Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determinants of QuantiFERON Plus-diagnosed tuberculosis infection in adult Ugandan TB contacts: A cross-sectional study

Background The tuberculin skin test is commonly used to diagnose latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) in resource-limited settings, but its specificity is limited by factors including cross-reactivity with BCG vaccine and environmental mycobacteria. Interferon-gamma release assays (IGRA) overcome this problem by detecting M. tuberculosis complex-specific responses, but studies to determine risk factors for IGRA-positivity in high TB burden settings are lacking. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study to determine factors associated with a positive IGRA by employing the QuantiFERON-TB® Gold-plus (QFT Plus) assay in a cohort of asymptomatic adult TB contacts in Kampala, Uganda. Multivariate logistic regression analysis with forward stepwise logit function was employed to identify independent correlates of QFT Plus-positivity. Results Of the 202 participants enrolled, 129/202 (64%) were female, 173/202 (86%) had a BCG scar, and 67/202 (33%) were HIV-infected. Overall, 105/192 (54%, 95% CI 0.48–0.62) participants had a positive QFT Plus result. Increased risk of QFT-Plus positivity was independently associated with casual employment/unemployment vs. non-casual employment (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 2.18, 95% CI 1.01–4.72), a family vs. non-family relation to the index patient (aOR 2.87, 95% CI 1.33–6.18), living in the same vs. a different house as the index (aOR 3.05, 95% CI 1.28–7.29), a higher body mass index (BMI) (aOR per additional kg/m2 1.09, 95% CI 1.00–1.18) and tobacco smoking vs. not (aOR 2.94, 95% CI 1.00–8.60). HIV infection was not associated with QFT-Plus positivity (aOR 0.91, 95% CI 0.42–1.96). Conclusion Interferon Gamma Release Assay positivity in this study population was lower than previously estimated. Tobacco smoking and BMI were determinants of IGRA positivity that were previously unappreciated.
Noncoding RNAs as a potential biomarker for the prognosis of bladder cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

ABSTRACT Objective The relationship between noncoding RNAs and the prognosis of bladder cancer (BC) is still controversial. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between noncoding RNAs and prognosis by meta-analysis. Methods Comprehensive retrieval of PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, the Web of Science, CNKI, and WanFang databases is related to the correlation between noncoding RNAs and the prognosis of BC. Data were extracted, and the literature quality was evaluated. STATA16.0 served for the meta-analysis. Results 1. CircRNAs: High circ-ZFR expression led to poor overall survival (OS) of BC. 2. LncRNAs: Low lnc-GAS5 expression predicted poor OS of BC, high lnc-TUG1 expression predicted poor OS of BC. 3. MiRNAs: High miR-21 expression predicted poor OS of BC, high miR-222 expression led to poor OS of BC, high miR-155 expression predicted poor progression-free survival (PFS) of BC, high miR-143 expression caused poor PFS of BC, low miR-214 expression could result in poor recurrence-free survival (RFS) of BC. Conclusions High circ-ZFR, lnc-TUG1, miR-222, and miR-21 expressions were correlated with poor OS of BC; high miR-155 and miR-143 expression predicted poor PFS of BC; low lnc-GAS5 expression predicted poor OS of BC; low miR-214 expression predicted poor RFS of BC.
On the issue of surface-related problems in stellar parameter estimation

I address the problem of estimating stellar parameters using asteroseismic data. In particular I focus on the biases introduced the differences existing between observed and theoretical oscillation frequencies introduced by a poor modelling of near-surface layers. I review some methods to evaluate this shift and discuss briefly some studies trying to take into account this effect while estimating stellar parameters.
Diagnosis, knowledge, perception, and productivity impact of headache education and clinical evaluation program in the workplace at an information technology company of more than 70,000 employees

