Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treatment of Hypothalamic Obesity with Dextroamphetamine: A Case Series

Background: A limited number of published case reports suggest a positive effect of dextroamphetamine, an adrenergic agonist affecting both the central nervous system (CNS) and peripheral nervous system, on physical activity and weight in patients with hypothalamic obesity (intractable obesity following CNS insult). Here, we present our clinical experience with dextroamphetamine treatment for hypothalamic obesity. Methods: The clinical course of all patients started on dextroamphetamine treatment for severe hypothalamic obesity at our institution between 2010 and 2013 is reported. Dextroamphetamine administration was initiated at a single dose of 5 mg per day and titrated to effect up to a dose of 20 mg/day. BMI z-score velocity was calculated as change in BMI z-score over standardized intervals of 12 months. Parameters of treatment success and adverse events were assessed in a standardized fashion. Results: Seven patients (2 males; mean age 17.6 years [range 12.9–24.5]) underwent individual treatment attempts with dextroamphetamine between 2010 and 2013. The primary diagnoses were craniopharyngioma (n = 4), ganglioglioma WHO I (n = 1), astrocytoma (n = 1), and neonatal meningitis (n = 1). Time from initial CNS insult to initiation of dextroamphetamine treatment averaged 5.2 years (range 2.4 months to 16.5 years). All patients demonstrated a steady increase in BMI z-score from the time of initial diagnosis until initiation of dextroamphetamine treatment. Mean baseline BMI z-score was +3.17 ± 0.93 (+1.9 to +4.4). Mean BMI z-score velocity decelerated to –0.18 ± 0.12 per year during the first year of treatment and stabilized at +0.05 ± 0.32 per year during the second year of treatment. No significant adverse events were reported. Conclusion: Dextroamphetamine treatment led to stabilization or reduction of BMI z-score in a cohort of 7 patients with hypothalamic obesity, with no adverse effects. Considering the projected increase in BMI z-score according to the natural course of the disease, these findings are promising and warrant further study.
Improving Dietary Behavior Among Ethnic Minority Women in Denmark: A Feasibility Study Based on a Participatory and Culturally Adapted Intervention

The Danish Heart Foundation and the non-governmental organization Neighborhood Mothers have co-developed a culturally adapted intervention seeking to promote healthy dietary behaviour among ethnic minority women. This feasibility study explores the potential of the intervention to reach ethnic minority women using health promotion initiatives. Participants attended instructor courses or cooking events, where culturally adapted, healthy recipes were introduced and meals prepared. Feasibility was explored using a mixed-method approach. Surveys were completed by 59 volunteers and 150 participants at five instructor courses and 21 cooking events. Individual interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with volunteers and participants after completion of the intervention. After the intervention, 61% of the 150 participants had high levels of knowledge about dietary recommendations, 96% intended to cook healthy dishes in the future and 84% intended to incorporate measuring equipment into their daily cooking routine. Participants with a high level of knowledge reported intention to change dietary behaviour more often than participants with lower levels of knowledge. Interviews confirmed that the participants cooked healthy dishes after participating, and incorporated knowledge about healthy food practices into their daily cooking. Few participants used measuring equipment. The intervention proved to be feasible as a health promotion initiative targeting a hard-to-reach population.
Computational Imaging on the Electric Grid

Night beats with alternating current (AC) illumination. By passively sensing this beat, we reveal new scene information which includes: the type of bulbs in the scene, the phases of the electric grid up to city scale, and the light transport matrix. This information yields unmixing of reflections and semi-reflections, nocturnal high dynamic range, and scene rendering with bulbs not observed during acquisition. The latter is facilitated by a dataset of bulb response functions for a range of sources, which we collected and provide. To do all this, we built a novel coded-exposure high-dynamic-range imaging technique, specifically designed to operate on the grid’s AC lighting.
A Review of Housing and Food Intersections: Implications for Nurses and Nursing Research

