Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of dietary nitrate on the O2 cost of submaximal exercise: Accounting for “noise” in pulmonary gas exchange measurements

ABSTRACT Dietary nitrate (NO3 –) supplementation can reduce the oxygen cost of submaximal exercise, but this has not been reported consistently. We hypothesised that the number of step transitions to moderate-intensity exercise, and corresponding effects on the signal-to-noise ratio for pulmonary O2, may be important in this regard. Twelve recreationally active participants were assigned in a randomised, double-blind, crossover design to supplement for 4 days in three conditions: 1) control (CON; water); 2); PL (NO3 –-depleted beetroot juice); and 3) BR (NO3 –-rich beetroot juice). On days 3 and 4, participants completed two 6-min step transitions to moderate-intensity cycle exercise. Breath-by-breath O2 data were collected and O2 kinetic responses were determined for a single transition and when the responses to 2, 3 and 4 transitions were ensemble-averaged. Steady-state O2 was not different between PL and BR when the O2 response to one-, two- or three-step transition was compared but was significantly lower in BR compared to PL when four-step transitions was considered (PL: 1.33 ± 0.34 vs. BR: 1.31 ± 0.34 L·min−1, P < 0.05). There were no differences in pulmonary O2 responses between CON and PL (P > 0.05). Multiple step transitions may be required to detect the influence of NO3 − supplementation on steady-state O2.
Getting palliative medications right across the contexts of homes, hospitals and hospices: protocol to synthesise scoping review and ethnographic methods in an activity theory analysis

Introduction Prescribing and medication use in palliative care is a multistep process. It requires systems coordination and is enacted through activities of patients, informal carers and professionals. This study compares practice to idealised descriptions of what should happen; identifying when, how and why process disturbances impact on quality and safety. Our objectives are to: Document an intended model (phase 1, scoping review). Refine the model with study of practice (phase 2, ethnography). Use the model to pinpoint ‘hot’ (viewed as problematic by participants) and ‘cold’ spots (observed as problematic by researchers) within or when patients move across three contexts-hospice, hospital and community (home). Create learning recommendations for quality and safety targeted at underlying themes and contributing factors. Methods and analysis The review will scope Ovid Medline, CINAHL and Embase, Google Scholar and Images—no date limits, English language only. The Population (palliative), Concept (medication use), Context (home, hospice, hospital) framework defines inclusion/exclusion criteria. Data will be extracted to create a model illustrating how processes ideally occur, incorporating multiple steps of typical episodes of prescribing and medication use for symptom control. Direct observations, informal conversations around acts of prescribing and medication use, and semistructured interviews will be conducted with a purposive sample of patients, carers and professionals. Drawing on activity theory, we will synthesise analysis of both phases. The analysis will identify when, how and why activities affect patient safety and experience. Generating a rich multivoiced understanding of the process will help identify meaningful targets for improvement. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval granted by the Camden & Kings Cross NHS Regional Ethics Committee (21/LO/0459). A patient and public involvement (PPI) coinvestigator, a multiprofessional steering group and a PPI engagement group are working with the research team. Dissemination of findings is planned through peer-reviewed publications and a stakeholder (policymakers, commissioners, clinicians, researchers, public) report/dissemination event.
Synergistically segmenting choroidal layer and vessel using deep learning for choroid structure analysis

Objective. The choroid is the most vascularized structure in the human eye, whose layer structure and vessel distribution are both critical for the physiology of the retina, and disease pathogenesis of the eye. Although some works have used graph-based methods or convolutional neural networks to separate the choroid layer from the outer-choroid structure, few works focused on further distinguishing the inner-choroid structure, such as the choroid vessel and choroid stroma. Approach. Inspired by the multi-task learning strategy, in this paper, we propose a segmentation pipeline for choroid analysis which can separate the choroid layer from other structures and segment the choroid vessel synergistically. The key component of this pipeline is the proposed choroidal U-shape network (CUNet), which catches both correlation features and specific features between the choroid layer and the choroid vessel. Then pixel-wise classification is generated based on these two types of features to obtain choroid layer segmentation and vessel segmentation. Besides, the training process of CUNet is supervised by a proposed adaptive multi-task segmentation loss which adds a regularization term that is used to balance the performance of the two tasks. Main results. Experiments show the high performance (4% higher dice score) and less computational complexity (18.85 M lower size) of our proposed strategy. Significance. The high performance and generalization on both choroid layer and vessel segmentation indicate the clinical potential of our proposed pipeline.
Associations of abdominal and cardiovascular adipose tissue depots with HDL metrics in midlife women: The SWAN Study.

