Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accurate segmentation of breast tumor in ultrasound images through joint training and refined segmentation

Objective. This paper proposes an automatic breast tumor segmentation method for two-dimensional (2D) ultrasound images, which is significantly more accurate, robust, and adaptable than common deep learning models on small datasets. Approach. A generalized joint training and refined segmentation framework (JR) was established, involving a joint training module (J module ) and a refined segmentation module (R module ). In J module , two segmentation networks are trained simultaneously, under the guidance of the proposed Jocor for Segmentation (JFS) algorithm. In R module , the output of J module is refined by the proposed area first (AF) algorithm, and marked watershed (MW) algorithm. The AF mainly reduces false positives, which arise easily from the inherent features of breast ultrasound images, in the light of the area, distance, average radical derivative (ARD) and radical gradient index (RGI) of candidate contours. Meanwhile, the MW avoids over-segmentation, and refines segmentation results. To verify its performance, the JR framework was evaluated on three breast ultrasound image datasets. Image dataset A contains 1036 images from local hospitals. Image datasets B and C are two public datasets, containing 562 images and 163 images, respectively. The evaluation was followed by related ablation experiments. Main results. The JR outperformed the other state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods on the three image datasets, especially on image dataset B. Compared with the SOTA methods, the JR improved true positive ratio (TPR) and Jaccard index (JI) by 1.5% and 3.2%, respectively, and reduces (false positive ratio) FPR by 3.7% on image dataset B. The results of the ablation experiments show that each component of the JR matters, and contributes to the segmentation accuracy, particularly in the reduction of false positives. Significance. This study successfully combines traditional segmentation methods with deep learning models. The proposed method can segment small-scale breast ultrasound image datasets efficiently and effectively, with excellent generalization performance.
The vacuole shapes the nucleus and the ribosomal DNA loop during mitotic delays

Chromosome structuring and condensation is one of the main features of mitosis. Here, Matos-Perdomo et al show how the nuclear envelope reshapes around the vacuole to give rise to the outstanding ribosomal DNA loop in budding yeast. The ribosomal DNA (rDNA) array of Saccharomyces cerevisiae has served as a model to address chromosome organization. In cells arrested before anaphase (mid-M), the rDNA acquires a highly structured chromosomal organization referred to as the rDNA loop, whose length can double the cell diameter. Previous works established that complexes such as condensin and cohesin are essential to attain this structure. Here, we report that the rDNA loop adopts distinct presentations that arise as spatial adaptations to changes in the nuclear morphology triggered during mid-M arrests. Interestingly, the formation of the rDNA loop results in the appearance of a space under the loop (SUL) which is devoid of nuclear components yet colocalizes with the vacuole. We show that the rDNA-associated nuclear envelope (NE) often reshapes into a ladle to accommodate the vacuole in the SUL, with the nucleus becoming bilobed and doughnut-shaped. Finally, we demonstrate that the formation of the rDNA loop and the SUL require TORC1, membrane synthesis and functional vacuoles, yet is independent of nucleus–vacuole junctions and rDNA-NE tethering.
The mediating role of psychological needs on the relationship between perceived organizational support and work engagement.

AIM To examine the mediating effect of basic psychological needs on the relationship between perceived organizational support and work engagement among nurses. BACKGROUND The satisfaction of basic psychological needs is crucial for breeding and sustaining individuals' intrinsic motivation. Little is known about the underlying motivational mechanisms that explain the relationship among perceived organizational support, basic psychological needs, and work engagement in a nursing context. METHODS This was a cross-sectional online survey. A sample of 858 nurses from 12 hospitals was surveyed on their perceived organizational support, basic psychological needs, and work engagement. Structural equation models and bootstrapping methods were used to examine the hypotheses. STROBE reporting guidelines were utilized. RESULTS Perceived organizational support was positively associated with basic psychological needs and work engagement. Basic psychological needs were positively associated with work engagement. Basic psychological needs mediated the relationship between perceived organizational and work engagement. CONCLUSION Perceived organizational support may enhance work engagement by fulfilling the basic psychological needs of nurses. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING AND NURSING POLICY Basic psychological needs deserve more attention in nursing organizations. Managers should seek optimal strategies to fulfill nurses' needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness to stimulate their intrinsic motivation to enhance work engagement.
Functional characteristics of the rigid elytra in a bamboo weevil beetle Cyrtotrachelus buqueti

