Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Orchestrated biomechanical, structural, and biochemical stimuli for engineering anisotropic meniscus

Anisotropic meniscus engineered using biomechanical, biochemical, and structural cues demonstrates long-term knee chondroprotection in rabbits. Engineering anisotropy The meniscus is a fibrocartilage structure within a joint that helps reduce friction during joint movement. The outer and inner regions within the knee meniscus differ in cell types, extracellular matrix components, organization, and corresponding mechanical properties (anisotropy). Here, Zhang et al. used biomechanical stimulation and growth factor treatment during culture of mesenchymal stem cell–seeded polymer scaffolds to generate tissue constructs that mimic the native knee meniscus. The engineered meniscus constructs demonstrated long-term chondroprotection when implanted into the knees of rabbits. This study helps guide tissue engineering efforts to generate anisotropic constructs. Reconstruction of the anisotropic structure and proper function of the knee meniscus remains an important challenge to overcome, because the complexity of the zonal tissue organization in the meniscus has important roles in load bearing and shock absorption. Current tissue engineering solutions for meniscus reconstruction have failed to achieve and maintain the proper function in vivo because they have generated homogeneous tissues, leading to long-term joint degeneration. To address this challenge, we applied biomechanical and biochemical stimuli to mesenchymal stem cells seeded into a biomimetic scaffold to induce spatial regulation of fibrochondrocyte differentiation, resulting in physiological anisotropy in the engineered meniscus. Using a customized dynamic tension-compression loading system in conjunction with two growth factors, we induced zonal, layer-specific expression of type I and type II collagens with similar structure and function to those present in the native meniscus tissue. Engineered meniscus demonstrated long-term chondroprotection of the knee joint in a rabbit model. This study simultaneously applied biomechanical, biochemical, and structural cues to achieve anisotropic reconstruction of the meniscus, demonstrating the utility of anisotropic engineered meniscus for long-term knee chondroprotection in vivo.
Yupingfeng polysaccharides enhances growth performance in Qingyuan partridge chicken by up‐regulating the mRNA expression of SGLT1, GLUT2 and GLUT5

Abstract The ban on the use of antibiotic in feed encouraged nutritionists to using alternatives to maintain growth performance and intestinal function of broilers. This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of Yupingfeng polysaccharides (YP) supplementation on growth performance and expression of SGLT1, GLUT2 and GLUT5 in Qingyuan partridge chicken. Experiment 1: a total of 540 chickens were randomly allocated to five groups with six replication. Dietary treatments were: (1) CON (control group), basal diet; (2) T1, CON + 0.5 g kg−1 YP; (3) T2, CON + 1 g kg−1 YP; (4) T3, CON + 2 g kg−1 YP; (5) T4, CON + 4 g kg−1 YP. Experiment 2, a total of 162 were randomly allocated to three groups with three replication. Dietary treatments were: (1) CON, basal diet; (2) T1, CON + 0.5 g kg−1 YP; (3) T2, CON + 1 g kg−1 YP. From days 1 to 14 and overall, chicken fed T1 diet had higher ADG. On day 42, there was increased villus height of jejunum in T1 group. On days 14 and 28, there was decreased villus height of duodenum and jejunum in T2 group. In duodenum, the expression of SGLT1 (days 21, 35 and 42), GLUT2 (days 7, 14, 21, 28, 35 and 42) and GLUT5 (days 7, 14, 21 and 28) was increased with YP supplementation. In jejunum, the expression of SGLT1 (days 7, 14, 21, 28 and 35), GLUT2 (days 14, 21, 28, 35 and 42) and GLUT5 (days 7, 14, 21, 28, 35 and 42) was increased with YP supplementation. In ileum, the expression of SGLT1 (days 7, 21, 35 and 42), GLUT2 (days 7, 14, 21 and 42) and GLUT5 (days 7, 14, 21, 28, 35 and 42) was increased with YP supplementation. Dietary YP supplementation improves growth performance and expression of SGLT1, GLUT2 and GLUT5 in intestine.
Context-Aware Visual Policy Network for Fine-Grained Image Captioning

