Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nutritional Supplements and Neuroprotective Diets and Their Potential Clinical Significance in Post-Stroke Rehabilitation

Nutrition and rehabilitation are crucial in post-stroke recovery, especially in the elderly. Since stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability, there is a need to promote special, individually tailored nutrition strategies targeting older patients with low motor ability. Chronic stroke survivors have higher risk of developing nutrition-related chronic diseases, such as sarcopenia, anemia, type 2 diabetes mellitus and osteoporosis. Moreover, reduced motor activity, cognitive impairment and depression might be aggravated by poor malnutrition status. Accumulated data suggest that nutritional supplements and neuroprotective diets can be associated with better effectiveness of post-stroke rehabilitation as well as brain recovery. Therefore, this review focuses on preventive strategies that can improve dietary intake and change dietary patterns. We highlight the importance of neuroprotective diets, the problem of dysphagia and the role of nutrition in rehabilitation. This article focuses on potential nutritional supplements and neuroprotective diets that may have an impact on functional recovery during and after rehabilitation. Moreover, a new approach to post-stroke neuroplasticity including the use of agents from marine sources such as fucoxanthin and tramiprosate as compounds that might be used as potential neuroprotectants with antioxidative and anti-inflammatory properties is introduced.
Comparison of a Miniaturized Cassette PCR System with a Commercially Available Platform for Detecting Escherichia coli in Beef Carcass Swabs

Detection sensitivity of cassette PCR was compared with a commercial BAX® PCR system for detection of eae and stx genes in Escherichia coli from 806 beef carcass swabs. Cassette PCR detects multiple genetic markers on multiple samples using PCR and melt curve analysis. Conventional PCR served as a gold standard. Overall, for positive and negative concordance, cassette PCR was 98.6% concordant with conventional PCR, and BAX PCR was 65.4% concordant. Of 806 beef carcass swabs, 339 by cassette PCR and 84 by BAX PCR harbored eae + stx+ E. coli. For BAX PCR reactions, 84% of eae+ swabs, 79% of stx+ swabs, and 86% of eae + stx+ swabs were also detected by cassette PCR. For cassette PCR reactions, 457 swabs were eae+ with only 117 scored as eae+ using BAX PCR for 26% positive concordance. For stx primers, cassette PCR scored 480 samples as stx+ but only 215 samples were stx+ by BAX PCR, giving 45% positive concordance. Importantly, cassette PCR scored 339 swabs as harboring eae + stx+ E. coli, but BAX PCR detected only 71 positives giving only 21% positive concordance, with many false negatives. Cassette PCR is a highly sensitive method for detection of STEC genes in E. coli found in carcass swabs.
Development and Evaluation of the Ancestry Informative Marker Panel of the VISAGE Basic Tool

We detail the development of the ancestry informative single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) panel forming part of the VISAGE Basic Tool (BT), which combines 41 appearance predictive SNPs and 112 ancestry predictive SNPs (three SNPs shared between sets) in one massively parallel sequencing (MPS) multiplex, whereas blood-based age analysis using methylation markers is run in a parallel MPS analysis pipeline. The selection of SNPs for the BT ancestry panel focused on established forensic markers that already have a proven track record of good sequencing performance in MPS, and the overall SNP multiplex scale closely matched that of existing forensic MPS assays. SNPs were chosen to differentiate individuals from the five main continental population groups of Africa, Europe, East Asia, America, and Oceania, extended to include differentiation of individuals from South Asia. From analysis of 1000 Genomes and HGDP-CEPH samples from these six population groups, the BT ancestry panel was shown to have no classification error using the Bayes likelihood calculators of the Snipper online analysis portal. The differentiation power of the component ancestry SNPs of BT was balanced as far as possible to avoid bias in the estimation of co-ancestry proportions in individuals with admixed backgrounds. The balancing process led to very similar cumulative population-specific divergence values for Africa, Europe, America, and Oceania, with East Asia being slightly below average, and South Asia an outlier from the other groups. Comparisons were made of the African, European, and Native American estimated co-ancestry proportions in the six admixed 1000 Genomes populations, using the BT ancestry panel SNPs and 572,000 Affymetrix Human Origins array SNPs. Very similar co-ancestry proportions were observed down to a minimum value of 10%, below which, low-level co-ancestry was not always reliably detected by BT SNPs. The Snipper analysis portal provides a comprehensive population dataset for the BT ancestry panel SNPs, comprising a 520-sample standardised reference dataset; 3445 additional samples from 1000 Genomes, HGDP-CEPH, Simons Foundation and Estonian Biocentre genome diversity projects; and 167 samples of six populations from in-house genotyping of individuals from Middle East, North and East African regions complementing those of the sampling regimes of the other diversity projects.
GDF-15 Predicts In-Hospital Mortality of Critically Ill Patients with Acute Kidney Injury Requiring Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy: A Multicenter Prospective Study

