Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treatment of radiation proctitis by coagulation: long term results

Results — The mean course number was 2.3 (extremes 1-5). Bleeding score decreased from 2.67 to 0.77 (P < 0.001). The success rate was 26/30 patients (87%) in an intention-to-treat analysis with 2 failures (6%), 1 patient lost for follow up and 1 patient not referred after one session. Improvement in endoscopic appearance was observed in the 13 endoscopically controlled patients with a decrease of the endoscopic score from 1.61 to 0.3 (P < 0.002). The overall morbidity was 47% with 3 severe complications (10%): 1 severe bleeding, 1 extensive necrosis of lower part of the rectum and 1 perforation. We also noticed 3 microrecties and 2 symptomless rectal stenosis. With regard to tolerance, we observed post treatment pain in 6 patients (20%), easily released by usual antalgics. Complications and side effects occurred, in all patients but one, when power shot was > 45 W. Mean follow up was 20 months (3 to 35 months). Hematochezia recurred in 4 patients, but were easily treated with 1 APC course.
QUBIC2: a novel and robust biclustering algorithm for analyses and interpretation of large-scale RNA-Seq data

MOTIVATION The biclustering of large-scale gene expression data holds promising potential for detecting condition-specific functional gene modules (i.e., biclusters). However, existing methods do not adequately address a comprehensive detection of all significant bicluster structures and have limited power when applied to expression data generated by RNA-Sequencing (RNA-Seq), especially single-cell RNA-Seq (scRNA-Seq) data, where massive zero and low expression values are observed. RESULTS We present a new biclustering algorithm, QUalitative BIClustering algorithm Version 2 (QUBIC2), which is empowered by: (i) a novel left-truncated mixture of Gaussian model for an accurate assessment of multimodality in zero-enriched expression data, (ii) a fast and efficient dropouts-saving expansion strategy for functional gene modules optimization using information divergency, and (iii) a rigorous statistical test for the significance of all the identified biclusters in any organism, including those without substantial functional annotations. QUBIC2 demonstrated considerably improved performance in detecting biclusters compared to other five widely-used algorithms on various benchmark datasets from E. coli, Human, and simulated data. QUBIC2 also showcased robust and superior performance on gene expression data generated by microarray, bulk RNA-Seq, and scRNA-Seq. AVAILABILITY The source code of QUBIC2 is freely available at https://github.com/OSU-BMBL/QUBIC2. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Lessons learned from recent clinical trials of ketogenic diet therapies in adults.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW Although ketogenic diet therapies (KDTs) were first developed as a treatment for patients with epilepsy, their potential efficacy for a broader number of neurologic and nonneurologic disorders and conditions has been explored over the last 10-20 years. The most recent clinical trials of KDTs in adults have highlighted common methodological aspects that can either facilitate or thwart appropriate risk/benefit analyses, comparisons across studies, and reproducibility of findings in future studies. RECENT FINDINGS Recent evidence suggests that KDTs not only improve seizure control, but also improve other neurologic conditions, including nonmotor Parkinson's disease symptoms. Therapies targeting nutritional ketosis without comprehensive diet modification improve cognition and cerebral blood flow in Alzheimer's disease patients. KDTs lower hemoglobin A1c levels and diabetes medication use in patients with Type 2 diabetes and mixed results have been observed when used for performance enhancement in athletes and healthy volunteers. SUMMARY Clinical studies of KDTs show promise for a variety of clinical indications. Future studies should factor in high potential participant attrition rates and utilize consistent and standard reporting of diet type(s), compliance measures, and side-effects to enable the reproducibility and generalizability of study outcomes.
Effects of flavoring compounds used in electronic cigarette refill liquids on endothelial and vascular function

