Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alteration of Membrane Cholesterol Content Plays a Key Role in Regulation of Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator Channel Activity

Altered cholesterol homeostasis in cystic fibrosis patients has been reported, although controversy remains. As a major membrane lipid component, cholesterol modulates the function of multiple ion channels by complicated mechanisms. However, whether cholesterol directly modulates cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) channel function remains unknown. To answer this question, we determined the effects of changing plasma membrane cholesterol levels on CFTR channel function utilizing polarized fischer rat thyroid (FRT) cells and primary human bronchial epithelial (HBE) cells. Treatment with methyl-β-cyclodextrin (MβCD) significantly reduced total cholesterol content in FRT cells, which significantly decreased forskolin (FSK)-mediated activation of both wildtype (WT-) and P67L-CFTR. This effect was also seen in HBE cells expressing WT-CFTR. Cholesterol modification by cholesterol oxidase and cholesterol esterase also distinctly affected activation of CFTR by FSK. In addition, alteration of cholesterol increased the potency of VX-770, a clinically used potentiator of CFTR, when both WT- and P67L-CFTR channels were activated at low FSK concentrations; this likely reflects the apparent shift in the sensitivity of WT-CFTR to FSK after alteration of membrane cholesterol. These results demonstrate that changes in the plasma membrane cholesterol level significantly modulate CFTR channel function and consequently may affect sensitivity to clinical therapeutics in CF patients.
Utility of the Interferon-Gamma Release Assay for Latent Tuberculosis Infection Screening among Indian Health-Care Workers

Background: The utility of interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs) for latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) screening among health-care workers (HCWs) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) remains unclear. Methods: This was a prospective cohort study among HCW trainees undergoing annual LTBI screening via tuberculin skin test (TST) and QuantiFERON® TB Gold Test-in-tube (QFT-GIT) in Pune, India. TST induration ≥ 10 mm and QFT-GIT ≥ 0.35 IU/ml were considered positive. Test concordance was evaluated at entry among the entire cohort and at 1 year among baseline TST-negative participants with follow-up testing. Overall test agreement was evaluated at both timepoints using the kappa statistic: fair (k < 0.40), good (0.41 ≥ k ≤0.60), or strong (k > 0.60). Results: Of 200 participants, prevalent LTBI was detected in 42 (21%) via TST and 45 (23%) via QFT-GIT; QFT-GIT was positive in 27/42 (64%) TST-positive and 18/158 (11%) TST-negative trainees. Annual TST conversion was 28% (40/142) and included 11 trainees with baseline TST-/IGRA+; QFT-GIT was positive in 17/40 (43%) TST-positive and 5/102 (5%) TST-negative trainees. Overall test concordance was 84% (k = 0.52; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.38–0.66) and 80% (k = 0.44; 95% CI: 0.29–0.59) at baseline and 12 months, respectively. Conclusions: We observed good overall agreement between TST and QFT-GIT, and QFT-GIT detected additional LTBI cases among TST-negative trainees with possible early detection of LTBI conversion. Overall, our results support the use of IGRA for annual LTBI screening among HCWs in a high burden LMIC setting.
Melatonin–Caffeine Combination Modulates Gamma Radiation-induced Sperm Malformations in C57BL/6 Male Mice at Sublethal Dose of Gamma Radiation

