Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phytochemical and In-Vivo Anti-Arthritic Significance of Aloe thraskii Baker in Combined Therapy with Methotrexate in Adjuvant-Induced Arthritis in Rats

Unlike other widely known Aloe species used for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, this species suffers from a lack of sufficient studies on its biological and chemical characters. This is what drove us to perform this work to evaluate the in vivo anti-arthritic potential of its leaf ethanolic extract. The in vivo anti-arthritic activity of the leaf ethanolic extract at 100 and 200 mg/kg/day b.wt. was evaluated alone and in combination with methotrexate (MTX) using complete Freund’s adjuvant. Serum levels of rheumatoid factor, anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (anti-CCP), cytokines pro-inflammatory marker, inflammatory mediator serum levels, and oxidative stress mediators were analyzed, in addition to liver function. Orientin, isoorientin, β-sitosterol, its palmitate and its glucoside were isolated. The combined therapy of MTX and the leaf ethanolic extract (especially at 200 mg/kg b.wt.) group showed better activity compared to MTX alone. Moreover, the combined therapy provided additional benefits in lowering the liver toxicity by comparison to MTX alone. We concluded that a synergetic combination of the leaf ethanolic extract and MTX is beneficial in the management of rheumatoid arthritis with fewer side effects on liver function, as well as the possibility of the leaf extract to stand alone as an effective natural anti-arthritic agent.
Are Sex Differences in Human Brain Structure Associated With Sex Differences in Behavior?

On average, men and women differ in brain structure and behavior, raising the possibility of a link between sex differences in brain and behavior. But women and men are also subject to different societal and cultural norms. We navigated this challenge by investigating variability of sex-differentiated brain structure within each sex. Using data from the Queensland Twin IMaging study (n = 1,040) and Human Connectome Project (n = 1,113), we obtained data-driven measures of individual differences along a male–female dimension for brain and behavior based on average sex differences in brain structure and behavior, respectively. We found a weak association between these brain and behavioral differences, driven by brain size. These brain and behavioral differences were moderately heritable. Our findings suggest that behavioral sex differences are, to some extent, related to sex differences in brain structure but that this is mainly driven by differences in brain size, and causality should be interpreted cautiously.
Sedation and analgesia in critically ill patients with COVID-19: a cohort retrospective study

Introduction: The global pandemic of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) began in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and spread worldwide. This retrospective study summarizes clinical experience and analgo-sedation treatment used for this novel epidemic in an Italian ICU between February to May 2020. Methods: This is a retrospective trial of 72 patients with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) admitted to ICU between February15, 2020 and May 15, 2020. Main Outcomes are demographic, clinical data (age, sex, medical comorbidities, respiratory supports, positive end-expiratory pressure values (PEEP), fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO2), arterial partial pressure of oxygen (PaO2), sedatives and analgesic drugs, their dosage and way of administration, medical treatments and patients mortality), ventilation strategies, sedation management in ICUs and patient mortality. Results: The mean age of the 72 patients included in the study was 69 years (SD ±12), 77% were male. All patients required respiratory support and sedation management according to different techniques of ventilation: 100% received deep sedation (RASS -4) before intubation and invasive mechanical ventilation and 19% received light sedation (RASS -1) and noninvasive ventilation). Conclusions: Of the 72 patients admitted in ICUs, 92% died. A total of 608 patients admitted to the AORN dei Colli “Naples” with confirmed COVID-19. In this restrospective study we have analyzed 72 (out of 608) patients that were admitted to intensive care due to worsening clinical conditions. All patients required tracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation with deep sedation (RASS -4), while only 19%(patients required light sedation so RASS -1) were subsequentely swiched to light sedation because of the need of compliance with non-invasive ventilation. Sedation was obtained with propofol, remifentanil, midazolam and dexmedetomidine, according to hospital guidelines.
News media narratives of Covid-19 across 20 countries: Early global convergence and later regional divergence

