Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association Between Non-high-density Lipoprotein Cholesterol and 3-Month Prognosis in Patients With Spontaneous Intracerebral Hemorrhage

Background: Previous studies have indicated a significant correlation between cholesterol levels and the incidence and outcomes of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), However, the association between non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-HDLC) levels and ICH functional outcomes are still unclear. Method: We included 654 consecutive spontaneous ICH patients who were enrolled in a prospective registry. We collected clinical, demographic, and laboratory data using standardized forms, and non-HDLC levels and 3-month modified Rankin Scale (mRS) scores were recorded. We performed multivariate logistic regression and interaction analyses to explored the association between non-HDLC levels and ICH functional outcomes. Results: Of 654 patients included in the study, 281 (42.9%) had poor functional outcome. Univariate analysis showed that high non-HDLC level was associated with good functional outcome at 90 days (p = 0.001). After adjustment for confounding factors, a high non-HDLC level (≥154.89 mg/dl) remained as an indicator of good functional outcome at 90 days [multivariate-adjusted odds ratios (OR) 0.50, 95%CI 0.27–0.92; p-value for trend = 0.043], and was stronger for female patients (OR: 0.13, 95%CI: 0.03–0.50). Conclusion: ICH patients with higher non-HDLC levels had a decreased prevalence of poor functional outcome at 90 days, and a high non-HDLC level is an independent indicator of good functional outcome at 90 days from onset, especially in females.
pH-Dependent Water Clusters in Photoacid Solution: Real-Time Observation by ToF-SIMS at a Submicropore Confined Liquid-Vacuum Interface

Water clusters are ubiquitously formed in aqueous solutions by hydrogen bonding, which is quite sensitive to various environment factors such as temperature, pressure, electrolytes, and pH. Investigation of how the environment has impact on water structure is important for further understanding of the nature of water and the interactions between water and solutes. In this work, pH-dependent water structure changes were studied by monitoring the changes for the size distribution of protonated water clusters by in-situ liquid ToF-SIMS. In combination with a light illumination system, in-situ liquid ToF-SIMS was used to real-time measure the changes of a light-activated organic photoacid under different light illumination conditions. Thus, the proton transfer and pH-mediated water cluster changes were analyzed in real-time. It was found that higher concentration of free protons could lead to a strengthened local hydrogen bonding network as well as relatively larger protonated water clusters in both organic acid and inorganic acid. Besides, the accumulation of protons at the liquid-vacuum interface under light illumination was observed owing to the affinity of organic molecules to the low-pressure gas phase. The application of in-situ liquid ToF-SIMS analysis in combination with in-situ light illumination system opened up an avenue to real-time investigate light-activated reactions. Besides, the results regarding water structure changes in acidic solutions showed important insights in related atmospheric and physiochemical processes.
Atendimento psiquiátrico à população prisional: cinco anos de experiência da Santa Casa de São Paulo no Centro Hospitalar do Sistema Penitenciário /Psychiatric assistance of prisoners: five years of experience of the Santa Casa de São Paulo at the Penitentiary Hospital

Prezados Editores, A taxa de transtorno mental na populacao prisional e particularmente alta. O primeiro grande estudo psiquiatrico epidemiologico brasileiro realizado com presos do Estado de Sao Paulo foi publicado neste ano de 2014(1). Seus resultados sao alarmantes. Entre as mulheres, a prevalencia de transtorno mental ao longo da vida foi de 68,9%, sendo que a prevalencia no ultimo ano foi de 39,2%. Entre os homens, a prevalencia ao longo da vida ficou em 56,1%, e no ultimo ano em 22,1%. Quando se tratou de transtorno mental grave, como transtornos psicoticos, transtorno bipolar do humor e depressao grave, a prevalencia ao longo da vida e a prevalencia no ultimo ano foram de 25,8% e 14,7% entre as mulheres e de 12,3% e 6,3% entre os homens. Essas taxas sao muito maiores que aquelas encontradas na populacao geral. Esse fenomeno tem multiplas causas. Em geral, as prisoes sao insalubres, muitas vezes superlotadas, funcionando como agentes estressores na eclosao de transtornos mentais. Como ha grande precariedade de assistencia a saude nas unidades prisionais e comum que presos que apresentavam transtornos mentais estabilizados quando foram presos descontinuem seu tratamento no carcere, passando a ficar sintomaticos. Ademais, a desassistencia na area de saude mental, que campeia em nosso pais, acaba favorecendo que pacientes portadores de transtornos mentais fiquem mais susceptiveis a entrar em conflito com a lei. Assim, os antigos manicomios vao dando lugar as prisoes, que passam a custodiar os pacientes com transtorno mental.
FcRn Overexpression Expands Diversity of the Humoral Immune Response in bFcRn Transgenic Mice

