Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Haemodialysis patients show a highly diminished antibody response after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination compared to healthy controls

Abstract Background Haemodialysis (HD) patients are exposed to a high risk due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. They are prone to acquiring the infection and are threatened by high mortality rates in case of infection. However, HD patients were not included in the efficacy trials of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Such efficacy data would have been critical because HD patients show decreased responses against various other vaccines and this could translate to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines as well. Methods We conducted a prospective cohort study that contained a group of 81 HD patients and 80 healthy controls. All of them had been vaccinated with the BioNTech/Pfizer mRNA vaccine (two doses, as per the manufacturer’s recommendation). The anti-SARS-CoV-2 S antibody response was measured for all participants 21 days after the second dose. The groups were compared using univariate quantile regressions and a multivariate analysis. The adverse events (AEs) of the vaccination were assessed via a questionnaire. Finally, a correlation between the HBs-Antibody response and the SARS-CoV-2 antibody response in the HD patients was established. Results The HD patients had significantly lower Anti-SARS-CoV-2 S antibody titres than the control patients 21 days after vaccination (median was 171 U/ml for dialysis patients and 2,500 U/ml for the controls). Further, the HD group presented less AEs than the control group. No correlation was found between the antibody response to previous Hepatitis B vaccination and that of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Conclusions HD patients present highly diminished SARS-CoV-2 S antibody titres compared to a cohort of controls. Therefore, they could be much less protected by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccinations than expected. Further studies to test alternative vaccination schemes should be considered.
Incorporating the interaction between health and work into the undergraduate medical curriculum – a qualitative evaluation of a teaching pilot in English medical schools

ABSTRACT Introduction: There is a growing recognition of the impact of work on health both positive and negative. It is important that all health care professionals are equipped to understand the effects of work and worklessness on health and help patients remain in work or manage a healthy return to work where appropriate. Despite explicit reference to health and work in the General Medical Council’s Outcomes for Graduates, currently, this is not a theme that is integrated across the undergraduate medical curricula. Aim: This study evaluates medical tutors’ and undergraduates’ perspectives of a selection of health and work topics in a teaching pilot to consider the suitability and appropriateness for delivery, integration into the curriculum, tailoring of the resources, and appropriateness and expected attainment of learning objectives. Methods: Qualitative, semi-structured interviews and focus groups were carried out with five medical tutors and 36 undergraduates. Interviews and focus groups were recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed. Results: Medical tutors and undergraduates identified suitability of appropriate subject specialities and years of teaching, whether learning objectives were important and if these had been achieved, and recommendations for future delivery. Discussion: Medical tutors were committed to delivering the health and work topics with the flexibility of tailoring the resources to existing subject specialities and with respect to the year of study. Learning objectives were perceived appropriate by tutors, despite ambivalence about their importance from some undergraduates. Resources were identified as having relevance to public health undergraduate teaching and during general practice placements.
First Branchial Cleft Anomalies: Rare Work Type I and Type II Entities

First branchial cleft anomalies (FBCAs) are the most infrequent malformations that occur during the development of the branchial apparatus, appearing in less than 8% of all branchial anomalies. Traditionally, they are classified into Work type I and II, depending on their origin. We present a pair of rare FBCAs: a case of a preauricular Work type I cyst with twin fistulae coursing toward the parotid gland and a Work type II cyst of significant dimensions.
Sprinting and dribbling differences in young soccer players: a kinematic approach

ABSTRACT Sprinting and dribbling a ball are considered essential for success in team sports, such as soccer. The purpose of the present study was to examine straight line (SL) and changes of direction (COD) sprinting and dribbling abilities after a standing and a flying starting position. Twelve amateur U12 male soccer players participated in the study. The participants were tested in four different sprinting conditions. The first consisted of 15 m SL sprinting and dribbling test by standing position; the second consisted of 15 m SL sprinting and dribbling test by flying start. The third condition consisted of 15 m COD sprinting and dribbling test by standing position, and the fourth condition consisted of 15 m COD sprinting and dribbling test by flying start. T-tests analysis indicated significant differences between SL sprinting and dribbling sprinting tests (P < 0.05) and between standing and flying start positions (P < 0.05). Step frequency was higher for sprinting tests (P < 0.05). Moreover, the results showed that step length was longer when players had a standing position (P < 0.05). These findings emphasize the importance for trainers to add parts without ball, focused on the development of certain fitness and running components.
Vibrational spectroscopy of phytochromes and phytochrome-related photoreceptors

