Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators in patients with long QT syndrome: a multicentre study.

BACKGROUND Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) therapy has been proven effective in the prevention of sudden cardiac death, but data on outcomes of ICD therapy in the young and otherwise healthy patients with long QT syndrome (LQTS) are limited. AIM We sought to collect data on appropriate and inappropriate ICD discharges, risk factors, and ICD-related complications. METHODS All LQTS patients implanted with an ICD in 14 centres were investigated. Demographic, clinical, and ICD therapy data were collected. RESULTS The study included 67 patients (88% female). Median age at ICD implantation was 31 years (12-77 years). ICD indication was based on resuscitated cardiac arrest in 46 patients, syncope in 18 patients, and malignant family history in three patients. During a median follow-up of 48 months, 39 (58%) patients received one or more ICD therapies. Time to first appropriate discharge was up to 55 months. Inappropriate therapies were triggered by fast sinus rhythm, atrial fibrillation, and T-wave oversensing. No predictors of inappropriate shocks were identified. Risk factors for appropriate ICD therapy were: (1) recurrent syncope despite b-blocker treatment before ICD implantation, (2) pacemaker therapy before ICD implantation, (3) single-chamber ICD, and (4) noncompliance to b-blockers. In 38 (57%) patients, at least one complication occurred. CONCLUSIONS ICD therapy is effective in nearly half the patient population; however, the rates of early and late complica-tions are high. Although the number of unnecessary ICD shocks and reimplantation procedures may be lowered by modern programming and increased longevity of newer ICD generators, other adverse events are less likely to be reduced.
Colloidal Plasmonic Nanoparticles for Ultrafast Optical Switching and Laser Pulse Generation

Light-matter interactions are greatly enhanced and spatially well-confined in plasmonic nanostructures in the spectral resonance range. In colloidal plasmonic nanoparticle (NP), this effect is manifested by the strong absorption caused by the collective oscillation of conduction electrons in NPs, known as the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). The strong spectral resonance due to LSPR also contributes to the large enhancement in optical nonlinearity, such as nonlinear absorption and optical Kerr effect, and the ultrafast transient photo-bleaching in those materials making them ideal platforms for exploring optical switching behavior that is needed in all optical devices. Here, we review the recent advances in the use of colloidal processed noble metal, metalloid, chalcogenide and oxide plasmonic NPs for ultrafast optical switches to drive pulse laser generation in both solid state and fiber lasers. The broadband and ultrafast response of these plasmonic NPs offers a significant advantage in devices performance and allows the pulse generation from near infrared (NIR) to middle infrared (MIR) spectral range with pulse duration down to 100-femtosecond level. Compared with commercial products and other optical switches based on 2D materials, these plasmonic NPs are expected to provide a competitive and cost-efficient material solution to compact ultrafast pulse lasers and relevant devices.
Acute Stroke Care in Dementia: A Cohort Study from the Swedish Dementia and Stroke Registries

Background: Previous studies have shown that patients with dementia receive less testing and treatment for stroke. Objectives: Our aim was to investigate hospital management of acute ischemic stroke in patients with and without dementia. Methods: Retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data 2010–2014 from the Swedish national dementia registry (SveDem) and the Swedish national stroke registry (Riksstroke). Patients with dementia who suffered an acute ischemic stroke (AIS) (n = 1,356) were compared with matched non-dementia AIS patients (n = 6,755). Outcomes included length of stay in a stroke unit, total length of hospitalization, and utilization of diagnostic tests and assessments. Results: The median age at stroke onset was 83 years. While patients with dementia were equally likely to be directly admitted to a stroke unit as their non-dementia counterparts, their stroke unit and total hospitalization length were shorter (10.5 versus 11.2 days and 11.6 versus 13.5, respectively, p < 0.001). Dementia patients were less likely to receive carotid ultrasound (OR 0.36, 95% CI [0.30–0.42]) or undergo assessments by the interdisciplinary team members (physiotherapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists; p < 0.05 for all adjusted models). However, a similar proportion of patients received CT imaging (97.4% versus 98.6%, p = 0.001) and a swallowing assessment (90.7% versus 91.8%, p = 0.218). Conclusions: Patients with dementia who suffer an ischemic stroke have equal access to direct stroke unit care compared to non-dementia patients; however, on average, their stay in a stroke unit and total hospitalization are shorter. Dementia patients are also less likely to receive specific diagnostic tests and assessments by the interdisciplinary stroke team.
Immune-related adverse events and atypical radiological response with checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy in an elderly patient with high PD-L1 expressing lung adenocarcinoma