Electronic cigarette refill liquids are commercially provided with a wide variety of flavoring agents. A recent study suggested that several common flavors may scavenge nitric oxide (NO) and cause endothelial dysfunction. It was the aim of the present study to investigate the effects of these flavors on NO/cyclic GMP-mediated signaling and vascular relaxation. We tested the flavoring agents for effects on Ca2+-induced cGMP accumulation and NO synthase activation in cultured endothelial cells. NO scavenging was studied with NO-activated soluble guanylate cyclase and as NO release from a NO donor, measured with a NO electrode. Blood vessel function was studied with precontracted rat aortic rings in the absence and presence of acetylcholine or a NO donor. Cinnamaldehyde inhibited Ca2+-stimulated endothelial cGMP accumulation and NO synthase activation at ≥0.3 mM. Cinnamaldehyde and diacetyl inhibited NO-activated soluble guanylate cyclase with IC50 values of 0.56 (0.54–0.58) and 0.29 (0.24–0.36) mM, respectively, and caused moderate NO scavenging at 1 mM that was not mediated by superoxide anions. The other compounds did not scavenge NO at 1 mM. None of the flavorings interfered with acetylcholine-induced vascular relaxation, but they caused relaxation of pre-contracted aortas. The most potent compounds were eugenol and cinnamaldehyde with EC50 values of ~0.5 mM. Since the flavors did not affect endothelium-dependent vascular relaxation, NO scavenging by cinnamaldehyde and diacetyl does not result in impaired blood vessel function. Although not studied in vivo, the low potency of the compounds renders it unlikely that the observed effects are relevant to humans inhaling flavored vapor from electronic cigarettes.
Multimodal Imaging Assessment of Vascular and Neurodegenerative Retinal Alterations in Type 1 Diabetic Patients without Fundoscopic Signs of Diabetic Retinopathy

The aim of this cross-sectional case-control study is to investigate the possible presence of vascular/neurodegenerative alterations in the retina of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) patients without diabetic retinopathy (DR). Thirty-four eyes of 34 consecutive T1DM without DR (mean age 21 ± 2 years) were included. Another cohort of 27 eyes (27 healthy control subjects matched with age and sex) was also recruited. All patients underwent multimodal imaging evaluation using structural optical coherence tomography (OCT), OCT-angiography (OCT-A), dynamic vessel analyzer (DVA) and microperimetry. No significant differences were disclosed comparing diabetics and controls for visual acuity, central macular thickness, and subfoveal choroidal thickness. On retinal nerve fiber layer and ganglion cell complex thickness, no significant differences were disclosed comparing each 3-mm-diameter macular and peripapillary subfield between two groups. Using OCT-A, deep capillary plexus perfusion density (PD) of diabetics was significantly lower compared to control group, whereas PD of other retinal/choriocapillaris plexuses and foveal avascular zone area did not show any significant difference. Using DVA, diabetic eyes revealed a significantly decreased vessel response to flicker light in comparison to controls. No differences were disclosed using microperimetry analysis. Taken together, these results suggest that vascular alterations could be the first detectable retinal change in the development of DR.
A comparative study of the behavior of neural progenitor cells in extrusion-based in vitro hydrogel models

With the aid of extrusion-based biofabrication strategies, neural stem/progenitor cell-laden hydrogel structures can be fabricated for use in neural research. Extrusion-based strategies can be altered in order to fulfill various requirements. In this study, mouse neural progenitor cell (NE-4C) behaviors in multiple extrusion-based fabricated microenvironments were investigated. Extrusion-based bioprinted cell-laden structures and coaxially extruded core–shell cell fibers were successfully fabricated. Cell distribution and morphology were observed in different structures with scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Genes and proteins related to cell differentiation were examined using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and western blot (WB). The results show that compared with NE-4Cs cultured in petri dishes, the abundance of nestin was 6.28 ± 1.38 times higher in bioprinted structures and the abundances of Tuj-1 and GFAP were 3.14 ± 1.38 and 2.11 ± 0.21 times higher in cell fibers, respectively, indicating that NE-4Cs showed stronger differentiation tendency in cell fibers and weaker tendency in printed structures. This study may provide guidance in selecting fabrication strategies for use in neural research.
Do abstinence-only programs delay the initiation of sex among young people and reduce teen pregnancy?

