Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of Cyclosaplin Efficacy Using a Silk Based 3D Tumor Model

Development of novel anti-cancer peptides requires a rapid screening process which can be accelerated by using appropriate in vitro tumor models. Breast carcinoma tissue is a three-dimensional (3D) microenvironment, which contains a hypoxic center surrounded by dense proliferative tissue. Biochemical clues provided by such a 3D cell mass cannot be recapitulated in conventional 2D culture systems. In this experiment, we evaluate the efficacy of the sandalwood peptide, cyclosaplin, on an established in vitro 3D silk breast cancer model using the invasive MDA-MB-231 cell line. The anti-proliferative effect of the peptide on the 3D silk tumor model is monitored by alamarBlue assay, with conventional 2D culture as control. The proliferation rate, glucose consumed, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9) activity of human breast cancer cells are higher in 3D constructs compared to 2D. A higher concentration of drug is required to achieve 50% cell death in 3D culture than in 2D culture. The cyclosaplin treated MDA-MB-231 cells showed a significant decrease in MMP-9 activity in 3D constructs. Microscopic analysis revealed the formation of cell clusters evenly distributed in the scaffolds. The drug treated cells were less in number, smaller and showed unusual morphology. Overall, these findings indicate the role of cyclosaplin as a promising anti-cancer therapeutic.
Muscle Antioxidant Enzymes Activity and Gene Expression Are Altered by Diet-Induced Increase in Muscle Essential Fatty Acid (α-linolenic acid) Concentration in Sheep Used as a Model

This study investigated the effect of dietary manipulations on muscle fatty acid composition, the activities and relative mRNA expressions of antioxidant enzymes and the relationship between muscle enzyme activity or mRNA expression and alpha linolenic acid (ALA) concentration in sheep. Eighty-four lambs blocked on liveweight were randomly allocated to four dietary treatments, lucerne pasture (Lucerne), annual ryegrass pasture (Ryegrass), feedlot pellets (Feedlot) or annual ryegrass plus feedlot pellets (RyeFeedlot). After six weeks of feeding, lambs were slaughtered and within 30 min post-mortem, samples collected from the longissimus lumborum (LL) muscle for RNA isolation and measurement of antioxidant enzyme activities. At 24 h post-mortem, LL samples were collected for determination of fatty acid concentrations. Feedlot treatment decreased ALA, eicosapentaenoic (EPA), docosapentaenoic (DPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA) concentrations compared with other treatments and increased linoleic acid (LA) and arachidonic acid (AA) compared with Lucerne and Ryegrass (p < 0.001). The activity of Glutathione peroxidase (GPX1, p < 0.001) and Superoxide dismutase (SOD2, p < 0.001) enzymes in the muscle increased with Lucerne compared to other treatments. Lucerne increased muscle gpx1 mRNA expression by 1.74-fold (p = 0.01) and 1.68-fold (p = 0.05) compared with Feedlot and other diets, respectively. The GPX1 (r2 = 0.319, p = 0.002) and SOD2 (r2 = 0.244, p = 0.009) enzyme activities were positively related to ALA. There was a positive linear relationship between muscle gpx1 (r2 = 0.102, p = 0.017) or sod2 (r2 = 0.049, p = 0.09) mRNA expressions and ALA concentration. This study demonstrates that diet can affect concentrations of ALA and other fatty acids as well as change activities and gene expression of antioxidant enzymes in muscle. Increased antioxidant activity may, in turn, have beneficial effects on the performance, health and wellbeing of animals and humans.
Lack of Association between PTPN22 (+1858 C>T) rs2476601 polymorphism and susceptibility to rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in Northeast of Iran

Hadi Bazzazi, Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, Gorgan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Gorgan, Iran hadi.bazzazi@gmail.com Abstract Background and objectives: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease with a complex genetic background. The protein tyrosine phosphatase non-receptor type 22 (PTPN22) is a lymphoid specific protein tyrosine phosphatase which is involved in negative regulation of T cell response. Several studies have assessed the association between PTPN22 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with RA susceptibility. Here, we aimed to assess the association of PTPN22 (1858 C>T) variant with the susceptibility to RA in northeast of Iran. Methods: A total of 127 RA patients and 119 ageand sexmatched healthy donors were enrolled. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) followed by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) technique (PCR-RFLP) was applied to detect PTPN22 (1858 C>T) SNP. SPSS 22.0 software was used to analyze data using relevant statistical tests. Results: Comparison of allele and genotype frequencies of PTPN22 (1858 C>T) SNP in RA patients and healthy donors revealed no significant association with RA susceptibility. Conclusion: The present study suggests that the PTPN22 (1858 C>T) genetic variants are not associated with RA susceptibility and disease activity. While this is the first report from northeast of Iran, further studies are needed to confirm these findings.
Assessment of medication usage awareness among rural population living in resource limited settings

