Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Host Phylogeny Is a Major Determinant of Fagaceae-Associated Ectomycorrhizal Fungal Community Assembly at a Regional Scale

Environmental filtering (niche process) and dispersal limitation (neutral process) are two of the primary forces driving community assembly in ecosystems, but how these processes affect the Fagaceae-associated ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungal community at regional scales is so far poorly documented. We examined the EM fungal communities of 61 plant species in six genera belonging to the Fagaceae distributed across Chinese forest ecosystems (geographic distance up to ∼3,757 km) using Illumina Miseq sequencing of ITS2 sequences. The relative effects of environmental filtering (e.g., host plant phylogeny, soil and climate) and dispersal limitation (e.g., spatial distance) on the EM fungal community were distinguished using multiple models. In total, 2,706 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) of EM fungi, corresponding to 54 fungal lineages, were recovered at a 97% sequence similarity level. The EM fungal OTU richness was significantly affected by soil pH and nutrients and by host phylogeny. The EM fungal community composition was significantly influenced by combinations of host phylogeny, spatial distance, soil and climate. Furthermore, host phylogeny had the greatest effect on EM fungal community. The study suggests that the assembly of the EM fungal community is governed by both environmental filtering and dispersal limitation, with host effect being the most important determinant at the regional scale.
C-Reactive Protein Predicts Risk of Venous Thromboembolism in Pediatric Musculoskeletal Infection

Background: The rate of venous thromboembolism in children with musculoskeletal infections (MSKIs) is markedly elevated compared with hospitalized children in general. Predictive biomarkers to identify high-risk patients are needed to prevent the significant morbidity and rare mortality associated with thrombotic complications. We hypothesize that overactivation of the acute phase response is associated with the development of pathologic thrombi and we aim to determine whether elevations in C-reactive protein (CRP) are associated with increased rates of thrombosis in pediatric patients with MSKI. Methods: A retrospective cohort study measuring CRP in pediatric MSKI patients with or without thrombotic complications. Results: The magnitude and duration of elevation in CRP values correlated with the severity of infection and the development of pathologic thrombosis. In multivariable logistic regression, every 20 mg/L increase in peak CRP was associated with a 29% increased risk of thrombosis (P<0.001). Peak and total CRP were strong predictors of thrombosis with area under the receiver-operator curves of 0.90 and 0.92, respectively. Conclusions: Future prospective studies are warranted to further define the discriminatory power of CRP in predicting infection-provoked thrombosis. Pharmacologic prophylaxis and increased surveillance should be strongly considered in patients with MSKI, particularly those with disseminated disease and marked elevation of CRP. Level of Evidence: Level III.
10-year follow-up after standardised treatment for Achilles tendinopathy

Background Achilles tendinopathy is a common and often long-lasting injury. We present a 10-year follow-up on a pragmatic study on Achilles tendinopathy treated with controlled exercises supplemented with corticosteroid injections if necessary in order to continue training. Methods All patients who completed the original study (n=93) were invited for a 10-year follow-up. 83% participated. Patients were evaluated with ultrasound scanning (n=58) and with a questionnaire (n=77) using the same outcome measures as in the primary study. The 10-year overall outcome on a 4-point scale (excellent, good, fair, poor), other treatments and adverse event and present activity level were recorded. Results Excellent outcome was reported in 63% and good outcome in 27%. 76% reported an activity level at 75%–100% of preinjury level. The average Victorian Institute of Sports Assessment-Achilles score for all patients was 84 (SD 19). 16% had surgery. Three ruptures occurred 5–8 years after the primary study. The improvement from entry to 6 months in the primary study was maintained until 10-year follow-up. Insertional tendinopathy did not differ from mid-substance tendinopathy in any outcome measure (short term and long term). We encountered no prognostic markers on ultrasound for the long-term outcome; however, present heterogeneity and increased flow resemble present pain. Thickened tendons seem to maintain their thickness despite improvement of symptoms. Conclusion One to two corticosteroid injections are a safe and effective supplement to controlled exercises in the treatment of Achilles tendon pain with no signs of deterioration in the very long term. Mid-substance and insertional tendinopathies benefit equally from this treatment.
Efficient Encapsulation of Citral in Fast-Dissolving Polymer-Free Electrospun Nanofibers of Cyclodextrin Inclusion Complexes: High Thermal Stability, Longer Shelf-Life, and Enhanced Water Solubility of Citral

