Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Parent-Child Interaction Therapy in a Case of Global Developmental Delay and Leukoencephalopathy

Parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) is an evidence-based, behavioral dyadic treatment for caregivers and their children aged 2–7 years old with emotional and behavioral disorders. Here we present a treatment course of a 3-years-old girl with leukoencephalopathy, dysgenesis of the brainstem, and associated global developmental delay who was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy after PCIT completion. At the beginning of PCIT she had the developmental level of an 18 months old with language skills of a 12–18 months old; both her vocabulary and verbal expression were very limited. She had slow, unco-ordinated gait with limited fine motor skills. She was referred to Psychiatry with concerns regarding disruptive behaviors including severe self-injury. PCIT was started with a focus on PRIDE skills (Praise, Reflection, Imitation, behavioral Description and Enjoyment); particularly behavioral description and reflection with simple developmentally appropriate labeled praise. Modifications to treatment included using non-verbal actions (e.g., “high fives” as praises), sign language and using only one-step basic commands, which greatly improved compliance. In a matter of weeks, the patient demonstrated remarkable improvement in her disruptive behavior as evidenced by parent/daycare report and clinical observation. Surprisingly her vocabulary more than doubled and her ability of self-expression also increased; she was able to point to things and ask for them. This clinical experience suggests that PCIT principles are effective treatment interventions for other clinical presentations outside of the usual inclusion criteria. Implementation of targeted PCIT interventions greatly benefited the development of language skills and communication in a young child with global developmental delay.
Growth performance, carcass criteria, and serum biochemical parameters of broiler chickens supplemented with either synbiotic or prebiotic under hot climatic conditions

ABSTRACT 1. Two separate experiments were conducted to evaluate the efficacy of either prebiotic or synbiotic on growth performance, carcass yield, organ weights, and serum metabolic profile of broilers under hot climatic conditions. 2. In experiment 1, 150 1-d-old Ross 308 male broiler chickens were fed dietary synbiotic (Biomin® IMBO, 0, 1 or 1.5 g kg−1 of the starter diets and 0, 0.5 or 0.75 g kg−1 of the grower diets) for 6 weeks. In experiment 2, 150 1-d-old Ross 308 male broiler chickens were fed dietary prebiotic (Mannan oligosaccharide 0, 0.5 or 1 g kg−1 of the starter diets and 0, 0.25 or 0.5 g kg−1 of the grower diets) for 6 weeks. Each treatment had 10 replicates containing 5 broiler chickens each. 3. Supplementation of synbiotic at 1 or 1.5 g kg−1 feed to broiler diets during 1–21 d and 0.5 or 0.75 g kg−1 feed, respectively, during 22–42 d improved (P < 0.01) body weight gain, feed conversion ratio (FCR), and decreased (P < 0.01) abdominal fat, serum total cholesterol, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels in experiment 1. 4. Similarly, supplementation of the prebiotic at 0.5 or 1 g kg−1 in broiler diets during 1–21 d and 0.25 or 0.50 g kg−1 feed, respectively, during 22–42 d improved (P < 0.01) body weight gain, FCR, and decreased (P < 0.01) abdominal fat, serum cholesterol, and LDL-cholesterol levels in experiment 2.
IL4 gene VNTR polymorphism in chronic periodontitis in end-stage renal disease patients.

