Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Middle ear effusion, ventilation tubes and neurological development in childhood

Background Otitis media with middle ear effusion (MEE) can be treated with ventilation tubes (VT) insertion, and it has been speculated that prolonged MEE in childhood can affect neurological development, which in turn may be important for later academic achievements. Objective To investigate the association between middle ear effusion (MEE), treatment with ventilation tubes (VT) and childhood neurological development. Study design We examined 663 children from the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood 2010 (COPSAC2010) unselected mother-child cohort study. Children were followed by study pediatricians with regular visits from pregnancy until 3 years of age. MEE was diagnosed using tympanometry at age 1, 2 and 3 years. Information regarding VT from age 0–3 years was obtained from national registries. We assessed age at achievement of gross motor milestones from birth, language scores at 1 and 2 years, cognitive score at 2.5 years and general development score at age 3 years using standardized quantitative tests. Results Children with MEE had a lower 1-year word production vs. children with no disease: (median 2, IQR [0–6] vs. 4, IQR [1–7]; p = 0.017), and a lower 1-year word comprehension (median 36; IQR [21–63] vs. 47, IQR [27–84]; p = 0.03). Children with VT had a lower 2-5-year cognitive score vs. children with no disease; estimate -2.34; 95% CI [-4.56;-0.12]; p = 0.039. No differences were found between children with vs. without middle ear disease regarding age at achievement of gross motor milestones, word production at 2 years or the general developmental score at 3 years. Conclusion Our study supports the previous findings of an association between MEE and concurrent early language development, but not later neurological endpoints up to the age of 3. As VT can be a treatment of those with symptoms of delayed development, we cannot conclude whether treatment with VT had positive or negative effects on neurodevelopment.
Safety, Tolerability, and Pharmacokinetics of Nebulized Hydroxychloroquine: A Pilot Study in Healthy Volunteers.

Background: Early in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) drew substantial attention as a potential COVID-19 treatment based on its antiviral and immunomodulatory effects in vitro. However, HCQ showed a lack of efficacy in vivo, and different groups of researchers attributed this failure to the insufficient drug concentration in the lung following oral administration (HCQ is only available in the market in the tablet form). Delivering HCQ by inhalation represents a more efficient route of administration to increase HCQ exposure in the lungs while minimizing systemic toxicity. In this pilot study, the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of HCQ nebulizer solution were evaluated in healthy volunteers. Methods: Twelve healthy participants were included in this study and were administered 2 mL of HCQ01 solution (equivalent to 25 mg of HCQ sulfate) through Aerogen® Solo, a vibrating mesh nebulizer. Local tolerability and systemic safety were assessed by forced expiratory volume in the first and second electrocardiograms, clinical laboratory results (e.g., hematology, biochemistry, and urinalysis), vital signs, and physical examinations. Thirteen blood samples were collected to determine HCQ01 systemic exposure before and until 6 hours after inhalation. Results: The inhalation of HCQ01 was well tolerated in all participants. The mean value of Cmax for the 12 participants was 9.66 ng/mL. Tmax occurred at around 4.8 minutes after inhalation and rapidly decreased thereafter. The reported systemic exposure was very low with a mean value of 5.28 (0.6-15.6) ng·h/mL. Conclusion: The low systemic concentrations of HCQ01 of 9.66 ng/mL reported by our study compared with 1 μg/mL previously predicted after 200 mg BID oral administration, and the safety and tolerability of HCQ01 administered as a single dose through nebulization, support the assessment of its efficacy, safety, and tolerability in further studies for the treatment of COVID-19.
Phase-contrast microtomography with coherent high-energy synchrotron x rays

Cross‐sectional information on low electron density materials can be obtained by probing a sample with a 60 keV coherent synchrotron x‐ray beam in an in‐line holography setup. Such objects are practically transparent to high energy x rays and create a phase shift of the wave front only. Images of a 100 μm diameter boron fiber were recorded in the extreme near field region, where contrast occurs only at interfaces between regions with different decrements of refractive index. Theoretical simulations are in good agreement with the measured intensities. In a tomographic reconstruction the 15 μm diameter core of the fiber is clearly visible, demonstrating the possibility of reconstructing three dimensional interfaces between low density materials.
Statistical Analysis of Parameter Estimation for 2-D Harmonics in Multiplicative and Additive Noise

