Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Appropriate time for ejection fraction reassessment after revascularization in patients with left ventricular dysfunction for risk stratification of sudden cardiac death

Abstract Background Appropriate time for ejection fraction (EF) reassessment after revascularization in patients with left ventricular dysfunction has not been investigated comprehensively, although 3 months after revascularization is recommended to stratify the risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD). Hypothesis EF reassessed within different timeframe after revascularization may have incosistent contribution for risk stratification of SCD. Methods Patients who had EF ≤ 40% before revascularization and had EF reassessment at least once during follow‐up were included. The role of early (<3 months) versus late (3–12 months) EF measurements in prediction of all‐cause mortality and SCD were compared. Results A total of 1589 patients were identified. EF reassessed <3 months was lower than EF reassessed within 3–12 months (42.1 ± 9.7% vs. 45.8 ± 10.8%; p < .01). Among 1069 patients who had EF reassessed <3 months, EF ≤ 35% was associated with a higher risk of all‐cause mortality (hazard ratio [HR], 1.67; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.22–2.29; p < .01), but had no association with the risk of SCD (HR, 1.44; 95% CI, 0.84–2.48; p = .18). By contrast, among 595 patients who had EF reassessed within 3–12 months, EF ≤ 35% was associated with higher risks of both all‐cause death (HR, 1.81; 95% CI, 1.06–3.10; p = .03) and SCD (HR, 2.71; 95% CI, 1.31–5.61; p < .01). The relative contribution of SCD to all‐cause death was higher in patients with EF ≤ 35% than patients with EF > 35% when EF was reassessed within 3–12 months (p = .04). However, when EF was reassessed <3 months, the mode of death was similar in patients with EF ≤ 35% versus >35% (p = .85). Conclusions 3 to 12 months after revascularization may be appropriate for cardiac function reassessment and SCD risk stratification.
Rb/Sr age determinations on late Proterozoic granitoids from the Evje area, South Norway

Rb/Sr whole rock age determinations on different orthogneiss units, on one postkinematic granite and on young monzonitic sheets from the Evje area, Central Aust-Agder, have yielded ages ranging from 1350 to 900 m.y. The ages obtained indicate that the penultimate major regional deformation is younger than 1120 ± 31 m.y. and older than 1026 ± 57 m.y. , while the last regional deformation is younger than 1026 ± 57 m.y. and probably contemporaneous with the last major period of deformation with accompanying· metamorphism dated at about 1000--900 m.y. elsewhere in South Norway. The ages suggest that a major part of the granitic basement rocks in this part of South Norway is younger than 1350 m.y. (87Sr/86Sr)0 ranges from 0.706 to 0.704 suggesting an origin from Rb poor source regions or from only slightly older crust with normal Rb/Sr ratios.
Application of a pyramid pooling Unet model with integrated attention mechanism and Inception module in pancreatic tumor segmentation

Abstract Background The segmentation and recognition of pancreatic tumors are crucial tasks in the diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic diseases. However, due to the relatively small proportion of the pancreas in the abdomen and significant shape and size variations, pancreatic tumor segmentation poses considerable challenges. Purpose To construct a network model that combines a pyramid pooling module with Inception architecture and SE attention mechanism (PIS‐Unet), and observe its effectiveness in pancreatic tumor images segmentation, thereby providing supportive recommendations for clinical practitioners. Materials and methods A total of 303 patients with histologically confirmed pancreatic cystic neoplasm (PCN), including serous cystic neoplasm (SCN) and mucinous cystic neoplasm (MCN), from Shanghai Changhai Hospital between March 2011 and November 2021 were included. A total of 1792 T2‐weighted imaging (T2WI) slices were used to build a CNN model. The model employed a pyramid pooling Inception module with a fused attention mechanism. The attention mechanism enhanced the network's focus on local features, while the Inception module and pyramid pooling allowed the network to extract features at different scales and improve the utilization efficiency of global information, thereby effectively enhancing network performance. Results Using three‐fold cross‐validation, the model constructed by us achieved a dice score of 85.49 ± 2.02 for SCN images segmentation, and a dice score of 87.90 ± 4.19 for MCN images segmentation. Conclusion This study demonstrates that using deep learning networks for the segmentation of PCNs yields favorable results. Applying this network as an aid to physicians in PCN diagnosis shows potential for clinical applications.
Kidneys in heart failure: Impact of flozins and beyond.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) and heart failure (HF) represent two modern epidemies and are closely related. According to the concept of cardio-renal and reno-cardiac syndromes most of patients with CKD are affected by cardiovascular disease (CVD) and CVD (including HF) is one of the factors not only promoting progression of established CKD, but also triggering its onset and development. Treatment of CVD and HF in CKD patients remains to be challenging since CKD patients are characterized by extremely diverse and strongly expressed risk profile and the data from well-designed clinical trials addressing this population are scarce. Nevertheless, it seems that most of the drugs used in the treatment of CVD and HF (including: beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, angiotensin II receptor blocking agents, mineralocorticosteroid receptor antagonists and sacubitril/valsartan) are of similar efficacy in patients with glomerular filtration rate (GFR) ranging between 45 and 60 ml/min/1.73 m² (although higher prevalence of side effect may limit their use). The data on cardiovascular (CV) drug efficacy in patients with lower GFR values (i.e. below 30-45 ml/min/1.73 m²) remains limited. In this review we focused on the efficacy of sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) in the treatment of CVD and HF in patients with CKD with or without diabetes. Sodium-glucose co-transporter type 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) are clearly cardioprotective in wide spectrum of estimated GFR although the data for HF patients with respect to urine albumin-creatinine ratio (UACR) remain limited and for those with significantly reduced estimated GFR are still not available or not convincing, even after completion of large-scale, high quality major cardio-vascular outcome trials (CVOT) in type 2 diabetes melitus (T2DMM) or trials with flozins in CKD and HF.
KLF4 suppresses the proliferation of perihilar cholangiocarcinoma by negatively regulating GDF15 and phosphorylating AKT

