Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identification of the prepared foods promising for dietary folate intake in Beijing, China

Abstract The aim of the present study was to analyze folate content and composition in foods consumed daily by Chinese people. The concentration of seven folate derivatives in sixty‐four selected foods was determined by a liquid‐chromatography tandem‐mass spectrometry method. The total folate levels ranged from 0.28 to 129 µg/100 g fresh weight, with an average of 21.18 μg/100 g. The highest folate content was found in boiled egg yolk and waxy corn (>120 µg/100 g), abundant folate levels in cooked vegetables such as hot pepper, spinach, soybean sprout, stem lettuce, coriander, and broccoli (44–72 µg/100 g), and lowest in Coca Cola (0.28 µg/100 g). 5‐Methyl‐tetrahydrofolate was the major folate derivative in various foods, accounting for 72% of the total folates on average, with the highest being 90% in egg yolk. These data will enable estimation of the daily folate intake and allow dietary recommendations to improve folate status in humans.
Systems of Risk Stratification of Malignancy by Ultrasound of Thyroid Nodules

Thyroid nodules (TN) are more frequently identified with the use of thyroid ultrasonography, and they have a low risk of malignancy. Ultrasonographic features have been established that increase the probability of being faced with thyroid carcinoma; however, individually, these characteristics do not perform adequately in the diagnosis of malignancy, limiting their usefulness when indicating cytological studies by means of fine-needle aspiration (FNC). This situation motivated the development of risk stratification systems for thyroid nodules, which unified their ultrasound characteristics, with the aim of establishing risk categories, standardizing the preparation of reports, and providing the clinician with useful tools to define the surveillance option or form invasive studies. The objective of this review is to compare the different systems developed by some scientific societies for the stratification of thyroid nodules, with respect to their predictive capacities for malignancy, their operational characteristics for diagnosis, and, to suggest recommendations for the implementation of these systems, placing emphasis on those with the best ability to reduce the performance of unnecessary invasive studies and to guide decision-making in the face of undetermined cytological results.
Extraction of polysaccharides from Codonopsis pilosula by fermentation with response surface methodology

Abstract Codonopsis pilosula is a kind of traditional Chinese medicine used to treat weak spleens, stomach problems, anemia, and fatigue. Polysaccharide is one of main components of Codonopsis pilosula. In this study, response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the extraction parameters of Codonopsis pilosula polysaccharides (CPP) by fermentation. The exaction temperature (°C), yeast liquid volume (2 mg/ml, ml), and time (h) were employed effects. Results indicated that the best extraction conditions were the following: extraction temperature 24.75°C, yeast liquid volume 2.96 ml (5.92 mg), and a fermentation time of 21.03 hr. After purification with DE52 and Sephadex G‐100, the molecular structure was determined by ultraviolet–visible (UV) spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) (1H and 13C). The monosaccharide composition of CPP1 was determined to be mannose (1.76%), glucose (97.38%), and arabinose (0.76%). CPP1 exhibited high antioxidant activities in scavenging ABTS radicals, ferreous ions, and superoxide ion radicals. Thus, CPP1 could be used as an antioxidant or functional food.
Prophylaxis of Pain and Fractures within Feet in the Course of Osteoporosis: The Issue of Diagnosing

