Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effectiveness of dual active ingredient insecticide-treated nets in preventing malaria: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Malaria vectors have demonstrated resistance to pyrethroid-based insecticides used in insecticide-treated nets, diminishing their effectiveness. This systematic review and meta-analysis investigated two forms of dual active-ingredient (DAI) insecticide-treated nets (ITN(s)) for malaria prevention. A comprehensive search was conducted on July 6th 2022. The databases searched included PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, amongst others. Trials were eligible if they were conducted in a region with ongoing malaria transmission. The first DAI ITN investigated were those that combined a pyrethroid with a non-pyrethroid insecticides. The second DAI ITN investigated were that combined a pyrethroid with an insect growth regulator. These interventions were compared against either a pyrethroid-only ITN, or ITNs treated with pyrethroid and piperonyl-butoxide. Assessment of risk of bias was conducted in duplicate using the Cochrane risk of bias 2 tool for cluster-randomised trials. Summary data was extracted using a custom data-extraction instrument. This was conducted by authors THB, JCS and SH. Malaria case incidence was the primary outcome and has been meta-analysed, adverse events were narratively synthesised. The review protocol is registered on PROSPERO (CRD42022333044). From 9494 records, 48 reports were screened and 13 reports for three studies were included. These studies contained data from 186 clusters and all reported a low risk of bias. Compared to pyrethroid-only ITNs, clusters that received pyrethroid-non-pyrethroid DAI ITNs were associated with 305 fewer cases per 1000-person years (from 380 fewer cases to 216 fewer cases) (IRR = 0.55, 95%CI: 0.44–0.68). However, this trend was not observed in clusters that received pyrethroid-insect growth regulator ITNs compared to pyrethroid-only ITNs (from 280 fewer cases to 135 more) (IRR = 0.90, 95%CI: 0.73–1.13). Pyrethroid-non-pyrethroid DAI ITNs demonstrated consistent reductions in malaria case incidence and other outcomes across multiple comparisons. Pyrethroid-non-pyrethroid DAI ITNs may present a novel intervention for the control of malaria.
A novel heterozygous truncating variant in the AGO1 gene in an Iranian family with schizophrenia as an unreported symptom

Intellectual disability (ID) and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are the most common developmental disorders in humans. Combined, they affect between 3% and 5% of the population. Although high‐throughput genomic methods are rapidly increasing the pool of ASD genes, many cases remain idiopathic. AGO1 is one of the less‐known genes related to ID/ASD. This gene encodes a core member protein of the RNA‐induced silencing complex, which suppresses mRNA expression through cleavage, degradation, and/or translational repression. Generally, patients with defects in the AGO1 gene manifest varying degrees of ID, speech delay, and autistic behaviors. Herein, we used whole‐exome sequencing (WES) to investigate an Iranian family with two affected members one of whom manifested ID and autism and the other showed borderline ID and schizophrenia. WES analysis identified a novel heterozygous truncating variant (NM_012199.5:c.1298G > A, p.Trp433Ter) in the AGO1 gene that co‐segregated with the phenotypes using Sanger sequencing. Moreover, the structural analysis showed that due to this variant, two critical domains (Mid and PIWI) of the AGO1 protein have been lost, which has a detrimental effect on the protein's function and structure. To the best of our knowledge, schizophrenia has not been reported in patients with AGO1 deficiency, which is a novel phenotypic finding that expands the AGO1‐related behavioral disorders. Moreover, this study's findings determined that patients with the same variant in the AGO1 gene may show heterogeneity in manifested phenotypes.
Settlement, identity and environment: understanding processes of vegetation change along the Wind River