OBJECTIVE Interleukin-4 gene polymorphisms were found to be associated with periodontitis. The purpose of this case-control study was to evaluate association of IL4 VNTR polymorphism with periodontitis in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). SUBJECTS AND METHODS We examined 180 ESRD patients with chronic periodontitis, 82 without CP and 180 healthy controls. Genomic DNA from all subjects was genotyped for the IL4 VNTR polymorphism by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). RESULTS Genotype distribution in all groups followed Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Significant differences in genotype and allele frequencies were observed between groups. The patient group had higher frequency of P1 allele than controls, with odds ratio for P1 allele 1.6 (95% CI 1.1-2.3) and P1P1 genotype 2.73 (95% CI 1.06-7.5). There were no differences in polymorphism distribution between ESRD patients without CP and controls. Periodontal disease was more severe in older patients (≥50 years). Similarly, patients with T2DM had more severe manifestation of CP than patients without diabetes (p = 0.01 for plaque index, p = 0.004 for bleeding index and p = 0.03 for gingival index). CONCLUSION Our findings suggest that VNTR polymorphism in IL4 gene might be a risk factor for chronic periodontitis in patients with ESRD.
CRISPR-induced deletion with SaCas9 restores dystrophin expression in dystrophic models in vitro and in vivo

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), a severe hereditary disease, affecting 1 boy out of 3500, mainly results from the deletion of one or more exons leading to a reading frame shift of the DMD gene that abrogates dystrophin protein synthesis. We used the Cas9 of Staphylococcus aureus (SaCas9) to edit the human DMD gene. Pairs of sgRNAs were meticulously chosen to induce a genomic deletion to not only restore the reading frame but also produced a dystrophin protein with normally phased spectrin-like repeats. The formation of a dystrophin protein with spectrin-like repeats normally phased is not usually obtained by skipping or by deletion of complete exons. This can however be obtained in rare instances where the exon/intron borders of the beginning and the end of the complete deletion (patient deletion plus CRISPR-induced deletion are at similar positions in the spectrin-like repeat. We used pairs of sgRNAs, targeting exons 47 and 58 and a normal reading frame was restored in 67 to 86% of the resulting hybrid exons in myoblasts derived from muscle biopsies of 4 DMD patients with different exon deletions. The restoration of the DMD reading frame and restoration of the dystrophin expression was also obtained in vivo in the heart of the del52hDMD/mđx. Our results provide a proof-of-principle that SaCas9 could be used to edit the human DMD gene and could be considered for the further development of a therapy for DMD.
Robotic and Endoscopic Thyroid Surgery: Evolution and Advances

To minimize surgical morbidity and neck scarring, minimally invasive thyroidectomy and robotic/endoscopic thyroidectomy via cervical, axillary, anterior chest, breast, postauricular or transoral approaches have been developed over the past 20 years. In this article, we review the evolution of robotic and endoscopic thyroid surgery and recent advances. Among remote access approaches, the gasless transaxillary approach, bilateral axillo-breast approach, postauricular facelift approach, and transoral vestibular approach are in common use today. Each procedure has its own advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, we need to understand these advantages and limitations, and to select the appropriate method for each patient. The most significant advantage of remote access thyroidectomy is its excellent cosmesis. The complication rate is similar in patients undergoing a remote access approach and those undergoing conventional surgery if the former is performed by experienced surgeons. Operative time is significantly longer in remote access thyroidectomy. In conclusion, remote access thyroidectomy is feasible and its outcomes are comparable to those of conventional transcervical thyroidectomy in highly selected patients.
Synthesizing and Reconstructing Missing Sensory Modalities in Behavioral Context Recognition

Detection of human activities along with the associated context is of key importance for various application areas, including assisted living and well-being. To predict a user’s context in the daily-life situation a system needs to learn from multimodal data that are often imbalanced, and noisy with missing values. The model is likely to encounter missing sensors in real-life conditions as well (such as a user not wearing a smartwatch) and it fails to infer the context if any of the modalities used for training are missing. In this paper, we propose a method based on an adversarial autoencoder for handling missing sensory features and synthesizing realistic samples. We empirically demonstrate the capability of our method in comparison with classical approaches for filling in missing values on a large-scale activity recognition dataset collected in-the-wild. We develop a fully-connected classification network by extending an encoder and systematically evaluate its multi-label classification performance when several modalities are missing. Furthermore, we show class-conditional artificial data generation and its visual and quantitative analysis on context classification task; representing a strong generative power of adversarial autoencoders.
Nitrate Accumulation and Expression Patterns of Genes Involved in Nitrate Transport and Assimilation in Spinach

