Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
QTL Mapping and Marker Identification for Sex-Determining: Indicating XY Sex Determination System in the Swimming Crab (Portunus trituberculatus)

Sex determination is an important area of research, which has always had an intriguing aspect in evolutionary and developmental biology. Quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping for sex will be helpful in clarifying the sex determination system. In this study, the sex QTL mapping of the swimming crab (Portunus trituberculatus) was performed based on a high-density linkage map, and a highly significant QTL specifically mapped on a single linkage group (LG) was firstly identified (LG24, LOD > 14). Twenty markers in the QTL region showed significant associations with sex by association analysis, of which heterogametic genotypes in males supported the XY sex determination mechanism. Two sex-specific markers at the family level were identified via segregation distortion analysis, which were known to be the most closely linked to the sex of P. trituberculatus. Based on sex marker sequences (Marker3840, Marker20320, and Marker10494), three potential sex-related genes were identified, and the quantitative real-time PCR results suggested that these genes were important in spermatogenesis or sex characteristics in males. Our results will contribute to the fine-mapping of sex-determining genes and clarify the sex determination mechanism of P. trituberculatus.
The Reduction of Diabetic Foot Amputations Starts with Preventing Foot Ulcers.

As many experts predicted, the worldwide prevalence of diabetes continues to increase. About 425 million people worldwide now have diabetes; half of these are undiagnosed. Complications of diabetes, especially foot ulcers and lower limb amputation, are of great concern. While this issue’s fascinating continuing education article reports on diabetic myonecrosis (a rare complication of diabetes), the prevention of diabetic foot amputations is a more common and pressing concern that requires global attention. The 5-year survival rate following amputation is lower than that of breast cancer in females or prostate cancer in males. The United Nations and others have taken note and are discussing diabetes and other noncommunicable diseases this month in New York City. Scientists from the University of Toronto sold the patent rights to insulin for Can $3 so it would be available to all persons with diabetes requiring insulin. Despite this gift to the world, the cost of insulin is unaffordable to people in Africa and other low-income regions. In 2016, two Cape Town Declarations of Action on the reduction of diabetic foot amputations and insulin access for all were signed by a group of nongovernmental organizations. These declarations were designed to galvanize people into action for improved diabetes foot care and insulin access. The vast majority of diabetic foot amputations are preventable. A patient-centered approach by a coordinated interprofessional team can be an effective management plan by implementing the 5 S’s: 1. Screening: Health providers and systems should use validated screening tools including the Simplified 60 Second Diabetic Foot Screening Tool. 2. Smoking cessation: Tobacco use is a known risk factor associated with diabetes-related lower limb amputations. Make appropriate interventions available to patients. 3. Shoes: Shoes, as well as socks and offloading devices, are an essential part of diabetic foot ulcer prevention and treatment. Provision at point of care and affordability of these devices are essential. 4. Systemic blood glucose and blood pressure control: Lowering hemoglobin A1c, controlling blood pressure, and diabetic foot screening are all potential solutions to the diabetes pandemic. Improving access to insulin and other essential medicines is key to avoiding diabetic foot amputations. 5. Skin temperature assessments: Infrared thermometry is a simple, inexpensive, and effective tool for clinicians to assess infection even in lowand middle-income populations. Research has validated that commercial, nonmedical devices are just as effective as medical-grade infrared thermometers. The editors ask Advances in Skin & Wound Care readers two things: What can you do in your local communities and practice to prevent diabetic foot amputations? And how can you move policy makers and politicians in your community toward evidence-based action to reduce diabetic foot amputation?
A parameterised model order reduction method for parametric systems based on Laguerre polynomials

