Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CALLISTO facilities in Peru: spectrometer commissioning and observations of type III solar radio bursts

The Astrophysics Directorate of CONIDA has installed two radio spectrometer stations belonging to the e-CALLISTO network in Lima, Peru. Given their strategic location near the Equator, it is possible to observe the Sun evenly throughout the whole year. The receiver located at Pucusana, nearby the capital city of Lima, took data from October 2014 until August 2016 in the metric and decimetric bands looking for radio bursts. During this period, this e-CALLISTO detector was unique in its time-zone coverage. To asses the suitability of the sites and the performance of the antennas, we analyzed the radio ambient background and measured their radiation pattern and beamwidth. To demonstrate the capabilities of the facilities for studying solar dynamics in these radio frequencies, we have selected and analyzed type III Solar Radio Bursts. The study of this kind of burst helps to understand the electron beams traversing the solar corona and the solar atmospheric density. We have characterized the most common radio bursts with the following mean values: a negative drift rate of –25.8 ± 3.7 MHz s−1, a duration of 2.6 ± 0.3 s and 35 MHz bandwidth in the frequency range of 114 to 174 MHz. In addition, for some events, it was possible to calculate a global frequency drift which on average was 0.4 ± 0.1 MHz s−1.
Biosynthese von N-Acylglutaminen im Insektendarm : Beteiligung und Charakterisierung bakterieller Enzyme

N-acyl glutamines are key signal molecules mediating the plant-insect interaction. A protein fraction has been isolated from a bacterium, Microbacterium arborescens SE14 living commensally in herbivore insect gut. The protein belongs to the bacterial Dps protein family (DNA-binding protein from starved cell), and catalyses reversible formation of N-acyl glutamines when free fatty acids and amino acids were supplied exogenously. The protein has some novel properties adapted well to the insect gut environment. The cloned gene increased the activity of strain M. arborescens DSM20754 when transformed into it.
Mono vs Multilingual Transformer-based Models: a Comparison across Several Language Tasks

BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) and ALBERT (A Lite BERT) are methods for pre-training language models which can later be fine-tuned for a variety of Natural Language Understanding tasks. These methods have been applied to a number of such tasks (mostly in English), achieving results that outperform the state-of-the-art. In this paper, our contribution is twofold. First, we make available our trained BERT and Albert model for Portuguese. Second, we compare our monolingual and the standard multilingual models using experiments in semantic textual similarity, recognizing textual entailment, textual category classification, sentiment analysis, offensive comment detection, and fake news detection, to assess the effectiveness of the generated language representations. The results suggest that both monolingual and multilingual models are able to achieve state-of-the-art and the advantage of training a single language model, if any, is small.
Association of Symptoms with Eating Habits and Food Preferences in Chronic Gastritis Patients: A Cross-Sectional Study

Purpose There is a lack of research on the relationship between symptoms and dietary factors of chronic gastritis (CG) patients, and the contribution of dietary management in relieving symptoms of CG patients has not attracted enough attention. This study aimed to identify the associations between different symptoms and dietary factors. Patients and Methods. All CG patients in this cross-sectional study were recruited from 3 hospitals in Beijing, China, from October 2015 to January 2016. Association Rule Mining analysis was performed to identify the correlations between gastrointestinal symptoms and dietary factors (including eating habits and food preferences), and subgroup analysis focused on gender differences. Results The majority of patients (58.17%) reported that their symptoms were related to dietary factors. About 53% reported that they had the habit of “eating too fast,” followed by “irregular mealtimes” (29.66%) and “eating leftover food” (28.14%). Sweets (27.57%), spicy foods (25.10%), and meat (24.33%) were the most popular among all participants. Stomachache and gastric distention were the most common symptoms and were both associated with irregular mealtimes, irregular meal sizes, eating out in restaurants, meats, barbecue, fried foods, sour foods, sweets, snacks, and salty foods (support >0.05 and lift >1.0). Their most strongly associated factors were irregular meal sizes, barbecues, and snacks (lift >1.2). In addition, irregular mealtimes, salty foods, and sweet foods may be important diet factors influencing the symptoms in CG patients (support >0.05 and lift >1.0), as they were associated with almost all dyspeptic symptoms in the whole group and subgroup analyses. Furthermore, alcohol, barbecue, and spicy foods were associated with almost all symptoms for males (support >0.05 and lift >1.0), but sweets were the only dietary factor associated with all symptoms for females (support >0.05 and lift >1.0). Conclusion This study has provided new data for the association of symptoms with eating habits and food preferences in CG patients. The role of individual daily management schemes, such as dietary or lifestyle programs, needs more attention.
Gingival Melanin Depigmentation by 808 nm Diode Laser: Report of a Case