Background Seldom in history does one get a ‘front row seat’—with large-scale dynamic data—on how online news media narratives shift with a global pandemic. News media narratives matter because they shape societal perceptions and influence the core tent poles of our society, from the economy to elections. Given its importance—and with the benefit of hindsight—we provide a systematic framework to analyze news narratives of Covid-19, laying the groundwork to evaluate policy and risk communications. Objectives We leverage a 10-billion-word-database of online news, taken from over 7,000 English newspapers and magazines across 20 countries, culminating in 28 million articles. First, we track the volume of Covid-19 conversations across 20 countries from before to during the pandemic (Oct’19 to May’20). Second, we distill the phases of global pandemic narratives, and elucidate regional differences. Methods To track the volume of Covid-19 narratives, we identified 10 target terms—Coronavirus, Covid-19, Covid, nCoV, SARS-CoV-2, Wuhan Virus, Virus, Disease, Epidemic, Pandemic—and tracked their combined monthly prevalence across eight months from October 2019 through May 2020. Globally, across 20 countries, we identified 18,042,855 descriptors of the target terms. Further, these descriptors were analysed with natural language processing models to generate the top five topics of Covid-19 that were labelled by two independent researchers. This process was repeated across six continents to distil regional topics. Results Our model found four phases of online news media narratives: Pre-pandemic, Early, Peak and Recovery. Pre-pandemic narratives (Oct’19–Dec’19) were divergent across regions with Africa focused on monkeypox, Asia on dengue fever, and North America on Lyme disease and AIDS. Early (Jan–Feb’20) and Peak Pandemic (Mar–May’20) evidenced a global convergence, reflecting the omnipresence of Covid-19. The brief transition from early to peak pandemic narratives underscored the pandemic’s rapid spread. Emerging from the embers of the pandemic’s peak were nascent recovery words that are regionally divergent—Oceania focused on hope and an uncertain future while North America centered on re-opening the economy and tackling discrimination. Conclusions Practically, we presented a media barometer of Covid-19, and provided a framework to analyse the pandemic’s impact on societal perceptions—laying the important groundwork for policy makers to evaluate policy communications, and design risk communication strategies.
Anti-gout Medications and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease: A Nested Case-Control Study

Introduction: Gout is the leading cause of inflammatory arthritis and is also correlated with multiple comorbidities, including cardiovascular disease (CVD), whose future risk can be lowered by urate-lowering therapy (ULT) in gout patients. It is, however, still not clear whether its effect is associated with the days of usage and the adherence rate of ULT. Methods: Data were collected from Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database. The study period was from 1999/1/1 to 2013/12/31. In addition, patients with newly diagnosed gout from 2000 to 2012 and usage of antigout preparations (allopurinol or benzbromarone) within half a year among age ≥20 years old were enrolled in the study. The outcome of interest is CVD. New diagnosis of CVD after half a year of diagnosis of gout was included in the CVD group. Moreover, conditional logistic regression was used to evaluate the odds ratio of CVD in relation to the days of usage and to the adherence rate of ULT after the adjustment for potentially confounding variables. Results: A total of 3,706 gout patients with and without CVD have been included in the final analysis after a 1:1 propensity score that matched for age, sex, comorbidities, aspirin, and statin. The days of usage of allopurinol was <180 days and benzbromarone, in its turn, presupposed a higher risk of CVD. The adherence rate of allopurinol and benzbromarone at ≥ 0.7 both have a lower CVD risk: allopurinol (adjusted OR: 0.66 95% CI: 0.46–0.96), benzbromarone (adjusted OR: 0.68 95% CI: 0.50–0.91). The subgroup analysis revealed an adherence rate of ≥0.7 of ULT with a lower CVD was only found to be present in males and at age <65. Furthermore, the correlations were more pronounced in the ischemic heart disease subgroup than in the cerebrovascular disease group. Conclusion: This study reveals that gout patients taking ULT (allopurinol and benzbromarone) with an adherence rate of ≥0.7 are at a lower risk of developing CVD, especially with a younger age (<65) and if they are male. On top of this, the benefit is more pronounced in ischemic heart disease. Despite further prospective trials needing to be warranted to confirm our findings, health care providers may, bearing these conclusions in mind, emphasize the importance of adherence to ULT in gout patients.
PF : Website Fingerprinting Attack Using Probabilistic Topic Model