The neonatal Fc receptor (FcRn) plays key roles in IgG and albumin homeostasis, maternal IgG transport, and antigen presentation of IgG-opsonized antigens. Previously, we reported that transgenic (Tg) mice that overexpress bovine FcRn (bFcRn) have augmented T-dependent humoral immune response with increased IgG protection, higher level of antigen-specific antibodies, greater number of antigen-specific B cells, and effective immune response even against weakly immunogenic epitopes. In this study we analyzed the diversity of the humoral immune response of bFcRn Tg mice, using a length distribution analysis (spectratyping) and next generation sequencing (NGS) of the immunoglobulin heavy chain variable regions. Our analysis showed that in response to immunization with ovalbumin or transfected cells that expressed a unique membrane protein, our Tg animals developed a more diverse plasma cell repertoire than controls, which manifested in greater numbers of different clones, and clusters with fewer highly expanded large clones, as identified by the variable region (CDR3) of the immunoglobulin heavy chain. The increased antibody diversity in Tg mice after immunization was observed at both IgM and IgG levels, indicating that the increased humoral immune diversity in Tg mice is due to a higher number of both activated, antigen-specific naïve and isotype switched B cells. We thus demonstrated that the BCR repertoire of the immunized bFcRn Tg animals is more diverse compared to wild type mice, which likely makes these Tg mice a better choice for monoclonal antibody production against challenging antigens, including the extracellular regions of cell membrane proteins.
Online Multitask Learning with Long-Term Memory

We introduce a novel online multitask setting. In this setting each task is partitioned into a sequence of segments that is unknown to the learner. Associated with each segment is a hypothesis from some hypothesis class. We give algorithms that are designed to exploit the scenario where there are many such segments but significantly fewer associated hypotheses. We prove regret bounds that hold for any segmentation of the tasks and any association of hypotheses to the segments. In the single-task setting this is equivalent to switching with long-term memory in the sense of [Bousquet and Warmuth; 2003]. We provide an algorithm that predicts on each trial in time linear in the number of hypotheses when the hypothesis class is finite. We also consider infinite hypothesis classes from reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces for which we give an algorithm whose per trial time complexity is cubic in the number of cumulative trials. In the single-task special case this is the first example of an efficient regret-bounded switching algorithm with long-term memory for a non-parametric hypothesis class.
Molecular characterization and expression analysis of target of rapamycin (TmTOR) in coleopteran insect Tenebrio molitor

Target of rapamycin (TOR) is an evolutionarily conserved serine–threonine kinase that affects various cellular functions including growth, development, ageing, immunity and autophagy. Inhibition in TOR activity stimulates autophagy, a self‐eating process that ensures survival by maintaining metabolic homeostasis and energy retention at both cellular and organismal levels. To understand the interplay between TOR and autophagy during development and immunity, we screened and identified a TOR homologue from the coleopteran insect, Tenebrio molitor (TmTOR). The full‐length cDNA of TmTOR contained an open reading frame (ORF) of 7,197 bp encoding a protein of 2,398 amino acids, and a 5′‐ and 3′‐ untranslated region (UTR) of 156 and 457 bp, respectively. Deduced amino acid sequence of TmTOR shows characteristic Huntington, EF3A, ATM, TOR (HEAT) repeat, focal adhesion kinase targeting (FAT), rapamycin‐binding, phosphatidylinositol 3‐/4‐kinase and FRAP, ATM and TRRAP C‐terminal (FATC) domains known to be conserved among TOR orthologs. TmTOR showed high sequence identity (92%) with Tribolium castaneum TOR (TcTOR) and the two were placed in the same cluster of the phylogenetic tree. TmTOR shows high mRNA expression level in the fat body and integument of T. molitor larvae. Significantly, a reduced expression of TmTOR mRNA during pupation correlated to an increase in the area of autolysosomes. Intriguingly, T. molitor larvae showed an increase in TmTOR transcripts upon a challenge with various bacterial pathogens. This suggests a negative role of TmTOR in the regulation of autophagy during development.
Phytolith production in wetland plants of the Hangzhou Xixi Wetlands ecosystem