Background Considering the enormous risk of fractures in the course of osteoporosis in the area of the feet, an important aspect of prophylaxis is periodic and, in special cases, ongoing monitoring of defects and deformations as well as pressure distribution. The purpose of this article is to indicate the role of the examination of posture and pressure distribution during standing, postural balance, and gait, in the prevention of fatigue fractures in the course of osteoporosis, based on the literature review and examples of patients. Methods The manuscript consists of two parts; it has a review-analytical character. The first part reviews the literature. The data were obtained using the MEDLINE (PubMed), as well as Cochrane and Embase databases. The database review was carried out focusing mainly on English-language publications, while taking into account the topicality of scientific and research works in the area of osteoporosis. The problem of multiaspects in the area of bone density was pointed out. Considering the above, in the second part, the authors analyzed 11 exemplary patients with osteoporosis, referring to the assessment of foot and lower limb defects using traditional posturological methods and including pedobarography to diagnostic procedures that are used in the assessment of pressure distribution, standing and moving, and an attempt to balance. Results Analysis of the research and scientific literature proved the lack of unambiguous diagnostic procedures of the locomotor system recommended for the prevention of fatigue fractures in the course of osteoporosis. The main diagnostic recommendations are imaging tests (most often X-ray), which are recommended in the case of specific clinical symptoms. The analysis of exemplary patients with osteoporosis showed numerous disorders in the distribution of pressure in the plantar part of the feet, which are related, among other things, with their individual defects and lower limbs. Conclusions Detailed posture diagnostics and gait estimation, along with the analysis of pressure distribution within the feet are a very important aspect of the prevention of structural degradation and fatigue fractures within the feet. An important postulate for further research and scientific work is the elaboration of the procedures that will serve the preventive diagnostics of the locomotor system, aimed at early detection of threats of fatigue fractures.
Stabilization of directly acidified protein drinks by single and mixed hydrocolloids—combining particle size, rheology, tribology, and sensory data

Abstract Background High methoxyl pectin and carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) can be used as a stabilizer for directly acidified protein drinks (DAPDs). Use of pectin or CMC together with other polysaccharides and their impacts on product's rheological properties and tribological behavior are still largely unknown. This project investigated the impact of pectin and CMC, alone or in combination with guar gum, locust bean gum (LBG), and gellan gum when preparing DAPDs. The particle size distributions, rheological properties, tribological properties, and sensory properties were determined. Results Pectin and CMC were dominating in the mixed system with other stabilizers. Increasing the concentration of hydrocolloids resulted in higher viscosity and better lubrication (lower friction coefficient). The sensory viscosity, smoothness, coating, and stickiness intensified as the concentration of hydrocolloids increased. The type and amount of hydrocolloids had a strong effect on the sensorial texture perception, but the flavor perception was only slightly affected. Conclusion Use of combined stabilizers may contribute to providing an effective viscosity enhancement without affecting the flavor in acidified milk beverages.
Face masks and COVID-19: don’t let perfect be the enemy of good

Whether to don face masks or facial coverings to prevent community spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has perhaps been one of the most argued and divisive issues, initially between East Asia and the West and later within western countries. Even the World Health Organization (WHO) had prevaricated on the issue during the initial months of the pandemic until it advised governments to ‘encourage the general public to wear masks in specific situations and settings as part of a comprehensive approach to suppress COVID19 transmission’ in guidance issued in June 2020 [1].
Simultaneous Presentation of Parvovirus B19 Infection and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus in a Patient: Description and Review of the Literature

We present the case of a 25-year-old woman without medical history, presenting with acute respiratory failure needing mechanical ventilation. Aetiologic screening showed PVB19 primary infection and concomitant SLE flare-up. We discuss the causative interactions between PVB19 and SLE in the pathogenesis of the disease. Difficulty diagnosing inaugural SLE flare-up concomitant with PVB19 infection can lead to delayed diagnosis and treatment. Inversely, overtreating a SLE-mimicking PVB19 infection with immunosuppressive agents can be highly detrimental. LEARNING POINTS The differential diagnosis between parvovirus B19 primary infection and systemic lupus erythematosus flare-up can be difficult. Parvovirus B19 primary infection can elicit authentic severe systemic lupus erythematosus flare-up that requires urgent immunosuppressive therapy. Parvovirus B19 primary infection can also mimic systemic lupus erythematosus.
Evaluation of Magnetic Resonance (MR) Findings in Patients with Refractory Epilepsy

