Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fusobacterium nucleatum and Prevotella in women with periodontitis and preterm birth

Background Studies try to explain the hypothesis that maternal periodontitis may be associated with preterm birth. Material and Methods This is a case-control study with 120, 40 cases (gestational age <37 weeks) and 80 controls (gestational age ≥37 weeks), that were submitted to the clinical periodontal examination and subgingival biofilm collection. Bacterial DNA of subgingival biofilm was performed and processed by qPCR. Results Periodontitis was statistically significant in the Case group (35%) when compared to the Control group (11.2%) and Gingival Bleeding Index (GBI), sites with PS ≥ 4mm and sites with CAL ≥ 5mm were statistically higher in the Case group (p < 0.05). The proportions of Pi (p = 0.026) and Fn (p = 0.041) of subgingival biofilm were higher in the Case group. A greater number of sites with PS ≥ 4mm (r = -0.202; p = 0.026) and CAL ≥ 5mm (r = -0.322; p < 0.001) were correlated to lower gestational age. Conclusions Periodontitis, preterm delivery, and/or low birth weight may have a possible relationship based on clinical parameters and the ratio of Pi and Fn at periodontal sites. Key words:Periodontal diseases, premature birth, fusobacterium nucleatum, prevotella intermedia.
Numerical modeling reveals improved organelle separation for dielectrophoretic ratchet migration

Organelle size varies with normal and abnormal cell function. Thus, size‐based particle separation techniques are key to assessing the properties of organelle subpopulations differing in size. Recently, insulator‐based dielectrophoresis (iDEP) has gained significant interest as a technique to manipulate sub‐micrometer‐sized particles enabling the assessment of organelle subpopulations. Based on iDEP, we recently reported a ratchet device that successfully demonstrated size‐based particle fractionation in combination with continuous flow sample injection. Here, we used a numerical model to optimize the performance with flow rates a factor of three higher than previously and increased the channel volume to improve throughput. We evaluated the amplitude and duration of applied low‐frequency DC‐biased AC potentials improving separation efficiency. A separation efficiency of nearly 0.99 was achieved with the optimization of key parameters—improved from 0.80 in previous studies (Ortiz et al. Electrophoresis, 2022;43;1283–1296)—demonstrating that fine‐tuning the periodical driving forces initiating the ratchet migration under continuous flow conditions can significantly improve the fractionation of organelles of different sizes.
Changes in lung epithelial cell volatile metabolite profile induced by pro-fibrotic stimulation with TGF-β1

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have shown promise as potential biomarkers in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Measuring VOCs in the headspace of in vitro models of lung fibrosis may offer a method of determining the origin of those detected in exhaled breath. The aim of this study was to determine the VOCs associated with two lung cell lines (A549 and MRC-5 cells) and changes associated with stimulation of cells with the pro-fibrotic cytokine, transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1. A dynamic headspace sampling method was used to sample the headspace of A549 cells and MRC-5 cells. These were compared to media control samples and to each other to identify VOCs which discriminated between cell lines. Cells were then stimulated with the TGF-β1 and samples were compared between stimulated and unstimulated cells. Samples were analysed using thermal desorption-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and supervised analysis was performed using sparse partial least squares-discriminant analysis (sPLS-DA). Supervised analysis revealed differential VOC profiles unique to each of the cell lines and from the media control samples. Significant changes in VOC profiles were induced by stimulation of cell lines with TGF-β1. In particular, several terpenoids (isopinocarveol, sativene and 3-carene) were increased in stimulated cells compared to unstimulated cells. VOC profiles differ between lung cell lines and alter in response to pro-fibrotic stimulation. Increased abundance of terpenoids in the headspace of stimulated cells may reflect TGF-β1 cell signalling activity and metabolic reprogramming. This may offer a potential biomarker target in exhaled breath in IPF.
NTCP Calculations of Five Different Irradiation Techniques for the Treatment of Thymoma

