Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Empathy and Mobile Phone Dependence in Nursing: A Cross-Sectional Study in a Public Hospital of the Island of Crete, Greece

This study examined the relationship between empathy and mobile phone dependence levels of the nursing staff in a public hospital in the island of Crete, using a cross-sectional study design. Data from 109 staff nurses and healthcare assistants (HCAs) were collected via the Greek version of the Mobile Phone Dependence Questionnaire (MPDQ) and the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ). Multiple linear regression was used to determine the correlation between empathy and mobile phone dependency. The total mean score for TEQ was 33.9 (±5.7). Accordingly, the total mean score for MPDQ was 22.9 (±6.1). High mobile phone dependence was found in 4.7% of the participants. A statistically significant difference was found between HCAs and staff nurses, with HCAs presenting a higher mean empathy levels (TEQ) (36.5 vs. 32.6) and lower dependence levels (MPDQ) (18.9 vs. 24.5) than staff nurses. A significant correlation between empathy and dependence was found between dependence and the altruism empathy subscale, with higher dependence being correlated with lower altruism. The participants’ levels of empathy do not seem to be affected by mobile phone dependence. However, empathy appears to be strongly determined by increased age and professional status. Nurses’ dependence on mobile phones is a complex phenomenon that requires attention. Educational programs on empathy and information on the proper use of mobile phones by the nursing staff should be provided.
Evidence Base Update for Questionnaires of Emotion Regulation and Reactivity for Children and Adolescents

ABSTRACT Objective: Emotion regulation (ER) is a multi-faceted and dynamic process relevant to both normative emotional development and transdiagnostic emotional dysfunction for a range of psychological disorders. There has been tremendous growth in ER research over the past decade, including the development of numerous new measures to assess ER. This Evidence Base Update included a systematic review to identify self- and informant-report questionnaire measures of ER for children and adolescents, including measures of ER strategies and effectiveness (or emotion dysregulation). Methods: PubMed, PsycInfo, and Health and Psychosocial Instruments databases were searched using the terms emotion OR affect AND regulation OR control OR reactivity OR response, as well as terms related to questionnaires and psychometrics, restricted to articles on youth (< 18 years old). Each measure’s psychometrics was evaluated based on modified criteria by De Los Reyes and Langer (2018). Results: Nine-hundred ninety-seven papers were identified yielding 87 measures that met inclusion for review. Although the majority (60%) of identified ER measures could not be recommended based on these criteria, 8% were Excellent, 14% were Good, and 17% were Adequate. The recommended measures included: 11 general ER measures (5 focused on strategies, 5 focused on dysregulation/ effectiveness), 13 measures of ER as it relates to specific emotions or contexts such as irritability or peer stress (4 focused on strategies, 9 focused on dysregulation/effectiveness), and 11 measures of other constructs that include an ER subscale (all focused on dysregulation). Conclusions: The characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses of the recommended ER measures are described in order to guide measure selection for clinical or research uses. A synthesis of themes identified during this review includes commonly observed areas of weakness and gaps in the literature to provide a foundation for future research and measure development.
Genetic Association of the Functional WDR4 Gene in Male Fertility

Infertility is one of the important problems in the modern world. Male infertility is characterized by several clinical manifestations, including low sperm production (oligozoospermia), reduced sperm motility (asthenozoospermia), and abnormal sperm morphology (teratozoospermia). WDR4, known as Wuho, controls fertility in Drosophila. However, it is unclear whether WDR4 is associated with clinical manifestations of male fertility in human. Here, we attempted to determine the physiological functions of WDR4 gene. Two cohorts were applied to address this question. The first cohort was the general population from Taiwan Biobank. Genomic profiles from 68,948 individuals and 87 common physiological traits were applied for phenome-wide association studies (PheWAS). The second cohort comprised patients with male infertility from Wan Fang Hospital, Taipei Medical University. In total, 81 male participants were recruited for the genetic association study. Clinical records including gender, age, total testosterone, follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), total sperm number, sperm motility, and sperm morphology were collected. In the first cohort, results from PheWAS exhibited no associations between WDR4 genetic variants and 87 common physiological traits. In the second cohort, a total of four tagging single-nucleotide polymorphisms (tSNPs) from WDR4 gene (rs2298666, rs465663, rs2248490, and rs3746939) were selected for genotyping. We found that SNP rs465663 solely associated with asthenozoospermia. Functional annotations through the GTEx portal revealed the correlation between TT or TC genotype and low expression of WDR4. Furthermore, we used mouse embryonic fibroblasts cells from mwdr4 heterozygous (+/‒) mice for functional validation by western blotting. Indeed, low expression of WDR4 contributed to ROS-induced DNA fragmentation. In conclusion, our results suggest a critical role of WDR4 gene variant as well as protein expression in asthenozoospermia.
Evaluating Effects of Background Stories on Graph Perception