Objectives: Epilepsy is characterized as a tendency towards recurrent seizures and it is a significant health problem in the world and one of the most common severe neurologic disorders among children. This study aims to evaluate the outcome of magnetic resonance imaging in determining the etiology in patients with refractory epilepsy and to reveal pathologies that may have the potential to be treated with methods, such as epileptic surgery. Methods: Data were obtained from the patient files of the patients diagnosed with epilepsy and monitored for at least two years between 01.01. 2009-12.31. 2012 in the Uludag Faculty of Medicine, the Division of the Pediatric Neurology. File records of the patients, age, sex and MRI findings of the patients were recorded. Results: One hundred twenty were girls (49%) and 125 were male (51%) of the cases. The age range ranged from 1 to 18 years and the median value was 8.3 (1-18) years. One hundred twenty of the 245 patients who met the diagnostic criteria for resistant epilepsy was found as well controlled. In patients with resistant epilepsy, the findings of these two groups of patients were compared concerning MR findings. Among all patients, 154 (62.8%) patients were found to have MR pathology. Of these patients, 83 (53.9%) were in the resistant group and 71 (46.1%) were in the well-controlled group. There was no significant difference in the presence of MR findings between the two groups (p=0.354). The highest incidence (24.8%) of the encephalomalacia in patients in the resistant group may explain the association of perinatal hypoxia with resistance development. Conclusion: If patients with epilepsy can be predicted early in the disease, which group of the patients will not respond well to medical treatment; unlike other patients, different treatment modalities, such as antiepileptic use, vagal nerve stimulation, ketogenic diet and epilepsy surgery, can be applied to this group of the patients. We think that clinicians can guide the planning of treatment of the MR findings.
Acute Myocardial Infarction Secondary to Paradoxical Embolism

Patent foramen ovale is a risk factor for systemic embolic events such as cryptogenic stroke. Far less commonly, patent foramen ovale is associated with non-cerebral systemic embolic events. Paradoxical coronary artery embolism is a rare and underdiagnosed cause of acute myocardial infarction. It should be considered in patients presenting with myocardial infarction and an otherwise low-risk profile for atherosclerotic coronary artery disease. We describe a case of paradoxical coronary artery embolism causing ST elevation myocardial infarction. Echocardiography demonstrated patent foramen ovale with a significant shunt. In addition to the treatment of the acute coronary event, patent foramen ovale closure was performed to prevent recurrent paradoxical embolic events. LEARNING POINTS Coronary artery embolism is an established cause of acute coronary syndrome, but paradoxical coronary artery embolism causing myocardial infarction is rare and requires a high degree of clinical suspicion for diagnosis. Recognition of this condition is important as it has an influence on management and prognosis. A search for venous thrombosis and underlying prothrombotic conditions should be undertaken. Percutaneous device closure of the patent foramen ovale should be considered to prevent future embolic events.
Learning Game-Theoretic Models of Multiagent Trajectories Using Implicit Layers

For prediction of interacting agents' trajectories, we propose an end-to-end trainable architecture that hybridizes neural nets with game-theoretic reasoning, has interpretable intermediate representations, and transfers to downstream decision making. It uses a net that reveals preferences from the agents' past joint trajectory, and a differentiable implicit layer that maps these preferences to local Nash equilibria, forming the modes of the predicted future trajectory. Additionally, it learns an equilibrium refinement concept. For tractability, we introduce a new class of continuous potential games and an equilibrium-separating partition of the action space. We provide theoretical results for explicit gradients and soundness. In experiments, we evaluate our approach on two real-world data sets, where we predict highway drivers' merging trajectories, and on a simple decision-making transfer task.
HIGhER: Improving instruction following with Hindsight Generation for Experience Replay

