Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lending a hand to storytelling: Gesture’s effects on narrative comprehension moderated by task difficulty and cognitive ability

Compelling evidence suggests observing iconic gestures benefits learning. While emerging evidence suggests typical iconic gestures benefit comprehension to a greater extent than atypical iconic gestures, it is unclear precisely when and for whom these gestures will be most helpful. The current study investigated factors that may moderate when and for whom gesture benefits narrative comprehension most, including the type of gesture, task difficulty, and individual differences in cognitive ability. Participants were shown a video narrative in which they observed either typical gestures (commonly produced gestures, highly semantically related to accompanying speech), atypical gestures (gestures that are seldom produced), or no gestures. The video narrative was either viewed with interference (background noise to increase task difficulty) or no interference (no background noise). To determine whether the effects of gesture observation and externally imposed task difficulty on narrative comprehension further depend on an individual’s cognitive abilities, participants completed four measures of cognitive abilities (immediate and delayed non-verbal memory, attention, and intellectual ability). Observing typical gestures significantly benefitted narrative comprehension compared with atypical and no gestures combined, which did not differ significantly. Participants with below average and average levels of delayed non-verbal memory benefitted more from typical gestures than atypical or no gestures compared with those with an above average level of delayed non-verbal memory. However, this interaction was only significant when the task was difficult (i.e., with interference) but not when the task was simple (i.e., no interference). This finding suggests that the type of iconic gesture observed may affect gesture’s beneficial effect on narrative comprehension, and that such gestures may be more beneficial in difficult tasks, but only for certain individuals.
Flexible Electrodes for In Vivo and In Vitro Electrophysiological Signal Recording

A variety of electrophysiological signals (electrocardiography, electromyography, electroencephalography, etc.) are generated during the physiological activities of human bodies, which can be collected by electrodes and thus provide critical insights into health status or facilitate fundamental scientific research. The long‐term stable and high‐quality recording of electrophysiological signals is the premise for their further applications, leading to demands for flexible electrodes with similar mechanical modulus and minimized irritation to human bodies. This review summarizes the latest advances in flexible electrodes for the acquisition of various electrophysiological signals. First, the concept of electrophysiological signals and the characteristics of different subcategory signals are introduced. Second, the invasive and noninvasive methods are reviewed for electrophysiological signal recording with a highlight on the design of flexible electrodes, followed by a discussion on their material selection. Subsequently, the applications of the electrophysiological signal acquisition in pathological diagnosis and restoration of body functions are discussed, showing the advantages of flexible electrodes. Finally, the main challenges and opportunities in this field are discussed. It is believed that the further exploration of materials for flexible electrodes and the combination of multidisciplinary technologies will boost the applications of flexible electrodes for medical diagnosis and human–machine interface.
Exemption for the poor or the rich? An assessment of socioeconomic inequalities in Ghana's national health insurance exemption policies.

Out-of-pocket payments for health are considered a major limitation to universal health coverage (UHC). Policymakers across the globe are committed to achieving UHC through the removal of financial barriers to health care. In Ghana, a national health insurance scheme was established for this purpose. A unique feature of the scheme is its premium exemption policies for vulnerable groups. In this article, we access the nature of socioeconomic inequality in these exemption policies. We used data from the Ghana Living Standards Survey rounds six and seven. Socioeconomic inequality was assessed using concentration curves and indices. Real household annual total consumption expenditure adjusted by adult equivalence scale was used as a wealth indicator. Four categories of exemption were used as outcome variables. These were exemptions for indigents, individuals <18 years, the aged and free maternal service. The analysis was also disaggregated by rural and urban locations of individuals. We found that while overall national health insurance scheme (NHIS) coverage was concentrated among the wealthy, all categories of premium exemption were concentrated among the poor. There was also evidence of a general decline in the magnitude of inequality over the survey years. With the specific exemptions, inequalities in exemption for indigents and maternal services were most relevant in rural locations, while inequalities in exemption for individuals <18 years and the aged were significant in urban areas. The findings suggest that the exemption policies under the NHIS are generally progressive and achieve the objective of inclusion for the underprivileged. However, it also provides lessons for better targeting and effective implementation. There may be a need for separate efforts to better target individuals in rural and urban locations to improve enrolment.
Detection of respiratory viruses in primary cholesteatoma tissues

