Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Associations of Lipoprotein(a) Level with Cerebral Small Vessel Disease in Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease

Background: This study aimed to examine the association of lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)] level with the burden of cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Methods: Data from 111 consecutive patients with AD admitted to Nanjing First Hospital from 2015 to 2022 were retrospectively analyzed in this study. Serum Lp(a) concentrations were grouped into tertiles (T1–T3). Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was rated for the presence of CSVD, including enlarged perivascular spaces (EPVS), lacunes, white-matter lesions, and cerebral microbleeds (CMBs). The CSVD burden was calculated by summing the scores of each MRI marker at baseline. A binary or ordinal logistic regression model was used to estimate the relationship of serum Lp(a) levels with CSVD burden and each MRI marker. Results: Patients with higher tertiles of Lp(a) levels were less likely to have any CSVD (T1, 94.6%; T2, 78.4%; T3, 66.2%; p = 0.013). Multivariable analysis found that Lp(a) levels were inversely associated with the presence of CSVD (T2 vs. T1: adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 0.132, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.018–0.946, p = 0.044; T3 vs. T1: aOR 0.109, 95% CI 0.016–0.737, p = 0.023) and CSVD burden (T3 vs. T1: aOR 0.576, 95% CI 0.362–0.915, p = 0.019). The independent relationship between Lp(a) levels and individual CSVD features was significant for moderate-to-severe EPVS in the centrum semiovale (T2 vs. T1: aOR 0.059, 95% CI 0.006–0.542, p = 0.012; T3 vs. T1: aOR 0.029, 95% CI 0.003–0.273, p = 0.002) and CMBs (T3 vs. T1: aOR 0.144, 95% CI 0.029–0.716, p = 0.018). Conclusions: In this study, serum Lp(a) level was inversely associated with CSVD in AD patients.
Proteomics Applications in Toxoplasma gondii: Unveiling the Host–Parasite Interactions and Therapeutic Target Discovery

Toxoplasma gondii, a protozoan parasite with the ability to infect various warm-blooded vertebrates, including humans, is the causative agent of toxoplasmosis. This infection poses significant risks, leading to severe complications in immunocompromised individuals and potentially affecting the fetus through congenital transmission. A comprehensive understanding of the intricate molecular interactions between T. gondii and its host is pivotal for the development of effective therapeutic strategies. This review emphasizes the crucial role of proteomics in T. gondii research, with a specific focus on host–parasite interactions, post-translational modifications (PTMs), PTM crosstalk, and ongoing efforts in drug discovery. Additionally, we provide an overview of recent advancements in proteomics techniques, encompassing interactome sample preparation methods such as BioID (BirA*-mediated proximity-dependent biotin identification), APEX (ascorbate peroxidase-mediated proximity labeling), and Y2H (yeast two hybrid), as well as various proteomics approaches, including single-cell analysis, DIA (data-independent acquisition), targeted, top-down, and plasma proteomics. Furthermore, we discuss bioinformatics and the integration of proteomics with other omics technologies, highlighting its potential in unraveling the intricate mechanisms of T. gondii pathogenesis and identifying novel therapeutic targets.
A General Multiscale Pyramid Attention Module for Ship Detection in SAR Images

Compared with large-scale ships, small-scale ships occupy few pixels and have low contrast, so it poses a great challenge to detect multiscale ships in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. In order to improve the accuracy of multiscale ship detection in SAR images, this article designs a general multiscale pyramid attention module (MPAM), which is a plug-and-play lightweight module that can adapt to many ship detection networks. In the MPAM, a deep feature extraction submodule is first designed to use the multiscale pyramid structure to divide the feature map into different levels, extracting rich features with resolution and semantic information for multiscale ship detection. The channel multilayer attention fusion submodule and spatial multilayer attention fusion submodule are then designed to fuse the channel and spatial attention blocks on different level feature maps, which could better learn the dependent features from the channel and spatial dimensions, to enhance the feature representation. Finally, the fused feature map is input into the existing ship detection networks to obtain the detection result. Experiments on SAR datasets containing multiscale ships show that the effectiveness of the MPAM in improving the accuracy of the existing ship detection networks.
Investigations of commercial sodium copper chlorophyllin degradation after ultraviolet irradiation

