Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-Term Pancreatic Functional Impairment after Surgery for Neuroendocrine Neoplasms

Radical surgery represents the only curative treatment for pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms (PanNEN). The aim of this study was to evaluate the postoperative onset of diabetes mellitus (DM) and/or pancreatic exocrine insufficiency (PEI) in surgically treated PanNEN. Consecutive PanNEN patients, without preoperative DM, who underwent partial pancreatic resection, were included. After a median follow-up of 72 months, overall 68/276 patients (24%) developed DM. Patients who developed DM were significantly older (p = 0.002) and they had a higher body mass index (BMI) (p < 0.0001) than those who did not; they were more frequently male (p = 0.017) and with nonfunctioning neoplasms (p = 0.019). BMI > 25 Kg/m2 was the only independent predictor of DM (p = 0.001). Overall, 118/276 patients (43%) developed a PEI, which was significantly more frequent after pancreaticoduodenectomy (p < 0.0001) and in patients with T3-T4 tumors (p = 0.001). Pancreaticoduodenectomy was the only independent predictor of PEI (p < 0.0001). Overall, 54 patients (20%) developed disease progression. Patients with and without DM had similar progression free survival (PFS), whereas patients without PEI had better five-year-PFS (p = 0.002), although this association was not confirmed in multivariate analysis. The risk of DM and PEI after surgery for PanNEN is relatively high but it does not affect PFS. BMI and pancreatic head resection are independent predictors of DM and PEI, respectively.
A Prospective Study Comparing Two Fascial Reconstruction Techniques to Stabilise the Cranial Cruciate Deficient Stifle in the Dog

Summary The standard intra-articular “underand-over” (U & O) cranial cruciate ligament substitute technique, using autogenous fascia lata, was compared with a combined intra- and extracapsular U & O fascial reconstruction procedure. Medium, large and giant dog breeds (body weights ≥ 15 kg), presented with unilateral rupture of the cranial cruciate ligament, were included in the study. Functional usage of the operated limb was evaluated according to a clinical grading system within the first six weeks and again at 12 and 26 weeks after the operation. Dogs treated with the standard intraarticular U & O procedure were partly weight-bearing on the operated limb within three to five weeks postoperatively. Return to full use of the limb with no or only mild, occasional lameness was recorded in 20 of 24 dogs (83.3%) after 26 weeks. Those treated with the combined intra- and extracapsular U & O procedure, returned to partial weight-bearing within four to seven weeks after the operation. These dogs exhibited slightly more cranial drawer motion (± 1.0 - 2.0 mm) at the six- and 12-week follow-up examinations, when compared to the first group, but stifle stability improved between 12 and 26 weeks. The results obtained from 45 of 55 dogs (81.9%) treated with the combined intra- and extracapsular U & O technique were comparable with the standard intra-articular U & O procedure with return to full use of the limb after 26 weeks. Radiological evidence of peri-articular osteophyte formation showed no remarkable difference between the two techniques after 26 weeks. Results obtained from the standard intra-articular U & O technique indicated that it was an effective method for use in large dogs with body weights greater than 30 kg. This is in agreement with findings in other studies. The combined intra- and extracapsular U &O fascial reconstruction was a reliable alternative for use in the medium to large dog breeds with body weights ranging between 15 and 26 kg. The standard intra-articular “under-and-over” (U & O) replacement technique was effective for use in dogs with body weights (BW) >30 kg. Dogs treated with the combined intra- and extracapsular U & O method had slightly more cranial drawer motion at the six-week and 12-week examinations, but stifle stability improved between 12 and 26 weeks, especially in medium-sized to larger dogs with BW ranging between 15 and 26 kg.
Efficient Characterization of Tetraploid Watermelon

Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum. &Nakai) is an economic crop, which is widely cultivated around the world. The ploidy study of watermelon has an important role in field breeding and production, therefore, timely and convenient ploidy detection is necessary to accelerate its application. Traditionally, the ploidy of watermelon was determined by a series of time-consuming, expensive, and less efficient methods. In this study, we developed a more efficient method to simplify and accelerate the polyploidy identification in watermelons. We first confirmed the ploidy of watermelon by traditional tetraploid morphological features and well-established flow cytometry (FCM). Then we developed a reliable real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) technique by quantifying the highly conserved 5S rDNA sequence and its copy numbers. This technique requires less sample collection and has comparable accuracy to FCM, it accelerates the analysis process and provides a new method for the identification of polyploidy of watermelon.
Examining the longitudinal nature of depressive symptoms in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC)

Depression during adolescence is associated with a number of negative outcomes in later life. Research has examined the longitudinal nature of adolescent depression in order to identify patterns of depressive mood, the early antecedents and later consequences. However, rich longitudinal data is needed to better address these questions. The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) is an intergenerational birth cohort with nine repeated assessments of depressive symptoms throughout late childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. Depressive symptoms are measured using the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (SMFQ). Many studies have used ALSPAC to examine the longitudinal nature of depressive symptoms in combination with the wealth of early life exposure and later outcome data. This data note provides a summary of the SMFQ data, where the data are stored in ALSPAC, the characteristics and distribution of the SMFQ, and highlights some considerations for researchers wanting to use the SMFQ data in ALSPAC.
Shaping EU Plastic Policies: The Role of Public Health vs. Environmental Arguments

Few other environmental problems have received as much public attention and criticism in recent years as plastic pollution. Accordingly, in recent years, a number of plastic policies have been adopted at the national and supranational level in the EU and worldwide. In the U.S., health risks were repeatedly raised in the decision-making process of these policies and scholars have pointed out the crucial role of these arguments for the adoption of plastic policies. Hence, this article uses a structuring qualitative content analysis to investigate the parliamentary debates of two recently adopted plastic policies in the EU—namely the EU Plastics Strategy and the Single-Use Plastics Directive—and to assess the relevance of public health and environmental arguments for the EU debate. The analysis reveals broad support for plastics regulation among Members of the European Parliament, who most often use environmental arguments to corroborate their support for the policies in question. In contrast, health concerns do not seem to be crucial for the adoption of plastic policies in the EU.
Determining nicotine-related behavior changes in juvenile female rats through long-term maternal nicotine exposure

Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) has been developed as a drug therapy for smoking cessation and has been considered a safe alternative to smoking during pregnancy. However, the effects of long-term nicotine exposure via NRT on the fetus are still being debated. Here, we determined the effects of long-term maternal nicotine exposure in gestation and lactation on nicotine-related behavior and drug vulnerability in dams and offspring rats. To expose long-term nicotine, on gestation day 14, pregnant rats were implanted with osmotic minipumps releasing nicotine tartrate (6 mg/kg/day, subcutaneously, equivalent to 2 mg nicotine-freebase) for 28 days. The concentration of cotinine in blood was 373.0 ± 109.0 ng/ml in dams and 12.50 ± 1.19 ng/ml in offspring rats. In dams, we found no significant differences in anxiety-like behaviors and various maternal behaviors such as touching, sniffing, pup licking, laying on pups, and retrieval between saline- and nicotine-exposed groups. Adolescent offspring female rats showed no significant differences in anxiety-like behavior and forced alcohol consumption between saline- and nicotine-exposed groups. Nicotine-exposed offspring rats showed more increased nicotine aversion than saline-exposed groups, but the effect was disturbed in the forced alcohol consumption condition on the first day of the nicotine consumption test. Taken together, these results suggest that, in the last gestation and lactation period corresponding to the second and third trimester of human pregnancy, long-term maternal nicotine exposure has a minor effect on dam and female offspring health and does not involve serious pathological changes in rat offspring, despite the presence of nicotine in their blood.
An isolated rat pancreas preparation for studying pancreatic spinal mechanosensitive and chemosensitive afferent activity

