Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
POSSIBILITY FOR IMPROVING OVARIAN ACTIVITY, CYTOPLASMIC MATURATION, FERTILIZATION AND DEVELOPMENTAL COMPETENCE IN VITRO OF OOCYTES BY ADMINISTRATION OF DOE RABBITS WITH GREEN TEA EXTRACT

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of oral administration of doe rabbits with green tea extract polyphenols (GTPs) at different levels on ovarian activity, oocyte quality, in vitro maturation, fertilization and development of oocytes. Total of 12 mature NZW doe rabbits (5-6 months of age, 2.5-3.20 kg LBW) were used in this study. Does were divided into 3 similar groups, (n=4). The 1st group (G1) was control, while does in the 2nd (G2) and 3th (G3) groups were given daily for one month oral 1 ml distilled water containing 200 and 400 mg/kg LBW of GTPs, respectively. At the end of treatment period, does in each group were slaughtered and immediately ovaries were removed and oocytes were collected by slicing technique for evaluation. Only compact-cumulus oocytes (COCs) were in vitro matured and fertilized. Results showed that ovarian weight relative to LBW, oocyte number/doe and recovery rate of oocyte were higher (P<0.05) in G2 and G3 than in G1. Number of visible follicles/doe was not affected by treatment. Frequency distribution was higher (P<0.05) for COCs and lower (P<0.05) for denuded oocytes in G2 and G3 as compared to G1. Frequency distribution of both expanded and partial denuded oocytes were not affected by treatment. Percentage of full expanded oocytes was the highest (P<0.05) in G2, followed by G3, while G1 showed the lowest (P<0.05) values. Percentage of partial expansion oocytes was higher (P<0.05) in G3 than in G1 and G2. Fertilization rate was higher (P<0.05) in G2, followed by G3, while G1 showed the lowest (P<0.05) values. Percentage of blastocysts was higher (P<0.05) in G2 and G1 than in G3. Percentage of morulae, and degenerated and un-cleaved embryos were not affected by GTPs treatment. In conclusion, treatment of doe rabbits with green tea extract at a level of 200 mg/kg LBW as daily oral dose for one month is recommended to enhance ovarian activity, oocyte quality, cytoplasmic maturation and in vitro embryo production.
Stochastic processes dominate the within and between host evolution of influenza virus

The global evolutionary dynamics of influenza virus ultimately derive from processes that take place within and between infected individuals. Here we define the dynamics of influenza A virus populations in human hosts through next generation sequencing of 249 specimens from 200 individuals collected over 6290 person-seasons of observation. Because these viruses were collected over 5 seasons from individuals in a prospective community-based cohort, they are broadly representative of natural human infections with seasonal viruses. We used viral sequence data from 35 serially sampled individuals to estimate a within host effective population size of 30-70 and an in vivo mutation rate of 4x10−5 per nucleotide per cellular infectious cycle. These estimates are consistent across several models and robust to the models' underlying assumptions. We also identified 43 epidemiologically linked and genetically validated transmission pairs. Maximum likelihood optimization of multiple transmission models estimates an effective transmission bottleneck of 1-2 distinct genomes. Our data suggest that positive selection of novel viral variants is inefficient at the level of the individual host and that genetic drift and other stochastic processes dominate the within and between host evolution of influenza A viruses.
LINE-2 transposable elements shape post-transcriptional gene regulation in the human brain

Transposable elements (TEs) are dynamically expressed at high levels in multiple human tissues including the brain, but the function of TE-derived transcripts remains largely unknown. In this study we identify numerous miRNAs that are derived from TEs and expressed in the human brain by conducting AGO2-RIP, followed by small RNA sequencing on human brain tissue. Many of these miRNAs originated from L2 elements, which entered the human genome around 100-300 million years ago. We found that L2-miRNAs derive from the 3’ end of the L2 consensus sequence and that they share very similar sequences, indicating that they could target transcripts with L2s in their 3’UTR. In line with this, we found that many protein-coding genes expressed in the brain carry fragments of L2-derived sequences in the 3’UTR, which serve as target sites for L2-derived miRNAs. Our findings uncover a TE-based post-transcriptional network that shapes transcriptional regulation in the human brain.
Egocentric Vision-based Traffic Accident Detection using Future Object Localization