Growth differentiation factor-15 (GDF-15) is a stress-responsive cytokine. This study evaluated the association between GDF-15 and in-hospital mortality among patients with severe acute kidney injury (AKI) requiring continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT). Among the multicenter prospective CRRT cohort between 2017 and 2019, 66 patients whose blood sample was available were analyzed. Patients were divided into three groups according to the GDF-15 concentrations. The median GDF-15 level was 7865.5 pg/mL (496.9 pg/mL in the healthy control patients). Baseline characteristics were not different among tertile groups except the severity scores and serum lactate level, which were higher in the third tertile. After adjusting for confounding factors, the patients with higher GDF-15 had significantly increased risk of mortality (second tertile: adjusted hazards ratio [aHR], 3.67; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.05–12.76; p = 0.041; third tertile: aHR, 6.81; 95% CI, 1.98–23.44; p = 0.002). Furthermore, GDF-15 predicted in-hospital mortality (area under the curve, 0.710; 95% CI, 0.585–0.815) better than APACHE II and SOFA scores. Serum GDF-15 concentration was elevated in AKI patients requiring CRRT, higher in more severe patients. GDF-15 is a better independent predictor for in-hospital mortality of critically ill AKI patients than the traditional risk scoring system such as APACHE II and SOFA scores.
Syntactic and Semantic Influences on the Time Course of Relative Clause Processing: The Role of Language Dominance

We conducted a visual world eye-tracking experiment with highly proficient Spanish-English bilingual adults to investigate the effects of relative language dominance, operationalized as a continuous, multidimensional variable, on the time course of relative clause processing in the first-learned language, Spanish. We found that participants exhibited two distinct processing preferences: a semantically driven preference to assign agency to referents of lexically animate noun phrases and a syntactically driven preference to interpret relative clauses as subject-extracted. Spanish dominance was found to exert a distinct influence on each of these preferences, gradiently attenuating the semantic preference while gradiently exaggerating the syntactic preference. While these results might be attributable to particular properties of Spanish and English, they also suggest a possible generalization that greater dominance in a language increases reliance on language-specific syntactic processing strategies while correspondingly decreasing reliance on more domain-general semantic processing strategies.
The large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy induced at the Co2FeAl/MgAl2O4 interface and tuned with the strain, voltage and charge doping by first principles study

The heterostructures with high perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) have advantages for the application of the nonvolatile memories with long data retention time and small size. The interface structure and magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE) of Co2FeAl/MgAl2O4 heterostructures were studied by first principles calculations. The stable interface atomic arrangement is the Co or FeAl layer located above the equatorial oxygen coordinate in the distorted oxygen octahedrons. The Co–O interface can induce large effective PMA up to 4.54 mJ m−2, but this structure is a metastable structure. Meanwhile, the effective MAE decreases linearly as the thickness of the ferromagnetic layer increase. The effective MAE for the FeAl–O interface is only 1.3 mJ m−2, while the maximum thickness of Co2FeAl layer that maintains the PMA effect is about 1.717 nm. These values are very close to the experimental results. Through d-orbital-resolved MAE, we confirm that the interface PMA is mainly originated from the hybridization between dxy, dyz and dz2 orbitals of interface 3d atoms. In addition, the compressive strain, negative electric field and hole doping can significantly enhance the effective PMA of FeAl–O interface. At the same time, Co–O interface will become the most stable structure by tuning the Mg/Al ratio in the spinel layers. The large effective PMA makes the Co2FeAl/MgAl2O4 junction a perfect candidate for the next-generation of non-volatile spintronic devices.
A Gain-of-Function Mutant of IAA7 Inhibits Stem Elongation by Transcriptional Repression of EXPA5 Genes in Brassica napus