Cholesteatomas are frequent middle ear benign tumors of unknown etiology. Infectious agents have been considered as possible contributing factors in the pathogenesis of cholesteatomas. Aiming to investigate the presence of respiratory viruses in primary cholesteatoma tissues, 26 formalin‐fixed paraffin‐embedded primary cholesteatoma tissues obtained from patients seen at the of the Clinical Hospital of the University of São Paulo School of Medicine, in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil were tested by real‐time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Considering the PCR results, 35% of the tissues were positive for human rhinovirus (HRV), 15.3% for human enterovirus (EV), 3.8% for human metapneumovirus (HMPV), and 3.8% for human bocavirus (HBoV). Serial immunohistochemistry for virus antigens and cell surface markers evidenced that the viruses were associated with fibroblasts, dendritic cells, macrophages, B lymphocytes, CD4+, and CD8+ T lymphocytes. These findings indicate for the first time the presence of active respiratory virus infection in primary cholesteatoma tissues, suggesting that persisting virus infection in the middle could play a role in the pathogenesis and evolution of cholesteatomas.
Genetic markers of abdominal obesity and weight loss after gastric bypass surgery

Background Weight loss after bariatric surgery varies widely between individuals, partly due to genetic differences. In addition, genetic determinants of abdominal obesity have been shown to attenuate weight loss after dietary intervention with special attention paid to the rs1358980-T risk allele in the VEGFA locus. Here we aimed to test if updated genetic risk scores (GRSs) for adiposity measures and the rs1358980-T risk allele are linked with weight loss following gastric bypass surgery. Methods Five hundred seventy six patients with morbid obesity underwent Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. A GRS for BMI and a GRS for waist-hip-ratio adjusted for BMI (proxy for abdominal obesity), respectively, were constructed. All patients were genotyped for the rs1358980-T risk allele. Associations between the genetic determinants and weight loss after bariatric surgery were evaluated. Results The GRS for BMI was not associated with weight loss (β = -2.0 kg/100 risk alleles, 95% CI -7.5 to 3.3, p = 0.45). Even though the GRS for abdominal obesity was associated with an attenuated weight loss response adjusted for age, sex and center (β = -14.6 kg/100 risk alleles, 95% CI -25.4 to -3.8, p = 0.008), it was not significantly associated with weight loss after adjustment for baseline BMI (β = -7.9 kg/100 risk alleles, 95% CI -17.5 to 1.6, p = 0.11). Similarly, the rs1358980-T risk allele was not significantly associated with weight loss (β = -0.8 kg/risk allele, 95% CI -2.2 to 0.6, p = 0.25). Discussion GRSs for adiposity derived from large meta-analyses and the rs1358980-T risk allele in the VEGFA locus did not predict weight loss after gastric bypass surgery. The association between a GRS for abdominal obesity and the response to bariatric surgery may be dependent on the association between the GRS and baseline BMI.
Biorefinery Lignosulfonates from Sulfite-Pretreated Softwoods as Dispersant for Graphite

Two biorefinery lignosulfonates (LSs), Ca-LS-DF and Na-LS-LP, were, respectively, isolated from pilot-scale sulfite-pretreated spent liquor of lodgepole pine and fermentation residue of Douglas-fir harvest forest residue. The molecular weights of Na-LS-LP and Ca-LS-DF were approximately 9 000 and 11 000 Da, respectively. The two LSs were applied as dispersant for graphite in aqueous suspensions. The dispersion stability was evaluated by a scanning electron microscope and Turbiscan Lab Expert. LS performance in modifying graphite was better than that of a commercial dispersant Reax-85A as indicated by the Turbiscan TSI values, zeta potential of suspension particles, and SEM imaging. The practical importance of this study lies in the fact that the pilot-scale sulfite pretreatments that produced the two LSs also produced excellent bioethanol yields at high titer without detoxification and washing, suggesting the LSs are a true value-added coproduct for high yield biofuel production.
High Incidence of Circuit Clotting in Critically-ill COVID-19 Patients Treated With Renal Replacement Therapy.