Recognizing abnormal events such as traffic violations and accidents in natural driving scenes is essential for successful autonomous and advanced driver assistance systems. However, most work on video anomaly detection suffers from one of two crucial drawbacks. First, it assumes cameras are fixed and videos have a static background, which is reasonable for surveillance applications but not for vehicle-mounted cameras. Second, it poses the problem as one-class classification, which relies on arduous human annotation and only recognizes categories of anomalies that have been explicitly trained. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised approach for traffic accident detection in first-person videos. Our major novelty is to detect anomalies by predicting the future locations of traffic participants and then monitoring the prediction accuracy and consistency metrics with three different strategies. To evaluate our approach, we introduce a new dataset of diverse traffic accidents, AnAn Accident Detection (A3D), as well as another publicly-available dataset. Experimental results show that our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art.
Microbiological evaluation of women with vulvovaginitis and cervicitis

Abstract: Introduction: The vaginal ecosystem is a complex environment that consists of interrelationships among endogenous microflora, their metabolic products, the host’s metabolic products, oestrogen and the pH level. The endocervix however is a sterile environment, which remains susceptible to many infections. Aims: An investigation of cervico-vaginal infections amongst female patients aged 14-63 years attending two private hospitals in Lagos, Nigeria was carried out. Materials and Methods: A total of 480 female patients constituting 444 with and 36 without vaginal discharge were examined. Both high vaginal (HVS) and endocervical swab (ECS) were taken from these patients and subjected to microbiological examinations. Antibiotics susceptibility pattern was determined using the disc diffusion technique. Results: Eight different 8 species of microorganisms were isolated. The most predominant was Gardnerella vaginalis, which accounted for 264 (49%) of the total isolates, followed by Candida albicans, 120 (22%), Escherichia coli, 76(14%) Trichomonas vaginals, 28(5%) and Neisseria gonorrhoeae,32(6%). Other were Proteus mirabilis, 8(1.5%) and Streptococcus pyogenes 4(0.7%). Mixed infections were observed in 20% of the patients studied. Conclusion: The health implication of the organisms isolated especially the high incidence of Gardnerella vaginosis in women of reproductive age can predispose them to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), spontaneous abortion, pre-term delivery among others. The bacterial isolates were most sensitive to Gentamycin, Pefloxacine and Ceftriaxone, while most of them were resistant to Ampicillin and Tetracycline which are commonly available and abused over-the-counter drugs.
Sleep during menopausal transition: a 10-year follow-up

Abstract Study Objectives A 10-year observational follow-up study to evaluate the changes in sleep architecture during the menopausal transition. Methods Fifty-seven premenopausal women (mean age 46 years, SD 0.9) were studied at baseline and after a 10-year follow-up. At both time points, polysomnography (PSG) was performed, and the serum follicle-stimulating hormone (S-FSH) concentration was measured. Linear regression models were used to study the effects of aging and menopause (assessed as change in S-FSH) on sleep. Results After controlling for body mass index, vasomotor, and depressive symptoms, higher S-FSH level was associated with longer sleep latency (B 0.45, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.07 to 0.83). Aging of 10 years was associated with shorter sleep latency (B −46.8, 95% CI: −77.2 to −16.4), shorter latency to stage 2 sleep (B −50.6, 95% CI: −85.3 to −15.9), decreased stage 2 sleep (B −12.4, 95% CI: −21.4 to −3.4), and increased slow-wave sleep (B 12.8, 95% CI: 2.32 to 23.3) after controlling for confounding factors. Conclusions This study suggests that PSG measured sleep of middle-aged women does not worsen over a 10-year time span due to the menopausal transition. The observed changes seem to be rather age- than menopause-dependent.
Statins and Risk of Cholangiocarcinoma: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The use of statins has been shown to be associated with a decreased risk of cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) in many studies although the results have been inconsistent. We conducted this systematic review and meta-analysis to further investigate this possible association by identifying all relevant studies and combining their results together. METHODS A comprehensive literature review was conducted utilizing the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases through March 2020 to identify all studies that compared the risk of CCA among individuals who use statins with individuals who do not use statins. Effect estimates from each study were extracted and combined using the random-effect, generic inverse variance method of DerSimonian and Laird. RESULTS A total of seven studies with 6,251,187 participants fulfilled the eligibility criteria and were included in this meta-analysis. The pooled analysis found a significantly decreased risk of CCA among individuals who use statins compared with individuals who do not use statins with the pooled odds ratio of 0.68 (95% CI: 0.52-0.89; I 2 96%). CONCLUSIONS The current systematic review and meta-analysis found a significant association between the use of statins and a decreased risk of CCA.
Long exposure convolutional memory network for accurate estimation of finger kinematics from surface electromyographic signals

