Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Vitamin K on Bone Mineral Density and Fracture Risk in Adults: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Summary: Recent studies have proposed that adequate intake of Vitamin K (VK) is associated with a low risk of fracture and high bone mineral density (BMD) to improve skeletal health in adults. This systematic review was designed to summarize the most relevant and updated evidence discussing the relationship between VK and bone. It explores the effect of VK deficiency and its supplementation on various bone parameters. Methods: The distinct databases such as PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, National Clinical Trials, Current Controlled Trials, and Clinical Trials were searched up to Jan 2020 to identify eligible trials. All relevant randomized controlled trial studies with any oral dosage form of VK supplement administered for at least six months and assessing BMD or fracture in adults were extracted. Finally, two independent reviewers identified 20 relevant citations for the systematic review and extracted data in tabular form. Results: The meta-analysis was performed with all studies, including postmenopausal and osteoporotic females, for both total clinical and vertebral fracture outcomes. The quantitative analysis showed that the odds ratios (OR) of any fracture were lower for VK as compared to control [OR 0.42 (95% CI 0.27 to 0.66)] for vertebral fractures and OR of 0.44 (95% CI 0.23 to 0.88) for clinical fracture. For the BMD, a meta-analysis of the pooled effect of interventional studies suggested a non-significant association between the use of VK and improvement in femoral BMD (CI 95%, p = 0.08 [−0.03–0.20]). Conclusion: VK decreases general fracture risk, and it can be an option to counter bone loss disorders. However, insufficient evidence is available regarding the significant impact of VK on femoral neck BMD. Therefore, further studies are required to establish the therapeutic value of VK as a treatment for osteoporosis.
Current and emerging molecular technologies for the diagnosis of plant diseases – An overview

Plant diseases caused by numerous pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi are responsible for substantial economic losses in the agricultural industry worldwide. Specific, sensitive, and efficient diagnostic tools have been developed worldwide to mitigate and prevent the pathogenic threat. The diagnostic tools have revolutionized from classical methods to more advanced molecular diagnostic approaches such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR), real-time PCR, loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), biosensor, and next-generation sequencing (NGS). Hence, this review describes the current and emerging molecular diagnostic tools to distinguish and identify pathogens in crops.
Factors Influencing Changes in Parenting Behavior during Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

Purpose: This study aimed to examine the effects of maternal coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) impact, parental stress, parenting behavior, and spousal support on changes in parenting behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic.Methods: A total of 162 mothers who raised infants and toddlers under 24 months of age participated in this descriptive study via a web survey. The researchers collected data, which included demographic variables about mothers and babies, COVID-19 impact, parenting stress, spousal support, parenting behavior, and changes in parenting behavior after the pandemic. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics ver. 24.0 using descriptive statistics, paired t-tests, analysis of variance, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression tests.Results: With the spread of COVID-19, mothers with infants and toddlers appeared to be affected in the order of psychological burden, resources, and financial burden, and their parenting stress increased compared to that before the pandemic. The change in mothers’ parenting behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic increased significantly as the mothers were significantly influenced by COVID-19. In addition, it was confirmed that the change in parenting behavior significantly decreased as mothers’ parenting stress increased.Conclusion: Change in infants’ and toddlers’ mothers’ parenting behavior was associated with both COVID-19 impact and parenting stress in South Korea during the pandemic.
Bruchid Resistance Study through Bulked Segregant Analysis: Used as a Preliminary Step for Next-Generation Sequencing