Study Background Quality, accessibility, and affordability of housing and food are public health and nursing concerns. Yet, intersections between housing and food security are relatively understudied. Purpose The purpose of this article is to examine the evidence describing the relationship between food security and housing interventions, and second, describing specific opportunities for targeted strategies for nursing practice and research. Methods Arksey and O’Malley’s scoping review method was followed to search housing and food security research. A database search identified 46 studies that were mapped onto a social ecological theory to understand the micro, meso, exo, and macro interventions. Results Three major recommendations were identified. Micro-system recommendations include primary care screening for low-income groups. Meso- and exo-system recommendations focus on creating partnerships in research and enhancing social housing. Lastly, macro-system recommendations focus on challenging housing affordability standards. The major gap in the literature is addressing healthy housing. Conclusion Broadening housing interventions to include comprehensive approaches to meeting individuals’ needs offers more than simply packaging two interventions together. There is a significant moment in nursing in which nurses are witness to a paradigmatic shift in the ways to approach housing and food security.
Characterization of interactions between cromolyn sodium and bovine serum albumin by spectroscopic, calorimetric and computational methods

Abstract Cromolyn sodium (CS), an anti-inflammatory drug is used in the treatment of allergic disorders. Bovine serum albumin (BSA) a blood plasma protein is used as a model protein for studying protein folding and ligand binding mechanism as it is the main transporter protein which decides the disposition and pharmacodynamics of numerous drugs. In this study, interaction of CS with BSA was investigated using isothermal titration calorimetry, UV-vis, fluorescence, circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy and molecular docking techniques. Steady state fluorescence data revealed that BSA-CS complex formation occurred through static mode of quenching. Negative values of Gibbs free energy change and enthalpy change showed that BSA-CS complexation was spontaneously favorable and enthalpy driven. CS preferentially interacted at Sudlow’s site I (sub-domain IIA) of BSA and the finding was further substantiated by molecular docking study. The binding of CS induced changes in secondary motif of BSA resulting decrease of α-helical content as evident from CD. We explored detailed thermodynamic and structural parameters of interaction of CS to BSA that will be helpful for understanding the more precise binding mechanism of the drug at molecular level. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma
Deep Attention Network for Egocentric Action Recognition

Recognizing a camera wearer’s actions from videos captured by an egocentric camera is a challenging task. In this paper, we employ a two-stream deep neural network composed of an appearance-based stream and a motion-based stream to recognize egocentric actions. Based on the insight that human action and gaze behavior are highly coordinated in object manipulation tasks, we propose a spatial attention network to predict human gaze in the form of attention map. The attention map helps each of the two streams to focus on the most relevant spatial region of the video frames to predict actions. To better model the temporal structure of the videos, a temporal network is proposed. The temporal network incorporates bi-directional long short-term memory to model the long-range dependencies to recognize egocentric actions. The experimental results demonstrate that our method is able to predict attention maps that are consistent with human attention and achieve competitive action recognition performance with the state-of-the-art methods on the GTEA Gaze and GTEA Gaze+ datasets.
Acute Activation of α7-Nicotinic Receptors by Nicotine Improves Rodent Skin Flap Survival Through Nitrergic System.