Gingival hyperpigmentation frequently poses an aesthetic problem, especially in patients with gingival smile. This paper presents the use of a 808 nm pulsed diode laser for gingival depigmentation in a 22-year-old male patient, with a frequency of 20,000 Hz, a peak power of 5 W, and a pulse width of 26 microseconds, using a 400 nm flexible optic fiber. The hyperpigmented gingival tissue was removed without bleeding or postoperative pain. Three weeks later, the gum resumed its normal, firm, and pink appearance. No significant recurrence was noted after a follow-up of 4 months. However, perfect control of this device is necessary to avoid certain consequences such as bone exposure or gingival fenestrations.
Inhibition of Daphnia by Oscillatoria in Lake Washington

The hypothesis of Edmondson and Litt concerning the inhibition of Daphnia by Oscillatoria in Lake Washington was tested in experiments with cultures. Growth and reproduction of Daphnia pulicaria and Daphnia thorata were reduced by increasing concentrations of Oscillatoria agardhii from 0 to 400 filaments ml-’ in the presence of adequate amounts of Cryptomonas as food. Cryptomonas reproduction also was inhibited by Oscillatoria, by an undetermined mechanism. The results are consistent with the idea that the scarcity of Daphnia in Lake Washington during the 1 O-year period before 1976 was related to high concentrations of 0. agardhii. In their study of Daphnia in Lake Washington, Edmondson and Litt (1982) hypothesized that Oscillatoria may have delayed the appearance of Daphnia in the lake for 10 years after the crash in the mid- 1960s of its main predator, Neomysis mercedis. Cladoceran populations can decline or disappear when some kinds of blue-green algae, especially filamentous forms, predominate (Burns 1968a; Keating 1976; Infante 1982). We present here the results of ex; periments to measure the effect of Oscillatoria on the two dominant species of Daphnia in Lake Washington and on their algal food. Certain kinds of filaments can interfere mechanically with feeding when they accumulate in the filtering apparatus of cladocerans (Burns 19683; Webster and Peters 1978). Rejection movements of the postabdomen become more frequent (Porter and Orcutt 1980) and some food particles are ejected with the mass of filaments. Porter et al. (1982) detected an increase in the respiratory rate of Daphnia along with an increase in rejection rate. The amount of energy available from a good food supply for growth and reproduction thus becomes less when filaments are numerous.
Adult Spinal Deformities: Can Patient-Specific Rods Change the Preoperative Planning into Clinical Reality? Feasibility Study and Preliminary Results about 77 Cases

Surgical management of adult spinal deformities remains challenging, and one of the major goals is to restore sagittal alignment. Spinal rods used for posterior fixation are usually delivered straight and bended manually during surgery. This manual bending can be responsible for undercorrection of the deformity. In the last years, prebended patient-specific rods have been developed and might be a valuable tool in order to optimize surgical results. The objective is therefore to use the time between surgical decision and operative room in order to realize a precise surgical planning and obtain patient-specific rods. We describe here the planning process and our preliminary experience with patient-specific rods in the management of adult deformity about 77 cases. On the 77 cases, PSR were used without further modifications of the shape. Based on 3-month postoperative evaluation, a significant decrease of sagittal vertical axis (−41%, p < 0.0001) and pelvic incidence-lumbar lordosis (−62%, p < 0.0001) was reported. Pelvic tilt was not significantly corrected, except in patients with Parkinson's disease. In this subgroup of patients, measurements revealed a significant correction of SVA and PI-LL (−53%, p=0.005, and −81%, p < 0.0001, respectively) but also of PT (−23%, p < 0.001). The use of PSR, in our experience, was feasible and provided satisfactory short-term results. It can be a valuable tool in the management of adult spinal deformities. Further studies will be needed in order to confirm these preliminary results.
Holocene radiative forcing impact of northern peatland carbon accumulation and methane emissions

Throughout the Holocene, northern peatlands have both accumulated carbon and emitted methane. Their impact on climate radiative forcing has been the net of cooling (persistent CO2 uptake) and warming (persistent CH4 emission). We evaluated this by developing very simple Holocene peatland carbon flux trajectories, and using these as inputs to a simple atmospheric perturbation model. Flux trajectories are based on estimates of contemporary CH4 flux (15–50 Tg CH4 yr−1), total accumulated peat C (250–450 Pg C), and peatland initiation dates. The contemporary perturbations to the atmosphere due to northern peatlands are an increase of ∼100 ppbv CH4 and a decrease of ∼35 ppmv CO2. The net radiative forcing impact northern peatlands is currently about −0.2 to −0.5 W m−2 (a cooling). It is likely that peatlands initially caused a net warming of up to +0.1 W m−2, but have been causing an increasing net cooling for the past 8000–11 000 years. A series of sensitivity simulations indicate that the current radiative forcing impact is determined primarily by the magnitude of the contemporary methane flux and the magnitude of the total C accumulated as peat, and that radiative forcing dynamics during the Holocene depended on flux trajectory, but the overall pattern was similar in all cases.
Collective effects of age, sex, genotype, and cognitive status on fitness outcomes

Individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) broadly exhibit lower cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) compared to cognitively healthy older adults. Other factors, such as increasing age and female sex, are also known to track with lower CRF levels. However, it is unclear how these factors together with AD diagnosis and genetic risk (apolipoprotein e4 ; APOE4) collectively affect CRF.
Urinary Cytochrome C and Caspase-3 as Novel Biomarker of Renal Function Impairment in Unilateral Ureteropelvic Junction Obstruction Model of Wistar Rats

Introduction Prolonged obstruction in UPJO would lead to kidney destruction. It is important to find a non-invasive biomarker for early detection of renal impairment before definitive treatment for UPJO. In this study, we aim to evaluate the role of urinary cytochrome c and caspase-3 as a novel biomarker to predict renal function impairment in a UPJO model in Wistar rats. Methods Twenty-five male Wistar rats were separated into 3 groups. Group I consists of 5 rats without any treatment or model, group II consists of 5 rats (sham group), and group III consists of 15 rats with the unilateral partial ureteral obstruction model. After 4, 15, and 21 days of observation, the urine was collected and rats were sacrificed to collect the glomerular count in the kidney. Measurement of cytochrome c and caspase-3 was done using the ELISA method, while the glomerular count was done using a light microscope. Data were analyzed using factorial repeated measures ANOVA test and correlation test with Pearson and processed using SPSS version 20.0. Results The UPJO group has a significant increase in cytochrome c concentration and caspase-3 concentration compared to the control group and sham group (p<0.05). There was a significant decrease in the normal glomerulus count of the UPJO group (p<0.05). There was a significant relationship between the decrease in glomerulus count with the concentration of cytochrome c and caspase-3 in the UPJO group. Conclusion There was a significant relationship between the decrease in glomerulus count with the increase in the concentration of cytochrome c and caspase-3 in the UPJO group.
Association between Visceral Fat and Bone Mineral Density in Both Male and Female Patients with Adult Growth Hormone Deficiency

Aim Adult growth hormone deficiency (AGHD) is associated with an increased risk of fractures. The interactions between various body composition and bone are known to be complex in nature. However, very few studies have examined this crosstalk in AGHD. In this study, we sought to investigate the relationship between various parameters of body composition and bone mineral density (BMD) as well as determine the role of visceral fat in determining the bone mass in patients with AGHD. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study on 57 patients with AGHD. Anthropometry, biochemistry, and analysis of body composition and BMD were performed according to standard protocols. Male and female patients were classified into those with osteoporosis and those without osteoporosis (normal subjects and patients with osteopenia). Further, we analyzed the correlation between the BMD and measurements obtained for various body composition parameters in male and female AGHD patients. Results Our findings indicated that among female AGHD patients, those with osteoporosis had a significantly higher levels of fat mass (FM) and visceral adipose tissue mass (VATM) (both, P < 0.05) than those without osteoporosis. Further, Pearson correlation analysis showed that the values of age, body mass index (BMI), FM, and VATM correlated negatively with BMD in women with AGHD (all P < 0.05); however, this association was not noted in men. After adjusting for the other covariates, VATM was found to be independently correlated with the BMD in female patients with AGHD. Conclusions A close correlation was noted between VATM and BMD in female patients with AGHD.
Catabolism and synthesis of amino acids in skeletal muscle: their significance in monogastric mammals and ruminants

The enhanced rate of synthesis and catabolism of amino acids in, and their release from, skeletal muscle, particularly during fasting, exercise and metabolic acidosis, highlight the integrative role of muscle in protein-energy metabolism. This review discusses aspects of such changes in muscles of monogastric mammals and ruminants. The glucose-alanine cycle, as it was originally proposed, has been well substantiated by studies using human and rat muscles. An alternative proposal, which suggested that other amino acids make a major contribution to the carbon skeleton of alanine synthesized in muscle, is less convincing, since some of the inhibitors and substrates used in relevant studies have been demonstrated to have multiple rather than specific effects. In the ruminant, the glucose-alanine cycle is quantitatively less significant than in human. The probable reason for this difference is the limited available pyruvate in ruminant muscle for transamination to alanine. This may be due to a lower carbon flux through the glycolytic pathway and/or to significant activity of the anaplerotic enzyme, pyruvate carboxylase. It is suggested that glutamine is the more important carrier of carbon and nitrogen out of skeletal muscle and that alanine may serve only as an ancillary vehicle to transport carbon and nitrogen when the availability of pyruvate for transamination in muscle is high. The more diverse role of glutamine (cf. alanine) in acid-base balance, as a respiratory fuel in the cells of the immune system and the epithelia of the small intestine, where it may also be converted to alanine for subsequent gluconeogenesis in the liver, is consistent with this suggestion.
Identification of Prognostic Immune-Related Genes by Integrating mRNA Expression and Methylation in Lung Adenocarcinoma