Phytoliths，also referred to as plant opal，are silicified features that form as a result of biomineralization within plants and plays an important role in terrestrial biogeochemical cycles of carbon and silicon. This study selected 18 different plant species at the Xixi Wetlands in Zhejiang Province，to determine the phytolith content and its production flux using microwave，Walkley-Black digestion，and a correlation analysis. The main purpose of this study is to provide scientific reference for understanding the role of phytoliths in biogeochemical cycles of silicon and carbon. Results showed strong variation in phytolith content among the 18 plants：Cortaderia selloana（7.7%），Setaria viridis（7.6%），Digitaria ternata（6.9%），and Phragmites australis （6.6%）were higher than Salvinia natans（1.3%），Halerpestes cymbalaria（1.1%），and Canna indica L. （1.0%）. A positive correlation between phytolith content and total SiO2 in the 18 plants（R2=0.663 3，P＜0.01）was also found. Phytolith production flux was 4.48-129.92 gm-2a-1；phytolith sequestration of atmospheric CO2 was 0.16-1.03 gm-2a-1；and the phytolith sequestration rate of atmospheric CO2 was 8.29 ta-1. So，it is very important to improve the flux of aboveground plant phytolith production in wetlands ecosystems by selecting a plant with high-phytolith（silicon）content and high-ANPP（aboveground net primary production）yields for the plant Phragmites australis. ［Ch，1 fig. 1 tab. 35 ref. ］
Effect of locally delivered doxycycline as an adjunct to scaling and root planing in the treatment of periodontitis in smokers: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials with meta-analysis and trial sequential analysis

Background: Scaling and root planing (SRP) for the treatment of periodontitis may be less effective in some patients. This study evaluated the effectiveness of local doxycycline as an adjunct to SRP among smokers with periodontitis compared to SRP alone in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Materials and Methods: For this systematic review and meta-analysis, PubMed and Scopus databases were searched till November 2018 for English publications. RCTs that compared the effect of local doxycycline adjunct to SRP among smokers with periodontitis were selected. Patient characteristics, disease characteristics, and outcome data on clinical attachment level (CAL) and periodontal probing depth at 1, 3- and 6-month follow-up was extracted. Quality of selected studies was assessed by the revised Cochrane Risk of Bias 2.0 tool. Random effects model and trial sequential analysis were performed. GRADE approach was used to assess the quality of evidence. P > 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: Five trials were included in the review. Local use of doxycycline as an adjunct to SRP was effective in gain of 1.1 mm (0.47–1.74, P = 0.091) in CAL at 6 months calculated from two studies. The evidence was of low quality, and at least a total of 866 patients are required for conclusiveness. Conclusion: Local doxycycline as an adjunct to SRP significantly improved clinical attachment in smokers with periodontitis and can be recommended. Studies are required with long-term follow-up and patient-related outcome data.
Real-World Insight on Apremilast Therapy in Patients with Plaque Psoriasis: Indian Experience

