Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The acceptability, adoption, and feasibility of a music application developed using participatory design for home-dwelling persons with dementia and their caregivers. The “Alight” app in the LIVE@Home.Path trial

Background Music interventions for persons with dementia can improve health and interaction with caregivers, yet the reach is often restricted to institutions. We describe the participatory design process of a prototype music application for patients affiliated with a gerontopsychiatric hospital and evaluate the acceptability, adoption, and feasibility of use for dyads of home-dwelling persons with dementia and their informal caregivers. Methods The application “Alight” was developed following an iterative, expert-driven participatory design approach, which includes a requirement elicitation phase and two rounds of prototyping and testing in real-world settings. End users and stakeholders were involved in all steps, that is, workshops, interviews, field observation, ethnographic inquiries, and beta testing sessions with music therapists, patients, and caregivers in collaboration with a commercial music and technology company. The last prototyping and testing took place in the LIVE@Home.Path trial, a stepped-wedge multicomponent randomized controlled trial to improve resource utilization and caregiver burden in municipal dementia care during 2019–2021. Results Mean age of the person with dementia in the LIVE@Home.Path trial was 82 years, 62% were female, and the majority had Alzheimer's dementia (44%) of mild severity (71%). Sixty-three dyads were offered Alight in the multicomponent intervention, of which 13% (n = 8) accepted use. The dyads accepting Alight did not differ in demographic and clinical characteristics compared to those not interested. The feasibility was high among those accepting Alight, 75% (n = 6) reported a positive impact on mood, 50% (n = 4) experienced a positive impact on activity, and 50% (n = 4) gooduser-friendliness. The adoption was high with daily use or use several times a week reported by 63% (n = 5). Obstacles emerged when updating the application in homes without wireless Wi-Fi, and some participants were unfamiliar with using touchscreens. Conclusion The feasibility and adoption of the application were high and accepting dyads did not differ on demographic and clinical variables from those not reached. This suggests a high potential for utilization in dementia care. This study contributes methodologically to the field of participatory design and mHealth interventions by demonstrating a specific design approach that throughout the process successfully involved researchers, industry partners, health care practitioners, and end users. Clinical trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04043364.
Identification of potential key circular RNAs related to cognitive impairment after chronic constriction injury of the sciatic nerve

Chronic neuropathic pain is commonly accompanied by cognitive impairment. However, the underlying mechanism in the occurrence of cognitive deficits under constant nociceptive irritation remains elusive. Herein, we established a chronic neuropathic pain model by chronic constriction injury (CCI) of the unilateral sciatic nerve in rats. Behavioral tests indicated that CCI rats with long-term nociceptive threshold decline developed significant dysfunction of working memory and recognitive memory starting at 14 days and lasting for at least 21 days. Afterward, circRNA expression profiles in the hippocampus of CCI and sham rats were analyzed via high-throughput sequencing to explore the potential key factors associated with cognitive impairment induced by ongoing nociception, which showed 76 differentially expressed circRNAs, 39 upregulated and 37 downregulated, in the CCI group. These differentially expressed circRNA host genes were validated to be primarily associated with inflammation and apoptotic signaling pathways according to GO/KEGG analysis and the circRNA-miRNA-mRNA network, which was also confirmed through the analysis of neuroinflammation and neuronal apoptosis. Consequently, we assumed that enhanced neuroinflammation and neuronal apoptosis might act as potential regulators of cognitive impairment induced by chronic neuropathic pain. The identification of the regulatory mechanism would provide promising clinical biomarkers or therapeutic targets in the diagnostic prediction and intervention treatment of memory deficits under neuropathic pain conditions.
Redox regulation of enzymes involved in sulfate assimilation and in the synthesis of sulfur-containing amino acids and glutathione in plants