Here, we report a facile production of citral/cyclodextrin (CD) inclusion complex (IC) nanofibers (NFs) from three types of CDs (hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin (HPβCD), hydroxypropyl-gamma-cyclodextrin (HPγCD), and methylated-beta-cyclodextrin (MβCD)) by an electrospinning technique without the need of any polymeric carrier matrix. Self-standing nanofibrous webs of citral/CD-IC nanofibers (citral/CD-IC-NF) with uniform fiber morphology have been successfully electrospun from aqueous solutions of citral/CD-IC. Thanks to the inclusion complex formed with CDs, the efficient preservation of citral (up to ~80%) in citral/CD-IC-NFs was observed. In addition, the citral/CD-IC-NFs have shown ~50% preservation of citral for 15 days at room temperature even though citral has a highly volatile nature. The enhanced thermal stability of citral (~100–300°C) in citral/CD-IC-NFs compared to pure citral (~50–165°C) has been observed. Moreover, citral/CD-IC-NFs tended to disintegrate in water very quickly. To summarize, citral was efficiently encapsulated in citral/CD-IC-NFs, and these citral/CD-IC-NFs have been shown to be fast dissolving. In citral/CD-IC-NFs, citral/CD-ICs have enhanced water solubility of citral along with high-temperature stability and a longer shelf-life.
A Brief Survey on Autonomous Vehicle Possible Attacks, Exploits and Vulnerabilities

Advanced driver assistance systems are advancing at a rapid pace and all major companies started investing in developing the autonomous vehicles. But the security and reliability is still uncertain and debatable. Imagine that a vehicle is compromised by the attackers and then what they can do. An attacker can control brake, accelerate and even steering which can lead to catastrophic consequences. This paper gives a very short and brief overview of most of the possible attacks on autonomous vehicle software and hardware and their potential implications.
Confirmation of BRD4 haploinsufficiency role in Cornelia de Lange–like phenotype and delineation of a 19p13.12p13.11 gene contiguous syndrome

Cornelia de Lange syndrome (CdLS) is a genetically and clinical heterogeneous condition characterized by congenital malformation, intellectual disability, and peculiar dysmorphic features. Recently, BRD4 (19p13.12) was proposed as a new critical gene associated with a mild CdLS because of a similar presentation of the patients carrying point mutations and of its involvement in the NIPBL pathway. Patients harboring a 19p interstitial deletion shared some physical features with BRD4 mutation carriers, which results in a more complex phenotype because of the involvement of several neighboring genes. We report a new 19p deletion in a patient clinically diagnosed as CdLS, partially overlapping with previously published cases with the aim to support the role of BRD4 haploinsufficiency in a CdL‐like phenotype and to improve the delineation of 19p13.12p13. 11 deletion as a new nonrecurrent gene contiguous syndrome, spanning GIPC1, NOTCH3, BRD4, AKAP8, AKAP8L, CASP14, and EPS15L1 genes. Previously described cases are reviewed, attempting to delineate a genotype–phenotype correlation.
Fathers and Perceptions of God Play an Important Role in Psychological Adjustment Among Emerging Adults in Guatemala and the United States

Abstract Interpersonal acceptance-rejection theory posits that people require parental acceptance in childhood to develop healthy psychological adjustment. People’s beliefs about and their relationship with deity also influences their psychological adjustment. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how both perceived parental acceptance and a relationship with deity are related to psychological adjustment for emerging adults in Guatemala and the United States. Participants (N = 189) from Guatemala and the United States completed measures of perceived parental acceptance-rejection, images of God, attachment to God, and psychological adjustment. Results indicate that perceived paternal acceptance-rejection was only a significant predictor of psychological adjustment in U.S. participants, and not in Guatemalan participants. In both samples, images of God did not predict psychological adjustment. However, an anxious attachment with God predicted psychological maladjustment for both groups. The findings suggest that two important factors to be considered by researchers, educators, and mental health professionals are adults’ perceptions of their father’s level of acceptance-rejection and the amount of anxiety they experience in their relationship with God.
Extended Bit-Plane Compression for Convolutional Neural Network Accelerators

