Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A 1.1 nW Energy-Harvesting System with 544 pW Quiescent Power for Next-Generation Implants

This paper presents a nW power management unit (PMU) for an autonomous wireless sensor that sustains itself by harvesting energy from the endocochlear potential (EP), the 70-100 mV electrochemical bio-potential inside the mammalian ear. Due to the anatomical constraints inside the inner ear, the total extractable power from the EP is limited close to 1.1-6.25 nW. A nW boost converter is used to increase the input voltage (30-55 mV) to a higher voltage (0.8-1.1 V) usable by CMOS circuits in the sensor. A pW charge pump circuit is used to minimize the leakage in the boost converter. Furthermore, ultralow-power control circuits consisting of digital implementations of input impedance adjustment circuits and zero current switching circuits along with Timer and Reference circuits keep the quiescent power of the PMU down to 544 pW. The designed boost converter achieves a peak power conversion efficiency of 56%. The PMU can sustain itself, and a duty-cyled ultralow-power load while extracting power from the EP of a live guinea pig. The PMU circuits have been implemented on a 0.18- μm CMOS process.
Ameloblastic Carcinoma of the Maxilla: A Rare Case Report and Review of Literature from 1948 to 2021

Ameloblastic carcinoma is a rare malignant neoplasm arising from the odontogenic epithelium. Ameloblastic carcinoma commonly occurs de novo affecting the posterior segments of the mandible. Presently, only less than 100 cases have been reported arising from the maxilla. We report a unique case of maxillary ameloblastic carcinoma in a 68-year-old male with a 5.6 cm positron emission tomography (PET) avid left maxillary sinus mass. The patient underwent a left maxillectomy which revealed hyperchromatic and pleomorphic tumor cells arranged in a nested and trabecular architecture. The tumor cells showed distinct peripheral palisading with reverse polarization. Areas of bone destruction, necrosis, lymphovascular and perineural invasions, as well as atypical mitoses, were identified. Immunohistochemically, the tumor cells were positive for keratin cocktail (AE1/AE3 and CAM 5.2), keratin 19, p40, and weakly positive for MDM2, while negative for calretinin. Molecular analysis revealed wild-type BRAF; however, alterations in CDKN2A/B, MTAP, RB1, SMARCA4, STK11, FGF12, SETD2, and TP53 were present. This histopathologic and molecular profile supported the diagnosis of ameloblastic carcinoma. There has been no evidence of disease recurrence or metastasis eleven months after the initial diagnosis.
Global protected areas seem insufficient to safeguard half of the world's mammals from human-induced extinction

Significance Protected areas are vital for conserving global biodiversity, but we lack information on the extent to which the current global protected area network is able to prevent local extinctions. Here we investigate this by assessing the potential size of individual populations of nearly 4,000 terrestrial mammals within protected areas. We find that many existing protected areas are too small or too poorly connected to provide robust and resilient protection for almost all mammal species that are threatened with extinction and for over 1,000 species that are not currently threatened. These results highlight that global biodiversity targets must reflect ecological realities by incorporating spatial structure and estimates of population viability, rather than relying simply on the total area of land protected.
Quality of life measures and physical activity in childhood systemic lupus erythematosus

