Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recent Updates on the Therapeutic Prospects of Reversion-Inducing Cysteine-Rich Protein with Kazal Motifs (RECK) in Liver Injuries

The reversion-inducing cysteine-rich protein with Kazal motifs (RECK), a membrane-anchored glycoprotein, negatively regulates various membrane proteins involved in the tissue governing extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling such as metalloproteases (MMPs) and the sheddases ADAM10 and ADAM17. The significance of the present review is to summarize the current understanding of the pathophysiological role of RECK, a newly discovered signaling pathway associated with different liver injuries. Specifically, this review analyzes published data on the downregulation of RECK expression in hepatic ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury, liver-related cancers, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and cholangiocarcinoma (CCA), as well as in the progression of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). In addition, this review discusses the regulation of RECK by inducers, such as FXR agonists. The RECK protein has also been suggested as a potential diagnostic and prognostic marker for liver injury or as a biomarker with predictive value for drug treatment efficacy.
Effectiveness of preventive maintenance of asphalt pavements

In light of shrinking agency budgets, pressure is being placed on agencies to become more cost-effective in their delivery of services to the public. Unfortunately, transportation infrastructure, by nature, begins to deteriorate as soon as it is placed. Roadway preventative maintenance provides users with safer and more comfortable rides and has been shown to reduce overall transportation costs when maintenance treatments are properly selected and timed. As such, infrastructure agencies have expressed an increasing interest in the selection and timing of maintenance activities for their existing transportation infrastructure. The paper presents the evaluation of field performance of asphalt pavements with sequential slurry seal applications. the study developed performance models for asphalt pavements without slurry seals and asphalt pavements receiving slurry seals at various times following construction, and identified the optimum time for the application of slurry seals on asphalt pavements. This was achieved by evaluating the long-term pavement performance data collected using the MicroPAVER system for the last 15 years and the cost-effectiveness of slurry seals applied to new and existing flexible pavements at years 0, 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 after construction. This study found that the application of the slurry seal immediately after or 1 year after construction of the asphalt layer is not effective in terms of both the benefit to the users and the benefit cost ratio for the agency. The optimum time of application of slurry seal depended on the type of the construction activity. For newly constructed pavements, the optimum time to apply slurry seal was three years after construction. For pavements subjected to overlays, the optimum time to apply slurry seal was between three and five years after construction. However, for uniformity purposes, it was recommended that the agency applies slurry seal three years after the construction of the asphalt layer for both new and overlay constructions.
The Many Faces of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Moving Towards Precision Medicine

When the term chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was first used in 1970s, it included two main phenotypes: the “blue bloater” (chronic bronchitis) and “pink puffer” (emphysema). Recently, as our current knowledge on the disease has progressed, the attention has been drawn to very diverse subtypes of chronic airflow obstruction characterised by different causes, age of onset, pathological and clinical manifestations. Over the years, “recommendations” have been generated for the clinicians on how to manage the patients with COPD, such as the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) recommendations. Although the GOLD recommendations had the great merit to draw attention onto the COPD severity and its clinical management, they are now less suitable to address the extremely diverse nature of COPD. This review will give an overview of the history of COPD, and the many faces of COPD over the years to date. (BRN Rev. 2019;5(2):90-103) Corresponding author: Francesca Polverino, fpolverino@copdnet.org
Neural networks with external dynamic memory to solve algorithmic problems

We developed a Differentiable Neural Computer and studied its architecture, characteristics, and capabilities. We tested the DNC through a set of basic tasks and made a benchmark versus its predecessor; The Neural Turing Machine. Also, we provide an extensive theoretical framework about how the Differentiable Neural Computer works. Preliminary results show that Differentiable Neural Computers can infer simple algorithms like Neural Turing Machines but in a more efficient and efficacy way, and also has the capability of generalizing results without retraining the model.
Insights into the Tectonic Fractures in the Yanchang Formation Interbedded Sandstone‐Mudstone of the Ordos Basin Based on Core Data and Geomechanical Models