Sulfur is essential in plants because of its presence in numerous molecules including the two amino acids, cysteine, and methionine. Cysteine serves also for the synthesis of glutathione and provides sulfur to many other molecules including protein cofactors or vitamins. Plants absorb sulfate from their environment and assimilate it via a reductive pathway which involves, respectively, a series of transporters and enzymes belonging to multigenic families. A tight control is needed to adjust each enzymatic step to the cellular requirements because the whole pathway consumes energy and produces toxic/reactive compounds, notably sulfite and sulfide. Glutathione is known to regulate the activity of some intermediate enzymes. In particular, it provides electrons to adenosine 5′-phosphosulfate reductases but also regulates the activity of glutamate-cysteine ligase by reducing a regulatory disulfide. Recent proteomic data suggest a more extended post-translational redox control of the sulfate assimilation pathway enzymes and of some associated reactions, including the synthesis of both sulfur-containing amino acids, cysteine and methionine, and of glutathione. We have summarized in this review the known oxidative modifications affecting cysteine residues of the enzymes involved. In particular, a prominent regulatory role of protein persulfidation seems apparent, perhaps because sulfide produced by this pathway may react with oxidized thiol groups. However, the effect of persulfidation has almost not yet been explored.
Childhood obesity in Mexico: Influencing factors and prevention strategies

Background Overweight and obesity in school-age children, in Mexico as in other countries around the world, is a rapidly increasing public health problem within recent years, with important consequences for the future health of the population. Various national strategies at the individual and community level have been established to prevent these conditions, but none have yet succeeded. Objective To describe factors which influence overweight and obesity in school-age children five to 11 years old in Mexico, and national strategies for the prevention and management of these conditions. Methods The data herein is derived from six National Health and Nutrition Surveys in Mexico: 2006, 2012, 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2021. They include a total of 45,216 school-age children with complete anthropometric data (weight/height) distributed over 84 pseudo-panels defined by age, wellbeing condition class (WCC), gender, and type of locality of residence. The indicators calculated were overweight and obesity by body mass index according to World Health Organization guidelines. Predictors are food consumption indicators in five groups. Results The prevalence of overweight and obesity showed a positive linear trend (p < 0.001), with average annual increases of 0.41%. Increases in fruit consumption reduced the prevalence of these conditions by 6.6% (p = 0.01) and vegetable consumption reduced this by 8.3%. Conclusions Overweight and obesity in school-age children is a growing problem with serious repercussions for future life. New strategies are needed which focus on involving food systems, which translates to healthy and sustainable diets.
MM-UNet: A multimodality brain tumor segmentation network in MRI images

The global annual incidence of brain tumors is approximately seven out of 100,000, accounting for 2% of all tumors. The mortality rate ranks first among children under 12 and 10th among adults. Therefore, the localization and segmentation of brain tumor images constitute an active field of medical research. The traditional manual segmentation method is time-consuming, laborious, and subjective. In addition, the information provided by a single-image modality is often limited and cannot meet the needs of clinical application. Therefore, in this study, we developed a multimodality feature fusion network, MM-UNet, for brain tumor segmentation by adopting a multi-encoder and single-decoder structure. In the proposed network, each encoder independently extracts low-level features from the corresponding imaging modality, and the hybrid attention block strengthens the features. After fusion with the high-level semantic of the decoder path through skip connection, the decoder restores the pixel-level segmentation results. We evaluated the performance of the proposed model on the BraTS 2020 dataset. MM-UNet achieved the mean Dice score of 79.2% and mean Hausdorff distance of 8.466, which is a consistent performance improvement over the U-Net, Attention U-Net, and ResUNet baseline models and demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed model.
Using combined CT-clinical radiomics models to identify epidermal growth factor receptor mutation subtypes in lung adenocarcinoma