Aims: The aim of this study was to assess the protective effect of the melatonin–caffeine combination against γ radiation-induced alterations in the morphological characteristics of sperms. Settings and Design: C57BL/6 male mice (n = 30) were randomly divided into five groups: control, radiation (2 Gy), melatonin (100ὕmg/kg body wt.) + radiation (2 Gy), caffeine (30ὕmg/kg body wt.) + radiation (2 Gy), melatonin–caffeine (100–30ὕmg/kg body wt.) + radiation (2 Gy). Materials and Methods: All the mice were sacrificed 24h postirradiation, and cauda epididymis was collected. In this study, sperm concentration along with any abnormality in their morphology (amorphous heads, pinheads, hookless, coiled tails, midpiece defect, and tail-less) was observed in the control and treatment group of animals. Results: Radiation exposure (2 Gy) considerably decreases the sperm count when compared with the control group. However, pretreatment with melatonin and melatonin–caffeine combination before gamma irradiation increased the sperm count (P < 0.05), but with caffeine alone could not produce a significant difference. The higher rate of abnormal sperms was observed in the γ-irradiated mice when compared with the control group (P < 0.05). Besides, the numbers of sperm that are hookless and coiled tails were significantly increased after irradiation. Melatonin significantly reduced the number of sperm with amorphous heads and coiled tails. Melatonin–caffeine combination further reduced sperm malformations when compared with the melatonin + 2 Gy radiation and caffeine + 2 Gy radiation group. Conclusions: This study suggests that caffeine exerts a protective effect when given in combination with melatonin against gamma irradiation in sperms of C57BL/6 mice and could be a potent combination for the development of radioprotector.
Landscape, Presentation, and Characteristics of Brain Gliomas in Zimbabwe

Introduction: Gliomas are tumors of the supporting cells of the central nervous system. They have great heterogeneity in their clinical and pathological features as well as prognosis. There is paucity of glioma epidemiology data in Zimbabwe. We carried out a study to determine the landscape, presentation, and characteristics of brain gliomas in Zimbabwe. Materials and Methods: A prospective cross-sectional study was conducted in Zimbabwe over a 2 years period to determine descriptive epidemiological data with regards to demographic distribution, presentation, and tumor characteristics. Consecutive patients from across the country with brain gliomas were recruited in the study. Results: A total of 112 brain tumors were diagnosed histologically. Of these 43.8% (n = 49) were gliomas and hence recruited in the study. The mean age of study participants was 40.3 years (standard deviation = 23.1 years), range 3–83 years. Male to female ratio (M:F) was 1:1. The study population consisted of 14% caucasians (n = 7), 83.7% black (n = 41), and 2% (n = 1) were of mixed race. Eighty-six percent (n = 42) of participants were from urban areas. The most common presenting complaint was headache in 87.8% (n = 43). The majority (61.2%) presented with a Karnofsky score ≥70%. Astrocytomas were the most common gliomas constituting 57.1% (n = 28), followed by ependymomas and oligodendrogliomas being 8.1% (n = 4) each. There was no statistical difference in the hemisphere of the brain involved (P = 0.475). Eight percent of the population were HIV positive (n = 4). Age above 60 years has an adjusted odds ratio of 13 for presenting with high-grade tumors. Conclusion: There is a disproportionately high number of gliomas among Caucasians, urban dwellers, and those gainfully employed. The prevalence of HIV in glioma patients is less than that of the general population.
Optimal Use of Temporary Clip Application during Aneurysm Surgery – In Search of the Holy Grail

Temporary clips are invaluable safety tools during the clipping of an aneurysm. Controversies regarding maximum permissible duration and safety, however, remain unanswered. This descriptive narrative attempts to review the literature to provide valuable insights on controversies clouding the use of temporary clips among neurosurgeons. Popular databases, including Pub Med, Medline/Medscape, Scopus, Cochrane, Embase, Google Scholar, were searched to find available literature on temporary clips. The searched MeSH terms were “Temporary Clip,” “Temporary Clipping,” “Cerebral Aneurysm,” and “Aneurysm. ” Temporary clips have been in use since 1928 and have undergone considerable structural and technical modifications. A temporary clip's optimal safety limit is not yet defined with literature evidence ranging from immediate to 93 min. It is not yet definite whether temporary clips application aggravates vasospasm, but emergency temporary clips application, especially in poor-grade aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage patients, is associated with poor outcomes. A temporary clip needs to be applied with caution in patients treated earlier by endovascular technique and having indwelling stents. Nitinol Stent is feasible, while a Cobalt-Chromium alloy stent does not get occluded and gets deformed under the closing pressure of a temporary clip. Although a temporary clip application is a fundamental strategy during the clipping of an aneurysm; the exact safe duration remains to be decided in randomized control trials. Their utility for the shorter duration is beneficial under un-conclusive evidence of neuroprotective agents and intraoperative monitoring. Neurosurgeons need to consider all aspects of their pros and cons for optimal use.
Prevalence and Determinants of Cognitive Impairment and Depression among the Elderly Population in a Rural Area of North India