Introduction: Psoriasis is an immune-mediated inflammatory skin disorder, which follows a chronic course. Apremilast is a novel phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4) inhibitor, approved by US-FDA for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. A majority of the data related to the effectivity and safety of apremilast use in psoriasis is extracted from clinical trials. The present study was planned to get an insight into real-world experience with the use of apremilast in patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis related to its effectiveness and safety in India. Materials and Methods: The present study was a retrospective one, wherein a review of the medical records of patients with psoriasis was conducted at one center in Kolkata, who were prescribed apremilast for 16 weeks in a community dermatology practice, from December 2017 to May 2018. Results: Out of 39 patients, two patients discontinued treatment due to diarrhea. Only three patients were treatment naïve; the rest had taken some form of systemic therapy before apremilast. At the end of 16 weeks of treatment with apremilast, PASI 100 was achieved in one patient (2.7%), PASI 90 in one (2.7%), PASI 75 in 18 patients (48%), while 14 patients (38%) achieved PASI 50. Eighteen (46%) experienced adverse events, diarrhea being the most common (29.7%). Conclusion: The findings of the present study indicate that apremilast is effective in a real-world setting, as compared with clinical trials in achieving certain endpoints like PASI 75, as was found in other real-world studies in other countries, as well.
Forêts soudaniennes et alimentation des bovins au Sénégal : potentiel et limites

Dans le cadre d'un programme conjoint de recherche sur l'alimentation du betail tropical au Senegal, l'ISRA et le CIRAD ont analyse le fonctionnement des systemes d'alimentation extensifs des bovins en zone soudanienne sur des terroirs agrosylvopastoraux. Les agropasteurs peuls sedentaires conduisent alternativement leurs troupeaux sur des parcours forestiers en saison des pluies et exploitent principalement les residus de recolte au champ en saison seche. Les parcours forestiers representent ainsi 24 a 94% des surfaces exploitees par le betail selon la saison, et les fourrages ligneux contribuent entre 1 et 29% au regime de ces animaux. La biomasse ligneuse consommee par te betail est bien inferieure au potentiel de ces formations. L'apport nutritif des fourrages ligneux est important sur le plan quantitatif, pour reduire tes deficits fourragers saisonniers et entretenir le betail mais il est insuffisant pour ameliorer significativement la teneur azotee des regimes, laquelle est un facteur limitant de ta production. L'etude de t'impact du feu et de la pâture sur ces formations forestieres a permis de montrer que ces facteurs peuvent etre utilises, selon la saison et l'intensite, pour lutter contre l'embroussaillement ou, au contraire, pour favoriser la regeneration d'especes ligneuses. L'ensemble des resultats permet de proposer des mesures et des techniques de gestion durable et d'amelioration des systemes agropastoraux, qui doivent etre choisies et testees avec les agroeleveurs en tenant compte de leurs objectifs et de leurs contraintes. Ces propositions concernent la mise en place de plans de gestion saisonniers des parcours, de jacheres ameliorees et de banques fourrageres ligneuses. (Resume d'auteur)
The comparison of the salivary concentration of interleukin-17 and interleukin-18 in patients with chronic periodontitis and healthy individuals

Background: Regarding the prevalence and importance of periodontal disease and the potential of salivary biomarkers for the early diagnosis of these diseases, this study was conducted to compare salivary concentrations of Interleukin-17 (IL-17) and Interleukin-18 (IL-18) in patients with chronic periodontitis and healthy individuals. Materials and Methods: The present research was a descriptive–analytical and also a cross-sectional study. Unstimulated saliva with full-mouth clinical periodontal recordings were obtained from 20 healthy individuals and 20 individuals with chronic periodontitis. The concentrations of salivary IL-17 and IL-18 were determined using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. The nonparametric Mann–Whitney U-test was used for statistical analysis of the findings. Alpha level was set at 0.05. Results: The mean salivary concentration of IL-18 in patients with chronic periodontitis was 143.10 pg/mL, which was higher than the same concentration in healthy controls (78.33 pg/mL), (P = 0.035). The mean salivary concentration of IL-17 in patients with chronic periodontitis and healthy controls was 3.51 and 4.57 pg/mL, respectively, and there was no difference between the two groups (P = 0.283). Conclusion: Within the limitations of the present study, it may be suggested that an elevated salivary IL-18 level in chronic periodontitis patients has the potential to be a biomarker for periodontal tissue destruction.
The AMANDA Neutrino Telescope

We present recent results from the Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA), located at the South Pole in Antarctica. AMANDA-II, commissioned in 2000, is a multipurpose high energy neutrino telescope with a broad physics and astrophysics scope. We summarize the results from searches for a variety of sources of ultra-high energy neutrinos: TeV-PeV diffuse sources by measuring either muon tracks or cascades, neutrinos in excess of PeV by searching for muons traveling in the down-going direction and point sources.
Comparisons between two Klebsiella: The plant endophyte K. pneumoniae 342 and a clinical isolate, K. pneumoniae MGH78578

