Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exposure to anticholinergic and sedative medication is associated with impaired functioning in older people with vertigo, dizziness and balance disorders—Results from the longitudinal multicenter study MobilE-TRA

Introduction: Anticholinergic and sedative medication is prescribed for various conditions in older patients. While the general association between anticholinergic and sedative medication and impaired functioning is well established, its specific role in older individuals with vertigo, dizziness, and balance disorders (VDB) is still incompletely understood. The objective of this study was to investigate, whether an exposure to anticholinergic and sedative medication is associated with lower generic and lower vertigo-specific functioning in older patients with VDB. Methods: Data originates from the longitudinal multicenter study MobilE-TRA with two follow-ups, conducted from 2017 to 2019 in two German federal states. Exposure to anticholinergic and sedative medication was quantified using the drug burden index (DBI). Generic functioning was assessed by the Health Assessment Questionnaire Disability Index, appraising the amount of difficulties in performing activities of daily living (ADL). Vertigo-specific functioning was measured using the Vestibular Activities and Participation (VAP) questionnaire, assessing patient-reported functioning regarding activities of daily living that are difficult to perform because of their propensity to provoke VDB (Scale 1) as well as immediate consequences of VDB on activities and participation related to mobility (Scale 2). Longitudinal linear mixed models were applied to assess the association of exposure to anticholinergic and sedative medication at baseline and the level of generic and vertigo-specific functioning status over time. Results: An overall of 19 (7 from Bavaria) primary care physicians (mean age = 54 years, 29% female) recruited 158 (59% from Bavaria) patients with VDB (median age = 78 years, 70% female). Anticholinergic and sedative medication at baseline was present in 56 (35%) patients. An exposure to anticholinergic and sedative medication at baseline was significantly associated with lower generic functioning [Beta = 0.40, 95%-CI (0.18; 0.61)] and lower vertigo-specific functioning [VAP Scale 1: Beta = 2.47, 95%-CI (0.92; 4.02)], and VAP Scale 2: Beta = 3.74, 95%-CI [2.23; 5.24]). Conclusion: Our results highlight the importance of a close monitoring of anticholinergic and sedative medication use in older patients with VDB. When feasible, anticholinergic and sedative medication should be replaced by equivalent alternative therapies in order to potentially reduce the burden of VDB.
An edge-preserving image interpolation system for a digital camcorder

Conventional image interpolation techniques degrade the quality of the magnified image due to various artifacts, such as, blocking artifact and excessive smoothing. Those degradations become worse as the magnification ratio increases and there also exists a tradeoff between reducing the blocking artifact and excessive smoothness. An image interpolation system, which provides more naturally magnified images than the conventional ones, is proposed. The system preserves the original edge while not destroying the smoothness in the flat area. The hardware structure of the proposed system is also proposed.
Relationship between risk factors for impaired bone health and HR-pQCT in young adults with type 1 diabetes

Objective In type 1 diabetes, risk factors associated with impaired bone health contribute to increased risk of fracture. The aim of this study was to (1): compare the high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT) parameters of young adults with type 1 diabetes with those of healthy controls (2), identify sex differences, and (3) evaluate the association between diabetes and bone health risk factors, with HR-pQCT. Methods This is a cross-sectional study in young Canadian adults with childhood onset type 1 diabetes. Z-scores were generated for HR-pQCT parameters using a large healthy control database. Diet, physical activity, BMI, hemoglobin A1C (A1C) and bone health measures were evaluated, and associations were analyzed using multivariate regression analysis. Results Eighty-eight participants (age 21 ± 2.2 years; 40 males, 48 females, diabetes duration 13.9 ± 3.4 years) with type 1 diabetes were studied. Low trabecular thickness and elevated cortical geometry parameters were found suggesting impaired bone quality. There were no sex differences. Significant associations were found: Vitamin D (25(OH)D) with trabecular parameters with possible synergy with A1C, parathyroid hormone with cortical parameters, BMI with cortical bone and failure load, and diabetes duration with trabecular area. Conclusions Our data suggests impairment of bone health as assessed by HR-pQCT in young adults with type 1 diabetes. Modifiable risk factors were associated with trabecular and cortical parameters. These findings imply that correction of vitamin D deficiency, prevention and treatment of secondary hyperparathyroidism, and optimization of metabolic control may reduce incident fractures.
Improvement of CBQ for bandwidth reclamation of RPR

The Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) IEEE 802.17 standard is under development as a new high-speed backbone technology for metropolitan area networks (MAN) [1]. Bandwidth reclamation has been concerned in RPR specifications from draft 0.1 to draft 2.4. According to specifications, allocated bandwidth can be reused, or reclaimed, by a lower priority service class whenever the reclamation does not effect the service guarantees of any equal or higher priority classes on the local station or on any other station on the ring [2]. The class-based queuing (CBQ) algorithm is proposed to implement link-sharing [3]. A hierarchical link-sharing structure can be used to specify guidelines for the distribution of 'excess’ bandwidth [4] and it can rate-limit all classes to their allocated bandwidth. There is some sameness between the link-sharing of CBQ and bandwidth reclamation of RPR. The CBQ is a mature technology while RPR is a new technology. Given CBQ improvement and full use so as to make its thought suitable for bandwidth reclamation of RPR is the focus of our work. In this paper, we present the solution that can solve the reclamation problem, which proves to be effective by simulation.
Category-Level 6D Pose Estimation Using Geometry-Guided Instance-Aware Prior and Multi-Stage Reconstruction

Category-level object 6D pose estimation is essential for robotic manipulation, augmented reality and 3D scene understanding. It aims to accurately predict the translation and rotation of arbitrary shape instances from a given set of object classes without models of each instance. However, such estimation is cumbersome owing to the intra-class variation and the difficulty of accurately regressing dense correspondences between an observed point cloud and the reconstructed instance model from high-order and complex features. In this study, we propose a framework comprising geometry-guided instance-aware prior and multi-stage reconstruction networks to address these challenges. The geometry-guided instance-aware prior network can avoid unstable RGB data interference and robustly learn implicit relations on semantic and geometric information between the observed point cloud and prior. We take advantage of these potential relations using a transformer network to cope with the intra-class variation. Furthermore, the proposed multi-stage reconstruction network is designed to learn the residual of the preliminary reconstruction and improve the accuracy of predicting dense correspondences originating from the complex feature. The results of extensive experiments on a well-acknowledged benchmark for category-level 6D pose estimation demonstrate that our proposed method achieves a significant improvement in performance compared to previous methods.
Exosomes Derived from Adipose Stem Cells Enhance Bone Fracture Healing via the Activation of the Wnt3a/β-Catenin Signaling Pathway in Rats with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Nonunion and delayed union are common complications of diabetes mellitus that pose a serious health threat to people. There are many approaches that have been used to improve bone fracture healing. Recently, exosomes have been regarded as promising medical biomaterials for improving fracture healing. However, whether exosomes derived from adipose stem cells can promote bone fracture healing in diabetes mellitus remains unclear. In this study, adipose stem cells (ASCs) and exosomes derived from adipose stem cells (ASCs-exos) are isolated and identified. Additionally, we evaluate the in vitro and in vivo effects of ASCs-exos on the osteogenic differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) and bone repair and the regeneration in a rat model of nonunion via Western blotting, immunofluorescence assay, ALP staining, alizarin red staining, radiographic examination and histological analysis. Compared with controls, ASCs-exos promoted BMSC osteogenic differentiation. Additionally, the results of Western blotting, radiographic examination and histological analysis show that ASCs-exos improve the ability for fracture repair in the rat model of nonunion bone fracture healing. Moreover, our results further proved that ASCs-exos play a role in activating the Wnt3a/β-catenin signaling pathway, which facilitates the osteogenic differentiation of BMSCs. All these results show that ASCs-exos enhance the osteogenic potential of BMSCs by activating the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway, and also facilitate the ability for bone repair and regeneration in vivo, which provides a novel direction for fracture nonunion in diabetes mellitus treatment.
aarhus

