Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Developing and implementing an exercise-based group for stroke survivors and their carers: the Carers Count group

Abstract Purpose Guidelines recommend that carers of stroke survivors should be engaged early in rehabilitation. There has been limited research implementing exercise programs that include carers. The aims of this study were to develop, facilitate, and evaluate an intervention, the Carers Count group, an exercise-based group for stroke survivors and their carers. Methods Over a 5-month period, a staged approach was used to design the intervention and implementation strategies which would maximise the chances of embedding the intervention within an inpatient stroke ward. Implementation strategies included planning, educating, restructuring, financing, and managing quality. Following development and facilitation of the intervention, outcomes were evaluated through collecting data about therapy time, surveys (n = 30) and interviews (n = 18) with participants, and a focus group with staff. Results Thirty stroke survivors and their carers participated in the Carers Count group. Analysis of time spent in therapy showed that participation led to increased dose of physiotherapy time (service outcome). Survey and interview data suggested that participation in the group was a rewarding and engaging experience for participants (client outcomes). Conclusion Using multifaceted strategies, a group designed to include carers was implemented on a stroke rehabilitation ward. The intervention provided positive outcomes in terms of increased therapy dose and satisfaction according to participant feedback. Clinical Trials registration number ANZCTR12620000708954 Implications for rehabilitation It is possible to develop modes of delivery in rehabilitation that include the carers of stroke survivors and these interventions are considered enjoyable and beneficial. Health professionals should consider interventions that are engaging and fun for stroke survivors and their carers. Health professionals should carefully plan and utilise appropriate implementation strategies when aiming to introduce a new intervention into an established health service. Health professionals should ensure stroke survivors and their carers have an understanding of recovery following stroke and how to maximise outcomes through increasing amount of practice.
Drought alters the carbon footprint of trees in soils—tracking the spatio‐temporal fate of 13C‐labelled assimilates in the soil of an old‐growth pine forest

Above and belowground compartments in ecosystems are closely coupled on daily to annual timescales. In mature forests, this interlinkage and how it is impacted by drought is still poorly understood. Here, we pulse‐labelled 100‐year‐old trees with 13CO2 within a 15‐year‐long irrigation experiment in a naturally dry pine forest to quantify how drought regime affects the transfer and use of assimilates from trees to the rhizosphere and associated microbial communities. It took 4 days until new 13C‐labelled assimilates were allocated to the rhizosphere. One year later, the 13C signal of the 3‐h long pulse labelling was still detectable in stem and soil respiration, which provides evidence that parts of the assimilates are stored in trees before they are used for metabolic processes in the rhizosphere. Irrigation removing the natural water stress reduced the mean C residence time from canopy uptake until soil respiration from 89 to 40 days. Moreover, irrigation increased the amount of assimilates transferred to and respired in the soil within the first 10 days by 370%. A small precipitation event rewetting surface soils altered this pattern rapidly and reduced the effect size to +35%. Microbial biomass incorporated 46 ± 5% and 31 ± 7% of the C used in the rhizosphere in the dry control and irrigation treatment respectively. Mapping the spatial distribution of soil‐respired 13CO2 around the 10 pulse‐labelled trees showed that tree rhizospheres extended laterally 2.8 times beyond tree canopies, implying that there is a strong overlap of the rhizosphere among adjacent trees. Irrigation increased the rhizosphere area by 60%, which gives evidence of a long‐term acclimation of trees and their rhizosphere to the drought regime. The moisture‐sensitive transfer and use of C in the rhizosphere has consequences for C allocation within trees, soil microbial communities and soil carbon storage.
Serum Biglycan as a Diagnostic Marker for Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis and Liver Fibrosis.