In May of 2001 the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy published a thorough review of programs designed to delay the initiation of sex increase condom or contraceptive use and reduce teen pregnancy. That review Emerging Answers: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy said at the time that "the evidence is not conclusive about the impact of abstinence-only programs" and that "there do not currently exist any abstinence-only programs with reasonably strong evidence that they actually delay the initiation of sex or reduce its frequency. " Emerging Answers also stated however that based on the relatively meager evidence available "one should not conclude that all abstinence-only programs either do or do not delay sex. " It suggested that some abstinence-only programs may be effective while others may not. In April of 2002 Robert Rector a Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation a Washington DC-based think tank published a paper titled "The Effectiveness of Abstinence Education Programs in Reducing Sexual Activity Among Youth. " Its conclusions were quite different from those of Emerging Answers published a year before. In particular the Heritage paper said that "abstinence education programs for youth have been proven to be effective in reducing early sexual activity" and the paper identified ten studies it said demonstrated that abstinence-only programs can reduce sexual activity among youth. (excerpt)
Ecology and signal structure drive the evolution of synchronous displays *

Animal synchrony is found in phylogenetically distant animal groups, indicating behavioral adaptations to different selective pressures and in different signaling modalities. A notable example of synchronous display is found in fiddler crabs in that males wave their single enlarged claw during courtship. They present species‐specific signals, which are composed of distinctive movement signatures. Given that synchronous waving has been reported for several fiddler crab species, the display pattern could influence the ability of a given species to sufficiently adjust wave timing to allow for synchrony. In this study, we quantified the wave displays of fiddler crabs to predict their synchronous behavior. We combined this information with the group's phylogenetic relationships to trace the evolution of display synchrony in an animal taxon. We found no phylogenetic signal in interspecific variation in predicted wave synchrony, which mirrors the general nonphylogenetic pattern of synchrony across animal taxa. Interestingly, our analyses show that the phenomenon of synchronization stems from the peculiarities of display pattern, mating systems, and the complexity of microhabitats. This is the first study to combine mathematical simulations and phylogenetic comparative methods to reveal how ecological factors and the mechanics of animal signals affect the evolution of the synchronous phenomena.
A Zero-Cross Detection Algorithm for Cavity-Length Interrogation of Fiber-Optic Fabry–Perot Sensors

A zero-cross detection algorithm was proposed for the cavity-length interrogation of fiber-optic Fabry–Perot (FP) sensors. The method can avoid the inaccuracy of peak determination in the conventional peak-to-peak method for the cavity-length interrogation of fiber-optic FP sensors caused by the slow variation of the spectral power density in peak neighboring regions. Both simulations and experiments were carried out to investigate the feasibility and performance of the zero-cross detection algorithm. Fiber-optic FP sensors with cavity lengths in the range of 150–1000 μm were successfully interrogated with a maximum error of 0.083 μm.
Accuracies of genomic prediction for twenty economically important traits in Chinese Simmental beef cattle

Summary Genomic prediction has been widely utilized to estimate genomic breeding values (GEBVs) in farm animals. In this study, we conducted genomic prediction for 20 economically important traits including growth, carcass and meat quality traits in Chinese Simmental beef cattle. Five approaches (GBLUP, BayesA, BayesB, BayesCπ and BayesR) were used to estimate the genomic breeding values. The predictive accuracies ranged from 0.159 (lean meat percentage estimated by BayesCπ) to 0.518 (striploin weight estimated by BayesR). Moreover, we found that the average predictive accuracies across 20 traits were 0.361, 0.361, 0.367, 0.367 and 0.378, and the averaged regression coefficients were 0.89, 0.86, 0.89, 0.94 and 0.95 for GBLUP, BayesA, BayesB, BayesCπ and BayesR respectively. The genomic prediction accuracies were mostly moderate and high for growth and carcass traits, whereas meat quality traits showed relatively low accuracies. We concluded that Bayesian regression approaches, especially for BayesR and BayesCπ, were slightly superior to GBLUP for most traits. Increasing with the sizes of reference population, these two approaches are feasible for future application of genomic selection in Chinese beef cattle.
Non-invasive assessment of ventriculo-arterial coupling using aortic wave intensity analysis combining central blood pressure and phase-contrast cardiovascular magnetic resonance.