Background There is plenty of evidence showing that immune-related genes (IRGs) and epigenetic modifications play important roles in the biological process of cancer. The purpose of this study is to establish novel IRG prognostic markers by integrating mRNA expression and methylation in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). Methods and Results The transcriptome profiling data and the RNA-seq data of LUAD with the corresponding clinical information of 543 LUAD cases were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, which were analyzed by univariate Cox proportional regression and multivariate Cox proportional regression to develop an independent prognostic signature. On the basis of this signature, we could divide LUAD patients into the high-risk, medium-risk, and low-risk groups. Further survival analyses demonstrated that high-risk patients had significantly shorter overall survival (OS) than low-risk patients. The signature, which contains 8 IRGs (S100A16, FGF2, IGKV4-1, CX3CR1, INHA, ANGPTL4, TNFRSF11A, and VIPR1), was also validated by data from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. We also conducted analyses of methylation levels of the relevant IRGs and their CpG sites. Meanwhile, their associations with prognosis were examined and validated by the GEO database, revealing that the methylation levels of INHA, S100A16, the CpG site cg23851011, and the CpG site cg06552037 may be used as the potential regulators for the treatment of LUAD. Conclusion Collectively, INHA, S100A16, the CpG site cg23851011, and the CpG site cg06552037 are promising biomarkers for monitoring the outcomes of LUAD.
An Unusual Case of Campylobacter jejuni Gastroenteritis Presenting with Acute Reversible Encephalopathy in an Immunocompetent Host

Campylobacter jejuni gastroenteritis is the most frequent organism associated with acute infectious diarrhea worldwide. The clinical presentation involves fever, diarrhea, rigors, and myalgias. Other extraintestinal symptoms that have been described involve delirium and other neurological complications, and the most well-known is Guillain-Barré, where there is cross-reactivity between the gastrointestinal tract and the brain. Despite previously described multiple neurological complications, there is a lack of clinical data on the association of Campylobacter-related gastroenteritis with acute encephalopathy in immunocompetent patients. The type of population, immunocompetent stage, and unfamiliarity with the clinical presentation makes this a challenging diagnosis for clinicians. We report a case of Campylobacter gastroenteritis associated with acute encephalopathy in an immunocompetent patient.
Antibiotic Susceptibility, Clonality, and Molecular Characterization of Carbapenem-Resistant Clinical Isolates of Acinetobacter baumannii from Washington DC

The occurrence of carbapenem-resistant (CR) strains of Acinetobacter baumannii is reported to contribute to the severity of several nosocomial infections, especially in critically ill patients in intensive care units. The present study aims to determine the antibiotic susceptibility, clonality, and genetic mechanism of carbapenem resistance in twenty-eight Acinetobacter baumannii isolates from four hospitals in Washington DC. The antibiotic susceptibility of the isolates was determined by VITEK 2 analyses, while PCR was used to examine the presence of antibiotic-resistant genes and mobile genetic elements. Trilocus multiplex-PCR was used along with pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) for strain typing and for accessing clonal relationships among the isolates. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing indicated that 46% of the isolates were carbapenem-resistant and possessed MDR and XDR phenotypes. PFGE clustered the 28 isolates into seven clonal (C1–C7) complexes based on >75% similarity cut-off. Thirty-six percent of the isolates belonged to international clone II, while 29% were assigned to Group 4 by trilocus multiplex-PCR. Although the blaOXA-51-like gene was found in all the isolates, only 36% were positive for the blaOXA-23-like gene. PCR analysis also found a metallo-β-lactamase (MBL) gene (blaVIM) in 71% of the isolates. Of the 13 CR isolates, 8 were PCR positive for both blaVIM and blaOXA-23-like genes, while 5 harbored only blaVIM gene. This study revealed the emergence of VIM carbapenemase-producing A. baumannii isolates, which has not been previously reported in the United States.
Favorable Outcomes Following the Use of Triple Therapy in a Patient with Osmotic Demyelination Syndrome

INTRODUCTION Osmotic Demyelination Syndrome (ODS) occurs following rapid overcorrection of hyponatremia.1 It is characterized by destruction of neuronal myelin sheaths in either the central area of the pons or in other susceptible areas causing severe irreversible neurologic deficits. Methods described in the literature suggested varying sodium correction rates which lead to different definitions of overcorrection of hyponatremia.2 The incidence of ODS consequently would be expected to increase. However, no general consensus exists regarding the optimal treatment regimen for this disease. Nevertheless, evidence-based management is essential for those who are diagnosed. We present a case of ODS treated with plasmapheresis (PP), intravenous immunoglobulins (IVIG), and intravenous methylprednisolone with significant recovery of neurologic function.