Advances in immunotherapy have changed the therapeutic landscape of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), extending overall survival over standard chemotherapy. However, by removing the protection against autoimmunity, immunotherapy can increase immune-related adverse events (irAEs). In addition, new patterns of radiological response have been observed in patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). We report the case of a 77 year-old patient with advanced lung adenocarcinoma, who presented three consecutive different irAEs (nephritis, hepatitis, and pneumonitis) and an atypical radiological response (partial response, dissociated response, and “disease flare”) in relation to treatment with the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab. The role of ICIs in elderly patients, the incidence of consecutive irAEs, and the new patterns of radiological response, are also reviewed.
Erianin against Staphylococcus aureus Infection via Inhibiting Sortase A

With continuous emergence and widespread of multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections, common antibiotics have become ineffective in treating these infections in the clinical setting. Anti-virulence strategies could be novel, effective therapeutic strategies against drug-resistant bacterial infections. Sortase A (srtA), a transpeptidase in gram-positive bacteria, can anchor surface proteins that play a vital role in pathogenesis of these bacteria. SrtA is known as a potential antivirulent drug target to treat bacterial infections. In this study, we found that erianin, a natural bibenzyl compound, could inhibit the activity of srtA in vitro (half maximal inhibitory concentration—IC50 = 20.91 ± 2.31 μg/mL, 65.7 ± 7.2 μM) at subminimum inhibitory concentrations (minimum inhibitory concentrations—MIC = 512 μg/mL against S. aureus). The molecular mechanism underlying the inhibition of srtA by erianin was identified using molecular dynamics simulation: erianin binds to srtA residues Ile182, Val193, Trp194, Arg197, and Ile199, forming a stable bond via hydrophobic interactions. In addition, the activities of S. aureus binding to fibronectin and biofilm formation were inhibited by erianin, when co-culture with S. aureus. In vivo, erianin could improve the survival in mice that infected with S. aureus by tail vein injection. Experimental results showed that erianin is a potential novel therapeutic compound against S. aureus infections via affecting srtA.
Isoflavones from Camphorosma lessingii Inhibit the Organic Anion Transporters OAT1 and OAT3

Abstract Phytochemical investigation of Camphorosma lessingii has resulted in the isolation of four previously unreported isoflavones (1–4) and eight known compounds (5–12). Nine of these compounds (1–6, 8–10) are reported for the first time from members of the family Amaranthaceae. The structures of all isolated compounds were determined by spectroscopic methods, primarily one-dimensional and two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry. The absolute configuration of 6 was confirmed by circular dichroism. Inhibition of the organic anion transporters, OAT1 and OAT3, by the isolated compounds was evaluated. Among them, 7, 2′-dihydroxy- 6,8-dimethoxyisoflavone (1), 2′-hydroxy-6,7,8-trimethoxyisoflavone (2), 6,2′-dihydroxy-7,8-dimethoxyisoflavone (3), and 7-methoxyflavone (5) showed a significant inhibitory effect on 6-carboxyfluorescein uptake mediated by OAT1 and OAT3.
Integration of Production and Education: Research and Practice on the Training Mode of Applied Undergraduate Professional Talents