Sensory information from the viscera to the brain is conducted by vagal and spinal afferent neurons (1). The pancreatobiliary system is innervated by both vagal and splanchnic afferents however there are few reports describing their functional electrophysiological properties. Under pathological conditions such as pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer, these sensory inputs are believed to be essential to the perception of the pain associated with these conditions and additional symptoms e.g. nausea. The pancreatic mechanosensitive afferents have been poorly investigated. Some information has been generated using anesthetized animal studies (2, 3). Due to the limited access to the pancreas in such preparations, the extent and distribution of mechanosensitive nerve endings has not been fully described.
American College of Sports Medicine Roundtable Report on Physical Activity, Sedentary Behavior, and Cancer Prevention and Control

Supplemental digital content is available in the text. ABSTRACT Introduction The American College of Sports Medicine convened an International Multidisciplinary Roundtable on Exercise and Cancer in March 2018 to evaluate and translate the evidence linking physical activity and cancer prevention, treatment, and control. This article discusses findings from the Roundtable in relation to the biologic and epidemiologic evidence for the role of physical activity in cancer prevention and survival. Results The evidence supports that there are a number of biologically plausible mechanisms, whereby physical activity can influence cancer risk, and that physical activity is beneficial for the prevention of several types of cancer including breast, colon, endometrial, kidney, bladder, esophageal, and stomach. Minimizing time spent in sedentary behavior may also lower risk of endometrial, colon and lung cancers. Conversely, physical activity is associated with higher risk of melanoma, a serious form of skin cancer. Further, physical activity before and after a cancer diagnosis is also likely to be relevant for improved survival for those diagnosed with breast and colon cancer; with data suggesting that postdiagnosis physical activity provides greater mortality benefits than prediagnosis physical activity. Conclusions Collectively, there is consistent, compelling evidence that physical activity plays a role in preventing many types of cancer and for improving longevity among cancer survivors, although the evidence related to higher risk of melanoma demonstrates the importance of sun safe practices while being physically active. Together, these findings underscore the importance of physical activity in cancer prevention and control. Fitness and public health professionals and health care providers worldwide are encouraged to spread the message to the general population and cancer survivors to be physically active as their age, abilities, and cancer status will allow.
Stabilization of Deformable Nanovesicles Based on Insulin-Phospholipid Complex by Freeze-Drying

Deformable nanovesicles have been extensively investigated due to their excellent ability to penetrate biological barriers. However, suffering from serious physical and chemical instabilities, the wide use of deformable nanovesicles in medical applications is still limited. Moreover, far less work has been done to pursue the lyophilization of deformable nanovesicles. Here, we aimed to obtain stable deformable nanovesicles via freeze-drying technology and to uncover the underlying protection mechanisms. Firstly, the density of nanovesicles before freeze-drying, the effect of different kinds of cryoprotectants, and the types of different reconstituted solvents after lyophilization were investigated in detail to obtain stable deformable nanovesicles based on insulin-phospholipid complex (IPC-DNVs). To further investigate the underlying protection mechanisms, we performed a variety of analyses. We found that deformable nanovesicles at a low density containing 8% lactose and trehalose in a ratio of 1:4 (8%-L-T) have a spherical shape, smooth surface morphology in the lyophilized state, a whorl-like structure, high entrapment efficiency, and deformability after reconstitution. Importantly, the integrity of IPC, as well as the secondary structure of insulin, were well protected. Accelerated stability studies demonstrated that 8%-L-T remained highly stable during storage for 6 months at 25 °C. Based on in vivo results, lyophilized IPC-DNVs retained their bioactivity and had good efficacy. Given the convenience of preparation and long term stability, the use of combined cryoprotectants in a proper ratio to protect stable nanovesicles indicates strong potential for industrial production.
Synthetic CT generation from non-attenuation corrected PET images for whole-body PET imaging