Childhood systemic lupus erythematosus (cSLE) is a life-long disease with significant morbidity and mortality, and with associated significant impact on health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Previous literature supports that physical activity has positive impact on HRQOL in patients with chronic diseases, including cSLE. We sought to describe the physical activity of our patients with cSLE and determine the relationship between physical activity, SLE activity, treatment modalities and HRQOL in cSLE. Children ≤18 years of age with cSLE and their parents were enrolled and completed corresponding child and parent Simple Measure of Impact of Lupus Erythematosus in Youngsters© reports (cSMILEY© and pSMILEY©, respectively), and the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Children (PAQ-C) or Adolescents (PAQ-A). Through retrospective chart review, we assessed the SLE Disease Activity Index (SLEDAI) using the SLEDAI-2K assessment tool. Descriptive statistics as well as Pearson’s correlation coefficients were performed with the data obtained. Forty-four children and their parents were enrolled; clinical data, SMILEY© and PAQ-C or PAQ-A scores of cSLE subjects were evaluated. The most frequently reported physical activity modality was walking (61.3%), with mean frequency of 3.7 ± 1.8 days a week, and a median of 3.5 days a week. Although there was no correlation noted between treatment modalities and PAQ-C/PAQ-A, there was weak correlation between SLEDAI and PAQ-C/PAQ-A (Pearson correlation= 0.2, ρ = 0.1, p = 0.9, n = 44). There was a weak correlation between SMILEY total score and PAQ [cSMILEY© and PAQ-C/PAQ-A combined cohorts (Pearson correlation = 0.2, ρ = 0.3, p = 0.07, n = 44), and modest correlation between pSMILEY© scores and PAQ-C/PAQ-A combined cohorts (Pearson correlation = 0.3, ρ = 0.3, p = 0.05, n = 44)]. Our study emphasizes the need for larger samples to understand the prognostic value of activity levels and the extent to which increasing physical activity might be linked to improvements in HRQOL in this vulnerable population.
Question Generation from Concept Maps

In this paper we present a question generation approach suitable for tutorial dialogues. The approach is based on previous psychological theories that hypothesize questions are generated from a knowledge representation modeled as a concept map. Our model semi-automatically extracts concept maps from a textbook and uses them to generate questions. The purpose of the study is to generate and evaluate pedagogically-appropriate questions at varying levels of speciﬁcity across one or more sentences. The evaluation metrics include scales from the Question Generation Shared Task and Evaluation Challenge and a new scale speciﬁc to the pedagogical nature of questions in tutoring
International Remittances and Women’s Reproductive Health Care: Evidence from Pakistan

ABSTRACT This paper determines the effect of international remittances on the healthcare utilization of childbearing mothers in Pakistan using the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) survey, 2018–19. The study reports a significant and positive effect of international remittances on the healthcare outcomes of childbearing mothers. Importantly, the remittance-receiving households have 0.615, 0.208 and 0.306 times the odds of the non-receiving households, utilizing prenatal healthcare, postnatal healthcare, and healthcare decision making, respectively, and all of them are statistically significant. Consequently, the analysis confirms that remittance receiving-households do in fact influence and increase the likelihood of utilizing prenatal healthcare, postnatal healthcare and decisions about medical treatment for women. As regression-based estimation of remittances is prone to selection bias due to the nature of the non-experimental data set, we also used propensity score matching methods, which also confirmed a significant and positive effect of international remittances on healthcare outcomes of the childbearing mothers. Thus, financial support or social development programs by the government or non-governmental organization are pivotal in enhancing the healthcare outcomes and ultimately the living standards of childbearing mothers.
Where Exactly Is the Therapist in Virtual Reality and Game-Based Rehabilitation Applications? A Randomized Controlled Trial in Children with Specific Learning Disability.

Objective: Children with specific learning disability (SLD) experience problems in visual perception that influence academical skills and activities of daily living. Virtual reality and game-based rehabilitation applications are becoming increasingly popular in rehabilitation, including visual perception rehabilitation. However, the usage of commercially available and easily accessible games as intervention tools raises the question whether rehabilitation conducted with these games is really rehabilitation, or just casual gameplay. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the effects of a nonactively supervised (game-based intervention program [GIP]) and an actively supervised (therapist guided game-based intervention program [TGGIP]) on the visual perception skills of children with SLD. Materials and Methods: This study was designed as a single-blind randomized, controlled trial of a TGGIP on visual perception skills in children with SLD compared with the self-oriented, nonsupervised program (GIP). A total of 138 children with SLD participated in the study and were randomly divided into two groups (TGGIP and GIP). Children's visual perception skills were assessed with Motor-Free Visual Perception Test-3. Results: Both groups showed significant improvements in visual perception after the intervention programs (P < 0.05). However, the TGGIP (a supervised and structured intervention program) was significantly more effective in improving the visual perception skills compared with the GIP (a standard, nonsupervised, and unstructured intervention program) (P < 0.05). Conclusion: We think that the TGGIP methodology that we designed acts as a facilitator for therapists in using trademarked, commercially available, and easily accessible games for structured and supervised virtual reality and game-based rehabilitation applications.
Blocking P2X7 receptor with AZ 10606120 exacerbates vascular hyperpermeability and inflammation in murine polymicrobial sepsis