1. Contexto La ciudad de Aarhus se encuentra en el centro de Dinamarca, en la península de Jutlandia. El puerto, predominantemente industrial, constituye un importante factor de su paisaje. 315.000 personas viven en Aarhus y 1,2 millones en su área metropolitana, lo que representa el 23% del total de la población de Dinamarca. Alrededor del 12% de la población es inmigrante, en su mayor parte procede de Palestina, Turquía o Somalia.
Thickness of an embedded ion shock

The thickness of an ion shock embedded in a collisional shock propagating in an electron proton gas is calculated, using both the kinetic theory and the continuum approach, for the free stream Mach numbers M=3 to M→∞. It is found that the shock thickness predicted by the kinetic theory is 2–4 times the thickness obtained from the continuum approach. It is also found that the electric field, via which the electrons are compressed across the ion shock, although representing considerable dissipation of the ion kinetic energy, has very little effect on the ion shock broadening.
Physically Inactive Undergraduate Students Exhibit More Symptoms of Anxiety, Depression, and Poor Quality of Life than Physically Active Students

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends at least 150 min of moderate or vigorous activity (MVPA) per week for health benefits. However, meeting WHO guidelines for physical activity has been shown to be a great challenge for general populations and it may be even more difficult for undergraduate students due to elevated academic demand, thus negatively affecting general health status. Thus, this study investigated whether undergraduate students meeting WHO guidelines for physical activity show greater scores for symptoms of anxiety, depression, and poor quality of life than their counterparts not meeting guideline recommendations. Additionally, symptoms of anxiety, depression, and poor quality of life among academic areas were compared. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study. The participants were recruited through messaging apps or institutional e-mail. The participants filled out an online consent form, questionnaires to assess demographic and academic characteristics, the International Physical Activity Questionnaire, the Beck depression and anxiety inventory, and the short-form 36-item health survey questionnaire. The participants were classified as physically active (MVPA > 150 min/week) or inactive (MVPA < 150 min/week) according to WHO Guidelines. Results: A total of 371 individuals were included in the analysis. Physically inactive students demonstrated higher scores of depression (17.96 vs. 14.62; 95% CI: −5.81 to −0.86; p = 0.0083) than physically active ones. SF-36 analyses revealed that physically inactive students had lower values in mental (45.68 vs. 52.77; 95% CI: 2.10 to 12.06; p = 0.0054) and physical (59.37 vs. 67.14; 95% CI: 3.24 to 12.30; p = 0.0015) domains compared with physically active ones. As for SF-36 subscales, physically inactive students showed lower scores in function capacity (70.45 vs. 79.70; 95% CI: 4.27 to 14.49; p = 0.0003), mental health (45.57 vs. 55.60; 95% CI: 5.28 to 14.76; p < 0.0001), social aspects (48.91 vs. 57.69; 95%CI: 3.47 to 14.08; p = 0.0012), vitality (42.19 vs. 50.61; 95% CI: 3.47 to 13.35; p = 0.0009), pain (61.85 vs. 68.00; 95% CI: 1.27 to 11.02; p = 0.0135), and general health status (53.82 vs. 63.81; 95% CI: 5.21 to 14.75; p < 0.0001) than their physically active peers. Conclusions: The findings suggest that undergraduate students who do not meet WHO guidelines for physical activity display higher scores of anxiety, depression, and poor quality of life in comparison with their counterparts meeting physical activity guidelines. Collectively, these data suggest the need for academic institutions and policy makers to monitor and promote in-campus interventions to encourage physical activity.
Ethnic differences in early onset multimorbidity and associations with health service use, long-term prescribing, years of life lost, and mortality: an observational study using person-level clustering in the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink

Background The population prevalence of multimorbidity (the existence of at least 2 or more long-term conditions (LTCs) in an individual) is increasing among young adults, particularly in minority ethnic groups and individuals living in socioeconomically deprived areas. In this study, we applied a data-driven approach to identify clusters of individuals who had an early onset multimorbidity in an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse population. We identified associations between clusters and a range of health outcomes. Methods and findings We analysed the electronic health records from 837,869 individuals in England with early onset multimorbidity (aged between 16 and 39 years old when the second LTC was recorded) using linked primary and secondary care data between 2010 and 2020 from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink GOLD (CPRD GOLD). A total of 204 LTCs were included. Latent class analysis stratified by ethnicity unveiled 4 clusters of multimorbidity in White groups and 3 clusters in South Asian and Black groups. We found that early onset multimorbidity is the most common form of multimorbidity among minority ethnic (59% and 56%, in the South Asian and Black populations, respectively) in the UK compared to the White population (42%). At the end of the study, 4% of the White early onset multimorbidity population had died compared to 2% of the South Asian and Black populations, however, the latter groups died younger and lost more years of life. The three ethnic groups displayed a cluster of individuals with increased rates of primary care consultations, hospitalisations, long-term prescribing, and odds of mortality. These presented a combination of physical and mental health conditions that are common across all groups (hypertension, depression and painful conditions being the leading conditions). However, they also presented exclusive LTCs and had different sociodemographic profiles: Whites were mostly men (54%), South Asian and Black groups were more socioeconomically deprived than White groups, with a consistent deprivation gradient across all multimorbidity clusters. In White groups, the highest risk cluster was more socioeconomically deprived than the lowest risk cluster. Conclusions These findings emphasise the need to identify, prevent and manage multimorbidity early in the life course. Our work provides additional insights into the need to ensure healthcare improvements are equitable and reach those from socioeconomically deprived and diverse groups who are disproportionately and more severely affected by multimorbidity.
Development of an adiabatic calorimeter for simultaneous measurement of enthalpy and volume under high pressure

A novel adiabatic calorimeter was constructed for simultaneous measurement of enthalpy and volume under high pressure. The calorimeter works under constant pressure up to 100 MPa and in the temperature range 80–380 K. The sample is pressurized hydrostatically by using a liquid pressure transmitting medium. The sample volume is measured with a new type of dilatometer using bellows installed in the cell. The dilatometer has two resolution modes (high and low) with different scanning range. As the calibration and test experiments, the heat capacities and volumes of toluene and water were measured at 0.1 and 50.1 MPa in the temperature range between 275 and 380 K. In the low resolution mode, the accuracies of heat capacity and volume were ±0.2% and 20 ppm of total, respectively. The test of the volume measurement in the high resolution mode showed that the resolution was ±0.1 ppm of total sample volume, which is ∼ ten times better than that of the previous best dilatometer. To demonstrate the performance of t.
De-novo reconstruction and identification of transcriptional gene regulatory network modules differentiating single-cell clusters

Abstract Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technology provides an unprecedented opportunity to understand gene functions and interactions at single-cell resolution. While computational tools for scRNA-seq data analysis to decipher differential gene expression profiles and differential pathway expression exist, we still lack methods to learn differential regulatory disease mechanisms directly from the single-cell data. Here, we provide a new methodology, named DiNiro, to unravel such mechanisms de novo and report them as small, easily interpretable transcriptional regulatory network modules. We demonstrate that DiNiro is able to uncover novel, relevant, and deep mechanistic models that not just predict but explain differential cellular gene expression programs. DiNiro is available at https://exbio.wzw. tum.de/diniro/.
Development of transverse flux linear motor with permanent-magnet excitation for direct drive applications