BACKGROUND Recent reports have identified angiogenic, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties of acute treatment with nicotine via activation of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). In addition, the nitric oxide (NO) pathway is involved in ischemic reperfusion injuries. OBJECTIVES We investigated the effects of acute pretreatment with nicotine in a rat model of random-pattern skin flap and the potential role of the NO pathway. METHODS The Sprague-Dawley rats received increasing doses of (-)-nicotine (0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, and 3 mg/kg) before the procedure. Dorsal skin flaps with caudal pedicles were elevated at the midline, and flap survival was evaluated 7 days after surgery. In addition, animals received an α7-nAChR antagonist, methyllycaconitine, with nicotine. Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction was also applied to measure the dermal expression of α7-nAChR. Next, a nonselective NO synthase inhibitor, N-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester hydrochloride; a selective inducible NO synthase inhibitor, aminoguanidine; and an NO precursor, L-arginine, were administered with nicotine. RESULTS Nicotine at doses of 1, 1.5, and 2 mg/kg significantly increased flap survival, whereas the protective effects of nicotine disappeared at higher doses. Methyllycaconitine completely reversed the protective effects of nicotine and the elevated cutaneous expression of α7-nAChR in nicotine-pretreated rats. In addition, systemic administration of N-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester hydrochloride or aminoguanidine with an effective dose of nicotine caused a significant decrease in flap survival. Conversely, coinjection of a subeffective dose of L-arginine with the subeffective dose of nicotine significantly boosted its protective effects. CONCLUSIONS Acute pretreatment with nicotine by stimulating the expression and activation of cutaneous α7-nAChR improves skin flap survival, which is partially mediated through modulation of the NO pathway.
European Society of Gynaecological Oncology (ESGO) Guidelines for Ovarian Cancer Surgery

Methods The European Society of Gynaecological Oncology council nominated an international multidisciplinary development group made of practicing clinicians who have demonstrated leadership and interest in the care of ovarian cancer (20 experts across Europe). To ensure that the statements are evidence based, the current literature identified from a systematic search has been reviewed and critically appraised. In the absence of any clear scientific evidence, judgment was based on the professional experience and consensus of the development group (expert agreement). The guidelines are thus based on the best available evidence and expert agreement. Before publication, the guidelines were reviewed by 66 international reviewers independent from the development group including patients representatives. Results The guidelines cover preoperative workup, specialized multidisciplinary decision making, and surgical management of diagnosed epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, and peritoneal cancers. The guidelines are also illustrated by algorithms.
Precursor Processing of Human Defensin-5 Is Essential to the Multiple Functions in vitro and in vivo

Human defensin-5 (HD-5) is one of the major antimicrobial peptides secreted by Paneth cells in the human small intestine. HD-5 is produced and stored as a propeptide in Paneth cell granules, secreted in response to stimulation by cholinergic reagents or bacterial antigens. The activation process by trypsin occurs in the intestinal lumen to produce mature HD-5. This study evaluated the difference between proHD-5 and mature HD-5 in bactericidal activity and induction of chemokine secretion in vitro. Mature HD-5 showed bactericidal activities against all bacterial strains. Though, proHD-5 without enzymatic cleavage possessed less antimicrobial ability against Salmonella typhimurium and Escherichia coli but not against Staphylococcus aureus. Mature HD-5 also induced intestinal epithelial cells to increase the protein and mRNA levels of interleukin-8. Furthermore, the peptides were applied to dextran sulfate sodium-induced mouse colitis. The expression of endogenous mouse defensins was not changed in the small intestine, and the additional injection of exogenous HD-5 improved mortality (p < 0.05). This study demonstrated the multifunctional roles of the activation process in human defensin and the possibility of using antimicrobial peptides for the treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases in future applications.
Propagation of Rhinovirus C in Differentiated Immortalized Human Airway HBEC3-KT Epithelial Cells

Rhinoviruses (RVs) are classified into three species: RV-A, B, and C. Unlike RV-A and -B, RV-C cannot be propagated using standard cell culture systems. In order to isolate RV-Cs from clinical specimens and gain a better understanding of their biological properties and pathogenesis, we established air–liquid-interface (ALI) culture methods using HBEC3-KT and HSAEC1-KT immortalized human airway epithelial cells. HBEC3- and HSAEC1-ALI cultures morphologically resembled pseudostratified epithelia with cilia and goblet cells. Two fully sequenced clinical RV-C isolates, RV-C9 and -C53, were propagated in HBEC3-ALI cultures, and increases in viral RNA ranging from 1.71 log10 to 7.06 log10 copies were observed. However, this propagation did not occur in HSAEC1-ALI cultures. Using the HBEC3-ALI culture system, 11 clinical strains of RV-C were isolated from 23 clinical specimens, and of them, nine were passaged and re-propagated. The 11 clinical isolates were classified as RV-C2, -C6, -C9, -C12, -C18, -C23, -C40, and -C53 types according to their VP1 sequences. Our stable HBEC3-ALI culture system is the first cultivable cell model that supports the growth of multiple RV-C virus types from clinical specimens. Thus, the HBEC3-ALI culture system provides a cheap and easy-to-use alternative to existing cell models for isolating and investigating RV-Cs.
Visualization of astrocytic intracellular Ca2+ mobilization