This study provided normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) calculations from photon radiotherapy techniques in eleven patients with thymoma. Five plans were created for each participant using three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT), five-field intensity modulated radiotherapy (5F-IMRT), seven-field IMRT (7F-IMRT), and volumetric modulated arc therapy with full arcs (FA-VMAT) and partial arcs (PA-VMAT). The target coverage, homogeneity index and conformation number for the planning target volume (PTV) and dosimetric parameters for the organs-at-risk (OARs) were taken from the fifty-five generated plans. The patient-specific NTCP of the lungs, heart and esophagus was calculated with an in-house software tool using differential dose-volume histograms and the equivalent uniform dose model. The PTV dose metrics from 3D-CRT were inferior to those from IMRT and VMAT plans. The dose constraints for the OARs were met in all treatment plans. The NTCP range of the lungs, heart and esophagus was 0.34–0.49%, 0.03–0.06% and 0.08–0.10%, respectively. The NTCPs of the heart for the incidence of peridarditis from IMRT and VMAT were significantly smaller than those from conformal treatment (p < 0.05). The 7F-IMRT was significantly superior to FA-VMAT in reducing the NTCP of the lungs and the risk of pneumonitis (p = 0.001). Similar superiority of 5F-IMRT over PA-VMAT for lung protection was found (p = 0.009). The presented results may be employed in the selection of the appropriate irradiation technique for restricting the complications in the adjacent OARs.
Sulforaphane supplementation did not modulate NRF2 and NF-kB mRNA expressions in hemodialysis patients.

BACKGROUND Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) have reduced expression of erythroid nuclear factor-related factor 2 (NRF2) and increased nuclear factor κB (NF-κB). "Food as Medicine" has been proposed as an adjuvant therapeutic alternative in modulating these factors. No studies have investigated the effects of sulforaphane (SFN) in cruciferous vegetables on the expression of these genes in patients with CKD. OBJECTIVE The study aimed to evaluate the effects of SFN on the expression of NRF2 and NF-κB in patients on hemodialysis (HD). METHODS A randomized, double-blind, crossover study was performed on 30 patients on regular HD. Fourteen patients were randomly allocated to the intervention group (1 sachet/day of 2.5g containing 1% sulforaphane extract with 0.5% myrosinase) and 16 patients to the placebo group (1 sachet/day of 2.5g containing corn starch coloured with chlorophyll) for two months. After a washout period of 2 months, the groups were switched. NRF2 and NF-κB mRNA expression was evaluated by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction, and TNF-α and IL-6 levels were quantified by ELISA. Malondialdehyde was evaluated as a marker of lipid peroxidation. RESULTS 25 patients (17 women, 55 (IQR=19) years and 55 (IQR=74) months on HD) completed the study. There was no significant difference concerning the expression of mRNA NRF2 (p=0.915) and mRNA NF-κB (p= 0.806) after supplementation with SFN. There was no difference in pro-inflammatory and oxidative stress biomarkers. CONCLUSION 150 μmol of sulforaphane for 2 months had no antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect in CKD patients on HD.
Detection of pregnancy using dielectric properties of urine

Abstract This article investigated and compared the dielectric properties of urine between pregnant women and non-pregnant women. Urine samples were collected from 30 pregnant women and 30 non-pregnant women. Dielectric properties of the urine were measured between 0.2 and 50 GHz at temperatures of 25, 30 and 37 °C. The composition of urine and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) were also determined accordingly. The urine of pregnant women was observed to have statistically significant lower dielectric constant than that of non-pregnant women at three temperatures and at certain frequencies (p < .05, mean relative error <0.48%). Loss factor (p < .05, mean relative error < .56%) and loss tangent (p < .05, mean relative error <0.71%) were statistically significant higher in pregnant women than that in non-pregnant women at three temperatures and at certain frequencies. The dielectric properties decreased with temperature before the crossing point while they increased with temperature after the crossing point. In general, the dielectric properties correlated positively with hCG at low frequencies but they correlated negatively with hCG at high frequencies. The correlation coefficients of more than ±0.85 indicated strong correlation, which suggested potential development of a diagnostic tool for pregnancy using the dielectric properties of urine.
Colloquium
: Superheavy elements: Oganesson and beyond

