Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prognostic Importance of Anaemia in HIV Type-1-Infected Patients Starting Antiretroviral Therapy: Collaborative Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies

Background In HIV type-1-infected patients starting highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), the prognostic value of haemoglobin when starting HAART, and of changes in haemoglobin levels, are not well defined. Methods We combined data from 10 prospective studies of 12,100 previously untreated individuals (25% women). A total of 4,222 patients (35%) were anaemic: 131 patients (1.1%) had severe (<8.0 g/dl), 1,120 (9%) had moderate (male 8.0–<11.0 g/dl and female 8.0–<10.0 g/ dl) and 2,971 (25%) had mild (male 11.0–<13.0 g/dl and female 10.0–<12.0 g/dl) anaemia. We separately analysed progression to AIDS or death from baseline and from 6 months using Weibull models, adjusting for CD4+ T-cell count, age, sex and other variables. Results During 48,420 person-years of follow-up 1,448 patients developed at least one AIDS event and 857 patients died. Anaemia at baseline was independently associated with higher mortality: the adjusted hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) for mild anaemia was 1.42 (1.17–1.73), for moderate anaemia 2.56 (2.07–3.18) and for severe anaemia 5.26 (3.55–7.81). Corresponding figures for progression to AIDS were 1.60 (1.37–1.86), 2.00 (1.66–2.40) and 2.24 (1.46–3.42). At 6 months the prevalence of anaemia declined to 26%. Baseline anaemia continued to predict mortality (and to a lesser extent progression to AIDS) in patients with normal haemoglobin or mild anaemia at 6 months. Conclusions Anaemia at the start of HAART is an important factor for short- and long-term prognosis, including in patients whose haemoglobin levels improved or normalized during the first 6 months of HAART.
Risky Sexual Behavior and Its Association With Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Stressful Life Events, and Other Psychiatric Correlates Among Women in Sex Work

Introduction: Numerous psychiatric disorders are known to be associated with risky sexual behavior (RSB). Depression or substance use is known to be higher in those who are in sex work. Recent literature has also described the association between attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and RSB. However, the association between ADHD and RSB among women in sex work (WSW) is relatively unknown. In this background, this study was conducted to study the prevalence of ADHD and associated psychiatric correlates among WSW and also to study the prevalence of RSB in this population. Methodology: A sample of 96 women who were in sex work and consented to be the part of the study were recruited. They were later administered Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale to screen for adult ADHD symptoms, Wender Utah Rating Scale to retrospectively look into a childhood diagnosis of ADHD, MINI neuropsychiatric interview for DSM 4-TR psychiatric diagnoses, HIV Risk Behavior Scale to study RSB, Beck’s Depression Inventory to quantify depression, and Presumptive Stressful Life Events Scale to quantify the presence of stressful life events. Results: The prevalence of Adult ADHD in the sample was 32.20 % (n = 31). Individuals with ADHD had a higher prevalence of RSB (P = .02), comorbid depression (P = .04), presence of stressful life events (P = .001), and a higher prevalence of sexually transmitted infections (P = .03). Conclusion: The prevalence of ADHD is high among WSW (32%). Risky sexual behavior in this population could be probably due to higher prevalence of associated psychiatric conditions including depression, higher presence of stressful life events, and ADHD, the association which is less understood. There is a need to replicate these findings in larger samples to study ADHD and its relationship with risky sexual behavior among WSW.
Digital leaders and the transformation of the IT function

With digital transformation attracting increasing attention, our study is motivated by a need to understand the impact on the transformation of the Information Technology (IT) function in pre-digital organisations. In particular, we present in this paper a qualitative study that aims to examine how digital transformation influences the IT organisational structure and leadership in pre-digital organisations. The empirical study is based on a series of semi-structured interviews with digital leaders across a range of organisations and sectors in the UK and Scandinavia. We find four different categories of both IT organisational structure and leadership following digital transformation initiatives: managing digital as projects within the IT function; managing the IT and digital functions separately with separate leaders; managing IT and digital within one function with dual leadership; and managing the IT and digital functions together with a single leader. The study has both theoretical and practical implications for the management of digital transformation and the IT function.
Mitochondria-Targeted Nanomedicine for Enhanced Efficacy of Cancer Therapy

