Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interplay among SNAIL Transcription Factor, MicroRNAs, Long Non-Coding RNAs, and Circular RNAs in the Regulation of Tumor Growth and Metastasis

SNAIL (SNAI1) is a zinc finger transcription factor that binds to E-box sequences and regulates the expression of genes. It usually acts as a gene repressor, but it may also activate the expression of genes. SNAIL plays a key role in the regulation of epithelial to mesenchymal transition, which is the main mechanism responsible for the progression and metastasis of epithelial tumors. Nevertheless, it also regulates different processes that are responsible for tumor growth, such as the activity of cancer stem cells, the control of cell metabolism, and the regulation of differentiation. Different proteins and microRNAs may regulate the SNAIL level, and SNAIL may be an important regulator of microRNA expression as well. The interplay among SNAIL, microRNAs, long non-coding RNAs, and circular RNAs is a key event in the regulation of tumor growth and metastasis. This review for the first time discusses different types of regulation between SNAIL and non-coding RNAs with a focus on feedback loops and the role of competitive RNA. Understanding these mechanisms may help develop novel therapeutic strategies against cancer based on microRNAs.
[Clinical effect of continuous blood purification in treatment of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome in neonates].

OBJECTIVE To study the clinical effect and complications of continuous blood purification (CBP) in the treatment of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) in neonates. METHODS A retrospective analysis was performed for the clinical data of 21 neonates with MODS who were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit from November 2015 to April 2019 and were treated with CBP. Clinical indices were observed before treatment, at 6, 12, 24, and 36 hours of CBP treatment, and at the end of treatment to evaluate the clinical effect and safety of CBP treatment. RESULTS Among the 21 neonates with MODS undergoing CBP, 17 (81%) had response to treatment. The neonates with response to CBP treatment had a significant improvement in oxygenation index at 6 hours of treatment, a significant increase in urine volume at 24 hours of treatment, a stable blood pressure within the normal range at 24 hours of treatment, and significant reductions in the doses of the vasoactive agents epinephrine and dopamine at 6 hours of treatment (P<0.05), as well as a significant reduction in serum K+ level at 6 hours of treatment, a significant improvement in blood pH at 12 hours of treatment, and significant reductions in blood lactic acid, blood creatinine, and blood urea nitrogen at 12 hours of treatment (P<0.05). Among the 21 neonates during CBP treatment, 6 experienced thrombocytopenia, 1 had membrane occlusion, and 1 experienced bleeding, and no hypothermia, hypotension, or infection was observed. CONCLUSIONS CBP is a safe, feasible, and effective method for the treatment of MODS in neonates, with few complications.
Complete and Sufficient Spatial Domination of Multidimensional Rectangles

Rectangles are used to approximate objects, or sets of objects, in a plethora of applications, systems and index structures. Many tasks, such as nearest neighbor search and similarity ranking, require to decide if objects in one rectangle A may, must, or must not be closer to objects in a second rectangle B, than objects in a third rectangle R. To decide this relation of "Spatial Domination" it can be shown that using minimum and maximum distances it is often impossible to detect spatial domination. This spatial gem provides a necessary and sufficient decision criterion for spatial domination that can be computed efficiently even in higher dimensional space. In addition, this spatial gem provides an example, pseudocode and an implementation in Python.
Recognizing Video Events with Varying Rhythms

Recognizing Video events in long, complex videos with multiple sub-activities has received persistent attention recently. This task is more challenging than traditional action recognition with short, relatively homogeneous video clips. In this paper, we investigate the problem of recognizing long and complex events with varying action rhythms, which has not been considered in the literature but is a practical challenge. Our work is inspired in part by how humans identify events with varying rhythms: quickly catching frames contributing most to a specific event. We propose a two-stage \emph{end-to-end} framework, in which the first stage selects the most significant frames while the second stage recognizes the event using the selected frames. Our model needs only \emph{event-level labels} in the training stage, and thus is more practical when the sub-activity labels are missing or difficult to obtain. The results of extensive experiments show that our model can achieve significant improvement in event recognition from long videos while maintaining high accuracy even if the test videos suffer from severe rhythm changes. This demonstrates the potential of our method for real-world video-based applications, where test and training videos can differ drastically in rhythms of sub-activities.
Automatic Extraction of Built-Up Areas from Very High-Resolution Satellite Imagery Using Patch-Level Spatial Features and Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Grouping