Sepsis is a devastating disease with high morbidity and mortality and no specific treatments. The pathophysiology of sepsis involves a hyperinflammatory response and release of damage‐associated molecular patterns (DAMPs), including adenosine triphosphate (ATP), from activated and dying cells. Purinergic receptors activated by ATP have gained attention for their roles in sepsis, which can be pro‐ or anti‐inflammatory depending on the context. Current data regarding the role of ATP‐specific purinergic receptor P2X7 (P2X7R) in vascular function and inflammation during sepsis are conflicting, and its role on the endothelium has not been well characterized. In this study, we hypothesized that the P2X7R antagonist AZ 10606120 (AZ106) would prevent endothelial dysfunction during sepsis. As proof of concept, we first demonstrated the ability of AZ106 (10 µM) to prevent endothelial dysfunction in intact rat aorta in response to IL‐1β, an inflammatory mediator upregulated during sepsis. Likewise, blocking P2X7R with AZ106 (10 µg/g) reduced the impairment of endothelial‐dependent relaxation in mice subjected to intraperitoneal injection of cecal slurry (CS), a model of polymicrobial sepsis. However, contrary to our hypothesis, AZ106 did not improve microvascular permeability or injury, lung apoptosis, or illness severity in mice subjected to CS. Instead, AZ106 elevated spleen bacterial burden and circulating inflammatory markers. In conclusion, antagonism of P2X7R signaling during sepsis appears to disrupt the balance between its roles in inflammatory, antimicrobial, and vascular function.
Mechanisms of brain activation following naming therapy in aphasia: A systematic review on task-based fMRI studies

Abstract The pattern of brain neuroplasticity after naming therapies in patients with aphasia can be evaluated using task-based fMRI. This article aims to review studies investigating brain reorganization after semantic and phonological-based anomia therapy that used picture-naming fMRI tasks. We searched for those articles that compared the activation of brain areas before and after aphasia therapies in the PubMed and the EMBASE databases from 1993 up to April 2020. All studies (single-cases or group designs) on anomia treatment in individuals with acquired aphasia were reviewed. Data were synthesized descriptively through tables to allow the facilitated comparison of the studies. A total of 14 studies were selected and reviewed. The results of the reviewed studies demonstrated that the naming improvement is associated with changes in the activation of cortical and subcortical brain areas. This review highlights the need for a more systematic investigation of the association between decreased and increased activation of brain areas related to anomia therapy. Also, more detailed information about factors influencing brain reorganization is required to elucidate the neural mechanisms of anomia therapy. Overall, regarding the theoretical and clinical aspects, the number of studies that used intensive protocol is growing, and based on the positive potential of these treatments, they could be suitable for the rehabilitation of people with aphasia.
Community science reveals links between migration arrival timing advance, migration distance, and wing shape.

Substantial global data show that many taxa are shifting their phenologies in response to climate change. For birds, migration arrival dates in breeding regions have been shifting earlier, and there is evidence that both evolutionary adaptation and behavioural flexibility influence these shifts. As more efficient flyers may be able to demonstrate more flexibility to respond to changing conditions during migratory flight, we hypothesize that differences among passerine species in flight efficiency, as reflected by morphology, may be associated with the magnitude of shifts in arrival date in response to climate warming. We applied a logistic model to eighteen years of eBird data to estimate mean arrival date for 44 common passerines migrating to northeast North America. We then used linear mixed-effects models to estimate changes in mean arrival date and compared these changes to morphological proxies for flight efficiency and migratory distance using phylogenetic generalized least squares models. On average, passerine species shifted their arrival dates 0.120 days earlier each year, with 27 of the 44 species shifting to significantly earlier arrival times, and two shifting to significantly later ones. Of the 15 species with non-significant shifts, 13 trended toward earlier arrivals. Longer migration distances and higher wing aspect ratios were associated with greater shifts towards earlier arrivals. Migration distance and aspect ratio were also significantly correlated to each other. This suggests that changes in arrival date are affected by factors pertaining to migratory flight over long distances namely, flight efficiency and migration distance. These traits may be able predict the magnitude of arrival date shift, and by extension identify species that are most at risk to climate change due to inflexible arrival timing.
Benchmarking of Deep Architectures for Segmentation of Medical Images