Nanomedicines have been designed and developed to deliver anticancer drugs or exert anticancer therapy more selectively to tumor sites. Recent investigations have gone beyond delivering drugs to tumor tissues or cells, but to intracellular compartments for amplifying therapy efficacy. Mitochondria are attractive targets for cancer treatment due to their important functions for cells and close relationships to tumor occurrence and metastasis. Accordingly, multifunctional nanoplatforms have been constructed for cancer therapy with the modification of a variety of mitochondriotropic ligands, to trigger the mitochondria-mediated apoptosis of tumor cells. On this basis, various cancer therapeutic modalities based on mitochondria-targeted nanomedicines are developed by strategies of damaging mitochondria DNA (mtDNA), increasing reactive oxygen species (ROS), disturbing respiratory chain and redox balance. Herein, in this review, we highlight mitochondria-targeted cancer therapies enabled by nanoplatforms including chemotherapy, photothermal therapy (PTT), photodynamic therapy (PDT), chemodynamic therapy (CDT), sonodynamic therapy (SDT), radiodynamic therapy (RDT) and combined immunotherapy, and discussed the ongoing challenges.
Peripheral Neuroergonomics – An Elegant Way to Improve Human-Robot Interaction?

Department of Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany, 2 Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, DLR German Aerospace Center, Weßling, Germany, Chair of Autonomous Systems and Mechatronics, Department of Electrical Engineering and Department of Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany, 4 Institute for Mechatronic Systems, Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
A Developmental Embodied Choice Perspective Explains the Development of Numerical Choices

The goal of this paper is to explore how an embodied view can redirect our understanding of decision making. To achieve this goal, we contribute a developmental embodied choice perspective. Our perspective integrates embodiment and bounded rationality from a developmental view in which the body provides cues that are used in abstract choices. Hereby, the cues evolve with the body that is not static and changes through development. To demonstrate the body’s involvement in abstract choices, we will consider choices in numerical settings in which the body is not necessarily needed for the solution. For this, we consider the magnitude-judgment task in which one has to choose the larger of two magnitudes. In a nutshell, our perspective will pinpoint how the concept of embodied choices can explain the development of numerical choices.
Linking inherent O-Linked Protein Glycosylation of YghJ to Increased Antigen Potential

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is a WHO priority pathogen and vaccine target which causes infections in low-income and middle-income countries, travelers visiting endemic regions. The global urgent demand for an effective preventive intervention has become more pressing as ETEC strains have become increasingly multiple antibiotic resistant. However, the vaccine development pipeline has been slow to address this urgent need. To date, vaccine development has focused mainly on canonical antigens such as colonization factors and expressed toxins but due to genomic plasticity of this enteric pathogen, it has proven difficult to develop effective vaccines. In this study, we investigated the highly conserved non-canonical vaccine candidate YghJ/SsLE. Using the mass spectrometry-based method BEMAP, we demonstrate that YghJ is hyperglycosylated in ETEC and identify 54 O-linked Set/Thr residues within the 1519 amino acid primary sequence. The glycosylation sites are evenly distributed throughout the sequence and do not appear to affect the folding of the overall protein structure. Although the glycosylation sites only constitute a minor subpopulation of the available epitopes, we observed a notable difference in the immunogenicity of the glycosylated YghJ and the non-glycosylated protein variant. We can demonstrate by ELISA that serum from patients enrolled in an ETEC H10407 controlled infection study are significantly more reactive with glycosylated YghJ compared to the non-glycosylated variant. This study provides an important link between O-linked glycosylation and the relative immunogenicity of bacterial proteins and further highlights the importance of this observation in considering ETEC proteins for inclusion in future broad coverage subunit vaccine candidates.
Inflammatory Amplification: A Central Tenet of Uterine Transition for Labor