Contemporary research concerning wildlands and wildlife of the American West increasingly calls for greater complexity in understanding humanenvironmental relationships. This dissertation investigates a culturally diverse portion of Greater Yellowstone in order to complicate these dialogues. It explores a riparian corridor along the Wind River, a region permanently settled by Eastern Shoshone, Northern Arapaho and Euro-American residents in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Using the Wind River Basin as a case study, this research observes the landscape through three different lenses: settlement geography, place identity, and vegetation change. By incorporating a variety of methods to understand regional change (including historical research, interviews with residents, and comparative aerial and ground photography), it finds that riparian change relates to a complex cultural-ecological mosaic. Not only is change perceived differently by a variety of communities in the Wind River Basin; change relates to century-old settlement geographies, government policies and cultural preferences, shifting economies and power relationships, and evolving relationships formed by interrelationships of people and environment. This dissertation argues that investigations of environmental change must not oversimplify dynamic relationships between people and place. Indeed, the complexity of these places may relate to why Greater Yellowstone has remained one of the largest intact ecosystems in the lower 48 states.
Effect of brain endurance training on maximal oxygen uptake, time‐to‐exhaustion, and inhibitory control in runners

We aimed to analyze the effect of brain endurance training on maximum oxygen consumption (VO2máx), time‐to‐exhaustion, and inhibitory control in amateur trained runners. We employed a mixed experimental design, with the group as the between‐participant factor and time as the within‐participant factor. 45 participants attended 36 training sessions over 12 weeks. The cognitive training group (CT) performed the Stroop word‐color task [trials of each type (congruent, incongruent, and neutral) were randomly presented during each training session], the endurance training group (ET) participated in a running training program (intensity was 60%Δ of maximal aerobic velocity and performed on a motor‐driven treadmill), and the brain endurance training group (BET) make cognitive and endurance training simultaneously over 12 weeks. The total time of each session (i.e., 20–40 min) was identical in the experimental groups. VO2máx, time‐to‐exhaustion, and inhibitory control tests were measured before (baseline) and after (post‐experiment) the 12‐week intervention. A significant effect of interaction (group × time) for VO2máx (p < 0.05) was found. A post‐hoc test showed an increase in VO2máx from baseline to post‐experiment only for ET (Δ% = 2.98) and BET (Δ% = 3.78) groups (p < 0.05). Also, the analyses showed a significant interaction (group × time) for time‐to‐exhaustion (p < 0.05), and a post‐hoc test revealed an improvement in time‐to‐exhaustion for ET (Δ% = 8.81) and BET (Δ% = 11.01) (p < 0.05). No group × time interaction was found for accuracy and response time in the inhibitory control task (p > 0.05). The results conclude that BET was not superior to ET for improving VO2máx and time‐to‐exhaustion. Also, the findings conclude that BET improved inhibitory control similar to CT.
Psychological Burden and Willingness to Pay Among Korean Rosacea Patients and Their Association With Rosacea Phenotype and Severity: A Multi-Center Cross-Sectional Study

Background Rosacea is a chronic inflammatory disorder that can adversely affect the patient’s quality of life (QOL). However, few studies have examined the association between the psychological burden and willingness to pay (WTP) with rosacea features and severity. Objectives The study aimed to determine the overall psychological burden and WTP among Korean rosacea patients and identify factors that may contribute, such as patient demographics, clinical features, and rosacea severity. Methods This prospective cross-sectional study recruited Koreans with rosacea. All were asked to complete a questionnaire on their demographics, rosacea-related symptoms, self-rated severity, dermatology life quality index (DLQI), and WTP. The clinical features were assessed by a board-certified dermatologist. The investigator’s global assessment and global flushing severity score (GFSS) were used to determine the clinical severity of rosacea. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to identify factors contributing to the psychological burden and WTP. Results Out of 201 rosacea patients, 147 (73.1%) were female, and 54 (26.9%) males, with a median age of 50.1 years. Their median DLQI score was 8 (interquartile range [IQR]): 4.0-13.0). The median WTP per month for the control of rosacea was $100, with relative WTP (WTP/household income per month x 100) being 3.3%. According to the multiple regression model, phymatous change (β = .153, p = .030), DLQI score (β = .152, P = .045), and GFSS (β = .154, P = .041) contributed most to the WTP. Conclusion Rosacea patients experience substantial psychological and economic burdens. More vigorous treatment should be performed for those with phyma and severe flushing whose QOL is most severely affected.
Optogenetic manipulation of neuronal and cardiomyocyte functions in zebrafish using microbial rhodopsins and adenylyl cyclases