The distribution and intensity of tectonic fractures within geologic units are important to hydrocarbon exploration and development. Taken the Upper Triassic Yanchang Formation interbedded sandstone‐mudstone in the Ordos Basin as an example, this study used the finite element method (FEM) based on geomechanical models to study the development of tectonic fractures. The results show that the sandstones tend to generate tectonic fractures more easily than mudstones with the same layer thickness, and the highest degree of tectonic fractures will be developed when the sandstone‐mudstone thickness ratio is about 5.0. A possible explanation is proposed for the tectonic fracture development based on two important factors of rock brittleness and mechanical layer thickness. Generally, larger rock brittleness and thinner layer thickness will generate more tectonic fractures. In interbedded sandstone‐mudstone formations, the rock brittleness increases with the increasing mechanical layer thickness, hence, these two factors will achieve a balance for the development of tectonic fractures when the sandstone‐mudstone thickness ratio reaches a specific value, and the development degree of tectonic fractures is the highest at this value.
Cracking Open the European Newsfeed

This paper contributes to the ongoing effort to describe and quantify the quality of information that is shared on large social media platforms. We do this by complementing existing research that provided a first quantitative assessment of the quality of the information circulating on Facebook among US users. Leveraging an updated version of the same data source — Meta's URL Shares Dataset — and replicating much of the methodology, we quantify the trustworthy and untrustworthy links to external websites that have been shared on Facebook in the period between 2019 and 2022 in three major European countries (Germany, France, and Italy). We observe a clear decline in the number of URLs present in the dataset and an increase in the URLs from untrustworthy domains as a percentage of the total URLs shared in a year. This increase seems to be higher in electoral years (in Germany and in Italy) but it does not translate into an increase of Views received from untrustworthy sources.
Shifting fire regimes from late to early dry-season fires to abate greenhouse emissions does not completely equate with terrestrial vertebrate biodiversity co-benefits on Cape York Peninsula, Australia

Carbon farming initiatives have rapidly developed in recent years, influencing broad scale changes to land management regimes. In the open carbon market a premium can be secured if additional benefits, such as biodiversity conservation or social advancement, can be quantified. In Australia, there is an accepted method for carbon abatement that requires shifting fire frequency from predominantly late, defined as fires occurring after August 1, to early dry-season fires or by reducing overall fire frequency. There is an assumption and some evidence that this might accrue co-benefits for biodiversity. We tested this assumption by comparing terrestrial vertebrate biodiversity patterns (richness and abundance of reptiles, birds and mammals) against increasing fire frequency in the early and late dry-season at the same spatial resolution as the fire management for emission abatement method. We systematically sampled 202 sites on Cape York Peninsula, and examined the relationship between vertebrate fauna, fire and environmental metrics. We found that within the approved vegetation type, open woodlands in tropical savanna woodland, early and late dry-season fire frequency had the same weak linear relationship with only some elements of the observed fauna. Additionally, the response of each taxa to fire frequency were different across broad vegetation structural categories, suggesting that a more nuanced species-specific monitoring approach is required to expose links between savanna burning for carbon abatement and burning for biodiversity benefit.
APPLICATION OF CARBON ISOTOPE IN CHINESE LOESS TO SEMI-QUANTITATIVE ESTIMATION OF PALAEOTEMPERATURE

