Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Future Scope of Unmanned Aerial System for Consumer Utilities in Covid-19 pandemic

Drones or ‘the eye in the sky’ is the technology of future that promises contact less, time bound and efficient delivery of services at consumer’s doorstep in times of COVID19 pandemic. Its well-known applications in military and civilian fields are already explored by myriad authors as presented in this work. But there exists a lack of proper categorization of applications of the UAVs to the best of author’s knowledge. This work proposes a model for their proper categorization on the basis of UAVs utilities. It also emphasizes on UAV aided items distribution category by exploring the case study of medicine delivery during COVID-19. The work mentions potential benefits associated with the UAVs deployment during pandemic along with its futuristic applications.
Evalua on of Diagnos c Performance of MDCT Coronary Angiography in Comparison with Conven onal Coronary Angiography

Background: Coronary artery disease is now becoming increasingly prevalent than before especially in younger age groups. We in the current study tried to evaluate the poten al of 128 slice MDCT coronary angiography for the detec on of steno c coronary lesions by comparing the results of computed tomographic coronary angiography to a gold standard set by Conven onal coronary angiography. Methods: A total of n=30 pa ents with clinically suspected Coronary artery disease. They were evaluated with 128 Slice CT Scanner (PHILIPS INGENUITY) and conven onal coronary angiography. All pa ents were examined with a 128 slice MDCT scanner (Philips Ingenuity 128 slice Netherlands) using standard cardiac CT protocol. Gantry rota on me was 400 ms with a half sector acquisi on protocol and mul sector reconstruc on permi ng an effec ve temporal resolu on between 50 and 200 ms depending on pa ent heart rate. Results: In the n=30 Pa ents included in the study with CCA, the n=450 coronary segments included in the study were found to contain a total number of n=138 stenoses among them non-significant stenoses. The accuracy of MDCT detec on of coronary stenoses greater than 50% diameter of vessel lumen is about 94.78. When raising the threshold for stenosis from 50% to 70% of the vessel lumen, so that only hemodynamic relevant stenoses enter the evalua on, the sensi vity decreases from 88%. The MDCT detec on in the pa ent group with heart rates below 60 beats per minute higher values for sensi vity 93% and specificity 97% were observed, compared to sensi vity 87% and specificity 93% of the pa ent group with heart rates above 60 beats per minute. Conclusion:The present study revealed that a high negave predic ve value (98.08%)suggests that 128Slice MDCT coronary angiography is a good screening modality for evalua on of pa ents with mild to intermediate-risk factors who might otherwise require invasive angiography.
3D-City Models: Automatic and Semiautomatic Acquisition Methods

D-city models are becoming an important tool for town planning. Photogrammetry appears to provide the only economic means to acquire truly 3D city data. The paper discusses the current status of automatic and semiautomatic acquisition method. Research in automatic methods for building extraction being increasingly intensive in the last few years has lead to promising results, however, still lacks the performance needed for practical applications. Semiautomatic acquisition methods rely on the ability of the operator to intelligently interpret and select the required information and appear to be ripe for practical implementation.
Expectations and Social Influence Dynamics in Economics

We examine the profitability of different R&D location strategies of firms in a dynamic industry model. Firms engage in imitative and innovative activities in order to improve their products’ quality, which determines their competitiveness. When choosing the set of locations in which to operate firms face a fundamental trade-off: co-locating with competitors’ generates opportunities to improve product quality through imitation, but at the same time it increases the risk of losing one’s competitive edge through outgoing spillovers. Being unable to fully predict competitors’ moves, in making location choices firms rely on heuristics based on the expected present values associated with alternative location patterns. In a positive perspective, our model replicates key stylized facts highlighted in the pertinent empirical literature. On normative ground, we identify industry scenarios in which a firm should enter (not enter) a location even if the expected present value of doing so is negative (positive). Our key contribution is to provide a taxonomy of suitable firm location strategies depending on firm type and industry characteristics in a dynamic environment with endogenous cluster formation.
Reflected Hamiltonian Monte Carlo