Even though microbial photosensitive proteins have been used for optogenetics, their use should be optimized to precisely control cell and tissue functions in vivo. We exploited GtCCR4 and KnChR, cation channelrhodopsins from algae, BeGC1, a guanylyl cyclase rhodopsin from a fungus, and photoactivated adenylyl cyclases (PACs) from cyanobacteria (OaPAC) or bacteria (bPAC), to control cell functions in zebrafish. Optical activation of GtCCR4 and KnChR in the hindbrain reticulospinal V2a neurons, which are involved in locomotion, induced swimming behavior at relatively short latencies, whereas activation of BeGC1 or PACs achieved it at long latencies. Activation of GtCCR4 and KnChR in cardiomyocytes induced cardiac arrest, whereas activation of bPAC gradually induced bradycardia. KnChR activation led to an increase in intracellular Ca2+ in the heart, suggesting that depolarization caused cardiac arrest. These data suggest that these optogenetic tools can be used to reveal the function and regulation of zebrafish neurons and cardiomyocytes.
Advances in Diagnosis and Prognosis of Parkinson Disease

The biological definition of Parkinson disease (PD) is still an open issue. Indeed, PD represents a heterogeneous disorder in which clinical symptoms may correspond to different biological substrates. In vivo biological characterization of PD is of great importance, to formulate an accurate diagnosis in the early stages of the disease, when clinical symptoms may be uncertain and disease-modifying therapies may have the greatest chance to halt disease progression. In recent years, several advances have been made in the field of fluid biomarkers. Among these, α-synuclein amplification assays (αS-SAAs) in CSF can detect the presence of α-synucleinopathy, the most widely recognized biological feature of PD.1,2 However, αS-SAAs are not yet quantitative, the extracted kinetic features poorly associate with clinical scores, and they do not capture alterations other than α-synucleinopathy that occur in patients with PD (e.g., neuroinflammation, synaptic damage, mitochondrial and autophagic dysfunctions). Moreover, some genetic forms of PD, such as LRKK2-PD, may not be characterized by α-synucleinopathy, and this may explain αS-SAA's poor sensitivity.2
Mentalizing in Adolescents and Young Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Associations with Age and Attention Problems.

INTRODUCTION Growing, albeit heterogenous evidence questions whether attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with socio-cognitive impairments, especially beyond childhood. This study focuses on mentalizing - the socio-cognitive ability to attribute and reason in terms of mental states. We aimed to characterize mentalizing performance in terms of correct scores and types of errors in adolescents and young adults with ADHD. METHODS Forty-nine adolescents and adults with ADHD and 49 healthy controls matched for age and gender completed a computerized naturalistic mentalizing task, the Movie for Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC). Repeated measures analyses of variance examined the effects of age group and ADHD diagnosis on MASC performance. Additionally, associations between mentalizing scores, the severity of attention problems, and the presence of comorbidity were explored in the ADHD group. RESULTS Results showed an increased prevalence of hypomentalizing errors in adolescents with ADHD. Lower mentalizing scores in adolescents with ADHD were correlated with indices of inattentiveness, impulsivity, and vigilance problems. Hypomentalizing errors in adolescents showed to be particularly associated with inattentiveness, after controlling for age and comorbidity. In contrast, adults with ADHD performed similarly to controls and their scores on the mentalizing task were not correlated to attention problems. CONCLUSION These findings highlight potential developmental differences in mentalizing abilities in ADHD youths and their association with attentional impairments.
Flora of the Pacific Northwest: An Illustrated Manual