CONTEXT The menopause transition is accompanied by declines in the atheroprotective features of high-density lipoprotein(HDL), which are linked to deleterious cardiovascular (CV) outcomes. OBJECTIVE To assess the relationship between abdominal and cardiovascular (CV) visceral adipose tissues(AT) with future HDL metrics in midlife women, and the role of insulin resistance on these associations. DESIGN Temporal associations of abdominal and cardiovascular fat with later measures of HDL metrics. SETTING Community-based cohort. PARTICIPANTS 299 women, baseline mean age 51.1 (SD: 2.8) years, 67% White, 33% Black, from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) HDL ancillary study. EXPOSURES Volumes of abdominal visceral AT, epicardial AT(EAT), paracardial AT(PAT), or perivascular AT(PVAT). MAIN OUTCOMES HDL cholesterol efflux capacity(HDL-CEC), HDL phospholipid(HDL-PL), triglycerides(HDL-Tg), and cholesterol(HDL-C), apolipoprotein A-I(ApoA-I), HDL particles(HDL-P) and size. RESULTS In multivariable models, higher abdominal visceral AT was associated with lower HDL-CEC, HDL-PL, HDL-C, and large HDL-P and smaller HDL size. Higher PAT was associated with lower HDL-PL, HDL-C and large HDL-P and smaller HDL size. Higher EAT was associated with higher small HDL-P. Higher PVAT volume was associated with lower HDL-CEC. HOMA-IR partially mediated the associations between abdominal AT depots with HDL-CEC, HDL-C, large HDL-P and HDL size; between PVAT with HDL-CEC, and PAT with HDL-C, large HDL-P and HDL size. CONCLUSIONS In midlife women, higher visceral AT volumes predict HDL metrics 2 years later in life, possibly linking them to future CVD. Managing insulin resistance may preclude the unfavorable impact of visceral fat on HDL metrics.
Resonance Frequency Auto-tracing Technology Based on PI Control for IGBT Induction Heating Power Source

In order to solve the problem about the variety of resonance frequency,an induction heating power source is designed based on SG3525A PWM control circuit,which detects the phasic difference of output voltage and current.A PI control circuit which adjusts the power operation frequency based on the phasic difference is designed,and it can trace the resonance frequency autometicly.The operating principle,circuit design and experiment results are introduced.
Inhibition of RIP3 increased ADSC viability under OGD and modified the competency of adipogenesis, angiogenesis, and inflammation regulation

Abstract Adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) showed decreased cell viability and increased cell death under oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD). Meanwhile, vital necroptotic proteins, including receptor-interacting protein kinase (RIP) 3 (RIP3) and mixed lineage kinase domain-like pseudokinase (MLKL), were expressed in the early stage. The present study aims to explore the effect of necroptosis inhibition on ADSCs. ADSCs were obtained from normal human subcutaneous fat and verified by multidirectional differentiation and flow cytometry. By applying cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8), calcein/propidium iodide (PI) staining and immunostaining, we determined the OGD treatment time of 4 h, a timepoint when the cells showed a significant decrease in viability and increased protein expression of RIP3, phosphorylated RIP3 (pRIP3) and phosphorylated MLKL (pMLKL). After pretreatment with the inhibitor of RIP3, necroptotic protein expression decreased under OGD conditions, and cell necrosis decreased. Transwell assays proved that cell migration ability was retained. Furthermore, the expression of the adipogenic transcription factor peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) and quantitative analysis of Oil Red O staining increased in the inhibitor group. The expression of vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGFA) and fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) and the migration test suggest that OGD increases the secretion of vascular factors, promotes the migration of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs), and forms unstable neovascularization. ELISA revealed that inhibition of RIP3 increased the secretion of the anti-inflammatory factor, interleukin (IL)-10 (IL-10) and reduced the expression of the proinflammatory factor IL-1β. Inhibition of RIP3 can reduce the death of ADSCs, retain their migration ability and adipogenic differentiation potential, reduce unstable neovascularization and inhibit the inflammatory response.
Assessment of Low Back Pain: Reliability and Minimal Detectable Change of the Brief Pain Inventory.