Rational drug use is a practice in which patients receive medications appropriate to their clinical needs, in doses that meet their own individual requirements, for an adequate duration, and at the lowest cost to them and their community. Irrational use of medicines results in serious morbidity and mortality. Rational prescription of drugs and rational use of drugs ha s been a concern in both developed and developing countries. The overriding purpose of our study is to evaluate the rural patient’s knowledge about their prescribed drugs and to have an idea about their compliance to their treatment. In this prospective interview based study patient’s medication usage awareness and drug usage problem(s) related to patient therapy was assessed by using a self structured questionnaire. A total of 200 patients living in the rural region of Rajampet, Kadapa District were enrolled. It was found that all 200 (100%) patients were aware about the frequency of their medication and the majority (80%) of the patients knew how they were supposed to administer their medication. It was observed that patients were least aware about the possible side effects (2%) of their medications and the dose of their prescribed medications. Our research study concludes that most of patients lack the knowledge of their medications. So there is a definite need of proper patient counseling by the health care providers like pharmacists to improve knowledge of medication usage among rural patients. Keywords: Rational drug use; Medication usage awareness; Drug usage problems; Patient’s knowledge; Compliance.
Estimating real-time high-street footfall from Wi-Fi probe requests

ABSTRACT The accurate measurement of human activity with high spatial and temporal granularity is crucial for understanding the structure and function of the built environment. With increasing mobile ownership, the Wi-Fi ‘probe requests’ generated by mobile devices can act as a cheap, scalable and real-time source of data for establishing such measures. The two major challenges we face in using these probe requests for estimating human activity are: filtering the noise generated by the uncertain field of measurement and clustering anonymised probe requests generated by the same devices together without compromising the privacy of the users. In this paper, we demonstrate that we can overcome these challenges by using class intervals and a novel graph-based technique for filtering and clustering the probe requests which in turn, enables us to reliably measure real-time pedestrian footfall at retail high streets.
GABAergic Medial Septal Neurons with Low-Rhythmic Firing Innervating the Dentate Gyrus and Hippocampal Area CA3

The medial septum implements cortical theta oscillations, a 5–12 Hz rhythm associated with locomotion and paradoxical sleep reflecting synchronization of neuronal assemblies such as place cell sequence coding. Highly rhythmic burst-firing parvalbumin-positive GABAergic medial septal neurons are strongly coupled to theta oscillations and target cortical GABAergic interneurons, contributing to coordination within one or several cortical regions. However, a large population of medial septal neurons of unidentified neurotransmitter phenotype and with unknown axonal target areas fire with a low degree of rhythmicity. We investigated whether low-rhythmic-firing neurons (LRNs) innervated similar or different cortical regions to high-rhythmic-firing neurons (HRNs) and assessed their temporal dynamics in awake male mice. The majority of LRNs were GABAergic and parvalbumin-immunonegative, some expressing calbindin; they innervated interneurons mostly in the dentate gyrus (DG) and CA3. Individual LRNs showed several distinct firing patterns during immobility and locomotion, forming a parallel inhibitory stream for the modulation of cortical interneurons. Despite their fluctuating firing rates, the preferred firing phase of LRNs during theta oscillations matched the highest firing probability phase of principal cells in the DG and CA3. In addition, as a population, LRNs were markedly suppressed during hippocampal sharp-wave ripples, had a low burst incidence, and several of them did not fire on all theta cycles. Therefore, CA3 receives GABAergic input from both HRNs and LRNs, but the DG receives mainly LRN input. We propose that distinct GABAergic LRNs contribute to changing the excitability of the DG and CA3 during memory discrimination via transient disinhibition of principal cells. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT For the encoding and recall of episodic memories, nerve cells in the cerebral cortex are activated in precisely timed sequences. Rhythmicity facilitates the coordination of neuronal activity and these rhythms are detected as oscillations of different frequencies such as 5–12 Hz theta oscillations. Degradation of these rhythms, such as through neurodegeneration, causes memory deficits. The medial septum, a part of the basal forebrain that innervates the hippocampal formation, contains high- and low-rhythmic-firing neurons (HRNs and LRNs, respectively), which may contribute differentially to cortical neuronal coordination. We discovered that GABAergic LRNs preferentially innervate the dentate gyrus and the CA3 area of the hippocampus, regions important for episodic memory. These neurons act in parallel with the HRNs mostly via transient inhibition of inhibitory neurons.
Snap and Paycheck Cycles