Chlorophyllins are naturally derived colors that provide green hues to food products in oil- and water-based systems. Due to their good antimicrobial activity, in order not to contaminate the surface of food products and to increase product expiration dates and safety, the use of commercial chlorophyllin is common in the form of antimicrobial films that could cover fresh or processed food. UV irradiation effects on commercial sodium copper chlorophyllin are examined to estimate the potential application risk of this chlorophyll derivative for use in foods and cosmetics. Photodegradation of an aqueous 1 × 10-4 M commercial sodium copper chlorophyllin solution was monitored after ultraviolet irradiation. The samples were irradiated for a period of 0 - 60 min. in a cylindrical photochemical reactor called "Rayonnet" with symmetrically placed lamps that emit an energy flux of 12 W/m2 at 300 nm. Ultrahigh liquid chromatography coupled with a diode array and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry was used to monitor the loss of major components of sodium copper chlorophyllin after irradiation, as well as, to detect possible new products. It is estimated that the photodegradation of all detected compounds follows first-order kinetics. UHPLC analysis showed the loss of the major chlorophyllin component, copper chlorin e6 , at a rate faster than the overall detected components, in the range of 7.02 × 10-2 min-1.The observed photosensitivity of sodium copper chlorophyllin was lower than to the natural chlorophylls, and raising the possibility of its use in food and cosmetics. The main detected photoproducts are oxidized compounds of chlorophyllin. For all these reasons, the rapid loss of copper chlorin e6 , may reduce some of the main commercial sodium copper chlorophyllin dietary benefits, like antimutagenic and antioxidant activity.
DATA REPORT: CARBONATE AND BARITE TRENDS ACROSS THE EOCENE/OLIGOCENE BOUNDARY AT SHATSKY RISE, ODP LEG 198

The barite and CaCO3 content (in weight percent) of marine sediments can be used to determine spatial and temporal changes in export production (organic and carbonate carbon flux) and/or CaCO3 preservation (inorganic carbon burial). Here we report barite and CaCO3 content in Eocene/Oligocene (E/O) boundary sediments from locations drilled on Shatsky Rise during Ocean Drilling Program Leg 198. Records of these indexes may be used along with other data to determine how the major E/O boundary climatic transition (initiation of Antarctic glaciation and resultant ocean–climate system changes) affected marine export production/preservation at Shatsky Rise. Such data are necessary to elucidate the timing and phasing of changes in the carbon cycle relative to fluctuations in oceanographic conditions across this climatically important interval.
SMES’ ENERGY EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENT: THE ROLES OF KNOWLEDGE, GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION AND PERSONAL NORMS

Energy efficiency is like the ‘low hanging fruit’ in which improving energy efficiency is one of the easiest ways to lessen energy demand. Firms, large or small, can make a major positive contribution to energy sustainability by improving energy efficiency. This research attempts to examine the effects of SMEs’ perceptions in terms of knowledge, government intervention and personal norms on their support for energy efficiency improvement. A survey was carried out to collect data and empirical testing of the research model was conducted. The estimated results suggest that the factors of knowledge and government intervention have significant effects on SMEs’ support for energy efficiency improvement. In addition, the results show that personal norms is an important mediator variable in influencing SMEs’ decision to improve energy efficiency. The findings of this research provide some fresh insights on energy efficiency improvement of SMEs and several notable implications can be drawn from this research.
Using Control Balance Theory to Examine Sports Doping Among Professional Athletes in Iran