Abstract The bamboo weevil beetle, Cyrtotrachelus buqueti, has evolved a particular flight pattern. When crawling, the beetle folds the flexible hind wings and stuffs under the rigid elytra. During flight, the hind wings are deployed through a series of deployment joints that are passively driven by flapping forces. When the hind wings are fully expanded, the unfolding joint realises self‐locking. At this time, the hind wings act as a folded wing membrane and flap simultaneously with the elytra to generate aerodynamics. The functional characteristics of the elytra of the bamboo weevil beetle were investigated, including microscopic morphology, kinematic properties and aerodynamic forces of the elytra. In particular, the flapping kinematics of the elytra were measured using high‐speed cameras and reconstructed using a modified direct linear transformation algorithm. Although the elytra are passively flapped by the flapping of the hind wings, the analysis shows that its flapping wing trajectory is a double figure‐eight pattern with flapping amplitude and angle of attack. The results show that the passive flapping of elytra produces aerodynamic forces that cannot be ignored. The kinematics of the elytra suggest that this beetle may use well‐known flapping mechanisms such as a delayed stall and clap and fling.
Safety and immunogenicity of the first Kazakh inactivated vaccine for COVID-19

ABSTRACT This article describes the results of a preclinical safety and immunogenicity study of QazCovid-in®, the first COVID-19 vaccine developed in Kazakhstan, on BALB/c mice, rats, ferrets, Syrian hamsters and rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). The study’s safety data suggests that this immunobiological preparation can be technically considered a Class 5 nontoxic vaccine. The series of injections that were made did not produce any adverse effect or any change in the general condition of the model animals’ health, while macroscopy and histology studies identified no changes in the internal organs of the BALB/c mice and rats. This study has demonstrated that a double immunization enhances the growth of antibody titers as assessed by the microneutralization assay (MNA) and the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in a pre-clinical immunogenicity test on animal models. The best GMT results were assessed in MNA and ELISA 7 days after re-vaccination; however, we noted that GMT antibody results in ELISA were lower than in MNA. A comparative GMT assessment after the first immunization and the re-immunization identified significant differences between model animal groups and a growth of GMT antibodies in all of them; also, differences between the gender groups were statistically significant. Moreover, the most marked MNA immune response to the QazCovid-in® vaccine was seen in the Syrian hamsters, while their SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody activity as assessed with ELISA was the lowest.
Reproductive toxicity of maternal exposure to di(2‐ethylhexyl)phthalate and butyl paraben (alone or in association) on both male and female Wistar offspring

Parabens and phthalates are commonly found as contaminants in human fluids and are able to provoke reproductive toxicity, being considered endocrine disruptors. To evaluate the effects of phthalate and paraben, alone or in combination, on reproductive development of the offspring, female pregnant Wistar rats were allocated in six experimental groups: Three control groups (gavage [CG], subcutaneous [CS], and gavage + subcutaneous) received corn oil as vehicle, and the remaining groups were exposed to di(2‐ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) (500 mg/kg, gavage), butyl paraben (BP) (100 mg/kg, subcutaneously), or MIX (DEHP + BP), from Gestational Day 12 until Postnatal Day (PND) 21. The following parameters were assessed on the offspring: anogenital distance and weight at PND 1, nipple counting at PND 13, puberty onset, estrous cycle, weights of reproductive and detoxifying organs, histological evaluation of reproductive organs, and sperm evaluations (counts, morphology, and motility). Female pups from MIX group presented reduced body weight at PND 1, lower AGD, and decreased endometrium thickness. Male animals showed decreased body weight at PND 1 and lower number of Sertoli cells on DEHP and MIX groups, MIX group revealed increase of abnormal seminiferous tubules, DEHP animals presented delayed preputial separation and higher percentage of immotile sperms, and BP males presented diminished number of Leydig cells. In conclusion, the male offspring was more susceptible to DEHP toxicity; even when mixed to paraben, the main negative effects observed seem to be due to antiandrogenic phthalate action. On the other hand, DEHP seems to be necessary to improve the effects of BP on reducing estrogen‐dependent and increasing androgen‐dependent events.
Autonomous Vehicles and their Impact on Parking Search

Parking is a major constraint for car users and therefore an important factor in mode choice decisions. In this paper we introduce a model to simulate parking search behavior for cars within a multiagent transport simulation, including full simulation of all steps of parking search, such as walking to and from the vehicle. This is combined with the capabilities of privately owned autonomous vehicles (AVs), which may park automatically, often in other locations than conventional cars, once they are not in use. Three different strategies for AVs to park are developed: (1) Conventional parking search, (2) parking at a designated AV lot, and (3) empty cruising, where vehicles do not use any parking space, but keep on driving. We apply the simulation model to a residential neighborhood in central Berlin, where parking pressure is generally high and apply different shares of AV usage to the synthetic population used. This allows a detailed evaluation of effects for both AV and conventional vehicle owners. Results suggest that the usage of designated parking lots may be the most beneficial solution for most users, with both vehicle wait times and parking search durations being the lowest.
Challenges and opportunities in downstream separation processes for mesenchymal stromal cells cultured in microcarrier‐based stirred suspension bioreactors

Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) are a promising platform for regenerative medicine applications because of their multilineage differentiation abilities and ease of collection, isolation, and growth ex vivo. To meet the demand for clinical applications, large‐scale manufacturing will be required using three‐dimensional culture platforms in vessels such as stirred suspension bioreactors. As MSCs are an adherent cell type, microcarriers are added to the culture to increase the available surface area for attachment and growth. Although extensive research has been performed on efficiently culturing MSCs using microcarriers, challenges persist in downstream processing, including harvesting, filtration, and volume reduction, which all play a critical role in the translation of cell therapies to the clinic. The objective of this review is to assess the current state of downstream technologies available for microcarrier‐based MSC cultures. This includes a review of current research within the three stages: harvesting, filtration, and volume reduction. Using this information, a downstream process for MSCs is proposed, which can be applied to a wide range of applications.
MultiGran-SMILES: multi-granularity SMILES learning for molecular property prediction

MOTIVATION Extracting useful molecular features is essential for molecular property prediction. Atom-level representation is a common representation of molecules, ignoring the sub-structure or branch information of molecules to some extent, however, it is vice versa for the substring-level representation. Both atom-level and substring-level representations may lose the neighborhood or spatial information of molecules. While molecular graph representation aggregating the neighborhood information of a molecule has a weak ability in expressing the chiral molecules or symmetrical structure. In this paper, we aim to make use of the advantages of representations in different granularities simultaneously for molecular property prediction. To this end, we propose a fusion model named MultiGran-SMILES, which integrates the molecular features of atoms, sub-structures, and graphs from the input. Compared with the single granularity representation of molecules, our method leverages the advantages of various granularity representations simultaneously and adjusts the contribution of each type of representation adaptively for molecular property prediction. RESULTS The experimental results show that our MultiGran-SMILES method achieves state-of-the-art performance on BBBP, LogP, HIV, and ClinTox datasets. For the BACE, FDA, and Tox21 datasets, the results are comparable with the state-of-the-art models. Moreover, the experimental results show that the gains of our proposed method are bigger for the molecules with obvious functional groups or branches. AVAILABILITY The code and data underlying this work are available on GitHub, at https://github. com/Jiangjing0122/MultiGran. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Coordination between Eye Movement and Whisking in Head-Fixed Mice Navigating a Plus Maze

Abstract Navigation through complex environments requires motor planning, motor preparation, and the coordination between multiple sensory–motor modalities. For example, the stepping motion when we walk is coordinated with motion of the torso, arms, head, and eyes. In rodents, movement of the animal through the environment is coordinated with whisking. Even head-fixed mice navigating a plus maze position their whiskers asymmetrically with the bilateral asymmetry signifying the upcoming turn direction. Here we report that, in addition to moving their whiskers, on every trial mice also move their eyes conjugately in the direction of the upcoming turn. Not only do mice move their eyes, but they coordinate saccadic eye movement with the asymmetric positioning of the whiskers. Our analysis shows that asymmetric positioning of whiskers predicted the turn direction that mice will make at an earlier stage than eye movement. Consistent with these results, our observations also revealed that whisker asymmetry increases before saccadic eye movement. Importantly, this work shows that when rodents plan for active behavior, their motor plans can involve both eye and whisker movement. We conclude that, when mice are engaged in and moving through complex real-world environments, their behavioral state can be read out in the movement of both their whiskers and eyes.
Regulatory T-cell therapy approaches

Summary Regulatory T cells (Tregs) have enormous therapeutic potential to treat a variety of immunopathologies characterized by aberrant immune activation. Adoptive transfer of ex vivo expanded autologous Tregs continues to progress through mid- to late-phase clinical trials in several disease spaces and has generated promising preliminary safety and efficacy signals to date. However, the practicalities of this strategy outside of the clinical trial setting remain challenging. Here, we review the current landscape of regulatory T-cell therapy, considering emergent approaches and technologies presenting novel ways to engage Tregs, and reflect on the progress necessary to deliver their therapeutic potential to patients.
Invariable resistance of conductive nanocomposite over 30% strain

