Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Residue of Paclobutrazol and Its Regulatory Effects on the Secondary Metabolites of Ophiopogon japonicas

Currently, paclobutrazol is excessively used in the planting process of Ophiopogon japonicus (O. japonicus) due to its important role in regulating the growth of tuber roots, ultimately increasing the yield and shortening the growth cycle of Ophiopogonis Radix. For insight into this process and the potential risks of paclobutrazol and its mediated consequences on the secondary metabolites in Ophiopogonis Radix, corresponding high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometric methods (HPLC-MS/MS) were developed in this study and then applied to Ophiopogonis Radix, soil, and water samples. The results demonstrated the detection of different levels of paclobutrazol residue were in Ophiopogonis Radix, soil, and water samples. In addition, the quantitative results of the secondary metabolites showed that paclobutrazol significantly decreased four steroidal saponins in Ophiopogonis Radix, especially ophiopogonin D, where the content was decreased from 824.87 to 172.50 mg/kg. Concurrently, ophiopogonanone C, a flavonoid in Ophiopogonis Radix, also significantly decreased from 2.66 to 1.33 mg/kg. In conclusion, the residual paclobutrazol and its negative regulation on the secondary metabolism of Ophiopogonis Radix brings potential hazards to the environment and human health. These results provide more comprehensive data that can be used for the reassessment of the use of paclobutrazol in O. japonicus and the formulation of related standards.
Lipid profile differences during menopause: a review with meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to determine lipid profile differences between premenopausal and postmenopausal women. METHODS The present review used a meta-analytic approach. Sixty-six studies were included, which provided a total sample of 114,655 women consisting of 68,394 that were premenopausal and 46,261 that were postmenopausal. RESULTS The main findings were that (1) lipoproteins were significantly higher in postmenopausal women compared to premenopausal women including triglycerides (0.27 mmol/L, 95% confidence interval, 0.22-0.31), total cholesterol (0.58, 0.50-0.65), low-density lipoprotein (0.45, 0.38-0.53), and total cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein levels (0.39, 0.16-0.62); (2) there was no difference in high-density lipoprotein levels between premenopausal and postmenopausal women (0.02, -0.00-0.04); and (3) the differences in lipid levels was partly attributable to the mean age difference between premenopausal and postmenopausal women. CONCLUSIONS These findings are important as they provide precise estimates of lipid differences in women around menopause. Furthermore the results suggest that the unfavorable lipid profile that develops in postmenopausal women puts them at higher risk of cardiovascular disease such as heart disease and stroke if appropriate lifestyle/pharmacological interventions are not implemented.
The Role of Medical Treatment in the Development of Atrial Fibrillation After Acute Myocardial Infarction

We read the article entitled “Early Versus Late New-Onset Atrial Fibrillation in Acute Myocardial Infarction: Differences in Clinical Characteristics and Predictors” by Shiyovich et al with interest. In this retrospective registry, analysis of 5946 patients provides valuable information. Patients were divided into 2 groups as early or late new-onset atrial fibrillation (AF). Important information regarding these groups (eg, demographic characteristics, comorbidities, bleeding and stroke risk scores, types of myocardial infarction [MI], echocardiography findings, and angiographic results) was presented. However, the lack of information about treatment that can play an important role in preventing the development of AF after acute MI is a considerable limitation of this study. In acute MI, the electrical properties of the atrial myocardium might be influenced by a variety of factors such as inflammation, ischemia, catecholamine drive, and left atrial overloading (an important factor in AF development). Recent studies have shown that b-blockers, angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, and statins may decrease the development of AF after MI. In particular, the time of onset of action of b-blockers and ACE inhibitors may affect both early and late AF rates. If there were data on medical treatment in this study, the results could be evaluated more accurately.
Thermotolerance of Broiler Chicks Ingesting Dietary Betaine and/or Creatine