This manual is essentially a condensation of the five-volume work, Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest, prepared by C. Leo Hitchcock, Arthur Cronquist, Marion Ownbey, and J. W. Thompson, and published serially from 1955 to 1969 by the University of Washington Press as volume 17 of the University of Washington Publications in Biology. The sequence of families is the same in the two works except for the transposition of the monocotyledons and dicotyledons; the dicotyledons are in the traditional Englerian sequence, and the monocotyledons are arranged according to the system of Cronquist as presented in "The Evolution and Classification of Flowering Plants. " The genera within each family in this manual are alphabetically arranged, as in the earlier work, but for convenience in presentation it has bee necessary to number the species.
Integrated Augmented and Virtual Reality Technologies for Realistic Fire Drill Training

In this article, we propose a novel fire drill training system designed specifically to integrate augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies into a single head-mounted display device to provide realistic as well as safe and diverse experiences. Applying hybrid AR/VR technologies in fire drill training may be beneficial because they can overcome limitations such as space–time constraints, risk factors, training costs, and difficulties in real environments. The proposed system can improve training effectiveness by transforming arbitrary real spaces into real-time, realistic virtual fire situations, and by interacting with tangible training props. Moreover, the system can create intelligent and realistic fire effects in AR by estimating not only the object type but also its physical properties. Our user studies demonstrated the potential of integrated AR/VR for improving training and education.
Multi-task contrastive learning for semi-supervised medical image segmentation with multi-scale uncertainty estimation

Objective. Automated medical image segmentation is vital for the prevention and treatment of disease. However, medical data commonly exhibit class imbalance in practical applications, which may lead to unclear boundaries of specific classes and make it difficult to effectively segment certain tail classes in the results of semi-supervised medical image segmentation. Approach. We propose a novel multi-task contrastive learning framework for semi-supervised medical image segmentation with multi-scale uncertainty estimation. Specifically, the framework includes a student-teacher model. We introduce global image-level contrastive learning in the encoder to address the class imbalance and local pixel-level contrastive learning in the decoder to achieve intra-class aggregation and inter-class separation. Furthermore, we propose a multi-scale uncertainty-aware consistency loss to reduce noise caused by pseudo-label bias. Main results. Experiments on three public datasets ACDC, LA and LiTs show that our method achieves higher segmentation performance compared with state-of-the-art semi-supervised segmentation methods. Significance. The multi-task contrastive learning in our method facilitates the negative impact of class imbalance and achieves better classification results. The multi-scale uncertainty estimation encourages consistent predictions for the same input under different perturbations, motivating the teacher model to generate high-quality pseudo-labels. Code is available at https://github.com/msctransu/MCSSMU.git.
Psychometric properties of the Big Three Perfectionism Scale‐Short Form (BTPS‐SF) among Iranian University students

Perfectionism is a common personality trait, particularly among university students. As awareness of this trait increases, research seeks to update tools for measuring it. The psychometric properties of the three‐dimensional perfectionism scale‐short form (BTPS‐SF) have not been studied in the Iranian population. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the psychometric properties of this 16‐item scale among Iranian university students.
Assessment of contaminants, health and survival of migratory shorebirds in natural versus artificial wetlands – the potential of wastewater treatment plants as alternative habitats