Objective. Estimation of finger kinematics is an important function of an intuitive human–machine interface, such as gesture recognition. Here, we propose a novel deep learning method, named long exposure convolutional memory network (LE-ConvMN), and use it to proportionally estimate finger joint angles through surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals. Approach. We use a convolution structure to replace the neuron structure of traditional long short-term memory (LSTM) networks, and use the long exposure data structure which retains the spatial and temporal information of the electrodes as input. The Ninapro database, which contains continuous finger gestures and corresponding sEMG signals was used to verify the efficiency of the proposed deep learning method. The proposed method was compared with LSTM and Sparse Pseudo-input Gaussian Process (SPGP) on this database to predict the ten main joint angles on the hand based on sEMG. The correlation coefficient (CC) was evaluated using the three methods on eight healthy subjects, and all the methods adopted the root mean square (RMS) features. Main results. The experimental results showed that the average CC, root mean square error, normalized root mean square error of the proposed LE-ConvMN method (0.82 ± 0.03,11.54 ± 1.89,0.12 ± 0.013) was significantly higher than SPGP (0.65 ± 0.05, p < 0.001; 15.51 ± 2.82, p < 0.001; 0.16 ± 0.01, p < 0.001) and LSTM (0.64 ± 0.06, p < 0.001; 14.77 ± 3.21, p < 0.001; 0.15 ± 0.02, p = < 0.001). Furthermore, the proposed real-time-estimation method has a computation cost of only approximately 82 ms to output one state of ten joints (average value of 10 tests on TitanV GPU). Significance. The proposed LE-ConvMN method could efficiently estimate the continuous movement of fingers with sEMG, and its performance is significantly superior to two established deep learning methods.
Conductors’ tempo choices shed light over Beethoven’s metronome

During most part of Western classical music history, tempo, the speed of music, was not specified, for it was considered obvious from musical context. Only in 1815, Maelzel patented the metronome. Beethoven immediately embraced it, so much as to add tempo marks to his already published eight symphonies. However, these marks are still under dispute, as many musicians consider them too quick to be played and even unmusical, whereas others claim them as Bethoven’s supposedly written will. In this work, we develop a methodology to extract and analyze the performed tempi from 36 complete symphonic recordings by different conductors. Our results show that conductor tempo choices reveal a systematic deviation from Beethoven’s marks, which highlights the salience of “correct tempo” as a perceptive phenomenon shaped by cultural context. The hasty nature of these marks could be explained by the metronome’s ambiguous scale reading point, which Beethoven probably misinterpreted.
Person-Centered Care in Persons Living With Dementia: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Abstract Background and Objectives The concept of person-centered care has been utilized/adapted to various interventions to enhance health-related outcomes and ensure the quality of care delivered to persons living with dementia. A few systematic reviews have been conducted on the use of person-centered interventions in the context of dementia care, but to date, none have analyzed intervention effect by intervention type and target outcome. This study aimed to review person-centered interventions used in the context of dementia care and examine their effectiveness. Research Design and Methods A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted. We searched through 5 databases for randomized controlled trials that utilized person-centered interventions in persons living with dementia from 1998 to 2019. Study quality was assessed using the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence checklist. The outcomes of interest for the meta-analysis were behavioral and psychological symptoms in dementia (BPSD) and cognitive function assessed immediately after the baseline measurement. Results In total, 36 studies were systematically reviewed. Intervention types were reminiscence, music, and cognitive therapies, and multisensory stimulation. Thirty studies were included in the meta-analysis. Results showed a moderate effect size for overall intervention, a small one for music therapy, and a moderate one for reminiscence therapy on BPSD and cognitive function. Discussion and Implications Generally speaking, person-centered interventions showed immediate intervention effects on reducing BPSD and improving cognitive function, although the effect size and significance of each outcome differed by intervention type. Thus, health care providers should consider person-centered interventions as a vital element in dementia care.
Socioeconomic deprivation in early life and symptoms of depression and anxiety in young adulthood: mediating role of hippocampal connectivity