Language creates a compact representation of the world and allows the description of unlimited situations and objectives through compositionality. While these characterizations may foster instructing, conditioning or structuring interactive agent behavior, it remains an open-problem to correctly relate language understanding and reinforcement learning in even simple instruction following scenarios. This joint learning problem is alleviated through expert demonstrations, auxiliary losses, or neural inductive biases. In this paper, we propose an orthogonal approach called Hindsight Generation for Experience Replay (HIGhER) that extends the Hindsight Experience Replay approach to the language-conditioned policy setting. Whenever the agent does not fulfill its instruction, HIGhER learns to output a new directive that matches the agent trajectory, and it relabels the episode with a positive reward. To do so, HIGhER learns to map a state into an instruction by using past successful trajectories, which removes the need to have external expert interventions to relabel episodes as in vanilla HER. We show the efficiency of our approach in the BabyAI environment, and demonstrate how it complements other instruction following methods.
Precursorchemistry with Metalalkoxides and their Use for Nano-Scaled Materials

The synthesis of nano-scaled materials using several variations of the single source precursor concept in sol–gel and chemical vapour deposition techniques is demonstrated. Mono- and biphasic ceramics and cermets (metallic phases incorporated in a metal oxide phase) are addressed. The materials prepared are all nanocrystalline in a range from 5 to 50nm. The ceramics belong inter alia to the spinel and perowskite-type. In the biphasic ceramic systems, especially NdAlO3 in Al2O3 is highlighted. In the cermet family Ge, Sn and Pb in either their oxide matrices or in perowskite matrices (M´MO3, M´ = Ca, Sr, Ba; M = Ge, Sn, Pb) and Al and Ga in Al2O3 or Ga2O3 matrices are discussed. Two general concepts are presented in more detail: 1) the arrangement of mutually dependent ligands in the precursor molecule, to facilitate intra-molecular cascade or domino reactions, and 2) the role of metastable phases for physical patterning. The temperature and pressure dependent formation of aluminum/aluminum oxide composites and their structural consequences leading to zero-dimensional ball-shape spheres or to one-dimensional nano-wires is shown as well as the core shell structures of such composites.
Neurocognitive dynamics of near-threshold voice signal detection and affective voice evaluation

Detection of continuous voice-in-noise recruits a dynamic, auditory cortical-limbic network. Communication and voice signal detection in noisy environments are universal tasks for many species. The fundamental problem of detecting voice signals in noise (VIN) is underinvestigated especially in its temporal dynamic properties. We investigated VIN as a dynamic signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) problem to determine the neurocognitive dynamics of subthreshold evidence accrual and near-threshold voice signal detection. Experiment 1 showed that dynamic VIN, including a varying SNR and subthreshold sensory evidence accrual, is superior to similar conditions with nondynamic SNRs or with acoustically matched sounds. Furthermore, voice signals with affective meaning have a detection advantage during VIN. Experiment 2 demonstrated that VIN is driven by an effective neural integration in an auditory cortical-limbic network at and beyond the near-threshold detection point, which is preceded by activity in subcortical auditory nuclei. This demonstrates the superior recognition advantage of communication signals in dynamic noise contexts, especially when carrying socio-affective meaning.
A latent variable approach to measuring wartime sexual violence

Conflict-related sexual violence is an international security problem and is sometimes used as a weapon of war. It is also a complex and hard-to-observe phenomenon, constituting perhaps one of the most hidden forms of wartime violence. Latent variable models (LVM) offer a promising avenue to account for differences in observed measures. Three annual human rights sources report on the sexual violence practices of armed conflict actors around the world since 1989 and were coded into ordinal indicators of conflict-year prevalence. Because information diverges significantly across these measures, we currently have a poor scientific understanding with regard to trends and patterns of the problem. In this article, we use an LVM approach to leverage information across multiple indicators of wartime sexual violence to estimate its true extent, to express uncertainty in the form of a credible interval, and to account for temporal trends in the underlying data. We argue that a dynamic LVM parametrization constitutes the best fit in this context. It outperforms a static latent variable model, as well as analysis of observed indicators. Based on our findings, we argue that an LVM approach currently constitutes the best practice for this line of inquiry and conclude with suggestions for future research.
Velocity Estimation of Moving Targets in Multi-channel SAR images by Optimally-weighted Velocity Averaging of Multiple Pixels