With the maturity of visual detection techniques, we are more ambitious in describing visual content with open-vocabulary, fine-grained and free-form language, i.e., the task of image captioning. In particular, we are interested in generating longer, richer and more fine-grained sentences and paragraphs as image descriptions. Image captioning can be translated to the task of sequential language prediction given visual content, where the output sequence forms natural language description with plausible grammar. However, existing image captioning methods focus only on language policy while not visual policy, and thus fail to capture visual context that are crucial for compositional reasoning such as object relationships (e.g., “man riding horse”) and visual comparisons (e.g., “small(er) cat”). This issue is especially severe when generating longer sequences such as a paragraph. To fill the gap, we propose a Context-Aware Visual Policy network (CAVP) for fine-grained image-to-language generation: image sentence captioning and image paragraph captioning. During captioning, CAVP explicitly considers the previous visual attentions as context, and decides whether the context is used for the current word/sentence generation given the current visual attention. Compared against traditional visual attention mechanism that only fixes a single visual region at each step, CAVP can attend to complex visual compositions over time. The whole image captioning model—CAVP and its subsequent language policy network—can be efficiently optimized end-to-end by using an actor-critic policy gradient method. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of CAVP by state-of-the-art performances on MS-COCO and Stanford captioning datasets, using various metrics and sensible visualizations of qualitative visual context.
Recent Chemical Approaches for Site‐Specific Conjugation of Native Antibodies: Technologies toward Next‐Generation Antibody–Drug Conjugates

Antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs), which consist of three components, antibody, linker, and payload, can function as “magic bullets”. These conjugates offer the ability to target drug delivery to specific cells, based on cell‐specific recognition and the binding of an antigen by a monoclonal antibody (mAb). In particular, by delivering a cytotoxic payload to cancer cells, ADCs are expected to provide a breakthrough in oncology treatments by providing a way to increase efficacy and decrease toxicity, in comparison with traditional chemotherapeutic treatments. The development of ADC therapeutics has dramatically progressed in the past decade and two ADCs have been approved and used as anticancer drugs in the clinic. However, several critical issues regarding the performance of ADCs are still being discussed and investigated. Indeed, in the past few years, several groups have reported that, changing the number and position of the drug payloads in the ADCs, affects the pharmacokinetics, drug release rates, and biological activity. The use of conventional heterogeneous conjugation methods for ADC preparation results in the drug/antibody ratio and connecting position of the payload having stochastic distributions. Therefore, it is important to investigate how these potential problems can be circumvented through site‐specific conjugation. Herein, various site‐specific chemical conjugation strategies with native mAbs that are currently used for the production of ADCs, including residue‐selective labeling for generating ADCs, disulfide rebridging, and affinity‐peptide‐mediated site‐specific chemical conjugation technologies, are reviewed and described.
Patient’s informational privacy in prehospital emergency care: Paramedics’ perspective

Background: As a fundamental human right in healthcare, informational privacy creates the foundation for patient’s safety and the quality of care. However, its realization can be a challenge in prehospital emergency care, considering the nature of the work. Objectives: To describe patient’s informational privacy, its realization, and the factors related to the realization in prehospital emergency care from the perspective of paramedics. Research design: A descriptive questionnaire study was conducted. The data were analyzed with inductive content analysis. Participants and research context: The participants (n = 26) were paramedics in one of the 22 rescue departments in Finland. Ethical considerations: The study received ethical approval from the ethics committee of the University of Turku (Finland). Permission for the study was given by the collaborating rescue department. Findings: Paramedics described patient’s informational privacy as patients’ right to their own health records, as protection of the patient’s health records, and as comprehensive respect of the patient’s privacy by the persons involved in the patient’s care. In general, informational privacy was described as being realized regarding confidentiality, reporting, and maintaining the patient’s health records. However, it was also described as being dependent on the context, and some areas in need of improvement were identified. Promoting and preventing factors related to the realization were also identified. The promoting factors were paramedics’ professional activity, environment, training, and guidelines. The preventing factors were the nature of the work, paramedics’ attitudes, and the lack of knowledge concerning informational privacy among paramedics, the collaborating authority, patients, and relatives. Discussion and conclusion: Paramedics had a multidimensional understanding of informational privacy and the factors related to its realization. However, its realization varies, and more research and education are therefore needed to enhance the realization and to provide equal and high-quality care for all the patients in prehospital emergency care.
Life satisfaction among older adult, long‐term cancer survivors: A comparison of Black with White survivors