IMPORTANCE The Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) is one of the most widely used measures to assess pain and related impacts among patients with low back pain (LBP). However, its test-retest reliability and minimal detectable change (MDC) have rarely been examined in patients with LBP, interfering with its utility. OBJECTIVE To investigate the test-retest reliability and MDC of the BPI among patients with LBP. DESIGN Repeated assessments design with a 1-wk interval. SETTING Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in a hospital in Taiwan. PARTICIPANTS Fifty-four patients with stable LBP conditions. OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The BPI has two subscales-Intensity and Interference-that assess pain intensity and pain interference, respectively. Their test-retest reliability was examined using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and MDCs were calculated. RESULTS The ICCs of the Intensity and Interference subscales were . 62 and . 76, respectively. The MDC values for the two subscales were 2.57 and 2.34, respectively. For the four Intensity items, the average-pain score had a higher ICC (.60) than scores on the other items (worst, least, and current pain, which had ICCs of about .40). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE The results suggest that although the BPI is a commonly used measure of pain intensity and pain interference among patients with LBP, caution should be exercised in interpreting the Intensity subscale score and its item scores. What This Article Adds: The BPI is widely used to assess pain and related impacts on daily occupation and functioning among patients with LBP. This study provides information regarding its test-retest reliability. Moreover, the MDC values provide clinicians and researchers with the thresholds for determining real improvement (beyond random measurement error).
The biodiversity and ecosystem service contributions and trade-offs of forest restoration approaches

Forest restoration is being scaled up globally to deliver critical ecosystem services and biodiversity benefits; however, there is a lack of rigorous comparison of cobenefit delivery across different restoration approaches. Through global synthesis, we used 25,950 matched data pairs from 264 studies in 53 countries to assess how delivery of climate, soil, water, and wood production services, in addition to biodiversity, compares across a range of tree plantations and native forests. Benefits of aboveground carbon storage, water provisioning, and especially soil erosion control and biodiversity are better delivered by native forests, with compositionally simpler, younger plantations in drier regions performing particularly poorly. However, plantations exhibit an advantage in wood production. These results underscore important trade-offs among environmental and production goals that policy-makers must navigate in meeting forest restoration commitments. Description Benefits of forest restoration Reforestation is promoted globally as one way to mitigate climate change through the storage of carbon in woody growth and ecosystem services such as control of soil erosion and management of water supplies. Hua et al. assessed the relative performance of plantation and native forest in achieving these goals (see the Perspective by Gurevitch). Synthesizing data from the world’s major forest biomes, they found that native forests consistently delivered better performance than plantations in the provision of the three major ecosystem services, with additional benefits for biodiversity. The discrepancy was particularly marked in in warmer and drier regions. These findings show that the benefits of reforestation will be best achieved through the restoration of native forests rather than extensive plantation programs. —AMS Critical ecosystem services and biodiversity are typically delivered more effectively by native forests than by plantations.
TephraNet: Wireless Self-Organizing Network Platform for Environmental Sensing

The growing number of threats to the Earth's environment necessitates the gathering of finegrained environmental sensor data to deepen our understanding of endangered species and assist in their protection. Traditional techniques for gathering environmental data, such as periodic field studies or satellite imaging, do not produce adequately detailed or persistent information. Self-organizing wireless networking provides an ideal way to quickly deploy and gather data from sensor networks in the field. The design of a practical, low-cost, and selforganizing wireless sensor network, TephraNet, is examined. This thesis also explores an implementation and deployment of TephraNet in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park to learn about the endangered ground plant Silene hawaiiensis. Thesis Supervisor: Michael J. Hawley Title: Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Bayesian optimisation for efficient parameter inference in a cardiac mechanics model of the left ventricle

We consider parameter inference in cardio‐mechanic models of the left ventricle, in particular the one based on the Holtzapfel‐Ogden (HO) constitutive law, using clinical in vivo data. The equations underlying these models do not admit closed form solutions and hence need to be solved numerically. These numerical procedures are computationally expensive making computational run times associated with numerical optimisation or sampling excessive for the uptake of the models in the clinical practice. To address this issue, we adopt the framework of Bayesian optimisation (BO), which is an efficient statistical technique of global optimisation. BO seeks the optimum of an unknown black‐box function by sequentially training a statistical surrogate‐model and using it to select the next query point by leveraging the associated exploration‐exploitation trade‐off. To guarantee that the estimates based on the in vivo data are realistic also for high‐pressures, unobservable in vivo, we include a penalty term based on a previously published empirical law developed using ex vivo data. Two case studies based on real data demonstrate that the proposed BO procedure outperforms the state‐of‐the‐art inference algorithm for the HO constitutive law.
A general calculus of fitness landscapes finds genes under selection in cancers

Genetic variants drive the evolution of traits and diseases. We previously modeled these variants as small displacements in fitness landscapes and estimated their functional impact by differentiating the evolutionary relationship between genotype and phenotype. Conversely, here we integrate these derivatives to identify genes steering specific traits. Over cancer cohorts, integration identified 460 likely tumor-driving genes. Many have literature and experimental support but had eluded prior genomic searches for positive selection in tumors. Beyond providing cancer insights, these results introduce a general calculus of evolution to quantify the genotype–phenotype relationship and discover genes associated with complex traits and diseases.
How big data and analytics reshape the wearable device market – the context of e-health

