Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contributions of particulate and gas phases of simulated burn pit smoke exposures to impairment of respiratory function

Abstract Objective Inhalation of smoke from the burning of waste materials on military bases is associated with increased incidences of cardiopulmonary diseases. This study examined the respiratory and inflammatory effects of acute inhalation exposures in mice to smoke generated by military burn pit-related materials including plywood (PW), cardboard (CB), mixed plastics (PL), and a mixture of these three materials (MX) under smoldering (0.84 MCE) and flaming (0.97 MCE) burn conditions. Methods Mice were exposed nose-only for one hour on two consecutive days to whole or filtered smoke or clean air alone. Smoldering combustion emissions had greater concentrations of PM (∼40 mg/m3) and VOCs (∼5–12 ppmv) than flaming emissions (∼4 mg/m3 and ∼1–2 ppmv, respectively); filtered emissions had equivalent levels of VOCs with negligible PM. Breathing parameters were assessed during exposure by head-out plethysmography. Results All four smoldering burn pit emission types reduced breathing frequency (F) and minute volumes (MV) compared with baseline exposures to clean air, and HEPA filtration significantly reduced the effects of all smoldering materials except CB. Flaming emissions had significantly less suppression of F and MV compared with smoldering conditions. No acute effects on lung inflammatory cells, cytokines, lung injury markers, or hematology parameters were noted in smoke-exposed mice compared with air controls, likely due to reduced respiration and upper respiratory scrubbing to reduce the total deposited PM dose in this short-term exposure. Conclusion Our data suggest that material and combustion type influences respiratory responses to burn pit combustion emissions. Furthermore, PM filtration provides significant protective effects only for certain material types.
A longitudinal study of the relationships between sleep problems in autistic children and maternal mental health

Autistic children experience a high rate of sleep problems, which have been associated with maternal mental health difficulties. However, the directionality of these relationships has received little attention. The extent to which children’s sleep problems influence maternal mental health difficulties and vice versa remains unclear. The aim of this study was to examine the bidirectional relationships between the sleep problems of autistic children and maternal mental health difficulties over 12 years. Six biennial waves of longitudinal data from when children were 4 to 5 years old were drawn from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. The sample comprised 397 child–mother dyads. Maternal mental health was assessed with the Kessler-6, while sleep problems were assessed through a series of questions relating to common sleep problems in children. The results demonstrated significant bidirectional effects between maternal mental health and child sleep problems at key developmental transition time points. Specifically, when children transitioned from preschool to primary school and again when the children transitioned from primary school to high school. These findings highlight the need for increased support for both the child and mother at these critical time points to reduce the negative impact of maternal psychological distress on child sleep problems and vice versa. Lay abstract Autistic children experience increased the rates of sleep problems. These sleep problems have been associated with mother’s mental health symptoms. However, the direction of these relationships is not well understood. This study investigated the relationships between autistic children’s sleep problems and mothers’ mental health over a 12-year period using data collected as part of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. Data from 397 autistic children and their mothers were included in this study. Mothers completed a questionnaire about their own mental health and common childhood sleep problems at four time points from 4–5 years to 14–15 years. The results showed important relationships between mothers’ mental health symptoms and child sleep problems at two time points. Specifically, (1) mothers’ mental health symptoms when the child was aged 4 to 5 years predicted child sleep problems at age 6 to 7 years; and (2) child sleep problems at age 12–13 years predicted mothers’ mental health symptoms when the child was aged 14 to 15 years. Interestingly, these significant relationships also coincide with key developmental transition time points, when the child is transitioning in and out of primary school. These findings highlight the need for increased support for both the child and mother at these times to optimise outcomes for both.
The effects of the presence of a face and direct eye gaze on voice identity learning