The rapid destruction of natural wetland habitats over past decades has been partially offset by an increase in artificial wetlands. However, these also include wastewater treatment plants, which may pose a pollution risk to the wildlife using them. We studied two long-distance Arctic-breeding migratory shorebird species, curlew sandpiper (Calidris ferruginea, n=70) and red-necked stint (Calidris ruficollis, n=100), while on their Australian non-breeding grounds using a natural wetland versus an artificial wetland at a wastewater treatment plant (WTP). We compared pollutant exposure (elements and per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances/PFASs), disease (avian influenza), physiological status (oxidative stress) of the birds at the two locations from 2011-2020, and population survival from 1978-2019. Our results indicated no significant differences in blood pellet pollutant concentrations between the habitats except mercury (WTP median: 224 ng/g, range: 19-873 ng/g; natural wetland: 160 ng/g, 22-998 ng/g) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (WTP median: 52 ng/g, range: <0.01-1280 ng/g; natural wetland: 14 ng/g, <0.01-379 ng/g) which were higher at the WTP, and selenium which was lower at the WTP (WTP median: 5000 ng/g, range: 1950-34400 ng/g; natural wetland: 19200 ng/g, 4130-65200 ng/g). We also measured higher blood o,o’-dityrosine (an indicator of protein damage) at the WTP. No significant differences were found for adult survival, but survival of immature birds at the WTP appeared to be lower which could be due to higher dispersal to other wetlands. Interestingly, we found active avian influenza infections were higher in the natural habitat, while seropositivity was higher in the WTP, seemingly not directly related to pollutant exposure. Overall, we found negligible differences in pollutant exposure, health and survival of the shorebirds in the two habitats. Our findings suggest that appropriately managed wastewater treatment wetlands may provide a suitable alternative habitat to these migratory species, curbing the decline of shorebird populations from widespread habitat loss.
Assessment of Subclinical Atherosclerosis in Children with Atopic Dermatitis

Introduction: Data from studies conducted to date have evaluated clinical atherosclerotic conditions in adult patients with atopic dermatitis (AD). Subclinical atherosclerotic changes that are a precursor of atherosclerotic conditions may begin in childhood. The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of subclinical atherosclerosis in pediatric patients with AD and to determine the associated risk factors. Methods: A total of 59 patients who were referred to our department over a 6-month period and diagnosed with AD, and 53 healthy controls with a similar age and gender were included in the study. Subclinical atherosclerosis markers (carotid intima media thickness [CIMT], distensibility, stiffness, and strain) were measured using conventional echocardiography. The patients’ age, SCORAD index, and duration of symptoms were recorded. Serum total immunoglobulin E, C-reactive protein (CRP), blood lipid profile, and complete blood count markers were measured. Results: The median age of the patients was 61 (10–103) months, and 59.3% of them were male. The patients with AD had a higher CIMT (1.60 ± 0.35 vs. 1.30 ± 0.50 mm) and a lower distensibility (0.006 ± 0.009 vs. 0.01 ± 0.008) and strain (0.10 ± 0.14 vs. 0.19 ± 0.14) than the healthy controls (p < 0.01 for all), but there was no significant difference with regard to stiffness (10.16 ± 21.75 vs. 8.99 ± 12.66). Significant correlations between CIMT and disease duration, age, and the SCORAD index were found (p < 0.01, p < 0.01, and p < 0.05, respectively). No correlation between the subclinical atherosclerosis markers and the other laboratory results was found (p > 0.05 for all). Conclusion: This study demonstrates that pediatric patients with AD may express subclinical atherosclerosis markers. The evaluation of subclinical atherosclerosis in these patients revealed that CIMT may be the most important marker, as it displayed positive correlations with symptom duration, age, and disease severity.
Investigation into the Spatial Distribution of AGN Companion Galaxies in Gravitationally Isolated Environments

Active galaxies are an important subclass of galaxies, distinguished by an energetic core radiating an extraordinary amount of energy. These hyperactive cores, referred to as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), are driven by enhanced accretion onto a central supermassive black hole about a million to a billion times the mass of our Sun. Accretion onto a supermassive black hole may be a convincing mechanism to explain the extreme properties stemming from an active galaxy, but this proposal inevitably opens up another problem: what source provides the gaseous fuel for black hole accretion? In this research project, we examine the possibility that these active galaxies have engaged in some form of galactic “cannibalism” of their neighbouring galaxies to acquire a fuel supply to power their energetic cores. By using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we conduct an environmental survey around active and non-active galaxies and map out the spatial distribution of their neighbouring galaxies. Our results show that, in gravitationally isolated environments, the local environment (< 0.5 Mpc) around active galaxies are seen to have an under-density or scarcity of neighbouring galaxies relative to the non-active control sample – a possible indication of a history of mergers and consumptions.