BACKGROUND Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) has risen in prevalence substantially through the years. Although course and progression of the disease are variable, fibrosis is the most important factor. We intended to explore utility of serum biglycan (BGN) in NASH and its capacity in anticipating liver fibrosis. METHODS Serum tests of consecutive patients with biopsy-confirmed NASH and age, gender-matched healthy volunteers were utilized to evaluate serum BGN levels using ELISA kits. The correlation between BGN and histopathological highlights of NASH was examined. While patients with fibrosis scores < 2 were assembled in mild and scores of (≥ 2) were in significant fibrosis groups. Univariate/multivariate regression analyses were performed to assess the independent predictive variables of liver fibrosis. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) were applied to locate the best cutoff values of BGN for NASH and fibrosis. RESULTS Seventy patients with NASH and 70 controls were recruited in the study. BGN levels were lower in NASH patients contrasted with controls 137.70 ± 33.12 pg/mL vs. 259.61 ± 187.34 pg/mL, respectively, and p < 0.001. In correlation, serum BGN was related to liver fibrosis and inflammation. The comparison between mild and significant fibrosis groups regarding BGN was as follows 155.92 ± 49.97 pg/mL vs. 390.07 ± 214.746 pg/mL, respectively, (p < 0.001). In multivariate analyses, BGN was an independent predictive factor of significant fibrosis (OR, 1.030; 95% CI: 1.011 - 1.048; p < 0.001). ROC analysis revealed that BGN was statistically significant in determination of significant fibrosis (AUROC, 0.955; 95% CI, 0.877 - 0.990; p < 0.001). Best cutoff value was 189.58 pg/mL with the best sensitivity (93.55%) and specificity (87.18%). CONCLUSIONS Serum BGN may be a new non-invasive indicative marker for the presence of NASH, significant fibrosis, and a treatment goal in the disease process.
Reducing False Triggering Caused by Irrelevant Mental Activities in Brain-Computer Interface Based on Motor Imagery

In recent years, the brain-computer interface (BCI) based on motor imagery (MI) has been considered as a potential post-stroke rehabilitation technology. However, the recognition of MI relies on the event-related desynchronization (ERD) feature, which has poor task specificity. Further, there is the problem of false triggering (irrelevant mental activities recognized as the MI of the target limb). In this paper, we discuss the feasibility of reducing the false triggering rate using a novel paradigm, in which the steady-state somatosensory evoked potential (SSSEP) is combined with the MI (MI-SSSEP). Data from the target (right hand MI) and nontarget task (rest) were used to establish the recognition model, and three kinds of interference tasks were used to test the false triggering performance. In the MI-SSSEP paradigm, ERD and SSSEP features modulated by MI could be used for recognition, while in the MI paradigm, only ERD features could be used. The results showed that the false triggering rate of interference tasks with SSSEP features was reduced to 29.3%, which was far lower than the 55.5% seen under the MI paradigm with ERD features. Moreover, in the MI-SSSEP paradigm, the recognition rate of the target and nontarget task was also significantly improved. Further analysis showed that the specificity of SSSEP was significantly higher than that of ERD (p < 0.05), but the sensitivity was not significantly different. These results indicated that SSSEP modulated by MI could more specifically decode the target task MI, and thereby may have potential in achieving more accurate rehabilitation training.
Post intensive care syndrome across the life course: Looking to the future of paediatric and adult critical care survivorship.

The COVID-19 global pandemic continues to place critical care ser-vices under significant pressures. Despite persistent challenges, optimizing the outcomes of those that survive the intensive care unit (ICU) remains of utmost importance. In this editorial, we take stock of post-ICU survivorship across the life course and propose future areas of focus for the field. The study and clinical follow up of ICU survivors remains a young but growing field, catalysed by the shift in focus of critical care from saving lives to optimizing outcomes. This has culminated in physical, cognitive, and psychological sequelae being described as postintensive care syndrome (PICS). 1,2 More recently, PICS has been conceptualized for the paediatric ICU populous, termed “ PICS-p ” . 3 This is differenti-ated from PICS by the interconnectedness of the critically ill child with their family unit, impact that can transcend physical, cognitive, emotional, and social health domains, and recognition that childhood is a period of significant maturation that can affect outcomes. 3,4 Across the lifecourse PICS and PICS-p are now recognized as a public health burden. In adults, the impact has been shown to persist for decades, with 30% of patients not returning to work, another 30% not returning to their pre-ICU income, and 25% needing increased assistance with daily activities. 5 For the paediatric ICU population survivorship outcome trajectories are largely undefined across the four health domains, with inconsistencies in the measure-ment and reported prevalence evident. However, at 6 months post-ICU, 38% had fatigue and 72% experienced sleep disturbances, 4,6 and at 1 year after their PICU stay, up to 75% can have impaired health related quality of life, over half have functional morbidities, including weakness and feeding problems, 4,7 and greater than 25% have negative psychological and behavioural responses, including post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD, symptoms of depression, fears, and
Hardware Acceleration of the STRIKE String Kernel Algorithm for Estimating Protein to Protein Interactions