Abstract We rarely become familiar with the voice of another person in isolation but usually also have access to visual identity information, thus learning to recognize their voice and face in parallel. There are conflicting findings as to whether learning to recognize voices in audiovisual vs audio‐only settings is advantageous or detrimental to learning. One prominent finding shows that the presence of a face overshadows the voice, hindering voice identity learning by capturing listeners' attention (Face Overshadowing Effect; FOE). In the current study, we tested the proposal that the effect of audiovisual training on voice identity learning is driven by attentional processes. Participants learned to recognize voices through either audio‐only training (Audio‐Only) or through three versions of audiovisual training, where a face was presented alongside the voices. During audiovisual training, the faces were either looking at the camera (Direct Gaze), were looking to the side (Averted Gaze) or had closed eyes (No Gaze). We found a graded effect of gaze on voice identity learning: Voice identity recognition was most accurate after audio‐only training and least accurate after audiovisual training including direct gaze, constituting a FOE. While effect sizes were overall small, the magnitude of FOE was halved for the Averted and No Gaze conditions. With direct gaze being associated with increased attention capture compared to averted or no gaze, the current findings suggest that incidental attention capture at least partially underpins the FOE. We discuss these findings in light of visual dominance effects and the relative informativeness of faces vs voices for identity perception.
Struggling with L2 alphabet: The role of proficiency in orthographic learning

The present study examined the process of L2 orthographic learning in bilinguals with distant L1–L2 orthographies. Chinese–English bilinguals with various English proficiency levels were trained with novel L2 words during a reading task. In contrast to higher proficient learners, those with lower L2 proficiency exhibited increased effects of length, frequency, and lexicality across exposures and at-chance recognition of trained words. Importantly, an additional post-training task assessing the lexical integration of trained words evidenced the engagement in different L1–L2 reading strategies across different levels of L2 proficiency, hence suggesting the L1 holistic processing at the base of the effortful establishment of L2 orthographic representations shown by lower-proficient learners. Overall, these findings indicate the role of L2 proficiency in the influence that cross-linguistic variation exerts on L2 orthographic learning and highlight the need for English education programmes to tackle specific grapheme-to-phoneme skills in non-alphabetic target communities.
IL-6, homocysteine, and autism spectrum phenotypes: an investigation among adults with autism spectrum disorder and their first-degree relatives

Abstract Background The importance of recognizing different kinds of autism spectrum presentations among adults, including subthreshold forms and the broad autism phenotype (BAP), has been increasingly highlighted in recent studies. Meanwhile, the possible involvement of immune system deregulation and altered methylation/trans-sulfuration processes in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is gaining growing attention, but studies in this field are mainly focused on children. In this framework, the aim of this study was to compare plasmatic concentrations of IL-6 and homocysteine (HCY) among adults with ASD, their first-degree relatives, and healthy controls (CTLs), investigating also possible correlations with specific autism symptoms. Methods Plasma concentrations of IL-6 and HCY were measured in a group of adult subjects with ASD, their first-degree relatives (BAP group), and healthy controls (CTL). All participants were also evaluated with psychometric instruments. Results IL-6 and HCY concentrations were significantly higher in the ASD group than in CTLs, while BAP subjects reported intermediate results. Significant correlations were reported between biochemical parameters and psychometric scales, particularly for the dimension of ruminative thinking. Conclusions These findings support the hypothesis of a key involvement of HCY-related metabolism and immune system alteration in autism spectrum pathophysiology. HCY and IL-6 seem to show different associations with specific autism dimensions.
Angiopoietin‐like protein 3 promotes colorectal cancer progression and liver metastasis partly via the mitogen‐activated protein kinase 14 pathway

Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains one of the most common malignancies worldwide, and liver metastasis represents a considerable challenge during CRC treatment. Aberrant expression of angiopoietin‐like protein 3 (ANGPTL3) has been reported in several human cancer types. However, the function and mechanism of ANGPTL3 in CRC remain unclear. In this study, we first explored ANGPTL3 expression profiles in CRC datasets from ONCOMINE and in local samples from patients with CRC. We then elucidated the function of ANGPTL3 via knockdown and overexpression experiments. Bioinformatic analyses were performed to investigate the biological function and associated molecular mechanisms of ANGPTL3 in CRC oncogenesis and development. Finally, a xenograft model of liver metastasis was used to determine the role of ANGPTL3 in CRC metastasis. Our findings indicated that ANGPTL3 expression was upregulated in human CRC tissues, with high ANGPTL3 expression significantly correlated with poor survival of patients with CRC. ANGPTL3 overexpression promoted the proliferation and migration of CRC cells partially through mitogen‐activated protein kinase 14 (MAPK14), while ANGPTL3 silencing had the opposite effect. Moreover, ANGPTL3 downregulation suppressed tumor growth and liver metastasis in xenograft mice. Collectively, the results presented here indicate that ANGPTL3 promotes cell proliferation and liver metastasis partly via MAPK14, suggesting that ANGPTL3 plays a tumor‐promoting role in CRC progression and thus may represent a therapeutic target for CRC treatment.
Determining boundary shapes from the optimized material distribution system

The Optimized Material Distribution (OMD) method for the design of electromagnetic devices can provide a topological structure and details of materials and excitations for a device to meet a set of specification. The large design space results in a slow convergence to the solution. The application of image processing techniques relatively early in the process allows the design space to be reduced and conventional shape optimization to be applied to the structure. This can result in major improvements in the performance of the design system.
Acalabrutinib and high-frequency low-dose subcutaneous rituximab for initial therapy of chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Key Points • Acalabrutinib and HFLD subcutaneous rituximab was assessed as a potential fixed-duration initial therapy for chronic lymphocytic leukemia. • This home-administered combination had a 100% response rate and can be a backbone for regimens aiming to achieve limited duration therapy.
The phenotypic and genotypic features of Chinese patients with oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy

Oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy (OPMD) is a late‐onset inherited neuromuscular disorder, with progressive ptosis and dysphagia as common manifestations. To date, OPMD has rarely been reported among East Asians. The present study summarizes the phenotypic and genotypic features of Chinese patients with OPMD.
NK/T-cell Lymphoma With Orbital Involvement: A Case Report and Systematic Review of the Literature

Purpose: To present the clinical course of a patient with recurrent NK/T-cell lymphoma (NKTL) involving the orbit and to review the literature on patients with NKTL involving the orbit. Methods: The PubMed database was searched for all cases of NKTL involving orbital, intraocular, or adnexal ocular structures. Results: Ninety-six patients were included in the final analysis. The mean age of diagnosis was 48.1 ± 16.8 years. The patients were 53/96 (55.2%) male and 43/96 (44.8%) female. Tumor location varied and included the orbit in 80/96 (83.3%), nasosinus in 56/96 (58.3%), uvea in 11/96 (11.5%), lacrimal gland in 9/96 (9.4%), lacrimal drainage system in 11/96 (11.5%), and conjunctiva in 7/96 (7.3%) cases. Management included surgical debulking in 29/96 (30.2%) cases, radiotherapy in 52/96 (54.2%) cases, and chemotherapy in 82/96 (85.4%) cases. Median survival was 6 months (95% CI: 5–9). Chemotherapy (hazard ratio = 0.80, 95% CI: 0.67–0.95, p = 0.013), radiotherapy (hazard ratio = 0.75, 95% CI: 0.64–0.87, p < 0.001), and orbital involvement being a recurrence of disease (hazard ratio = 0.79, 95% CI: 0.67–0.95, p = 0.009) were associated with improved survival. Advanced Ann Arbor stage (III–IV) at diagnosis (hazard ratio = 1.22, 95% CI: 1.08–1.38, p = 0.001), vision loss (hazard ratio = 1.18, 95% CI: 1.04–1.34, p = 0.009), proptosis (hazard ratio = 1.15, 95% CI: 1.01–1.30, p = 0.035) and periorbital swelling (hazard ratio = 1.15, 95% CI: 1.00–1.33, p = 0.048) were associated with poor survival. Conclusions: NK/T-cell lymphoma involving the orbit, globe, or ocular adnexa heralds a poor prognosis where early diagnosis and therapy are critical. The use of radiotherapy and chemotherapy is associated with improved survival. A systematic review of NK/T-cell lymphoma involving the orbit, globe, and ocular adnexa identifies factors that may be important for diagnosis, prognosis, and management of a highly aggressive malignancy.
Cephalic anatomy highlights morphological adaptation to underground habitats in a minute lacewing larva of Dilar (Dilaridae) and conflicting phylogenetic signal in Neuroptera