Astrocytes generate robust intracellular Ca2+ concentration changes (Ca2+ signals), which are assumed to regulate astrocytic functions that play crucial roles in the regulation of brain functions. One frequently used strategy for exploring the role of astrocytic Ca2+ signalling is the use of mice deficient in the type 2 inositol 1,4,5‐trisphosphate receptor (IP3R2). These IP3R2‐knockout (KO) mice are reportedly devoid of Ca2+ mobilization from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in astrocytes. However, they have shown no functional deficits in several studies, causing a heated debate as to the functional relevance of ER‐mediated Ca2+ signalling in astrocytes. Recently, the assumption that Ca2+ mobilization from the ER is absent in IP3R2‐KO astrocytes has been re‐evaluated using intraorganellar Ca2+ imaging techniques. The new results indicated that IP3R2‐independent Ca2+ release may generate Ca2+ nanodomains around the ER, which may help explain the absence of functional deficits in IP3R2‐KO mice.
A hybrid approach for automated mutation annotation of the extended human mutation landscape in scientific literature

As the cost of DNA sequencing continues to fall, an increasing amount of information on human genetic variation is being produced that could help progress precision medicine. However, information about such mutations is typically first made available in the scientific literature, and is then later manually curated into more standardized genomic databases. This curation process is expensive, time-consuming and many variants do not end up being fully curated, if at all. Detecting mutations in the literature is the first key step towards automating this process. However, most of the current methods have focused on identifying mutations that follow existing nomenclatures. In this work, we show that there is a large number of mutations that are missed by using this standard approach. Furthermore, we implement the first mutation annotator to cover an extended mutation landscape, and we show that its F1 performance is the same performance as human annotation (F1 78.29 for manual annotation vs F1 79.56 for automatic annotation).
The Sleepiness Curve of Young Men With and Without Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

ABSTRACT Objectives: The present study aimed at comparing the sleepiness curve of young men with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to that of young men without ADHD before, during, and after a night of sleep deprivation. Participants: Thirty young men (age 18–30) of whom 14 were diagnosed with ADHD combined type (ADHD-C) and 16 without ADHD. Methods: The participants’ sleep was monitored for 5 days via actigraphy. Subsequently, the participants were kept continuously awake in a controlled environment for 25 hr (8:00 a.m.–9:00 a.m.). The sleepiness of the participants was assessed every hour by the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) in order to obtain the sleepiness curve of both study groups. Results: Actigraphy data demonstrated that the two groups did not differ in their total sleep time, sleep onset latency, or sleep efficiency during the 5 nights preceding the experimental session. However, during the experimental session, the ADHD group demonstrated higher sleepiness scores, particularly following midnight and on the morning following the night of sleep deprivation. Moreover, on the morning following sleep deprivation the proportion of participants reporting extreme levels of sleepiness (KSS > 7) was significantly higher in the ADHD group than in the control group. Conclusions: Young men with ADHD suffer from sleepiness more than their counterparts from the general population, and are particularly vulnerable to the effects of sleep deprivation on sleepiness. As excessive daytime sleepiness negatively affects cognition and increases the risk for motor vehicle crash and other accidents, these findings may have important clinical implications.
Variation in mental health service use among U.S. Latinos by place of origin and service provider type.