Background: Demographic transition has resulted in population aging, which has led to advancement in multiple geriatric problems including cognitive impairment (CI) and depression. Objectives: The objective was to find the prevalence and determinants of CI and depression in the rural elderly population. Materials and Methods: This was a community-based cross-sectional study conducted in a rural area. The prevalence of CI was measured using the Mini-Mental State Examination scale and depression was assessed using the Geriatric Depression Scale. The data so collected were analyzed using PSPP software. Results: The mean age of the study participants was 67.47 ± 6.43 years. The prevalence of CI and geriatric depression was found to be 36% (153/425) and 29.1% (124/425), respectively. Variables which were found to have independent significant association on multivariate analysis with CI were literacy, memory complaints, and depression. For geriatric depression, an independent association was seen with literacy, socioeconomic status, memory complaints, stress in the family, and presence of CI. CI and geriatric depression were found to be strongly correlated with each other (r = −0.252, P < 0.001). Conclusions: Almost one-third of the geriatric population is suffering from depression (29.1%) and CI (36%). This necessitates for accurate and timely diagnosis, so as to ensure proper care and support to the elderly population with emphasis on geriatric mental health care.
Expression level of micro-RNA-1, IL-5, IFNγ, and TNFα in adult-onset asthmatic patients

Background and objective Asthma is an inflammatory process, where T lymphocytes cells, mainly the Th1/Th2 cells, participate in bronchial asthma’s pathogenesis and progression. Studying the inflammatory and genetic mediators’ expression levels, which control this inflammatory process like microRNAs, is essential to illustrate this disease’s pathogenesis. This work aimed to evaluate the levels of miRNA-1 and inflammatory mediators interleukin (IL)-5, interferon-γ (IFNγ), and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α in the peripheral blood of adult-onset asthmatic patients and their correlation to the disease severity. Patients and methods A case–control study was carried out on 69 participants, divided over two groups: group I was the asthmatic group, which included 49 patients with adult-onset bronchial asthma more than 18 years old, subdivided to group IA, with mild asthma (10 patients), group IB, with moderate asthma (19 patients), and group IC, with severe asthma (20 patients). Group II was the control group, which included 20 healthy individuals. IL-5, TNFα, and IFNγ were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and relative quantification of MiRNA-1 expression was done by PCR. Results miRNA-1 decreased significantly in asthmatics and decreased more with increasing severity of the disease, with a significant positive correlation between miRNA-1 and both forced expiratory volume in first second and IFNγ, and meaningful negative relationship between miRNA-1 and both IL-5 and TNFα. The sensitivity and specificity of miRNA-1 in diagnosing asthma and detecting its severity were 100%. Conclusion miRNA-1 expression level is significantly decreased in adult-onset asthmatic patients. It decreases with increasing severity of the disease, with a positive correlation between miRNA-1 and plasma IFNγ but a negative relationship between miRNA-1 and both plasma IL-5 and TNFα.
Patient Empowerment By Uploading Health Education Materials Through Medical/Research Institutions Social Media Websites

Dear Editor, Modern digital literacy has increased tremendously in India due to the ongoing information technology revolution. [1,2] In the present era, whenever people have any health problem, many of them try to seek related information from internet-based sources before taking any preventive action or medical consultation. Often, they end it up with self-medication. However, there is a problem of the authenticity of sources. [3] The diagnosis made by “Google Doctor” can be devastating, if public follow some wrong advice given on the internet or due to their misinterpretations.
Factors Predisposing to Burnout Syndrome among Medical Staff Participating in Complex Surgical Processes