In the present work an integral vibrational spectroscopic approach was applied to investigate the mechanisms of the photoinduced processes in phytochromes. These photoreceptor proteins bind an open-chain tetrapyrrole as a cofactor. Mainly classified in canonical (plants), prototypical (bacteria, fungi), bathy phytochromes (bacteria) and cyanobacteriochromes (cyanobacteria), they regulate diverse biological processes (e.g flowering, phototaxis and pigment expression). The chromophore structural changes during the transition from the dark adapted (Pr) to the light-induced state (Pfr) in three different prototypical bacterio-phytochromes (Agp1, CphB and Rph2) were characterized employing (pre-)Resonance Raman (RR) spectroscopy, thus selectively probing chromophore bands over the protein matrix. A common unidirectional temperature-dependent Pr-to-Pfr reaction pathway was identified. This reaction sequence involves the chromophore Z/E-isomerization (Lumi-R), the loss of bilin coplanarity (Meta-Ra) and a transient deprotonation, (Meta-Rc), followed by protein refolding which eventually leads to Pfr state formation. The last step involves a β-sheet-to-α-helix transition, as determined by infrared (IR) spectroscopy in line with published crystallographic data. Band analysis of the RR spectra of Pfr in prototypical phytochromes allowed the identification of conformational heterogeneities of the chromophore (ZZE) –which are beyond the resolution of protein crystallography. The bilin flexibility at the AB and CD methine bridge is presumably associated with the thermal Pfr-deactivation pathway. In contrast, the chromophore in the dark-adapted Pfr state of bathy phytochromes (Agp2, Pap1) adopts a homogeneous structure, most likely due to the strong hydrogen bonding with the side chain of an adjacent Asp194 residue forces the bilin cofactor into a defined geometry. Hydrogen bond interaction and accurate geometry were predicted by QM/MM calculations and experimentally validated by the extremely slow pyrrole-nitrogen proton exchange at the bilin ring D. Formation of the light-activated Pr-state in bathy phytochromes involves the deprotonation of the bilin propionic side chain and α-helix-to-β-sheet refolding in the PHYtongue. Output module (de)activation via the thermal decay of the Pr state is based on a keto-enol tautomerism at the terminal ring D, modulated by an acid-based equilibrium of the nearby His278. This keto-enol controlled mechanism is likely to represent a general decay mechanism of the light-activated states also in prototypical phytochromes (Pfr-to-Pr) and cyanobacteriochromes.
Myomedin scaffold variants targeted to 10E8 HIV-1 broadly neutralizing antibody mimic gp41 epitope and elicit HIV-1 virus-neutralizing sera in mice

ABSTRACT One of the proposed strategies for the development of a more efficient HIV-1 vaccine is based on the identification of proteins binding to a paratope of chosen broadly neutralizing antibody (bNAb) that will mimic cognate HIV-1 Env (glyco)protein epitope and could be used as potent immunogens for induction of protective virus-neutralizing antibodies in the immunized individuals. To verify this “non-cognate ligand” concept, we developed a highly complex combinatorial library designed on a scaffold of human myomesin-1 protein domain and selected proteins called Myomedins specifically binding to variable regions of HIV-1 broadly neutralizing antibody 10E8. Immunization of mice with these Myomedin variants elicited the production of HIV-1 Env-specific antibodies. Hyperimmune sera bound to Env pseudotyped viruses and weakly/moderately neutralized 54% of tested clade A, B, C, and AE pseudotyped viruses variants in vitro. These results demonstrate that Myomedin variants have the potential to mimic Env epitopes and could be used as potential HIV-1 vaccine components.
A critical review on analytical methods and characterization of butyl and bromobutyl rubber

ABSTRACT The molecular structure characterization of butyl and bromobutyl rubber (BIIR) requires the definition of three main parameters: (I) the unsaturation degree of the rubbers, (II) the total bromine content of the BIIRs, and (III) the functional bromine content of the BIIRs. The analytical methods for the determination of the previously mentioned parameters have been described and critically examined in this review.
Performance of Paracoccus homiensis DRR-3 in microbial fuel cell with membranes

ABSTRACT This study focuses on the bioelectricity production of Paracoccus homiensis strain DRR-3, a Gram-negative bacterium with Nafion117 and polymer membranes. Among the various electrodes used, carbon paper showed a higher production of 790 mV and 0.13 mA with Nafion 117 membrane and 290 mV and 0.10 mA with salt bridge as a proton exchanger. The scanning electron micrograph of the biofilm attached to the anode revealed the presence of P. homiensis. A major highlight in this study is to reveal the efficiency of the two membranes made of conducting polymers (polyvindylene difluoride [PVDF] and polycarbazole [PCZ]) in the proton transfer. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy was used to study the anode resistance, total resistance of the microbial fuel cell and to recognise the membrane which facilitates the efficient proton transfer. The PVDF membrane showed a better performance of bioelectricity generation when compared to Nafion and PCZ membrane with a low Rct value of 45.05 Ω and Rs of 23.61 Ω.
ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECT OF FINANCIAL LITERATION, FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY, INCOME, AND LOCUS OF CONTROL ON LECTURER FINANCIAL BEHAVIOR

