Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Season, age, and sex affect the fecal mycobiota of free‐ranging Tibetan macaques (Macaca thibetana)

Recent studies highlight that the gut mycobiota play essential roles in mammalian metabolic and immune systems, but to date we lack information on the forces that naturally shape the gut mycobiota of wild primates. To investigate the contributions of host and environmental factors in the taxonomic variation of the gut mycobiota, we examined the effects of age, sex, and season on the fecal mycobiota in wild‐living Tibetan macaques (Macaca thibetana). Using next generation sequencing and a longitudinal set of fecal samples collected over 1 year, we identified a set of core fungal taxa present in the Tibetan macaque's fecal samples. The predominant genera Aspergillus and Penicillium, which promote the digestion of cellulose and hemicellulose in herbivorous mammals, were detected in this study. Similar to humans, we found age and sex effects on the macaques’ fecal mycobiota. We also found that both fecal fungal composition and diversity (alpha and beta diversity) varied significantly by season. In particular, the Penicillium enriched mycobiota in summer samples may aid in the digestion of cellulose and hemicellulose present in mature leaves. The high alpha diversity detected in Tibetan macaques’ winter fecal samples may facilitate a diet rich in fiber ingested during this season. We propose that the gut mycobiota play an important role in the macaques’ ability to adapt to seasonal fluctuations in food availability and nutrient content.
Time-variable camera separation for compression of stereoscopic video

This paper presents a hypothesis that stereoscopic perception requires a short adjustment period after a scene change before it is fully effective. A compression method based on this hypothesis is proposed - instead of coding pictures from the left and right views conventionally, a view in the middle of the left and right view is coded for a limited period after a scene change. The coded middle view can be utilized in two alternative ways in rendering. First, it can be rendered as such, which causes an abrupt change from conventional monoscopic video to stereoscopic video. Second, the layered depth video (LDV) coding scheme can be used to associate depth, background texture, and background depth to the middle view, enabling view synthesis and gradual view disparity increase in rendering. Subjective experiments were conducted to evaluate and validate the presented hypothesis and compare the two rendering methods. The results indicate that when the maximum disparity between the left and right views was relatively small, the presented time-variable camera separation method was imperceptible. A compression gain, the magnitude of which depended on the scene duration, was achieved with half of the sequences having a suitable disparity for the presented coding method.
Blood Pressure in Acute Stroke: To Treat or Not to Treat: That Is Still the Question.

One of the oldest questions in acute stroke management, and perhaps the most challenging since it has yet to be solved after more than half a century of published research, is how to manage high blood pressure (BP). The problem might be summed up as follows: > To treat , or not to treat : that is the question: > > Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer > > The slings and arrows of outrageous pressure , > > Or to take drugs against a sea of blood , > > And by opposing end them? To live : to walk ; > > —With apologies to Shakespeare , Hamlet Act III, Scene I To treat, or not to treat, high BP was debated >30 years ago in 1985,1–3 and yet there is no definitive answer here in 2018. Part of the debate is driven by opposing arguments based on epidemiology and pathophysiology and part by the failure of every large trial to provide a definitive answer. There is considerable evidence that high BP is associated independently with a poor outcome after ischemic stroke (IS) whether defined by early recurrence or death, or late death and dependency.4,5 Similarly, high BP is related to hematoma expansion6 and functional outcome after intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). 7 A straightforward conclusion of this epidemiological evidence is that high BP should be lowered. In contrast, pathophysiological concerns are based on the presence of dysfunctional cerebral autoregulation during acute stroke, and so lowering BP will reduce tissue perfusion, increase lesion size, and thereby worsen outcome.8 There are many causes of high BP in acute stroke, including prior hypertension, acute neuroendocrine stimulation (via the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system [RAAS], sympathetic autonomic nervous, and corticotrophin-cortisol systems), the Cushing reflex (due to raised intracranial pressure), and stress associated with admission to hospital and …
Single-Sensor Motion and Orientation Tracking in a Moving Vehicle

