Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Indirect estimation of the need for palliative care during the COVID-19 pandemic: A descriptive cross-sectional study using mortality data in the Biobío Region, Chile

Background People with chronic diseases in their advanced phase require palliative care. This is essential to ensure their quality of life as it ends. However, a very low percentage of patients receive the necessary palliative care. The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the planning and provision of palliative care. Despite this, in Chile, palliative care coverage was extended by law to cover nononcological chronic diseases. Implementation of this law is expected to be a significant challenge in terms of material resources, as well as the need for the formation of specialized palliative care teams. Therefore, it is essential to estimate the need for palliative care for all chronic diseases to generate useful input for planning and decision-making in public health. Objectives To indirectly estimate the need for palliative care among people with Chronic Oncological Diseases (COD) and Chronic Non-Oncological Diseases (CNOD) during the prepandemic and pandemic context due to COVID-19 in the Biobío Region in Chile. Methods Cross-sectional study based on mortality data from chronic oncological and nononcological diseases during the prepandemic (2010-2018) and pandemic (2020-2021) contexts due to COVID-19 in a Region of Chile through indirect estimation using minimal estimate, standardized mortality rates and geographically weighted regression. Results It was estimated that 76.25% of deaths from chronic diseases in the Biobío Region would have required palliative care, which represents 77,618 people who should have been included in these health benefits. The pandemic had a significant effect on the average number of deaths from CNOD. People belonging to this group were more likely to die from COVID-19 than from their baseline disease, unlike the deaths of people from COD, where no significant changes were observed. Conclusion These estimates highlight the potential size of the population requiring palliative care and emphasize the importance of recognizing the rights of individuals with COD and CNOD conditions. It is evident that there is a significant demand for palliative care services, as well as a pressing need for adequate resources, effective management, and strategic planning to cater to the needs of this population. This is particularly crucial in the heavily impacted areas and communes of the Biobío Region, Chile.
Bright and efficient light-emitting diodes based on perovskite quantum dots with formamidine-methylamine hybrid cations

Perovskites have become an excellent candidate for the next-generation optoelectronic semiconductor materials due to their attractive optoelectronic properties, such as size-dependent emission peak, narrow emission spectrum, and high luminescent efficiency. Herein, we present the synthesis of mixed-cation perovskite quantum dots (QDs) based on FAxMA(1−x)PbBr3 (FA = CH(NH2)2, MA = CH3NH2). By photoluminescence (PL) characterization, it shows that the perovskite QDs emit green light (~530 nm) and measured high absolute quantum yield up to 88%. It is also found that the emission peak shows a blue-shift with the increase of MA+ doping due to a contracted lattice structure. We also fabricated perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs) with FAxMA(1−x)PbBr3 as the light-emitting layer. Ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy confirmed that the valence band of FAxMA(1−x)PbBr3 decreases with MA content increases, which can reduce the hole injection barrier in related devices. As a result, we obtained light-emitting diodes with an optimized composition of synthesized materials FA0.8MA0. 2PbBr3 as the emitting layer exhibiting maximum luminance of 2020 cd · m−2, a maximum current efficiency of 14.10 cd · A−1 and an external quantum efficiency of 3.36%, which are more than two-fold that of the FAPbBr3 PeLED, indicating that the doping of methylamine cations in FA-cation-based perovskites is a beneficial way to improve device performance.
Evaluation of Antibiotics Residues in Milk and Meat Using Different Analytical Methods

Veterinary drugs are pharmacologically and biologically active chemical agents. At present, veterinary drugs are extensively used to prevent and treat animal diseases, to promote animal growth, and to improve the conversion rate of feed. However, the use of veterinary drugs in food-producing animals may leave residues of the parent compounds and/or their metabolites in food products resulting in harmful effects on humans. To ensure food safety, sensitive and effective analytical methods have been developing rapidly. This review describes sample extraction and cleanup methods, and different analytical techniques are used for the determination of veterinary drug residues in milk and meat. Sample extraction methods, such as solvent extraction, liquid-liquid extraction, and cleanup methods such as dispersive solid-phase extraction and immunoaffinity chromatography, were summarized. Different types of analytical methods such as microbial, immunological, biosensor, thin layer chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography, and liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry were discussed for the analysis of veterinary drug residues in animal-derived foods. Liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry is the most widely used analytical technique for the determination of antibiotic drug residues. This is due to the powerful separation of LC and accurate identification of MS, and LC-MS/MS is more popular in the analysis of veterinary drug residues.
Text classification technique for discovering country-based publications from international COVID-19 publications