After the tremendous success of convolutional neural networks in image classification, object detection, speech recognition, etc., there is now rising demand for deployment of these compute-intensive ML models on tightly power constrained embedded and mobile systems at low cost as well as for pushing the throughput in data centers. This has triggered a wave of research towards specialized hardware accelerators. Their performance is often constrained by I/O bandwidth and the energy consumption is dominated by I/O transfers to off-chip memory. We introduce and evaluate a novel, hardware-friendly compression scheme for the feature maps present within convolutional neural networks. We show that an average compression ratio of 4.4× relative to uncompressed data and a gain of 60% over existing method can be achieved for ResNet-34 with a compression block requiring <300 bit of sequential cells and minimal combinational logic.
An in vitro cyclic fatigue resistance comparison of conventional and new generation nickel-titanium rotary files

Background New designs and processing of Niquel-Titanium (NiTi) have been introduced to increase resistance to cyclic fatigue. The purpose of this study was to compare the cyclic fatigue resistance of 3 NiTi rotary instruments, ProTaper Next (PTN; Dentsply Maillefer, Ballaigues, Switzerland), Profile Vortex Blue (PVB; Dentsply Tulsa Dental, Tulsa, OK, USA) and ProTaper Universal (PTU; Dentsply Maillefer, Ballaigues, Switzerland). Material and Methods A cyclic fatigue test was conducted operating instruments from ProTaper Next X2, Profile Vortex Blue 25.06 and ProTaper F2. A total of 234 instruments were rotated in 2 simulated stainless steel curved canals with different angles of curvature (45º and 60°) and 5-mm radius of curvature. The number of cycles to fracture (NCF) was calculated. Data were compared using 2-way analysis of variance and post-hoc Bonferroni test in software (SPSS 15.0, Chicago, IL). Statistical significance was set at P<0.05. Results Profile Vortex Blue showed higher resistance to cyclic fatigue in both curved canals than ProTaper Next and ProTaper Universal (P<0.001). ProTaper Universal obtained the lowest resistance to cyclic fatigue in both canals (P<0.001). Conclusions Profile Vortex Blue was the most resistant to cyclic fatigue failure, followed by ProTaper Next and ProTaper Universal. Anatomical complexity (angle of curvature) and manufacturing process of NiTi are important factors for resistance to cyclic fatigue. Key words:Cyclic fatigue, M-Wire, Protaper Next, ProTaper Universal, Profile Vortex Blue.
Saliency Prediction in the Deep Learning Era: An Empirical Investigation

Visual saliency models have enjoyed a big leap in performance in recent years, thanks to advances in deep learning and large scale annotated data. Despite enormous effort and huge breakthroughs, however, models still fall short in reaching human-level accuracy. In this work, I explore the landscape of the field emphasizing on new deep saliency models, benchmarks, and datasets. A large number of image and video saliency models are reviewed and compared over two image benchmarks and two large scale video datasets. Further, I identify factors that contribute to the gap between models and humans and discuss remaining issues that need to be addressed to build the next generation of more powerful saliency models. Some specific questions that are addressed include: in what ways current models fail, how to remedy them, what can be learned from cognitive studies of attention, how explicit saliency judgments relate to fixations, how to conduct fair model comparison, and what are the emerging applications of saliency models.
Identification of Serial DNA Methylation Changes in the Blood Samples of Patients with Lung Cancer