Website fingerprinting (WFP) attack enables identifying the websites a user is browsing even under the protection of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs). Previous studies demonstrate that most machine-learning attacks need multiple types of features as input, thus inducing tremendous feature engineering work. However, we show the other alternative. That is, we present Probabilistic Fingerprinting (PF), a new website fingerprinting attack that merely leverages one type of features. They are produced by using a mathematical model PWFP that combines a probabilistic topic model with WFP for the first time, due to a finding that a plain text and the sequence file generated from a traffic instance are essentially the same. Experimental results show that the proposed new features are more distinguishing than the existing features. In a closed-world setting, PF attains a better accuracy performance (99.79% at most) than prior attacks on various datasets gathered in the scenarios of Shadowsocks, SSH, and TLS, respectively. Besides, even when the number of training instances drops to as few as 4, PF still reaches an accuracy of above 90%. In the more realistic open-world setting, PF attains a high true positive rate (TPR) and Bayes detection rate (BDR), and a low false positive rate (FPR) in all evaluations, which outperforms the other attacks. These results highlight that it is meaningful and possible to explore new features to improve the accuracy of WFP attacks.
Coverage by Russian Media Outlets of the Trade War Between China and the USA

In recent years, the trade war between China and USA became one of the most important crises not only in global economic relations, but also in the international political agenda. The trade war between the world’s major powers also involved the core countries from differing regions, due to the significance of the trading streams between China and the USA. Therefore, Russia as one of the core countries was also affected by this trade war and attempted to develop own policy and economic relations towards the two sides. The current research is devoted to analysing the Russian media coverage of the trade war between China and USA based on content analysis and the implication of structural differences existing in the current Russian media system into war and peace journalism paradigms.
Occurrence and bacterial loads of Bartonella and haemotropic Mycoplasma species in privately owned cats and dogs and their fleas from East and Southeast Asia

Bartonella spp. and haemoplasmas are pathogens of veterinary and medical interest with ectoparasites mainly involved in their transmission. This study aimed at molecular detection of Bartonella spp. and haemoplasmas in cats (n = 93) and dogs (n = 96), and their related fleas (n = 189) from countries in East and Southeast Asia. Ctenocephalides felis was the dominant flea species infesting both cats (97.85%) and dogs (75%) followed by Ctenocephalides orientis in dogs (18.75%) and rarely in cats (5.2%). Bartonella spp. DNA was only detected in blood samples of flea‐infested cats (21.51%) (p < .0001, OR = 27.70) with Bartonella henselae more frequently detected than Bartonella clarridgeiae in cat hosts (15.05%, 6.45%) and their associated fleas (17.24%, 13.79%). Out of three Bartonella‐positive fleas from dogs, two Ct. orientis fleas carried Bartonella vinsonii subsp. berkhoffii and Bartonella clarridgeiae, while the 3rd flea (Ct. felis) carried Candidatus Bartonella merieuxii. Felines represented a risk factor for Bartonella spp. infections, where fleas collected from cats (32.25%) presented an increased likelihood for Bartonella spp. occurrence (p < .0001, OR = 14.76) than those from dogs (3.13%). Moreover, when analysing infectious status, higher Bartonella spp. DNA loads were detected in fleas from bacteraemic cats compared to those from non‐bacteraemic ones (p < .05). The haemoplasma occurrence was 16.13% (15/93) and 4.17% (4/96) in cat and dog blood samples from different countries (i.e. Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand), with cats more at risk of infection (p < .01, OR = 5.96) than dogs. Unlike Bartonella spp. , there was no evidence for flea involvement in the hemoplasmas' transmission cycle, thus supporting the hypothesis of non‐vectorial transmission for these pathogens. In conclusion, client‐owned cats and dogs living in East and Southeast Asia countries are exposed to vector‐borne pathogens with fleas from cats playing a key role in Bartonella spp. transmission, thus posing a high risk of infection for humans sharing the same environment.
Time-varying Stock Market Integration and Diversification Opportunities within Developed Markets Using Aggregated Data Approach