In order to improve the quality of talents training, we should explore a cooperative education model for the training of applied undergraduate talents and the cooperative education model of production, school and research, and rationally utilize two kinds of educational resources inside and outside school. This paper expounds the connotation and significance of the depth of integration of production and education, plan, curriculum, teaching methods, teaching staff, apprenticeship etc. to optimize the curriculum system from personnel training; from the class, education, construction of campus practice collaborative engineering base, to carry out joint academic competitions, graduation design, teaching etc. the establishment of school enterprise cooperation.
Learning and Evaluating Sparse Interpretable Sentence Embeddings

Previous research on word embeddings has shown that sparse representations, which can be either learned on top of existing dense embeddings or obtained through model constraints during training time, have the benefit of increased interpretability properties: to some degree, each dimension can be understood by a human and associated with a recognizable feature in the data. In this paper, we transfer this idea to sentence embeddings and explore several approaches to obtain a sparse representation. We further introduce a novel, quantitative and automated evaluation metric for sentence embedding interpretability, based on topic coherence methods. We observe an increase in interpretability compared to dense models, on a dataset of movie dialogs and on the scene descriptions from the MS COCO dataset.
Comparative Analysis of Mechanical Properties and Metal-Ceramic Bond Strength of Co-Cr Dental Alloy Fabricated by Different Manufacturing Processes

Cobalt-chromium (Co-Cr) alloy is a widely used base material for dental fixed prostheses. These restorations can be produced through casting technique, subtractive or additive manufacturing technologies. However, limited information is available regarding the influence of manufacturing techniques on the properties of Co-Cr alloy since most studies used different chemical compositions of Co-Cr alloy for different manufacturing methods. This study compares the mechanical properties, metal-ceramic bond strength, and microstructures of specimens produced by casting, milling, and selective laser melting (SLM) from one single Co-Cr alloy composition. The mechanical properties of the alloy were investigated by tensile and Vickers hardness tests, and metal-ceramic bond strength was determined by three-point bending. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with backscattered electron (BSE) images and optical microphotographs were used to analyze the surface microstructures. Compared with the casting and milling techniques, SLM Co-Cr alloy specimens indicated enhanced mechanical properties and comparable metal-ceramic bond strength. Besides, the microstructures of the SLM specimens showed finer grains with more second phase particles than the casting and milling specimens. The results of our study indicate that SLM might be superior to traditional techniques for the manufacturing of fixed dental restorations.
Distinguishing the meaning making processes of survivors of suicide loss: An expansion of the meaning of loss codebook

Abstract Suicide loss represents particularly a difficult form of bereavement due to the challenges that volitional death poses to survivors. Understanding these challenges requires recognition of the idiosyncratic processes of meaning reconstruction for this specific group of grievers. The current study investigates such processes in survivors of suicide loss (SOSL) by utilizing the Meaning of Loss Codebook (MLC) to analyze the narratives of eight SOSL. The findings contribute to a broader understanding of meaning making following suicide, strengthen the validity of the MLC by demonstrating its appropriateness for SOSL, and illuminate unique challenges faced by SOSL, resulting in the proposal of supplemental MLC codes. Research and clinical implications are discussed.
An overview of deep learning techniques

Abstract Deep learning is the paradigm that profoundly changed the artificial intelligence landscape within only a few years. Although accompanied by a variety of algorithmic achievements, this technology is disruptive mainly from the application perspective: It considerably pushes the border of tasks that can be automated, changes the way products are developed, and is available to virtually everyone. Subject of deep learning are artificial neural networks with a large number of layers. Compared to earlier approaches with ideally a single layer, this allows using massive computational resources to train black-box models directly on raw data with a minimum of engineering work. Most successful applications are found in visual image understanding, but also in audio and text modeling.
Knowledge Sharing of Virtual Teams: The Mediating Effect of Trust on Relationship Communication