We briefly describe the standard Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) method [4, 14] to prepare the machinery needed for Reflected Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (RHMC). Consider a d-dimensional position variable q ∈ R distributed according to a target distribution with an unnormalized density π : R → R. The HMC method augments the position space with an auxiliary momentum variable of the same dimension p ∼ N(p | 0,M), where M ∈ Rd×d is the mass matrix. The Hamiltonian is then defined by H(q,p) ≡ − log π(q) + 12 ⟨p,M −1p⟩. The sampler explores the joint density
EFFECT OF YOGA AND EXERCISES PROGRAM ON SELF CONFIDENCE AND MEMORY STRESS OF SCHOOL STUDENTS

In today's modern world, students are subjected to stress. Students are unable to concentrate on their studies. The importance of memory in human existence, and therefore in the life of a student, cannot be overstated. Memory and education are intertwined and interdependent. The students who were exposed to yoga showed improved memory and self-confidence, as well as a reduction in stress levels afterward. Yoga not only helps you relax, but it also has been shown to help with the symptoms of mental illness. Yoga has been shown to improve students' capacity to concentrate and focus, as well as their memory. It is critical for students' health and well-being that they engage in physical activity on a regular basis in their daily life. Yoga is a mind-body practice that combines physical postures, breathing exercises, and meditation practices. A growing body of evidence shows that regular yoga practice aids in the development of the body as well as the mind and soul, resulting in a healthier and happier existence. Students with high intelligence outperformed those with low intelligence, indicating that there is a relationship between yoga treatment and intelligence in terms of memory, selfconfidence, and stress scores. Yoga has no statistically significant effect on memory, stress, or selfconfidence, regardless of the gender of the practitioner.
STRESS AND BURDEN IN THE CONTEXT OF THEIR COPING

The current society puts pressure on each of us. More and more stressors appear to have their source in the environment and work in our everyday lives. People`s reactions to these stressors vary a lot. In our article, we do not aim to uncover stress more deeply in the context of its theoretical definition nor to analyse stressors and their consequences. We focused on the elementary perception of coping with stress using various coping strategies.
Halvade somatic: Somatic variant calling with Apache Spark

Abstract Background The accurate detection of somatic variants from sequencing data is of key importance for cancer treatment and research. Somatic variant calling requires a high sequencing depth of the tumor sample, especially when the detection of low-frequency variants is also desired. In turn, this leads to large volumes of raw sequencing data to process and hence, large computational requirements. For example, calling the somatic variants according to the GATK best practices guidelines requires days of computing time for a typical whole-genome sequencing sample. Findings We introduce Halvade Somatic, a framework for somatic variant calling from DNA sequencing data that takes advantage of multi-node and/or multi-core compute platforms to reduce runtime. It relies on Apache Spark to provide scalable I/O and to create and manage data streams that are processed on different CPU cores in parallel. Halvade Somatic contains all required steps to process the tumor and matched normal sample according to the GATK best practices recommendations: read alignment (BWA), sorting of reads, preprocessing steps such as marking duplicate reads and base quality score recalibration (GATK), and, finally, calling the somatic variants (Mutect2). Our approach reduces the runtime on a single 36-core node to 19.5 h compared to a runtime of 84.5 h for the original pipeline, a speedup of 4.3 times. Runtime can be further decreased by scaling to multiple nodes, e.g., we observe a runtime of 1.36 h using 16 nodes, an additional speedup of 14.4 times. Halvade Somatic supports variant calling from both whole-genome sequencing and whole-exome sequencing data and also supports Strelka2 as an alternative or complementary variant calling tool. We provide a Docker image to facilitate single-node deployment. Halvade Somatic can be executed on a variety of compute platforms, including Amazon EC2 and Google Cloud. Conclusions To our knowledge, Halvade Somatic is the first somatic variant calling pipeline that leverages Big Data processing platforms and provides reliable, scalable performance. Source code is freely available.
Coordinated glucocorticoid receptor and MAFB action induces tolerogenesis and epigenome remodeling in dendritic cells

