Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contextualising COVID-19 prevention behaviour over time in Australia: Patterns and long-term predictors from April to July 2020 in an online social media sample

Background In Australia in March 2020 a national public health directive required that non-essential workers stay at home, except for essential activities. These restrictions began easing in May 2020 as community transmission slowed. Objectives This study investigated changes in COVID prevention behaviours from April-July 2020, and psychosocial predictors of these behaviours. Methods An Australia-wide (national) survey was conducted in April, with monthly follow-up over four months. Participants who were adults (18+ years), currently residing in Australia and who could read and understand English were eligible. Recruitment was via online social media. Analysis sample included those who provided responses to the baseline survey (April) and at least one subsequent follow-up survey (N = 1834 out of a possible 3216 who completed the April survey). 71.7% of the sample was female (n = 1,322). Principal components analysis (PCA) combined self-reported adherence across seven prevention behaviours. PCA identified two behaviour types: ‘distancing’ (e.g. staying 1.5m away) and ‘hygiene’ (e.g. washing hands), explaining 28.3% and 24.2% of variance, respectively. Distancing and hygiene behaviours were analysed individually using multivariable regression models. Results On average, participants agreed with statements of adherence for all behaviours (means all above 4 out of 7). Distancing behaviours declined each month (p’s < .001), whereas hygiene behaviours remained relatively stable. For distancing, stronger perceptions of societal risk, self-efficacy to maintain distancing, and greater perceived social obligation at baseline were associated with adherence in June and July (p’s<0.05). For hygiene, the only significant correlate of adherence in June and July was belief that one’s actions could prevent infection of family members (p < .001). Conclusion High adherence to COVID prevention behaviours were reported in this social media sample; however, distancing behaviours tended to decrease over time. Belief in social responsibility may be an important aspect to consider in encouraging distancing behaviours. These findings have implications for managing a shift from government-imposed restrictions to individual responsibility.
Alterations in biochemical markers in adenovirus infection

Background Analyze possible relationships between HAdV and markers for inflammation, specifically the C-reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT) tests, along with other haematological markers. Methods Retrospective study of 487 children presenting with fever and/or acute respiratory symptoms in the Paediatric Emergency Department. Analyses included viral presence/absence (both HAdV and other respiratory viruses) in respiratory exudates, CRP and PCT alterations in plasma, and haematological markers in whole blood. Results Viral load was >500 copies/103 cells of HAdV in 127 cases (26.1%), of which 66 (52%, P<0.0001) had alterations in PCT, and 112 (88.1%, P<0.0001) in CRP. Haematological markers were similar either HAdV was present or not, although many HAdV positive patients demonstrated leukocytosis (66%). Bacterial cultures from 141 samples showed altered PCT in 27 (60%) with HAdV infection, in 3 (18.7%) with bacterial infection, and 13 (26.5%) without either viral or bacterial infection (P<0.05). CRP was altered in 88.9% of HAdV infected children and in 87% infected with bacteria, although the percentage was greater than in cases where other respiratory viruses were present (61.3% P<0.05). Conclusions Results demonstrate a clear relationship between HAdV infection and alterations in PCT and CRP which should be taken into account in paediatric patient management.
GDS score as screening tool to assess the risk of impact of chronic conditions and depression on quality of life in hospitalized elderly patients in internal medicine wards