This article considers the problem of parameter estimation for two dimensional (2-D) multi-component harmonics in non zero-mean multiplicative and additive noise. The least squares estimators (LSEs) are proposed to estimate the coherent model parameters, and some statistical results of the LSEs are obtained, including strong consistency, strong convergence rate, and asymptotic normality. Furthermore, the LSEs-based estimators are proposed to estimate the noncoherent model parameters, and the strong consistency and the asymptotic normality are also proved. Finally, some numerical experiments are performed to see how the asymptotic results work for finite sample sizes.
The role of environmental enrichment in the aetiopathogenesis of Staphylococcus aureus facial, periorbital and retroorbital abscesses in mice

In this observational retrospective study, an outbreak of Staphylococcus aureus abscesses was correlated with the presence of sharp edges in damaged plastic environmental enrichment within the cages. In 2010, Lawson reported cases of S. aureus mandibulofacial and maxillofacial abscess in mice and proposed excessive barbering or grooming, leading to the mastication and fragmentation of hair, as an aetiopathogenesis of S. aureus abscesses. In contrast, in this study, the presence of hair was not found in any of the histopathology, and abscesses were present in the periorbital area. S. aureus colonises the skin, nasopharynx and intestines, and may cause pyogenic infections if a breach in local defences promotes staphylococcal invasion. Whole genome sequencing and analysis supported the hypothesis that this outbreak resulted from clonal expansion of S. aureus infected C57BL6/J mice imported into the area and infection transmission from humans to mice was ruled out. An additional aetiopathogenesis is proposed for S. aureus abscesses with the sharp edges of damaged plastic environmental enrichment items leading to oral mucosal injury allowing S. aureus entrance into tissues, its carriage into the submucosa, followed by abscess formation.
Tunable optical fiber devices based on broadband long-period gratings and pumped microfluidics

This letter describes classes of tunable microfluidic fiber (μFF) devices that use specially designed long-period gratings in which the phase matching condition is satisfied over a wide spectral range. Dynamic tuning is achieved by electrowetting-based pumping of microfluidic plugs back and forth over the gratings. As specific examples, we demonstrate dynamically tunable broadband attenuators and filters with adjustable profiles by using fluids with different refractive indices. These devices have attractive features that include in-fiber design and polarization-independent behavior together with low-power, nonmechanical, fully reversible, and latchable tuning.
Genotypic distribution of human papillomavirus and phylogenetic analysis of E6 and E7 gene of HR-HPV variants isolated from Pakistani population

High-risk-human papillomavirus (HR-HPV)-induced cervical cancer is the second most common cause of death among females worldwide. HPV16 is the most prevalent HR-HPV infection worldwide. This study found the genotypic distribution of HR-HPV in the local population and investigated the sequence variations among the E6 and E7 oncogenes of the local HPV16 genotype to the E6 and E7 oncogenes of the foreign HPV16 genotypes and constructed a phylogenetic relationship based on nucleotide sequence comparison among the variants identified in our study along with previously reported isolates that were obtained from different regions of the world. The samples were collected from patients with cervical cancer. Genomic DNA was extracted, and HR-HPV genotypes were determined using real-time PCR. The HPV16 E6 and E7 genes were amplified and sequenced. A HPV16 phylogenetic tree was constructed using the maximum likelihood method with MEGA 7. HPV16 was the most prevalent human papillomavirus (HPV) type identified in the present study. HPV16 isolates belonged to the A1 sublineage of the European branch. Twenty-one nucleotide sequences were included in this analysis. The first, second, and third codon positions are also included. The final dataset included 776 positions.
Effect of statins on inflammation and cardiac function in patients with chronic Chagas disease: A protocol for pathophysiological studies in a multicenter, placebo-controlled, proof-of-concept phase II trial