Abstract Glucocorticoids (GCs) exert potent anti-inflammatory effects in immune cells through the glucocorticoid receptor (GR). Dendritic cells (DCs), central actors for coordinating immune responses, acquire tolerogenic properties in response to GCs. Tolerogenic DCs (tolDCs) have emerged as a potential treatment for various inflammatory diseases. To date, the underlying cell type-specific regulatory mechanisms orchestrating GC-mediated acquisition of immunosuppressive properties remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the transcriptomic and epigenomic remodeling associated with differentiation to DCs in the presence of GCs. Our analysis demonstrates a major role of MAFB in this process, in synergy with GR. GR and MAFB both interact with methylcytosine dioxygenase TET2 and bind to genomic loci that undergo specific demethylation in tolDCs. We also show that the role of MAFB is more extensive, binding to thousands of genomic loci in tolDCs. Finally, MAFB knockdown erases the tolerogenic properties of tolDCs and reverts the specific DNA demethylation and gene upregulation. The preeminent role of MAFB is also demonstrated in vivo for myeloid cells from synovium in rheumatoid arthritis following GC treatment. Our results imply that, once directly activated by GR, MAFB plays a critical role in orchestrating the epigenomic and transcriptomic remodeling that define the tolerogenic phenotype.
A profile of research on the parasitic trypanosomatids and the diseases they cause

The parasitic trypanosomatids cause lethal and debilitating diseases, the leishmaniases, Chagas disease, and the African trypanosomiases, with major impacts on human and animal health. Sustained research has borne fruit by assisting efforts to reduce the burden of disease and by improving our understanding of fundamental molecular and cell biology. But where has the research primarily been conducted, and which research areas have received the most attention? These questions are addressed below using publication and citation data from the past few decades.
Immune correlates of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis patients in Zambia stratified by HIV serostatus and level of immunity-a cross-sectional analytical laboratory based study

Background People living with HIV (PLHIV) co-infected with tuberculosis (TB) have a distinct clinical presentation and poorer treatment outcomes compared to HIV-seronegative TB patients. Excluding low CD4 count, innate immune factors associated with TB are not fully elucidated. We, therefore, characterised and compared the expression of IL-6, TNF-α, IFN-γ, and IL-10 in whole blood of treatment naïve TB patients stimulated with heat-killed Mycobacterium tuberculosis stratified by HIV status and the level of CD4 count. Results We recruited 39 HIV seropositive and 31 HIV seronegative TB patients. Median (IQR) age was 35(28–42) years and 31(25–36) years respectively, and a majority had pulmonary tuberculosis i.e. 38(95%) and 30(97%), respectively. The two groups were significantly different in the distribution of CD4 count, 563 [465–702.5 cells/mm3] vs 345 [157–483 cell/mm3] in HIV negative vs HIV positive respectively p = <0.001. Post stimulation, the expression of IL-6 in HIV negative TB patients was significantly higher than in the HIV positive 16,757366 [8,827–23,686 pg/ml] vs. 9,508 [5,514–15,008 pg/ml], respectively; p = 0.0360. TNF-α and IFN-γ were highly expressed in HIV negative TB patients compared to the HIV positive though not statistically significant. We only observed higher expression of IL-6 in HIV negative patients in comparison to the HIV positive when stratified by level of CD4 counts as < 500 and ≥ 500 cell/mm3 for both cohorts. 21,953 [8,990–24,206 pg/ml] vs 9,505 [5,400–15,313 pg/ml], p value = 0.0585 in patients with CD4 count < 500 cell/mm3 and 13,168 [7,087–22,584 pg/ml] vs 10,413 [7,397–14,806 pg/ml], p value = 0.3744 for patients with CD4 count of ≥ 500 cell/mm3 respectively. We found a positive pairwise correlation between TNF-α -alpha and IL-6 in both HIV positive and HIV negative patients, r = 0.61 (95% CI 0.36–0.72; p < 0.0001) and r = 0.48 (95% CI 0.15–0.68; p = 0.005) respectively. The IFNγ/IL-10 ratio was higher in HIV negative when compared to HIV positive individuals, 0.052 [0.0–0.28] vs 0.007 [0–0.32] respectively; p = 0.05759. IL-6 independently reduced the probability of TB/HIV, Adjusted odds ratio 0.99, p value 0.007. Conclusions This study suggests that HIV seronegative TB patients have a higher pro-inflammatory response to MTB than HIV seropositive TB patients. Further, it also shows that the level of CD4 influences immunomodulation. The findings suggest that the difference in cytokine expression may be responsible for the distinct patterns of TB presentation between HIV positive and HIV negative patient.
Thermal stress affects proliferation and differentiation of turkey satellite cells through the mTOR/S6K pathway in a growth-dependent manner