Automatic extraction of built-up areas from very high-resolution (VHR) satellite images has received increasing attention in recent years. However, due to the complexity of spectral and spatial characteristics of built-up areas, it is still a challenging task to obtain their precise location and extent. In this study, a patch-based framework was proposed for unsupervised extraction of built-up areas from VHR imagery. First, a group of corner-constrained overlapping patches were defined to locate the candidate built-up areas. Second, for each patch, its salient textures and structural characteristics were represented as a feature vector using integrated high-frequency wavelet coefficients. Then, inspired by visual perception, a patch-level saliency model of built-up areas was constructed by incorporating Gestalt laws of proximity and similarity, which can effectively describe the spatial relationships between patches. Finally, built-up areas were extracted through thresholding and their boundaries were refined by morphological operations. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated on two VHR image datasets. The resulting average F-measure values were 0.8613 for the Google Earth dataset and 0.88 for the WorldView-2 dataset, respectively. Compared with existing models, the proposed method obtains better extraction results, which show more precise boundaries and preserve better shape integrity.
Biointegrated and Wirelessly Powered Implantable Brain Devices: A Review

Implantable neural interfacing devices have added significantly to neural engineering by introducing the low-frequency oscillations of small populations of neurons known as local field potential as well as high-frequency action potentials of individual neurons. Regardless of the astounding progression as of late, conventional neural modulating system is still incapable to achieve the desired chronic in vivo implantation. The real constraint emerges from mechanical and physical differences between implants and brain tissue that initiates an inflammatory reaction and glial scar formation that reduces the recording and stimulation quality. Furthermore, traditional strategies consisting of rigid and tethered neural devices cause substantial tissue damage and impede the natural behavior of an animal, thus hindering chronic in vivo measurements. Therefore, enabling fully implantable neural devices requires biocompatibility, wireless power/data capability, biointegration using thin and flexible electronics, and chronic recording properties. This article reviews biocompatibility and design approaches for developing biointegrated and wirelessly powered implantable neural devices in animals aimed at long-term neural interfacing and outlines current challenges toward developing the next generation of implantable neural devices.
Occupational Therapy for the Management of Fatigue in Multiple Sclerosis

A fatigue management programme for clients with multiple sclerosis has been developed as part of the occupational therapy service at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. * A single case study approach was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the fatigue management programme during a 3-week period of inpatient rehabilitation. The assessments used were, first, objective measures of productivity and, secondly, client rating of performance, satisfaction and level of fatigue, associated with the performance of a keyboard activity chosen by the client. The activity was performed and the assessments were made during four sessions in the baseline phase (first week) and repeated in the third week. The fatigue management programme was carried out in the second week. The ratings of performance and satisfaction after the task were initially varied but became more consistent when fatigue management was applied. Also, a downwards trend (more exhausted) in the level of fatigue ratings recorded in the baseline was reversed (less tired). Productivity improved up to 100% of the task. The main conclusion was an overall change to more consistent levels of task performance which had a positive impact on the experience of fatigue. Further work is required to evaluate generalisation to other tasks and the carry-over to the community setting.
Comprehensive Circulatory Metabolomics in ME/CFS Reveals Disrupted Metabolism of Acyl Lipids and Steroids