Background Cardiac complications, including heart failure and arrhythmias, are the leading causes of disability and death in Chagas disease (CD). CD, caused by the Trypanosoma cruzi parasite, afflicts 7 million people in Latin America, and its incidence is increasing in non-endemic countries due to migration. The cardiac involvement is explained by parasite-dependent, immune-mediated myocardial injury, microvascular abnormalities, and ischemia. Current treatment of early CD includes the administration of nifurtimox and benznidazole. However, their efficacy is low in the chronic phase and may induce severe adverse events, forcing therapy to halt. Therefore, finding innovative approaches to treat this life-threatening tropical disease is of utmost importance. Thus, improving the efficacy of the current antichagasic drugs by modifying the inflammatory response would render the current treatment more effective. It has been reported that, in mice, simvastatin decreases cardiac inflammation and endothelial activation, and improves cardiac function, effects that require clinical confirmation. Objective The study aims to analyze whether two doses of Atorvastatin, administered after CD treatment is completed, are safe and more efficacious than the antiparasitic drugs alone in reducing general inflammation and improving endothelial and cardiac functions in a proof-of-concept, placebo-controlled phase II trial. Methods 300 subjects will be recruited from four Chilean hospitals with an active Program for the Control of Chagas Disease. 40 or 80 mg/day of atorvastatin or placebo will be administered after completion of the antichagasic therapy. The patients will be followed up for 12 months. Efficacy will be determined by measuring changes in plasma levels of anti-inflammatory and pro-inflammatory cytokines, soluble cell adhesion molecules, BNP, and cTnT. Also, the resting 12-lead ECG and a 2D-echocardiogram will be obtained to evaluate cardiac function. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04984616.
Turbidity in Eastern Canada

Abstract Unsworth and Monteith's aerosol attenuation coefficient τA was calculated with hourly cloudless sky data at Goose Bay, Montreal and Woodbridge (near Toronto) for the period 1968 to 1978. Turbidity was less on average (τA < 0.11) than for British urban locations (0.25 < τA < 0.55). Values of τA were largest in summer and in southerly flow, increased with relative humidity and varied inversely with visibility. Turbidity decreased over the 1968–78 period at the three stations. The decrease was a feature of air flow from most directions. It coincides with decreases in air quality indices reported by Ricci et al. for Canada between 1971 and 1975.
Pairwise attention-enhanced adversarial model for automatic bone segmentation in CT images

Objective. Bone segmentation is a critical step in screw placement navigation. Although the deep learning methods have promoted the rapid development for bone segmentation, the local bone separation is still challenging due to irregular shapes and similar representational features. Approach. In this paper, we proposed the pairwise attention-enhanced adversarial model (Pair-SegAM) for automatic bone segmentation in computed tomography images, which includes the two parts of the segmentation model and discriminator. Considering that the distributions of the predictions from the segmentation model contains complicated semantics, we improve the discriminator to strengthen the awareness ability of the target region, improving the parsing of semantic information features. The Pair-SegAM has a pairwise structure, which uses two calculation mechanics to set up pairwise attention maps, then we utilize the semantic fusion to filter unstable regions. Therefore, the improved discriminator provides more refinement information to capture the bone outline, thus effectively enhancing the segmentation models for bone segmentation. Main results. To test the Pair-SegAM, we selected the two bone datasets for assessment. We evaluated our method against several bone segmentation models and latest adversarial models on the both datasets. The experimental results prove that our method not only exhibits superior bone segmentation performance, but also states effective generalization. Significance. Our method provides a more efficient segmentation of specific bones and has the potential to be extended to other semantic segmentation domains.
Haemoglobin levels and outcomes of subgroups of patients with pre‐operative anaemia based on red cell size: A retrospective cohort study