Background To investigate the value of computed tomography (CT)-based radiomics signatures in combination with clinical and CT morphological features to identify epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutation subtypes in lung adenocarcinoma (LADC). Methods From February 2012 to October 2019, 608 patients were confirmed with LADC and underwent chest CT scans. Among them, 307 (50.5%) patients had a positive EGFR-mutation and 301 (49.5%) had a negative EGFR-mutation. Of the EGFR-mutant patients, 114 (37.1%) had a 19del -mutation, 155 (50.5%) had a L858R-mutation, and 38 (12.4%) had other rare mutations. Three combined models were generated by incorporating radiomics signatures, clinical, and CT morphological features to predict EGFR-mutation status. Patients were randomly split into training and testing cohorts, 80% and 20%, respectively. Model 1 was used to predict positive and negative EGFR-mutation, model 2 was used to predict 19del and non-19del mutations, and model 3 was used to predict L858R and non-L858R mutations. The receiver operating characteristic curve and the area under the curve (AUC) were used to evaluate their performance. Results For the three models, model 1 had AUC values of 0.969 and 0.886 in the training and validation cohorts, respectively. Model 2 had AUC values of 0.999 and 0.847 in the training and validation cohorts, respectively. Model 3 had AUC values of 0.984 and 0.806 in the training and validation cohorts, respectively. Conclusion Combined models that incorporate radiomics signature, clinical, and CT morphological features may serve as an auxiliary tool to predict EGFR-mutation subtypes and contribute to individualized treatment for patients with LADC.
A platform technology for generating subunit vaccines against diverse viral pathogens

The COVID-19 pandemic response has shown how vaccine platform technologies can be used to rapidly and effectively counteract a novel emerging infectious disease. The speed of development for mRNA and vector-based vaccines outpaced those of subunit vaccines, however, subunit vaccines can offer advantages in terms of safety and stability. Here we describe a subunit vaccine platform technology, the molecular clamp, in application to four viruses from divergent taxonomic families: Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), Ebola virus (EBOV), Lassa virus (LASV) and Nipah virus (NiV). The clamp streamlines subunit antigen production by both stabilising the immunologically important prefusion epitopes of trimeric viral fusion proteins while enabling purification without target-specific reagents by acting as an affinity tag. Conformations for each viral antigen were confirmed by monoclonal antibody binding, size exclusion chromatography and electron microscopy. Notably, all four antigens tested remained stable over four weeks of incubation at 40°C. Of the four vaccines tested, a neutralising immune response was stimulated by clamp stabilised MERS-CoV spike, EBOV glycoprotein and NiV fusion protein. Only the clamp stabilised LASV glycoprotein precursor failed to elicit virus neutralising antibodies. MERS-CoV and EBOV vaccine candidates were both tested in animal models and found to provide protection against viral challenge.
Corilagin prevents non-alcoholic fatty liver disease via improving lipid metabolism and glucose homeostasis in high fat diet-fed mice

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has been considered to be one of the most common chronic liver diseases. However, no validated pharmacological therapies have been officially proved in clinic due to its complex pathogenesis. The purpose of this study was to examine the protective effects of Corilagin (referred to Cori) against NAFLD in mice under a high fat diet (HFD) condition. Mice were fed either a normal control diet (NCD) or HFD with or without Cori (5 or 10 mg/kg body weight) for 15 weeks. In our results, Cori treatment significantly attenuated HFD-induced hepatic steatosis, high NAFLD activity score (NAD) and liver injury. Consistently, Cori treatment remarkably alleviated HFD-induced hepatic lipid accumulation (e.g., triglycerides (TG) and total cholesterol (TC) contents in liver), and improved plasma lipid concentrations (e.g., plasma TG, TC, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c)). Moreover, Cori treatment ameliorated NAFLD associated metabolic disorders such as glucose intolerance and insulin resistance in HFD-fed mice. Additionally, Cori treatment dramatically changed HFD-induced liver gene expression profiles, and identified overlapped differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between NCD vs. HFD group and HFD vs. HCR (high fat diet plus treatment with Cori) group. With these DEGs, we observed a marked enrichment of Gene Ontology (GO) terms and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways, which were closely associated with the metabolic balance in liver. Particularly, we found several potential hub proteins against NAFLD development with analyses of protein-protein interaction (PPI) network and qPCR assays. Collectively, our results revealed the important protective effects of Cori against the progress of NAFLD, which was probably mediated through improving dysregulated lipid metabolism and insulin resistance in HFD-fed mice. Additionally, Cori-dependent overlapped DEGs might serve as a featured NAFLD-associated gene expression signature for the diagnosis, treatment, as well as drug discovery and development of NAFLD in the near future.
Progress in preclinical studies of macrophage autophagy in the regulation of ALI/ARDS