Given the increasing popularity of mobile and wearable devices, this paper explores the potential use of inertial sensors that are widely available on mobile and wearable devices for vehicle and driver tracking. Such a capability would enable novel classes of mobile safety and assisted driving applications without relying on information or sensors in the vehicle. Although inertial sensors have been widely used in motion tracking, existing approaches cannot distinguish the motion of the vehicle and the device's motion in the vehicle. Additionally, the noise exerted from the electronic components in the vehicle and the ferromagnetic frame of the vehicle distorts the inertial sensor readings. This paper introduces a method to separately estimate the orientation of both the vehicle and the sensor by tracking the earth's magnetic field and the electromagnetic distortion from the vehicle, as measured by a magnetometer in addition to a gyroscope and an accelerometer. Specifically, the vehicle noise is used to estimate the orientation of the sensor within the vehicle while the earth's magnetic field combined with vehicle noise is used to estimate the vehicle's heading. Our on-road experiments show that the technique is able to estimate the sensor orientation with a mean error of $5.61^o$ for the yaw angle and $3.73^o$ for the pitch angle, as well as able to estimate the vehicle heading with a mean error of $4.12^o$.
Case Study of Resilient Baton Rouge: Applying Depression Collaborative Care and Community Planning to Disaster Recovery

Background: Addressing behavioral health impacts of major disasters is a priority of increasing national attention, but there are limited examples of implementation strategies to guide new disaster responses. We provide a case study of an effort being applied in response to the 2016 Great Flood in Baton Rouge. Methods: Resilient Baton Rouge was designed to support recovery after major flooding by building local capacity to implement an expanded model of depression collaborative care for adults, coupled with identifying and responding to local priorities and assets for recovery. For a descriptive, initial evaluation, we coupled analysis of documents and process notes with descriptive surveys of participants in initial training and orientation, including preliminary comparisons among licensed and non-licensed participants to identify training priorities. Results: We expanded local behavioral health service delivery capacity through subgrants to four agencies, provision of training tailored to licensed and non-licensed providers and development of advisory councils and partnerships with grassroots and government agencies. We also undertook initial efforts to enhance national collaboration around post-disaster resilience. Conclusion: Our partnered processes and lessons learned may be applicable to other communities that aim to promote resilience, as well as planning for and responding to post-disaster behavioral health needs.
Next generation portal for federated testbeds MySlice v2: from prototype to production

A number of projects in computer science around the world have contributed to build federated experimental facilities providing access to a large set of distributed compute, storage and network resources for the research community. Several tools have been developed to provide users an easy access to the federated testbeds. This paper presents the architecture of the new version of the MySlice web portal, that has evolved from a prototype to a production ready software.
A Globally Generalized Emotion Recognition System Involving Different Physiological Signals

Machine learning approaches for human emotion recognition have recently demonstrated high performance. However, only/mostly for subject-dependent approaches, in a variety of applications like advanced driver assisted systems, smart homes and medical environments. Therefore, now the focus is shifted more towards subject-independent approaches, which are more universal and where the emotion recognition system is trained using a specific group of subjects and then tested on totally new persons and thereby possibly while using other sensors of same physiological signals in order to recognize their emotions. In this paper, we explore a novel robust subject-independent human emotion recognition system, which consists of two major models. The first one is an automatic feature calibration model and the second one is a classification model based on Cellular Neural Networks (CNN). The proposed system produces state-of-the-art results with an accuracy rate between 80% and 89% when using the same elicitation materials and physiological sensors brands for both training and testing and an accuracy rate of 71.05% when the elicitation materials and physiological sensors brands used in training are different from those used in training. Here, the following physiological signals are involved: ECG (Electrocardiogram), EDA (Electrodermal activity) and ST (Skin-Temperature).
User-Centric Delay-Aware Joint Caching and User Association Optimization in Cache-Enabled Wireless Networks

The mobile edge caching is a promising way to reduce the user-perceived delay and improve the transmission data rates for the wireless networks. However, the cache capacities of base stations (BSs) tend to be limited and users’ interests for the contents are diverse, which makes the content placement decision critical for the network performance optimization. Besides, due to the flexible user-BS association, it is more complicated to optimize the content delivery and placement which are coupled with each other. This paper investigates the content placement and content delivery strategies in the cache-enabled wireless networks. In particular, the effective capacity, which can characterize the end-to-end user-perceived delay and data rates simultaneously, is introduced as the user’s utility metric. As the content caching and content delivery operate in different time-scales, they are investigated separately. For the content caching, a content placement problem is formulated, where both users’ different active levels and diverse content preferences are considered. Due to the NP-hard nature, the problem is decomposed into two sub-problems, and an iterative association-aware content placement algorithm is proposed. For the content delivery, the user-BS association problem is formulated, and a cache-aware user-BS association algorithm is designed. The performance of the proposed algorithms is evaluated based on the simulations. The numerical results show that the proposed algorithms have a better capability to cope with users’ diverse active levels, and achieve a better performance in terms of effective capacity and fairness level, compared with the existing algorithms.
Dengue Infection Spectrum in Guangzhou: A Cross-Sectional Seroepidemiology Study among Community Residents between 2013 and 2015