A graph is an abstract model that represents relations among entities, for example, the interactions between characters in a novel. A background story endows entities and relations with real-world meanings and describes the semantics and context of the abstract model, for example, the actual story that the novel presents. Considering practical experience and prior research, human viewers who are familiar with the background story of a graph and those who do not know the background story may perceive the same graph differently. However, no previous research has adequately addressed this problem. This research article thus presents an evaluation that investigated the effects of background stories on graph perception. Three hypotheses that focused on the role of visual focus areas, graph structure identification, and mental model formation on graph perception were formulated and guided three controlled experiments that evaluated the hypotheses using real-world graphs with background stories. An analysis of the resulting experimental data, which compared the performance of participants who read and did not read the background stories, obtained a set of instructive findings. First, having knowledge about a graph's background story influences participants’ focus areas during interactive graph explorations. Second, such knowledge significantly affects one's ability to identify community structures but not high degree and bridge structures. Third, this knowledge influences graph recognition under blurred visual conditions. These findings can bring new considerations to the design of storytelling visualizations and interactive graph explorations.
Unintentional Injury Burden in Hong Kong: Results from a Representative Population-Based Survey

Unintentional injuries are major causes of mortality and morbidity. Although generally perceived as accidents, it is possible to identify those at higher risk and implement appropriate prevention measures. This study aims to investigate the common causes of unintentional injuries and their associated risk factors among a large representative sample. Data of 12,022 individuals who completed the Hong Kong Population Health Survey 2014/15 were extracted. The primary outcome was the prevalence of having unintentional injury(-ies) in the previous 12 months that was severe enough to limit daily activities. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify associations between injuries and sociodemographic, clinical and lifestyle factors. 14.5% of respondents reported episode(s) of unintentional injury in the past 12 months in the population level. The main causes of top three most severe unintentional injuries were sprains (24.0%), falls (19.9%) and being hit/struck (19.6%). 13.2% injury episodes were work-related among the most severe episode. Factors independently associated with significantly higher risks of injury included currently employed, homemaker or student, born in Hong Kong (as compared with immigrants), doctor-diagnosed chronic conditions, harmful alcohol consumption, insufficient sleep, and disturbed sleep. To summarize, unintentional injuries are highly prevalent and associated with harmful drinking, insufficient sleep, and disturbed sleep, which are potential modifiable risk factors for prevention.
Does PRGF Work? A Prospective Clinical Study in Dogs with A Novel Polylactic Acid Scaffold Injected with PRGF Using the Modified Maquet Technique