Objective The significant increase in the number of COVID-19 publications, on the one hand, and the strategic importance of this subject area for research and treatment systems in the health field, on the other hand, reveals the need for text-mining research more than ever. The main objective of the present paper is to discover country-based publications from international COVID-19 publications with text classification techniques. Methods The present paper is applied research that has been performed using text-mining techniques such as clustering and text classification. The statistical population is all COVID-19 publications from PubMed Central® (PMC), extracted from November 2019 to June 2021. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) was used for clustering, and support vector machine (SVM), scikit-learn library, and Python programming language were used for text classification. Text classification was applied to discover the consistency of Iranian and international topics. Results The findings showed that seven topics were extracted using the LDA algorithm for international and Iranian publications on COVID-19. Moreover, the COVID-19 publications show the largest share in the subject area of “Social and Technology in COVID-19” at the international (April 2021) and national (February 2021) levels with 50.61% and 39.44%, respectively. The highest rate of publications at international and national levels was in April 2021 and February 2021, respectively. Conclusion One of the most important results of this study was discovering a common trend and consistency of Iranian and international publications on COVID-19. Accordingly, in the topic category “Covid-19 Proteins: Vaccine and Antibody Response,” Iranian publications have a common publishing and research trend with international ones.
Effect of wavelength change in microholographic recording

In microholographic recording, expensive laser diodes having no spectrum broadening (single mode) and no wavelength variation are used. On the other hand, in conventional optical disk systems, cheap laser diodes having spectrum broadening (multimode) and wavelength variation are used. It is a great advantage if the laser diodes for conventional optical disk systems can be used for microholographic recording. Therefore, the effect of wavelength change in microholographic recording was investigated through a numerical simulation. The laser diodes were modeled so that the full width at 1/e2 maximum of the spectrum was 0.8 nm and the center wavelength was 405 nm. The numerical aperture of the objective lenses was 0.85 and the thickness of the recording medium was 300 μm. The diffraction efficiency of the diffracted beam from a microhologram was calculated using the coupled wave theory and the following results were obtained. The diffraction efficiency decreased by three orders of magnitude by replacing single-mode laser diodes with multimode laser diodes, which makes it necessary to enhance the readout signal. The tolerance of the optical path length difference between the signal and reference beams was -50 ~ 110 μm, which makes it necessary to adjust the optical path length difference. The tolerance of the wavelength variation was 405 ± 0.5 nm, which makes it necessary to select the laser diodes. The conclusion was that it is not practical to use the laser diodes for conventional optical disk systems for microholographic recording.
Active inhibition of the retro-cue effect in visual working memory: Evidence from event-related potential

This study used the event-related potential (ERP) technique to investigate whether active inhibition exists in retro-cue Effect (RCE) in visual working memory using modified retro-cue tasks. In this modified task, the participants were first asked to memorize six color blocks and then presented with directed remembering or directed forgetting cues; finally, their working memory performance was tested. For behavioral results, due to the extension of the memory interval, this study did not find RCE in accuracy but reflected it in the total reaction time. For ERP results, the frontal late positive potential (LPP) followed by the directed forgetting condition was larger than that followed by directed remembering and baseline conditions, and there was no significant difference between directed remembering and baseline conditions. There was no significant difference in parietal P3 followed by both the directed remembering and directed forgetting conditions, which were significantly larger than the baseline condition. This result reveals that active inhibition plays an important role in directed forgetting RCE. There was a correlation between parietal P3 and frontal LPP with the same time window but different scalp regions in the directed forgetting condition, indicating a potential relationship between active inhibition and retelling in directed forgetting RCE.
Pressure sensing mat as an objective and sensitive tool for the evaluation of lameness in rabbits

In orthopaedic research, the analysis of the gait pattern is an often-used evaluation method. It allows an assessment of changes in motion sequence and pain level during postoperative follow up periods. Visual assessments are highly subjective and dependent on the circumstances. Particular challenge in rabbits is their hopping gait pattern. The aim of the present study was to establish a more objective and sensitive lameness evaluation using a pressure sensing mat. Twelve NZW rabbits were implemented in the study. They got an artificial anterior cruciate ligament transection of the right knee in connection with an experimental study, which investigated PTOA treatment. Rabbits were examined by a visual lameness score. Additionally, load of the hindlimbs was measured by the use of a pressure sensing mat and a video was recorded. Peak pressure and time force integral, defined as cumulated integral of all sensors associated to a hind paw, were evaluated. Preoperative data were collected on three independent days. As postoperative measurement time points, week 1 and week 12 after surgery were chosen. The subjective visual scoring was compared to the objective data of the pressure sensing mat. Following the visual score, lameness in week one was mild to moderate. In week twelve, rabbits were evaluated as lame free bar one. Contrary, following the values of the sensor mat, lameness in week one appeared to be more pronounced and almost all rabbits still showed low-grade lameness in week twelve. Consequently, the pressure sensing mat is more sensitive than the visual score and captures the grade of lameness much more accurately. For specific orthopaedic issues, where subtle differences in lameness are important to detect, the used system is a good supplementary evaluation method.
Cultural patterns and outcome of umbilical cord care among caregivers in Africa: a systematic review