In preparation for delivery, the uterus transitions from actively maintaining quiescence during pregnancy to an active parturient state. This transition occurs as a result of the accumulation of pro-inflammatory signals which are amplified by positive feedback interactions involving paracrine and autocrine signaling at the level of each intrauterine cell and tissue. The amplification events occur in parallel until they reach a certain threshold, ‘tipping the scale’ and contributing to processes of uterine activation and functional progesterone withdrawal. The described signaling interactions all occur upstream from the presentation of clinical labor symptoms. In this review, we will: 1) describe the different physiological processes involved in uterine transition for each intrauterine tissue; 2) compare and contrast the current models of labor initiation; 3) introduce innovative models for measuring paracrine inflammatory interactions; and 4) discuss the therapeutic value in identifying and targeting key players in this crucial event for preterm birth.
Reliability and Reproducibility of Hadamard Encoded Pseudo-Continuous Arterial Spin Labeling in Healthy Elderly

The perfusion parameters cerebral blood flow (CBF) and arterial transit time (ATT) measured with arterial spin labeling (ASL) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provide valuable essentials to assess the integrity of cerebral tissue. Brain perfusion changes, due to aging, an intervention, or neurodegenerative diseases for example, could be investigated in longitudinal ASL studies with reliable ASL sequences. Generally, pseudo-continuous ASL (pCASL) is preferred because of its larger signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) compared to pulsed ASL (PASL) techniques. Available pCASL versions differ regarding their feature details. To date only little is known about the reliability and reproducibility of CBF and ATT measures obtained with the innovative Hadamard encoded pCASL variant, especially if applied on participants in old age. Therefore, we investigated an in-house developed Hadamard encoded pCASL sequence on a group of healthy elderly at two different 3 Tesla Siemens MRI systems (Skyra and mMR Biograph) and evaluated CBF and ATT reliability and reproducibility for several regions-of-interests (ROI). Calculated within-subject coefficients of variation (wsCV) demonstrated an excellent reliability of perfusion measures, whereas ATT appeared to be even more reliable than CBF [e.g., wsCV(CBF) = 2.9% vs. wsCV(ATT) = 2.3% for a gray matter (GM) ROI on Skyra system]. Additionally, a substantial agreement of perfusion values acquired on both MRI systems with an inter-session interval of 78 ± 17.6 days was shown by high corresponding intra-class correlation (ICC) coefficients [e.g., ICC(CBF) = 0.704 and ICC(ATT) = 0.754 for a GM ROI]. The usability of this novel Hadamard encoded pCASL sequence might improve future follow-up perfusion studies of the aging and/or diseased brain.
Ethics in Design and Implementation of Technologies for Workplace Health Promotion: A Call for Discussion

Aim: This study aims to initiate discussion on the ethical issues surrounding the development and implementation of technologies for workplace health promotion. We believe this is a neglected topic and such a complex field of study that we cannot come up with solutions easily or quickly. Therefore, this study is the starting point of a discussion about the ethics of and the need for policies around technologies for workplace health promotion. Method: Based on a literature review, the present study outlines current knowledge of ethical issues in research, development, and implementation of technologies in the workplace. Specifically, the focus is on two ethical issues that play an important role in the worker–employer relation: privacy and autonomy. Application: Two cases indicative for a multidisciplinary project aimed at developing and evaluating sensor and intervention technologies that contribute to keeping ageing workers healthy and effectively employable are explored. A context-specific approach of ethics is used to investigate ethical issues during the development and implementation of sensor and intervention technologies. It is a holistic approach toward the diverse field of participants and stakeholders, and the diversity in perceptions of relevant values, depending on their respective professional languages. Discussion: The results show how protecting the privacy and autonomy of workers cannot be seen as stand-alone issues, but, rather, there is interplay between these values, the work context, and the responsibilities of workers and employers. Consequently, technologies in this research project are designed to improve worker conscientious autonomy, while concurrently creating balance between privacy and health, and assigning responsibilities to appropriate stakeholders. Conclusion: Focusing on a contextual conceptualisation of the ethical principles in the design and implementation of digital health technologies helps to avoid compartmentalization, out-of-context generalisation, and neglect of identifying responsibilities. Although it is a long reiterative process in which all stakeholders need to be included in order to assess all ethical issues sufficiently, this process is crucial to achieving the intended goal of a technology. Having laid out the landscape and problems of ethics around technologies for workplace health promotion, we believe policies and standards, and a very overdue discussion about these, are needed.
Co-Degeneracy and Co-Treewidth: Using the Complement to Solve Dense Instances