BACKGROUND Wave intensity analysis (WIA) in the aorta offers important clinical and mechanistic insight into ventriculo-arterial coupling, but is difficult to measure non-invasively. We performed WIA by combining standard cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) flow-velocity and non-invasive central blood pressure (cBP) waveforms. METHODS AND RESULTS Two hundred and six healthy volunteers (age range 21-73 years, 47% male) underwent sequential phase contrast CMR (Siemens Aera 1.5 T, 1.97 × 1.77 mm2, 9.2 ms temporal resolution) and supra-systolic oscillometric cBP measurement (200 Hz). Velocity (U) and central pressure (P) waveforms were aligned using the waveform foot, and local wave speed was calculated both from the PU-loop (c) and the sum of squares method (cSS). These were compared with CMR transit time derived aortic arch pulse wave velocity (PWVtt). Associations were examined using multivariable regression. The peak intensity of the initial compression wave, backward compression wave, and forward decompression wave were 69.5 ± 28, -6.6 ± 4.2, and 6.2 ± 2.5 × 104 W/m2/cycle2, respectively; reflection index was 0.10 ± 0.06. PWVtt correlated with c or cSS (r = 0.60 and 0.68, respectively, P < 0.01 for both). Increasing age decade and female sex were independently associated with decreased forward compression wave (-8.6 and -20.7 W/m2/cycle2, respectively, P < 0.01) and greater wave reflection index (0.02 and 0.03, respectively, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION This novel non-invasive technique permits straightforward measurement of wave intensity at scale. Local wave speed showed good agreement with PWVtt, and correlation was stronger using the cSS than the PU-loop. Ageing and female sex were associated with poorer ventriculo-arterial coupling in healthy individuals.
T2 mapping in orbital masses: preliminary study on differential diagnostic ability of T2 relaxation time

Background T2 mapping has been proven to be useful in tumor characterization. As to orbital masses, its diagnostic value needs to be investigated. Purpose To evaluate the usefulness of T2 mapping in orbital masses and the ability of T2 relaxation time in differentiating malignant from benign orbital masses. Material and Methods Forty-seven patients with solid orbital masses (33 benign and 14 malignant) who underwent T2 mapping examination for preoperative assessment were enrolled in the current study. T2 mapping was acquired using 16 TE values (range 12–192 ms; delta TE 12 ms). Mean T2 relaxation time was calculated based on the whole mass region of interest and compared between the malignant and benign groups using the unpaired t-test. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was adopted to calculate its diagnostic value. Results Malignant orbital masses showed significantly lower T2 relaxation time than benign masses (76.4 ± 13.0 ms vs. 119.1 ± 20.4 ms; P < 0.001). If setting a T2 relaxation time of 89.5 ms as the threshold value, optimal differentiating performance could be achieved (area under the curve 0.936; sensitivity 100.0%; specificity 87.9%; accuracy 91.5%; positive predictive value 77.8%; negative predictive value 100%). Conclusion T2 mapping and its derived T2 relaxation time could provide quantitative information and serve as a supplementary imaging marker for differentiating malignant from benign orbital masses.
Pregnancy-associated plasma protein A (PAPP-A) and severity of coronary atherosclerosis assessed by angiographic Gensini score

Background: Pregnancy-associated plasma protein A (PAPP-A) is a potentially proatherosclerotic metalloproteinase, which has been shown to be abundantly expressed in ruptured unstable plaques. However, changes of the PAPP-A blood levels in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) according to the Gensini score is unknown in Turkish population. Objective: We hypothesized that pregnancy-associated plasma protein A (PAPP-A) levels might be important in determining the degree of CAD severity and extent according to its relationship with inflammation in the partly unstable plaque area and with proliferative stimulation overall. Methods: Our study population included 145 consecutive patients, who underwent elective diagnostic coronary angiography because of CAD symptoms such as chest pain or shortness of breath. The severity and the extent of CAD were evaluated using the Gensini score. Plasma PAPP-A concentrations were determined by ELISA. Results: Among the 145 study patients (mean age 57 ± 10 years; 97 men and 48 women), 80 had mild CAD (Gensini score Conclusion: There is still a need for large epidemiological studies to better understand the mechanisms and prognostic roles of both PAPP-A and insulin-like growth factor 1 in asymptomatic subjects and in subjects with well-documented CAD. If the results were promising, the measurement of PAPP-A may become a clinically important tool for risk stratification in patients with chest pain. Keywords: Atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease, Gensini score, PAPP-A, plasma protein A, pregnancyassociated
From Emotions to Mood Disorders: A Survey on Gait Analysis Methodology