Attenuation correction (AC) of PET/MRI faces challenges including inter-scan motion, image artifacts such as truncation and distortion, and erroneous transformation of structural voxel-intensities to PET mu-map values. We propose a deep-learning-based method to derive synthetic CT (sCT) images from non-attenuation corrected PET (NAC PET) images for AC on whole-body PET/MRI imaging. A 3D cycle-consistent generative adversarial networks (CycleGAN) framework was employed to synthesize CT images from NAC PET. The method learns a transformation that minimizes the difference between sCT, generated from NAC PET, and true CT. It also learns an inverse transformation such that cycle NAC PET image generated from the sCT is close to true NAC PET image. A self-attention strategy was also utilized to identify the most informative component and mitigate the disturbance of noise. We conducted a retrospective study on a total of 119 sets of whole-body PET/CT, with 80 sets for training and 39 sets for testing and evaluation. The whole-body sCT images generated with proposed method demonstrate great resemblance to true CT images, and show good contrast on soft tissue, lung and bony tissues. The mean absolute error (MAE) of sCT over true CT is less than 110 HU. Using sCT for whole-body PET AC, the mean error of PET quantification is less than 1% and normalized mean square error (NMSE) is less than 1.4%. Average normalized cross correlation on whole body is close to one, and PSNR is larger than 42 dB. We proposed a deep learning-based approach to generate sCT from whole-body NAC PET for PET AC. sCT generated with proposed method shows great similarity to true CT images both qualitatively and quantitatively, and demonstrates great potential for whole-body PET AC in the absence of structural information.
N-Butyrylated hyaluronic acid ameliorates gout and hyperuricemia in animal models

Abstract Context: Hyaluronic acid (HA) plays critical roles in the structural skeleton, joint lubrication, renal function and cell signaling. We previously showed that partially N-butyrylated, low molecular weight, hyaluronic acid (BHA) exhibited an anti-inflammatory effect in cultured human macrophage, where inflammation was induced either by a TL-4 agonist or the low molecular weight HA itself, in dose-dependent fashion. Objectives: To investigate the anti-inflammatory, antioxidative, and antihyperuricemic effects of BHA using animal models of acute gouty arthritis and hyperuricemia. Materials and methods: The anti-inflammatory effect of articular BHA (10 and 50 μg) injections was evaluated by measuring joint swelling and the serum levels of inflammatory cytokines in a model of acute gouty arthritis induced by intra-articular injection of monosodium urate crystals in Wistar rats (n = 10/group), in comparison to the control group with saline injection. Antioxidative and antihyperuricemic activities were investigated using intraperitoneal injections of oteracil potassium and yeast extract hyperuricemic Balb/C mice, which were treated with intraperitoneal injection of BHA at day 6–8 in the model. Results: In the gouty arthritis rat model, BHA at a higher dosage (50 μg) demonstrated a strong anti-inflammatory effect by reducing the degree of articular swelling and the serum levels of IL-1β, IL-8, IFN-γ, and MCP-1 by 5.56%, 6.55%, 15.58% and 33.18%. In the hyperuricemic mouse model, lower dosage BHA (10 μg) was sufficient to provide antioxidative activities by significantly decreasing the ROS levels in both serum and liver by 14.87% and 8.04%, while improving liver SOD by 12.77%. Intraperitoneal injection of BHA suppressed uric acid production through reducing liver XO activity by 19.78% and decreased the serum uric acid level in hyperuricemic mice by 30.41%. Conclusions: This study demonstrated for the first time that BHA exhibits anti-inflammatory, antioxidative and antihyperuricemic effects in vivo, suggesting a potential therapeutic application of BHA in gouty arthritis and hyperuricemia.
NLRP3 inflammasome suppression improves longevity and prevents cardiac aging in male mice

While NLRP3‐inflammasome has been implicated in cardiovascular diseases, its role in physiological cardiac aging is largely unknown. During aging, many alterations occur in the organism, which are associated with progressive impairment of metabolic pathways related to insulin resistance, autophagy dysfunction, and inflammation. Here, we investigated the molecular mechanisms through which NLRP3 inhibition may attenuate cardiac aging. Ablation of NLRP3‐inflammasome protected mice from age‐related increased insulin sensitivity, reduced IGF‐1 and leptin/adiponectin ratio levels, and reduced cardiac damage with protection of the prolongation of the age‐dependent PR interval, which is associated with atrial fibrillation by cardiovascular aging and reduced telomere shortening. Furthermore, old NLRP3 KO mice showed an inhibition of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway and autophagy improvement, compared with old wild mice and preserved Nampt‐mediated NAD+ levels with increased SIRT1 protein expression. These findings suggest that suppression of NLRP3 prevented many age‐associated changes in the heart, preserved cardiac function of aged mice and increased lifespan.
Revealing users’ experience and social interaction outcomes following a web-based smoking prevention intervention for adolescents: A qualitative study