OBJECTIVE This study examined variation in mental health service use among U.S. Latinos by place of origin and service provider type. METHODS Data were obtained from the National Latino and Asian American Study. The sample for this study consisted of 2,533 Latino adults, including Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and other Latinos. Use of services from specialty mental health providers, general medical providers, and other providers was examined. Guided by Andersen's behavioral model of health service use, logistic regression models were conducted. RESULTS Although over one-fifth of the sample (21.3%) had a psychiatric disorder, only 9.6% reported that they received any mental health services in the past 12 months. Overall, Puerto Ricans were more likely than the other Latino subgroups to use any mental health services. Respondents with a psychiatric disorder were more likely to use mental health services from all provider types, but the effect of having a psychiatric disorder on use of general medical care providers was greater among Mexicans than among Puerto Ricans. CONCLUSIONS Findings suggest the existence of variations among Latino subgroups in mental health service use by provider type and place of origin. Mental health professionals should provide tailored outreach and services to this vulnerable population, which underutilizes mental health services. Further research should examine variation in mental health service use by immigrant legal status.
Structural Elucidation and Free Radical Scavenging Activity of a new o-Orsellinic Acid Derivative Isolated from the Lichen Cladonia rappii

Rappiidic acid, a new o-orsellinic acid derivative, was isolated from the lichen Cladonia rappii. Its capability to scavenge reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS) was investigated and compared with resveratrol and (+)-usnic acid. Usnic acid at 100 μM was the most efficient ROS scavenger, exhibiting activity 3-fold higher than that of resveratrol. At the same concentration, rappidic acid scavenged 23.1% of ROS formed, demonstrating that this compound is twice as active as resveratrol. Both compounds were shown to be poor RNS scavengers.
Does Peer Rejection Moderate the Associations among Cyberbullying Victimization, Depression, and Anxiety among Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder?

While the consequences of cyberbullying victimization have received some attention in the literature, to date, little is known about the multiple types of strains in adolescents’ lives, such as whether cyberbullying victimization and peer rejection increase their vulnerability to depression and anxiety. Even though some research found that adolescents with disabilities show higher risk for cyberbullying victimization, most research has focused on typically developing adolescents. Thus, the present study focused on examining the moderating effect of peer rejection in the relationships between cyberbullying victimization, depression, and anxiety among adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. There were 128 participants (89% male; ages ranging from 11–16 years old) with autism spectrum disorder in the sixth, seventh, or eighth grade at 16 middle schools in the United States. Participants completed questionnaires on cyberbullying victimization, peer rejection, depression, and anxiety. Results revealed that cyberbullying victimization was associated positively with peer rejection, anxiety, and depression among adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. Further, peer rejection was linked positively with depression and anxiety. Peer rejection moderated the positive relationship between cyberbullying victimization and depression, but not anxiety. Implications for prevention programs and future research are discussed.
Dietary calcium intake and the risk of metabolic syndrome: evidence from observational studies

Abstract Objective Epidemiological investigations evaluating the association of dietary Ca intake with metabolic syndrome (MetS) risk have yielded controversial results. Therefore, a meta-analysis was conducted to quantitatively summarize the association between dietary Ca intake and the risk of MetS. Design PubMed, Embase and Web of Science were searched for relevant articles published up to October 2018. The pooled OR and 95 % CI were calculated with a random-effects model. Setting Meta-analysis. Participants Nine cross-sectional studies. Results A total of nine articles with fifteen studies for dietary Ca intake were finally included in the meta-analysis. The combined OR with 95 % CI of MetS for the highest v. lowest category of dietary Ca intake was 0·80 (95 % CI 0·70, 0·91). For dose–response analysis, a non-linear relationship was found between dietary intake of Ca and risk of MetS (P non-linearity<0·001). The threshold for dietary Ca intake was 280 mg/d (OR=0·87; 95 % CI 0·82, 0·93), reducing the risk of MetS by 13 %. Conclusions The present meta-analysis suggests that dietary Ca intake might reduce the risk of MetS, which needs to be further confirmed by larger prospective cohort studies.