Pre‐operative anaemia is common and associated with adverse outcomes. We hypothesised that pre‐operative anaemia would be evident more than 1 month pre‐operatively, and that peri‐operative changes in haemoglobin and post‐operative outcomes differed between red cell size‐based subsets of anaemia.
INF2 mutations in patients with a broad phenotypic spectrum of Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth disease and focal segmental glomerulosclerosis

Mutations in INF2 are associated with the complex symptoms of Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth disease (CMT) and focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS). To date, more than 100 and 30 genes have been reported to cause these disorders, respectively. This study aimed to identify INF2 mutations in Korean patients with CMT. This study was conducted with 743 Korean families with CMT who were negative for PMP22 duplication. In addition, a family with FSGS was included in this study. INF2 mutations were screened using whole exome sequencing (WES) and filtering processes. As the results, four pathogenic INF2 mutations were identified in families with different clinical phenotypes: p.L78P and p.L132P in families with symptoms of both CMT and FSGS; p.C104Y in a family with CMT; and p.R218Q in a family with FSGS. Moreover, different CMT types were observed in families with CMT symptoms: CMT1 in two families and Int‐CMT in another family. Hearing loss was observed in two families with CMT1. Pathogenicity was predicted by in silico analyses, and considerable conformational changes were predicted in the mutant proteins. Two mutations (p.L78P and p.C104Y) were unreported, and three families showed de novo mutations that were putatively occurred from fathers. This study suggests that patients with INF2 mutations show a broad phenotypic spectrum: CMT1, CMT1 + FSGS, CMTDIE + FSGS, and FSGS. Therefore, the genotype‐phenotype correlation may be more complex than previously recognized. We believe that this study expands the clinical spectrum of patients with INF2 mutations and will be helpful in the molecular diagnosis of CMT and FSGS.
Electromigration induced ductile-to-brittle transition in lead-free solder joints

The effect of electromigration on ductile-to-brittle transition in flip chip solder joints has been studied using one-dimensional bamboo-type samples of eutectic 95.5Sn–3.8Ag–0.7Cu solder joined by Cu wires at two ends. Both electrical current and tensile stress were applied to the samples either in serial or in parallel. In serial tests, the strain rate was 6×10−3. In parallel test, the creep stress was 7MPa. The current density applied was (1–5)×103A∕cm2. The working temperature was 100–150°C. In both tests, the authors observed the ductile-to-brittle transition in which the fracture migrates from the middle to the cathode interface of the joint with increasing current density and time. The transition is explained by the polarity effect of electromigration, especially the accumulation of vacancies at the cathode interface.
Perfectly conducting tape-helix model for guided electromagnetic wave propagation

The homogeneous boundary value problem arising in the propagation of electromagnetic waves guided by an open tape helix modelled to be of infinitesimal tape thickness and infinite tape-material conductivity is shown to be inherently ill posed. It is demonstrated how the ill posed problem may be regularised using the mollification method. The regularised boundary value problem is then solved to yield the approximate dispersion equation which takes the form of the solvability condition for an infinite system of linear homogeneous algebraic equations viz., the determinant of the infinite-order coefficient matrix is zero. For the numerical computation of the dispersion characteristic, all the entries of the symmetrically truncated version of the coefficient matrix are estimated by summing an adequate number of the rapidly converging (after regularisation) series for them. The tape-current distribution is estimated from the null-space vector of the truncated coefficient matrix corresponding to a specified root of the dispersion equation. A comparison of the numerical results with those for the anisotropically conducting model (that neglects the component of the tape-current density perpendicular to the winding direction) of the tape helix reveals that the propagation characteristic computed on the basis of the anisotropically conducting model could be substantially in error even for moderately wide tapes.
Examining the Measurement Invariance of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI-30) by Sexual Orientation