Background: Burnout syndrome is a serious manifestation of distress among health-care professionals. Objective: Due to the specific nature of work in operating theaters, factors that affect the staff performance and therefore predispose to burnout syndrome were assessed. Methods: Based on the original questionnaire, 254 respondents working in the operating theaters of the university hospital, appraised levels of work satisfaction, sources of stress, and psychosocial burden. Work-related mental stress was assessed using the Meister's questionnaire. Burnout levels were evaluated in the group extended to 316 employees with Maslach Burnout Inventory. Results: Work satisfaction analysis indicated unsatisfactory management and remuneration as the negative agents. The majority of the respondents emphasized the maintenance of medical records as a prominent stress factor. A large number of participants (n = 221; 87%) described work as emotionally burdensome. The results showed that the highest burden was related to the following variables: time pressure, responsibility, problems, and conflicts. The examined group was qualified to the second degree of mental load related to the work. Similarly, the entire group reached a high level of emotional exhaustion. Conclusions: Presented data indicate the need of evaluation to minimize occupational burnout problem.
Influence of Solvents on the Electroactivity of PtAl/rGO Catalyst Inks and Anode in Direct Ethanol Fuel Cell

This paper presents research on the effects of common solvents such as n-butyl acetate, isopropanol, and ethanol on the properties and electroactivity of catalyst ink based on PtAl/rGO. The inks prepared by mixing PtAl/rGO catalyst, Nafion solution (5 wt%), and solvent were coated on carbon cloth by the spin coating method. The results obtained showed that ethanol was the most suitable solvent for the preparation of catalyst ink with a volume ratio between catalyst slurry and solvent of 1 : 1 (CI-EtOH (1/1) ink). The surface of the CI-EtOH (1/1) coated electrode was smooth, flat, and even and had no cracks due to the increase of Nafion mobility, resulting in significant improvement in the interaction between Pt particles and ionomer. Moreover, the electrochemical activity of the CI-EtOH (1/1) ink in ethanol electrooxidation reaction, in both acidic and alkaline media, has the highest value, with the forward current density, IF, reaching 1793 mA mgPt−1 and 4751 mA mgPt−1, respectively. In the application in direct ethanol fuel cell (DEFC), the CI-EtOH ink-coated anode also exhibited the highest power density in both PEM-DEFC (with a proton exchange membrane) and AEM-DEFC (with an anion exchange membrane) at 19.10 mW cm−2 and 27.07 mW cm−2, respectively.
Cardiac Death in Patients with End-Stage Renal Disease Undergoing Hemodialysis: Multi-Center, Retrospective Cohort Study

Hyun Jin Lee Yonsei University College of Medicine A Reum Choe ewha womans university college of medicine HaeJu Lee seoul national university Dong Ryeol Ryu Ewha Womans University Ea Wha Kang National Health Insurance Service Ilsan Hospital Jung Tak Park Yonsei University College of Medicine Su Hwan Lee (  hihogogo@yuhs.ac ) Yonsei University College of Medicine https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3487-2574 Junbeom Park College of medicine, Ewha Womans university
Analysis of Mobile App Coverage Popularity with ML Algorithms

: Current technologies required deep focus from Machine learning to perform better in major heterogeneous industries. Deep learning and Machine learning are becoming popular for accuracy and ease. This paper includes comprehensive analysis of broad area coverage of mobile app with machine learning (ML) and deep learning. This paper also studies the comparison of neural network models. It covers dynamic analysis on usage of various kind of app engaged with different categories with ANN multilayer perceptron, Naïve bayes, J48 tree, REPTree and LMT algorithm. In this paper, we propose and scrutinize major app area and compare their usage coverage capabilities with the various ML approach. Dynamic Analysis is conceded with various attributes of mobile apps which covers the complete data related their commercial aspect. Further Comparison of accuracy, F-measure and time to summarize comparison result. The findings of this paper indicate ML/Deep learning models give high accuracy and outperform for preprocessed mobile app dataset.The finding predicts the most popular category of mobile app using ML.
Managing video objects in large peer-to-peer systems Managing video objects in large peer-to-peer systems