The use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) is one of the most important issues in the world of sports. At its very heart, this issue speaks to athletic integrity and competitive fairness. When athletes engage in doping, they are committing acts of deviance. The main purpose of this research, accordingly, is to explain why athletes use illegal PEDs. Specifically, we use Tittle’s control balance theory as a conceptual framework. A sample of 852 professional athletes from Iran was used to test assumptions related to control balance theory, and the findings of the study generally indicated that the components of control balance theory predicted athletes’ doping behavior. In addition, the moderating relationships of the control balance model indicated that the relationship between the control deficit and PED use was moderated by the variance in self-control, opportunity, motivation, constraint, perceived benefits, and provocations. Specific results, policy implications, and study limitations are discussed.
The Sphingosine-1-Phosphate Receptor Agonist FTY720 Increases Heart Rate Variability in Isolated Murine Ischemic Heart Model

Despite considerable improvements in the management of hypertension, only half of adults with hypertension have their blood pressure under control. Uncontrolled hypertension may contribute to the development of left ventricular hypertrophy-induced myocardial ischemia. Accumulating evidence also suggests that hypertension may lead to lower heart rate variability (HRV), which is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. This forms the basis for the hypothesis that interventions aiming at raising HRV and reducing ischemia-induced injury in hypertensive patients, especially after AMI, may reduce the risk of cardiac events and mortality. In experiments reported here, we investigated the effects of the sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor agonist FTY720 on HRV in isolated, denervated murine ischaemic hearts. Our results demonstrated the presence of one major concentration of power centred on the ultra low frequency bands (ULF) which accounted for more than 99.9% of the total power (TP). TP and ULF decreased by 98% and 98.5% during ischemia respectively whilst these parameters increased by 1074% and 1073% during ischemia + 25 nFTY720 respectively (n=8, p<0.001). The Poincare plot of the ischemia + 25 nM FTY720 condition exhibits greater dispersion of points than that of the control and ischemia conditions. The reconstructed ellipses had larger SD2 in the ischemia + 25 nM FTY720 condition than in the control and ischemia conditions (n=8, p<0.001). These data provide the first evidence that FTY720 may increase HRV, especially after myocardial ischemia and may represent a therapeutic approach for the treatment and prevention of coronary artery disease.
Uncovering Iranian EFL Learners’ Repair Operations’ Employment in Story-Retelling

Abstract: Although Iranian EFL learners’ practices concerning the process of repair have been investigated by some researchers the state of Iranian EFL learners’ use of repair operations in narratives and story-retelling is underexplored. This study aimed to investigate how Iranian EFL learners manage communication during story retelling and identify the repair operations they use to overcome communication breakdowns. Based on Schegloff's theoretical framework of 10 repair operations, this study examined the preferences of forty EFL learners regarding the use of repair operations. In addition, the relationship between the gender and English proficiency level of EFL learners and repair operations in story retelling was investigated. After analyzing forty monologues totaling 183 minutes, the findings show that nonlinguistic repair operation and parenthesizing are the most and least frequently used operation. Moreover, recycling, replacing, deletion and insertion are found to be the second, third, fourth and fifth most frequent repair operations while abortion, searching, reformatting and sequence jumping are considered less used by the EFL learners. Additionally, the results of crosstabulation and chi-square tests show no statistically association between proficiency levels and repair operations as well as gender and repair operations employment by EFL learners in story-retelling. The findings might be useful to researchers, language educators and syllabus designers.
Feasibility of 3D Body Tracking from Monocular 2D Video Feeds in Musculoskeletal Telerehabilitation

Musculoskeletal conditions affect millions of people globally; however, conventional treatments pose challenges concerning price, accessibility, and convenience. Many telerehabilitation solutions offer an engaging alternative but rely on complex hardware for body tracking. This work explores the feasibility of a model for 3D Human Pose Estimation (HPE) from monocular 2D videos (MediaPipe Pose) in a physiotherapy context, by comparing its performance to ground truth measurements. MediaPipe Pose was investigated in eight exercises typically performed in musculoskeletal physiotherapy sessions, where the Range of Motion (ROM) of the human joints was the evaluated parameter. This model showed the best performance for shoulder abduction, shoulder press, elbow flexion, and squat exercises. Results have shown a MAPE ranging between 14.9% and 25.0%, Pearson’s coefficient ranging between 0.963 and 0.996, and cosine similarity ranging between 0.987 and 0.999. Some exercises (e.g., seated knee extension and shoulder flexion) posed challenges due to unusual poses, occlusions, and depth ambiguities, possibly related to a lack of training data. This study demonstrates the potential of HPE from monocular 2D videos, as a markerless, affordable, and accessible solution for musculoskeletal telerehabilitation approaches. Future work should focus on exploring variations of the 3D HPE models trained on physiotherapy-related datasets, such as the Fit3D dataset, and post-preprocessing techniques to enhance the model’s performance.
An Efficient and Scalable FHE-Based PDQ Scheme: Utilizing FFT to Design a Low Multiplication Depth Large-Integer Comparison Algorithm