An abbreviated version of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory, the CMNI-30, was developed with several strengths. However, its measurement invariance across men with different sexual orientations has not been examined in a U.S. sample, so it is unclear whether these different populations understand the items similarly. In addition, no studies have compared conformity to masculinity norms across sexual orientations. This would be important to understand sexual minority men’s experience of masculinity and how it differs from heteronormative masculinity. This article explores the measurement invariance of the CMNI-30 among 882 heterosexual, gay, and bisexual+ men using confirmatory factor analysis, and compares their CMNI-30 subscale scores. Results indicated that the CMNI-30 demonstrated residual invariance between men of different sexual orientations, suggesting that men of different sexual orientations interpreted the items similarly. We also found higher levels of conformity to the masculine norms of Winning, Heterosexual self-presentation, and Power over women among heterosexual men relative to gay and bisexual+ men, and higher levels of Pursuit of status among gay men relative to the other groups. Results provide support for the use of the CMNI-30 in research with men of different sexual orientations.
Realizing Textured Zinc Metal Anodes through Regulating Electrodeposition Current for Aqueous Zinc Batteries.

Crystallography modulation of zinc (Zn) metal anode is promising to promote Zn reversibility in aqueous electrolytes, but efficiently constructing Zn with specific crystallographic texture remains challenging. Herein, we report a current-controlled electrodeposition strategy to texture the Zn electrodeposits in conventional aqueous electrolytes. Using the electrolytic cell with low-cost Zn(CH3COO)2 electrolyte and Cu substrate as a model system, the texture of as-deposited Zn gradually transforms from (101) to (002) crystal plane as increasing the current density from 20 to 80 mA cm-2. Moreover, the high current accelerates the Zn nucleation rate with abundant nuclei, enabling uniform deposition. The (002) texture permits stronger resistance to dendrite growth and interfacial side reactions than the (101) texture. The resultant (002)-textured Zn electrode achieves deep cycling stability and supports the stable operation of full batteries with conventional V/Mn-based oxide cathodes.
Virtual Prototyping of Die Design Part Two: Algorithmic, Computational, and Practical Considerations

This paper presents the implementation of the algorithms used to compute the die-open directions for a near-net-shape manufac tured part described in "Virtual Prototyping of Die Design Part One. Theory and Formulation. " In this approach, a set of concavity features is used to determine the die-open directions for a given part by first determining the convex hull of the geometry and then by performing a boolean subtraction between the convex hull of the part and the three-dimensional solid model of the original part geometry. This will pro vide the set of concavity features that restrict the possible die-open directions for the part. A set of possible die-open directions is deter mined for each concavity feature. The set of directions common to all concavity features is then determined to be the set of die-open direc tions for the part. The convex hull of a part (which is a convex part) has unrestricted draw, implying that a convex part can be oriented in any fashion inside a die. The algorithms for this approach, its computational analysis, and strengths and weaknesses of the implementation are discussed in this paper.
Associations between enteral nutrition and outcomes in the SUP‐ICU trial: Protocol for exploratory post hoc analyses

Critically ill patients are at risk of gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding. Counter measures to minimise this risk include the use of pharmacological stress ulcer prophylaxis (SUP). The effect of enteral nutrition as SUP on GI bleeding event rates is unknown. There are conflicting data describing the effect of co‐administration of enteral nutrition with pharmacological SUP, and there is substantial variation in practice. We aim to conduct an exploratory post hoc analysis to evaluate the association of enteral nutrition with clinically important GI bleed rates in ICU patients included in the SUP‐ICU trial, and to explore any interactions between enteral nutrition and pharmacologic SUP on patient outcomes. The SUP‐ICU trial dataset will be used to assess if enteral nutrition is associated with the outcomes of interest. Extended Cox models will be used considering relevant competing events, including treatment allocation (SUP or placebo) and enteral nutrition as a daily time‐varying covariate, with additional adjustment for severity of illness (SAPS II). Results will be presented as adjusted hazard ratios for treatment allocation and enteral nutrition, and for treatment allocation and enteral nutrition considering potential interactions with the other variable, all with 95% confidence intervals and p‐values for the tests of interaction. All results will be considered as exploratory only. This post hoc analysis may yield important insights to guide practice and inform the design of future randomised clinical trial investigating the effect of enteral nutrition on GI bleeding.