Excessive accumulation of nitrate in spinach is not only harmful to human beings, but also limits the efficiency of nitrogen usage. However, the underlying mechanism of nitrate accumulation in plants remains unclear. This study analyzed the physiological and molecular characteristics of nitrate uptake and assimilation in the spinach varieties with high or low nitrate accumulation. Our results showed that the variety of spinach with a high nitrate content (So18) had higher nitrate uptake compared to the variety with a low nitrate content (So10). However, the nitrate reductase activities of both varieties were similar, which suggests that the differential capacity to uptake and transport nitrate may account for the differences in nitrate accumulation. The quantitative PCR analysis showed that there was a higher level of expression of spinach nitrate transporter (SoNRT) genes in So18 compared to those in So10. Based on the function of Arabidopsis homologs AtNRTs, the role of spinach SoNRTs in nitrate accumulation is discussed. It is concluded that further work focusing on the expression of SoNRTs (especially for SoNRT1.4, SoNRT1.5 and SoNRT1.3) may help us to elucidate the molecular mechanism of nitrate accumulation in spinach.
Fairness-Aware Recommendation of Information Curators

This paper highlights our ongoing efforts to create effective information curator recommendation models that can be personalized for individual users, while maintaining important fairness properties. Concretely, we introduce the problem of information curator recommendation, provide a high-level overview of a fairness-aware recommender, and introduce some preliminary experimental evidence over a real-world Twitter dataset. We conclude with some thoughts on future directions.
Determination of 16 PAHs and 22 PCBs in honey samples originated from different region of Lebanon and used as environmental biomonitors sentinel

Abstract In order to assess the air quality in some Lebanese regions, a biomonitoring study based on honey as biomonitor candidate was conducted. For this, 18 samples of honey collected from four regions in Lebanon, were analyzed for their contamination by 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and 22 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Samples were first extracted using a multi-residue extraction method based on the quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe extraction method (QuEChERS) followed by a concentration step using Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) procedures. The extraction was then followed by chromatographic analysis by gas chromatography-ion-trap tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS). After PAHs samples assessment, different ratios of founded PAHs were calculated in order to estimate the sources of the pollution by these compounds. The obtained results showed that the four analyzed regions were contaminated with PAHs originated from both pyro and petro genic sources while none of them was found to be contaminated by any of the 22 assessed PCBs. The results of this study show that honey can be used as potential biomonitor candidate allowing the assessment of the pollution statement of a given environment.
Understanding architecture non-conformance: why is there a gap between conceptual architectural rules and source code dependencies?

Evaluations of approaches and tools that assess the matching between a conceptual software architecture and its implementation show that divergences typically occur. However, there is limited investigation of the nature of these divergences. Such an investigation can reveal underlying problems, e.g. the use of inadequate granularity to document the architecture. In this paper, we evaluate and characterize the divergences between conceptual architectural rules and dependencies among modules implemented in the source code, potentially reflecting implemented rules. This was done by means of a study involving six subject systems, in which we extracted source code dependencies and compared them against architectural rules using an association rule algorithm that provides a metric based on frequency. This allowed us to make a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the rule-dependency conformance. We concluded that, as expected, some systems have a large gap between conceptual architectural rules and implemented dependencies, with divergences between conceptual rules and dependencies ranging from 26.1% to 94.1%. Based on the relationship of implemented dependencies and architectural rules, we identified the occurrence of four types of dependencies, which revealed that large non-conformance is not always due to architectural violations. In some cases, it is due to the coarse-grained representation of the software architecture, which does not capture implemented dependencies that are consistent with conceptual architectural rules---these are the identified intra-module and sub-conceptual dependencies. This indicates that finer-grained architectural documentation is needed to use this information to govern software development and evolution.
Metal–dielectric hybrid nanoantennas for efficient frequency conversion at the anapole mode

