and 2) all the pixels in a subregion belong to the same class. The JASD method consists of the following steps. First, a principal component analysis method is applied to the original high-dimensional HSI to obtain low-dimensional features in order to promote the separability of pixels between different classes and improve the execution efficiency of the proposed method. Then, the local density peak-assisted $k$ nearest neighbor idea is introduced into oversegmentation-based regions to define the structural spatial information of the HSI and overcome the aforementioned weak assumptions. Meanwhile, recursive filtering in the transform domain is applied to the above low-dimensional HSI to preserve global edge details. Next, the global edge details and the local spatial structure feature are fused based on the stacking method. Finally, the composite hyperspectral feature is fed into the supervised classifier to obtain the classification results. Experimental results on three widely used real HSI data sets demonstrated that the proposed JASD method is superior to several comparative classification methods in terms of classification accuracy and computational burden.
Mining Key Classes in Java Projects by Examining a Very Small Number of Classes: A Complex Network-Based Approach

Key classes have become excellent starting points for developers to understand unknown software systems. Up to now, a variety of approaches have been proposed to mine key classes in a software project. Many of them are based on a network representation (namely, software networks) of the software projects. However, the software networks they used are usually un-weighted and un-directed, which is not consistent with the reality in a real software project where the coupling actually has direction and strength. Worse still, the number of key class candidates returned by existing approaches is usually very large. Thus, it is usually infeasible for developers to start the comprehension process from these classes, especially when there are tight time and resource constraints. To tackle these problems, in this paper, we propose an approach named MinClass, to Mine key Classes in Java projects by examining a very small number of classes. First, the software structure at the class level is represented by a weighted directed software network, which considers both the coupling strength and direction between every pair of classes. Second, we propose a new metric, OSE (One-order Structural Entropy), and use it to calculate the importance of each class in the system. Finally, we sort classes in descending order according to their OSE values, and a small number of top-ranked classes are treated as the key class candidates identified by MinClass. Experiments are performed on six open-source Java projects, and comparison studies with other eight state-of-the-art approaches are also performed. Results show that, although no one method performs best in all software systems, MinClass is the most promising one. It performs best in the whole set of software systems according to the average ranking of the Friedman test. Thus, MinClass is a valuable technique that can be used to mine the key classes.
Five Degrees-of-Freedom Pose-Estimation Method for Smartphones Using a Single Acoustic Anchor

In this paper, we describe a novel method for the five-degrees-of-freedom (5-DoF) pose estimation of a smartphone using the acoustic signal from only one external speaker. To obtain the smartphone’s 5-DoF pose using this speaker, we apply the concept of “mirror-image” speakers to effectively obtain a multiplicity of signals. Here, the primary reflected signals from the wall or floor are captured as signals transmitted from “virtual speakers” located at (wall or floor) mirror-image positions with respect to the real speaker’s location. By using the smartphone built-in stereo microphones, we can obtain not only its three-dimensional (3-D) position but also its yaw and pitch angles, giving a 5-DoF pose estimation. Holding the smartphone sideways, we can calculate arrival angles for each speaker using the two microphones, and identify which (real or mirror-image) speaker is the signal source. We can then robustly identify the 5-DoF pose by utilizing the information obtained from arrival angles and an acceleration-based pitch angle. For our experiments, we located the speaker and estimated the smartphone’s 5-DoF pose at several places along a 2-m wide corridor. Its measurement range was $2.0\times 2.0\times 1.9\,\,\text{m}^{3}$ . The results within the effective operating range gave 90th-percentile errors of less than 114.35 mm for the 3-D position, less than 7.96° for the yaw angle, and 7.09° for the pitch angle. We also clarified the effectiveness of the proposed method which can extend speakers’ baselines beyond the physical limit of the corridor via dilution-of-precision measures. Moreover, we identified limitations of the proposed method using simulations.
CARA-BAN: Clone Attack Resistant Authentication Scheme in Body Area Networks Using Channel Characteristics