It is well documented that individuals do not spend the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits smoothly over the month after receipt. Rather, recipients spend a disproportionate share of benefits at the beginning of the benefit month. This has costs for recipients and stores. There is also evidence that other income streams, such as Social Security and paychecks, are not spent smoothly. The presence of these other income streams may bias estimates of the effects of this SNAP cycle on consumption for working SNAP beneficiaries and those who receive other government benefits. We use data from United States Department of Agriculture's National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey to explore how the SNAP cycle is affected by accounting for these other income streams. We find suggestive evidence that the cycle is more pronounced for workers who are paid on a weekly or monthly basis, but little evidence that cycles in other income streams mitigate or exacerbate the SNAP cycle.
A Stacking Approach to Direct Marketing Response Modeling

In this work, we investigate the viability of the stacked generalization approach in predictive modeling of a direct marketing problem. We compare the performance of individual models created using different classification algorithms, and stacked ensembles of these models. The base algorithms we investigate and use to create stacked models are Neural Networks, Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machines (SVM), Naïve Bayes and Decision Tree (CART). These algorithms were selected for their popularity and good performance on similar tasks in previous studies. Using a benchmark experiment and statistical tests, we compared five single algorithm classifiers and 26 stacked ensembles of combinations these algorithms on two popular metrics: Area Under ROC Curve (AUC) and lift. We will demonstrate a significant improvement in the AUC and lift values when the stacked generalization approach is used viz a viz the single-algorithm approach. We conclude that despite its relative obscurity in marketing applications, stacking holds great promise as an ensembling technique for direct marketing problems.
Dynamic Analysis of the Fuselage of a Four-Rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

The four-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle has a light and simple structure, convenient control and broad application prospects, so it has great research significance. In order to study the vibration and response characteristics of the four-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle fuselage, the Ansys Workbench was used to analyze the fuselage. First, the fuselage structure is modeled and modal analysis is performed. The results show that the excitation frequency of the four-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle avoids the natural frequency of the fuselage and avoids the occurrence of resonance. Based on the modal analysis, the harmonic response analysis is carried out. The results show that the fuselage can overcome the harmful vibration caused by the cyclic load generated by the rotor, which provides a theoretical reference and basis for the design and improvement of the fourrotor unmanned aerial vehicle. Keywords— Four-Rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle; Fuselage; Dynamics Analysis; Finite Element Method
Photothermal-responsive nanosized hybrid polymersome as versatile therapeutics codelivery nanovehicle for effective tumor suppression

Significance The use of increasingly sophisticated drugs to treat diseases like cancer often requires increasingly sophisticated delivery technologies, where multiple drugs often must be delivered simultaneously and in precise amounts; moreover, many drugs are hydrophobic and cannot be easily delivered. We report a simple and robust process to fabricate nanometer-sized polymersomes that can simultaneously deliver multiple therapeutics, both hydrophobic and hydrophilic, and have significantly improved drug-loading efficiencies over existing methods. We use these polymersomes to deliver a combination of hydrophobic anticancer drugs in a mouse model and see remarkable effectiveness against breast tumors. This work enables the use of previously undeliverable compounds in cancer therapy and forms a foundation for further development in a broad range of biomedical applications. Effective cancer therapies often demand delivery of combinations of drugs to inhibit multidrug resistance through synergism, and the development of multifunctional nanovehicles with enhanced drug loading and delivery efficiency for combination therapy is currently a major challenge in nanotechnology. However, such combinations are more challenging to administer than single drugs and can require multipronged approaches to delivery. In addition to being stable and biodegradable, vehicles for such therapies must be compatible with both hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs, and release drugs at sustained therapeutic levels. Here, we report synthesis of porous silicon nanoparticles conjugated with gold nanorods [composite nanoparticles (cNPs)] and encapsulate them within a hybrid polymersome using double-emulsion templates on a microfluidic chip to create a versatile nanovehicle. This nanovehicle has high loading capacities for both hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs, and improves drug delivery efficiency by accumulating at the tumor after i.v. injection in mice. Importantly, a triple-drug combination suppresses breast tumors by 94% and 87% at total dosages of 5 and 2.5 mg/kg, respectively, through synergy. Moreover, the cNPs retain their photothermal properties, which can be used to significantly inhibit multidrug resistance upon near-infrared laser irradiation. Overall, this work shows that our nanovehicle has great potential as a drug codelivery nanoplatform for effective combination therapy that is adaptable to other cancer types and to molecular targets associated with disease progression.
Parental Mediation Regarding Children’s Pornography Exposure: The Role of Parenting Style, Protection Motivation and Gender