Plant height is one of the most important agronomic traits of rapeseeds. In this study, we characterized a dwarf Brassica napus mutant, named ndf-2, obtained from fast neutrons and DES mutagenesis. Based on BSA-Seq and genetic properties, we identified causal mutations with a time-saving approach. The ndf-2 mutation was identified on chromosome A03 and can result in an amino acid substitution in the conserved degron motif (GWPPV to EWPPV) of the Auxin/indole-3-acetic acid protein 7 (BnaA03.IAA7) encoded by the causative gene. Aux/IAA protein is one of the core components of the auxin signaling pathway, which regulates many growth and development processes. However, the molecular mechanism of auxin signal regulating plant height is still not well understood. In the following work, we identified that BnaARF6 and BnaARF8 as interactors of BnaA03.IAA7 and BnaEXPA5 as a target of BnaARF6 and BnaARF8. The three genes BnaA03.IAA7, BnaARF6/8 and BnaEXPA5 were highly expressed in stem, suggesting that these genes were involved in stem development. The overexpression of BnaEXPA5 results in larger rosettes leaves and longer inflorescence stems in Arabidopsis thaliana. Our results indicate that BnaA03.IAA7- and BnaARF6/8-dependent auxin signal control stem elongation and plant height by regulating the transcription of BnaEXPA5 gene, which is one of the targets of this signal.
Inhibition of Very Long Chain Fatty Acids Synthesis Mediates PI3P Homeostasis at Endosomal Compartments

A main characteristic of sphingolipids is the presence of a very long chain fatty acid (VLCFA) whose function in cellular processes is not yet fully understood. VLCFAs of sphingolipids are involved in the intracellular traffic to the vacuole and the maturation of early endosomes into late endosomes is one of the major pathways for vacuolar traffic. Additionally, the anionic phospholipid phosphatidylinositol-3-phosphate (PtdIns (3)P or PI3P) is involved in protein sorting and recruitment of small GTPase effectors at late endosomes/multivesicular bodies (MVBs) during vacuolar trafficking. In contrast to animal cells, PI3P mainly localizes to late endosomes in plant cells and to a minor extent to a discrete sub-domain of the plant’s early endosome (EE)/trans-Golgi network (TGN) where the endosomal maturation occurs. However, the mechanisms that control the relative levels of PI3P between TGN and MVBs are unknown. Using metazachlor, an inhibitor of VLCFA synthesis, we found that VLCFAs are involved in the TGN/MVB distribution of PI3P. This effect is independent from either synthesis of PI3P by PI3-kinase or degradation of PI(3,5)P2 into PI3P by the SUPPRESSOR OF ACTIN1 (SAC1) phosphatase. Using high-resolution live cell imaging microscopy, we detected transient associations between TGNs and MVBs but VLCFAs are not involved in those interactions. Nonetheless, our results suggest that PI3P might be transferable from TGN to MVBs and that VLCFAs act in this process.
Physiotherapy versus Consecutive Physiotherapy and Cognitive Treatment in People with Parkinson’s Disease: A Pilot Randomized Cross-Over Study

Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by motor and cognitive dysfunctions that can usually be treated by physiotherapy or cognitive training, respectively. The effects of consecutive physiotherapy and cognitive rehabilitation programs on PD deficits are less investigated. Objective: We investigated the effects of 3 months of physiotherapy (physiotherapy treatment group) or consecutive physiotherapy and cognitive (physiotherapy and cognitive treatment group) rehabilitation programs on cognitive, motor, and psychological aspects in 20 PD patients. Methods: The two groups switched programs and continued rehabilitation for another 3 months. The outcomes were score improvement on cognitive (Montreal Cognitive Assessment, Frontal Assessment Battery, Trail Making Test, Verbal Phonemic Fluency, Digit Span, and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning), motor (Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale-III, Berg Balance Scale, Two-Minute Walking Test, and Time Up and Go), and psychological (Beck Depression Inventory and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) scales. Results: Between-group comparison revealed a significant difference in functional mobility between the two rehabilitation programs. Improvements in walking abilities were noted after both interventions, but only the patients treated with consecutive training showed better performance on functional mobility and memory tasks. Conclusion: Our findings support the hypothesis that consecutive physiotherapy plus cognitive rehabilitation may have a greater benefit than physiotherapy alone in patients with PD.
Micro Scalable Graphene Oxide Productions Using Controlled Parameters in Bench Reactor