Background: Dielectric nanoantennas have recently emerged as an alternative solution to plasmonics for nonlinear light manipulation at the nanoscale, thanks to the magnetic and electric resonances, the strong nonlinearities, and the low ohmic losses characterizing high refractive-index materials in the visible/near-infrared (NIR) region of the spectrum. In this frame, AlGaAs nanoantennas demonstrated to be extremely efficient sources of second harmonic radiation. In particular, the nonlinear polarization of an optical system pumped at the anapole mode can be potentially boosted, due to both the strong dip in the scattering spectrum and the near-field enhancement, which are characteristic of this mode. Plasmonic nanostructures, on the other hand, remain the most promising solution to achieve strong local field confinement, especially in the NIR, where metals such as gold display relatively low losses. Results: We present a nonlinear hybrid antenna based on an AlGaAs nanopillar surrounded by a gold ring, which merges in a single platform the strong field confinement typically produced by plasmonic antennas with the high nonlinearity and low loss characteristics of dielectric nanoantennas. This platform allows enhancing the coupling of light to the nanopillar at coincidence with the anapole mode, hence boosting both second- and third-harmonic generation conversion efficiencies. More than one order of magnitude enhancement factors are measured for both processes with respect to the isolated structure. Conclusion: The present results reveal the possibility to achieve tuneable metamixers and higher resolution in nonlinear sensing and spectroscopy, by means of improved both pump coupling and emission efficiency due to the excitation of the anapole mode enhanced by the plasmonic nanoantenna.
Positive Psychology and Physical Health

Positive psychology is the scientific study of a healthy and flourishing life. The goal of positive psychology is to complement and extend the traditional problem-focused psychology that has proliferated in recent decades. Positive psychology is concerned with positive psychological states (eg, happiness), positive psychological traits (eg, talents, interests, strengths of character), positive relationships, and positive institutions. We describe evidences of how topics of positive psychology apply to physical health. Research has shown that psychological health assets (eg, positive emotions, life satisfaction, optimism, life purpose, social support) are prospectively associated with good health measured in a variety of ways. Not yet known is whether positive psychology interventions improve physical health. Future directions for the application of positive psychology to health are discussed. We conclude that the application of positive psychology to health is promising, although much work remains to be done.
The first Caipirasuchus (Mesoeucrocodylia, Notosuchia) from the Late Cretaceous of Minas Gerais, Brazil: new insights on sphagesaurid anatomy and taxonomy

Field work conducted by the staff of the Centro de Pesquisas Paleontológicas Llewellyn Ivor Price of the Universidade Federal do Triângulo Mineiro since 2009 at Campina Verde municipality (MG) have resulted in the discovery of a diverse vertebrate fauna from the Adamantina Formation (Bauru Basin). The baurusuchid Campinasuchus dinizi was described in 2011 from Fazenda Três Antas site and after that, preliminary descriptions of a partial crocodyliform egg, abelisaurid teeth, and fish remains have been done. Recently, the fossil sample has been considerably increased including the discovery of several, partially articulated fish remains referred to Lepisosteiformes and an almost complete and articulated skeleton referred to a new species of Caipirasuchus (Notosuchia, Sphagesauridae), which is the main subject of this contribution. At present, this genus was restricted to the Adamantina Formation cropping out in São Paulo state, with the species Caipirasuchus montealtensis, Caipirasuchus paulistanus, and Caipirasuchus stenognathus. The new material represents the holotype of a new species, Caipirasuchus mineirus n. sp. , diferenciated from the previously ones due to the following traits: last two maxillary teeth located posterior to anterior edge of infraorbital fenestra, elongated lateroventral maxillo-jugal suture—about ½ the anteroposterior maxillar length—and contact between posterior crest of quadrate and posterior end of squamosal forming an almost 90° flaring roof of the squamosal, among others. C. mineirus was found in the same outcrop than Campinasuchus but stratigraphically the former occurs in the lower portion of the section with no unambiguous data supporting the coexistance of both taxa.
Primary cervical disc arthroplasty versus cervical disc arthroplasty adjacent to previous fusion