In peer-to-peer video systems, most hosts will retain only a small portion of a video after its playback, not only because a video usually is very large in size, but also because serving a video request takes a significant amount of communication bandwidth. This presents two challenges in managing video data in such systems: {1) how a host can find enough video pieces, which may scatter among the whole system, to assemble a complete video, and {2) given a limited buffer size, what part of a video a host should cache. In this thesis, we address these problems with a new distributive file management technique. In our scheme, we organize hosts into many cells, each of which is a distinct set of hosts which together can supply a video in its entirety. Because each cell is dynamically created and individually managed as an independent video supplier, our technique addresses the two problems, video lookup and caching, simultaneously. First, a client looking for a video can stop its search as soon as it finds a host that caches any part of the video. While this dramatically reduces the search scope of a video lookup, advanced peer-to peer file search techniques can now be used for more efficient video lookup. Second, caching operations can now be coordinated within each cell to balance data redundancy in the system. We have implemented a Gnutella-like simulation network and use it as a testbed to evaluate the proposed technique. Our extensive study shows convincingly the performance advantage of the new scheme.
Viper: An Efficient Hybrid PMem-DRAM Key-Value Store

Key-value stores (KVSs) have found wide application in modern software systems. For persistence, their data resides in slow secondary storage, which requires KVSs to employ various techniques to increase their read and write performance from and to the underlying medium. Emerging persistent memory (PMem) technologies offer data persistence at close-to-DRAM speed, making them a promising alternative to classical disk-based storage. However, simply drop-in replacing existing storage with PMem does not yield good results, as block-based access behaves differently in PMem than on disk and ignores PMem’s byte addressability, layout, and unique performance characteristics. In this paper, we propose three PMem-specific access patterns and implement them in a hybrid PMem-DRAM KVS called Viper . We employ a DRAM-based hash index and a PMem-aware storage layout to utilize the random-write speed of DRAM and efficient sequential-write performance PMem. Our evaluation shows that Viper significantly outperforms existing KVSs for core KVS operations while providing full data persistence. Moreover, Viper outperforms existing PMem-only, hybrid, and disk-based KVSs by 4–18x for write workloads, while matching or surpassing their get performance.
Psychological Distress and Well-Being among Students of Health Disciplines: The Importance of Academic Satisfaction in the Context of Academic Year-End and COVID-19 Stress

Background University students’ psychological health is linked to their academic satisfaction. This study aimed to investigate students’ psychological health and academic satisfaction in the context of COVID-19 and academic year-end stress. Methods Standardized self-filled scales for anxiety, depression, stress, psychological well-being, and an ad-hoc COVID-19 stress scale were used in this cross-sectional study. Participants were first- to third-year students of eight different health-related tracks in Geneva, Switzerland. Descriptive statistics and hierarchical regression analyses were applied. Results In June 2020, out of 2835 invited students, 433 (15%) completed the survey. Academic satisfaction was a stronger mental health predictor than COVID-19, which mainly predicted stress and anxiety. Lower academic satisfaction scores were significantly associated with stress (β = -.53, p < .001), depression (β = -.26, p < .001), anxiety (β = -.20, p < .001), while higher scores with psychological well-being (β = .48, p < .001). Being female was strongly associated with anxiety and stress but not with depression or psychological well-being. Lower age was associated with stress only. The nature of the academic training had a lesser impact on mental health and the academic year none. Compared to students starting the academic year, year-end students reported significantly lower academic satisfaction, higher depression, and particularly higher anxiety and stress. There was, however, no difference in psychological well-being. Conclusion Students suffer more from anxiety, stress, depression, and lower satisfaction with studies at the end of the academic year than at the beginning. Academic satisfaction plays a more substantial role than COVID-19 in predicting students’ overall mental health status. Training institutions should address the underlying factors that can enhance students’ academic satisfaction, especially during the COVID-19 period, in addition to ensuring that they have a continuous and adequate learning experience, as well as access to psychosocial services that help them cope with mental distress and enhance their psychological well-being.