ABSTRACT This paper presents a Laguerre polynomials-based parametrised model order reduction method for the parametric system in time domain. The method allows that the parametric dependence in system matrices is nonaffine. The method is presented via reducing an approximate polynomial parametric system based on Taylor expansion and Laguerre polynomials, resulting in a parametric reduced system that can accurately approximate the time response of the original parametric system over a wide range of parameter. The reduced parametric system obtained by proposed method can be implemented by two algorithms. Algorithm 1 is a direct way that is suitable for single-input multi-output parametric systems. Algorithm 2 is presented based on a connection to the Krylov subspace, which is efficient and suitable for multi-input multi-output parametric systems. The effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated with two benchmarks in practical applications.
Primary Care Provider Counseling Practices about Adverse Drug Reactions and Interactions in Croatia

Background: Prescribing medications is one of the most common medical decisions that is made by primary care providers (PCPs). In the Republic of Croatia, PCPs hold a key position in prescribing and evaluating the medications that are provided for patients. Accordingly, providing advice for patients regarding the potential adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and drug-drug interactions (DDIs) is frequently the responsibility of the PCPs. The aim of the current study was to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and counseling practices of PCPs regarding drug interactions and adverse effects. Methods: After enrolling 195 PCPs that were selected at random, a survey was conducted while using an anonymous questionnaire that was created based on previously published studies, adjusted in a way that includes the most commonly prescribed medications in Croatia. Results: Of the 10 questions on knowledge about DDIs and ADRs, the median number of correct responses by PCPs was 5 (interquartile range 4 to 7). More than half of respondents (56%) agreed with the claim that knowledge of drug side effects facilitated their work in family medicine. Almost all of the respondents (92.8%) explained side effects and drug interactions to special groups of patients (pregnant women, elderly patients etc.). Conclusion: The results show a need for additional education in the field of drug prescribing. However, PCPs were aware of the importance of counseling practices about adverse drug reactions and interactions and counseling practices among special patients populations are satisfactory.
Participatory design negotiations in project funding regimes

In this paper, we discuss two emerging controversies in the meeting between participatory design (PD) ideals and the funding regime in an EU-funded cross-sector partnership project with seven partners. We argue that this discussion is much needed within the PD community, as more and more research is funded through outlets that challenge current design practices in PD that emphasize bottom-up and open-ended processes. We argue for a continued need for reflexive PD practices that take implications of publicly funded cross-sector partnerships into account.
Computed Tomography Enterography: Quantitative Evaluation on Crohn's Disease Activity

Objective To explore the feasibility of computed tomography enterography (CTE) in the quantitative evaluation of the activity of Crohn's disease (CD). Methods There were 49 CD patients with whole clinical, enteroscopy, and CTE data to be analyzed retrospectively. The patients were graded as inactive (0–2), mild (3–6), and moderate-severe group (>6) based on simplified endoscopic activity score for Crohn's disease (SES-CD). The differences in bowel wall thickening, mural hyperenhancement in the portal vein period, and the ΔCT values were analyzed among groups using ANOVA (analysis of variance) and q test. Then, the parameters were correlated with SES-CD, C-reactive protein (CRP), and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR). Results In the 49 patients, 13 ones were inactive, 19 ones were mild, and 17 ones were moderate-severe; the thickness of bowel wall, mural hyperenhancement in the portal vein period, and ΔCT value among groups were all significantly different (P < 0.001 in all). Correlative analysis showed that compared with the SES-CD, the bowel wall thickening (r = 0.564, P < 0.001), mural hyperenhancement in the portal vein period (r = 0.585, P < 0.001), and ΔCT value (r = 0.533, P < 0.001) were moderately correlated. Conclusion The mural hyperenhancement in the portal vein period, bowel wall thickening, and ΔCT value can accurately and quantitatively assess the activity of CD lesions and are potential visual biomarkers of CD lesions.
NLRC3 negatively regulates CD4+ T cells and impacts protective immunity during Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection

NLRC3, a member of the NLR family, has been reported as a negative regulator of inflammatory signaling pathways in innate immune cells. However, the direct role of NLRC3 in modulation of CD4+ T-cell responses in infectious diseases has not been studied. In the present study, we showed that NLRC3 plays an intrinsic role by suppressing the CD4+ T cell phenotype in lung and spleen, including differentiation, activation, and proliferation. NLRC3 deficiency in CD4+ T cells enhanced the protective immune response against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. Finally, we demonstrated that NLRC3 deficiency promoted the activation, proliferation, and cytokine production of CD4+ T cells via negatively regulating the NF-κB and MEK-ERK signaling pathways. This study reveals a critical role of NLRC3 as a direct regulator of the adaptive immune response and its protective effects on immunity during M. tuberculosis infection. Our findings also suggested that NLRC3 serves as a potential target for therapeutic intervention against tuberculosis.
Link prediction potentials for biological networks

Improvement of biological networks reconstructed from high-throughput expression data is an important challenge in systems biology. Link prediction is a problem of interest in many application domains that can be used for this purpose. In this paper after a short review of several biological networks, we present the latest definition of the link prediction problem and review it from several viewpoints. With a comprehensive search in the literature using PubMed, Science Direct and Google Scholar databases, and carefully reviewing the related papers having the 'link prediction' plus at least one of the biological network terms in their title, abstract or keywords, we classify the results based on the graph type and major link prediction outlooks. Finally, we analyse the preformed researches to find new insights about potential uses in addition to understanding the current state, and propose several hints and directions for future works.
De eendagspartij: the one-day party

De Eendagspartij (The One-day Party) is an intervention that aims to give citizens, in light of the upcoming local elections, a platform to voice their own views as opposed to having to conform to one of the existing party programs. By stimulating the involvement of inhabitants in the shaping of their own environment the project questions the functioning of a purely representative democracy. Furthermore, the project discusses the issue of ownership in public space by letting the participants design and print their own posters and post them in the surrounding public space. It explores the use of vernacular (graphic) design as a way to connect more closely to the context and its actors.1
Towards providing optimal energy‐efficiency and throughput for IEEE 802.11 WLANs

IEEE 802.11 wireless network standard has become one of the most used wireless networking technologies for smart devices as it offers mobility support and low cost deployment. However, these devices deeply rely on the energy provided by their batteries, which results in limited running time. IEEE 802.11 network standard provides stations with carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance for the medium access. Yet it results in stations to consume an important amount of power. Therefore, minimizing WiFi‐based energy consumption in smart devices has been received substantial attention in both academia and industry. Accordingly, this paper proposes a novel beacon‐based energy‐efficient collision‐free medium access control protocol for any type of IEEE 802.11 stations, regardless of being stationary or mobile, or having different amount of traffic flow, transmission rates, or traffic types. The proposed scheme is valid for all types of low or wide bandwidth, single or multiuser multiple‐input multiple‐output WLAN channels, such as IEEE 802.11a\b\g\n\ac. In the proposed scheme, energy saving is achieved, enabling stations to transmit on the right time and maintaining stations in the doze state during a predetermined sleep_time interval after each successful frame transmission, by making use of modified control and management frames of the standard IEEE 802.11 protocol. The proposed scheme reduces the probability of collisions and may allow stations to enter the collision‐free state, regardless of the number of stations on the channel and their traffic types. Widespread simulations have been executed to validate the efficiency of the proposed method. The results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly increases overall throughput and reduces power consumption of stations over IEEE 802.11 WLANs.
Insights from the Third International Conference on Hyperacusis: Causes, Evaluation, Diagnosis, and Treatment

Background: Hyperacusis is intolerance of certain everyday sounds that causes significant distress and impairment in social, occupational, recreational, and other day-to-day activities. Objective: The aim of this report is to summarize the key findings and conclusions from the Third International Conference on Hyperacusis. Topics covered: The main topics discussed comprise (1) diagnosis of hyperacusis and audiological evaluations, (2) neurobiological aspect of hyperacusis, (3) misophonia, (4) hyperacusis in autism spectrum disorder, (5) noise sensitivity, (6) hyperacusis-related distress and comorbid psychiatric illness, and (7) audiologist-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy for hyperacusis. Conclusions: Implications for research and clinical practice are summarised.
High-frequency (50 Hz) electroacupuncture ameliorates cognitive impairment in rats with amyloid beta 1–42-induced Alzheimer's disease