Abstract The outcomes of cervical disc arthroplasty (CDA) following a previous fusion are ill -defined. The aim of this study was to share our experience and to assess mid-term outcomes in patients receiving CDA adjacent to a previous fusion compared with primary CDA. Patients with cervical radiculopathy and/or myelopathy or patients who had undergone a previous cervical fusion surgery and had developed adjacent segment disease (ASD) between January 2008 and April 2013 were enrolled. Clinical and radiographic outcomes were compared for patients undergoing CDA at a level adjacent to a previous fusion (previous group) and those undergoing primary CDA (primary group). Fifty-two patients in the primary group and 9 patients in the previous group had adequate follow-up data. The mean follow-up periods were 61.96 months and 61.78 months, respectively. The clinical outcomes all significantly improved after surgery, and no significant difference was found between groups. The disc height and range of motion of the operated level were preserved, and the values were similar between groups. Subsidence occurred in 2 (3.8%) patients in the primary group and 1 (11.11%) patient in the previous group. Heterotopic ossification (HO) was detected in 4 (44.44%) patients in the previous group and 18 (34.62%) patients in the primary group. None of the patients required reoperation. Patients treated with a Prestige-LP disc maintained improved clinical outcomes and segmental motion in both the primary and previous groups. Additionally, CDA-treated patients who had a previous fusion surgery could safely undergo the surgery with complication rates similar to that of the first CDA surgery after 48 months of follow-up. CDA adjacent to a previous fusion may be an alternative treatment strategy in the future.
Cardiac Spiral Wave Drifting Due to Spatial Temperature Gradients – a Numerical Study

Cardiac rotors are believed to be a major driver source of persistent atrial fibrillation (AF), and their spatiotemporal characterization is essential for successful ablation procedures. However, electrograms guided ablation have not been proven to have benefit over empirical ablation thus far, and there is a strong need of improving the localization of cardiac arrhythmogenic targets for ablation. A new approach for characterize rotors is proposed that is based on induced spatial temperature gradients (STGs), and investigated by theoretical study using numerical simulations. We hypothesize that such gradients will cause rotor drifting due to induced spatial heterogeneity in excitability, so that rotors could be driven towards the ablating probe. Numerical simulations were conducted in single cell and 2D atrial models using AF remodeled kinetics. STGs were applied either linearly on the entire tissue or as a small local perturbation, and the major ion channel rate constants were adjusted following Arrhenius equation. In the AF-remodeled single cell, recovery time increased exponentially with decreasing temperatures, despite the marginal effect of temperature on the action potential duration. In 2D models, spiral waves drifted with drifting velocity components affected by both temperature gradient direction and the spiral wave rotation direction. Overall, spiral waves drifted towards the colder tissue region associated with global minimum of excitability. A local perturbation with a temperature of T=28°C was found optimal for spiral wave attraction for the studied conditions. This work provides a preliminary proof-of-concept for a potential prospective technique for rotor attraction. We envision that the insights from this study will be utilize in the future in the design of a new methodology for AF characterization and termination during ablation procedures.
Towards certified virtual machine-based regular expression parsing

Regular expressions (REs) are pervasive in computing. We use REs in text editors, string search tools (like GNU-Grep) and lexical analysers generators. Most of these tools rely on converting regular expressions to its corresponding finite state machine or use REs derivatives for directly parse an input string. In this work, we investigate the suitability of another approach: instead of using derivatives or generate a finite state machine for a given RE, we developed a virtual machine (VM) for parsing regular languages, in such a way that a RE is merely a program executed by the VM over the input string. We developed a prototype implementation in Haskell, tested it using QuickCheck and provided proof sketches of its correctness with respect to RE standard inductive semantics.