In recent years, there were many suggestions regarding modifications of the well-known U-Net architecture in order to improve its performance. The central motivation of this work is to provide a fair comparison of U-Net and its five extensions using identical conditions to disentangle the influence of model architecture, model training, and parameter settings on the performance of a trained model. For this purpose each of these six segmentation architectures is trained on the same nine data sets. The data sets are selected to cover various imaging modalities (X-rays, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging), single- and multi-class segmentation problems, and single- and multi-modal inputs. During the training, it is ensured that the data preprocessing, data set split into training, validation, and testing subsets, optimizer, learning rate change strategy, architecture depth, loss function, supervision and inference are exactly the same for all the architectures compared. Performance is evaluated in terms of Dice coefficient, surface Dice coefficient, average surface distance, Hausdorff distance, training, and prediction time. The main contribution of this experimental study is demonstrating that the architecture variants do not improve the quality of inference related to the basic U-Net architecture while resource demand rises.
Sb2Se3 Thin‐Film Solar Cells Exceeding 10% Power Conversion Efficiency Enabled by Injection Vapor Deposition Technology

Binary Sb2Se3 semiconductors are promising as the absorber materials in inorganic chalcogenide compound photovoltaics due to their attractive anisotropic optoelectronic properties. However, Sb2Se3 solar cells suffer from complex and unconventional intrinsic defects due to the low symmetry of the quasi‐1D crystal structure resulting in a considerable voltage deficit, which limits the ultimate power conversion efficiency (PCE). In this work, the creation of compact Sb2Se3 films with strong [00l] orientation, high crystallinity, minimal deep level defect density, fewer trap states, and low non‐radiative recombination loss by injection vapor deposition is reported. This deposition technique enables superior films compared with close‐spaced sublimation and coevaporation technologies. The resulting Sb2Se3 thin‐film solar cells yield a PCE of 10.12%, owing to the suppressed carrier recombination and excellent carrier transport and extraction. This method thus opens a new and effective avenue for the fabrication of high‐quality Sb2Se3 and other high‐quality chalcogenide semiconductors.
Evolution of genetic mechanisms regulating cortical neurogenesis

The size of the cerebral cortex increases dramatically across amniotes, from reptiles to great apes. This is primarily due to different numbers of neurons and glial cells produced during embryonic development. The evolutionary expansion of cortical neurogenesis was linked to changes in neural stem and progenitor cells, which acquired increased capacity of self‐amplification and neuron production. Evolution works via changes in the genome, and recent studies have identified a small number of new genes that emerged in the recent human and primate lineages, promoting cortical progenitor proliferation and increased neurogenesis. However, most of the mammalian genome corresponds to noncoding DNA that contains gene‐regulatory elements, and recent evidence precisely points at changes in expression levels of conserved genes as key in the evolution of cortical neurogenesis. Here, we provide an overview of basic cellular mechanisms involved in cortical neurogenesis across amniotes, and discuss recent progress on genetic mechanisms that may have changed during evolution, including gene expression regulation, leading to the expansion of the cerebral cortex.
Recent Advancements in Multimodal Medical Image Fusion Techniques for Better Diagnosis: An overview.