This study examines the relationship between relationship communication and knowledge sharing by exploring the mediating effect of interpersonal trust in a virtual team environment. A multiple-mediation model was developed to examine this relationship, where cognitive trust and affective trust are defined as mediation variables between relationship communication and knowledge sharing. The main results of this study demonstrated significant positive correlations between relationship communication, trust, and knowledge sharing. Furthermore, this study identified interpersonal trust as playing an important role in mediating the relationship between task communication and knowledge sharing. However, only the rational aspect of trust has an impact, unlike that of the emotional aspect. Thus, only cognitive trust was found to be a mediator for knowledge sharing. This research model can help virtual teams resolve some of the emerging organizational challenges by increasing knowledge sharing.
I‐Tiao‐Gung extract through its active component daidzin improves cyclophosphamide‐induced bladder dysfunction in rat model

We explored the therapeutic potential of intragastric administration traditional Chinese medicine Glycine tomentella Hayata (I‐Tiao‐Gung, ITG) extract and its active component Daidzin on cyclophosphamide (CYP)‐induced cystitis and bladder hyperactivity in rats.
Autonomous Deep Learning: Incremental Learning of Denoising Autoencoder for Evolving Data Streams

The generative learning phase of Autoencoder (AE) and its successor Denosing Autoencoder (DAE) enhances the flexibility of data stream method in exploiting unlabelled samples. Nonetheless, the feasibility of DAE for data stream analytic deserves in-depth study because it characterizes a fixed network capacity which cannot adapt to rapidly changing environments. An automated construction of a denoising autoeconder, namely deep evolving denoising autoencoder (DEVDAN), is proposed in this paper. DEVDAN features an open structure both in the generative phase and in the discriminative phase where input features can be automatically added and discarded on the fly. A network significance (NS) method is formulated in this paper and is derived from the bias-variance concept. This method is capable of estimating the statistical contribution of the network structure and its hidden units which precursors an ideal state to add or prune input features. Furthermore, DEVDAN is free of the problem- specific threshold and works fully in the single-pass learning fashion. The efficacy of DEVDAN is numerically validated using nine non-stationary data stream problems simulated under the prequential test-then-train protocol where DEVDAN is capable of delivering an improvement of classification accuracy to recently published online learning works while having flexibility in the automatic extraction of robust input features and in adapting to rapidly changing environments.
Comparison of 18F-NaF PET/CT and 18F-FDG PET/CT for Detection of Skull-Base Invasion and Osseous Metastases in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Our study aimed at comparing the diagnostic value of 18F-NaF positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET/CT) and 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET/CT for detection of skull-base invasion and osseous metastases in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Our study retrospectively analyzed 45 patients with pathologically proven NPC. They all underwent both 18F-NaF PET/CT and 18F-FDG PET/CT within a 7-day interval. Bone metastases were confirmed by follow-up using PET/CT, enhance-contrast computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance image (MRI). These two examinations were compared using per-patient-based analysis and per-lesion-based analysis. 18F-NaF PET/CT detected 27 patients with skull-base invasion, whereas 18F-FDG PET/CT detected 17 patients. 18F-NaF PET/CT and 18F-FDG PET/CT differed significantly in diagnosing skull-base invasion (p=0.02) and sensitivity (p=0.008). The sensitivity, specificity, and agreement rate of 18F-NaF PET/CT for detecting bone metastatic lesions were 98.3%, 65.7%, and 92.9%, respectively; these values were 42.9%, 97.1%, and 51.9%, respectively, for 18F-FDG PET/CT. 18F-NaF PET/CT and 18F-FDG PET/CT differed significantly in the number of osseous metastases detected (t=2.45, p=0.18) sensitivity (p < 0.0001) and specificity (p=0.003). In patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma, 18F-NaF PET/CT assessed invasion of the skull base better and detected more osseous metastases than 18F-FDG PET/CT.
Mutations of mitochondrial DNA are not major contributors to aging of fruit flies