Abstract Aging of population is characterized by multiple chronic conditions in the same individual. Health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) reflects the multidimensional impact of chronic disease on population and it is increasingly analysed as outcomes. The aim of this study was the evaluation of the predictors of quality of life among elderly patients hospitalized in internal medicine ward, investigating the effect of comorbidities on health-related quality of life. Data collected in this cross-sectional study were analysed. Socio-demographic, clinical characteristics, disease distribution and quality of life by the 12-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-12) were evaluated. Of 240 inpatients, subjects with Barthel Index (BI)≤40 were 23.7%, 55% had a Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS)≥2. After categorizing mental component score (MCS) and physical component score (PCS) in five classes, we found that diabetics and patients with cancer were more frequent in the first class of MCS while patients with NYHA III-IV are significantly more frequent in the first class of PCS. When we classified patients according to GDS≥2 or < 2, subjects with GDS≥2 had BI and MCS significantly lower. In the multivariate analysis GDS score ≥2 was independently associated with first MCS class [16.32 (3.77–70.68)] while NYHA III-IV class and claudicatio intermittents were strong predictors of the worst PCS class [9.54 (1.97–47.40), 2.53 (1.16–5.49), respectively]. Liver disease was independently associated with GDS≥2 [5.26 (1.13–24.39)]. Our study highlighted the impact of chronic diseases on health-related quality of life in elderly subjects hospitalized in an internal medicine ward pointing out the importance of taking into account patient's needs and perception and the setting up of a personalised health-care. Patients with diabetes and liver disease along with persons affected by cancer need psychological support to improve their quality of life. A GDS score ≥ 2 is a strong predictor of poor quality of life and should trigger an in-depth assessment of mental health in this kind of patients.
Study on the chemiluminescent system of luminol-H_2O_2-Cr(III)-Tween-80 and its application

Based on the obvious sensitization of nonionic surfactant Tween-80 on the chemiluminescent reaction in the system of luminol-H2O2-Cr(Ⅲ), a sensitive chemiluminescent method for the determination of Cr(Ⅲ) with flow injection technique was developed.The method is simple,rapid and effective to determine Cr(Ⅲ) in the range of 6.0×10-8-8.0×10-5 mol/L with detection limit of 1.2×10-8 mol/L.The relative standard deviation is 1.09% for the determination of 2.0×10-6 mol/L of Cr(Ⅲ)(n=11). Although some metal ions such as Fe2+,Co2+,Cu2+ may interfere with the determination of Cr(Ⅲ),citric acid and oxalic acid can eliminate this interference.Therefore,the method is successfully applied to determine the content of Cr*# in water samples in the presence of masking agents with the recoveries of 91%-104%.
Involvement of an FNR-like oxygen sensor in Komagataeibacter medellinensis for survival under oxygen depletion.

During acetic acid fermentation, acetic acid bacteria face oxygen depletion stress caused by the vigorous oxidation of ethanol to acetic acid. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the response to oxygen depletion stress remain largely unknown. Here, we focused on an oxygen-sensing FNR homolog, FnrG, in Komagataeibacter medellinensis. Comparative transcriptomic analysis between the wild-type and fnrG-disrupted strains revealed that FnrG upregulated eight genes (fold change > 3). Recombinant FnrG bound to a specific DNA sequence only when FnrG was reconstituted anaerobically. An operon consisting of acetate kinase and xylulose-5-phosphate/fructose-6-phosphate phosphoketolase genes was found to be an FnrG regulon involved in cell survival under oxygen-limiting conditions. Moreover, a strain that overexpressed these two genes accumulated more acetic acid than the wild-type strain harboring an empty vector. Thus, these two genes could be new targets for the molecular breeding of acetic acid bacteria with high acetic acid productivity.
B cell residency but not T cell–independent IgA switching in the gut requires innate lymphoid cells