Acute lung injury (ALI)/acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a critical clinical syndrome with high morbidity and mortality that poses a major challenge in critical care medicine. The development of ALI/ARDS involves excessive inflammatory response, and macrophage autophagy plays an important role in regulating the inflammatory response in ALI/ARDS. In this paper, we review the effects of autophagy in regulating macrophage function, discuss the roles of macrophage autophagy in ALI/ARDS, and highlight drugs and other interventions that can modulate macrophage autophagy in ALI/ARDS to improve the understanding of the mechanism of macrophage autophagy in ALI/ARDS and provide new ideas and further research directions for the treatment of ALI/ARDS.
The association between ACTB methylation in peripheral blood and coronary heart disease in a case-control study

Background Coronary heart disease (CHD) brings a heavy burden to society worldwide. Novel and minimally invasive biomarkers for the risk evaluation of CHD are urgently needed. Previous study has revealed that blood-based hypomethylation of β-actin (ACTB) was associated with increased risk of stroke, but not reported in CHD yet. Objectives We aimed to explore the association between blood-based ACTB methylation and the risk of CHD in a case-control study in the Chinese population. Methods The methylation level of ACTB was quantitatively determined by mass spectrometry in 281 CHD patients and 272 controls. The association between ACTB methylation and CHD risk was estimated by logistic regression analyses adjusted for possible confounding effects. Results We found a significant association between hypermethylation of ACTB in peripheral blood and increased risk of CHD (odds ratios (ORs) per +10% methylation: 1.19–1.45, p < 0.013 for nine out of thirteen CpG sites), especially in male subjects and heart failure (HF) patients (ORs per +10% methylation: 1.20–1.43, 1.38–1.46; p < 0.030, 1.52 × 10−4, respectively). Hypermethylation of ACTB_CpG_2. 3, ACTB_CpG_7. 8, and ACTB_CpG_9. 10 was observed in the CHD patients with minor to medium cardiac function impairment (NYHA I&II CHD cases) (ORs per +10% methylation: 1.38–1.44; p < 0.001). The combination of ACTB_CpG_2. 3, ACTB_CpG_7. 8, and ACTB_CpG_9. 10 methylation levels could efficiently discriminate CHD cases, male CHD patients, HF and NYHA I&II CHD patients from controls (area under curve (AUC) = 0.75, 0.74, 0.73, and 0.77, respectively). Conclusions Our study reveals a strong association between blood-based ACTB hypermethylation and CHD risk. The combination of ACTB methylation and conventional risk factors might provide a novel strategy to improve risk assessment of CHD.
FT3/FT4 ratio is correlated with all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and cardiovascular disease risk: NHANES 2007-2012