Abstract Background Experience of early-life socioeconomic deprivation (ELSD) may increase the risk of mental disorders in young adulthood. This association may be mediated by structural and functional alterations of the hippocampus. Methods We conducted a prospective cohort study on 122 participants of the European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood. Information about ELSD was collected via questionnaire from mothers during the first 18 months of participants’ lives. At age 23–24, participants underwent examination by structural magnetic resonance imaging, resting-state functional connectivity and assessment of depressive symptoms (Mood and Feelings Questionnaire) and anxiety (Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory). The association of ELSD with brain outcomes in young adulthood was assessed with correlations, linear regression (adjusting for sex, socioeconomic position and mother's mental health) and moderated mediation analysis. Results Higher ELSD was associated with greater depressive symptoms (B = 0.22; p = 0.001), trait anxiety (B = 0.07; p = 0.02) and lower global connectivity of the right hippocampus (B = −0.01; p = 0.02). These associations persisted when adjusted for covariates. In women, lower global connectivity of the right hippocampus was associated with stronger trait anxiety (B = −4.14; p = 0.01). Global connectivity of the right hippocampus as well as connectivity between the right hippocampus and the left middle temporal gyrus mediated the association between ELSD and trait anxiety in women. Higher ELSD correlated with a lower volume of the right hippocampus in men, but the volume of the right hippocampus was not related to mental health. Conclusions Early preventive strategies targeted at children from socioeconomically deprived families may yield long-lasting benefits for the mental health of the population.
Weakly-Supervised Caricature Face Parsing Through Domain Adaptation

A caricature is an artistic form of a person’s picture in which certain striking characteristics are abstracted or exaggerated in order to create a humor or sarcasm effect. For numerous caricature related applications such as attribute recognition and caricature editing, face parsing is an essential pre-processing step that provides a complete facial structure understanding. However, current state-of-the-art face parsing methods require large amounts of labeled data on the pixel-level and such process for caricature is tedious and labor-intensive. For real photos, there are numerous labeled datasets for face parsing. Thus, we formulate caricature face parsing as a domain adaptation problem, where real photos play the role of the source domain, adapting to the target caricatures. Specifically, we first leverage a spatial transformer based network to enable shape domain shifts. A feed-forward style transfer network is then utilized to capture texture-level domain gaps. With these two steps, we synthesize face caricatures from real photos, and thus we can use parsing ground truths of the original photos to learn the parsing model. Experimental results on the synthetic and real caricatures demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed domain adaptation algorithm. Code is available at: https://github.com/ZJULearning/CariFaceParsing.
Capillary forces between two solid spheres linked by a concave liquid bridge: Regions of existence and forces mapping

