Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preliminary evidence for the phosphodiesterase type-4 inhibitor, roflumilast, in ameliorating cognitive flexibility deficits in patients with schizophrenia

Background: Cognitive flexibility deficits are present in patients with schizophrenia and are strong predictors of functional outcome but, as yet, have no pharmacological treatments. Aims: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the phosphodiesterase type-4 inhibitor, roflumilast, can improve cognitive flexibility performance and functional brain activity in patients with schizophrenia. Methods: This was a within-subject, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, three-period crossover study using a version of the Intradimensional/Extradimensional (ID/ED) task, optimised for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in 10 patients with schizophrenia who were scanned after receiving placebo, 100 µg or 250 µg roflumilast for 8 consecutive days. Data from an additional fMRI ID/ED study of 18 healthy participants on placebo was included to contextualise the schizophrenia-related performance and activations. The fMRI analyses included a priori driven region of interest (ROI) analysis of the dorsal frontoparietal attention network. Results: Patients on placebo demonstrated broad deficits in task performance compared to the healthy comparison group, accompanied by preserved network activity for solution search, but reduced activity in left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and posterior parietal cortex for attentional set-shifting and reduced activity in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) for reversal learning. These ROI deficits were ameliorated by 250 µg roflumilast, whereas during solution search 100 µg roflumilast reduced activity in the left orbitofrontal cortex, right DLPFC and bilateral PPC, which was associated with an improvement in formation of attentional sets. Conclusions: The results suggest roflumilast has dose-dependent cognitive enhancing effects on the ID/ED task in patients with schizophrenia, and provides sufficient support for larger studies to test roflumilast’s role in improving cognitive flexibility deficits in this clinical population.
Research and evolution of mid-infrared optical source

3-5 μm mid-infrared wave band is in the atmosphere window, it has lots of promising applications on the spectroscopy, remote sensing, medical treatment, environmental protection and military affairs. So, it has been a hot topic around the world to research the lasers at this wave band. In recent years, adiabatic passage technology has been applied in frequency conversion area, which borrowed from atomic physics. In this paper we will introduce efficient nonlinear optics frequency conversion by suing this technology.
Structural hierarchy of NH 4v 3o 7 particles prepared under hydrothermal conditions

Despite having simple stoichiometry, NH4V3O7 still remains an odd compound with poorly resolved structure among the series of known ammonium vanadates. Here, a new hydrothermal synthesis of the product with explicit NH4V3O7 stoichiometry is evaluated. Intricate microstructure of the product is revealed as an aggregate of spherical microparticles consisting of microplatelets via scanning electron microscopy. To further guide the characterization of the NH4V3O7 phase, X-ray diffraction analysis and first-principle calculations were carried out to refine the structure at an atomistic level and to predict electronic properties. The results suggest a complex structural hierarchy with consequent nanodomain organization of prepared NH4V3O7 microplatelets.
Internet of medical things embedding deep learning with data augmentation for mammogram density classification

Females are approximately half of the total population worldwide, and most of them are victims of breast cancer (BC). Computer‐aided diagnosis (CAD) frameworks can help radiologists to find breast density (BD), which further helps in BC detection precisely. This research detects BD automatically using mammogram images based on Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) supported devices. Two pretrained deep convolutional neural network models called DenseNet201 and ResNet50 were applied through a transfer learning approach. A total of 322 mammogram images containing 106 fatty, 112 dense, and 104 glandular cases were obtained from the Mammogram Image Analysis Society dataset. The pruning out irrelevant regions and enhancing target regions is performed in preprocessing. The overall classification accuracy of the BD task is performed and accomplished 90.47% through DensNet201 model. Such a framework is beneficial in identifying BD more rapidly to assist radiologists and patients without delay.
Depression Symptoms in Patients with Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy

AIM The study aimed to investigate the possible relationship between diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) and the development of depressive symptoms in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D). METHODS A comparative non-experimental study was conducted. Ninety-five T2D individuals aged 65 years and more were recruited. The sample was divided into two groups: 50 participants with T2D and without DPN and 45 participants with T2D and DPN. The Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9) was used to collect information about low mood and depression symptoms in the subjects recruited. RESULTS Participants with DPN recorded higher scores on PHQ-9 than those with T2D only. The mean PHQ-9 score for the DPN group (6.09) was significantly higher than that for the T2D only group (2.24) (p < 0.001). Participants with DPN were more likely to have mild to moderate or moderately severe low mood and depression symptoms than T2D only participants who exhibited minimal to no low mood and depressive symptoms. CONCLUSIONS The association between DPN and depression is confirmed by this study, with significant depressive symptoms found in patients with neuropathy when compared to diabetes patients with no neurological complications. It is therefore important that discomfort and emotional problems caused by DPN should be taken seriously and addressed closely in the management of DPN in order to prevent depression. Also, a change in screening practices to identify patients with diabetes and depressive symptoms is required.
Comparison of severe pediatric complicated influenza patients with and without neurological involvement

Abstract Although influenza is generally an acute, self-limited, and uncomplicated disease in healthy children, it can result in severe morbidity and mortality. The objectives of this study were to analyze and compare the clinical features and outcome of severe pediatric influenza with and without central nervous system (CNS) involvement. We conducted a retrospective observational study of children admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) of China Medical University Children's Hospital in Taiwan with a confirmed diagnosis of influenza. The demographic data, clinical and laboratory presentations, therapeutic strategies, and neurodevelopmental outcomes for these patients were analyzed. Furthermore, comparison of patients with and without CNS involvement was conducted. A total of 32 children with severe influenza were admitted during the study periods. Sixteen children were categorized as the non-CNS (nCNS) group and 16 children were categorized as the CNS group. Nine of them had underlying disease. The most common complication in the nCNS group was acute respiratory distress syndrome, (n = 8/16), followed by pneumonia (n = 7/16, 44%). In the CNS group, the most lethal complication was acute necrotizing encephalopathy (n = 3/16) which led to 3 deaths. The overall mortality rate was higher in the CNS group (n = 6) than in the nCNS group (n = 1) (37.5% vs 6.25%, P = .03). The mortality rate of severe complicated influenza was significantly higher with CNS involvement. Children with primary cardiopulmonary abnormalities were at high risk of developing severe complicated influenza, while previously healthy children exhibited risk for influenza-associated encephalitis/encephalopathy.
Unprecedented Biting Performance in Herbivorous Fish: How the Complex Biting System of Pomacentridae Circumvents Performance Trade-Offs

It is well accepted that the complexity of functional systems may mitigate performance trade-offs. However, data supporting this theory are hard to find because they need to be based on a functional system with different complexity levels in closely related species. The Pomacentridae (damselfishes) provide an excellent opportunity to test this hypothesis because most of the species have two mouth-closing systems: the first using the adductor mandibulae, as in all teleost fishes, and the second relying on the ceratomandibular (cmd) ligament, a synapomorphic trait of the family. Interestingly, some pomacentrids have secondarily lost the cmd ligament during evolution and therefore have a less complex mouth-closing system. Using dissection, kinematic analysis, and mathematical modeling, we demonstrated that the possession of two mouth-closing systems enabled grazing damselfishes to have a forceful and extremely fast bite. This combination challenges a major functional trade-off in fish jaw dynamics, as systems better suited for force transmission are usually less suited for speed transmission, and vice versa. The combination of grazing behavior, small and robust lower jaws (conferring high biting force), and an ultrafast bite is unusual within actinopterygians. These attributes and their associated performance seem to be required conditions to colonize the ecological niche of farming, that is, the maintenance of small filamentous algae crops serving as both food and storage.
Synthesis and solid-state fluorescence of aryl substituted 2-halogenocinchomeronic dinitriles