Acupuncture has been shown to ameliorate cognitive impairment of Alzheimer's disease. Acupoints and stimulation frequency influence the therapeutic effect of electroacupuncture. Rat models of Alzheimer's disease were established by injecting amyloid beta 1–42 (Aβ1–42) into the bilateral lateral ventricles. Electroacupuncture at 2, 30, and 50 Hz was carried out at Baihui (GV20; 15° obliquely to a depth of 2 mm) and Shenshu (BL23; perpendicularly to 4–6 mm depth), once a day for 20 minutes (each), for 15 days, taking a break every 7 days. The Morris water maze test was conducted to assess the learning and memory. The expression levels of glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK-3β), pSer9-GSK-3β, pTyr216-GSK-3β, amyloid precursor protein and Aβ1–40 in the hippocampus were determined by western blot assay. Results demonstrated that electroacupuncture treatment at different frequencies markedly improved learning and memory ability, increased synaptic curvatures, decreased the width of synaptic clefts, thickened postsynaptic densities, and downregulated the expression of GSK-3β, amyloid precursor protein, and Aβ1–40. pSer9-GSK-3β expression markedly decreased, while pTyr216-GSK-3β expression increased. High-frequency (50 Hz) electroacupuncture was more effective than low (2 Hz) or medium-frequency (30 Hz) electroacupuncture. In conclusion, electroacupuncture treatment exerts a protective effect against Aβ1–42-induced learning and memory deficits and synapse-ultrastructure impairment via inhibition of GSK-3β activity. Moreover, high-frequency electroacupuncture was the most effective therapy.
AutoConfig: Automatic Configuration Tuning for Distributed Message Systems

Distributed message systems (DMSs) serve as the communication backbone for many real-time streaming data processing applications. To support the vast diversity of such applications, DMSs provide a large number of parameters to configure. However, It overwhelms for most users to configure these parameters well for better performance. Although many automatic configuration approaches have been proposed to address this issue, critical challenges still remain: 1) to train a better and robust performance prediction model using a limited number of samples, and 2) to search for a high-dimensional parameter space efficiently within a time constraint. In this paper, we propose AutoConfig – an automatic configuration system that can optimize producer-side throughput on DMSs. AutoConfig constructs a novel comparison-based model (CBM) that is more robust that the prediction-based model (PBM) used by previous learning-based approaches. Furthermore, AutoConfig uses a weighted Latin hypercube sampling (wLHS) approach to select a set of samples that can provide a better coverage over the high-dimensional parameter space. wLHS allows AutoConfig to search for more promising configurations using the trained CBM. We have implemented AutoConfig on the Kafka platform, and evaluated it using eight different testing scenarios deployed on a public cloud. Experimental results show that our CBM can obtain better results than that of PBM under the same random forests based model. Furthermore, AutoConfig outperforms default configurations by 215.40% on average, and five state-of-the-art configuration algorithms by 7.21%-64.56%.
Pilot Scale Cavitational Reactors and Other Enabling Technologies to Design the Industrial Recovery of Polyphenols from Agro-Food By-Products, a Technical and Economical Overview