During relative stable climate,soil CO_(2) is isotopically equilibrated with soil carbonate.This means that carbon isotopic fractionation between them can be used as a geothermometer to estimate palaeotemperature.So ten loess paleosol couplets of L_(1-1)—S_(8) in the Luochuan section of northern China were analyzed for carbon isotopes in both soil carbonate and soil organic matter.These units date back to about 800 kaBP and are correlated with marine oxygen isotope stages 2—21.Meanwhile L_(1-1)—L_(2) are correlated with CO_(2) content record in Vostok ice core.The measured δ~(13)C of soil organic matter is used following the method of Cerling (1984,1991) to calculate δ~(13)C values of soil CO_(2). That and measured δ~(13)C values of soil carbonate are used to calculate soil temperature of each unit based on Denies'(1974)fractionation equation.The result is showed in the tables in the text.All the data exhibit a good agreement with loess-palaosol units,quantitatively reflecting climate fluctuation of Chinese loess plateau in recent 800 ka.Generally,well developed paleosols such as S_(1),S_(4),S_(5),S_(6),S_(7),and S_(8) have higher temperature than weakly developed paleosols (S_(0-1,)S_(2-1,)S_(2-2 ),S_(3 )). The temperature decreases towards the present in both paleosol and loess units.It can also be seen that temperature changes in land are more extensive than on marine surface.
Multiply robust estimation of natural indirect effects with multiple ordered mediators

Multiple mediation analysis is a powerful methodology to assess causal effects in the presence of multiple mediators. Several methodologies, such as G‐computation and inverse‐probability‐weighting, have been widely used to draw inferences about natural indirect effects (NIEs). However, a limitation of these methods is their potential for model misspecification. Although powerful semiparametric methods with high robustness and consistency have been developed for inferring average causal effects and for analyzing the effects of a single mediator, a comparably robust method for multiple mediation analysis is still lacking. Therefore, this theoretical study proposes a method of using multiply robust estimators of NIEs in the presence of multiple ordered mediators. We show that the proposed estimators not only enjoy the multiply robustness to model misspecification, they are also consistent and asymptotically normal under regular conditions. We also performed simulations for empirical comparisons of the finite‐sample properties between our multiply robust estimators and existing methods. In an illustrative example, a dataset for liver disease patients in Taiwan is used to examine the mediating roles of liver damage and liver cancer in the pathway from hepatitis B/C virus infection to mortality. The model is implemented in the open‐source R package “MedMR. ”
A Hybrid GMM / SVM System for Text Independent Speaker Identification

This paper proposes a novel approach that combines statistical models and support vector machines. A hybrid scheme which appropriately incorporates the advantages of both the generative and discriminant model paradigms is described and evaluated. Support vector machines (SVMs) are trained to divide the whole speakers’ space into small subsets of speakers within a hierarchical tree structure. During testing a speech token is assigned to its corresponding group and evaluation using gaussian mixture models (GMMs) is then processed. Experimental results show that the proposed method can significantly improve the performance of text independent speaker identification task. We report improvements of up to 50% reduction in identification error rate compared to the baseline statistical model. Keywords—Speaker identification, Gaussian mixture model (GMM), support vector machine (SVM), hybrid GMM/SVM.
Plasma Insulin-like Growth Factor-Binding Protein-2 of Critically Ill Patients Is Related to Disease Severity and Survival

Insulin-like growth factor-binding protein (IGFBP)-2 regulates the bioactivity of the anabolic hormone’s insulin-like growth factors, which are decreased in sepsis and contribute to the catabolic status of severely ill patients. The circulating levels of IGFBP-2 in critical illness have been rarely studied; therefore, we evaluated IGFBP-2 plasma levels in patients with systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) or sepsis as well as healthy controls. Our analysis of 157 SIRS/sepsis patients revealed higher plasma IGFBP-2 levels compared to 22 healthy controls. Plasma IGFBP-2 levels correlated positively with procalcitonin but not with C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, or the leukocyte count. Septic shock patients exhibited higher IGFBP-2 levels than those with SIRS. Bacterial or SARS-CoV-2 infection did not influence plasma IGFBP-2 levels. There was no difference in the IGFBP-2 levels between ventilated and non-ventilated SIRS/sepsis patients, and vasopressor therapy did not alter these levels. Dialysis patients had elevated plasma IGFBP-2 levels. Survivors had lower plasma IGFBP-2 levels than non-survivors. In conclusion, our study indicates that plasma IGFBP-2 levels are associated with disease severity, renal failure, and mortality in SIRS/sepsis patients.
A Novel Mutation in Frabin (FGD4) Causing a Mild Phenotype of CMT4H in an Indian Patient

Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease 4H(CMT4H) is an autosomal recessive demyelinating form of CMT caused by FGD4/FRABIN mutations. CMT4H is characterized by early onset and slowly progressing motor and sensory deficits in the distal extremities, along with foot deformities. We describe a patient with CMT4H who presented with rapidly progressing flaccid quadriparesis during the postpartum period, which improved significantly with steroid therapy. Magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasonography demonstrated considerable nerve thickening with increased cross-sectional area in the peripheral nerves. A nerve biopsy revealed significant demyelination and myelin outfolding. This is the first report of an Indian patient with a novel homozygous nonsense c.1672C>T (p.Arg558Ter) mutation in the FGD4 gene, expanding the mutational and phenotypic spectrum of this disease.
Response of grassland ecosystem function to plant functional traits under different vegetation restoration models in areas of karst desertification

Plant functional traits serve as a bridge between plants, the environment, and ecosystem function, playing an important role in predicting the changes in ecosystem function that occur during ecological restoration. However, the response of grassland ecosystem function to plant functional traits in the context of ecological restoration in areas of karst desertification remains unclear. Therefore, in this study, we selected five plant functional traits [namely, plant height (H), specific leaf area (SLA), leaf dry matter content (LDMC), root length (RL), and root dry matter content (RDMC)], measured these along with community-weighted mean (CWM) and functional trait diversity, and combined these measures with 10 indexes related to ecosystem function in order to investigate the differences in plant functional traits and ecosystem function, as well as the relationship between plant functional traits and ecosystem functions, under four ecological restoration models [Dactylis glomerata (DG), Lolium perenne (LP), Lolium perenne + Trifolium repens (LT), and natural grassland (NG)]. We found that: 1) the Margalef index and Shannon–Wiener index were significantly lower for plant species in DG and LP than for those in NG (P<0.05), while the Simpson index was significantly higher in the former than in NG (P<0.05); 2) CWMH, CWMLDMC, and CWMRDMC were significantly higher in DG, LP, and LT than in NG, while CWMSLA was significantly lower in the former than in NG (P<0.05). The functional richness index (FRic) was significantly higher in DG and LP than in NG and LT, but the functional dispersion index (FDis) and Rao’s quadratic entropy index (RaoQ) were significantly lower in DG and LP than in NG and LT (P<0.05), and there was no significant difference between DG and LP, or between NG and LT (P>0.05); 3) ecosystem function, including ecosystem productivity, carbon storage, water conservation and soil conservation, was highest in LT and lowest in NG; and 4) CWMLDMC (F=56.7, P=0.024), CWMRL (F=28.7, P=0.024), and CWMH (F=4.5, P=0.048) were the main factors affecting ecosystem function. The results showed that the mixed pasture of perennial ryegrass and white clover was most conductive to restoration of ecosystem function. This discovery has important implications for the establishment of vegetation, optimal utilization of resources, and the sustainable development of degraded karst ecosystems.
Development of a Standardized Index of Biotic Integrity for the Piedmont Region of Georgia

The Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI) is a multimetric index developed to assess the quality of a stream based on the structure of its fish community. The IBI consists of 12 measures, or metrics, that evaluate the species richness, health, abundance, and trophic dynamics . of the fish community at a sample site. The Fisheries Section of the Georgia Department ofN atural Resources is currently in the process of developing a standardized IBI for wadeable streams in the piedmont region of Georgia. The metrics were adapted to the fish communities found in streams in the piedmont region while maintaining the basic ecological framework of the original IBI.
Inverse Design of SIW Devices Based on the Internal Multiport Method