Background Tobacco smoking remains a public health problem among adolescents in the United States. While Web-based interventions for smoking prevention have been successful at the individual level, there is still an urgent need to understand their engagement capabilities and their effects at the social level. In the current study, we aimed to (1) learn about adolescents’ subjective experience with a Web-based program called a smoking prevention interactive experience (ASPIRE), (2) obtain suggestions for improvement in ASPIRE content, (3) identify psychological outcomes of ASPIRE, and (4) explore outcomes of social interaction. Materials and methods After a randomized controlled trial with 110 adolescents, 20 adolescent users of ASPIRE, aged 11–18, were randomly selected to participate in one-on-one interviews at four after-school programs in Houston, Texas. Interviews involved questions concerning adolescents’ experience with the intervention. Qualitative data were coded and analyzed using a constant comparison approach for the generation of themes. Results Describing their experience with ASPIRE, participants expressed comfort in material that is tailored to their demographic and preferred interactive activities over entertaining videos. Presenting suggestions for improvement, participants mainly reported the need to include gaming features into ASPIRE. Presenting psychological outcomes, they expressed emotional engagement in the program, shifts in attitudes and beliefs, and unwillingness to smoke. Finally, as outcomes of social interaction, participants reported engagement with others in discussions about tobacco and their need to hold smokers accountable for their actions. Conclusions Adolescents’ reports moved from their individual experience with ASPIRE to their active interactions with family members and friends and their attempt to persuade others to quit smoking. Future Web-based programs for adolescents may be designed with tailoring and game play in mind, in order to provide mobilization skills and foster social interactions against smoking.
Pfcyp51 exclusively determines reduced sensitivity to 14α-demethylase inhibitor fungicides in the banana black Sigatoka pathogen Pseudocercospora fijiensis

The haploid fungus Pseudocercospora fijiensis causes black Sigatoka in banana and is chiefly controlled by extensive fungicide applications, threatening occupational health and the environment. The 14α-Demethylase Inhibitors (DMIs) are important disease control fungicides, but they lose sensitivity in a rather gradual fashion, suggesting an underlying polygenic genetic mechanism. In spite of this, evidence found thus far suggests that P. fijiensis cyp51 gene mutations are the main responsible factor for sensitivity loss in the field. To better understand the mechanisms involved in DMI resistance, in this study we constructed a genetic map using DArTseq markers on two F1 populations generated by crossing two different DMI resistant strains with a sensitive strain. Analysis of the inheritance of DMI resistance in the F1 populations revealed two major and discrete DMI-sensitivity groups. This is an indicative of a single major responsible gene. Using the DMI-sensitivity scorings of both F1 populations and the generation of genetic linkage maps, the sensitivity causal factor was located in a single genetic region. Full agreement was found for genetic markers in either population, underlining the robustness of the approach. The two maps indicated a similar genetic region where the Pfcyp51 gene is found. Sequence analyses of the Pfcyp51 gene of the F1 populations also revealed a matching bimodal distribution with the DMI resistant. Amino acid substitutions in P. fijiensis CYP51 enzyme of the resistant progeny were previously correlated with the loss of DMI sensitivity. In addition, the resistant progeny inherited a Pfcyp51 gene promoter insertion, composed of a repeat element with a palindromic core, also previously correlated with increased gene expression. This genetic approach confirms that Pfcyp51 is the single explanatory gene for reduced sensitivity to DMI fungicides in the analysed P. fijiensis strains. Our study is the first genetic analysis to map the underlying genetic factors for reduced DMI efficacy.