Background Migraine is a highly prevalent, disabling, misunderstood, underdiagnosed, and undertreated neurological disease. It is a leading cause of productivity loss in the workplace. Methods This is the first large-scale company-wide headache education and evaluation program in the workplace. Results 73,432 (90.5%) Fujitsu employees participated. The prevalence of migraine was 16.7%, tension-type headache 40.7%, and cluster headache 0.5%. After completing the training, 82.9% of participants without headache said they would change their attitude towards colleagues with headache disorders and 72.5% of total participants said their understanding of headache changed. The proportion of employees who thought that headache had a significant impact on people’s lives increased from 46.8% to 70.6%; 2971 (4.1%) of all participants were interested in a virtual consultation with a headache specialist as part of the program, more than half of whom had not previously consulted for headache. Approximately 14.7 days per year of full productivity per employee with headache were gained resulting in an annual productivity saving per employee of US$4531. Conclusion This unique headache workplace program was associated with a high level of participation, an improvement in the understanding of migraine and attitude towards colleagues with migraine, reduction in disability and increased employee productivity, and decreased costs of lost productivity due to migraine. Workplace programs for migraine should be considered for all industry sectors.
Time reallocation of physical behaviours induced by endurance exercise in physically active individuals

ABSTRACT Increasing moderate-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) through exercise requires reallocating time from other physical behaviour(s). We aimed to determine the reallocations induced by endurance exercise in physically active individuals. We also searched for behavioural compensatory responses, and explored the effect of exercise on daily energy expenditure. Fourteen participants (8 women; median age 37.8 [IQR 29.9–48.5] yr) exercised on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (cycling MVPA, 65 min/session; “exercise days”), and avoided exercising on Tuesday and Thursday (“rest days”). Time spent on sleep, sedentary behaviour, light-intensity physical activity, and MVPA was determined each day by accelerometers and logs. An energy expenditure index was computed considering minutes spent on each behaviour and fixed metabolic equivalents. We found that all participants had lower sleep and higher total (including exercise) MVPA on exercise days compared to rest days. Thus, on exercise vs. rest days, sleep was lower (490 [453–553] vs. 553 [497–599] min/day, respectively, P < 0.001), and total MVPA was higher (86 [80–101] vs. 23 [15–45] min/day, respectively; P < 0.001). No differences in other physical behaviours were detected. Notably, exercise not only induced reallocations (i.e. less time in other behaviours) but also behavioural compensatory responses in some participants (e.g. increased sedentary behaviour). This rearrangement of physical behaviours manifested in exercise-induced increases in energy expenditure from 96 to 232 MET × min/day. In conclusion, active individuals reallocated time from sleep to accommodate morning exercise. Yet exercise induced variable rearrangements of behaviours, with some individuals manifesting compensatory responses. Understanding individual rearrangements may help improve exercise interventions. Highlights Adults are recommended to engage in moderate-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) to maintain health. But including exercise sessions within a day inevitably requires reallocating time from other physical behaviour(s): sleep, sedentary behaviour, or physical activity. We studied the time reallocations induced by 65 min/day of morning exercise (cycling MVPA) in physically active participants. Participants spent less time sleeping and higher time on total (including exercise) MVPA on days that included exercise compared to days without exercise. Thus, participants reallocated sleep time to accommodate morning exercise sessions. Some participants also spent higher time on sedentary behaviour during days that included exercise compared to days without exercise. This probably represents a behavioural compensatory response to exercise-induced fatigue. Together, time reallocations and behavioural compensatory responses led to a rearrangement of daily time spent on physical behaviours. This rearrangement was estimated to produce large interindividual variability in the increase in energy expenditure induced by exercise.
The role of intellectual disability and emotional regulation in the autism–depression relationship