The detailed study of graphene oxide (GO) synthesis by changing the graphite/oxidizing reagents mass ratios (mG/mROxi), provided GO nanosheets production with good yield, structural quality, and process savings. Three initial samples containing different amounts of graphite (3.0 g, 4.5 g, and 6.0 g) were produced using a bench reactor under strictly controlled conditions to guarantee the process reproducibility. The produced samples were analyzed by Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), x-ray diffraction (XDR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and thermogravimetry (TGA) techniques. The results showed that the major GO product comprised of nanosheets containing between 1–5 layers, with lateral size up to 1.8 µm. Therefore, it was possible to produce different batches of graphene oxide with desirable physicochemical characteristics, keeping the amount of oxidizing reagent unchanged. The use of different proportions (mG/mROxi) is an important strategy that provides to produce GO nanostructures with high structural quality and scale-up, which can be well adapted in medium-sized bench reactor.
The Connected Qualities of Design Thinking and Maker Education practices in Early Education: A narrative review

Design Thinking (DT) and Maker Education (ME) are fairly new approaches that aim to equip students with skills for the 21st century. As DT and ME both involve a design process, these might be combined. To guide design processes that aim to combine DT and ME in early education, we review 28 formal and non-formal educational practices aimed at children 8 to 14 years old that have incorporated DT or ME over the past 10 years. We analyse their qualities in terms of their Objectives, Learning Activities, the Teacher’s Role, and Assessment Activities. From our findings, we develop an overview that showcases the connections between these qualities within the selected practices. We found that not all components were aligned well. Therefore, we outline the DT and ME Curriculum Blueprint, a tool aimed to support reflection on the alignment between these components in the development of DT and ME practices in early education.
Curator - A system for creating data sets for behavioral malware detection

Detecting malware during execution using machine learning models presents some hard-to-solve problems relating to data set construction seldom discussed in the literature. We identify, name these problems and show our solutions to them in the form of Curator, a specialized distributed system for detonating potentially malicious programs, extracting behavior information, and correctly labeling said behavior to construct an accurate, consistent, and reliable data set. We demonstrate Curator’s need by using generated data sets to train machine learning models based on Naive Bayes, Logistic Regression, and Random Forests. Our work is currently focused on the Windows operating system.
ZnSxSe1–x Carrier-Selective Contacts for Silicon Photovoltaics

The wide bandgaps and superior conductivity of ZnSxSe1–x semiconductors to amorphous Si suggest an alternative carrier-selective contact in silicon heterojunction solar cells. Electron-selective ZnSxSe1–x front contacts on p-type c-Si solar cells are explored by simulating in Sentaurus TCAD a large design parameter space informed by experimentally determined optoelectronic properties. Comparable performance to experimental and simulated p-SHJ reference devices is shown, with a champion simulated device efficiency of 20.8%.
Prediction of the histopathological tumor type of newly diagnosed liver lesions from standard abdominal computer tomography with a machine-learning classifier based on convolutional neural networks