Protein-protein interaction (PPI) is an important field in bioinformatics which helps in understanding diseases and devising therapy. PPI aims at estimating the similarity of protein sequences and their common regions. STRIKE was introduced as a PPI algorithm which was able to achieve reasonable improvement over existing PPI prediction methods. Although it consumes a lower execution time than most of other state-of the-art PPI prediction methods, its compute-intensive nature and the large volume of protein sequences in protein databases necessitate further time acceleration. In this paper, we develop hardware accelerator designs for the STRIKE algorithm. Results indicate that the weighted STRIKE accelerator execution times are about 10x longer than the unweighted STRIKE accelerator execution times. To further accelerate the performance of the weighted STRIKE, a parallel module accelerator organization duplicating the weighted STRIKE modules is introduced, achieving near linear speedups for long sequences of 100 or more characters. As demonstrated by Verilog simulations and FPGA runs, the weighted STRIKE module accelerator exhibits three orders of magnitude speed improvement over multi-core and cluster computers. Much higher speedups are possible with the parallel module accelerator.
Direct measurements of ions mobilities in gaseous helium for validation of their indirect determinations using corona discharges

An experiment carried out with the same He gas shows the distinction between negative ions mobility data obtained both by time-of-flight and corona current methods. The negative charge carriers mobility magnitude extracted from corona discharge experiments could be either very close to the one obtained by time of flight (for the more dirty gas) or greater by several fold than that from the time-of-flight experiments (for the smallest impurity level). This is interpreted as the difference in production and capture of electrons in the 2 methods: for plane-plane geometry the number of electrons produced by the photo-cathode is low and they are immediately captured by impurities near the electrodes. In corona the electrons are multiplied by avalanche process before being captured, the lifetime of electrons depending strongly on impurity level. The mixture of both electrons and negative ions in current transport is revealed in the obtained indirect mobility which conversely could be used to appreciate the purity level.
Changing profiles of cancer burden worldwide and in China: a secondary analysis of the global cancer statistics 2020

Abstract Background: Cancer is one of the leading causes of death globally, but its burden is not uniform. GLOBOCAN 2020 has newly updated the estimates of cancer burden. This study summarizes the most recent changing profiles of cancer burden worldwide and in China and compares the cancer data of China with those of other regions. Methods: We conducted a descriptive secondary analysis of the GLOBOCAN 2020 data. To depict the changing global profile of the leading cancer types in 2020 compared with 2018, we extracted the numbers of cases and deaths in 2018 from GLOBOCAN 2018. We also obtained cancer incidence and mortality from the 2015 National Cancer Registry Report in China when sorting the leading cancer types by new cases and deaths. For the leading cancer types according to sex in China, we summarized the estimated numbers of incidence and mortality, and calculated China's percentage of the global new cases and deaths. Results: Breast cancer displaced lung cancer to become the most leading diagnosed cancer worldwide in 2020. Lung, liver, stomach, breast, and colon cancers were the top five leading causes of cancer-related death, among which liver cancer changed from the third-highest cancer mortality in 2018 to the second-highest in 2020. China accounted for 24% of newly diagnosed cases and 30% of the cancer-related deaths worldwide in 2020. Among the 185 countries included in the database, China's age-standardized incidence rate (204.8 per 100,000) ranked 65th and the age-standardized mortality rate (129.4 per 100,000) ranked 13th. The two rates were above the global average. Lung cancer remained the most common cancer type and the leading cause of cancer death in China. However, breast cancer became the most frequent cancer type among women if the incidence was stratified by sex. Incidences of colorectal cancer and breast cancer increased rapidly. The leading causes of cancer death varied minimally in ranking from 2015 to 2020 in China. Gastrointestinal cancers, including stomach, colorectal, liver, and esophageal cancers, contributed to a massive burden of cancer for both sexes. Conclusions: The burden of breast cancer is increasing globally. China is undergoing cancer transition with an increasing burden of lung cancer, gastrointestinal cancer, and breast cancers. The mortality rate of cancer in China is high. Comprehensive strategies are urgently needed to target China's changing profiles of the cancer burden.
Effects of floating-gate interference on NAND flash memory cell operation