During the last decade, six new superheavy elements were added into the seventh period of the periodic table, with the approval of their names and symbols. This milestone was followed by proclaiming 2019 the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements by the United Nations General Assembly. According to theory, due to their large atomic numbers, the new arrivals are expected to be qualitatively and quantitatively different from lighter species. The questions pertaining to superheavy atoms and nuclei are in the forefront of research in nuclear and atomic physics, and chemistry. This Colloquium offers a broad perspective on the field and outlines future challenges.
Managers’ Influence on the Prevention of Common Mental Disorders in the Workplace

The study contributes with novel findings of the association between managers’ attitudes towards subordinates with common mental disorders CMD), self-confidence in supporting these subordinates and managerial preventive actions into the area of CMD at work, today one of the most common reasons for sickness absence in many countries. Objective To investigate the association among managers’ attitudes toward subordinates with common mental disorders (CMDs), self-confidence in supporting these subordinates, and managerial preventive actions (MPAs). Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted among Swedish managers (n = 2988) and two types of MPAs: reviewing assignments and work situation (MPA-review), and talking about CMD at the workplace (MPA-talk). Binary logistic regression models were applied and adjusted for individual and organizational covariates. Results Managers with negative attitudes toward subordinates with CMD were less likely to have done both MPAs. Managers with higher self-confidence in supporting these subordinates were more likely to have done both MPAs compared with managers with lower self-confidence. Conclusions Managerial negative attitudes toward CMD and self-confidence in supporting subordinates with CMD have a role in MPAs and should be addressed in manager training programs to encourage preventive actions.
Psychological and physiological acoustics: 1920–1940

The 1920 decade was dominated by new and improved instrumentation and by the Bell Telephone Laboratory program that undertook to measure (physically) speech, hearing, music, noise, and (with E. P. Fowler, Sr.) abnormal hearing. It also introduced syllable articulation and sentence intelligibility tests. Harvey Fletcher summarized all this in Speech and Hearing in 1929. In 1928 Georg V. Bekesy described the traveling wave pattern on the cochlear partition, and in 1930 E. G. Wever and C. W. Bray listened to the electrical output of a cat's auditory nerve. These events initiated a whole new era in the bioacoustics of the ear and the electrophysiology of the auditory system. Psychoacoustic topics of interest included masking, lateralization, combination tones, and subjective scales of pitch and loudness. The different approaches were correlated by S. S. Stevens and H. Davis in Hearing in 1938.
Micro-Meteorological Conditions for Snow Melt

Abstract The energy budget of a snow or ice surface is determined by atmospheric variables like solar and atmospheric long-wave radiation, air temperature, and humidity; the transfer of energy from the free atmosphere to the surface depends on the stability of the atmospheric boundary layer, where vertical profiles of wind speed and temperature determine stability, and on surface conditions like surface temperature (and thus surface humidity), roughness, and albedo. This paper investigates the conditions exactly at the onset or the end of melting using air temperature, humidity, and as the radiation term the sum of global and reflected short-wave plus downward long-wave radiation. For the turbulent exchange in the boundary layer, examples are computed with a transfer coefficient of 18.5 W m−2 K−1 which corresponds to the average over the ablation period on an Alpine glacier. Ways to estimate the transfer coefficient for various degrees of stability are indicated in the Appendix. It appears from such calculations that snow may melt at air temperatures as low as –10°C and may stay frozen at +10°C.
SARS-CoV-2 ORF8 accessory protein is a virulence factor