Background Thyroid hormones play a vital role in maintaining the homeostasis of the cardiovascular system. The FT3/FT4 ratio can be used to evaluate the rate of T4-to-T3 conversion, reflecting the peripheral sensitivity of thyroid hormones. There is no study to investigate its relationship with death and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the general population. Methods This retrospective cohort study involved 8,018 participants with measured thyroid function and no prior thyroid disease who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2007 to 2012. Mortality status was determined by routine follow-up using the National Death Index through December 31, 2015. Results During a median of 87 months of follow-up, we observed 699 all-cause deaths, including 116 cardiovascular deaths. In multivariate adjusted models, higher free thyroxine (FT4) was linked to increased all-cause mortality (HR, 1.15 per SD; 95% CI, 1.09-1.22), cardiovascular mortality (HR, 1.18 per SD; 95% CI, 1.01-1.39), and CVD risk (HR, 1.17 per SD; 95% CI, 1.08-1.27). Higher free triiodothyronine (FT3) was linked to decreased all-cause mortality (HR 0.81 per SD; 95% CI, 0.70-0.93). Higher FT3/FT4 ratio was linked to decreased all-cause mortality (HR, 0.77 per SD; 95% CI, 0.69-0.85), cardiovascular mortality (HR, 0.79 per SD; 95% CI, 0.62-1.00), and CVD risk (HR, 0.82 per SD; 95% CI, 0.74-0.92). The FT3/FT4 ratio stratified findings were broadly consistent with the overall results. Conclusions FT3, FT4, and the FT3/FT4 ratio were all independent predictors of all-cause death. FT4 and the FT3/FT4 ratio, but not FT3, were independent predictors of cardiovascular mortality and CVD risk. Along with FT3 and FT4, we should pay equal attention to the FT3/FT4 ratio in the general population.
Expression profiles analysis identifies specific interferon-stimulated signatures as potential diagnostic and predictive indicators of JAK2V617F + myelofibrosis

Objective: This study aimed to identify specific dysregulated genes with potential diagnostic and predictive values for JAK2V617F + myelofibrosis. Methods: Two gene expression datasets of CD34+ hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) from patients with JAK2V617F + myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) [n = 66, including polycythemia vera (PV), essential thrombocythemia (ET), and primary myelofibrosis (PMF)] and healthy controls (HC) (n = 30) were acquired from the GEO (Gene Expression Omnibus) database. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were screened between each JAK2V617F + MPN entity and HC. Subsequently, functional enrichment analyses, including Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), Reactome, and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA), were conducted to decipher the important biological effects of DEGs. Protein–protein interaction (PPI) networks of the DEGs were constructed to identify hub genes and significant modules. Another two gene expression profiles of patients with JAK2V617F + MPN [n = 23, including PV, ET, secondary myelofibrosis (SMF), and PMF] and HC (n = 6) from GEO were used as external validation datasets to prove the reliability of the identified signatures. Results: KEGG analysis revealed the upregulated genes in three JAK2V617F + MPN entities compared with HC were essentially enriched in inflammatory pathways and immune response signaling pathways, and the number of these pathways enriched in PMF was obviously more than that in PV and ET. Following the PPI analysis, 10 genes primarily related to inflammation and immune response were found upregulated in different JAK2V617F + MPN entities. In addition, Reactome enrichment analysis indicated that interferon signaling pathways were enriched specifically in PMF but not in PV or ET. Furthermore, several interferon (IFN)-stimulated genes were identified to be uniquely upregulated in JAK2V617F + PMF. The external datasets validated the upregulation of four interferon-related genes (OAS1, IFITM3, GBP1, and GBP2) in JAK2V617F + myelofibrosis. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves indicate that the four genes have high area under the ROC curve (AUC) values when distinguishing JAK2V617F + myelofibrosis from PV or ET. Conclusion: Four interferon-stimulated genes (OAS1, IFITM3, GBP1, and GBP2) exclusively upregulated in JAK2V617F + myelofibrosis might have the potential to be the auxiliary molecular diagnostic and predictive indicators of myelofibrosis.
The effect of a radial rotational velocity gradient on p-mode eigenfrequencies. [of solar envelope

The splitting of p-mode eigenfrequencies due to a depth-dependent solar rotation rate is considered. It is shown that to a first approximation this splitting can be treated as resulting from the translation of the wave pattern across the field of view with a velocity equal the actual velocity at a depth called the effective depth. The effective depths for a model solar envelope with lvertical-barH=3 are presented as a function of position on the (K/sub h/, .omega.) -plane. The combination of . omega. near 0.025 s/sup -1/ and K/sub h/ near 0 yields the deepest probe of the solar envelope. For this same combination of K/sub h/ and . omega. it is possible to resolve individual groups of eigenmodes in frequency but not in spatial wavenumber. Achievement of this resolution observationally may permit a determination of the lifetime of these particular modes.