Research shows significant rates of depressive symptoms in people with autistic spectrum disorder and intellectual disabilities. Finding factors related to the development of depression in autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability is necessary. Emotion regulation is associated with depression in autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability. The role of the intellectual disability in this relationship is not clear, so it is necessary to clarify it. One hundred twenty-one adults (M = 35.46 years, SD = 9.46) with autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disabilities were evaluated to verify moderating role of intellectual disability and mediating role of emotion regulation. A moderated mediation analysis supported the moderated role of mild intellectual disability in the relationship mediated by emotional dysregulation between autism spectrum disorder and depression symptoms. These findings suggest that interventions designed to prevent or reduce depressive symptoms in people with autism spectrum disorder and mild intellectual disability should include among their goals emotional regulation. Lay abstract Many people with autism and intellectual disability have significant levels of depressive symptoms. However, this relationship is not clear. For this reason, knowing the factors that are associated with having depression in autism and intellectual disability is important. Emotion regulation is associated with depression in autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability. After evaluating a group of people with autism and intellectual disability, we found that people with mild intellectual disability have problems regulating their emotions which lead them to develop depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that interventions designed to prevent or reduce depressive symptoms in people with autism spectrum disorder and mild intellectual disability should include among their goals emotional regulation.
Implementation of a brief online skills group of dialectical behaviour therapy for emotional dysregulation in Latinx: a withdrawal experimental single-case design

Abstract Background: Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) skills groups have shown promise as an effective treatment for clients with emotional dysregulation, especially when combined with individual DBT. However, their efficacy is not well established as an online therapy, or in the Latinx population. Aims: This study aimed to explore satisfaction, retention and effects of an internet-based DBT group added to individual online sessions. Method: An ABAB withdrawal experimental single-case design was conducted to evaluate the effect of a brief online DBT skills group on emotional dysregulation, anxiety and depression for five Latinx participants. DBT skills group (phase B) were compared with placebo group sessions (phase A) and fortnightly individual DBT sessions were offered throughout to manage risk. Results: Visual inspection showed a decrease in level of emotional dysregulation and a large effect size according to the Nonoverlap of All Pairs when comparing group DBT and placebo phases. Although depression symptoms decreased after introducing group DBT, anxiety indicators decreased most during the second round of group placebo sessions. Discussion: Whilst only a pilot, this study suggests that online group DBT in Latinx populations is feasible and effective for changing emotional regulation processes but may not effectively target anxiety. Future research might increase the number of DBT sessions in order to enhance learning opportunities and generalization. Replication with larger sample sizes and diverse modalities is needed.
Mechanisms of mGluR‐dependent plasticity in hippocampal area CA2

Pyramidal cells in hippocampal area CA2 have synaptic properties that are distinct from the other CA subregions. Notably, this includes a lack of typical long‐term potentiation of stratum radiatum synapses. CA2 neurons express high levels of several known and potential regulators of metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR)‐dependent signaling including Striatal‐Enriched Tyrosine Phosphatase (STEP) and several Regulator of G‐protein Signaling (RGS) proteins, yet the functions of these proteins in regulating mGluR‐dependent synaptic plasticity in CA2 are completely unknown. Thus, the aim of this study was to examine mGluR‐dependent synaptic depression and to determine whether STEP and the RGS proteins RGS4 and RGS14 are involved. Using whole cell voltage‐clamp recordings from mouse pyramidal cells, we found that mGluR agonist‐induced long‐term depression (mGluR‐LTD) is more pronounced in CA2 compared with that observed in CA1. This mGluR‐LTD in CA2 was found to be protein synthesis and STEP dependent, suggesting that CA2 mGluR‐LTD shares mechanistic processes with those seen in CA1, but in addition, RGS14, but not RGS4, was essential for mGluR‐LTD in CA2. In addition, we found that exogenous application of STEP could rescue mGluR‐LTD in RGS14 KO slices. Supporting a role for CA2 synaptic plasticity in social cognition, we found that RGS14 KO mice had impaired social recognition memory as assessed in a social discrimination task. These results highlight possible roles for mGluRs, RGS14, and STEP in CA2‐dependent behaviors, perhaps by biasing the dominant form of synaptic plasticity away from LTP and toward LTD in CA2.
Allele-dependent interaction of LRRK2 and NOD2 in leprosy