The majority of dengue virus infections are asymptomatic, which could potentially facilitate the transmission of dengue fever and increase the percentage of sever dengue fever manifestations. This cross-sectional study explored the sero-prevalence of dengue virus infection in Guangzhou to clarify the infection spectrum. In total, 2085 serum samples were collected from residents of 34 communities. All samples were selected from a 200,000-sample database holding serum collected from community residents living in Liwan and Yuexiu districts of Guangzhou between September 2013 and August 2015, and 17 to 28 individuals of each age group were chosen per month. Dengue immunoglobulin G (IgG) and immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibodies were tested by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Symptomatic infected individuals were identified via follow-up questionnaires. Among 2085 serum samples, anti-dengue IgG and IgM positive rates were 11.80% and 3.98%, respectively. The IgG antibody positive rate increased with age and was higher in poorly educated people than in highly educated people and in married individuals than in single individuals. Approximately 96.71% of dengue virus infections and an estimated 13.68% of the whole population were asymptomatic. Such high asymptomatic-infection rates have an impact on the local spread of dengue fever. Stricter surveillance, such as a network of rapid diagnostic laboratories, screening of residents in the epidemic season, and other integrated control measures are necessary.
A novel inverse association between cord 25-hydroxyvitamin D and leg length in boys up to three years. An Odense Child Cohort study

Background and aim Long standing vitamin D deficiency in children causes rickets with growth impairment. We investigated whether sub-ischial leg length (SLL) is shorter, and cephalo-caudal length:length (CCL:L) ratio and sitting height:height (SH:H) ratio larger, with lower cord s-25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) in the population-based prospective Odense Child Cohort, Denmark. Methods We included healthy singletons born to term with available measures of cord 25OHD and anthropometrics up to three years’ age. Linear regression was stratified by sex a priori and adjusted for maternal ethnicity, pre-pregnancy body mass index and smoking during pregnancy, season of blood sampling and child age. Results Median (IQR) cord 25OHD was 48.0 (34.0–62.4) nmol/L. At mean age 19.1 months, n = 504, mean (SD) SLL was 31.7 (1.7) cm; CCL:L-ratio 0.62 (0.01). At 36.3 months, n = 956, mean SLL was 42.9 (2.0) cm; SH:H-ratio 0.56 (0.01). No participants had rickets. In adjusted analyses, 19-months-old boys had 0.1 cm shorter SLL (p = 0.009) and 0.1% higher CCL:L-ratio (p = 0.04) with every 10 nmol/L increase in cord 25OHD. Similar findings were seen for late pregnancy 25OHD. In the highest cord 25OHD quartile (>60.7 nmol/L), SLL was 0.8 cm shorter (95% C.I.: 1.36;-0.29, linear trend, p = 0.004), and CCL:L-ratio 0.8% higher (95% C.I. 8.0x10-05;0.01, linear trend, p = 0.01), compared to lowest quartile (<30.7 nmol/L). Similar associations with cord 25OHD were observed in 3-year-old boys. No consistent associations between 25OHD and anthropometrics were seen in girls at either age. Conclusion No leg shortening was found with decreasing cord s-25OHD in a healthy population of infants. A small, yet significant inverse association between cord 25OHD and SLL in boys 1½-3 years warrants further investigations.
VIA CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORKS

In order to improve the accuracy and reliability of myocontrol (control of prosthetic devices using signals gathered from the human body), novel kinds of sensors able to detect muscular activity are being explored. In particular, Optical Myography (OMG) consists of optically tracking and decoding the deformations happening at the surface of the body whenever muscles are activated. OMG potentially requires no devices to be worn, but since it is an advanced problem of computer vision, it incurs a number of other drawbacks, e.g., changing illumination, identification of markers, frame tear and drop. In this work we propose an improvement to OMG as it has been recently introduced, namely we relax the need of precise positioning and orientation of the markers on the body surface. The small size of the markers and their curvature while adhering to the surface of the forearm can lead to missed detections and misdetections in their orientation; here we rather detect the deformations by applying a Convolutional Neural Network to the region of interest around the feature source segmented, from the forearm. The classification-based approach yields results similar to those obtained by other classification based modalities, reaching accuracies in the range of 96.21% to 99.30% when performed on 10 intact subjects.
Modulation of gastrointestinal barrier and nutrient transport function in farm animals by natural plant bioactive compounds – A comprehensive review