Abstract Background and objectives: Liver lesions are a relatively common incidental finding in computer tomography (CT) of the abdomen. The current gold standard is liver biopsy, which has the downside of respecting only a small part of the total lesion volume. Furthermore, this invasive method carries interventional risks like bleeding or infection. Therefore, an image-based biomarker would be highly desirable. Conventional “radiomics” methods have often been utilized for similar problems, but the results are often not reproducible. This is mainly due to sampling errors and interobserver variability, but also the seemingly complex nature of the problem. We present a new approach that implements cutting-edge research in machine learning which is nevertheless cheap and easily applicable in a routine clinical setting. To achieve this, we use convolutional neural networks (CNN) to predict the histopathological findings from liver lesions from preoperative liver CT. Methods: After splitting the study population into a training and test set we trained a CNN to predict the histopathological tumor type from CT data. Results: The developed CNN workflow is able to predict liver tumor histology from routine CT images. We also evaluated in how far transfer learning and data augmentation can help in solving this problem and implemented the developed workflow in a clinical routine setting. Conclusion: We propose a robust semiautomatic end-to-end classification workflow for the prediction of the histopathological type of tumor lesions based on abdominal CT and a deep convolutional neural network model. In our cohort, the model shows reliable and accurate results even with limited computational resources.
Evaluation of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Feature Sets for Delineating Agricultural Fields in Heterogeneous Landscapes

The Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring Initiative (GEOGLAM) considers agricultural fields as one of the essential variables that can be derived from satellite data. We evaluated the accuracy at which agricultural fields can be delineated from Sentinel-1 (S1) and Sentinel-2 (S2) images in different agricultural landscapes throughout the growing season. We used supervised segmentation based on the multiresolution segmentation (MRS) algorithm to first identify the optimal feature set from S1 and S2 images for field delineation. Based on this optimal feature set, we analyzed the segmentation accuracy of the fields delineated with increasing data availability between March and October of 2018. From the S1 feature sets, the combination of the two polarizations and two radar indices attained the best segmentation results. For S2, the best results were achieved using a combination of all bands (coastal aerosol, water vapor, and cirrus bands were excluded) and six spectral indices. Combining the radar and spectral indices further improved the results. Compared to the single-period dataset in March, using the dataset covering the whole season led to a significant increase in the segmentation accuracy. For very small fields (< 0.5 ha), the segmentation accuracy obtained was 27.02%, for small fields (0.5 – 1.5 ha), the accuracy was 57.65%, for medium fields (1.5 ha – 15 ha), the accuracy was 75.71%, and for large fields (>15 ha), the accuracy stood at 68.31%. As a use case, the segmentation result was used to aggregate and improve a pixel-based crop type map in Lower Saxony, Germany.
Clinical and molecular characteristics of carnitineacylcarnitine translocase deficiency with c.270delC and a novel c.408C>A variant.

BACKGROUND Carnitine-acylcarnitine translocase deficiency (CACTD) is a rare, autosomal recessive, and highly lethal fatty acid oxidation (FAO) disorder caused by defective acylcarnitine transport across the mitochondrial membrane. CACTD is characterized by severe episodes of hypoglycemia and hyperammonemia, seizures, cardiomyopathy, liver dysfunction, severe neurological damage, and muscle weakness. Herein, we described the clinical features, biochemical, and molecular findings of three patients with CACTD, presented with poor feeding, hypoglycemia, liver dysfunctions, and hyperammonemia, but died despite intensive treatment. CASES All cases had similar signs and symptoms like poor feeding and respiratory failure associated with liver dysfunction. Urinary organic acid profiles in the presence of hypoglycemia and hyperammonemia led us to the possible diagnosis of one of fatty acid β-oxidation defects. Results of the molecular analyses were compatible with CACTD. In addition to known mutation (c.270delC;p.Phe91Leufs*38) we detected a novel one (c.408C > A;p.Cys136*). CONCLUSIONS All three cases died despite a very intensive therapy. Based on our experience with these three cases, it can be said that CACTD has a relatively poor prognosis, molecular studies are of most importance in suspected cases for the final diagnosis and such studies might be of help while giving genetic counselling and guidance to parents for future pregnancies.
Comparative study on fill factor of PERC Silicon Solar cells and Al-BSF Silicon solar cells under non-standard test conditions

In recent years, PERC solar cells have been the dominant industrial cells compared with Al-BSF solar cells. Fill factor (FF) is a vital indication of the performance of solar cells. In this paper, a comparative study on the temperature coefficients of FF for PERC solar cells and Al-BSF solar cells are investigated under non-standard test conditions. It is found that the absolute value of the temperature coefficient of FF for PERC solar cell is always lower than that for Al-BSF solar cell under non-standard conditions, which agrees with the calculated result. The obtained results are beneficial to understand the performance of solar cell under non-standard conditions.