Clique-width and treewidth are two of the most important and useful graph parameters, and several problems can be solved efficiently when restricted to graphs of bounded clique-width or treewidth. Bounded treewidth implies bounded clique-width, but not vice versa. Problems like Longest Cycle , Longest Path , MaxCut , Edge Dominating Set , and Graph Coloring are fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by the treewidth, but they cannot be solved in FPT time when parameterized by the clique-width unless FPT = W[1], as shown by Fomin, Golovach, Lokshtanov, and Saurabh [SIAM J. Comput. 2010, SIAM J. Comput. 2014]. For a given problem that is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by treewidth, but intractable when parameterized by clique-width, there may exist infinite families of instances of bounded clique-width and unbounded treewidth where the problem can be solved efficiently. In this work, we initiate a systematic study of the parameters co-treewidth (the treewidth of the complement of the input graph) and co-degeneracy (the degeneracy of the complement of the input graph). We show that Longest Cycle , Longest Path , and Edge Dominating Set are FPT when parameterized by co-degeneracy. On the other hand, Graph Coloring is para-NP-complete when parameterized by co-degeneracy but FPT when parameterized by the co-treewidth. Concerning MaxCut , we give an FPT algorithm parameterized by co-treewidth, while we leave open the complexity of the problem parameterized by co-degeneracy. Additionally, we show that Precoloring Extension is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by co-treewidth, while this problem is known to be W[1]-hard when parameterized by treewidth. These results give evidence that co-treewidth is a useful width parameter for handling dense instances of problems for which an FPT algorithm for clique-width is unlikely to exist. Finally, we develop an algorithmic framework for co-degeneracy based on the notion of Bondy-Chvátal closure.
Information Cascades Prediction With Graph Attention

The cascades prediction aims to predict the possible information diffusion path in the future based on cascades of the social network. Recently, the existing researches based on deep learning have achieved remarkable results, which indicates the great potential to support cascade prediction task. However, most prior arts only considered either cascade features or user relationship network to predict cascade, which leads to the performance limitation because of the lack of unified modeling for the potential relationship between them. To that end, in this paper, we propose a recurrent neural network model with graph attention mechanism, which constructs a seq2seq framework to learn the spatial-temporal cascade features. Specifically, for user spatial feature, we learn potential relationship among users based on social network through graph attention network. Then, for temporal feature, a recurrent neural network is built to learn their structural context in several different time intervals based on timestamp with a time-decay attention. Finally, we predict the next user with the latest cascade representation which obtained by above method. Experimental results on two real-world datasets show that our model achieves better performance than the baselines on the both evaluation metrics of HITS and mean average precision.
Natural Killer Cells as Key Mediators in Type I Diabetes Immunopathology