ABSTRACT The use of antibiotics in diets has been restricted in several countries as a precautionary measure to avoid development of antibiotic resistance among pathogenic microorganisms. This regulation promoted the exploration of natural plant bioactive compounds (PBCs) as feed additives to improve productivity, welfare and health of livestock and poultry. Along with several beneficial attributes of PBCs, including antimicrobial, antioxidant and various pharmacological effects, they also improve barrier function and nutrient transport in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. This comprehensive review discusses the effects of different PBCs on the integrity, nutrient transport and permeability of GI epithelia and their mechanism of actions. Dietary PBCs influence the maintenance and enhancement of GI integrity via a number of mechanisms including altered signaling pathways and expression of several tight junction proteins (claudins, occludin, and zonula occludens proteins), altered expression of various cytokines, chemokines, complement components and their transcription factors, goblet cell abundance and mucin gene expression, and the modulation of the cellular immune system. They also affect nutrient transporter gene expression and active absorption of nutrients, minerals and ammonia. One intriguing perspective is to select an effective dose at which a specific PBC could improve GI barrier function and nutrient absorption. The effective doses and clear-cut molecular mechanisms for PBCs are yet to be elucidated to understand discrepant observations among different studies and to improve the targeted biotechnological and pharmaceutical uses of PBCs in farm animals. The latter will also enable a more successful use of such PBCs in humans.
Pharma-Nutritional Properties of Olive Oil Phenols. Transfer of New Findings to Human Nutrition

The Mediterranean diet has been long associated with improved cardiovascular prognosis, chemoprevention, and lower incidence of neurodegeneration. Of the multiple components of this diet, olive oil stands out because its use has historically been limited to the Mediterranean basin. The health benefits of olive oil and some of its components are being rapidly decoded. In this paper we review the most recent pharma-nutritional investigations on olive oil biophenols and their health effects, chiefly focusing on recent findings that elucidate their molecular mechanisms of action.
Functional Exercise Training and Undulating Periodization Enhances the Effect of Whole-Body Electromyostimulation Training on Running Performance

The popularity of whole-body electromyostimulation is growing during the last years, but there is a shortage of studies that evaluate its effects on physical fitness and sport performance. In this study, we compared the effects of a periodized and functional whole-body-electromyostimulation training on maximum oxygen uptake (VO2max), ventilatory thresholds (VT1 and VT2), running economy (RE), and lower-body muscle strength in runners, vs. a traditional whole-body-electromyostimulation training. A total of 12 male recreational runners, who had been running 2–3 times per week (90–180 min/week) for at least the previous year and had no previous experience on WB-EMS training, were enrolled in the current study. They were randomly assigned to a periodized and functional whole-body-electromyostimulation training group (PFG) (n = 6; 27.0 ± 7.5 years; 70.1 ± 11.1 kg; 1.75 ± 0.05 m) whose training program involved several specific exercises for runners, or a traditional whole-body-electromyostimulation training group (TG) (n = 6; 25.8 ± 7.4 years; 73.8 ± 9.8 kg; 1.73 ± 0.07 m), whose sessions were characterized by circuit training with 10 dynamic and general exercises without external load. The training programs consisted of one whole-body electromyostimulation session and one 20-min running session per week, during 6 weeks. The PFG followed an undulating periodization model and a selection of functional exercises, whereas the TG followed a traditional session structure used in previous studies. Both groups were instructed to stop their habitual running training program. VO2max, VT1, VT2, RE, and lower body muscle strength (vertical jump) were measured before and after the intervention. The PFG obtained significantly higher improvements when compared with the TG in terms of VO2max (2.75 ± 0.89 vs. 1.03 ± 1.01 ml/kg/min, P = 0.011), VT2 (2.95 ± 1.45 vs. 0.35 ± 0.85 ml/kg/min, P = 0.005), VO2max percentage at VT2 (5.13 ± 2.41 vs. 0.63 ± 1.61%), RE at VT1 (−7.70 ± 2.86 vs. −3.50 ± 2.16 ml/kg/km, P = 0.048), RE at 90% of VT2 (−15.38 ± 4.73 vs. −3.38 ± 4.11 ml/kg/km, P = 0.005), and vertical jump in Abalakov modality (2.95 ± 0.94 vs. 0.52 ± 1.49 cm, P = 0.008). Therefore, we conclude that running performance improvements were better after a 6-week program following an undulating periodization and consisting on functional exercises when compared with a 6-week traditional WB-EMS program.