This paper proposes and evaluates a model of the relative importance that cancer‐related health factor along with other health factors have for the self‐rated health and life satisfaction of older adult, long‐term cancer survivors. The data are examined in the context of important racial differences in health and life satisfaction along with other covariates including gender and education.
Mycoplasma genitalium in symptomatic male urethritis: macrolide use is associated with increased resistance.

BACKGROUND Mycoplasma genitalium (Mg) causes symptomatic urethritis in men, and can infect alone or together with other STI agents. METHODS The prevalence of Mg and other STIs were determined in 1816 men with symptomatic urethritis. Resistance of Mg to macrolides and fluoroquinolones was determined by sequencing; the impact of recent antimicrobial usage on the distribution of Mg single or mixed infections was determined. RESULTS Overall, prevalence of Mg infection was 19.7% (358/1816). 54.1% (166/307) of Mg infections occurred alone in the absence of other STI agents. Men with single Mg infection self-administered or were prescribed antibiotics more often in the 30 days prior to enrollment than subjects with urethritis caused by Mg coinfection (P<0.0001). Higher rates (96.7%) of infection with macrolide resistance in Mg were identified in men who had taken macrolides prior to enrollment (P< 0.03). Overall, 88.9% (303/341) of 23S rRNA genes contained mutations responsible for macrolide resistance; 89.5% (308/344) of parC and 12.4% (42/339) of gyrA genes had mutations responsible for fluoroquinolone resistance. 87.7% (270/308) of Mg had combined mutations in 23S rRNA and parC genes; 10.4% (32/308) had mutations in all three genes. CONCLUSIONS Mg was the single pathogen identified in 11% of men with symptomatic urethritis. Overall, nearly 90% of Mg were resistant to macrolides and fluoroquinolones. Men who took macrolides in the 30 days prior to enrollment had higher rates (97%) of macrolide resistant Mg. Resistance was associated with numerous mutations in 23SrRNA, parC and gyrA genes.
An Evaluation of Atlas Selection Methods for Atlas-Based Automatic Segmentation in Radiotherapy Treatment Planning

Atlas-based automatic segmentation is used in radiotherapy planning to accelerate the delineation of organs at risk (OARs). Atlas selection has been proposed as a way to improve the accuracy and execution time of segmentation, assuming that, the more similar the atlas is to the patient, the better the results will be. This paper presents an analysis of atlas selection methods in the context of radiotherapy treatment planning. For a range of commonly contoured OARs, a thorough comparison of a large class of typical atlas selection methods has been performed. For this evaluation, clinically contoured CT images of the head and neck ( ${N}={316}$ ) and thorax ( ${N}={280}$ ) were used. The state-of-the-art intensity and deformation similarity-based atlas selection methods were found to compare poorly to perfect atlas selection. Counter-intuitively, atlas selection methods based on a fixed set of representative atlases outperformed atlas selection methods based on the patient image. This study suggests that atlas-based segmentation with currently available selection methods compares poorly to the potential best performance, hampering the clinical utility of atlas-based segmentation. Effective atlas selection remains an open challenge in atlas-based segmentation for radiotherapy planning.
Respect, attentiveness, and growth: wisdom and beliefs about good relationships