ABSTRACT Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) encodes six accessory proteins (3a, 6, 7a, 7b, 8, and 9b) for which limited information is available on their role in pathogenesis. We showed that the deletion of open reading frames (ORFs) 6, 7a, or 7b individually did not significantly impact viral pathogenicity in humanized K18-hACE2 transgenic mice. In contrast, the deletion of ORF8 partially attenuated SARS-CoV-2, resulting in reduced lung pathology and 40% less mortality, indicating that ORF8 is a critical determinant of SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis. Attenuation of SARS-CoV-2-∆8 was not associated with a significant decrease in replication either in the lungs of mice or in organoid-derived human airway cells. An increase in the interferon signaling at early times post-infection (1 dpi) in the lungs of mice and a decrease in the pro-inflammatory and interferon response at late times post-infection, both in the lungs of mice (6 dpi) and in organoid-derived human airway cells [72 hours post-infection (hpi)], were observed. The early, but not prolonged, interferon response along with the lower inflammatory response could explain the partial attenuation of SARS-CoV-∆8. The presence of ORF8 in SARS-CoV-2 was associated with an increase in the number of macrophages in the lungs of mice. In addition, the supernatant of SARS-CoV-2-WT (wild-type)-infected organoid-derived cells enhanced the activation of macrophages as compared to SARS-CoV-2-∆8-infected cells. These results show that ORF8 is a virulence factor involved in inflammation that could be targeted in COVID-19 therapies. IMPORTANCE The relevance of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) ORF8 in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 is unclear. Virus natural isolates with deletions in ORF8 were associated with wild milder disease, suggesting that ORF8 might contribute to SARS-CoV-2 virulence. This manuscript shows that ORF8 is involved in inflammation and in the activation of macrophages in two experimental systems: humanized K18-hACE2 transgenic mice and organoid-derived human airway cells. These results identify ORF8 protein as a potential target for COVID-19 therapies. The relevance of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) ORF8 in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 is unclear. Virus natural isolates with deletions in ORF8 were associated with wild milder disease, suggesting that ORF8 might contribute to SARS-CoV-2 virulence. This manuscript shows that ORF8 is involved in inflammation and in the activation of macrophages in two experimental systems: humanized K18-hACE2 transgenic mice and organoid-derived human airway cells. These results identify ORF8 protein as a potential target for COVID-19 therapies.
The Roles of Cultural Capital in Teacher–Student Interactions in China: A Qualitative Study of Students in Higher Vocational Colleges

The theory of cultural capital has long been applied to explain academic achievement. This qualitative study investigated first-year students in higher vocational colleges and, taking this low cultural capital group as an example, explored how cultural capital has affected their past teacher–student interactions. Participants described their experience of interacting with their teachers. We found that these students primarily experienced authoritative and laissez-faire teacher–student interactions. Students’ embodied and institutionalized cultural capital profoundly affected different aspects of the teacher–student interaction. In modern China, vocational and academic education are of the same status, so teachers should modify their evaluations based solely on academic achievement. When interacting with students, teachers should be more understanding and interact in a more student-centred way. Teacher training programmes should also be reformed, and training for teachers in general and vocational schools should be distinguished.
The Future of AI in Ovarian Cancer Research: The Large Language Models Perspective

Conversational large language model (LLM)-based chatbots utilize neural networks to process natural language. By generating highly sophisticated outputs from contextual input text, they revolutionize the access to further learning, leading to the development of new skills and personalized interactions. Although they are not developed to provide healthcare, their potential to address biomedical issues is rather unexplored. Healthcare digitalization and documentation of electronic health records is now developing into a standard practice. Developing tools to facilitate clinical review of unstructured data such as LLMs can derive clinical meaningful insights for ovarian cancer, a heterogeneous but devastating disease. Compared to standard approaches, they can host capacity to condense results and optimize analysis time. To help accelerate research in biomedical language processing and improve the validity of scientific writing, task-specific and domain-specific language models may be required. In turn, we propose a bespoke, proprietary ovarian cancer-specific natural language using solely in-domain text, whereas transfer learning drifts away from the pretrained language models to fine-tune task-specific models for all possible downstream applications. This venture will be fueled by the abundance of unstructured text information in the electronic health records resulting in ovarian cancer research ultimately reaching its linguistic home.
Techniques de synthèse vocale neuronale à l’épreuve des données d’apprentissage non dédiées : les livres audio amateurs en français [Neural speech synthesis techniques put to the test with non-dedicated training data: amateur French audio books]