Communication between parent and child regarding pornography can be awkward. In the following study, we examined if parenting style (authoritarian, authoritative, or permissive) and gender was associated with parental mediation strategies (restrictive, active, and co-use) in relation to pornography exposure, mediated by threat appraisal and coping appraisal (protection motivation theory). A sample of 1,070 Israeli parents of 10- to 14-year-old youth completed a set of online questionnaires. Findings suggested that authoritarian and permissive parents, who had lower scores in authoritative parenthood, were more likely to have dysfunctional (i.e., low-quality) communication about pornography and subsequently be less active in their mediation regarding pornography. Conversely, parents who were more authoritative were more likely to perceive 1 the severity of pornography consumption and were more restrictive and active in mediating pornography. Finally, fathers tended to have more dysfunctional communication about pornography than mothers and were consequently less active in their mediation strategies concerning pornography.
Orientation-Constrained System for Lamp Detection in Buildings Based on Computer Vision

Computer vision is used in this work to detect lighting elements in buildings with the goal of improving the accuracy of previous methods to provide a precise inventory of the location and state of lamps. Using the framework developed in our previous works, we introduce two new modifications to enhance the system: first, a constraint on the orientation of the detected poses in the optimization methods for both the initial and the refined estimates based on the geometric information of the building information modelling (BIM) model; second, an additional reprojection error filtering step to discard the erroneous poses introduced with the orientation restrictions, keeping the identification and localization errors low while greatly increasing the number of detections. These enhancements are tested in five different case studies with more than 30,000 images, with results showing improvements in the number of detections, the percentage of correct model and state identifications, and the distance between detections and reference positions.
SMF-GA: Optimized Multitask Allocation Algorithm in Urban Crowdsourced Transportation

Urban crowdsourced transportation, which can solve traffic problem within city, is a new scenario where citizens share vehicles to take passengers and packages while driving. Differing from the traditional location based crowdsourcing system (e.g., crowdsensing system), the task has to be completed with visiting two different locations (i.e., start and end points), so task allocation algorithms in crowdsensing cannot be leveraged in urban crowdsourced transportation directly. To solve this problem, we first prove that maximizing the crowdsourcing system’s profit (i.e., maximizing the total saved distance) is an NP-hard problem. We propose a heuristic greedy algorithm called Saving Most First (SMF) which is simple and effective in assigning tasks. Then, an optimized SMF based genetic algorithm (SMF-GA) is devised to jump out of the local optimal result. Finally, we demonstrate the performance of SMF and SMF-GA with extensive evaluations, based on a large scale real vehicle traces. The evaluation with large scale real dataset indicates that both SMF and SMF-GA algorithms outperform other benchmark algorithms in terms of saved distance, participant profits, etc.
Investigating the utility of intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring for anterior cervical discectomy and fusion: analysis of over 140,000 cases from the National (Nationwide) Inpatient Sample data set.

OBJECTIVE Intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring (IONM) is a useful adjunct in spine surgery, with proven benefit in scoliosis-correction surgery. However, its utility for anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) is unclear, as there are few head-to-head comparisons of ACDF outcomes with and without the use of IONM. The authors sought to evaluate the impact of IONM on the safety and cost of ACDF. METHODS This was a retrospective analysis of data from the National (Nationwide) Inpatient Sample of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project from 2009 to 2013. Patients with a primary procedure code for ACDF were identified, and diagnosis codes were searched to identify cases with postoperative neurological complications. The authors performed univariate and multivariate logistic regression for postoperative neurological complications with use of IONM as the independent variable; additional covariates included age, sex, surgical indication, multilevel fusion, Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) score, and admission type. They also conducted propensity score matching in a 1:1 ratio (nearest neighbor) with the use of IONM as the treatment indicator and the aforementioned variables as covariates. In the propensity score–matched cohort, they compared neurological complications, length of stay (LOS), and hospital charges (in US dollars). RESULTS A total of 141,007 ACDF operations were identified. IONM was used in 9540 cases (6.8%). No significant association was found between neurological complications and use of IONM on univariate analysis (OR 0.80, p = 0.39) or multivariate regression (OR 0.82, p = 0.45). By contrast, age ≥ 65 years, multilevel fusion, CCI score > 0, and a nonelective admission were associated with greater incidence of neurological complication. The propensity score–matched cohort consisted of 18,760 patients who underwent ACDF with (n = 9380) or without (n = 9380) IONM. Rates of neurological complication were comparable between IONM and non-IONM (0.17% vs 0.22%, p = 0.41) groups. IONM and non-IONM groups had a comparable proportion of patients with LOS ≥ 2 days (19% vs 18%, p = 0.15). The use of IONM was associated with an additional $6843 (p < 0.01) in hospital charges. CONCLUSIONS The use of IONM was not associated with a reduced rate of neurological complications following ACDF. Limitations of the data source precluded a specific assessment of the effectiveness of IONM in preventing neurological complications in patients with more complex pathology (i.e., ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament or cervical deformity).