Dilaridae are a distinctive and phylogenetically ambiguous neuropteran family. So far, the anatomy of the immature stages remains largely unknown. We examined the 1st instar larvae of Dilar montanus in detail and present results of live observations for the first time. The minute, cryptic larvae display features correlated with their underground lifestyle: for instance, a strongly flattened head, stout antennae, eyelessness, and burrowing forelegs. In contrast to molecular data, several characters suggest a ‘dilarid clade’ combining Dilaridae with Mantispoidea, for instance a very thin and curved or reduced tentorial bridge, and an elongated postmentum. We found intrinsic antennal muscles and Johnston's organ, the first record of these structures in holometabolous larvae. This proves that the first 2 larval antennomeres are homologous with the scapus and pedicellus. The described characters are discussed and analyzed with an updated matrix of neuropteran larval characters. Alternative scenarios of character evolution are presented. Additionally, we show how the 1st‐instar larvae move and feed in the substrate, and also provide a high‐resolution video recording of the function of the elongate tubular ovipositor and the egg‐laying behavior in an adult female under natural conditions.
Hybrid method for analysis of eddy-current loss in electrical machine winding caused by the main flux

A hybrid method for the analysis of eddy-current loss caused by the given main flux in rectangular bars of an electrical machine winding is described. Different bar structures are considered. With the help of a hybrid field analyzer, the effective damping coefficient of the magnetic field is calculated. Using this coefficient an analytical formula for computing the eddy-current loss is proposed. The accuracy of the method is investigated numerically. The influence of the magnetic saturation in the teeth on the eddy-current loss caused by the main flux is also analyzed. >
Malignant polyps in the COVID‐19 era: a population‐based analysis

Malignant polyps represent the early development of colorectal adenocarcinoma. During 2020, there was widescale rationing of health‐care resources in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. In particular there was deferral of some colonoscopy procedures required for timely malignant polyp detection. This study sought to assess how these deferrals affected the diagnosis of malignant polyps.
GHαFaS: galaxy Hα Fabry-Perot system for the WHT

GHαFaS is a new Fabry-Perot system available at the William Herschel Telescope. It was mounted, for the first time, at the Nasmyth focus of the 4.2 m WHT in La Palma in 2007 July. With a spectral resolution of the order R~15000 and a seeing limited spatial resolution, GHαFaS provides a new look at the Hα-emitting gas over a 4 arcminutes circular field in the nearby universe. Many types of objects can be observed with a scanning Fabry-Perot system on a 4.2 m class telescope such as galaxies, HII regions, planetary nebulae, supernova remnants outflows from stars and the diffuse interstellar medium. Astronomers from the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique Experimentale (LAE) in Montreal, the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), have inaugurated GHαFaS by studying in detail the dynamics of nearby spiral galaxies. A robust set of tools for reducing and analyzing the data cubes obtained with GHαFaS has also been developed.
Propagating Visions of a Forest Reservoir: A Supposed Zoonotic Outbreak in the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana

ABSTRACT When examined closely, the backgrounds of some of the most widely cited origin stories for zoonotic disease outbreaks have been found to be irreconcilable with empirical data. Stated simply, these explanatory landscapes do not appear to have existed. Here, I present a detailed case study of one such fictional landscape, that of a monkey-filled forest which was identified as the source of a suspected zoonotic outbreak in the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana in 2010. Taking my approach from cultural epidemiology, I elucidate the mechanisms by which this fictional landscape was constructed and transmitted among the professionals involved in the response.
Quorum Tree Abstractions of Consensus Protocols