The immunopathology of type I diabetes (T1D) presents a complicated case in part because of the multifactorial origin of this disease. Typically, T1D is thought to occur as a result of autoimmunity toward islets of Langerhans, resulting in the destruction of insulin-producing cells (β cells) and thus lifelong reliance on exogenous insulin. However, that explanation obscures much of the underlying mechanism, and the actual precipitating events along with the associated actors (latent viral infection, diverse immune cell types and their roles) are not completely understood. Notably, there is a malfunctioning in the regulation of cytotoxic CD8+ T cells that target endocrine cells through antigen-mediated attack. Further examination has revealed the likelihood of an imbalance in distinct subpopulations of tolerogenic and cytotoxic natural killer (NK) cells that may be the catalyst of adaptive immune system malfunction. The contributions of components outside the immune system, including environmental factors such as chronic viral infection also need more consideration, and much of the recent literature investigating the origins of this disease have focused on these factors. In this review, the details of the immunopathology of T1D regarding NK cell disfunction is discussed, along with how those mechanisms stand within the context of general autoimmune disorders. Finally, the rarer cases of latent autoimmune, COVID-19 (viral), and immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) induced diabetes are discussed as their exceptional pathology offers insight into the evolution of the disease as a whole.
Investigation of Body Development in Growing Holstein Heifers With Special Emphasis on Body Fat Development Using Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis

This study analyzed skeletal development, body condition, and total body fat development of growing heifers. A total of 144 female primiparous Holstein cattle from four commercial dairy farms with different degrees of stillbirth rates were examined during the rearing period. This included measurements in body condition, fat tissue, metabolic, and endocrine factors. Pelvic measurements and the sacrum height were analyzed to assess skeletal development. The body condition was classified via body condition scoring, bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), back fat thickness measurements, and the body mass. For the first time, BIA was used as an appropriate method to evaluate the fat tissue content of cattle throughout the rearing period. This analysis technique can be performed on heifers aged 8–15 months. Throughout that period, the fat content decreased while the skeletal development increased. In addition, high free fatty acid concentrations in serum of the animals with high frame development were found, supporting our hypothesis that stored energy of body fat deposits is used for skeletal growth. Furthermore, we were able to demonstrate complex endocrine relationships between fat metabolism and skeletal growth by using specific markers, such as leptin, insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1), and estradiol (E2). Food analysis showed high crude protein (CP) levels in the total mixed ration above recommendation for daily protein intake of all farms. However, there was a positive correlation between CP and the body frame measurements in our study. In summary, we established a novel regression formula for BIA analysis (“BIA-Heine”) in heifers to evaluate the body composition throughout different ages and physiological stages in the development of heifers. This special formula allows the evaluation of fat tissue without a whole-body analysis and therefore provides an innovative technique for animal welfare support.
Bioavailability of Various Phosphorus Fractions and Their Seasonality in a Eutrophic Estuary in the Southern Baltic Sea – A Laboratory Approach

Phosphorus (P) is a major driver of eutrophication, especially in anthropogenically impacted coastal waters, and determining its bioavailability is important for providing a good estimation of the eutrophication potential in aquatic systems. Therefore, we observed the bioavailability of P in four laboratory experiments on water samples collected in March, June, September, and December 2018. In the experiments, all P fractions of the sampled water were investigated in three treatments (“unfiltered” and “10 μm”- and “1.2 μm”-filtered). The bioavailability (utilization by organisms within several days) ranged from 9 to 100% for dissolved P, and 34 to 100% for particulate P. However, one of the particulate P fractions was bound in biomass and therefore was not directly bioavailable. The conditions in the March experiment represented a natural spring bloom with a residual potential for planktonic growth. In June and September, the nutrients needed for growth were depleted in the different treatments. In December, a spring bloom was simulated by the laboratory conditions. Preferential P uptake by a specific group of organisms could not be observed directly, although a trend of higher utilization of dissolved P by heterotrophic bacteria was observed. In conclusion, the bioavailable P (sum of dissolved P fractions and one particulate P fraction) accounted for between 20 and 94% of the total P. Consequently, our experiments demonstrated that the commonly monitored P fractions lead to an underestimation of the bioavailable P and thus of potential for eutrophication in aquatic systems, too.