Significance Immunoglobulin A (IgA)–producing plasma cells, important for maintaining the homeostasis of gut flora, can be generated in both T cell–dependent and independent pathways. In this study, by using unique animal models, we demonstrate that IgA class switching can occur in a T cell– and helper-like innate lymphoid cell (ILC)–independent manner, although NKp46-CCR6+ lymphoid tissue inducers are critical for the formation of lymphoid structures and B cell residency in the gut. Therefore, while lymphoid structures are required for T cell–dependent IgA switching and B cell recruitment, they are not essential for T cell–independent generation of IgA-producing plasma cells from the remaining gut B cells, indicating a fundamental mechanistic difference between T cell–dependent and independent IgA class switching. Immunoglobulin A (IgA)–producing plasma cells derived from conventional B cells in the gut play an important role in maintaining the homeostasis of gut flora. Both T cell–dependent and T cell–independent IgA class switching occurs in the lymphoid structures in the gut, whose formation depends on lymphoid tissue inducers (LTis), a subset of innate lymphoid cells (ILCs). However, our knowledge on the functions of non-LTi helper-like ILCs, the innate counter parts of CD4 T helper cells, in promoting IgA production is still limited. By cell adoptive transfer and utilizing a unique mouse strain, we demonstrated that the generation of IgA-producing plasma cells from B cells in the gut occurred efficiently in the absence of both T cells and helper-like ILCs and without engaging TGF-β signaling. Nevertheless, B cell recruitment and/or retention in the gut required functional NKp46−CCR6+ LTis. Therefore, while CCR6+ LTis contribute to the accumulation of B cells in the gut through inducing lymphoid structure formation, helper-like ILCs are not essential for the T cell–independent generation of IgA-producing plasma cells.
Ionic transport and electrochemical stability of PVDF-HFP based gel polymer electrolytes

The gel polymer electrolytes (GPEs) samples consisting of polyvinylidenefluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene (PVDF-HFP), ethylene carbonate (EC) and propylene carbonate (PC) with different concentrations of magnesium triflate salt, Mg(CF3SO3)2 were prepared using the solution casting technique. The ionic conductivity of the GPEs was studied by using a.c impedance spectroscopy and the sample containing 20 wt% salt exhibited the highest conductivity of 5.11 × l0−3 Scm−1. Ionic transport number of the GPEs shows that the samples contain ionic species as main charge carrier while cationic transport number for the highest conducting sample was found to be 0.27. The electrochemical properties of the GPEs were studied using Linear Sweep Voltammetry (LSV) and Cyclic Voltammetry (CV). The GPEs show high electrochemical stability ∼3.5V (versus Mg2+/Mg) where the highest conducting sample exhibited the highest stability.
The association of mobile touch screen device use with parent-child attachment: a systematic review

Abstract Mobile touch screen devices (smartphones and tablet computers) have become an integral part of many parents’ and children’s lives, with this interaction linked to physical, mental and social outcomes. Despite the known importance of parent-child attachment, evidence on the association between device use and attachment was yet to be reviewed. Following protocol pre-registration, databases were searched, papers screened, and methodological quality assessed. Three papers met the inclusion criteria, and reported some negative associations between duration of parent/child smartphone use and attachment outcomes. A narrative synthesis on two groups of related papers found child time using any screen technology (including television viewing), and child ‘problematic’ internet, mobile phone, gaming and social media use, was negatively associated with attachment outcomes. Currently there is limited direct evidence on any association between time parents or children spend using these devices and parent-child attachment to support time guidelines for families and professionals working with families. Practitioner summary: Many parents and children regularly spend time using smartphones and tablet computers. This systematic review found limited evidence evaluating associations between child/adolescent or parent time using devices and parent-child attachment. Until quality evidence exists, practitioners should be alert to potential impacts of device use on family relationships and child outcomes.
Variation in milk fat globule size and composition: A source of bioactives for human health

ABSTRACT: Milk fat globules (MFGs) are secreted from the mammalian gland and are composed of a triacylglycerol core surrounded by a triple membrane structure, the milk fat globule membrane (MFGM). The MFGM contains complex lipids and proteins reported to have nutritional, immunological, neurological and digestive functions. Human and ruminant milk are shown to share a similar MFG structure but with different size, profile and abundance of protein and polar lipids. This review summarizes the reported data on human, bovine, caprine and ovine MFG composition and concentration of bioactive components in different MFG-size fractions. A comprehensive understanding of compositional variations between milk from different species and MFG size fractions may help promote various milk sources as targeted supplements to improve human development and health. MFG size and MFGM composition are species-specific and affected by lactation, diet and breed (or maternal origin). Purification and enrichment methods for some bioactive proteins and lipids present in the MFGM have yet to be established or are not scaled sufficiently to be used to supplement human diets. To overcome this problem, MFG size selection through fractionation or herd selection may provide a convenient way to pre-enrich the MFG fraction with specific protein and lipid components to fulfill human dietary and health requirements.
In-vitro digestion models: a critical review for human and fish and a protocol for in-vitro digestion in fish