Satellite cells (SCs) are stem cells responsible for post-hatch muscle growth through hypertrophy and in birds are sensitive to thermal stress during the first week after hatch. The mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway, which is highly responsive to thermal stress in differentiating turkey pectoralis major (p. major) muscle SCs, regulates protein synthesis and the activities of SCs through a downstream effector, S6 kinase (S6K). The objectives of this study were: 1) to determine the effect of heat (43°C) and cold (33°C) stress on activity of the mTOR/S6K pathway in SCs isolated from the p. major muscle of one-week-old faster-growing modern commercial (NC) turkeys compared to those from slower-growing Randombred Control Line 2 (RBC2) turkeys, and 2) to assess the effect of mTOR knockdown on the proliferation, differentiation, and expression of myogenic regulatory factors of the SCs. Heat stress increased phosphorylation of both mTOR and S6K in both turkey lines, with greater increases observed in the RBC2 line. With cold stress, greater reductions in mTOR and S6K phosphorylation were observed in the NC line. Early knockdown of mTOR decreased proliferation, differentiation, and expression of myoblast determination protein 1 and myogenin in both lines independent of temperature, with the RBC2 line showing greater reductions in proliferation and differentiation than the NC line at 38° and 43°C. Proliferating SCs are more dependent on mTOR/S6K-mediated regulation than differentiating SCs. Thus, thermal stress can affect breast muscle hypertrophic potential by changing satellite cell proliferation and differentiation, in part, through the mTOR/S6K pathway in a growth-dependent manner. These changes may result in irreversible effects on the development and growth of the turkey p. major muscle.
Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stromal Cells for Cartilage Regeneration Applications

Chondropathies are increasing worldwide, but effective treatments are currently lacking. Mesenchymal stromal cell (MSCs) transplantation represents a promising approach to counteract the degenerative and inflammatory environment characterizing those pathologies, such as osteoarthritis (OA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Umbilical cord- (UC-) MSCs gained increasing interest due to their multilineage differentiation potential, immunomodulatory, and anti-inflammatory properties as well as higher proliferation rates, abundant supply along with no risks for the donor compared to adult MSCs. In addition, UC-MSCs are physiologically adapted to survive in an ischemic and nutrient-poor environment as well as to produce an extracellular matrix (ECM) similar to that of the cartilage. All these characteristics make UC-MSCs a pivotal source for a stem cell-based treatment of chondropathies. In this review, the regenerative potential of UC-MSCs for the treatment of cartilage diseases will be discussed focusing on in vitro, in vivo, and clinical studies.
Dynamic 23S rRNA modification ho5C2501 benefits Escherichia coli under oxidative stress