Seed beetles, commonly known as bruchids, are serious insect pests of Indian pulses inflicting high damage during storage. Earlier, a bruchid resistant rice bean landrace (TNAU Red) from Manipur and a susceptible mung bean variety (VRMGg1) from Tamil Nadu were reported and their inter-specific cross was made in Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. In the present study, seeds from the segregating populations (recombinant inbred lines, RILs) of VRM (Gg)1 and TNAU Red were evaluated for bruchid Callosobruchus maculatus Fabricius resistance following standard methods under laboratory conditions. Bulked segregant analysis (BSA) is an efficient method for quick identification of molecular markers linked to any specific gene or genomic region. BSA significantly reduces the scale and cost by simplifying the procedure compared to conventional method of analyzing the entire population. BSA was carried out using 3 marker systems with an attempt to identify markers associated with the present trait of interest. Two DNA bulks namely resistant bulk (RB) and susceptible bulk (SB) were grouped by pooling equal amount of DNA from 5 each of resistant and susceptible RILs based on bruchid responses such as seed damage (%), mean developmental days (MDP) and adult emergence from seeds. Marker analysis carried out with 41 polymorphic SSRs showed skewed segregation distortion towards the susceptible parent. However, out of 9 RAPDs and 10 ISSRs, 2 RAPD (OPB08 and OPX04) and 1 ISSR (UBC810) primers amplified an allele at 200 - 300 and 300 - 400 bp, respectively, in resistant parent and resistant bulk but not in susceptible parent and susceptible bulk. The amplification of resistant parent allele in resistant bulk may indicate the presence of bruchid resistant gene(s) in the resistant RILs. This experiment was aimed at verifying the presence of bruchid resistant lines carrying resistant gene(s) prior to further association mapping or QTL mapping studies. Further, such type of study can be applied as a preliminary step in NGS technology. HIGHLIGHTS Bruchids are the most damaging storage insect in pulses and other legumes causing great economic losses Bulk segregant analysis (BSA) conducted using three marker systems in an attempt to identify markers associated with bruchid resistance Categorization of RILs based on bruchid responses such as seed damage (%), mean developmental days (MDP), adult emergence from seeds and scoring done Marker analysis using BSA useful for verification of the presence of bruchid resistant lines carrying resistant gene(s) prior to further advanced studies such as QTL mapping, NGS, etc. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Investigating the Measurement of OTL in PISA 2012 and its Relationship with Self-efficacy and Mathematics Achievement: Doubly Latent Multilevel Analyses

ABSTRACT The importance of the opportunity to learn (OTL) for mathematics achievement has been extensively researched. However, there were still unanswered questions regarding OTL’s measurement, analytical level, and relationship with motivational beliefs. To fill in the gaps, we aimed to (1) scrutinize the reliability and validity of OTL, (2) investigate the multilevel nature of OTL, and (3) explore the relationship among OTL, self-efficacy, and mathematics achievement. We used Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 data provided by 470,745 15-year-old students from 63 economies. Psychometric analyses and doubly latent multilevel structural equating modeling were conducted. Results indicated that (1) OTL measured by familiarity with mathematical concepts displayed high reliability and validity, (2) student-reported OTL exhibited high reliability at the school-level, (3) OTL significantly predicted achievement both at student- and school-level, and (4) OTL mediated the relationship between self-efficacy and mathematics achievement at student-level. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
A context-aware anchor-free tiny object detector for aerial images

Object detection in aerial images is a task of predicting the target categories while locating the objects. Since the different categories of objects may have similar shapes and textures in aerial images, we propose context-aware layer to provide global and robust features for classification and regression branch. In addition, we propose the CentraBox to reduce unnecessary training samples during the training phase. We also propose the instance-level normalization to balance the contributions among the instances. Finally, we compare our method with other methods in terms of accuracy, speed and parameters usage. Moreover, we also compare our own method with different hyper-parameter settings.
New tone reservation PAPR reduction techniques for multicarrier systems

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) has been adopted by many telecommunication and broadcasting systems for its robustness, high transmission rates, mobility and bandwidth efficiency. However, OFDM signals are characterized by high power fluctuations, measured by the Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR), which cause distortions at the output of the non-linear High Power Amplifier (HPA) and prevent the radio frequency designer to feed the signal at the optimal point of the HPA specifications in order to reduce the energy consumption. The second generation of Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB-T2) adopted two PAPR reduction techniques, one of them is Tone Reservation (TR). TR creates a Kernel from a reserved set of subcarriers. The kernel is then iteratively added to the OFDM signal in such a way to reduce its peaks thus reducing its PAPR. In the first part of the thesis, different algorithms offering better performances compared to the DVB-T2 TR solution are proposed. A first group of solutions introduces changes and enhancements to the TR algorithm adopted in DVB-T2 TR but keeps the same kernel definition. This group includes: the Partial Oversampling and Fractional Shifted Kernels (POFSK) technique which is based on a partial oversampling of the signal, the Dynamic Threshold (DT) technique which allows better algorithm convergence by dynamically computing the PAPR reduction threshold for every OFDM symbol, and the Enhanced Peak Selection (EPS) technique which provides additional PAPR reduction by choosing the appropriate signal peaks to reduce and the peaks to skip. The second group of solutions includes the Individual Carrier Multiple Peaks (ICMP) technique which is based on a special kernel definition that changes from one algorithm iteration to another and uses a different phase calculation approach that allows the reduction of multiple peaks at a time. GICMP is an optimized version of ICMP that allows the parallelization of iterations in such a way to reduce the processing delay and the number of algorithm iterations. The simulation results and real hardware platform measurements of the proposed algorithms showed that, compared to the DVB-T2 TR version, the GICMP algorithm allows a Modulation Error Rate – MER gain of up to 2.5 dB or a 10 % reduction in HPA consumed energy with the same performances.
Retrospective Analysis of the Risk Factors of Perioperative Bacterial Infection and Correlation with Clinical Prognosis in Kidney Transplant Recipients