Simple Summary PRGF is a concentration of autologous platelets in a small volume of plasma, which is performed in a specific way and is an accessible resource in veterinary medicine. The PRGF has multiple demonstrated properties as antimicrobial, analgesic and anti-inflammatory but their osteoinductivity potential is controversial. We decided to use PRGF in combination with a PLA bioresorbable scaffold (a specific type of implant with osteoconduction properties) performed by 3D printing, and personalized for each patient, to determinate if the PRGF can produce osteoinduction and as a result, a faster bone healing and a faster patient recovery. Furthermore, in this study PLA scaffolds are proposed as an alternative for metallic implants to avoid the problems that those can cause. The MMT was the technique selected for solving the RCrCL as it is a variant of TTA that follows the same principle for the correction of the patellar tendon angle to neutralize distractive forces; however, this technique needs a lower amount of metallic implants for the scaffold fixation. Abstract Tibial tuberosity advancement is a surgical technique to restore the dynamical stability in the knee by advancing the insertion of the patellar ligament, for which it is necessary to advance the tibial crest, being maintained in the desired position usually by a cage and metallic implants. The purpose of this study was to replace the cage with a polylactic acid biodegradable scaffold designed for each patient by 3D printing, inserting platelet-rich in growth factors (PRGF) to demonstrate its osteoinductive properties. To this end, we used the modified Maquet technique to reduce the amount of metal to a minimum. Fifty-three dogs finished the study. The control and PRGF groups did not present any statistically significant differences in terms of ossification degree (p > 0.001) but they demonstrated satisfactory ossification compared to previous publications, although in the PRGF group three of the scaffolds suffered complete reabsorption. The PRGF and control groups did not show any statistically significant differences in terms of lameness degree (p > 0.001). However, the PRGF group showed at the first control some analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties but they were not enough for reducing the functional recovery time in a significant way. The PRGF group did not show any complications or negative results associated with their use.
Study of Titanium–Silver Monolayer and Multilayer Films for Protective Applications in Biomedical Devices

The search for coatings that extend the useful life of biomedical devices has been of great interest, and titanium has been of great relevance due to its innocuousness and low reactivity. This study contributes to the investigation of Ti/Ag films in different configurations (monolayer and multilayer) deposited by magnetron sputtering. The sessile droplet technique was applied to study wettability; greater film penetrability was obtained when Ag is the external layer, conferring high efficiency in cell adhesion. The morphological properties were characterized by SEM, which showed porous nuclei on the surface in the Ag coating and crystals embedded in the Ti film. The structural properties were studied by XRD, revealing the presence of TiO2 in the anatase crystalline phase in a proportion of 49.9% and the formation of a silver cubic network centered on the faces. Tafel polarization curves demonstrated improvements in the corrosion current densities of Ag/Ti/Ag/Ti/Ag/Ti/Ag/Ti and Ti/Ag compared to the Ag coating, with values of 0.1749, 0.4802, and 2.044 nA.m−2, respectively. Antimicrobial activity was evaluated against the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Bacillus subtilis and the yeasts Candida krusei and Candida albicans, revealing that the Ti/Ag and Ag/Ti/Ag/Ti/Ag/Ti/Ag/Ti coatings exhibit promise in biomedical material applications.
Metronidazole- and Amoxicillin-Loaded PLGA and PCL Nanofibers as Potential Drug Delivery Systems for the Treatment of Periodontitis: In Vitro and In Vivo Evaluations

The purpose of this study was to prepare poly (D-L) lactide-co-glycolide (PLGA) and poly ε-caprolactone (PCL) nanofibers containing metronidazole and amoxicillin using an electrospinning process as intrapocket sustained-release drug delivery systems for the treatment of periodontal diseases. Scanning electron microscopy showed that the drug containing PLGA and PCL nanofibers produced from the electrospinning process was uniform and bead-free in morphology. The obtained nanofibers had a strong structure and resisted external tension according to the tensiometry results. The cytotoxicity results indicated acceptable cell viability (>80%). Quantification by high-performance liquid chromatography showed almost complete in vitro drug release between 7 and 9 days, whereas 14 days were required for complete drug release in vivo. No significant signs of irritation or inflammatory reaction were detected after three weeks of subcutaneous implantation of nanofibers in the animal models, thus indicating suitable compatibility. The results therefore suggest that the designed nanofibers can be used as potential commercial formulations in the treatment of periodontitis as controlled-release intrapocket drug delivery systems that can increase patient compliance. This is due to their ability to reduce the frequency of administration from three times daily in a systemic manner to once weekly as local delivery.
Human antibody recognition of H7N9 influenza virus HA following natural infection