RÉSUMÉ. Dans cet article, nous nous intéressons à la capacité des systèmes de synthèse vocale neuronale à tirer parti des données non dédiées en langue française. En effet, ces dernières sont abondantes mais leurs conditions d’enregistrement sont hétérogènes, alors que les données dédiées à la synthèse de parole (de meilleure qualité) sont en quantité limitée et difﬁciles à collecter. Leur impact est mesuré sur trois systèmes : synthèse de parole monolocuteur, clonage de voix et conversion de voix. Des évaluations objectives et subjectives sur la reproduction de la voix du locuteur et sur la qualité des échantillons synthétisés ont été menées. Elles montrent qu’il est difﬁcile de produire une synthèse vocale de qualité comparable avec l’état de l’art dans certaines conditions d’enregistrement ou pour des voix atypiques. MOTS-CLÉS : Synthèse de la parole, clonage de voix, conversion de voix, synthèse vocale neuro-nale. ABSTRACT. In this article, we consider how neural speech synthesis systems perform with non-dedicated data in French. Indeed, these are plentiful, unlike dedicated data of better quality which are limited in their availability and difﬁcult to collect, but are recorded in heterogeneous conditions. Their impact is measured on three systems: single-speaker speech synthesis, voice cloning and voice conversion. Speaker similarity and overall quality were measured through objective and subjective evaluations. Our results outline the difﬁculty of producing high-quality speech synthesis under some recording conditions, or for atypical voices.
Sous-titrage automatique : étude de stratégies d’adaptation aux genres télévisuels [Automatic closed captioning: a study of strategies for televisual genre adaptation]

RÉSUMÉ. Les obligations légales concernant l’accessibilité des contenus audiovisuels conju-guées avec l’importance des volumes actuellement produits par diverses sources suscitent un intérêt croissant pour les systèmes de sous-titrage automatique. Traditionnellement, ces sys-tèmes procèdent en enchaînant une étape de reconnaissance de la parole et une étape de « traduction » de la transcription vers les sous-titres. Pour le sous-titrage monolingue, la « traduction » correspond à une simplification et à une segmentation du texte, qui doivent notamment respecter des normes liées à l’affichage, et composer avec les erreurs issues de la reconnais-sance vocale. Dans le cas des émissions télévisées, la forme et la teneur du flux audio initial comme des sous-titres à répliquer varient significativement selon les programmes. En prenant inspiration dans la littérature de la traduction automatique, cet article met en place et compare des méthodes d’adaptation aux genres télévisuels pour la production de sous-titres. MOTS-CLÉS : sous-titrage automatique, simplification de textes, traduction automatique. TITLE. Automatic closed captioning: a study of strategies for televisual genre adaptation
Un jeu de données pour répondre à des questions visuelles à propos d’entités nommées [A dataset for answering visual questions about named entities]

RÉSUMÉ. Dans le contexte des approches multimodales, nous nous intéressons à la tâche de réponse à des questions visuelles à propos d’entités nommées en utilisant des bases de connaissances (KVQAE). Nous mettons à disposition ViQuAE, un nouveau jeu de données de 3 700 questions associées à des images, annoté à l’aide d’une méthode semi-automatique. C’est le premier jeu de données de KVQAE comprenant des types d’entités variés associé à une base de connaissances composée de 1,5 million d’articles Wikipédia, incluant textes et images. Nous proposons également un modèle de référence de KVQAE en trois étapes : recherche d’information initiale, réordonnancement, puis extraction des réponses. Les résultats de nos expériences démontrent empiriquement la difficulté de la tâche et ouvrent la voie à une meilleure représen-tation multimodale des entités nommées.