This study examines the time-varying feature of Developed stock markets to identify diversification opportunities. For this purpose, we sample 21 developed countries ranging from 2000-2018 from the Pacific Region, Northern Europe, Western Europe, Southern Europe, and G7, with each region consisting of a panel with one home country and other as remaining countries portfolio. We applied Panel co-integration and VECM to test the stock market integration and diversification opportunities in short and long run. Our results indicate few short and long-run diversification opportunities for international investors in the post-crisis period that are more relevant. Canada, Japan, and Italy have long-run opportunities for diversification in the G7, and only Japan has short-run opportunities for diversification. Hong Kong and Japan have short-and long-run opportunities for diversification in the Pacific region. In the Northern Europe region, we have only the short-run diversification option of the UK and Norway. In the Western European Region, Australia and Switzerland have long-term diversification. There are no long and short-run diversification opportunities in the Southern European Region in the post-crisis period.
Time Varying Impact of Oil Prices on Stock Returns: Evidence from Developing Markets

In this study, we provide new evidence on the relationship between crude oil, exchange rate and stock returns before and after the official announcement of COVID-19 as a pandemic by WHO. Data for the present study consists of the major stock indices of ten emerging markets (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan and Thailand), their exchange rates, And prices of Brent crude oil. We employ panel vector autoregression and provide evidence based on panel granger causality, impulse response function and forecast error variance decomposition. Panel granger causality reveals that after the declaration of COVID-19 as pandemic, interdependence between oil price changes and stock returns has increased. We find positive (negative) impact of oil market (exchange rate) shocks on stock returns. Analysis of impulse response suggests that during pandemic shocks to crude oil, exchange rate and stock market have larger and longer own and cross-market impact. Thus, there is a need for sharing timely and adequate information to minimize uncertainties in financial and commodity markets. This would benefit investors by lessening the transmission of shocks during the times of crisis.
"Please help share!": Security and Privacy Advice on Twitter during the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine

—The Russian Invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 resulted in a rapidly changing (cyber) threat environment. This changing environment incentivized the sharing of security advice on social media, both for the Ukrainian population, as well as against Russian cyber attacks at large. Previous research found a signiﬁcant inﬂuence of online security advice on end users. We collected 8,920 tweets posted after the Russian Invasion of Ukraine and examined 1,228 in detail, including qualitatively coding 232 relevant tweets and 140 linked documents for security and privacy advice. We identiﬁed 221 unique pieces of advice which we divided into seven categories and 21 subcategories, and advice targeted at individuals or organizations. We then compared our ﬁndings to those of prior studies, ﬁnding noteworthy similarities. Our results conﬁrm a lack of advice prioritization found by prior work, which seems especially detrimental during times of crisis. In addition, we ﬁnd offers for individual support to be a valuable tool and identify misinformation as a rising threat in general and for security advice speciﬁcally.
“I think maybe I want to lend the notes from you”: Development of request modification in graduate learners