Krüppel-like factor 4 (KLF4) is a transcription factor which functions as a tumor suppressor or an oncogene in numerous types of solid tumors. However, its expression levels and function in perihilar cholangiocarcinoma (pCCA) have yet to be elucidated. In the present study, in order to investigate its roles in pCCA, reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR), western blot analysis and immunohistochemistry were used to detect KLF4 expression in pCCA. The Chi-squared test was used to analyze the associations between KLF4 and the clinicopathological features of patients with pCCA. Univariate and multivariate analyses were subsequently used to analyze the prognostic significance of KLF4. The tumor suppression of KLF4 was investigated for the purposes of illustrating its biological function both in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, the association between KLF4 and growth/differentiation factor 15 (GDF15) was determined using pCCA tissue microarray (TMA) analysis and RT-qPCR. The underlying molecular mechanisms between KLF4 and GDF15 were subsequently investigated in vitro. In pCCA tissues, KLF4 was found to be downregulated, and this was negatively associated with the histological grade and tumor size. The knockdown of KLF4 was also found to be a prognostic indicator of the poorer survival of patients with pCCA. Based on in vitro and in vivo analyses, KLF4 was found to suppress tumor progression and induce cell apoptosis. Furthermore, it was found that KLF4 executed its tumor suppressive effects via the regulation of the GDF15/AKT signaling pathway. Taken together, the findings of the present study demonstrate that KLF4 may be considered as an independent biomarker of a favorable prognosis of patients with pCCA, and the KLF4/GDF15/AKT signaling pathway may potentially be a novel molecular therapeutic target for patients with pCCA.
Clinical factors linked to the type of respiratory medication in COPD: results from the COSYCONET cohort

Background: The use of maintenance medication in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in real life is known to deviate from recommendations in guidelines, which are largely based on randomized controlled trials and selected populations. Objectives: We used the COSYCONET (COPD and Systemic Consequences – Comorbidities Network) cohort to analyze factors linked to the use of COPD drugs under non-interventional circumstances. Design: COSYCONET is an ongoing, multi-center, non-interventional cohort of patients with COPD. Methods: Patients with COPD of Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) grades 0–4 participating in visits 1–5 were included. Data covered the period from 2010 to 2018. Generalized linear models were used to examine the relation of COPD characteristics to different types of respiratory medication. Results: A total of 1043 patients were included. The duration of observation was 4.5 years. Use of respiratory medication depended on GOLD grades 0–4 and groups A-D. Long-acting muscarinic antagonist therapy increased over time, and was associated with low carbon monoxide (CO) diffusing capacity, while inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) use decreased. Active smoking was associated with less maintenance therapy in general, and female sex with less ICS use. From the eight items of the COPD Assessment Test, only hill and stair climbing were consistently linked to treatment. Conclusion: Using data from a large, close to real-life observational cohort, we identified factors linked to the use of various types of respiratory COPD medication. Overall, use was consistent with GOLD recommendations. Beyond this, we identified other correlates of medication use that may help us to understand and improve therapy decisions in clinical practice. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01245933.
Sex-related communicative functions of voice spectral energy in human chorusing