We herein provide an overview of the most recent multidisciplinary process advances that have occurred in the food industry as a result of changes in consumer lifestyle and expectations. The demand for fresher and more natural foods is driving the development of new technologies that may efficiently operate at room temperature. Moreover, the huge amount of material discarded by the agro-food production chain lays down a significant challenge for emerging technologies that can provide new opportunities by recovering valuable by-products and creating new applications. Aiming to design industrial processes, there is a need for pilot scale plants such as the ‘green technologies development platform’, which was established by the authors. The platform is made up of a series of multifunctional laboratories that are equipped with non-conventional pilot reactors, developed in direct collaboration with partner companies, in order to bridge the enormous gap between academia and industry via the large-scale exploitation of relevant research achievements. Selected key, enabling technologies for process intensification make this scale-up feasible. We make use of two selected examples, the grape and olive production chains, to show how cavitational reactors, which are based on high-intensity ultrasound and rotational hydrodynamic units, can assist food processing and the sustainable recovery of waste, to produce valuable nutraceuticals as well as colouring and food–beverage additives.
Regeneration of plantlets through somatic embryogenesis from root derived calli of Hibiscus sabdariffa L. (Roselle) and assessment of genetic stability by flow cytometry and ISSR analysis

Induction of somatic embryogenesis and complete plantlet regeneration from callus culture of Hibiscus sabdariffa L. var. HS4288 has been made. Leaf and root explants were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) and Driver–Kuniyuki Walnut (DKW) basal media supplemented with different concentrations of synthetic auxins and cytokinins. Root explants on DKW medium supplemented with 2. 26μM 2, 4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2, 4-D) and 4. 65μM kinetin (KIN) induced highest percentage (70%) of embryogenic calli. Average number of globular embryos per root derived callus produced within 6 weeks of culture initiation on MS media with different plant growth regulators (PGRs) ranged from 2.27±0.12 to 8.80±0.17 and that of cotyledonary embryos ranged from 0.00 to 2.53±0.20. On DKW medium comparatively more globular embryos (2.70±0.15 to 14.53±0.23) and cotyledonary embryos (0.00 to 8.90±0.17) were produced than that of MS medium. Regeneration of complete plantlets was highest (76.67%) when embryogenic calli with mature somatic embryos were grown on DKW medium containing 2. 32μM KIN and 2. 22μM 6-Benzyladenine (BA). Plants were primarily hardened in humidity, temperature and light controlled chamber and finally in a greenhouse showed 70% survival ability. Different stages of somatic embryogenesis process in the root derived embryogenic calli were elaborated in detail by morphological, histological and SEM study. The data were statistically analyzed by Duncan Multiple range test (p ≤ 0.05) and Principal component analysis (PCA). Flow cytometry and Inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR) marker analysis confirmed that there was no genetic variation within the regenerated plants.
Community Dynamics in case of Critical Hydrogeological Phenomena: Some Simulated Scenarios

The problem of critical floods has raised a lot of interest in the last few years, due to the significant losses they can cause, both in economic terms and especially in terms of injuries and human lives. In this work we provide some useful insights about critical weather phenomena, focusing on the strict relationship between citizens and the authority. We realized a simulative agent-based platform in which the citizens (modeled through cognitive agents) need to identify -on the basis of their information sources and of the trustworthiness attributed to themthe risks to which they are exposed and act accordingly. The main results of this work are: 1) the identification of the most significant indexes to evaluate the citizens’ performance; 2) a detailed analysis of some possible strategies for the citizens and for the authority; 3) the identification of what we call ”dissonance between evaluation and action”, i.e. the fact that in a risky situation I could trust my sources and what they report, but still acting differently from what they suggest.
On the Front Lines: Hepatitis C Infection in Primary Care.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Editorial support was provided by Gregory Scott, PharmD, RPh. The authors were responsible for all content and editorial decisions. INTRODUCTION Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is the most common bloodborne infection in the United States, with an estimated incidence of 33,900 acute cases in 2015—nearly a 100% increase from 2011 and a 250% increase from 2010. The largest increase has been among persons 20 to 39 years of age, with three quarters of cases occurring in persons who use illicit injection drugs. Other groups at increasingly high risk of acute HCV infection are men who have sex with men and newborns of infected mothers, as well as reproductive-age and pregnant women (the latter for unclear reasons). CONTINUING MEDICAL EDUCATION