Introduced the concept of floating-gate interference in flash memory cells for the first time. The floating-gate interference causes V/sub T/ shift of a cell proportional to the V/sub T/ change of the adjacent cells. It results from capacitive coupling via parasitic capacitors around the floating gate. The coupling ratio defined in the previous works should be modified to include the floating-gate interference. In a 0.12-/spl mu/m design-rule NAND flash cell, the floating-gate interference corresponds to about 0.2 V shift in multilevel cell operation. Furthermore, the adjacent word-line voltages affect the programming speed via parasitic capacitors.
Prognostic factors for incomplete response in thyroid microcarcinoma: an analysis of initial response to therapy in 517 patients

ABSTRACT Objective: Although thyroid microcarcinoma (TMC) usually has a favorable prognosis, some patients present a higher risk of disease recurrence or persistence. Thus, we aimed at identifying possible risk factors associated with an incomplete response to therapy in TMC. Subjects and methods: This was a retrospective study of 517 patients with TMC treated with total thyroidectomy, with or without radioactive iodine (RAI) therapy, reclassified after 1.1 ± 0.4 years according to the response to treatment into “favorable” (excellent/indeterminate) or “unfavorable” (biochemical/structural incomplete) responses. We evaluated participants' age, sex, tumor size, histological variants, multifocality, presence of vascular/lymphatic/perineural invasion, extrathyroidal extension, metastatic lymph nodes (LN), and distant metastasis. The effect of RAI therapy on the response range was analyzed in a given subgroup. Results: The mean age observed was 46.4 ± 12.0 years, and 89.7% were female. We noted 97.5% with papillary carcinoma, 27.8% with multifocality and 11.2% with LN metastasis. Although the majority of patients had a low risk of recurrence/persistence (78%), 75% were submitted to RAI therapy. Incomplete response (20.7%) was associated with multifocality (p=0.041; OR=1.619) and metastatic LN (p=0.041; OR=1.868). These variables were strongly correlated (p=0.000; OR=3.283). No cut-off of tumor size was identified as a predictor of incomplete response by the receiver operating curve analysis. RAI treatment did not influence the response of patients with multifocality or LN metastasis. Conclusion: Multifocality and LN metastasis are independent risk factors for incomplete response in TMC patients and are strongly correlated. Additional RAI therapy was not associated with a more favorable response in these subgroups.
Localization of right ventricular non-apical lead position: comparison of three-dimensional echocardiography, computed tomography, and fluoroscopic imaging