This research is a quantitative study that aims to determine the effect of financial literacy, financial technology, income, and locus of control on financial behavior. The population in this study were Lecturers at the Universitas Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jakarta. The sample size was taken as many as 80 respondents, with methods through nonprobability sampling, purposive sampling. Data collection was carried out through questionnaires. The analysis technique used is the PLS (Partial Least Square) analysis method with SmartPLS 3.0 software. The results of this study indicate that (1) financial literacy has a significant positive effect on financial behavior. (2) financial technology has no influence and is not significant in financial behavior. (3) income has a significant positive effect on financial behavior. (4) locus of control does not influence financial behavior.
Characterization of the Lil3 protein during deetiolation of Hordeum vulgare

Angiosperm plants growing in darkness are free of chlorophyll and develop etioplasts instead of chloroplasts the characteristic organelles of green plants. Upon illumination, chlorophyll and the chlorophyll binding proteins of the photosynthetic machinery rapidly accumulate. Recently, chlorophyll has been shown to bind to Lil3 immediately after illumination of etioplasts. Lil3 is a light harvesting like proteins that shares an alpha helix motif with the light harvesting proteins of the photosystem complexes. However, it is unknown how much of the Lil3 protein complex is present during development of the photosystem complexes. Here, we show that Lil3 is a membrane protein and that its amount is constant throughout deetiolation of dark grown barley seedlings. We found that the Lil3 protein immediately assembles into two protein complexes upon the onset of illumination of barley leaves, but is not present as a protein complex in etioplasts. In contrast, equal amounts of the protein were found in etioplasts and in any of the developmental time points during biogenesis of chloroplasts. Our results demonstrate that the Lil3 proteins could provide the missing link for transfer of the chlorophyll free membrane of etioplasts into the chlorophyll rich membrane of chloroplasts. The Lil3 protein could operate as chlorophyll storage and integrate into an enzymatic chlorophyll delivery chain to enable the assembly of the photosynthetic machinery in the membrane of plant plastids. This report is the starting point for a more detailed characterization of the Lil3 function. The next level of further investigations will be directed to understand the composition, folding, and structure of the Lil3 protein complexes.
Retinal Blood Vessel Segmentation from Depigmented Diabetic Retinopathy Images

Diabetic Retinopathy is a progressive disease that affects diabetic patients and changes the width and tortuosity of the retinal blood vessels. The preferred center of attention is to predict the new vessel growth and the dissimilarity in diameter of the retinal blood vessels. To examine the changes, primarily segmentation has to be made. A system has been proposed to enhance the quality of the segmentation result over pathological retinal images. The proposed system comprises preprocessing of Fundus images and extracts the blood vessels. The proposed system uses Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) for preprocessing and Tandem Pulse Coupled Neural Network (TPCNN) model to segment the retinal vasculature. To categorize the small blood vessels from pathological images, the algorithm depending on its parameters. In the former PCNN model, the parameters have to be set at every time for all images. The proposed TPCNN model assigns values for its multiple parameters through Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO); so that the decay speeds of the threshold would be regulated adaptively. This greatly enhances the flexibility of TPCNN in dealing with depigmented pathological images. The generated feature vectors of blood vessels are classified and extracted via Deep Learning Based Support Vector Machine (DLBSVM) technique. The proposed method is assessed over DRIVE, STARE, HRF, REVIEW, CHASE_DB1 and DRIONS databases by the performance parameters such as Sensitivity, Specificity, Accuracy, and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve. The results render that these techniques improve the segmentation with an average value of 94.68% Sensitivity, 99.70% Specificity, 99.61% Accuracy and 98% ROC. The results evoke that the proposed methods are a suitable alternative for the supervised methods.
Comparative in vitro assessment of tolterodine tartrate tablets by high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC)