The growing number of data privacy breaches and associated financial losses have driven the demand for private database queries. Clients typically submit queries that involve both search and computation operations, such as counting students under a certain age or calculating the BMI of employees above a specific age. Existing protocols often face limitations due to reliance on specific-purpose encryption schemes or multiple communication rounds between clients and servers. In this work, we present a unified framework utilizing fully homomorphic encryption techniques to efficiently and privately process queries with search and computation operations. Our contributions include a homomorphic encryption-based private comparison algorithm, called the layered comparison algorithm, which achieves a 2.6-6.6X performance improvement compared to algorithms from prior work; a fast Fourier transform-based preprocessing method enabling accurate large integer arithmetic operations in the encrypted domain; and a scalable database encoding method. Evaluation results demonstrate the practicality of our system, as it processes an aggregated query for a 1k-row encrypted database in approximately 4.53 seconds.
Low dose ribosomal DNA P-loop mutation affects development and enforces autophagy in Arabidopsis

ABSTRACT Arabidopsis contains hundreds of ribosomal DNA copies organized within the nucleolar organizing regions (NORs) in chromosomes 2 and 4. There are four major types of variants of rDNA, VAR1–4, based on the polymorphisms of 3’ external transcribed sequences. The variants are known to be differentially expressed during plant development. We created a mutant by the CRISPR-Cas9-mediated excision of ~ 25 nt from predominantly NOR4 ribosomal DNA copies, obtaining mosaic mutational events on ~ 5% of all rDNA copies. The excised region consists of P-loop and Helix-82 segments of 25S rRNA. The mutation led to allelic, dosage-dependent defects marked by lateral root inhibition, reduced size, and pointy leaves, all previously observed for defective ribosomal function. The mutation in NOR4 led to dosage compensation from the NOR2 copies by elevated expression of VAR1 in mutants and further associated single-nucleotide variants, thus, resulting in altered rRNA sub-population. Furthermore, the mutants exhibited rRNA maturation defects specifically in the minor pathway typified by 32S pre-rRNA accumulation. Density-gradient fractionation and subsequent RT-PCR of rRNA analyses revealed that mutated copies were not incorporated into the translating ribosomes. The mutants in addition displayed an elevated autophagic flux as shown by the autophagic marker GFP-ATG8e, likely related to ribophagy.
Cerebral response to emotional working memory based on vocal cues: an fNIRS study

Introduction Humans mainly utilize visual and auditory information as a cue to infer others’ emotions. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown the neural basis of memory processing based on facial expression, but few studies have examined it based on vocal cues. Thus, we aimed to investigate brain regions associated with emotional judgment based on vocal cues using an N-back task paradigm. Methods Thirty participants performed N-back tasks requiring them to judge emotion or gender from voices that contained both emotion and gender information. During these tasks, cerebral hemodynamic response was measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Results The results revealed that during the Emotion 2-back task there was significant activation in the frontal area, including the right precentral and inferior frontal gyri, possibly reflecting the function of an attentional network with auditory top-down processing. In addition, there was significant activation in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which is known to be a major part of the working memory center. Discussion These results suggest that, compared to judging the gender of voice stimuli, when judging emotional information, attention is directed more deeply and demands for higher-order cognition, including working memory, are greater. We have revealed for the first time the specific neural basis for emotional judgments based on vocal cues compared to that for gender judgments based on vocal cues.
In Vivo and In Silico Studies of the Hepatoprotective Activity of Tert-Butylhydroquinone