Based on the reaction of available adducts of tetracyanoethylene (TCNE) and aromatic ketones (4-aryl-4-oxoalkane-1,1,2,2-tetracarbonitriles) with hydrogen chloride, several aryl substituted 2-halogencinchomeronic dinitriles were synthesized. We found that aryl substituted derivatives, in contrast to alkyl substituted ones, possess an intensive solid state fluorescence. The relationship between the chemical structures and photophysical properties of these compounds was investigated.
Short-term ciprofloxacin prophylaxis for prostate biopsy and risk of aortic aneurysm. Nationwide, population-based cohort study

Abstract Introduction The use of quinolones has recently been questioned due to reports on side effects including an increased risk of aortic aneurysm. The aim of the study was to examine the risk of aortic aneurysm (AA) after short-term ciprofloxacin as prophylaxis for prostate biopsy. Materials and Methods We used the Prostate Cancer data Base Sweden and investigated 192,024 prostate biopsy exposures vs. 554,974 non-exposures for risk of AA. Prostate biopsy was used as a proxy for quinolone use as short-term ciprofloxacin is the recommended and documented prophylaxis in Sweden for this procedure. The outcome was the hazard ratio (HR) of AA in men who underwent a biopsy vs. those that did not. Results The absolute risk of AA was small, 39/10,000 person years for all AÁs and for ruptured AÁs 3.5/10,000 person years. In multivariate analyses, there were small, non-significant increases in risk of all AA’s (adjusted HR = 1.13, 95% CI: 0.91 to 1.39) and ruptured AÁs (adjusted HR = 1.05, 95% CI: 0.52 to 2.15) in men who underwent biopsy. A significantly increased risk of AA was observed in men diagnosed with high-risk prostate cancer on biopsy (HR = 1.50, 95% CI: 1.15–2.21). The use of prostate biopsy as a proxy for exposure to ciprofloxacin was a limitation of the study. Conclusions Short-term ciprofloxacin was not associated with an increased risk of aortic aneurysm and the increased risk in men with high-risk prostate cancer was likely due detection bias caused by imaging more commonly performed in these men.
A Very Simple and Sensitive Spectrofluorimetric Method Based on the Oxidation with Cerium (IV) for the Determination of Four Different Drugs in Their Pharmaceutical Formulations

Background: Methyldopa is a catecholamine widely used as an antihypertensive agent. Pioglitazone is an oral anti-hyperglycemic agent. It is used for the treatment of diabetes mellitus type 2. A survey of the literature reveals that only one spectrofluorimetric method has been reported for the determination of pioglitazone in pharmaceutical preparations. Atenolol and metoprolol are prescription drugs of the β-blocker class with hypotensive action to treat angina, MI, alcohol syndrome, hypertension, and arrhythmias. A survey of the literature reveals that several spectrofluorimetric methods have been reported for the determination of atenolol and metoprolol in pharmaceutical preparations. In continuing of our studies on the developing of simple and fast spectrofluorimetric methods for determination of drugs and active ingredients, in this work we have developed a spectrofluorimetric method based on the oxidation with cerium (IV) for the determination of studied drugs in their pharmaceutical formulations. Methods: A simple, rapid and sensitive spectrofluorimetric method was developed for the determination of studied drugs in pharmaceutical formulations. Proposed method is based on the oxidation of these drugs with Ce (IV) to produce Ce (III), and its fluorescence was monitored at 356 ± 3 nm after excitation at 254 ± 3 nm. Results: The variables affecting oxidation of each drug were studied and optimized. Under the experimental conditions used, the calibration graphs were linear over the range of 25-450, 50-550, 15-800 and 15-800 ng/mL in the case of atenolol, metoprolol, pioglitazone and methyldopa, respectively. The limit of detection was found to be 8.27, 16.5, 1.52 and 5.08 ng/mL in the case of atenolol, metoprolol, pioglitazone and methyldopa, respectively. Intra- and inter-day assay precisions, expressed as the relative standard deviation (RSD), were lower than 3% in all cases. Conclusion: The proposed method was applied to the determination of studied drugs in their pharmaceutical formulations by good recoveries in the range 92-113%.
Low bottleneck detection in long-lived species despite lost genetic diversity: a case study of tuatara and eastern massasauga rattlesnakes.