Bacterial strains of potential value to agriculture that promote plant growth or control plant disease are often close relatives of isolates associated with human disease. Klebsiella pneumoniae endophytes isolated from maize, Kp342, Kp2028, and Kp zmvsy are examples of this dilemma. These strains enhance plant growth and are endophytes of a wide variety of plant species. This work represents a collection of experiments to define the taxonomic status of these endophytes and to compare several phenotypes of this strain to a clinical isolate, K. pneumoniae MGH78578 (KpMGH). Three genetic assays show that although the maize endophytes are members of K. pneumoniae they are more closely related to each other and to the type strain of the species (Kp13883) than they are to KpMGH. In addition, the endophytes lack the complete set of virulence factors assays that are present in KpMGH. Most physiological and metabolic characteristics were shared by all strains further confirming the identity of these endophytes as K. pneumoniae. However, the maize endophytes colonized the interior of wheat seedlings in much higher numbers than either KpMGH or Kp13883. These results show that these endophytes are strains of K. pneumoniae but they are distinct from a clinical isolate.
Narrative Interpolation for Generating and Understanding Stories

We propose a method for controlled narrative/story generation where we are able to guide the model to produce coherent narratives with user-specified target endings by interpolation: for example, we are told that Jim went hiking and at the end Jim needed to be rescued, and we want the model to incrementally generate steps along the way. The core of our method is an interpolation model based on GPT-2 which conditions on a previous sentence and a next sentence in a narrative and fills in the gap. Additionally, a reranker helps control for coherence of the generated text. With human evaluation, we show that ending-guided generation results in narratives which are coherent, faithful to the given ending guide, and require less manual effort on the part of the human guide writer than past approaches.
A VCG-based Fair Incentive Mechanism for Federated Learning

Federated learning (FL) has shown great potential for addressing the challenge of isolated data islands while preserving data privacy. It allows artificial intelligence (AI) models to be trained on locally stored data in a distributed manner. In order to build an ecosystem for FL to operate in a sustainable manner, it has to be economically attractive to data owners. This gives rise to the problem of FL incentive mechanism design, which aims to find the optimal organizational and payment structure for the federation in order to achieve a series of economic objectives. In this paper, we present a VCG-based FL incentive mechanism, named FVCG, specifically designed for incentivizing data owners to contribute all their data and truthfully report their costs in FL settings. It maximizes the social surplus and minimizes unfairness of the federation. We provide an implementation of FVCG with neural networks and theoretic proofs on its performance bounds. Extensive numerical experiment results demonstrated the effectiveness and economic reasonableness of FVCG.
Towards Dynamic Urban Bike Usage Prediction for Station Network Reconfiguration

Bike sharing has become one of the major choices of transportation for residents in metropolitan cities worldwide. A station-based bike sharing system is usually operated in the way that a user picks up a bike from one station, and drops it off at another. Bike stations are, however, not static, as the bike stations are often reconfigured to accommodate changing demands or city urbanization over time. One of the key operations is to evaluate candidate locations and install new stations to expand the bike sharing station network. Conventional practices have been studied to predict existing station usage, while evaluating new stations is highly challenging due to the lack of the historical bike usage. To fill this gap, in this work we propose a novel and efficient bike station-level prediction algorithm called AtCoR, which can predict the bike usage at both existing and new stations (candidate locations during reconfiguration). In order to address the lack of historical data issues, virtual historical usage of new stations is generated according to their correlations with the surrounding existing stations, for AtCoR model initialization. We have designed novel station-centered heatmaps which characterize for each target station centered at the heatmap the trend that riders travel between it and the station's neighboring regions, enabling the model to capture the learnable features of the bike station network. The captured features are further applied to the prediction of bike usage for new stations. Our extensive experiment study on more than 23 million trips from three major bike sharing systems in US, including New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, shows that AtCoR outperforms baselines and state-of-art models in prediction of both existing and future stations.