Mood disorders affect more than 300 million people worldwide and can cause devastating consequences. Elderly people and patients with neurological conditions are particularly susceptible to depression. Gait and body movements can be affected by mood disorders, and thus they can be used as a surrogate sign, as well as an objective index for pervasive monitoring of emotion and mood disorders in daily life. Here we review evidence that demonstrates the relationship between gait, emotions and mood disorders, highlighting the potential of a multimodal approach that couples gait data with physiological signals and home-based monitoring for early detection and management of mood disorders. This could enhance self-awareness, enable the development of objective biomarkers that identify high risk subjects and promote subject-specific treatment.
Graph Convolutional Network with Sequential Attention for Goal-Oriented Dialogue Systems

Abstract Domain-specific goal-oriented dialogue systems typically require modeling three types of inputs, namely, (i) the knowledge-base associated with the domain, (ii) the history of the conversation, which is a sequence of utterances, and (iii) the current utterance for which the response needs to be generated. While modeling these inputs, current state-of-the-art models such as Mem2Seq typically ignore the rich structure inherent in the knowledge graph and the sentences in the conversation context. Inspired by the recent success of structure-aware Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) for various NLP tasks such as machine translation, semantic role labeling, and document dating, we propose a memory-augmented GCN for goal-oriented dialogues. Our model exploits (i) the entity relation graph in a knowledge-base and (ii) the dependency graph associated with an utterance to compute richer representations for words and entities. Further, we take cognizance of the fact that in certain situations, such as when the conversation is in a code-mixed language, dependency parsers may not be available. We show that in such situations we could use the global word co-occurrence graph to enrich the representations of utterances. We experiment with four datasets: (i) the modified DSTC2 dataset, (ii) recently released code-mixed versions of DSTC2 dataset in four languages, (iii) Wizard-of-Oz style CAM676 dataset, and (iv) Wizard-of-Oz style MultiWOZ dataset. On all four datasets our method outperforms existing methods, on a wide range of evaluation metrics.
Multi-Parameter Optimization Study on the Crashworthiness Design of a Vehicle by Using Global Sensitivity Analysis and Dynamic Meta-model

In a vehicle’s concept design stage, there are usually a lot of design parameters need to be defined and optimized. For such a complex and non-linear system of a vehicle, multi-parameter optimization not only has a great computation, but also face the difficulty to obtain optimum solutions. This paper aimed at an optimization problem of a vehicle’s crashworthiness with 20 design parameters, and presented a new method which uses global sensitivity analysis and dynamic meta-model. First, vehicle crash simulation model was constructed and design parameters were simplified by using global sensitivity analysis, then, the sensitive parameters were used to construct an initial meta-model. During the optimization solving process, the design domain and meta-model were updated continually until the accuracy of the solutions met the requirement of the convergence criteria. Final results showed that the presented method in this paper could not only successfully solve the multi-parameter optimization problem, but also significantly reduce the computation time and cost.
Design and Synthesis of Benzimidazole-Chalcone Derivatives as Potential Anticancer Agents

Numerous reports have shown that conjugated benzimidazole derivatives possess various kinds of biological activities, including anticancer properties. In this report, we designed and synthesized 24 new molecules comprising a benzimidazole ring, arene, and alkyl chain-bearing cyclic moieties. The results showed that the N-substituted benzimidazole derivatives bearing an alkyl chain and a nitrogen-containing 5- or 6-membered ring enhanced the cytotoxic effects on human breast adenocarcinoma (MCF-7) and human ovarian carcinoma (OVCAR-3) cell lines. Among the 24 synthesized compounds, (2E)-1-(1-(3-morpholinopropyl)-1H-benzimidazol-2 -yl)-3-phenyl-2-propen-1-one) (23a) reduced the proliferation of MCF-7 and OVCAR-3 cell lines demonstrating superior outcomes to those of cisplatin.