ABSTRACT Objectives: Human beings are social entities – our development occurs in and through interaction with others. Thus, it seems likely that relationships influence the development of wisdom, especially long-term intimate relationships in which couples share many important life experiences, and that wisdom, in turn, influences relationships. How wisdom relates to characteristics of intimate relationships has received little attention in the research literature. As a first step in a research program addressing this question, this study analyzed associations between participants’ levels of wisdom and their views of a good relationship. Design and Participants: A sample of 155 individuals aged 23-90 years participated in two sessions including semi-structured qualitative interviews and questionnaires. Measurements: The participants were interviewed about their views of a good intimate relationship. Wisdom was measured using a self-report scale and two open-ended performance measures. Results: Wisdom was significantly related to some of the content categories identified in participants’ views about a good relationship, although some correlations differed between wisdom measures. Emphasizing the relevance of mutual respect and conscious attention in relationships was related to both performance measures of wisdom. Paying considerate attention to the relationship and viewing it as a chance for personal development were each related to one measure of wisdom. Conclusions: The results support the notion that wisdom is related to how participants regulate long-term relationships. We consider them as a promising first step in a research program investigating the dynamic interrelation between wisdom and intimate relationships.
Does ginger supplementation lower blood pressure? A systematic review and meta‐analysis of clinical trials

The aim of the present systematic review and meta‐analysis was to determine the efficacy of ginger supplementation on blood pressure (BP). PubMed, Scopus, ISI Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar were comprehensively searched until September 2018. Human clinical trials, which reported the effect of ginger supplementation on aortic and/or brachial BP, were included. Mean differences were pooled using a random effects model. Standard methods were used for assessment of heterogeneity, sensitivity analysis, and publication bias. Total of six randomized clinical trials (345 participants) were included in the meta‐analysis. Pooled analysis suggested that ginger supplementation can reduced systolic BP (MD: −6.36 mmHg, 95% confidence interval [−11.27, −1.46]; I2 = 89.8%; P = .011) and diastolic BP (MD: −2.12 mmHg, 95% confidence interval [−3.92, −0.31]; I2 = 73.4%; P = .002). When studies were categorized based on participants' mean age, ginger dosage and duration of intervention, systolic BP and diastolic BP were significantly decreased only in the subset of studies with mean age ≤ 50 years, follow‐up duration of ≤8 weeks and ginger doses ≥3 g/d. Our findings revealed that ginger supplementation has favorable effects on BP. Nonetheless, further studies are warranted before definitive conclusions may be reached.
Nonprofit Partisanship

We establish a novel measurement of nonprofit organization ideology using semantic text analysis and validate it with a large-scale online experiment. On average, health-related nonprofits as well as education-related organizations, including US universities, are the most left-leaning group. Religion-related nonprofits, on the other hand, are the most conservative. We then examine whether ”rage donations” for selected lib- eral nonprofits right after the Trump elections documented by the media hold true more generally across different sectors over different presidential elections. We find no evidence that expected shifts in ideology of a government systematically influence donations differently depending on nonprofit ideology.
The predictive power of tumor mutational burden in lung cancer immunotherapy response is influenced by patients’ sex

Immunotherapy, represented by immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI), is transforming the treatment of cancer. However, only a fraction of patients show response to ICI, and there is an unmet need for biomarkers that will identify patients more likely to respond to ICI. Here we report that the ICI response prediction biomarker tumor mutational burden (TMB) shows significant sex differences. TMB's predictive power is significantly better for female than for male lung cancer patients. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was performed and the area under the curve (AUC) was reported to evaluate the predictive power of TMB in lung cancer ICI response. Hazard ratios (HR) of TMB‐high vs. TMB‐low patients were compared between male and female patients. Both AUC and HR differences between female and male are significant in all available independent lung cancer datasets. However, the AUC of programmed death ligand 1 (PD‐L1) expression does not show a difference between female and male, suggesting TMB, but not PD‐L1 expression has a better predictive power for female than for male lung cancer patients. Our study suggests significant sex differences in the performance of TMB in ICI response prediction. Future development of ICI biomarker should consider sex differences and special efforts should be paid to improve the performance of ICI predictive biomarkers for male lung cancer patients.
Melanized focal changes in skeletal muscle in farmed Atlantic salmon after natural infection with Piscine orthoreovirus (PRV)