The dependence of the electrical resistance on materials’ geometry determines the performance of conductive nanocomposites. Here, we report the invariable resistance of a conductive nanocomposite over 30% strain. This is enabled by the in situ–generated hierarchically structured silver nanosatellite particles, realizing a short interparticle distance (4.37 nm) in a stretchable silicone rubber matrix. Furthermore, the barrier height is tuned to be negligible by matching the electron affinity of silicone rubber to the work function of silver. The stretching results in the electron flow without additional scattering in the silicone rubber matrix. The transport is changed to quantum tunneling if the barrier height is gradually increased by using different matrix polymers with smaller electron affinities, such as ethyl vinyl acetates and thermoplastic polyurethane. The tunneling current decreases with increasing strain, which is accurately described by the Simmons approximation theory. The tunable transport in nanocomposites provides an advancement in the design of stretchable conductors.
Data acquisition for an SiPM based muon detector

Tomeasure cosmic rays at the highest energies, ground based detectors sparsely covering an area of several thousand square kilometers to detect cosmic ray induced air showers are used. One of those experiments is the Pierre Auger Observatory, which is currently being upgraded for a better determination of the muonic component in the showers to allow a better identification of the type of primary particle. For this upgrade multiple different detector concepts and designs were proposed. One of those proposals is the Aachen Muon Detector (AMD), which is a tiled scintillator detector with silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) as light sensors. To digitize the SiPM signals the EASIROC chip is used, which allows to read out 32 SiPMs and adjusting of their supply voltage with a low power consumption. The complete readout electronics, including the power supply unit as well as the firmware and software needed for operation, are described in this thesis. Furthermore, characterization measurements of the electronics and first measurements with the detector system are presented.
Bridging 50 Years of Theoretical and Applied Cross-Cultural Psychology: Contributions of IACCP and JCCP

Over the course of 50 years, the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) and its flagship journal, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (JCCP), have been lynchpins in the relationship between theory and practice. We provide evidence that cross-cultural psychology, as practiced by members of the IACCP, performs an essential bridging function between theoretical psychology and applied psychology. Employing survey data of IACCP members, bibliometric analyses of core members’ publication history, and of the citation patterns of JCCP and other journals, we reveal the extent to which IACCP members contribute to applied psychology and how JCCP contributes to the research published in applied psychology journals. We further review strategies and controversies extant in teaching theoretical and applied cross-cultural psychology to university undergraduate and graduate students in the service of preparing them to live and work in a globalized world. Finally, we look at research traditions, issues, and prospects of a key applied field to which cross-cultural psychology contributes—cross-cultural training.
Four Decades of Challenges by Culture to Mainstream Psychology: Finding Ways Forward

Over 5 days at the Nag’s Head Conference Center, USA in 1987, social and cross-cultural psychologists discussed what would be required if research relating to culture were to gain greater attention from psychology in general, and in particular from what was perceived at the time as its mainstream. The criteria for gaining greater credibility laid down by three leading social psychologists proved daunting in relation to the cross-cultural work presented at the meeting but subsequently inspired cross-culturalists to “raise their game. ” In this paper, we describe these crucial challenges and how they have been addressed more recently by cross-cultural psychologists. We assess the extent to which studies focused on cultural differences are now thoughtfully represented in social, personality, and organizational psychology by briefly surveying the content of a single year’s issues of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of International Business Studies, and the Journal of Personality in relation to the concurrent content of the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. We identify the perils of assimilation to psychology in general by diluting the concept of culture and by tyrannizing research with over-specified criteria of statistical rectitude. We also identify studies published in top-rated journals that have nonetheless advanced our field. We reiterate the need for defensible measures of cultural difference and methods for identifying and examining them as a basis for multi-level explanations of cultural effects and cultural change. We conclude by proposing a gold standard for assaying cross-cultural studies of psychological processes and outcomes.
Origins and control of polarization effects in single-mode fibers (A)

The polarization state of light in single-mode fibers is very sensitive to any perturbation which is not symmetric about the fiber axis. While this is a source of noise, drift, or signal fading in some applications, it can also be exploited in novel guided-wave devices. The basic birefringences that couple the two modes and change the polarization state along the fiber are reviewed. The three cases of uniform, phase-matched, and random coupling are considered. Polarization preservation in both low- and high-birefringence fibers is achieved by reducing this coupling. In addition to polarization-state changes, bireftingent fibers can quickly reduce the polarization degree of nonmonochromatic light if both modes are excited, a characteristic that greatly simplifies evaluation of the degree of polarization preservation in these fibers. Current evaluations of the birefringence and the polarization-holding ability of state-of-the-art fibers are discussed, and it is concluded that fibers with good polarization-holding properties are becoming available.