This letter presents a novel inverse design method for substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) devices. Based on the internal multiport method (IMPM), the metallic via arrangement in the SIW structure is converted to a numerical optimization problem on a binary-option vector. By simply inputting the expected device performance, a satisfying via implementation can be automatically generated aided by the numerical optimizer, without sophisticated structural analysis and repeated full-wave simulation. Application examples are shown to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.
Perturbation AUTOVC: Voice Conversion From Perturbation and Autoencoder Loss

AUTOVC is a voice-conversion method that performs self-reconstruction using an autoencoder structure for zero-shot voice conversion. AUTOVC has the advantage of being easy and simple to learn because it only uses the autoencoder loss for learning. However, it performs voice conversion by disentangling speech information from speakers and linguistic information by adjusting the bottleneck dimension; this requires highly meticulous fine tuning of the bottleneck dimension and involves a tradeoff between speech quality and speaker similarity. To address these issues, neural analysis and synthesis (NANSY)—a fully self-supervised learning system that uses perturbations to extract speech features—is proposed. NANSY solves the problem of the adjustment of the bottleneck dimension by utilizing perturbation and exhibits high-reconstruction performance. In this study, we propose perturbation AUTOVC, a voice conversion method that utilizes the structure of AUTOVC and the perturbation of NANSY. The proposed method applies perturbations to speech signals (such as NANSY signals) to solve the problem of the voice conversion method using bottleneck dimensions. Perturbation is applied to remove the speaker-dependent information present in the speech, leaving only the linguistic information, which is then passed through a content encoder and modeled as a content embedding containing only the linguistic information. To obtain speaker information, we used x-vectors, which are extensively used in pretrained speaker recognition. The concatenated linguistic and speaker information extracted from the encoder and additional energy information is used as input to the decoder to perform self-reconstruction. Similar to AUTOVC, it is easy and simple to learn using only the autoencoder loss. For the evaluation, we measured three objective evaluation metrics: character error rate (%), cosine similarity, and short-time objective intelligibility, as well as a subjective evaluation metric: mean opinion score. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms other voice conversion techniques and demonstrated robust performance in zero-shot conversion.
Association between gut microbiota, microbial network, and immunity in pregnancy with a focus on specific bacterial clusters

Background The community characteristics of the gut microbiota are not well defined and are not as widely studied as the functions of individual bacteria. This study aims to investigate the community composition of intestinal flora in women of childbearing age by conducting cluster analysis of gut microbiota and analyzing the relationship between different clusters and immune status. Methods A total of 45 women of childbearing age were recruited in the study, including 15 non-pregnant women and 30 women in late pregnancy, and stool samples were collected twice during the third trimester, specifically at 32 weeks and at full term. The gut microbiota data was analyzed using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. Partitioning Around Medoids algorithm was employed to assess microbial clustering patterns. Microbial network for each cluster was performed and plasm cytokines were measured to analyze the relationship between specific genera and immune state in clusters. Results There were three distinct clusters of intestinal community composition in women of childbearing age. Cluster 1 (PAM_1) was characterized by a high abundance of Bacteroides, while cluster 2 (PAM_2) showed higher levels of Bifidobacterium and Blautia, along with a significantly increased Firmicutes to Bacteroidota ratio. Cluster 3 (PAM_3) displayed a high abundance of Escherichia-shigella. PAM_1 was the most dominant cluster in non-pregnant women, and this dominant cluster was also one of the main in late pregnancy. At full term, the majority of subjects retained the same cluster as at 32 weeks, while a few experienced a shift. The microbial correlation networks differed across the three clusters, with PAM_1 exhibiting higher modularity and fewer connections. Analysis of the correlation between genera and plasma cytokines showed significant differences in their associations with cytokines between pregnancy and nonpregnancy within the same cluster, and the same genera had different effects in different clusters. Conclusion Women of childbearing age exhibit three distribution patterns of gut microbiota, and the intestinal clusters reshaped during late pregnancy in a small population. Different clusters may have diverse immunomodulatory effects in different physiological states. When studying the gut microbiome during pregnancy, it is crucial to consider the cluster differences within healthy women.