The wearable device can be a key link between health care and big data and analytics (BDA). The benefits of BDA in health care have been widely acknowledged, but the uncertainty of the implementation of BDA has led some firms to hesitate in adopting this technology. In this research, we are keen to answer the key questions of whether the wearable device firms would adopt the BDA strategy, and how much effort they would put into it. We propose a competition model between the wearable device firms with and without BDA strategies, and consider the consumer’s preference towards BDA and network effects. Our model demonstrates that the investment on BDA directly affects the firm’s equilibrium price, market share and profit and at the same time, this strategy also affects the rival’s performances. When the firm with BDA strategy adopts different competition strategy: conservative or expansive, the outcomes of market are different. We also find that different market structures, fully covered and partially covered, have different impacts on the firms’ competition when the consumers have heterogeneous preference on BDA strategy.
AMP‐activated protein kinase activation in skeletal muscle modulates exercise‐induced uncoupled protein 1 expression in brown adipocyte in mouse model

Aerobic exercise is an effective intervention in preventing obesity and is also an important factor associated with thermogenesis. There is an increasing interest in the factors and mechanisms induced by aerobic exercise that can influence the metabolism and thermogenic activity in an individual. Recent studies suggest that exercise induced circulating factors (known as ‘exerkines’), which are able to modulate activation of brown adipose tissue (BAT) and browning of white adipose tissue. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms associated with the effect of exercise‐induced peripheral factors on BAT activation remain poorly understood. Furthermore, the role of exercise training in BAT activation is still debatable. Hence, the purpose of our study is to assess whether exercise training affects the expression of uncoupled protein 1 (UCP1) in brown adipocytes via release of different blood factors. Four weeks of exercise training significantly decreased the body weight gain and fat mass gain. Furthermore, trained mice exhibit higher levels of energy expenditure and UCP1 expression than untrained mice. Surprisingly, treatment with serum from exercise‐trained mice increased the expression of UCP1 in differentiated brown adipocytes. To gain a better understanding of these mechanisms, we analysed the conditioned media obtained after treating the C2C12 myotubes with an AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) activator (AICAR; 5‐aminoimidazole‐4‐carboxamide ribonucleotide), which leads to an increased expression of UCP1 when added to brown adipocytes. Our observations suggest the possibility of aerobic exercise‐induced BAT activation via activation of AMPK in skeletal muscles.
COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among undocumented migrants during the early phase of the vaccination campaign: a multicentric cross-sectional study

Study objectives The marginalisation of undocumented migrants raises concerns about equitable access to COVID-19 vaccination. This study aims to describe migrants’ hesitancy about the COVID-19 vaccination during the early phase of the vaccination campaign. Setting This multicentric cross-sectional survey was conducted in health facilities providing care to undocumented migrants in the USA, Switzerland, Italy and France in February–May 2021. Participants Eligibility criteria included age >16 years, being of foreign origin and living without valid residency permit in the country of recruitment. A convenience sample of minimum 100 patients per study site was targeted. Primary and secondary outcome measures Data were collected using an anonymous structured questionnaire. The main outcomes were perceived access to the local COVID-19 vaccination programme and demand for vaccination. Results Altogether, 812 undocumented migrants participated (54.3% Geneva, 17.5% Baltimore, 15.5% Milano and 12.7% Paris). Most (60.9%) were women. The median age was 39 years (interquartile range 1). Participants originated from the Americas (55.9%), Africa (12.7%), Western Pacific (11.2%) Eastern Mediterranean (7.9%), Europe (7.6%) and South-East Asia (4.7%). Overall, 14.1% and 26.2% of participants, respectively, reported prior COVID-19 infection and fear of developing severe COVID-19 infection. Risk factors for severe infection were frequently reported (29.5%). Self-perceived accessibility of COVID-19 vaccination was high (86.4%), yet demand was low (41.1%) correlating with age, comorbidity and views on vaccination which were better for vaccination in general (77.3%) than vaccination against COVID-19 (56.5%). Participants mainly searched for information about vaccination in the traditional and social media. Conclusions We found a mismatch between perceived accessibility and demand for the COVID-19 vaccination. Public health interventions using different communication modes should build on trust about vaccination in general to tackle undocumented migrants’ hesitancy for COVID-19 vaccination with a specific attention to men, younger migrants and those at low clinical risk of severe infection.