Background The development of lung cancer results from the interaction between genetic mutations and dynamic epigenetic alterations, although the exact mechanisms are not completely understood. Changes in DNA methylation may be a promising biomarker for early detection and prognosis of lung cancer. We evaluated the serial changes in genome-wide DNA methylation patterns in blood samples of lung cancer patients. Methods Blood samples were obtained for three consecutive years from three patients (2 years before, 1 year before, and after lung cancer detection) and from three control subjects (without lung cancer). We used the MethylationEPIC BeadChip method, which covers the 850,000 bp cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) site, to conduct an epigenome-wide analysis. Significant differentially methylated regions (DMRs) were identified using p-values <0.05 in a correlation test identifying serial methylation changes and serial increase or decrease in β value above 0.1 for three consecutive years. Results We found three significant CpG sites with differentially methylated β values and 7,105 CpG sites with significant correlation from control patients without lung cancer. However, there were no significant DMRs. In contrast, we found 11 significant CpG sites with differentially methylated β values and 10,562 CpG sites with significant correlation from patients with lung cancer. There were two significant DMRs: cg21126229 (RNF212) and cg27098574 (BCAR1). Conclusion This study revealed DNA methylation changes that might be implicated in lung cancer development. The DNA methylation changes may be the possible candidate target regions for the early detection and prevention of lung cancer.
Description of Ore Particles from X-Ray Microtomography (XMT) Images, Supported by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)-Based Image Analysis

Abstract In this paper, three-dimensional (3D) image data of ore particle systems is investigated. By combining X-ray microtomography with scanning electron microscope (SEM)-based image analysis, additional information about the mineralogical composition from certain planar sections can be gained. For the analysis of tomographic images of particle systems the extraction of single particles is essential. This is performed with a marker-based watershed algorithm and a post-processing step utilizing a neural network to reduce oversegmentation. The results are validated by comparing the 3D particle-wise segmentation empirically with 2D SEM images, which have been obtained with a different imaging process and segmentation algorithm. Finally, a stereological application is shown, in which planar SEM images are embedded into the tomographic 3D image. This allows the estimation of local X-ray attenuation coefficients, which are material-specific quantities, in the entire tomographic image.
Maternal Protein Restriction Alters the Renal Ptger1 DNA Methylation State in SHRSP Offspring

We previously reported that maternal protein restriction (LP) during pregnancy increases salt sensitivity in offspring using the Stroke-Prone Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat (SHRSP). In the present study, we focus on DNA methylation profiles of prostaglandin E receptor 1 gene (ptger1), which is known to be associated with hypertension. We evaluated the ptger1 DNA methylation status via bisulfite sequencing, and analyzed the expression of ptger1-related genes. The results of these analyses showed that, compared to controls, the LP-S offspring exhibited both marked ptger1 hypermethylation, and significantly increased ptger1 expression. Moreover, they also exhibited significantly decreased expression of the downstream gene epithelial Na+ channel alpha (enacα). Interestingly, LP offspring that were provided with a standard water drinking supply (W) also exhibited increased ptger1 methylation and expression. Together, these results suggest that maternal protein restriction during pregnancy modulates the renal ptger1 DNA methylation state in SHRSP offspring, and thereby likely mediates ptger1 and enacα gene expression to induce salt sensitivity.
Interfacial Solar Steam Generation Enables Fast‐Responsive, Energy‐Efficient, and Low‐Cost Off‐Grid Sterilization

Steam sterilization is widely used as one of the most reliable sterilization methods for public health. However, traditional steam sterilization mainly relies on electricity, a constrained resource for many developing countries and areas. The lack of available and affordable sterilization techniques in these areas is exposing human beings to a high risk of various epidemic diseases, and calls for the development of off‐grid sterilization solutions. For the first time, the kinetic advantages of interfacial solar steam generation is fundamentally revealed and it is demonstrated that interfacial solar steam generation can enable fast‐responsive (as short as 8.4 min for a full sterilization cycle) and energy‐efficient (100 J mL−1 for steam reaching 121 °C) sterilization, superior to those of the conventional sterilization techniques. The key solar absorber is made of low cost and widely available biochar. A proof‐of‐concept sterilization system with a 10.5 L solar autoclave is built with very low cost of whole life‐cycle and operates with minimum carbon footprint. Effective sterilization (≈99.999999% inactivation of pathogen), exceeding the requirements of Food and Drug Administration is demonstrated, making the sterilization strategy a promising and complementary personalized sterilization solution, particularly beneficial for off‐grid areas.
Answer Extraction in Question Answering using Structure Features and Dependency Principles