This article focuses on the capillary interactions arising when two spherical particles are connected by a concave liquid bridge. This scenario is found in many situations where particles are partially wetted by a liquid, like liquid films stabilized with nanoparticles. We analyze different parameters governing the liquid bridge: interparticle separation, wetting angle and liquid volume. The results are compiled in a liquid volume-wetting angle diagram in which the regions of existence (stability) or inexistence (instability) of the bridge are outlined and the possible maximum and minimal particle distances for which the liquid bridge may be found. Calculations of the capillary forces discriminate those conditions for which such force is repulsive or attractive. The results are plotted in form of maps that allow an easy understanding of the stability of a liquid bridge and the conditions at which it may be produced for the two particle model. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2009
Associations of coffee and tea consumption with lung cancer risk

Associations of coffee and tea consumption with lung cancer risk have been inconsistent, and most lung cancer cases investigated were smokers. Included in this study were over 1.1 million participants from 17 prospective cohorts. Cox regression analyses were conducted to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Potential effect modifications by sex, smoking, race, cancer subtype and coffee type were assessed. After a median 8.6 years of follow‐up, 20 280 incident lung cancer cases were identified. Compared with noncoffee and nontea consumption, HRs (95% CIs) associated with exclusive coffee drinkers (≥2 cups/d) among current, former and never smokers were 1.30 (1.15‐1.47), 1.49 (1.27‐1.74) and 1.35 (1.15‐1.58), respectively. Corresponding HRs for exclusive tea drinkers (≥2 cups/d) were 1.16 (1.02‐1.32), 1.10 (0.92‐1.32) and 1.37 (1.17‐1.61). In general, the coffee and tea associations did not differ significantly by sex, race or histologic subtype. Our findings suggest that higher consumption of coffee or tea is associated with increased lung cancer risk. However, these findings should not be assumed to be causal because of the likelihood of residual confounding by smoking, including passive smoking, and change of coffee and tea consumption after study enrolment.
Reporting and methodological quality of systematic reviews and meta-analysis with protocols in Diabetes Mellitus Type II: A systematic review

Background Systematic reviews with or without meta-analyses (SR/MAs) are strongly encouraged to work from a protocol to facilitate high quality, transparent methodology. The completeness of reporting of a protocol (PRISMA-P) and manuscript (PRISMA) is essential to the quality appraisal (AMSTAR-2) and appropriate use of SR/MAs in making treatment decisions. Objectives The objectives of this study were to describe the completeness of reporting and quality of SR/MAs, assess the correlations between PRISMA-P, PRISMA, and AMSTAR-2, and to identify reporting characteristics between similar items of PRISMA-P and PRISMA. Methods We performed a systematic review of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus SR/MAs of hypoglycemic agents with publicly available protocols. Cochrane reviews, guidelines, and specific types of MA were excluded. Two reviewers independently, (i) searched PubMed and Embase between 1/1/2015 to 20/3/2019; (ii) identified protocols of included studies by searching the manuscript bibliography, supplementary material, PROSPERO, and Google; (iii) completed PRISMA-P, PRISMA, and AMSTAR-2 tools. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and multivariable linear regression. Results Of 357 relevant SR/MAs, 51 had available protocols and were included. The average score for PRISMA-P was 15.8±3.3 (66%; maximum 24) and 25.2±1.1 (93%; maximum 27) for PRISMA. The quality of SR/MAs assessed using the AMSTAR-2 tool identified an overall poor quality (63% critically low, 18% low, 8% moderate, 12% high). The correlation between the PRISMA-P and PRISMA was not significant (r = 0.264; p = 0.06). Correlation was significant between PRISMA-P and AMSTAR-2 (r = 0.333; p = 0.02) and PRISMA and AMSTAR-2 (r = 0.555; p<0.01). Discrepancies in reporting were common between similar PRISMA-P and PRISMA items. Conclusion Adherence to protocol reporting guidance was poor while manuscript reporting was comprehensive. Protocol completeness is not associated with a completely reported manuscript. Independently, PRISMA-P and PRISMA scores were weakly associated with higher quality assessments but insufficient as a surrogate for quality. Critical areas for quality improvement include protocol description, investigating causes of heterogeneity, and the impact of risk of bias on the evidence synthesis.