Tert-butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) is a synthetic food antioxidant with biological activities, but little is known about its pharmacological benefits in liver disease. Therefore, this work aimed to evaluate TBHQ during acute liver damage induced by CCl4 (24 h) or BDL (48 h) in Wistar rats. It was found that pretreatment with TBHQ prevents 50% of mortality induced by a lethal dose of CCl4 (4 g/kg, i.p.), and 80% of BDL+TBHQ rats survived, while only 50% of the BDL group survived. Serum markers of liver damage and macroscopic and microscopic (H&E staining) observations suggest that TBHQ protects from both hepatocellular necrosis caused by the sublethal dose of CCl4 (1.6 g/kg, i.p.), as well as necrosis/ductal proliferation caused by BDL. Additionally, online databases identified 49 potential protein targets for TBHQ. Finally, a biological target candidate (Keap1) was evaluated in a proof-of-concept in silico molecular docking assay, resulting in an interaction energy of −5.5491 kcal/mol, which was higher than RA839 and lower than monoethyl fumarate (compounds known to bind to Keap1). These findings suggest that TBHQ increases the survival of animals subjected to CCl4 intoxication or BDL, presumably by reducing hepatocellular damage, probably due to the interaction of TBHQ with Keap1.
Etude systémique d'un groupe d'hivernage aux îles Kerguelen

Les hivernages polaires constituent un remarquable terrain d'etude des processus de groupe etant des groupes «naturels» evoluant, ce, pendant longtemps, dans des conditions proches du laboratoire. Le MIPG permet une approche standardisee des tensions latentes de la «matrice de groupe». En utilisant des methodes non parametriques, nous confrontons les donnees du MIPG a celles des methodes sociometriques banales
Why do Zakah Institutions in Sri Lanka Underperform?

Zakah as a compulsory worship obligation of Muslims has been practiced for several decades in an institutionalized form in Sri Lanka. Although the institutionalized mechanism contributes to some improvements in socioeconomic conditions, recent research highlighted that the impact of such a model is yet below the expected level. The institutional zakah practice in Sri Lanka has remained essentially informal lacking any state recognition or zakah specific regulation. This paper examined the contemporary challenges and root causes of the zakah institutions’ underperformance in Sri Lanka. This paper took a qualitative methodology and collected primary and secondary data through official documents, interviews, and published literature. The empirical findings of the paper reveal a threefold challenge that contributes to the inefficient institutional zakah performance, namely low collection, ineffective disbursement, and external hurdles. The paper suggests that the prolonged dominant informal and individualist zakah culture of Sri Lankan Muslims fails to actualize the designated goals of zakah and this in turn has contributed to the contemporary challenges. The paper highlights the need for developing an alternative jurisprudential methodology that has the potential to offer sensible remedies to the contemporary identified challenges. The paper suggests that zakah institutions must thoroughly re-evaluate existing zakah applications to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their zakah management systems. It is also suggested that it would be helpful to establish a National Zakah Consultative Body that can advise the government on adopting effective regulations or guidance relevant to zakah management for the Sri Lankan Muslim minority.
A Study of Active Contour Segmentation Models based on Automatic Initial Contour

Image segmentation is a fundamental and challenging problem in image processing and often a vital step for high level analysis. Due to the active contour model (ACM) need to choose the initial contour for the following evolution, it limited the utilities of this kind of segmentation to a large extent. For the purpose of avoiding the processing of human choosing initial contour, in this paper, we proposed an automatic initial contour choosing algorithm of the input image information. Based on the chosen initial contour, the iterative efficient and the accuracy of segmentation have been improved when the initial contour is incorporated into the local based segmentation framework. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real images are provided to evaluate our method, showing significant improvements on the segmentation accuracy and stability, comparing to the human chosen initial contour, such as LBF and LGIF.