Abstract Post-transcriptional modifications are added to ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs) to govern ribosome biogenesis and to fine-tune protein biosynthesis. In Escherichia coli and related bacteria, RlhA uniquely catalyzes formation of a 5-hydroxycytidine (ho5C) at position 2501 of 23S rRNA. However, the molecular and biological functions as well as the regulation of ho5C2501 modification remain unclear. We measured growth curves with the modification-deficient ΔrlhA strain and quantified the extent of the modification during different conditions by mass spectrometry and reverse transcription. The levels of ho5C2501 in E. coli ribosomes turned out to be highly dynamic and growth phase-dependent, with the most effective hydroxylation yields observed in the stationary phase. We demonstrated a direct effect of ho5C2501 on translation efficiencies in vitro and in vivo. High ho5C2501 levels reduced protein biosynthesis which however turned out to be beneficial for E. coli for adapting to oxidative stress. This functional advantage was small under optimal conditions or during heat or cold shock, but becomes pronounced in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. Taken together, these data provided first functional insights into the role of this unique 23S rRNA modification for ribosome functions and bacterial growth under oxidative stress.
Early life, life course and gender influences on levels of C-reactive protein among migrant Bangladeshis in the UK

Abstract Background and objectives Humans co-evolved with pathogens, especially helminths, that educate the immune system during development and lower inflammatory responses. The absence of such stimuli in industrialized countries is associated with higher baseline levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) among adults who appear at greater risk for inflammatory disorders. This cross-sectional study examined effects of early life development on salivary CRP levels in 452 British-Bangladeshis who spent varying periods growing up in Bangladesh or UK. We also analyzed how gender and central obesity modulate effects on CRP. We hypothesized that: (i) first-generation Bangladeshis with higher childhood exposure to pathogens would have chronically lower CRP levels than second-generation British-Bangladeshis; (ii) effects would be greater with early childhoods in Bangladesh; (iii) effects by gender would differ; and (iv) increasing obesity would mitigate early life effects. Methodology Saliva samples were assayed for CRP using ELISAs, and anthropometric data collected. Participants completed questionnaires about demographic, socioeconomic, lifestyle and health histories. Data were analyzed using multiple linear regression. Results First-generation migrants who spent early childhoods in mostly rural, unhygienic areas, and moved to UK after age 8, had lower salivary CRP compared to the second-generation. Effects differed by gender, while waist circumference predicted higher CRP levels. CRP increased with years in UK, alongside growing obesity. Conclusions and implications Our study supports the hypothesis that pathogen exposure in early life lowers inflammatory responses in adults. However, protective effects differed by gender and can be eroded by growing obesity across the life course which elevates risks for other inflammatory disorders. Lay Summary: Migrants to the UK who spent early childhoods in less hygienic environments in Bangladesh that help to educate their immune systems had lower levels of the inflammatory marker, C-reactive protein (CRP) compared to migrants who grew up in UK. Both gender and increasing obesity were associated with increased levels of CRP.
Development of a questionnaire to determine the case detection delay of leprosy: A mixed-methods cultural validation study

Background Delay in case detection is a risk factor for developing leprosy-related impairments, leading to disability and stigma. The objective of this study was to develop a questionnaire to determine the leprosy case detection delay, defined as the period between the first signs of the disease and the moment of diagnosis, calculated in total number of months. The instrument was developed as part of the PEP4LEP project, a large-scale intervention study which determines the most effective way to implement integrated skin screening and leprosy post-exposure prophylaxis with a single-dose of rifampicin (SDR-PEP) administration in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Tanzania. Methodology/Principal findings A literature review was conducted and leprosy experts were consulted. The first draft of the questionnaire was developed in Ethiopia by exploring conceptual understanding, item relevance and operational suitability. Then, the first draft of the tool was piloted in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Tanzania. The outcome is a questionnaire comprising nine questions to determine the case detection delay and two annexes for ease of administration: a local calendar to translate the patient’s indication of time to number of months and a set of pictures of the signs of leprosy. In addition, a body map was included to locate the signs. A ‘Question-by-Question Guide’ was added to the package, to provide support in the administration of the questionnaire. The materials will be made available in English, Oromiffa (Afaan Oromo), Portuguese and Swahili via https://www.infolep. org. Conclusions/Significance It was concluded that the developed case detection delay questionnaire can be administered quickly and easily by health workers, while not inconveniencing the patient. The instrument has promising potential for use in future leprosy research. It is recommended that the tool is further validated, also in other regions or countries, to ensure cultural validity and to examine psychometric properties like test-retest reliability and interrater reliability.