Population bottlenecks can reduce genetic diversity and may lead to inbreeding depression. However, some studies have provided evidence that long lifespans buffer negative genetic effects of bottlenecks. Others have cautioned that longevity might merely mask the effects of genetic drift, which will still affect long-term population viability. We used microsatellite data from actual populations of tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) and eastern massasaugas (Sistrurus catenatus) as a starting point for simulated population declines to evaluate the performance of bottleneck tests under a range of scenarios. We quantified losses in genetic diversity for each scenario and assessed the power of commonly used tests (i.e., M-ratio, heterozygosity excess, and mode-shift) to detect known bottlenecks in these moderate- to long-lived species. Declines in genetic diversity were greater in bottlenecks simulated for eastern massasaugas, the shorter-lived species, and mode-shift and heterozygosity excess tests were more sensitive to population declines in this species. Conversely, M-ratio tests were more sensitive to bottlenecks simulated in tuatara. Despite dramatic simulated population declines, heterozygosity excess and mode-shift tests often failed to detect bottlenecks in both species, even when large losses in genetic diversity had occurred (both allelic diversity and heterozygosity). While not eliminating type II error, M-ratio tests generally performed best and were most reliable when a critical value (Mc) of 0.68 was used. However, in tuatara simulations, M-ratio tests had high rates of type I error when Mc was calculated assuming θ = 10. Our results suggest that reliance on these tests could lead to misguided species management decisions.
Cameroonian medicinal plants as potential candidates of SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors

Abstract Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an ongoing pandemic instigated by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) which changed the daily train of the world’s population and cause several dead. Despite the significant efforts made in developing vaccines and therapeutic drugs, there is currently no available effective treatment against this new coronavirus infection, hence the need to continue research which is aimed at limiting the progression of this virus. The present study which has as objective to carry out in silico studies on the metabolites of some Cameroonian medicinal plants of the Asteraceae family with a view to propose potential molecules to fight against COVID-19. The selected plants are commonly used to treat respiratory infectious diseases, and for this reason they may contain some constituents which could exhibit an antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2. In this work, a set of 74 naturally occurring compounds are computed with SARS-CoV-2 main protease protein (PDB ID: 6lu7) and spike protein (PDB ID: 6m0j) for their affinity and stability using binding energy analysis and molecular docking. Chrysoeriol-7-O-β-D-glucuronopyranoside (compound 16) has showed promising results including excellent Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism and Excretion (ADME) parameters as well as insignificant toxicity. Finally, the stability of this compound is complex with the two proteins validated through molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, they displayed stable trajectory and molecular properties with consistent interaction profile in molecular dynamics simulations. These findings call for further in vitro and in vivo challenges of phytoconstituents against the COVID-19 as a potential agent to fight the spread of this dramatic pandemic. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma
Evaluating the value of Amphiregulin, Phosphatase and Tensin Homologue (PTEN) and P21 Expression for Anti-EGFR Treatment in Metastatic Colorectal Carcinoma