Background: The third leading cause of death in infants under 1-month-old is neonatal sepsis. Following the severing of the umbilical cord, bacterial infection may result in newborn sepsis and mortality. The objective of this review on cultural patterns and umbilical cord-care outcomes is to evaluate present practices and create a case for developing and implementing novel cord-care regimens in Africa. Materials and methods: In order to find published studies on cultural patterns and outcomes of umbilical cord care among caregivers in Africa from January 2015 to December 2021, we conducted a systematic literature search across six computerized bibliographic databases: Google Scholar, POPLINE, PubMed, Web of Science, Science Direct, and Scopus. As a result, a narrative synthesis of quantitative and qualitative data was employed to summarize the data from the included research. Results: There were 17 studies included in this review with 16 out of the 17 studies having a total of 5757 participants. The odds of neonatal sepsis were 13 times higher among infants whose caregivers had improper hygiene compared with those who had proper hygiene. The outcome of cord management showed that the majority (75.1%) of the umbilical cords were infected. Majority of the included studies (n=13) show that the respondents (caregivers) had a low level of knowledge and practice. Conclusion: This systematic review reveals that unsafe umbilical cord-care practices remained prevalent in some African regions. Home delivery is still a prevalent practice in some communities and inappropriate umbilical cord cleaning practices were common findings.
COVID-19 and Listeria Meningitis Treated by Ampicillin, Sulfamethoxazole/Trimethoprim and Meropenem

Background Secondary bacterial infection was initially rare in SARS-CoV-2 infectious disease (COVID-19) patients, but COVID-19-associated bacterial infectious diseases have recently been increasing. Furthermore, it might be difficult to distinguish COVID-19 from bacterial meningitis by the symptoms, and one might be uncertain about antibiotic therapy for Listeria meningitis infection—typically caused by eating contaminated food—in elderly persons and pregnant women. Case Report A 96-year-old woman who had been living alone was found to have SARS-CoV-2 infection in February 2023. She was admitted to our hospital with high fever and disturbance of consciousness and was started on treatment with remdesivir. Two days later, her consciousness was still disturbed, and she was found to have a stiff neck. In addition, increased white blood cell counts and C-reactive protein suggested bacterial infection. Therefore, a lumbar puncture was done, and Listeria monocytogenes was ultimately isolated from blood cultures and its genetic material was detected in cerebrospinal fluid. She had previously eaten refrigerated food and cheese products. Intravenous ampicillin 1.0 g 6×/day was started, but one week later, loss of consciousness continued, and the cerebrospinal findings were not improved, although nasal swab became negative for SARS-CoV-2. Intravenous sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim (ST) 80/400 mg 3×/day was added, and her consciousness and fever improved by one week later. A drug rash appeared after ST was started, and she was switched to meropenem. Her condition finally improved. Conclusion COVID-19-associated secondary listeria infection was found in an elderly woman. She was treated with not only ampicillin, but also ST and meropenem. Meningitis caused by Listeria monocytogenes should be considered as a secondary complication and carefully treated with antibiotics during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Increased tissue modulus and hardness in the TallyHO mouse model of early onset type 2 diabetes mellitus

Individuals with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) have a higher fracture risk compared to those without T2DM despite having higher bone mineral density (BMD). Thus, T2DM may alter other aspects of resistance to fracture beyond BMD such as bone geometry, microarchitecture, and tissue material properties. We characterized the skeletal phenotype and assessed the effects of hyperglycemia on bone tissue mechanical and compositional properties in the TallyHO mouse model of early-onset T2DM using nanoindentation and Raman spectroscopy. Femurs and tibias were harvested from male TallyHO and C57Bl/6J mice at 26 weeks of age. The minimum moment of inertia assessed by micro-computed tomography was smaller (-26%) and cortical porosity was greater (+490%) in TallyHO femora compared to controls. In three-point bending tests to failure, the femoral ultimate moment and stiffness did not differ but post-yield displacement was lower (-35%) in the TallyHO mice relative to that in C57Bl/6J age-matched controls after adjusting for body mass. The cortical bone in the tibia of TallyHO mice was stiffer and harder, as indicated by greater mean tissue nanoindentation modulus (+22%) and hardness (+22%) compared to controls. Raman spectroscopic mineral:matrix ratio and crystallinity were greater in TallyHO tibiae than in C57Bl/6J tibiae (mineral:matrix +10%, p < 0.05; crystallinity +0.41%, p < 0.10). Our regression model indicated that greater values of crystallinity and collagen maturity were associated with reduced ductility observed in the femora of the TallyHO mice. The maintenance of structural stiffness and strength of TallyHO mouse femora despite reduced geometric resistance to bending could potentially be explained by increased tissue modulus and hardness, as observed at the tibia. Finally, with worsening glycemic control, tissue hardness and crystallinity increased, and bone ductility decreased in TallyHO mice. Our study suggests that these material factors may be sentinels of bone embrittlement in adolescents with T2DM.
Method for calibrating intrinsic camera parameters using orthogonal vanishing points