Simple Summary Improving broiler performance is still an essential task in animal production, especially under certain environmental challenge conditions. Heat stress is among the first and crucial limiting factors of the development of poultry production in warm regions. Betaine (B) and creatine (C) are seemingly two promising additives that showed enhancement in water metabolism in several animal species. Despite the clear beneficial effect of B and/or C on water metabolism, limited information is available about their use and effect on performance and thermophysiological responses of broiler chicks exposed to heat stress challenge. In view of the above consideration and in order to improve the productivity of broiler chickens, the present study was designed to examine the potential alteration in water metabolism in broiler chicks treated with B and/or C under thermoregulation challenge, which may contribute to the ongoing efforts to improve broiler chicken production. Under the current study conditions, the results demonstrated that performance and carcass parameters measured were not affected by B and/or C supplementation by the end of the rearing period. In light of the improved thermoregulatory performance and water balance indicators, it seems that B and/or C have successfully improved water holding capacity and therefore helped in enhancing thermo-tolerance. Abstract The present study aimed to assess the effect of dietary betaine (B) and/or creatine (C) on performance and thermoregulatory responses of broiler chicks. Indian River broiler chicks, fitted with compact thermosensors, were reared to market age (five weeks). The chicks were randomly distributed into four treatment groups, in a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of treatments—basal control diet (Control group: CONT; B−/C−); 1 g betaine/kg feed (Betaine group: BETA; B+/C−), 1.2 g creatine monohydrate/kg feed (Creatine group: CRET; B−/C+), and combination (Betaine and Creatine group: COMB; B+/C+) of both supplements. At 31 days of age, 20 chicks from each group were exposed to acute heat stress (A-HS) for 3 h (34.45 ± 0.20 °C), and hemogramic profiles were screened before and after. Performance parameters (feed intake, body weight gain, and feed conversion ratio) were reported on a weekly basis, and carcass meat quality was evaluated at the end of experiment. Redness of breast was higher due to B and C treatments separately than the CONT group (B by C interaction; p < 0.05). Compared to the CONT, dietary supplements alleviated hyperthermia responses, with B alone being more efficient than C or COMB treatments. The mitigation of hyperthermia is likely mediated by enhancement of water balance indicators. Although not efficient in improving growth performance, dietary B and/or C are efficient in improving thermophysiological performance and survival of finishing broiler chicks under A-HS.
Continuous Distant Measurement of the User’s Heart Rate in Human-Computer Interaction Applications

In real world scenarios, the task of estimating heart rate (HR) using video plethysmography (VPG) methods is difficult because many factors could contaminate the pulse signal (i.e., a subjects’ movement, illumination changes). This article presents the evaluation of a VPG system designed for continuous monitoring of the user’s heart rate during typical human-computer interaction scenarios. The impact of human activities while working at the computer (i.e., reading and writing text, playing a game) on the accuracy of HR VPG measurements was examined. Three commonly used signal extraction methods were evaluated: green (G), green-red difference (GRD), blind source separation (ICA). A new method based on an excess green (ExG) image representation was proposed. Three algorithms for estimating pulse rate were used: power spectral density (PSD), autoregressive modeling (AR) and time domain analysis (TIME). In summary, depending on the scenario being studied, different combinations of signal extraction methods and the pulse estimation algorithm ensure optimal heart rate detection results. The best results were obtained for the ICA method: average RMSE = 6.1 bpm (beats per minute). The proposed ExG signal representation outperforms other methods except ICA (RMSE = 11.2 bpm compared to 14.4 bpm for G and 13.0 bmp for GRD). ExG also is the best method in terms of proposed success rate metric (sRate).
CT- and MRI-Based Assessment of Body Composition and Pancreatic Fibrosis Reveals High Incidence of Clinically Significant Metabolic Changes That Affect the Quality of Life and Treatment Outcomes of Patients with Chronic Pancreatitis and Pancreatic Cancer

Background and Objectives: Both chronic pancreatitis (CP) and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) may lead to cachexia, sarcopenia, and osteoporosis due to different mechanisms. Neither patient gender, age, nor body weight are good predictors of these metabolic changes having a significant negative impact on the quality of life (QOL) and treatment outcomes. The aim of this study was to evaluate radiological changes in body composition and to compare them with manifestations of exocrine and endocrine pancreatic insufficiency, body mass, and QOL among patients with CP and PDAC. Materials and Methods: Prospectively collected data of 100 patients with diagnosed CP or PDAC were used for analysis. All patients underwent dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-C30 (EORTC QLQ-C30) was used to assess QOL. Diabetes and changes in fecal elastase-1 were also assessed. Results: There was no significant difference in skeletal muscle mass (SMM) among patients with CP and PDAC (p = 0.85). Significantly more underweight patients had low SMM (p = 0.002). Patients with CP had more pronounced pancreatic fibrosis (PF) (p < 0.001). Data showed a significant relationship between a high degree of PF and occurrence of diabetes (p = 0.006) and low fecal elastase-1 levels (p = 0.013). A statistically significant lower QOL was determined in patients with PF ≥ 50% and in the CP group. Conclusions: Sarcopenia and osteoporosis/osteopenia are highly prevalent among patients with chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer, and CT- and MRI-based assessment of body composition and pancreatic fibrosis could be a potentially useful tool for routine detection of these significant metabolic changes.
Prevalence and determinants of gestational weight gain among pregnant women in Niger