This paper presents the development of a transverse flux linear motor (TFLM) with permanent-magnet excitation for Stocker system, which is used for transferring glasses in the liquid crystal display industry. Magnetic field is analyzed by three-dimensional equivalent magnetic circuit network method and two-dimensional finite-element analysis is used to determine the influence of the end effect of a mover on the performance of TFLM. The experimental results of a prototyped motor are in good agreement with the analysis ones.
The relationship between clinical perfectionism and nonsuicidal self‐injury: The roles of experiential avoidance, self‐esteem, and locus of control

Abstract Objectives Perfectionism is linked to nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI). Individuals with elevated perfectionism tend to avoid undesirable emotions and experience lower self‐esteem, which are associated with NSSI. However, it is unclear if these mechanisms explain the link between clinical perfectionism and NSSI, and if locus of control is involved. We aimed to explore whether experiential avoidance and self‐esteem would mediate the relationship between clinical perfectionism and NSSI, and if locus of control would moderate links between clinical perfectionism and both experiential avoidance and self‐esteem. Method As part of a larger study, 514 Australian university students (M age = 21.15 years, SD = 2.40; 73.5% female) completed an online survey of NSSI, clinical perfectionism, experiential avoidance, self‐esteem, and locus of control. Results Clinical perfectionism was associated with NSSI history, but not with recent NSSI or past year NSSI frequency. Lower self‐esteem, but not experiential avoidance, mediated links between clinical perfectionism and NSSI history, recent NSSI, and NSSI frequency. More external locus of control was associated with NSSI, experiential avoidance, and lower self‐esteem, but locus of control did not moderate pathways between clinical perfectionism and experiential avoidance or self‐esteem. Conclusion University students reporting elevated clinical perfectionism may have a tendency to experience lower self‐esteem which is associated with NSSI history, recency, and severity.
Large converse magnetoelectric response in Rosen-type transformer and Terfenol-D laminated composite

A magnetoelectric laminate composite was proposed by combing a piezoelectric transformer and a Terfenol-D plate. Converse magnetoelectric effect was researched by using an induction method with frequency, bias magnetic field, ac voltage, and Terfenol-D thickness. A giant converse magnetoelectric coefficient of 35.7 G/V was obtained at half-wavelength vibration mode in the composite with the Terfenol-D thickness of 0.7 mm, which is a great improvement in comparison with the previous reports. The magnetoelectric distribution exhibited that the converse magnetoelectric effect was dominated by the stress in the composite.
A meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of childhood wheezing phenotypes identifies ANXA1 as a susceptibility locus for persistent wheezing

Background: Many genes associated with asthma explain only a fraction of its heritability. Most genome-wide association studies (GWASs) used a broad definition of "doctor-diagnosed asthma", thereby diluting genetic signals by not considering asthma heterogeneity. Objective: To identify genetic associates of childhood wheezing phenotypes. Methods: We conducted a novel multivariate GWAS meta-analysis of wheezing phenotypes jointly derived using unbiased analysis of data collected from birth to 18 years in 9,568 individuals from five UK birth-cohorts. Results: 44 independent SNPs were associated with early-onset persistent, 25 with preschool remitting, 33 with mid-childhood remitting and 32 with late-onset wheeze. We identified a novel locus on chr9q21.13 (close to annexin 1 (ANXA1), p<6.7x10-9), associated exclusively with early-onset persistent wheeze. We identified rs75260654 as the most likely causative single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) using Promoter Capture Hi-C loops, and then showed that the risk allele (T) confers a reduction in ANXA1 expression. Finally, in a murine model of house dust mite (HDM)-induced allergic airway disease, we demonstrated that anxa1 protein expression increased and anxa1 mRNA was significantly induced in lung tissue following HDM exposure. Using anxa1-/- deficient mice, we showed that loss of anxa1 results in heightened airway hyperreactivity and Th2 inflammation upon allergen challenge. Conclusions: We discovered a novel locus in chr9q21 uniquely associated with early-onset persistent wheeze, identified SNP rs75260654 as the most likely causative variant, and showed that ANXA1 may play a role in regulating the pulmonary immune response to allergens. Targeting this pathway in persistent disease may represent an exciting therapeutic prospect.