Music is a human communicative art whose evolutionary origins may lie in capacities that support cooperation and/or competition. A mixed account favouring simultaneous cooperation and competition draws on analogous interactive displays produced by collectively signalling non-human animals (e.g. crickets and frogs). In these displays, rhythmically coordinated calls serve as a beacon whereby groups of males ‘cooperatively’ attract potential female mates, while the likelihood of each male competitively attracting an actual mate depends on the precedence of his signal. Human behaviour consistent with the mixed account was previously observed in a renowned boys choir, where the basses—the oldest boys with the deepest voices—boosted their acoustic prominence by increasing energy in a high-frequency band of the vocal spectrum when girls were in an otherwise male audience. The current study tested female and male sensitivity and preferences for this subtle vocal modulation in online listening tasks. Results indicate that while female and male listeners are similarly sensitive to enhanced high-spectral energy elicited by the presence of girls in the audience, only female listeners exhibit a reliable preference for it. Findings suggest that human chorusing is a flexible form of social communicative behaviour that allows simultaneous group cohesion and sexually motivated competition.
Surface circulation at the Strait of Gibraltar: A combined HF radar and high resolution model study

Observations from a high frequency radar system and outputs from a high resolution operational ocean model working at the Strait of Gibraltar have been analyzed and compared during the period February 2013 to September 2014 in order to evaluate their capability to resolve the surface circulation of the region. The description of the mean circulation patterns has been statistically assessed, showing good agreement, particularly in the central region of the strait corresponding with the Atlantic Jet (AJ) stream, although some short scale features are not reproduced by the model. In the frequency domain very high concordance is observed. Tidal maps of diurnal and semidiurnal constituents are in good agreement with previous observations. The analysis of the model and radar response to the wind forcing reveals that the low resolution of the model wind-forcing field and its deeper superficial level smoothes the wind effect on the simulated currents. The first three EOF modes account for the 86% of model and radar variances. The coincidence between the observed and simulated patterns is very significant for the first two modes, which account for the mean velocity field and the latitudinal shifting of the AJ consequence of the flow-topography interaction. The third mode captures the wind-induced circulation, and greater discrepancies are found in this case. Results underline the complementary character of both systems: radar observations improve the model description, resolving short scale processes, while the model completes the radar information when the time or spatial coverage is poorer.
ASSESSMENT OF THE SPATIAL VARIATION AND SOURCE APPORTIONMENT OF AIR POLLUTION BASED ON CHEMOMETRIC TECHNIQUES: A CASE STUDY IN THE PENINSULAR MALAYSIA

This study aims to investigate the spatial variation in the source of air pollution, identify the percentage contribution of each pollutant and apportion the mass contribution of each source category using chemometric techniques. Hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis (HACA) successfully grouped the five air monitoring sites into three groups (cluster 1, 2 and 3). Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to spot out the sources of air pollution which are attributed to anthropogenic activities. Multiple linear regression (MLR) was used to develop an equation model that explains the contribution of pollutants in each cluster. However, it was observed that particulate matter (PM 10 ) and Ozone (O 3 ) are the most significant pollutants influencing the value of air pollutant index (API). Meanwhile, the source apportionment indicates that cluster 1 is influenced by gas and non-gas pollutants to a degree of 84%, weather condition 15% and 1% by gas and secondary pollutants. Cluster 2 is affected by gas and secondary pollutants to a tune of 87% and 13% by weather condition while cluster 3 is apportioned with 98% secondary gas and non-gas pollutants and 2% weather condition. This study reveals the usefulness of chemometric technique in modeling and reducing the cost and time of monitoring redundant stations and parameters.
Neural mechanism underlying the beneficial effect of Theory of Mind psychotherapy on early-onset schizophrenia: a randomized controlled trial

Background: Psychosocial interventions have emerged as an important component of a comprehensive therapeutic approach in early-onset schizophrenia, typically representing a more severe form of the disorder. Despite the feasibility and efficacy of Theory of Mind (ToM) psychotherapy for schizophrenia, relatively little is known regarding the neural mechanism underlying its effect on early-onset schizophrenia. Methods: We performed a randomized, active controlled trial in patients with early-onset schizophrenia, who were randomly allocated into either an intervention (ToM psychotherapy) or an active control (health education) group. Diffusion tensor imaging data were collected to construct brain structural networks, with both global and regional topological properties measured using graph theory. Results: We enrolled 28 patients with early-onset schizophrenia in our study. After 5 weeks of treatment, both the intervention and active control groups showed significant improvement in psychotic symptoms, yet the improvement was greater in the intervention group. Importantly, in contrast with no brain structural network change after treatment in the active control group, the intervention group showed increased nodal centrality of the left insula that was associated with psychotic symptom improvement. Limitations: We did not collect important information concerning the participants’ cognitive abilities, particularly ToM performance. Conclusion: These findings suggest a potential neural mechanism by which ToM psychotherapy exerts a beneficial effect on early-onset schizophrenia via strengthening the coordination capacity of the insula in brain structural networks, which may provide a clinically translatable biomarker for monitoring or predicting responses to ToM psychotherapy. Clinical trial registration: NCT05577338; ClinicalTrials.gov
Inequalities in human well-being in the urban Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta: implications for sustainable development