The latest worldwide prevalence rate projects that over 65 million patients suffer from myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), an illness with known effects on the functioning of the immune and nervous systems. We performed an extensive metabolomics analysis on the plasma of 52 female subjects, equally sampled between controls and ME/CFS patients, which delivered data for about 1750 blood compounds spanning 20 super-pathways, subdivided into 113 sub-pathways. Statistical analysis combined with pathway enrichment analysis points to a few disrupted metabolic pathways containing many unexplored compounds. The most intriguing finding concerns acyl cholines, belonging to the fatty acid metabolism sub-pathway of lipids, for which all compounds are consistently reduced in two distinct ME/CFS patient cohorts. We compiled the extremely limited knowledge about these compounds and regard them as promising in the quest to explain many of the ME/CFS symptoms. Another class of lipids with far-reaching activity on virtually all organ systems are steroids; androgenic, progestin, and corticosteroids are broadly reduced in our patient cohort. We also report on lower dipeptides and elevated sphingolipids abundance in patients compared to controls. Disturbances in the metabolism of many of these molecules can be linked to the profound organ system symptoms endured by ME/CFS patients.
Semantic Security for Quantum Wiretap Channels

We determine the semantic security capacity for quantum wiretap channels. We extend methods for classical channels to quantum channels to demonstrate that a strongly secure code guarantees a semantically secure code with the same secrecy rate. Furthermore, we show how to transform a non-secure code into a semantically secure code by means of biregular irreducible functions (BRI functions). We analyze semantic security for classical-quantum channels and for quantum channels.
[The Establishment of a Three-color Flow Cytometry Approach for the Scoring of Micronucleated Reticulocytes in Rat Bone Marrow].

Objective To develop and verify a flow cytometric measurement of reticulocytes (RETs) micronucleus in rat bone marrow. Methods In our flow cytometric protocol, reticulocytes, leukocytes and DNA were labeled by anti-CD71-fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC), anti-CD45-phycoerythrin (PE) and DRAQ5, respectively. Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were assigned to four treatment groups randomly, and were exposed to ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS), cyclophosphamide (CP), ethyl nitrosourea (ENU) and colchicine (COL) respectively. Each treatment group was divided into four subgroups (5 rats per subgroup) according to different exposure dosage. A exposure dose of 0 was used as vehicle control for each group. Rats were administered with testing mutagens by gavage twice with a 24 h interval. Bone marrow from both femurs were collected 24 h after the last administration. The frequency of micronucleated reticulocytes (MN-RETs) and the percentage of reticulocytes (RETs%) were determined by flow cytometric measurement established in this study. And the manual counting method with microscope (by Giemsa staining) was conducted at the same time. Results A method for detection of reticulocyte micronucleus in bone marrow based on flow cytometry was successfully established. The MN-RETs in rat bone marrow of 20 SD rats treated by vehicle (i.e., background value of MN-RETs) was 0.83‰±0.12‰ by this method. The background value of MN-RETs in manual enumeration method was 1.43‰±0.44‰. It was obvious that the flow cytometric method had lower background value and more stable results. The trend, in which MN-RETs ascended and RETs% descended with increasing dose, can be detected by both methods in rats that exposed to EMS, CP, ENU and COL. Both methods were good to detect the correlation of induced-MN-RETs with four testing mutagens (the correlation coefficients were ranged from 0.834 3 to 0.913 7). Conclusion With its sensitivity, rapidity, easy operation and low background value, the three-color flow cytometric enumerative protocol established in our laboratory can be used as a good substitute for manual micronucleus counting method and used in genotoxicity assessment of chemical substances.
A Novel Cytological Model of B-Cell/Macrophage Biphenotypic Cell Hodgkin Lymphoma in Ganp-Transgenic Mice

Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is one of the most difficult neoplasms in terms of cytopathological research owing to the lack of established cytological murine models. Although HL is believed to be of lymphoid germinal center B-cell origin, HL cells exhibit unique biphenotypic characteristics of B cells and macrophages. B-cell/macrophage biphenotypic cells have also been identified in the spleen of Lyn-deficient mice. Moreover, Lyn-targeting germinal center-associated nuclear protein (GANP)-transgenic mice (Ig-ganpTg mice) spontaneously develop a lymphoid tumor. We aimed to investigate whether the lymphoid tumor developed in Ig-ganpTg mice exhibit biphenotypic characteristics of B cells/macrophages that correspond to human HL. Here, we demonstrated GANP overexpression in human HL cells and found that it may regulate transdifferentiation between B cells and macrophages. We also demonstrated that tumors were comparable with B-cell/macrophage biphenotypic Hodgkinoid lymphomas. The tumor cells expressed macrophage-related F4/80, CD68, and CD204 as well as cytoplasmic B220 and µ-/κ-chains; in addition, these cells exhibited phagocytic activity. These cells also expressed transcripts of CD30; c-fms; and the cytokines monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP)-1, MCP-5, RANTES, tumor necrosis factor-α and thrombopoietin associated with macrophages as well as granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor, interleukin (IL)-4, IL-10, IL-12, and IL-13. Ig-ganpTg mice represent a novel cytological model for the study of cytopathological etiology and oncogenesis of HL.
Implications of clinical research on adjuvant chemotherapy for gastric cancer: Where to go next?

Postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy (ACT) confers superior gastric cancer (GC) survival in the Eastern cohort. However, is the current standard of ACT already excessive, or is it still necessary to increase its intensity for specific subgroups? Tailored ACT strategies for GC depend on gradual exploration by clinical trials in selected patients. Thus, understanding the implications of previous and current research can help us respond wisely and design effective, rational trials, save medical resources and make better decisions in clinical practice. After reviewing and analyzing studies on ACT for GC patients undergoing curative resection, we found that research strategies for conducting “addition” ACT for specific stages of the disease have achieved great progress in making ACT more tailored and personalized in consideration of pathology stages. Furthermore, trials indicate that “addition” ACT strategies for GC patient subgroups based on histological characteristics might be helpful to move toward a more specific tailored and personalized management approach. Designing ACT research focused on different node statuses should also be conducted according to the biological specificity of lymph node (LN) metastasis. Therefore, future trials designed to determine tailored treatment based on histological and biological characteristics for specific subgroups are urgently needed and conducted as the theme of the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO): Caring for Every Patient, Learning from Every Patient.
Weighted Completion Time Minimization for Unrelated Machines via Iterative Fair Contention Resolution

We give a 1.488-approximation for the classic scheduling problem of minimizing total weighted completion time on unrelated machines. This is a considerable improvement on the recent breakthrough of $(1.5 - 10^{-7})$-approximation (STOC 2016, Bansal-Srinivasan-Svensson) and the follow-up result of $(1.5 - 1/6000)$-approximation (FOCS 2017, Li). Bansal et al. introduced a novel rounding scheme yielding strong negative correlations for the first time and applied it to the scheduling problem to obtain their breakthrough, which resolved the open problem if one can beat out the long-standing $1.5$-approximation barrier based on independent rounding. Our key technical contribution is in achieving significantly stronger negative correlations via iterative fair contention resolution, which is of independent interest. Previously, Bansal et al. obtained strong negative correlations via a variant of pipage type rounding and Li used it as a black box.
Design and optimization of a child-friendly dispersible tablet containing isoniazid, pyrazinamide, and rifampicin for treating tuberculosis in pediatrics

Abstract Objective: Develop a child-friendly Fixed Dose Combination (FDC) water-dispersible tablet for Tuberculosis (TB) treatment, with 50, 150, and 75 mg of isoniazid, pyrazinamide and rifampicin respectively. This new formulation must contain the lowest number of excipients accepted for pediatrics and fulfill all the pharmacopeia requirements. Significance: At present, there is no adequate market dosage form available for children. There is, however, one in a prequalification phase by the World Health Organization but its composition contains excipients which may not be suitable for pediatrics. Therefore, this new formulation would cover this therapeutic gap. Methods: A factorial design, based on three quantitative factors (compression force and concentration of AcDiSol® and Explosol®) at three levels each, was performed to elucidate their influence over disintegration time and friability. In addition, the influence of the press speed on disintegration time, friability, tensile strength, fineness of dispersion and content uniformity over the target tablet was tested. A stability test was done following ICH guideline for accelerated conditions. Results: Tablets developed with 9% w/w of Explosol® and a compression force of 16 kN disintegrated in less than 3 min and showed a friability below 1% when 15-mm punches were used. The tableting process could be done up to 25 and 50 cycles/minute ensuring good quality attributes when 15 and 12-mm punches were used, respectively. All APIs remained inside the limit of ± 5% of drug content till 6 months of storage. Conclusion: A high-quality child-friendly FDC water-dispersible tablet was developed improving the treatment of TB in pediatric.
Junior and Senior Nursing Students: A Near-Peer Simulation Experience.