Wireless body area network (WBAN) is a network of small sensor devices placed on the patients' bodies to remotely collect their health information and transmit it to medical professionals via open wireless channels. However, the collected data is vulnerable to unauthorized access due to the open nature of the wireless channels. Thus, a reliable authentication mechanism is essential in the study of WBAN. The limited resources of the devices in WBAN prevents the adoption of complex traditional cryptographic authentication schemes. As a result, authentication schemes based on channel characteristics are proposed, which are more preferable due to their simpler requirements. However, an attacker in the existing channel characteristics based approaches is always assumed to be an off-body device. Thus, the schemes are not secure against an on-body clone attacker, which is a clone device created from a legitimate on-body device and placed back on the body by a privileged insider. To address this limitation, we first propose CARA-BAN, a novel clone attack resistant authentication (CARA) scheme for body area network (BAN) based on channel characteristics and lightweight symmetric encryption. Then, we conduct security and performance analyses to demonstrate the resistance of the scheme to security attacks and its effectiveness regarding resources. Finally, we perform real-world experiments in indoor and outdoor places, involving 3 volunteers to validate the robustness of the scheme. The results show that CARA-BAN can effectively identify 90% of attack attempts from a clone on-body attacker device with negligible overhead.
SDN-Based Detection of Self-Propagating Ransomware: The Case of BadRabbit

In the last decade, many ransomware attacks had the ability to spread within local networks or even outside them. At the same time, software defined networking (SDN) has provided a major boost to networks by transferring intelligence from network devices to a programmable logically centralised controller. The latter can be programmed to be compatible with the requirements of a wide range of networks and environments in a straightforward manner. This has motivated researchers to design SDN-based security solutions against threats targeting traditional networks and systems. This article investigates the use of SDN to detect and mitigate the risk of self-propagating ransomware. The infamous BadRabbit ransomware has been used for the proof of concept. To achieve this, an extensive analysis of BadRabbit was performed to identify its characteristics and understand its behaviour at both the infected device level and at the network level. As a result, several unique artifacts were extracted from BadRabbit, which could facilitate its detection. These artifacts were relied upon to design an SDN-based intrusion detection and prevention system. Our system comprises five modules, namely deep packet inspection, ARP scanning detection, packet header inspection, honeypot, and SMB checker. The first two modules have been inspired by other works and have been included for comparison with the existing solutions. Three other modules rely on novel SDN-based methods for ransomware detection. We have also evaluated the efficiency and the performance of our system in terms of detection time, CPU utilisation, as well as TCP and ping latency. Finally, the proposed approach has also been tested for other ransomware families, such as WannaCry and NotPetya. Our experimental results show that the system is effective in terms of detecting self-propagating ransomware and outperforms other proposed approaches.
Video distance measurement based on focus

In monovision field- distance determination with a single camera or video- the methods for determining distances are varied and we can divide them as follows: a) based on focusfixing the lens in the position corresponding to the maximum sharpness of the acquired image (DFF- depth-from focusing); b) based on the blur / defocus of the lenses - (DFD - depth-from defocusing); c) combined methods. The DFF method scans the “scene” by taking sequences of images with various lens settings and tries to find the best focus. This paper presents a method of measuring distances based on focus. It is used a web video camera. To achieve the autofocus, the camera lens moves to a position where the clearest image is obtained. The maximum clarity is measured from the histograms of the images on which a filter with the role of highlighting the edges was initially applied. Knowing the focal length of the lens, the distances can be found from the lens equation (1). Theoretically, for each position of the lens, in which the maximum clarity is reached, it corresponds a measured distance between the object and the camera. Because the camera used has only 16 positions of the lens, each position corresponds to a range of distances, this range being of the order of centimeters. Measurement accuracy can be improved by applying a linear and parabolic interpolation process. In this way the errors reach the order of millimeters. The distance measuring device in the present paper consists of a fixed video camera, a PC with the role of information processing and an object moving in front of the camera on its optical axis. Both the camera and the object are arranged on a graduated ruler support on which the camera is calibrated.