Background Infection remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in kidney transplant patients. This study aimed to investigate the risk factors of bacterial infection during the perioperative period of transplantation and the effects of infection on long-term clinical outcomes. Methods In total, 295 kidney transplantation recipients were included in this retrospective study and assigned to two groups: non-infected and infected. The tacrolimus concentration, pharmacogenomics, laboratory parameters, and clinical outcomes of both groups were evaluated. Results A relatively low incidence of urinary tract infection was observed in our cohort, and lung was identified as the most frequent site of infection. Gram-negative bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Klebsiella pneumoniae, were the most common infecting strains in kidney transplant recipients. Patients with diabetes showed greater susceptibility to infection. Compared with the non-infected group, tacrolimus concentration was significantly lower on day 7 and 14 in the infected group. White blood cell count, neutrophil count, and C-reactive protein (CRP) in the infected group were markedly higher post-transplantation, while albumin levels were lower relative to the non-infected group. ABCB1 (rs2032582) genotype showed clear associations with infection. Furthermore, the incidence of delayed graft function (DGF) and early acute rejection (AR) before infection was significantly greater in the infected group. Finally, early post-transplant infection was associated with a marked increase in the incidence of AR, post-transplant diabetes mellitus (PTDM), and secondary infection. Conclusion Pre-diabetes, longer duration of catheterization, lower albumin, higher CRP, tacrolimus concentration on the day 7 and 14, early AR before infection, and DGF were closely related to postoperative infection in kidney transplantation recipients. Moreover, bacterial infection during the perioperative period was closely associated with AR, PTDM and secondary infection.
PI-PD, an Extension of Proportional–Integral–Derivative Control

My previous article on ‘Setting the parameters of proportional–integral–derivative controllers’ looked at the initial work of Ziegler and Nichols and how their concepts have developed into today’s proportional–integral–derivative controllers in the process industries. Here, I look further into the increased control possibilities the controller provides when used in the slightly modified form of a proportional–integral controller with proportional–derivative feedback.
Research highlights on contributions of mitochondrial DNA microsatellite instability in solid cancers – an overview

Cancer has been broadly considered a genetic disease involving mutations in nuclear DNA and the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA). Mitochondria are essential bioenergetics and biosynthetic machinery found in most eukaryotic organisms. Thus, failure of their function is crucial for tumourigenesis, tumour cell growth, and metastasis. Mitochondrial dysregulation can occur as a consequence of molecular alterations in mtDNA, such as point mutations, deletions, inversions, microsatellite instability (MSI), and copy number variations. This review article aims to highlight the published research work on alterations in mtDNA, with a particular focus on mitochondrial MSI (mtMSI) in various types of solid cancers. Databases including PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar were searched for articles about mtMSI and its link to solid cancer published from 1990 till 2021. In this review, we briefly summarize the knowledge related to possible molecular mechanisms causing mtMSI formation and the available information on mtMSI frequency values in all main solid cancer types. Mutations in the mitochondrial genome are widely believed to have a broad impact across various cancers. Based on the available published data, mtMSI can act as a vital risk factor and a potential marker for cancer progression. Further research is required to unravel the role of mtMSI in tumourigenesis.
Preoperative and postoperative prognostic factors of patients with stage II/III lower rectal cancer without neoadjuvant therapy in the clinical trial (JCOG0212)

Abstract Background The JCOG0212 trial was a randomized controlled trial comparing mesorectal excision alone to mesorectal excision with lateral lymph node dissection for stage II/III lower rectal cancer patients without clinical lateral lymph node enlargement. This study aimed to identify clinicopathological prognostic factors for relapse-free survival and overall survival of lower rectal cancer in the trial. Methods Prospective data were selected from 663 patients with complete data. Uni and multivariable Cox regression model was applied to evaluate the preoperative and the combined preoperative and postoperative factors, respectively. Preoperative factors included age, sex, performance status, clinical T, clinical N and operative procedures. Postoperative factors included histological grade, pathological T, number of metastatic lymph nodes and number of dissected lymph nodes. No patient received neoadjuvant treatment. Results Regarding preoperative factors, multivariable analysis revealed that performance status 1 (vs. 0: HR 2.079, P = 0.0041) and cT4a (vs. cT2–3: HR 2.721, P = 0.0002) were independent risk factors for relapse-free survival, and those for overall survival were male (vs. female: HR 1.660, P = 0.0228) and cT4a (vs. cT2–3: HR 2.486, P = 0.0473). The only independent preoperative risk factor common for relapse-free survival and overall survival was cT4a. Taking preoperative and postoperative factors together, the number of metastatic lymph nodes was the only independent risk factor common for relapse-free survival and overall survival. Conclusions Clinical stage II/III lower rectal cancer patients with cT4a should be a target of therapeutic development of neoadjuvant therapy. Postoperatively, intensive chemotherapy should be investigated for patients with more metastatic lymph nodes.
Communities of Practice for Open Source Software