Abstract Low gestational weight gain (GWG) and low mid‐upper arm circumference (MUAC) are associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. We aimed to assess the prevalence and determinants of low GWG and low MUAC among pregnant women in rural Zinder, Niger. A community‐based survey was conducted among 1,384 pregnant women in the catchment areas of 18 integrated health centers in the region of Zinder, Niger. Weight and MUAC were measured during an in‐home visit and again 1 month later, when haemoglobin concentration and micronutrient status were also assessed. The prevalence of low GWG was defined based on the 2009 United States Institute of Medicine (U.S. IOM) guidelines (<0.35 kg/week) and less than the third centile of the International Fetal and Newborn Growth Consortium for the 21st Century (INTERGROWTH‐21st) standards. Factors associated with GWG and MUAC were identified using logistic regression models adjusting for season, village, and gestational age. The median (interquartile range) age was 25.0 (20.7, 30.0) years, and 16.4% were ≤19 years. The prevalence of low GWG were 62.9% and 27.5% according to 2009 IOM and less than the third INTERGROWTH‐21st centile, respectively; 24.9% had low MUAC. Higher α‐1‐acid glycoprotein (OR = 1.7, 95% CI [1.1, 2.8]) and C‐reactive protein (OR = 1.2, 95% CI [1.02, 1.50]) increased the odds of low GWG. Adolescents (OR = 2.7, 95% CI [1.8, 4.0]), housewives (OR = 1.97, 95% CI [1.36, 2.86]), and those who reported recent food assistance (OR = 1.80, 95% CI [1.04, 3.11]) had higher odds of low MUAC. Prevalence of low GWG and low MUAC was high among pregnant women. Determinants of GWG and MUAC included socio‐economic, demographic, and biological factors, although only markers of inflammation were consistent predictors across different definitions of low GWG.
Increased white matter diffusivity associated with phantom limb pain

Background We utilized diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to evaluate the cerebral white matter changes that are associated with phantom limb pain in patients with unilateral arm amputation. It was anticipated that this would complement previous research in which we had shown that changes in cerebral blood volume were associated with the cerebral pain network. Methods Ten patients with phantom limb pain due to unilateral arm amputation and sixteen healthy age-matched controls were enrolled. The intensity of phantom limb pain was measured by the visual analogue scale (VAS) and depressive mood was assessed by the Hamilton depression rating scale. Diffusion tensor-derived parameters, including fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, axial diffusivity (AD), and radial diffusivity (RD), were computed from the DTI. Results Compared with controls, the cases had alterations in the cerebral white matter as a consequence of phantom limb pain, manifesting a higher AD of white matter in both hemispheres symmetrically after adjusting for individual depressive moods. In addition, there were associations between the RD of white matter and VAS scores primarily in the hemispheres related to the missing hand and in the corpus callosum. Conclusions The phantom limb pain after unilateral arm amputation induced plasticity in the white matter. We conclude that loss of white matter integrity, particularly in the hemisphere connected with the missing hand, is significantly correlated with phantom limb pain.
An Introduction to Probabilistic Spiking Neural Networks: Probabilistic Models, Learning Rules, and Applications

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are distributed trainable systems whose computing elements, or neurons, are characterized by internal analog dynamics and by digital and sparse synaptic communications. The sparsity of the synaptic spiking inputs and the corresponding event-driven nature of neural processing can be leveraged by energy-efficient hardware implementations, which can offer significant energy reductions as compared to conventional artificial neural networks (ANNs). The design of training algorithms for SNNs, however, lags behind hardware implementations: most existing training algorithms for SNNs have been designed either for biological plausibility or through conversion from pretrained ANNs via rate encoding.
Estimating Lower Limb Kinematics Using a Reduced Wearable Sensor Count

<italic>Goal:</italic> This paper presents an algorithm for accurately estimating pelvis, thigh, and shank kinematics during walking using only three wearable inertial sensors. <italic>Methods:</italic> The algorithm makes novel use of a constrained Kalman filter (CKF). The algorithm iterates through the prediction (kinematic equation), measurement (pelvis position pseudo-measurements, zero velocity update, flat-floor assumption, and covariance limiter), and constraint update (formulation of hinged knee joints and ball-and-socket hip joints). <italic>Results:</italic> Evaluation of the algorithm using an optical motion capture-based sensor-to-segment calibration on nine participants (7 men and 2 women, weight <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{63.0} \pm \text{6.8}$</tex-math></inline-formula> kg, height <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{1.70} \pm \text{0.06}$</tex-math></inline-formula> m, age <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{24.6} \pm \text{3.9}$</tex-math></inline-formula> years old), with no known gait or lower body biomechanical abnormalities, who walked within a <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{4} \times \text{4}$</tex-math></inline-formula> m<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^2$</tex-math></inline-formula> capture area shows that it can track motion relative to the mid-pelvis origin with mean position and orientation (no bias) root-mean-square error (RMSE) of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{5.21} \pm \text{1.3}$</tex-math></inline-formula> cm and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{16.1} \pm \text{3.2}^\circ$</tex-math></inline-formula>, respectively. The sagittal knee and hip joint angle RMSEs (no bias) were <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{10.0} \pm \text{2.9}^\circ$</tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{9.9} \pm \text{3.2}^\circ$</tex-math></inline-formula>, respectively, while the corresponding correlation coefficient (CC) values were <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{0.87} \pm \text{0.08}$</tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{0.74} \pm \text{0.12}$</tex-math></inline-formula>. <italic>Conclusion:</italic> The CKF-based algorithm was able to track the 3D pose of the pelvis, thigh, and shanks using only three inertial sensors worn on the pelvis and shanks. <italic>Significance:</italic> Due to the Kalman-filter-based algorithm's low computation cost and the relative convenience of using only three wearable sensors, gait parameters can be computed in real-time and remotely for long-term gait monitoring. Furthermore, the system can be used to inform real-time gait assistive devices.
Book QA: Stories of Challenges and Opportunities