A Medical imaging plays a vital role in medical diagnosis and clinical treatment. The biggest challenge in the medical field is the correct identification of disease and better treatment. Multi-modal Medical Image Fusion (MMIF) is the process of merging multiple medical images from different modalities into a single fused image. The main objective of the medical image fusion is to obtain a large amount of appropriate information (i.e., features) to improve the quality and makes it more informative for increasing clinical therapy for better diagnosis and clear assessment of medical related problems. The MMIF is generally considered with MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), CT (Computed Tomography), PET (Positron Emission Tomography), SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography), MRA (Magnetic Resonance Angiography), T1-weighted MR, T2-weighted MR, X-ray, and ultrasound imaging (Vibro-Acoustography). This review article presents a comprehensive survey of existing medical image fusion methods and have been characterized as six parts: (1) Multi-modality medical images, (2) literature review process, (3) image fusion rules, (4) quality evaluation metrics for assessment of fused image, (5) experimental results on registered datasets and (6) Conclusion. In addition, this review article provides scientific challenges faced in MMIF and future directions for better diagnosis. It is expected that this review will be useful to establish a concrete foundation for developing more valuable fusion methods for medical diagnosis.
Schwann cell nodal membrane disruption triggers bystander axonal degeneration in a Guillain-Barré syndrome mouse model

In Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), both axonal and demyelinating variants can be mediated by complement-fixing anti–GM1 ganglioside autoantibodies that target peripheral nerve axonal and Schwann cell (SC) membranes, respectively. Critically, the extent of axonal degeneration in both variants dictates long-term outcome. The differing pathomechanisms underlying direct axonal injury and the secondary bystander axonal degeneration following SC injury are unresolved. To investigate this, we generated glycosyltransferase-disrupted transgenic mice that express GM1 ganglioside either exclusively in neurons [GalNAcT–/–-Tg(neuronal)] or glia [GalNAcT–/–-Tg(glial)], thereby allowing anti-GM1 antibodies to solely target GM1 in either axonal or SC membranes, respectively. Myelinated-axon integrity in distal motor nerves was studied in transgenic mice exposed to anti-GM1 antibody and complement in ex vivo and in vivo injury paradigms. Axonal targeting induced catastrophic acute axonal disruption, as expected. When mice with GM1 in SC membranes were targeted, acute disruption of perisynaptic glia and SC membranes at nodes of Ranvier (NoRs) occurred. Following glial injury, axonal disruption at NoRs also developed subacutely, progressing to secondary axonal degeneration. These models differentiate the distinctly different axonopathic pathways under axonal and glial membrane targeting conditions, and provide insights into primary and secondary axonal injury, currently a major unsolved area in GBS research.
Diaphragmatic Thickening Fraction by Ultrasound in Mechanically Ventilated Pediatric Patients: Pilot Observations During Spontaneous Breathing Trials

In critically ill, mechanically ventilated adults, diaphragmatic atrophy and reduced diaphragmatic thickening fraction (DTF) has been associated with poor extubation outcomes. Diaphragmatic ultrasound assessment in critically ill pediatric patients shows similar results, though studies are on‐going. We sought to explore the feasibility and utility of using DTF, obtained during a spontaneous breathing trial (SBT) in predicting weaning outcomes.
Parental Factors Associated With Physical Activity Among East Asian Children/Youth: A Meta-Analysis Based on the Active Healthy Kids Report Cards

Insufficient physical activity (PA) is a leading risk factor for mortality. The Active Healthy Kids Report Cards provide comprehensive evidence related to PA in children/adolescents. Associations of (1) parental support for PA with amount of moderate-to-vigorous-intensity PA (MVPA) performed by children/adolescents and (2) amount of MVPA performed by parents with amount of MVPA performed by children/adolescents, as indicated by Report Cards, have not been critically synthesized in meta-analysis. We selected data in Asian countries/regions Report Cards and performed meta-analyses to assess pooled associations of influence indicators and behavior indicators among children/adolescents in Asian countries/regions. Our meta-analyses included five studies that assessed association of parental support or MVPA performance with child/adolescent MVPA performance. Positive association was observed between the amount of time spent by parents on MVPA per week, regardless of gender, and the amount of time spent by children and adolescents on MVPA per week (r = .11; I2 = 40%). In East Asia, the amount of MVPA performed by parents appears to be an important factor influencing the participation of children/adolescents in PA.