Introduction Tolterodine tartrate, (R)-N,N-diisopropyl-3(2-hydroxy5-methylphenyl)-3-phenylpropanamine l-hydrogen tartrate (Fig. 1), is a new, potent and competitive muscarinic receptor antagonist in clinical development for the treatment of urge incontinence and other symptoms of unstable bladder (1-3). Tolterodine has a high affinity and specificity for muscarinic receptors in vitro and exhibits the selectivity for the urinary bladder over salivary glands in vivo, so it has the advantageous tolerability profile in terms of the low frequency of bothersome dry mouth (4). After oral administration, tolterodine is metabolized in liver, resulting in the formation of the 5-hydroxymethyl derivative, a major pharmacologically active metabolite (5). However, a small proportion Abstract Tolterodine tartrate, is a new, potent and competitive muscarinic receptor antagonist in clinical development for the treatment of urge incontinence and other symptoms of unstable bladder. The purpose of this study is to establish a reliable and quick method for the assignment of tolterodine tartrate by high performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection (HPLC-UV). A rapid and sensitive high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method has been developed for determination of tolterodine tartrate. Mobile phase was composed of phosphate acetate 0.1 M (pH 2.5)-acetonitrile (50:50 v/v) with a flow rate of 1.2 ml/min. The eluted peaks were detected by a UV detector was set at wavelength of 285 nm. The method was validated in the range of tolterodine tartrate concentrations from 10 to 100 μg/ml. The limits of detection (LOD) and quantitation (LOQ) of the method were 5 and 10 μg/ml, respectively. The average drug recovery was 98.20 % throughout the linear concentration range. The average within-run and between-run accuracy values of 98.56 % and 99.11 % respectively. Statistical assessment of various in vitro dissolution parameters and assay results was also conducted to establish if there were any significant difference among them. The validated HPLC method has been used successfully to study tolterodine tartrate.
Prediction of the effective reproduction number of COVID-19 in Greece. A machine learning approach using Google mobility data.

This paper demonstrates how a short-term prediction of the effective reproduction number (Rt) of COVID-19 in regions of Greece is achieved based on online mobility data. Various machine learning methods are applied to predict Rt and attribute importance analysis is performed to reveal the most important variables that affect the accurate prediction of Rt. Our results are based on an ensemble of diverse Rt methodologies to provide non-precautious and non-indulgent predictions. The model demonstrates robust results and the methodology overall represents a promising approach towards COVID-19 outbreak prediction. This paper can help health related authorities when deciding non-nosocomial interventions to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Clinical Burkholderia pseudomallei isolates from Queensland carry diverse bimABm genes that are associated with central nervous system disease and are phylogenomically distinct from other Australian strains

Burkholderia pseudomallei is an environmental gram-negative bacterium that causes the disease melioidosis and is endemic in many countries of the Asia-Pacific region. In Australia, the mortality rate remains high at approximately 10%. The bacterium is almost exclusively found in the endemic region, which spans the Northern Territory, Western Australia and North Queensland. However, Queensland infections remain understudied compared to those of the Northern Territory. This pilot study aimed to assess the prevalence of central nervous system disease associated variant bimABm, identify circulating antimicrobial resistance mutations and genetically distinct strains from Queensland, via comparative genomics. From 76 clinical isolates, we identified the bimABm variant in 20 (26.3%) isolates and in 9 (45%) of the isolates with documented central nervous system infection (n=18). Explorative analysis suggests a significant association between isolates carrying the bimABm variant and central nervous system disease (OR 2.8, 95% CI 1.3-6.0, P=0.009) compared with isolates carrying the wildtype bimABp, with the possibility of additional driving factors. Furthermore, 50% of isolates were identified as novel multi-locus sequence types (STs), while the bimABm variant was more commonly identified in isolates with novel sequence STs, compared to those of previously described STs. Additionally, mutations associated with acquired antimicrobial resistance were only identified in 14.5% of all genomes. The findings of this research have provided clinically relevant genomic data of B. pseudomallei in Queensland and suggest that the bimABm variant may enable risk stratification for the development CNS complications and be a potential therapeutic target.
Detection of simultaneous mechanical faults in 6‐kV pumping induction motors using combined MCSA and stray flux methods

Konstantinos N. Gyftakis, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, The King’s Buildings, Edinburgh, EH93DW UK. Email. k.n. gyftakis@ieee.org Abstract The popularity of stray and air‐gap flux monitoring methods is increasing. This trend is justified by several advantages of such methods over the stator current monitoring that has been demonstrated for electrical fault detection in the induction and synchronous machines. However, the use of the magnetic flux for mechanical faults detections has not drawn this much attention, while in industry, the vibration analysis continues to be popular. This study comes to bridge this gap via the detection of mechanical faults of 6‐ kV induction motors in a pumping station. The diagnostic procedure mainly involves the stator current and stray flux monitoring, and harmonic index analysis. The localisation of the fault has been made possible via oscillometer readings. It will be shown that mechanical faults have a very different impact on the stator current and the flux signals, while the flux is not sensitive to the bearing fault mechanisms.
EMIS

The objective of the emis project is the conception and realization of a web-based multilingual information system on European media law with the following functionalities: search by words, a combination of words, phrases or keywords; guided search by using a so-called thematic structure; cross language retrieval of documents in different languages with one monolingual query by using language processing and MT technology; exploitation of additional information for the retrieved documents, which is stored in a database; structured representation of the document archive, the so-called dogmatic structure; multilingual user interface.