Leprosy, caused by Mycobacterium leprae, rarely affects children younger than 5 years. Here, we studied a multiplex leprosy family that included monozygotic twins aged 22 months suffering from paucibacillary leprosy. Whole genome sequencing identified three amino acid mutations previously associated with Crohn’s disease and Parkinson’s disease as candidate variants for early onset leprosy: LRRK2 N551K, R1398H and NOD2 R702W. In genome-edited macrophages, we demonstrated that cells expressing the LRRK2 mutations displayed reduced apoptosis activity following mycobacterial challenge independently of NOD2. However, employing co-immunoprecipitation and confocal microscopy we showed that LRRK2 and NOD2 proteins interacted in RAW cells and monocyte-derived macrophages, and that this interaction was substantially reduced for the NOD2 R702W mutation. Moreover, we observed a joint effect of LRRK2 and NOD2 variants on Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG)-induced respiratory burst, NF-κB activation and cytokine/chemokine secretion with a strong impact for the genotypes found in the twins consistent with a role of the identified mutations in the development of early onset leprosy.
Palbociclib blocks neutrophilic phosphatidylinositol 3‐kinase activity to alleviate psoriasiform dermatitis

Neutrophilic inflammation is a critical pathogenic factor in psoriasis. The therapeutic applicability of palbociclib, a cyclin‐dependent kinase 4 and 6 (CDK4/6) inhibitor clinically used to treat cancer, in the treatment of neutrophil‐associated psoriasis remains undefined. In this study, we evaluated the therapeutic potential and pharmacological effect of palbociclib on neutrophil‐associated psoriasiform dermatitis.
Gravity induced deflection of a reference plate and tested plane surfaces and its influence on optical measurement with the Fizeau interferometer

The paper presents an analysis of deflection of a reference plate and a tested plane parallel plate due to gravity during measurement with the Fizeau interferometer. Detailed expressions for the calculation of a deflection assuming different supports are presented. Furthermore, the relations for the calculation of a minimum thickness of a reference plate of the interferometer ensuring the required accuracy of measurement are given as well.
Protein Tyrosine Phosphatases: Mighty oaks from little acorns grow

In October 2020, we were finally able to gather for a celebration of Eddy Fischer's 100th birthday. As with many other events, COVID had disrupted and restricted preparations for the gathering, which ultimately was held via ZOOM. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful opportunity to share a day with Eddy, an exceptional scientist and true renaissance man, and to appreciate his stellar contributions to science. Eddy Fischer, together with Ed Krebs, was responsible for the discovery of reversible protein phosphorylation, which launched the entire field of signal transduction. The importance of this seminal work is now being felt throughout the biotechnology industry with the development of drugs that target protein kinases, which have transformed the treatment of a wide array of cancers. I was privileged to have worked with Eddy both as a postdoc and a junior faculty member, during which time we laid the foundations for our current understanding of the protein tyrosine phosphatase (PTP) family of enzymes and their importance as critical regulators of signal transduction. This tribute to Eddy is based upon the talk I presented at the event, giving a personal perspective on Eddy's influence on my career, our early research efforts together in this area, and how the field has developed since then.
Semi-supervised graph convolutional networks for the domain adaptive recognition of thyroid nodules in cross-device ultrasound images.