Background: Despite the significant progress in target therapy for the treatment of metastatic colorectal carcinoma (mCRC), the overall survival isn’t satisfactory. Methods: We assessed the expression of Amphiregulin, PTEN, and P21 in sections from 23 paraffin blocks prepared from 23 patients with left-sided mCRC using immunohistochemistry (IHC). The relationship between their level of expressions, clinicopathological parameters, response to anti-EGFR, and prognosis were analyzed. Results: High Amphiregulin, PTEN and low P21 expression levels were associated with low tumor grade (p= 0.038 and 0.025 respectively), better response to anti-EGFR treatment (p <0.001), and favorable outcome {progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS)} (p <0.05). There was a direct relation between Amphiregulin and PTEN expressions (phi coefficient=+0.840), while there was an inverse relation between P21expression and both Amphiregulin (phi coefficient= -0.840) and PTEN expressions (phi coefficient = -1.000), which was statistically significant (P <0.001). Conclusion: High Amphiregulin and PTEN expression levels and low P21 expression levels were associated with better response to anti-EGFR therapy and improved survival outcome. They might be considered predictive markers of response to anti-EGFR therapy in mCRC.
Composited FishNet: Fish Detection and Species Recognition From Low-Quality Underwater Videos

The automatic detection and identification of fish from underwater videos is of great significance for fishery resource assessment and ecological environment monitoring. However, due to the poor quality of underwater images and unconstrained fish movement, traditional hand-designed feature extraction methods or convolutional neural network (CNN)-based object detection algorithms cannot meet the detection requirements in real underwater scenes. Therefore, to realize fish recognition and localization in a complex underwater environment, this paper proposes a novel composite fish detection framework based on a composite backbone and an enhanced path aggregation network called Composited FishNet. By improving the residual network (ResNet), a new composite backbone network (CBresnet) is designed to learn the scene change information (source domain style), which is caused by the differences in the image brightness, fish orientation, seabed structure, aquatic plant movement, fish species shape and texture differences. Thus, the interference of underwater environmental information on the object characteristics is reduced, and the output of the main network to the object information is strengthened. In addition, to better integrate the high and low feature information output from CBresnet, the enhanced path aggregation network (EPANet) is also designed to solve the insufficient utilization of semantic information caused by linear upsampling. The experimental results show that the average precision (AP)0.5:0.95, AP50 and average recall (AR)max=10 of the proposed Composited FishNet are 75.2%, 92.8% and 81.1%, respectively. The composite backbone network enhances the characteristic information output of the detected object and improves the utilization of characteristic information. This method can be used for fish detection and identification in complex underwater environments such as oceans and aquaculture.
Score tests for scale effects, with application to genomic analysis

Tests for variance or scale effects due to covariates are used in many areas and recently, in genomic and genetic association studies. We study score tests based on location‐scale models with arbitrary error distributions that allow incorporation of additional adjustment covariates. Tests based on Gaussian and Laplacian double generalized linear models are examined in some detail. Numerical properties of the tests under Gaussian and other error distributions are examined. Our results show that the use of model‐based asymptotic distributions with score tests for scale effects does not control type 1 error well in many settings of practical relevance. We consider simple statistics based on permutation distribution approximations, which correspond to well‐known statistics derived by another approach. They are shown to give good type 1 error control under different error distributions and under covariate distribution imbalance. The methods are illustrated through a differential gene expression analysis involving breast cancer tumor samples.
Streptozotocin‐Induced Diabetic Models in Mice and Rats

Streptozotocin (STZ) is an antibiotic that causes pancreatic islet β‐cell destruction and is widely used experimentally to produce a model of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). Detailed in this article are protocols for producing STZ‐induced insulin deficiency and hyperglycemia in mice and rats. Also described are protocols for creating animal models for type 2 diabetes using STZ. These animals are employed for assessing the pathological consequences of diabetes and for screening potential therapies for the treatment of this condition. © 2021 The Authors.
Neck and shoulder pain in adolescents seldom occur alone: Results from the Norwegian Ungdata Survey

No previous studies have investigated the prevalence of co‐occurring neck/shoulder pain, other musculoskeletal pain, headache and depressive symptoms in adolescents. This study aimed to describe the prevalence of isolated neck/shoulder pain and the co‐occurrence of neck/shoulder pain with other musculoskeletal pain, headache and depressive symptoms in Norwegian adolescents.