Distributed algorithms solving agreement problems like consensus or state machine replication are essential components of modern fault-tolerant distributed services. They are also notoriously hard to understand and reason about. Their complexity stems from the different assumptions on the environment they operate with, i.e., process or network link failures, Byzantine failures etc. In this paper, we propose a novel abstract representation of the dynamics of such protocols which focuses on quorums of responses (votes) to a request (proposal) that form during a run of the protocol. We show that focusing on such quorums, a run of a protocol can be viewed as working over a tree structure where different branches represent different possible outcomes of the protocol, the goal being to stabilize on the choice of a fixed branch. This abstraction resembles the description of recent protocols used in Blockchain infrastructures, e.g., the protocol supporting Bitcoin or HotStuff. We show that this abstraction supports reasoning about the safety of various algorithms, e.g., Paxos, PBFT, Raft, and HotStuff, in a uniform way. In general, it provides a novel induction based argument for proving that such protocols are safe.
Lee-Yang theory of quantum phase transitions with neural network quantum states

Predicting the phase diagram of interacting quantum many-body systems is a central problem in condensed matter physics and related fields. A variety of quantum many-body systems, ranging from unconventional superconductors to spin liquids, exhibit complex competing phases whose theoretical description has been the focus of intense efforts. Here, we show that neural network quantum states can be combined with a Lee-Yang theory of quantum phase transitions to predict the critical points of strongly-correlated spin lattices. Specifically, we implement our approach for quantum phase transitions in the transverse-field Ising model on different lattice geometries in one, two, and three dimensions. We show that the Lee-Yang theory combined with neural network quantum states yields predictions of the critical field, which are consistent with large-scale quantum many-body methods. As such, our results provide a starting point for determining the phase diagram of more complex quantum many-body systems, including frustrated Heisenberg and Hubbard models.
Sequential model correction for nonlinear inverse problems

Inverse problems are in many cases solved with optimization techniques. When the underlying model is linear, first-order gradient methods are usually sufficient. With nonlinear models, due to nonconvexity, one must often resort to second-order methods that are computationally more expensive. In this work we aim to approximate a nonlinear model with a linear one and correct the resulting approximation error. We develop a sequential method that iteratively solves a linear inverse problem and updates the approximation error by evaluating it at the new solution. This treatment convexifies the problem and allows us to benefit from established convex optimization methods. We separately consider cases where the approximation is fixed over iterations and where the approximation is adaptive. In the fixed case we show theoretically under what assumptions the sequence converges. In the adaptive case, particularly considering the special case of approximation by first-order Taylor expansion, we show that with certain assumptions the sequence converges to a critical point of the original nonconvex functional. Furthermore, we show that with quadratic objective functions the sequence corresponds to the Gauss-Newton method. Finally, we showcase numerical results superior to the conventional model correction method. We also show, that a fixed approximation can provide competitive results with considerable computational speed-up.
Revisiting Power Systems Time-Domain Simulation Methods and Models

The changing nature of power systems dynamics is challenging present practices related to modeling and study of system-level dynamic behavior. While developing new techniques and models to handle the new modeling requirements, it is also critical to review some of the terminology used to describe existing simulation approaches and the embedded assumptions. This article provides a first-principles review of the simplifications and transformations commonly used in the formulation of time-domain simulation models. It introduces a taxonomy and classification of time-domain simulation models depending on their frequency bandwidth, network representation, and software availability. Furthermore, it focuses on the fundamental aspects of averaging techniques, and model reduction approaches that result in modeling choices, and discusses the associated challenges and opportunities of applying these methods in systems with large shares of Inverter Based Resources (IBRs). The article concludes with an illustrative simulation that compares the trajectories of an IBR-dominated system.