Abstract Melanized focal changes in skeletal muscle of farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) are a major quality problem. The aetiology is unknown, but infection with Piscine orthoreovirus (PRV) has been associated with the condition. Here, we addressed the pathogenesis of red and melanized focal changes and their association with PRV. First, a population of farmed fish (PRV‐negative prior to sea transfer) was sequentially investigated throughout the seawater period. The fish were autopsied and tested for PRV infection. Muscular changes were described by macroscopy and histology, and a classification system was established. Second, in an experimental infection trial, PRV was injected intramuscularly to induce changes. The farmed fish was gradually infected with PRV. Red focal changes occurred throughout the observation period with a low prevalence regardless of PRV status. Melanized changes were highly diverse and their prevalence increased during the trial. Changes of low macroscopic grade and histological category were more prevalent in PRV‐negative fish. Diffuse granulomatous melanized changes only occurred after PRV infection. No muscular changes were observed in the experimentally challenged fish. Our studies do not indicate that PRV infection causes red focal changes, but seems important in the development of granulomatous melanized changes.
Polypyrrole-Coated Sodium Manganate Hollow Microspheres as a Superior Cathode for Sodium Ion Batteries.

Advanced electrode materials play a very important role in the development of large-scale production of sodium-ion batteries. Herein, Na0.7MnO2. 05 hollow microspheres with diameters of 2 μm and a shell thickness of 200 nm are prepared and then modified by polypyrrole (PPy) coating. As cathodes for sodium-ion batteries, the designed PPy-coated sodium manganate hollow microspheres demonstrate enhanced electrochemical performances, with an initial capacity of 165.1 mAh g-1, capacity retention of 88.6% at 0.1 A g-1 after 100 cycles, and improved rate capability. The excellent electrochemical properties are attributed to the improved electroconductivity and the high stability of hollow spherical structure of sodium manganate oxide particles due to the introduction of conductive polymer coating.
Return to work after first incidence of long-term sickness absence: A 10-year prospective follow-up study identifying labour-market trajectories using sequence analysis

Aims: The study aim was to identify prototypical labour-market trajectories following a first incidence of long-term sickness absence (LTSA), and to assess whether baseline socio-demographic characteristics are associated with the return-to-work (RTW) process and labour-market attachment (LMA). Methods: This prospective study used Norwegian administrative registers with quarterly information on labour-market participation to follow all individuals born 1952–1978 who underwent a first LTSA during the first quarter of 2004 (n =9607) over a 10-year period (2004–2013). Sequence analysis was used to identify prototypical labour-market trajectories and LMA; trajectory membership was examined with multinomial logistic regression. Results: Sequence analysis identified nine labour-market trajectories illustrating the complex RTW process, with multiple states and transitions. Among this sample, 68.2% had a successful return to full-time work, while the remaining trajectories consisted of part-time work, unemployment, recurrence of LTSA, rehabilitation and disability pension (DP). A higher odds ratio (OR) for membership to trajectories of weaker LMA was found for females and older participants, while being married/cohabitating, having children, working in the public sector, and having a higher education, income and occupational class were associated with a lower OR of recurrence, unemployment, rehabilitation and DP trajectories. These results are consistent with three LMA indicators. Conclusions: Sequence analysis revealed prototypical labour-market trajectories and provided a holistic overview of the heterogeneous RTW processes. While the most frequent outcome was successful RTW, several unfavourable labour-market trajectories were identified, with trajectory membership predicted by socio-demographic measures.