Abstract. To self-calibrate the intrinsic camera parameters, we designed a calibration pattern and proposed a method to estimate camera parameters involving distortion coefficients from orthogonal vanishing points. We first obtained four pairs of vanishing points from an image of the calibration pattern and selected the two pairs with the smallest error. Then, after analyzing the effect of the intrinsic parameter error from the noise of the vanishing points, we employed an optimization algorithm to obtain the best vanishing points. Using two images with different orientations, we could obtain the intrinsic parameters by using a linear method. Finally, according to the preliminary calibrated intrinsic parameters and a criterion that the airline is a static straight line in the pictorial plane, the arithmetic mean of the camera distortion, which is based on the common characteristic points, could be obtained. Simulated and experimental results indicated that the two-dimensional reconstruction error is 0.32 pixels. Although this method has the same error level as the traditional method, it has a better flexibility and can achieve real-time camera self-calibration.
Adaptive intermittent control for exponential synchronization of directed networks with complex-variable systems and distributed delays coupling

In this paper, adaptive exponential synchronization of directed networks with complex-variable systems and distributed delays coupling is investigated. An adaptive nonperiodical intermittent control scheme is adopted to realize exponential synchronization of such complex-variable directed dynamical networks. Based on the complex inequality, piecewise analysis method and Lyapunov stability theory, some sufficient conditions guaranteeing globally exponential synchronization are established. Different from previous works, here the designed adaptive update law for intermittent feedback control gain does not explicitly depend on time, which makes the adaptive nonperiodical intermittent control technique more convenient to implement in realistic applications. Moreover, it is indicated that the established synchronization criteria depend on the control rates rather than the control periods or control widths, and therefore the control periods can be optionally chosen for practical problems. Finally, numerical simulations are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the derived theoretical results.
Changes in lifestyle-related behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan: a questionnaire survey for examinees who underwent an annual health check-up

Objective To investigate the effect of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on lifestyle behaviour and clinical data in a population who underwent an annual health check-up in Tokyo, Japan. Methods A self-report questionnaire was completed regarding changes in their physical activities, diet, alcohol intake, smoking and mental stress. For those recommended to undergo further examination or treatment, their intention to do so was also questioned. The clinical results of the check-ups across three different periods (before and during the pandemic and survey period) were statistically compared. Results During the survey period, 838 examinees responded. While physical activities decreased due to teleworking, changes in food intake and dietary patterns were varied. Furthermore, changes in mental stress were also diverse. As for the intention to undergo further clinical examination or treatment, 23.5% answered that they thought they would wait until the government lifted the state of emergency or the pandemic subsided. Compared with before the pandemic, diastolic blood pressure, liver function, kidney function and bone density tended to deteriorate. Conclusions The COVID-19 pandemic affected the lifestyle of the current study population. To prepare for future outbreaks, real-world information should be collected and shared so that effective measures for health promotion can be developed.
MTGDC: A Multi-Scale Tensor Graph Diffusion Clustering for Single-Cell RNA Sequencing Data

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) is a new technology that focuses on the expression levels for each cell to study cell heterogeneity. Thus, new computational methods matching scRNA-seq are designed to detect cell types among various cell groups. Herein, we propose a Multi-scale Tensor Graph Diffusion Clustering (MTGDC) for single-cell RNA sequencing data. It has the following mechanisms: 1) To mine potential similarity distributions among cells, we design a multi-scale affinity learning method to construct a fully connected graph between cells; 2) For each affinity matrix, we propose an efficient tensor graph diffusion learning framework to learn high-order information among multi-scale affinity matrices. First, the tensor graph is explicitly introduced to measure cell-cell edges with local high-order relationship information. To further preserve more global topology structure information in the tensor graph, MTGDC implicitly considers the propagation of information via a data diffusion process by designing a simple and efficient tensor graph diffusion update algorithm. 3) Finally, we mix together the multi-scale tensor graphs to obtain the fusion high-order affinity matrix and apply it to spectral clustering. Experiments and case studies showed that MTGDC had obvious advantages over the state-of-art algorithms in robustness, accuracy, visualization, and speed.