Significance Mutations of mtDNA accumulate in aging humans and other mammals to cause mitochondrial dysfunction in a subset of cells in various tissues. Furthermore, experimental induction of mtDNA mutations causes a premature aging syndrome in the mouse. To study if mitochondrial dysfunction is universally involved in shortening life span in metazoans, we generated a series of fruit fly lines with varying levels of mtDNA mutations. Unexpectedly, we report that fruit flies are remarkably tolerant to mtDNA mutations, as exemplified by their lack of effect on physiology and lifespan. Only an artificially induced, very drastic increase of the mtDNA mutation load will lead to reduced lifespan, showing that mtDNA mutations are unlikely to limit lifespan in natural fruit fly populations. Mammals develop age-associated clonal expansion of somatic mtDNA mutations resulting in severe respiratory chain deficiency in a subset of cells in a variety of tissues. Both mathematical modeling based on descriptive data from humans and experimental data from mtDNA mutator mice suggest that the somatic mutations are formed early in life and then undergo mitotic segregation during adult life to reach very high levels in certain cells. To address whether mtDNA mutations have a universal effect on aging metazoans, we investigated their role in physiology and aging of fruit flies. To this end, we utilized genetically engineered flies expressing mutant versions of the catalytic subunit of mitochondrial DNA polymerase (DmPOLγA) as a means to introduce mtDNA mutations. We report here that lifespan and health in fruit flies are remarkably tolerant to mtDNA mutations. Our results show that the short lifespan and wide genetic bottleneck of fruit flies are limiting the extent of clonal expansion of mtDNA mutations both in individuals and between generations. However, an increase of mtDNA mutations to very high levels caused sensitivity to mechanical and starvation stress, intestinal stem cell dysfunction, and reduced lifespan under standard conditions. In addition, the effects of dietary restriction, widely considered beneficial for organismal health, were attenuated in flies with very high levels of mtDNA mutations.
A Method for Sex Prediction from Transfer Stains

Violent criminal activities under most circumstances are accompanied by large spillage of blood. A bloodstain formed due to accumulation of liquid blood on an absorbent surface such as carpet, fabric, clothing, bed sheet, curtains etc. is commonly referred to as ‘Saturation Stain’. This paper proposed a computer based system that could effectively predict the gender of an individual using SVM basic kernel functions.
Cerebral Small Vessel Disease

Cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) is composed of several diseases affecting the small arteries, arterioles, venules, and capillaries of the brain, and refers to several pathological processes and etiologies. Neuroimaging features of CSVD include recent small subcortical infarcts, lacunes, white matter hyperintensities, perivascular spaces, microbleeds, and brain atrophy. The main clinical manifestations of CSVD include stroke, cognitive decline, dementia, psychiatric disorders, abnormal gait, and urinary incontinence. Currently, there are no specific preventive or therapeutic measures to improve this condition. In this review, we will discuss the pathophysiology, clinical aspects, neuroimaging, progress of research to treat and prevent CSVD and current treatment of this disease.
The Development of Flipped Classroom Lessons for EFL Speaking

The flipped classroom is an emerging pedagogical model characterized by moving explicit instructions to online lectures and using class time for practical activities in which students apply their learned knowledge into practice. This study adapted an undergraduate English-speaking course to flipped classroom format and examined the effectiveness of the flipped lessons. The theoretical basis and development process of the flipped lessons were presented, and the effectiveness of the lessons was examined through the comparison of the speaking tests scores between two groups, an experimental group taught with flipped classroom method and a control group taught with traditional method. Meanwhile, interviews were conducted to gather information about students' opinions towards the flipped lessons. The data analyses indicated that the flipped lessons were more effective than the traditional lessons, since the speaking test scores of the experimental group significantly improved whereas the control group did not show any significant improvement; students generally held supportive opinions towards the flipped classroom lessons and their disagreements and suggestions were also summarized to improve the lessons for further studies.