Strategic and economic considerations led the University of São Paulo to institute a program to promote the use of OSS, also driven by a national OSS dissemination policy that draws a lot of mass media attention. The major drivers were software license cost reductions and independence from single vendors, as well as the perception that OSS allows increased user control over systems and interoperability. ABSTRACT
Advancements in Robust Fault Reconstruction Using Sliding Mode Observers

With the massive growth of technologies used in the industry, more is expected from the control systems. Issues such as safety, efficiency and economical operation of the systems and the equipment are of utmost importance as these systems are expected to perform complicated and complex tasks. Hence, there is an essential need for fault detection and isolation. This thesis describes the developments and advancements in the use of sliding mode observers for the purpose of robust fault reconstruction. Existing work has shown that the effect of the disturbances onto the fault reconstruction was minimised in an L2 sense; but complete disturbance decoupling was not guaranteed. The first contribution of this thesis is the investigation of the conditions that enable actuator (input) faults to be reconstructed independently of the disturbances. The conditions are found in terms of the original system matrices. Then, the next contribution is the extension of those results to the case of sensor (output) faults. Following that, using the results of the first contribution, a scheme was developed using cascaded observers to enable disturbance decoupled fault reconstruction for a more general class of systems. Finally, this thesis presents a method to reconstruct faults in cases where the first Markov matrix is rank deficient. The efficacy of these schemes is demonstrated by simulation examples.
Long‐term proton pump inhibitor use and risk of osteoporosis and hip fractures: A nationwide population‐based and multicenter cohort study using a common data model

Association between protonpump inhibitors (PPIs) and osteoporosis, hip fractures has not been fully elucidated. We aimed to evaluate the relationship between PPIs use and the risk of osteoporosis and hip fractures in the databases converted to a common data model (CDM) and to compare the results across the databases.
Association between Periodontitis and Aortic Calcification: A Cohort Study

The present study investigated the association between the presence of periodontitis and aortic calcification (AC) risk among Chinese adults. A total of 6059 individuals who underwent regular health check-ups and received a diagnosis of periodontitis between 2009 and 2016 were included. The outcome was AC, assessed by a chest low-dose spiral CT scan. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to assess the association between periodontitis and AC risk after adjusting for several confounders. After a median follow-up period of 2.3 years (interquartile range: 1.03–4.97 years), 843 cases of AC were identified, with 532 (12.13%) and 311 (18.59%) patients in the non-periodontitis group and periodontitis group, respectively. Multivariate analyses demonstrated that, compared with those without periodontitis, the hazard ratio and 95% confidence interval for AC risk in participants with periodontitis was 1.18 (1.02–1.36) (P = .025) in the fully adjusted model. Stratified analyses showed that the positive relationship between periodontitis and AC was more evident in males and participants <65 years of age (pinteraction = .005 and .004, respectively). Our results show that the presence of periodontitis was positively associated with AC among Chinese adults, especially among males and younger participants.
Next generation live-attenuated influenza vaccine platforms

ABSTRACT Introduction Influenza virus is a major cause of seasonal epidemics and intermittent pandemics. Despite the current molecular biology and vaccine development, influenza virus infection is a significant burden. Vaccines are considered an essential countermeasure for effective control and prevention of influenza virus infection. Even though current influenza virus vaccines provide efficient protection against seasonal influenza outbreaks, the efficacy of these vaccines is not suitable due to antigenic changes of the viruses. Areas covered This review focuses on different live-attenuated platforms for influenza virus vaccine development and proposes essential considerations for a rational universal influenza virus vaccine design. Expert opinion Despite the recent efforts for universal influenza virus vaccines, there is a lack of broadly reactive antibodies’ induction that can confer broad and long-lasting protection. Various strategies using live-attenuated influenza virus vaccines (LAIVs) are investigated to induce broadly reactive, durable, and cross-protective immune responses. LAIVs based on NS segment truncation prevent influenza virus infection and have shown to be effective vaccine candidates among other vaccine platforms. Although many approaches have been used for LAIVs generation, there is still a need to focus on the LAIVs development platforms to generate a universal influenza virus vaccine candidate.