BACKGROUND Near-peer teaching is a form of peer-assisted learning with at least 1 year of difference between the groups of students. METHOD A near-peer simulation allowed junior nursing students to obtain a focused history and assessment, administer medications, and provide patient education to senior students. Senior students provided performance feedback to the junior students. Faculty gave additional feedback and facilitated a group debriefing session. All students were asked to complete an anonymous online postsurvey. RESULTS One hundred nine junior and senior students completed the immediate postsurvey. The mean score was 2.14, corresponding to the "agree" response. Nearly three quarters (73%) of the students indicated they agree or strongly agree that "the simulation provided a variety of ways to learn. " Five themes emerged: Improved Confidence in Assessment Skills, Communication, Connecting Nursing Content, Peer Feedback and Interaction, and Awareness of Community Resources. CONCLUSION Near-peer simulation is a beneficial teaching strategy for nursing students. [J Nurs Educ. 2020;59(1):54-56. ].
Translating Cancer Biomarker Discoveries to Clinical Tests: What should be Considered?

The use of biomarkers for the diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring of disease; as well as to guide the choice of therapeutic regimens is predicted to be one of the leading priorities in clinical practice. The sheer complexity of the human cell, including its growth and signaling pathways, has made one of the biggest challenges in the cancer field the identifica- tion and characterization of such biomarkers and their translation into informative and reproducible diagnostic/prognostic tests. The increasing amounts of data, generated by experimental methods, challenges researchers to extract biologically applicable information. The authors, who represent academia, industry, and governmental organizations, discuss the cur- rent potential of translating cancer biomarker discoveries into suitable clinical tests. This review includes current informa- tion based on the latest patents in the cancer biomarker field relating to the different types of biomarkers (genomic, pro- teomics, epigenetics and microRNAs). It also describes the importance of strong intellectual property protection, current trends in patenting biomarkers, and future intellectual property strategies in the biomarker-related field. Finally, a sum- mary of the recent relevant patentsand primary barriers to the translation of new biomarkers into viable clinical diagnostic tests is presented.
NANOTHERAPIES FOR THE TREATMENT OF AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION (AMD) DISEASE: RECENT ADVANCEMENTS AND CHALLENGES.

Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is one of the common diseases affecting the posterior part of the eye, affecting a large population above 45 years old. Anti-Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor-A (Anti-VEGF-A) agents have been considered as approved as therapeutic agents for the treatment of AMD. Due to the large molecular weight and poor permeability through various eye membranes, VEGF-A inhibitors are given through intravitreal injection. Even though the delivery of small therapeutic molecules by topical application to the posterior part of the eye exhibit challenges in treatment. To overcome these limitations nanocarriers based delivery systems have been utilized to a large extent for delivery of therapeutics. Nanocarriers system offers prodigious benefits for delivery of therapeutics to posterior part of eye in both invasive and non-invasive techniques. The nano size can improve the permeation of therapeutic agent across the biological membranes. They provide protection from enzymes present at site, targeted delivery or binding with the disease site, extended release of therapeutic agent with prolong retention. This leads to improved therapeutic efficacy, patient compliance, and cost effectiveness of therapy with minimum dose associated side effects. This review has summarized various nanocarriers explored for the treatment of AMD and challenges in the translation.