ABSTRACT Digestive systems in human, animals, and fish are biological reactors and membranes to digest food and extract nutrients. Therefore, static and dynamic models of in-vitro digestion systems are developed to study e.g. novel food and feed before in-vivo studies. Such models are well developed for human, but not to the same extent for animals and fish. On the other hand, recent advances in aquaculture nutrition have created several potential fish meal replacements, and the assessment of their nutrient digestibility is critical in the application as a fish meal replacement. Using an in-vitro method, the assessment of an ingredient digestibility could be faster and less expensive compared to using an in-vivo experiment. An in-vitro method has been widely used to assess food nutrient digestibility for humans; however, its application for fish is still in the early stages. Both the human and fish as monogastric vertebrates share similar gastrointestinal systems; thus, the concept from the application for humans could be applied for fish. This review aims to improve the in-vitro digestion protocol for fish by adapting the concept from then study for humans, summarizing the current available in-vitro digestion model developed for human and fish in-vitro digestion study, identifying challenges specifically for fish required to be tackled and suggesting an engineering approach to adapt the human in-vitro gastrointestinal model to fish. Protocols to conduct in-vitro digestion study for fish are then proposed. Graphical abstract
A systematic review on the effect of Ginger (Zingiber officinale) on improvement of biological and fertility indices of sperm in laboratory animals, poultry and humans

Abstract There is an evidence that ginger enhance semen quality via improving different sperm parameters mainly count, viability, motility, morphology and DNA integrity. According to research results in various species, ginger seems to have strong antioxidant properties (due to the presence of active phenolic compounds) and androgenic activity. Ginger improves semen quality and increases fertility of sperm by disrupting the production of free radicals, dissolving oxidative chain reactions, reducing oxidative stress and altering the levels of gonadotropin hormones (LH, FSH) and sex hormones (such as testosterone). The antioxidant and androgenic properties of ginger give a sperm with normal morphological structure (head, middle and tail) and more integrated chromatin. The rate of DNA failure and damage to the mitochondrial genome in these cells is minimal and they have the most progressive motility, the highest viability and the best fertility. Therefore, the use of the ginger significantly improves the biological parameters of sperm (number, total motility, survival rate and normal morphology) and also increases all specialized fertility indicators of sperm. Tacking account of lacking literature and possibility of toxicity and adverse effect of ginger on vital organ, further clinical trial especially on evaluating the safety and clinical effect must be considered. Also, dose and duration of consumption by monitoring of health indicators and biochemical changes in all species such as human, animal and poultry must be applied.
Development and application of an efficient recombineering system for Burkholderia glumae and Burkholderia plantarii

The lambda phage Red proteins Redα/Redβ/Redγ and Rac prophage RecE/RecT proteins are powerful tools for precise and efficient genetic manipulation but have been limited to only a few prokaryotes. Here, we report the development and application of a new recombineering system for Burkholderia glumae and Burkholderia plantarii based on three Rac bacteriophage RecET‐like operons, RecETheBDU8, RecEThTJI49 and RecETh1h2eYI23, which were obtained from three different Burkholderia species. Recombineering experiments indicated that RecEThTJI49 and RecETh1h2eYI23 showed higher recombination efficiency compared to RecETheBDU8 in Burkholderia glumae PG1. Furthermore, all of the proteins currently categorized as hypothetical proteins in RecETh1h2eYI23, RecEThTJI49 and RecETheBDU8 may have a positive effect on recombination in B. glumae PG1 except for the h2 protein in RecETh1h2eYI23. Additionally, RecETYI23 combined with exonuclease inhibitors Pluγ or Redγ exhibited equivalent recombination efficiency compared to Redγβα in Escherichia coli, providing potential opportunity of recombineering in other Gram‐negative bacteria for its loose host specificity. Using recombinase‐assisted in situ insertion of promoters, we successfully activated three cryptic non‐ribosomal peptide synthetase biosynthetic gene clusters in Burkholderia strains, resulting in the generation of a series of lipopeptides that were further purified and characterized. Compound 7 exhibited significant potential anti‐inflammatory activity by inhibiting lipopolysaccharide‐stimulated nitric oxide production in RAW 264.7 macrophages. This recombineering system may greatly enhance functional genome research and the mining of novel natural products in the other species of the genus Burkholderia after optimization of a protocol.
COAST: COntrollable Arbitrary-Sampling NeTwork for Compressive Sensing