We read, with great interest, the study by Gupta et al. on the risk factors and outcomes of patients critically ill with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) who developed AKI and were treated with RRT. They found AKI is frequent in patients with COVID-19, and that RRT is associated with high mortality. On the basis of our experience, we would like to draw attention to the clinical relevance of circuit clotting, a feature not addressed by Gupta et al. Indeed, hypercoagulability is a common problem in patients with COVID-19, and is associated with a high risk of deep venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. In our center, 30.5% of patients critically ill with COVID-19, who were admitted during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, required RRT. Among 130 RRT sessions performed in 20 patients, circuit clotting or catheter thrombosis occurred in 21% of RRT sessions, leading to premature termination of the session. These thrombotic events occurred despite prophylactic anticoagulation with systemic heparin (40%), systemic and prefilter heparin (35%), or prefilter heparin (25%). We compared patients with COVID-19 with a control group of 20 critically ill patients without COVID-19 who underwent 130 RRT sessions in our intensive care unit within 6 months before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients were matched for age, comorbidities, severity scores, need for mechanical ventilation and vasopressors, and anticoagulation regimen. We found that the incidence of thrombotic events of patients with COVID-19 during RRT sessions was four times that of patients without COVID-19 (21% versus 4.1%, P50.003). Moreover, laboratory analyses revealed significant differences in coagulation parameters. Patients with COVID-19 displayed a higher level of fibrinogen (9.05 versus 6.6 g/L, P50.0004) and platelet count (364 versus 194 g/L, P50.008), and a lower level of D-dimers (1274 versus 14,814 ng/ml, P50.02) compared with patients without COVID-19. Our results are similar to those reported by Shankaranarayanan et al. They analyzed 203 circuits and found a 40% incidence of premature clotting on various anticoagulation regimens. We aim to raise the awareness of intensive-careunit physicians who manage patients with COVID-19 and severe AKI on the high incidence of thrombotic events during RRT. We hypothesize that repeated loss of RRT circuits may have contributed to significant blood loss and the delivery of a low intensity of therapy. Such adverse events can play a significant role in increasing RRT-related morbidity and mortality in patients with COVID-19. Further studies are needed to assess whether the optimization of anticoagulation can translate into improved management of RRT and better patient outcomes.
Mesenchymal Tumors of the Mediastinum: An Update on Diagnostic Approach

Mesenchymal tumors of the mediastinum are a heterogenous group of rare tumors with divergent lineages. Mediastinal mesenchymal tumors are diagnostically challenging due to their diversity and morphologic overlap with nonmesenchymal lesions arising in the mediastinum. Accurate histologic diagnosis is critical for appropriate patient management and prognostication. Many mediastinal mesenchymal tumors affect distinct age groups or occur at specific mediastinal compartments. Neurogenic tumors, liposarcoma, solitary fibrous tumor, and synovial sarcoma are common mesenchymal tumors in the mediastinum. Herein, we provide an update on the diagnostic approach to mediastinal mesenchymal tumors and a review of the histologic features and differential diagnosis of common benign and malignant mesenchymal tumors of the mediastinum.
Following up internet-delivered Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT): A Longitudinal Qualitative Investigation of Clients' Usage of CBT Skills.

BACKGROUND While the acquisition and application of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) skills is a core component and likely mechanism of effect maintenance in all CBT-based treatments, the extent of post-therapeutic CBT skills usage among internet-delivered CBT (iCBT) clients remains under-researched. METHOD Nested within a pragmatic randomized controlled trial, 241 participants received an 8-week supported iCBT intervention for anxiety and/or depression and answered open-ended questions about their use and experience of CBT skills at 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-month follow-up. Recurrent, cross-sectional qualitative analysis following the descriptive and interpretive approach was used to create a taxonomy, through which all qualitative data was coded. RESULTS In total 479 qualitative responses across 181 participants were analyzed. Participants reported using a wide range of CBT skills and associated helpful and hindering experiences and impacts. The reasons for discontinued CBT skills usage were diverse, ranging from rare adverse effects to healthy adaptation. CONCLUSION The study shows how clients receiving iCBT in routine care learn CBT skills during treatment and utilize them in productive ways post-treatment. Findings coincide with similar research in face-to-face CBT and may inform future research to drive innovation and iCBT intervention development.
A proposed population-health based metric for evaluating representativeness of air quality monitoring in cities: Using Hong Kong as a demonstration

City air quality monitoring (AQM) network are typically sparsely distributed due to high operation costs. It is of the question of how well it can reflect public health risks to air pollution given the diversity and heterogeneity in pollution, and spatial variations in population density. Combing high-resolution air quality model, spatial population distribution and health risk factors, we proposed a population-health based metric for AQM representativeness. This metric was demonstrated in Hong Kong using hourly modelling data of PM10, PM2.5, NO2 and O3 in 2019 with grid cells of 45m * 48m. Individual and total hospital admission risks (%AR) of these pollutants were calculated for each cell, and compared with those calculated at 16 monitoring sites using the similarity frequency (SF) method. AQM Representativeness was evaluated by SF and a population-health based network representation index (PHNI), which is population-weighted SF over the study-domain. The representativeness varies substantially among sites as well as between population- and area-based evaluation methods, reflecting heterogeneity in pollution and population. The current AQM network reflects population health risks well for PM10 (PHNI = 0.87) and PM2.5 (PHNI = 0.82), but is less able to represent risks for NO2 (PHNI = 0.59) and O3 (PHNI = 0.78). Strong seasonal variability in PHNI was found for PM, increasing by >11% during autumn and winter compared to summer due to regional transport. NO2 is better represented in urban than rural, reflecting the heterogeneity of urban traffic pollution. Combined health risk (%ARtotal) is well represented by the current AQM network (PHNI = 1), which is more homogenous due to the dominance and anti-correlation of NO2 and O3 related %AR. The proposed PHNI metric is useful to compare the health risk representativeness of AQM for individual and multiple pollutants and can be used to compare the effectiveness of AQM across cities.
Orthogonal test optimized process for macroporous resin purification of astragalus polysaccharide