We present a system for answering questions based on the full text of books (BookQA), which first selects book passages given a question at hand, and then uses a memory network to reason and predict an answer. To improve generalization, we pretrain our memory network using artificial questions generated from book sentences. We experiment with the recently published NarrativeQA corpus, on the subset of Who questions, which expect book characters as answers. We experimentally show that BERT-based retrieval and pretraining improve over baseline results significantly. At the same time, we confirm that NarrativeQA is a highly challenging data set, and that there is need for novel research in order to achieve high-precision BookQA results. We analyze some of the bottlenecks of the current approach, and we argue that more research is needed on text representation, retrieval of relevant passages, and reasoning, including commonsense knowledge.
Robust Bayesian Regression with Synthetic Posterior Distributions

Although linear regression models are fundamental tools in statistical science, the estimation results can be sensitive to outliers. While several robust methods have been proposed in frequentist frameworks, statistical inference is not necessarily straightforward. We here propose a Bayesian approach to robust inference on linear regression models using synthetic posterior distributions based on γ-divergence, which enables us to naturally assess the uncertainty of the estimation through the posterior distribution. We also consider the use of shrinkage priors for the regression coefficients to carry out robust Bayesian variable selection and estimation simultaneously. We develop an efficient posterior computation algorithm by adopting the Bayesian bootstrap within Gibbs sampling. The performance of the proposed method is illustrated through simulation studies and applications to famous datasets.
Cosmological baryon transfer in the simba simulations

We present a framework for characterizing the large-scale movement of baryons relative to dark matter in cosmological simulations, requiring only the initial conditions and final state of the simulation. This is performed using the spread metric that quantifies the distance in the final conditions between initially neighbouring particles, and by analysing the baryonic content of final haloes relative to that of the initial Lagrangian regions (LRs) defined by their dark matter component. Applying this framework to the simba cosmological simulations, we show that 40 per cent (10 per cent) of cosmological baryons have moved $\gt 1\, h^{-1}\, {\rm Mpc}{}$ ($3\, h^{-1}\, {\rm Mpc}{}$) by z = 0, primarily due to entrainment of gas by jets powered by an active galactic nucleus, with baryons moving up to $12\, h^{-1}\, {\rm Mpc}{}$ away in extreme cases. Baryons decouple from the dynamics of the dark matter component due to hydrodynamic forces, radiative cooling, and feedback processes. As a result, only 60 per cent of the gas content in a given halo at z = 0 originates from its LR, roughly independent of halo mass. A typical halo in the mass range Mvir = 1012–1013 M⊙ only retains 20 per cent of the gas originally contained in its LR. We show that up to 20 per cent of the gas content in a typical Milky Way-mass halo may originate in the region defined by the dark matter of another halo. This inter-Lagrangian baryon transfer may have important implications for the origin of gas and metals in the circumgalactic medium of galaxies, as well as for semi-analytic models of galaxy formation and ‘zoom-in’ simulations.
Deletion-contraction triangles for Hausel-Proudfoot varieties

To a graph, Hausel and Proudfoot associate two complex manifolds, B and D, which behave, respectively like moduli of local systems on a Riemann surface, and moduli of Higgs bundles. For instance, B is a moduli space of microlocal sheaves, which generalize local systems, and D carries the structure of a complex integrable system. We show the Euler characteristics of these varieties count spanning subtrees of the graph, and the point-count over a finite field for B is a generating polynomial for spanning subgraphs. This polynomial satisfies a deletion-contraction relation, which we lift to a deletion-contraction exact triangle for the cohomology of B. There is a corresponding triangle for D. Finally, we prove B and D are diffeomorphic, that the diffeomorphism carries the weight filtration on the cohomology of B to the perverse Leray filtration on the cohomology of D, and that all these structures are compatible with the deletion-contraction triangles.