BACKGROUND Ultrasound plays a critical role in the early screening and diagnosis of cancers. Although deep neural networks have been widely investigated in the computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) of different medical images, diverse ultrasound devices, and image modalities pose challenges for clinical applications, especially in the recognition of thyroid nodules having various shapes and sizes. More generalized and extensible methods need to be developed for the cross-devices recognition of thyroid nodules. PURPOSE In this work, a semi-supervised graph convolutional deep learning framework is proposed for the domain adaptative recognition of thyroid nodules across several ultrasound devices. A deep classification network, trained on a source domain with a specific device, can be transferred to recognize thyroid nodules on the target domain with other devices, using only few manual annotated ultrasound images. METHODS This study presents a semi-supervised graph-convolutional-network-based domain adaptation framework, namely Semi-GCNs-DA. Based on the ResNet backbone, it is extended in three aspects for domain adaptation, i.e., graph convolutional networks (GCNs) for the connection construction between source and target domains, semi-supervised GCNs for accurate target domain recognition, and pseudo labels for unlabeled target domains. Data were collected from 1,498 patients comprising 12,108 images with or without thyroid nodules under three different ultrasound devices. Accuracy, Sensitivity and Specificity were used for the performance evaluation. RESULTS The proposed method was validated on 6 groups of data for a single source domain adaptation task, the mean Accuracy was 0.9719 ± 0.0023, 0.9928 ± 0.0022, 0.9353 ± 0.0105, 0.8727 ± 0.0021, 0.7596 ± 0.0045, 0.8482 ± 0.0092, which achieved better performance in comparison with the state-of-the-art. The proposed method was also validated on 3 groups of multiple source domain adaptation tasks. In particular, when using X60 and HS50 as the source domain data, and H60 as the target domain, it can achieve the Accuracy of 0.8829 ± 0.0079, Sensitivity of 0.9757 ± 0.0001, and Specificity of 0.7894 ± 0.0164. Ablation experiments also demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed modules. CONCLUSION The developed Semi-GCNs-DA framework can effectively recognize thyroid nodules on different ultrasound devices. The developed semi-supervised GCNs can be further extended to the domain adaptation problems for other modalities of medical images. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Crossed-plate Type Support Structure of the Second Mirror

In order to optimize the second mirror support of the modern telescope's statics and dynamics performance,with the FEM method,the relationship between the second mirror tube max deformation and the second mirror tube offset angles and lamina thickness was calculated.Then the relationship between the crossed-plate type frequency and lamina offset angles was analyzed.The results approve that when the second mirror tube offset certain angles the statics performance can be improved,and when the two relative laminas staggered certain distance along the diameter the harmonic frequency can be increased.The crossed-plate optimized type was determined between the two cases.The calculated result confirmes the statics and the dynamics performance of the optimized crossed-plate type are all increased.
Resizing of stereoscopic images for display adaptation

Display adaptation is one of the key factors for the success of visual services. For two-dimensional (2D) imaging, the display adaptation is generally accomplished by 2D image re-sampling (i.e., up-/down-sampling). However, when it comes to stereoscopic three-dimensional (S3D) images, 2D re-sampling methods are inadequate because additional consideration on the third dimension of depth is not incorporated. In this paper, we analyze S3D image resizing from two aspects: geometrical deformation and frequency-domain aliasing. A number of S3D displays are available in the market and they have various screen dimensions. As we have more varieties of the displays, efficient S3D image resizing is becoming more emphasized. We present the conditions for equi-proportional S3D image resizing using the model of the binocular vision; and propose an anti-aliasing filter for stereoscopic 3D image up/down-sampling.
Beta‐adrenergic agonist induces unique transcriptomic signature in inguinal white adipose tissue

Activation of thermogenic adipose tissue depots has been linked to improved metabolism and weight loss. To study the molecular regulation of adipocyte thermogenesis, we performed RNA‐Seq on brown adipose tissue (BAT), gonadal white adipose tissue (gWAT), and inguinal white adipose tissue (iWAT) from mice treated with β3‐adrenoreceptor agonist CL316,243 (CL). Our analysis revealed diverse transcriptional profile and identified pathways in response to CL treatment. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in iWATCL were associated with the upregulation of pathways involved in cellular immune responses and with the upregulation of the browning program. We identified 39 DEGs in beige adipose which included certain heat shock proteins (Hspa1a and Hspa1b), and others suggesting potential associations with browning. Our results highlight transcriptional heterogeneity across adipose tissues and reveal genes specifically regulated in beige adipose, potentially aiding in identifying novel browning pathways.