Discussions on post Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) unanimously agree on the need to focus on sustainable development, finishing the job of ending extreme poverty and the importance of supporting urban development. Urbanization has the ability to transform societies and cities are the primary engine of economic growth and development. On the other hand, there is an increasing number of people living in poverty in urban environments and inequalities are increasing. Sustainable and inclusive urban development will accelerate progress towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and contribute to the end of extreme poverty. Urban growth in Bangladesh is very rapid and it is crucial to develop policy initiatives to monitor the existing inequalities in the region in order to maintain current socio-economic trends. The present study analyses the level and determinants of selected welfare measures and assesses the extent of inequalities in human well-being in the urban Bangladeshi Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta. Using the 2010 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES), this paper aims to provide some reflections on current inequality trends, thus contributing to the progress towards sustainable development of the country.
Pesticide Exposure or Pesticide Poisoning and the Risk of Depression in Agricultural Populations: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

ABSTRACT Evidence suggests that farm workers represent a high-risk population for the development of depression. The aim of the study was to clarify the association between pesticide exposure/poisoning and depression. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis were conducted in this systematic review and meta-analysis. Relevant studies were included through searching in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, CINAHL and pre-print services databases. A total of eight studies were included. A positive but non-significant association was observed between pesticide use and depression (OR = 1.123; 95% CI, 0.932–1.354, p-value = .221) while a significant positive association was observed between pesticide poisoning and depression (OR = 2.942; 95% CI, 1.791–4.831, p-value < .001). The present meta-analysis suggested clearly a significant positive association between pesticide poisoning and depression, confirming the hypothesis that pesticide poisoning is a risk factor of depression. It also revealed positive, yet non-significant association, between pesticide exposure and depression, a finding that enhances recent research but requires to be further supported by future cohort studies, including socioeconomic factors and biomarkers of depression.
The Application of Neoprene Diving Boots in Reduction of Feet Injuries in the Sowing Process Among the Rice Farmers in Thailand

ABSTRACT Foot injuries have been a problem among Thai farmers for a long time. The sowing process is one of the high-risk processes because farmers have to walk in the field to spray rice seed without footwear. Literature review showed that cuts from stepping on sharp material or snail shells were major sources of injury. Traditional footwear such as Ninja shoes or cloth socks have raised the questions regarding their ability in protection from such injuries. This study investigates using Neoprene diving boots to protect from foot injuries during the rice sowing process. The sample from this study were farmers from Sena District, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province, Thailand. 29 farmer wearing Neoprene diving boots, 7 farmers wearing traditional Ninja shoes, and 19 farmers wearing cloth socks were asked to work in the sowing process and interviewed about any foot injuries that may have occurred. The statistical test showed there were no significant differences in characteristics among each group of farmers, except for work experience. The results show that there were no foot injuries in farmers wearing Neoprene diving boots, whereas 73% of farmers wearing Ninja shoes, and 14% of farmers wearing cloth socks still had foot injuries. Most injuries were alaceration that were caused by the golden apple snail. The satisfaction survey showed that farmers were satisfied and strongly satisfied with all of the aesthetics, utilization, and functionality factors. This study suggested that the Neoprene diving boots can be recommended for farmers to use as safeguarding against foot injuries in the rice sowing process.
Administration of corticosteroid therapy for HELLP syndrome in pregnant women: evidences from seven randomized controlled trials

ABSTRACT Background HELLP syndrome, featuring hemolysis, elevated liver enzymes, and thrombocytopenia, is life-threatening disease of pregnancy that triggers comorbidities in both pregnant women and the fetus/newborn. This study provides an updated systematic review and meta-analysis of relevant studies to assess the therapeutic efficacy of corticosteroids in maternal and neonatal outcomes. Methods Randomized control trials (RCTs) regarding the use of corticosteroids in the HELLP population from three electronic databases, including Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid EMBASE, andCochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, were searched from database inception to 23 March 202323 March 2023. Results A total of 485 patients treated with corticosteroids from 7 RCTs were included. Compared to placebo, corticosteroids therapy failed to significantly improve the maternal outcomes regard to maternal morbidity (RR = 1.36, 95%CI [0.45, 4.10]), eclampsia (RR = 1.16, 95%CI [0.76, 1.77]), acute renal failure (RR = 0.71, 95%CI [0.41, 1.22]), pulmonary edema (RR = 0.34, 95%CI [0.10, 1.15]) and oliguria (RR = 1.08, 95%CI [0.75, 1.54]). In addition, pooled data showed that it wasn’t significant differences between corticosteroids therapy and placebo regarding neonatal outcomes. Conclusions This study compared the efficacy of corticosteroids in patients with HELLP syndrome, revealing that corticosteroids did not provide any significant benefit in clinical outcomes for pregnant women and newborns with HELLP. The conclusions of this study must be verified by a larger sample of high-quality RCTs.