Recent deep network-based compressive sensing (CS) methods have achieved great success. However, most of them regard different sampling matrices as different independent tasks and need to train a specific model for each target sampling matrix. Such practices give rise to inefficiency in computing and suffer from poor generalization ability. In this paper, we propose a novel COntrollable Arbitrary-Sampling neTwork, dubbed COAST, to solve CS problems of arbitrary-sampling matrices (including unseen sampling matrices) with one single model. Under the optimization-inspired deep unfolding framework, our COAST exhibits good interpretability. In COAST, a random projection augmentation (RPA) strategy is proposed to promote the training diversity in the sampling space to enable arbitrary sampling, and a controllable proximal mapping module (CPMM) and a plug-and-play deblocking (PnP-D) strategy are further developed to dynamically modulate the network features and effectively eliminate the blocking artifacts, respectively. Extensive experiments on widely used benchmark datasets demonstrate that our proposed COAST is not only able to handle arbitrary sampling matrices with one single model but also to achieve state-of-the-art performance with fast speed.
Associations of IL13 gene polymorphisms and immune factors with Schistosoma haematobium infection in schoolchildren in four schistosomiasis-endemic communities in Ghana

Background Schistosomiasis remains a major public health issue with over 90% of the prevalence rates recorded in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this study, the relationships between different interleukin gene polymorphisms (IL-13-591A/G, IL-13-1055C/T, IL-13-1258A/G) and Schistosoma haematobium infection levels were evaluated; as well as the host plasma antibodies and cytokine profiles associated with schistosomiasis infection. Methodology A total of 469 school children aged 6 to 19 years from four schistosomiasis-endemic communities in Ghana were involved. Single urine and stool samples were obtained from each pupil, processed via sedimentation and Kato-Katz, and examined via microscopy for Schistosoma and soil-transmitted helminth (STH) eggs. Next, venous blood samples were drawn from 350 healthy pupils, and used to measure antibody and plasma cytokine levels by ELISA. Single nucleotide polymorphisms in the IL-13 gene were genotyped on 71 selected blood samples using the Mass Array technique. Principal findings and conclusion The overall prevalence of urinary schistosomiasis was 21.11%. Community-level prevalences were 17.12%, 32.11%, 20.80%, and 15.32% for Asempaneye, Barikumah, Eyan Akotoguah, and Apewosika respectively. Generally, higher S. haematobium infection prevalence and intensity were recorded for participants with genotypes bearing the IL13-1055C allele, the IL13-591A, and the IL13-1258A alleles. Also, higher S. haematobium infection prevalence was observed among participants in the 12-14-year age group with the IL13-1055C, IL13-591A, and IL13-1258A alleles. Interestingly, higher STH prevalence was also observed among participants with the IL13-1055C, IL13-591A, and IL13-1258A alleles. Furthermore, the age-associated trends of measured antibodies and cytokines of S. haematobium-infected school-children depicted a more pro-inflammatory immune profile for pupils aged up to 1l years, and an increasingly anti-inflammatory profile for pupils aged 12 years and above. This work provides insight into the influence of IL-13 gene polymorphisms on S. haematobium, and STH infections, in school-aged children (SAC).