Objective:To use the column chromato graphy purification of astragalus polysaccharide and to optimize the process. Methods:To use the cation exchange resin,macroreticular resin and polyamide to purify astragalus polysaccharide.The results of purification were compared.Results:Cation exchange resin almost played no role in purification of astragalus polysaccharide,macroporous resin and polyamide played obvious role in the purification of astragalus polysaccharide.Then the macroporous resin purification process was optimizeed.Conclusion:Using macroporous resin for the purification of astragalus polysaccharide has better effect.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder during COVID-19 - two- and six-month follow-ups.OCD during COVID-19.

BACKGROUND Psychiatric patients are perceived to be especially vulnerable during a pandemic as it increases stress and uncertainty. Several current publications have considered Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) patients to be particularly vulnerable during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), and clinicians were advised to adjust treatments accordingly. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the two- and six-month impacts of COVID-19 on the symptom severity of OCD patients. METHODS A cohort of OCD patients, actively treated with Exposure and Response Prevention [ERP] combined with pharmacological treatment, was evaluated as part of their regular psychiatric assessment twice: 113 patients were evaluated at their two-month follow-up, and 90 patients (from that cohort), were evaluated at their six-month follow up. RESULTS Eighty-four percent of the patients at the two-month follow-up and 96% of the patients at the six-month follow-up did not show OC symptom deterioration. The results were also replicated in the OCD subgroup that included contamination (washers) and patients with illness obsessions who were believed to be particularly vulnerable, considering their obsessional content. CONCLUSION OCD patients (including those with obsessions related to contamination and health) who are under an active ERP and pharmacological treatment, did not experience exacerbated symptoms during COVID-19 at their two- and six-month follow-ups.
snpXplorer: a web application to explore human SNP-associations and annotate SNP-sets

Abstract Genetic association studies are frequently used to study the genetic basis of numerous human phenotypes. However, the rapid interrogation of how well a certain genomic region associates across traits as well as the interpretation of genetic associations is often complex and requires the integration of multiple sources of annotation, which involves advanced bioinformatic skills. We developed snpXplorer, an easy-to-use web-server application for exploring Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP) association statistics and to functionally annotate sets of SNPs. snpXplorer can superimpose association statistics from multiple studies, and displays regional information including SNP associations, structural variations, recombination rates, eQTL, linkage disequilibrium patterns, genes and gene-expressions per tissue. By overlaying multiple GWAS studies, snpXplorer can be used to compare levels of association across different traits, which may help the interpretation of variant consequences. Given a list of SNPs, snpXplorer can also be used to perform variant-to-gene mapping and gene-set enrichment analysis to identify molecular pathways that are overrepresented in the list of input SNPs. snpXplorer is freely available at https://snpxplorer.net. Source code, documentation, example files and tutorial videos are available within the Help section of snpXplorer and at https://github.com/TesiNicco/snpXplorer.
Clonal hematopoiesis associated with epigenetic aging and clinical outcomes

Clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) is a common precursor state for blood cancers that most frequently occurs due to mutations in the DNA‐methylation modifying enzymes DNMT3A or TET2. We used DNA‐methylation array and whole‐genome sequencing data from four cohorts together comprising 5522 persons to study the association between CHIP, epigenetic clocks, and health outcomes. CHIP was strongly associated with epigenetic age acceleration, defined as the residual after regressing epigenetic clock age on chronological age, in several clocks, ranging from 1.31 years (GrimAge, p < 8.6 × 10−7) to 3.08 years (EEAA, p < 3.7 × 10−18). Mutations in most CHIP genes except DNA‐damage response genes were associated with increases in several measures of age acceleration. CHIP carriers with mutations in multiple genes had the largest increases in age acceleration and decrease in estimated telomere length. Finally, we found that ~40% of CHIP carriers had acceleration >0 in both Hannum and GrimAge (referred to as AgeAccelHG+). This group was at high risk of all‐cause mortality (hazard ratio 2.90, p < 4.1 × 10−8) and coronary heart disease (CHD) (hazard ratio 3.24, p < 9.3 × 10−6) compared to those who were CHIP−/AgeAccelHG−. In contrast, the other ~60% of CHIP carriers who were AgeAccelHG− were not at increased risk of these outcomes. In summary, CHIP is strongly linked to age acceleration in multiple clocks, and the combination of CHIP and epigenetic aging may be used to identify a population at high risk for adverse outcomes and who may be a target for clinical interventions.