ABSTRACT A scheme is proposed for the radial-velocity estimation of moving targets in multi-channel SAR systems. A moving target consists of multiple pixels in SAR images, generally. The radial velocity of each pixel can be estimated from its interferometric phase. The radial velocity of the moving target is then obtained by averaging the radial-velocity estimates of its multiple pixels. In the averaging, the weight of each radial-velocity estimate is designed to minimize the mean-square-error (MSE) between the estimate and the truth. This scheme has a higher estimation accuracy than those conventional schemes, which take the radial-velocity estimate of one pixel as the final radial-velocity estimate of the moving target. The experimental results of both simulated and real data show the effectiveness of this scheme.
Mobile Payment: The Next Frontier of Payment Systems? - an Empirical Study Based on Push-Pull-Mooring Framework

Push-Pull-Mooring framework is adopted to identify the antecedents affecting users’ switching intention from Internet payment to mobile payment. Using the data obtained from 264 valid respondents, the results show that both the mooring factors (perceived switching cost and personal innovativeness) and pull factors (relative advantages of substitute information technology and critical mass) are direct antecedents affecting customer switching behavior. In addition, mooring factors could moderate the relationship between push factors (dissatisfaction on system quality and dissatisfaction on service quality) as well as pull factors and customer switching intention. Managerial implications of findings were provided to payment service providers for maintaining incumbent customers and attracting potential customers.
Comparing Different Methods for Assigning Portuguese Proverbs to News Headlines

This paper reports on the automatic selection of short-texts for amplifying the range of a given input’s context, e.g. a news headline. Different methods are applied to select a corresponding expression from a list, which should be as semantically related to the input as possible. This study was developed for the Portuguese language, and considered expressions are proverbs, where ﬁgurative language is predominant. The set of explored methods includes some based on word overlap, others on static word embeddings, and also on recent contextual embeddings. To compare the explored methods in this subjective scenario, a survey was answered by humans, who rated the value of the selected expressions in terms of relatedness with regard to the input, and the humoristic value that may arise from this selection. The main conclusion was that simpler approaches, which end up selecting expressions that share words with the headline, are more easily related and considered to be funnier than other more elaborate approaches, which are more focused on the context.
Exploring the flexibility of a design tool through different artificial agents

Many machine learning approaches are focused on deﬁning artiﬁcial agents able to ﬁnd solutions to a certain problem given ﬁxed design tools or parameters to optimize. In order to do that, creators must have certain knowledge of the solu-tion space to deﬁne design parameters that ensure enough exploration allowing agent to ﬁnd its best conﬁguration. However, this approach may limit artiﬁcial agents since they are restricted by their initial conditions of a certain design problem. In addition, speciﬁc initial conditions also limits them to scale across multiple challenges. In this paper, we explore how the deﬁnition of more general design tools can allow artiﬁcial agents to better explore the solution space and generalize through multiple design problems. To do that, we compare design artifacts produced by an artiﬁcial agent that learns to construct 2D shapes with a ﬁxed number of pieces to another artiﬁcial agent that also learns to add or remove pieces from its design proposal. We demonstrate how by allowing more freedom in design, an artiﬁcial system is able to produce more novel artifacts with higher performances in multiple scenarios.
Being Creative: A Cross-Domain Mapping Network

The ability to extract features from objects or concepts and to connect them in a meaningful way is believed to be crucial to creativity. This paper proposes a novel computational model for creative behaviour, by learning extractions and connections separately. Such separation enables adaptive feature and object connections, which means one object can be connected to different other objects within different contexts. This paper applies recent cognitive theories of computational creativity to two specific tasks: an image-to-image mapping and musicto- video mapping. In both cases deep neural networks are used to automate these two creative cognition tasks.