Avian H7N9 influenza viruses cause sporadic outbreaks of human infections and threaten to cause a major pandemic. The breadth of B cell responses to natural infection and the dominant antigenic sites recognized during first exposure to H7 HA following infection are incompletely understood. Here, we studied the B cell response to H7 HA of 2 individuals who had recovered from natural H7N9 virus infection. We used competition binding, hydrogen-deuterium mass spectrometry, and single-particle negative stain electron microscopy to identify the patterns of molecular recognition of the antibody responses to H7 HA. We found that circulating H7-reactive B cells recognized a diverse antigenic landscape on the HA molecule, including HA head domain epitopes in antigenic sites A and B and in the trimer interface-II region and epitopes in the stem region. Most H7 antibodies exhibited little heterosubtypic breadth, but many recognized a wide diversity of unrelated H7 strains. We tested the antibodies for functional activity and identified clones with diverse patterns of inhibition, including neutralizing, hemagglutination- or egress-inhibiting, or HA trimer–disrupting activities. Thus, the human B cell response to primary H7 natural infection is diverse, highly functional, and broad for recognition of diverse H7 strains.
Co-Occurrence of 35 Mycotoxins: A Seven-Year Survey of Corn Grain and Corn Silage in the United States

Mycotoxins contaminate crops worldwide and play a role in animal health and performance. Multiple mycotoxins may co-occur which may increase the impact on the animal. To assess the multiple mycotoxin profile of corn (Zea mays), we conducted a 7-year survey of new crop corn grain and silage in the United States. A total of 711 grain and 1117 silage samples were collected between 2013 and 2019 and analyzed for the simultaneous presence of 35 mycotoxins using ultra-performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. The measured mean number of mycotoxins per sample were 4.8 (grain) and 5.2 (silage), ranging from 0 to 13. Fusaric acid (FA) was most frequently detected in 78.1 and 93.8% of grains and silages, respectively, followed by deoxynivalenol (DON) in 75.7 and 88.2% of samples. Fumonisin B1 (FB1), fumonisin B2 and 15-acetyl-deoxynivalenol (15ADON) followed. The greatest (p < 0.05) co-occurrence was between FA and DON in 59.1% of grains and 82.7% of silages, followed by FA with FB1, DON with 15ADON, and FA with 15ADON. Although many samples had lower mycotoxin concentrations, 1.6% (grain) and 7.9% (silage) of tested samples had DON ≥ 5000 µg/kg. Fumonisins were detected ≥ 10,000 µg/kg in 9.6 and 3.9% of grain and silage samples, respectively. Concentrations in grain varied by year for eight mycotoxin groups (p < 0.05), while all 10 groups showed yearly variations in silage. Our survey suggest that multiple mycotoxins frequently co-occur in corn grain and silage in the United States, and some of the more prevalent mycotoxins are those that may not be routinely analyzed (i.e., FA and 15ADON). Assessment of multiple mycotoxins should be considered when developing management programs.
Effects of Protein-Rich Nutritional Composition Supplementation on Sarcopenia Indices and Physical Activity during Resistance Exercise Training in Older Women with Knee Osteoarthritis

Older adults with knee osteoarthritis (KOA) are at high risk of sarcopenia. Protein-rich nutritional composition supplementation (PS) combined with resistance exercise training (RET) improves muscle gains and facilitates physical activity in older adults. However, whether PS augments the effects of RET on muscle mass and PA in patients with KOA remains unclear. Therefore, this study identified the effects of PS on sarcopenic indices and PA in older women with KOA subjected to an RET program. Eligible older women aged 60–85 years and diagnosed as having KOA were randomly assigned to either the experimental group (EG) or the control group (CG). Both groups performed RET twice a week for 12 weeks. The EG received additional PS during this period. Outcome measures included appendicular lean mass index, walking speed, physical activity, and scores on the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index—WOMAC). All measures were tested at baseline and after intervention. With participant characteristics and baseline scores as covariates, analysis of variance was performed to identify between-group differences in changes in all outcome measures after intervention. Statistical significance was defined as p < 0.05. Compared with the CG, the EG achieved greater changes in appendicular lean mass index (adjusted mean difference (aMD) = 0.19 kg/m2, p < 0.01), physical activity (aMD = 30.0 MET-hour/week, p < 0.001), walking speed (aMD = 0.09 m/s, p < 0.05), and WOMAC global function (aMD = −8.21, p < 0.001) after intervention. In conclusion, PS exerted augmentative effects on sarcopenic indices, physical activity, and perceived global WOMAC score in older women with KOA through 12 weeks of RET.
Noise-Robust Image Reconstruction Based on Minimizing Extended Class of Power-Divergence Measures