This study examines the development of request modification strategies in eight graduate students from Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan in a British university. The study employed open role plays (Kasper 2008) to collect interlanguage data on three occasions over eight months. The role plays comprised two sociocontextually varied (status unequal, status equal) situations and sought to investigate (i) the patterns of request strategy development in relation to internal and external modification and (ii) the effect of situational variation on the selection of modification strategies. Qualitative data in the form of retrospective interviews informed on learners’ states of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge in pragmatic development. Comparison with baseline data indicated convergence to, and divergence from native speaker patterns of request modification over time.
A Cross-Sectional Study of the Perceived Stress, Well-Being and Their Relations with Work-Related Behaviours among Hong Kong School Leaders during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The health and well-being of school leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic have been largely neglected compared to the health and well-being of students and teachers. This study assessed the magnitude of perceived stress and well-being and the associated factors, including number of working hours, work-related sense of coherence (work-SoC), perceived stress, self-endangering work behaviour, secondary burnout symptoms, and satisfaction with work, among school leaders in Hong Kong, China during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-sectional, survey-based study collected demographic data and mental health measurements from 259 eligible school leaders in Hong Kong from April 2021 to February 2022. Pearson’s correlation analyses, multilinear regression models, and independent-samples Student’s t-tests were performed. The findings revealed that school leaders’ perceived stress was negatively correlated with their well-being (r = −0.544, p < 0.01) and work-related SoC (r = −0.327, p < 0.01) but positively correlated with their extensification of work (r = 0.473, p < 0.01), exhaustion related to work situations (r = 0.559, p < 0.01), and psychosomatic complaints (r = 0.439, p < 0.01). In a model that adjusted for gender and age, student leaders with higher subjective well-being scores had a lower level of perceived stress (B = −0.031; 95% confidence interval [CI], −0.59, −0.02; p = 0.034), whereas leaders in schools with a larger student population had a higher level of perceived stress (B = 0.002; 95% CI, 0.000, 0.003; p = 0.030). School leaders with a higher likelihood of performing the self-endangering work behaviour of ‘intensification of work’ had higher perceived stress levels (B = 1.497; 95% CI, 0.717, 2.278; p < 0.001). School leaders with a higher work-related SoC (B = 4.20; 95% CI, 1.290, 7.106; p = 0.005) had a higher level of well-being. School leaders with higher levels of perceived stress (B = −0.734; 95% CI, −1.423, −0.044; p = 0.037), a higher likelihood of performing the self-endangering work behaviour of ‘extensification of work’ (B = −4.846; 95% CI, −8.543, −1.149; p = 0.010), and a higher score for exhaustion related to work (B = −10.449; 95% CI, −13.864, −7.033; p = 0.000) showed lower levels of well-being. The finding of a high incidence of stress among school leadership justifies the need for more societal attention to the well-being of school leaders in Hong Kong. It is important that policies and initiatives are designed to enhance the well-being of school leaders and that they are supported in leading the management of schools and coping with stress in school settings.
Association of Fc Gamma Receptor 3B Gene Copy Number Variation with Rheumatoid Arthritis Susceptibility

Structural variations such as copy number variants (CNVs) have been associated with multiple autoimmune diseases. In this study, we explored the association of the Fc gamma receptor 3B gene (FCGR3B) copy number variation (CNV) with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) susceptibility and related serological traits in the Pakistani population. We also performed a meta-analysis of four published FCGR3B CNV studies along with the current study. A total of 927 subjects (597 RA cases, 330 healthy controls) were recruited from three rheumatology centers in Pakistan. Anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (anti-CCP) antibodies and rheumatoid factor (RF) were measured in RA patients. FCGR3B copy number was assayed using the TaqMan® CN assay (Hs04211858_cn, Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA) and the copy number was estimated by using CopyCaller® software (version 2.1; Applied Biosystems, USA). Logistic regression was applied to calculate the odds ratio (OR) of RA risk associated with FCGR3B CNV using sex and age as covariates in R. Meta-analysis on four previously published studies and the current study was performed using the random-effect model. We observed a significant association between FCGR3B copy number < 2 and RA susceptibility (OR = 1.53; 95% CI: 1.05 to 2.22; p = 0.0259) and anti-CCP seropositivity (OR 2.56; 95% CI: 1.34 to 4.89; p = 0.0045). A non-significant association of FCGR3B copy number < 2 was also observed between increased rheumatoid factor (RF) seropositivity (OR = 1.74; 95% CI:0.93 to 3.26; p = 0.0816). Meta-analysis on 13,915 subjects (7005 RA cases and 6907 controls) also showed significant association of copy number < 2 with the increased risk of RA (OR = 1.30; 95% CI: 1.07 to 1.56; p = 0.00671). FCGR3B copy number < 2 is associated with increased RA risk and anti-CCP seropositivity.