Objective Right ventricular (RV) septal pacing is considered a better pacing procedure compared with traditional apical pacing. This study aimed to investigate agreement among computed tomography (CT), three-dimensional echocardiography (3D-echo), and fluoroscopy for evaluating the tip of the RV pacing lead in the non-apical position in patients with permanent pacemaker implantation. Methods Fifty-four patients were prospectively enrolled. Data on patients’ characteristics and imaging findings were analyzed. The agreement rate in distinguishing the RV septal lead position among the three imaging modalities was determined. Results Thirty-three (61%) patients were men and the median age was 76 years. Overall, the agreement rate among the three imaging modalities was 87% (47/54; Kappa ratio: 0.734). The agreement of 3D-echo compared with thoracic CT (Kappa ratio: 0.893) was better than that for thoracic CT and fluoroscopy (Kappa ratio: 0.658). Agreement between fluoroscopy and 3D-echo was lowest (Kappa ratio: 0.632). Conclusions Agreement in evaluating the position of the septal lead between thoracic CT and 3D-echo is better than that between other imaging modalities. Our findings indicate that 3D-echo imaging might be the best imaging tool for defining the tip of the RV non-apical lead position and be useful for guiding positioning of the RV lead.
Towards Cross-Dataset Palmprint Recognition Via Joint Pixel and Feature Alignment

Deep learning-based palmprint recognition algorithms have shown great potential. Most of them are mainly focused on identifying samples from the same dataset. However, they may be not suitable for a more convenient case that the images for training and test are from different datasets, such as collected by embedded terminals and smartphones. Therefore, we propose a novel Joint Pixel and Feature Alignment (JPFA) framework for such cross-dataset palmprint recognition scenarios. Two-stage alignment is applied to obtain adaptive features in source and target datasets. 1) Deep style transfer model is adopted to convert source images into fake images to reduce the dataset gaps and perform data augmentation on pixel level. 2) A new deep domain adaptation model is proposed to extract adaptive features by aligning the dataset-specific distributions of target-source and target-fake pairs on feature level. Adequate experiments are conducted on several benchmarks including constrained and unconstrained palmprint databases. The results demonstrate that our JPFA outperforms other models to achieve the state-of-the-arts. Compared with baseline, the accuracy of cross-dataset identification is improved by up to 28.10% and the Equal Error Rate (EER) of cross-dataset verification is reduced by up to 4.69%. To make our results reproducible, the codes are publicly available at http://gr.xjtu. edu.cn/web/bell/resource.
Internet-Specific Epistemic Beliefs in Medicine and Intention to Use Evidence-Based Online Medical Databases Among Health Care Professionals: Cross-sectional Survey

Background Evidence-based medicine has been regarded as a prerequisite for ensuring health care quality. The increase in health care professionals’ adoption of web-based medical information and the lack of awareness of alternative access to evidence-based online resources suggest the need for an investigation of their information-searching behaviors of using evidence-based online medical databases. Objective The main purposes of this study were to (1) modify and validate the internet-specific epistemic beliefs in medicine (ISEBM) questionnaire and (2) explore the associations between health care professionals’ demographics, ISEBM, and intention to use evidence-based online medical databases for clinical practice. Methods Health care professionals in a university-affiliated teaching hospital were surveyed using the ISEBM questionnaire. The partial least squares-structural equation modeling was conducted to analyze the reliability and validity of ISEBM. Furthermore, the structural model was analyzed to examine the possible linkages between health professionals’ demographics, ISEBM, and intention to utilize the evidence-based online medical databases for clinical practice. Results A total of 273 health care professionals with clinical working experience were surveyed. The results of the measurement model analysis indicated that all items had significant loadings ranging from 0.71 to 0.92 with satisfactory composite reliability values ranging from 0.87 to 0.94 and average variance explained values ranging from 0.70 to 0.84. The results of the structural relationship analysis revealed that the source of internet-based medical knowledge (path coefficient –0.26, P=.01) and justification of internet-based knowing in medicine (path coefficient 0.21, P=.001) were correlated with the intention to use evidence-based online medical databases. However, certainty and simplicity of internet-based medical knowledge were not. In addition, gender (path coefficient 0.12, P=.04) and academic degree (path coefficient 0.15, P=.004) were associated with intention to use evidence-based online medical databases for clinical practice. Conclusions Advancing health care professionals’ ISEBM regarding source and justification may encourage them to retrieve valid medical information through evidence-based medical databases. Moreover, providing support for specific health care professionals (ie, females, without a master’s degree) may promote their intention to use certain databases for clinical practice.