The problem of tomographic image reconstruction can be reduced to an optimization problem of finding unknown pixel values subject to minimizing the difference between the measured and forward projections. Iterative image reconstruction algorithms provide significant improvements over transform methods in computed tomography. In this paper, we present an extended class of power-divergence measures (PDMs), which includes a large set of distance and relative entropy measures, and propose an iterative reconstruction algorithm based on the extended PDM (EPDM) as an objective function for the optimization strategy. For this purpose, we introduce a system of nonlinear differential equations whose Lyapunov function is equivalent to the EPDM. Then, we derive an iterative formula by multiplicative discretization of the continuous-time system. Since the parameterized EPDM family includes the Kullback–Leibler divergence, the resulting iterative algorithm is a natural extension of the maximum-likelihood expectation-maximization (MLEM) method. We conducted image reconstruction experiments using noisy projection data and found that the proposed algorithm outperformed MLEM and could reconstruct high-quality images that were robust to measured noise by properly selecting parameters.
Association between Body Mass Index and Outcomes in Patients with Return of Spontaneous Circulation after Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Increased body mass index (BMI) is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, stroke, and metabolic diseases. A high BMI may affect outcomes of post-cardiac arrest patients, but the association remains debatable. We aimed to determine the association between BMI and outcomes in patients with return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). A systematic literature search was conducted using MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library. Studies that included patients who presented ROSC after OHCA, had a recorded BMI, and were assessed for neurological outcomes and in-hospital mortality were included. To assess the risk of bias of each included study, we employed the Risk of Bias Assessment Tool for Non-randomized Studies. We assessed 2427 patients from six studies. Neurological outcomes were significantly poorer in underweight patients (risk ratio (RR) = 1.21; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.07–1.37; p = 0.002; I2 = 51%) than in normal-weight patients. Additionally, in-hospital mortality rate was significantly higher in underweight patients (RR = 1.35; 95% CI = 1.14–1.60; p<0.001; I2 = 21%) and in obese patients (RR = 1.25; 95% CI = 1.12–1.39; p<0.001; I2 = 0%) than in normal-weight patients. Poor neurological outcome is associated with underweight, and low survival rate is associated with underweight and obesity in patients with ROSC after OHCA.
Weakly Aligned Feature Fusion for Multimodal Object Detection

To achieve accurate and robust object detection in the real-world scenario, various forms of images are incorporated, such as color, thermal, and depth. However, multimodal data often suffer from the position shift problem, i.e., the image pair is not strictly aligned, making one object has different positions in different modalities. For the deep learning method, this problem makes it difficult to fuse multimodal features and puzzles the convolutional neural network (CNN) training. In this article, we propose a general multimodal detector named aligned region CNN (AR-CNN) to tackle the position shift problem. First, a region feature (RF) alignment module with adjacent similarity constraint is designed to consistently predict the position shift between two modalities and adaptively align the cross-modal RFs. Second, we propose a novel region of interest (RoI) jitter strategy to improve the robustness to unexpected shift patterns. Third, we present a new multimodal feature fusion method that selects the more reliable feature and suppresses the less useful one via feature reweighting. In addition, by locating bounding boxes in both modalities and building their relationships, we provide novel multimodal labeling named KAIST-Paired. Extensive experiments on 2-D and 3-D object detection, RGB-T, and RGB-D datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our method.