Question Answering (QA) research is a significant and challenging task in Natural Language Processing. QA aims to extract an exact answer from a relevant text snippet or a document. The motivation behind QA research is the need of user who is using state-of-the-art search engines. The user expects an exact answer rather than a list of documents that probably contain the answer. In this paper, for a successful answer extraction from relevant documents several efficient features and relations are required to extract. The features include various lexical, syntactic, semantic and structural features. The proposed structural features are extracted from the dependency features of the question and supported document. Experimental results show that structural features improve the accuracy of answer extraction when combined with the basic features and designed using dependency principles. Proposed structural features use new design principles which extract the long-distance relations. This addition is a possible reason behind the improvement in overall answer extraction accuracy.
A Generative Adversarial Model for Right Ventricle Segmentation

The clinical management of several cardiovascular conditions, such as pulmonary hypertension, require the assessment of the right ventricular (RV) function. This work addresses the fully automatic and robust access to one of the key RV biomarkers, its ejection fraction, from the gold standard imaging modality, MRI. The problem becomes the accurate segmentation of the RV blood pool from cine MRI sequences. This work proposes a solution based on Fully Convolutional Neural Networks (FCNN), where our first contribution is the optimal combination of three concepts (the convolution Gated Recurrent Units (GRU), the Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), and the L1 loss function) that achieves an improvement of 0.05 and 3.49 mm in Dice Index and Hausdorff Distance respectively with respect to the baseline FCNN. This improvement is then doubled by our second contribution, the ROI-GAN, that sets two GANs to cooperate working at two fields of view of the image, its full resolution and the region of interest (ROI). Our rationale here is to better guide the FCNN learning by combining global (full resolution) and local Region Of Interest (ROI) features. The study is conducted in a large in-house dataset of $\sim$ 23.000 segmented MRI slices, and its generality is verified in a publicly available dataset.
COMPARATIVE AND ONTOGENIC BIOCHEMISTRY 4-oxo-1 , 4-dihydrocinnoline Derivative with Phosphatase 1 B Inhibitor Activity Enhances Leptin Signal Transduction in Hypothalamic Neurons

Most of regulatory effects of leptin on feeding behavior and energy metabolism are implemented via the hypothalamic leptin system. Attenuation of its activity leads to hyperphagia, obesity and other metabolic disorders. To prevent these pathological conditions, it is necessary to develop approaches aimed at restoring the leptin system. Most promising of them is creating efficient inhibitors of protein phosphotyrosine phosphatase PTP1B, a negative regulator of leptin signaling. The aim of this work was to synthesize a new compound, ethyl-3-(hydroxymethyl)-4-oxo-1,4dihydrocinnoline-6-carboxylate (PI-04), a 4-oxo-1,4-dihydrocinnoline derivative with a PTP1B inhibitor activity, and to study its effect on IRS2and STAT3-dependent leptin pathways in culture of hypothalamic neurons isolated from 18-day-old rat embryos. It was shown that PI-04 enhances the stimulatory effect of leptin on phosphorylation of the IRS2 protein at the Ser731 residue and of the STAT3 transcriptional factor at the Tyr705 residue, suggesting a potentiation of functional responses of hypothalamic neurons to leptin in the presence of this compound. The potentiating effect of PI-04 on leptin signaling was implemented at micromolar concentrations when this substance had virtually no effect on neuronal survival. The data obtained are promising in terms of creating phosphatase PTP1B inhibitors based on 4-oxo-1,4-dihydrocinnoline, as well as the possibility of their further use to prevent and correct metabolic disorders caused by attenuated activity of the hypothalamic leptin system. DOI: 10.1134/S0022093018040038