Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cytokine Release Syndrome By T-cell–Redirecting Therapies: Can We Predict and Modulate Patient Risk?

T-cell–redirecting therapies are promising new therapeutic options in the field of cancer immunotherapy, but the development of these modalities is challenging. A commonly observed adverse event in patients treated with T-cell–redirecting therapies is cytokine release syndrome (CRS). Its clinical manifestation is a burden on patients, and continues to be a big hurdle in the clinical development of this class of therapeutics. We review different T-cell–redirecting therapies, discuss key factors related to cytokine release and potentially leading to CRS, and present clinical mitigation strategies applied for those modalities. We propose to dissect those risk factors into drug-target-disease–related factors and individual patient risk factors. Aiming to optimize the therapeutic intervention of these modalities, we illustrate how the knowledge on drug-target-disease–related factors, such as target expression, binding affinity, and target accessibility, can be leveraged in a model-based framework and highlight with case examples how modeling and simulation is applied to guide drug discovery and development. We draw attention to the current gaps in predicting the individual patient's risk towards a high-grade CRS, which requires further considerations of risk factors related, but not limited to, the patient's demographics, genetics, underlying pathologies, treatment history, and environmental exposures. The drug-target-disease–related factors together with the individual patient's risk factors can be regarded as the patient's propensity for developing CRS in response to therapy. As an outlook, we suggest implementing a risk scoring system combined with mechanistic modeling to enable the prediction of an individual patient's risk of CRS for a given therapeutic intervention.
Impact of Betaine Under Salinity on Accumulation of Phenolic Compounds in Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) Sprouts

It has been assumed that abiotic stresses often lead to osmotic and ionic stress in plants either inducing or reducing secondary plant metabolites. Therefore, the influence of NaCl, glycinebetaine (betaine), and NaCl with betaine on the growth and variation in the accumulation of phenolic compounds was investigated in safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.). The growth pattern of safflower sprouts was significantly influenced by these treatments. It was found that with increases in the concentration of NaCl, all growth parameters steadily decreased, but growth was markedly increased by adding different concentrations of betaine, especially at 0.5 mM, which produced the highest growth in terms of different growth parameters. High-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) analysis revealed changes in 7 different phenolic compounds in response to different treatments. After treatment with up to 200 mM NaCl, the levels of catechin, ferulic acid, benzoic acid, and kaempferol increased, whereas the levels of the remaining phenolic compounds, especially chlorogenic acid, and p-coumaric acid were reduced. Our results suggest that the growth suppression due to salinity stress is decreased in the sprouts of safflower by adding betaine.
Andrographis paniculata (Burm. F.) Wall. Ex Nees, Andrographolide, and Andrographolide Analogues as SARS-CoV-2 Antivirals? A Rapid Review

Drug repurposing is commonly employed in the search for potential therapeutic agents. Andrographis paniculata, a medicinal plant commonly used for symptomatic relief of the common cold, and its phytoconstituent andrographolide, have been repeatedly identified as potential antivirals against SARS-CoV-2. In light of new evidence emerging since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, this rapid review was conducted to identify and evaluate the current SARS-CoV-2 antiviral evidence for A. paniculata, andrographolide, and andrographolide analogs. A systematic search and screen strategy of electronic databases and gray literature was undertaken to identify relevant primary articles. One target-based in vitro study reported the 3CLpro inhibitory activity of andrographolide as being no better than disulfiram. Another Vero cell-based study reported potential SARS-CoV-2 inhibitory activity for both andrographolide and A. paniculata extract. Eleven in silico studies predicted the binding of andrographolide and its analogs to several key antiviral targets of SARS-CoV-2 including the spike protein-ACE-2 receptor complex, spike protein, ACE-2 receptor, RdRp, 3CLpro, PLpro, and N-protein RNA-binding domain. In conclusion, in silico and in vitro studies collectively suggest multi-pathway targeting SARS-CoV-2 antiviral properties of andrographolide and its analogs, but in vivo data are needed to support these predictions.
Evaluation of antibacterial, teratogenicity and antibiofilm effect of sulfated chitosans extracted from marine waste against microorganism

Biofilms play a key role in infectious diseases, as they may form on the surface and persist after treatment with various antimicrobial agents. The Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, S. typhimurium, P. aeruginosa, and Escherichia coli most frequently associated with medical devices. Chitosan sulphate from marine litter (SCH-MW) was extracted and the mineral components were determined using atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS). The degree of deacetylation (DA) of SCH was predicted 50% and 33.3% in crab and shrimp waste respectively. The elucidation of the structure of the SCH-MW was portrayed using FT-IR and 1H-NMR spectroscopy. The molecular mass of SCH-MW was determined with Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization-Time of Flight (MALDI-TOF). The teratogenicity of SCH-MW was characterized by the zebrafish embryo (ZFE) model. Antimicrobial activity of SCH-MW was tested with the agar well diffusion method; the inhibitory effect of SCH-MW on biofilm formation was assessed in 96 flat well polystyrene plates. The result revealed that a low concentration of crab-sulfated chitosan inhibited bacterial growth and significantly reduced the anti-biofilm activity of gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria relatively to shrimp. It is potentially against the biofilm formation of pathogenic bacteria.
The Effect of Visitor Number on the Behavior of Zoo-Housed Macropods

ABSTRACT Free-range exhibits are used by zoos to allow visitors to experience or interact with animals in a semi-natural setting; close interactions with animals have been shown to increase empathy and contribute to conservation outcomes, and as such zoos are increasingly implementing free-range style exhibits to facilitate this goal. We aimed to investigate whether this close proximity to zoo visitors impacted upon four species of macropod (red kangaroo Macropus rufus, red-necked wallaby Macropus rufogriseus, swamp wallaby Wallabia bicolor, and quokka Setonix brachyurus) in a free-range exhibit in an Australian zoo. Specifically, we used instantaneous scan sampling to assess animal behavior and examined whether visitor number affected the proportion of individuals that exhibited four target behaviors; visitor-directed vigilance, retreat, resting, and foraging behavior. We found that the proportion of individuals exhibiting visitor-directed vigilance significantly increased as pedestrian visitor number increased for three of the four species, and the proportion of individuals that were resting was significantly negatively related to visitor number for both wallaby species. The proportion of individuals of each species foraging or retreating was unrelated to visitor number. These data suggest that a visitor effect exists in a walk-through exhibit of macropods, and once visitor numbers go beyond a threshold, the behavior of more animals is impacted, likely compromising welfare. Interestingly, quokka do not appear to be affected by zoo visitors; which may be due to visitor pressure being perceived differently due to evolutionary differences, or that housing and husbandry ameliorate the visitor effect for this species but not others. Like many studies before, taking a species-specific approach to understanding zoo visitor–animal interactions has determined how the visitor effect likely impacts macropods differently.
Bullying discussions in UK female influencers’ YouTube comments

ABSTRACT Victims of bullying are often reluctant to seek formal support, and instead, internalise their emotions, hindering recovery. Some will subsequently encounter discussions of bullying online, giving them an unexpected opportunity to share their feelings or experience vicarious support. In this article, we investigate reactions to discussions of offline and online bullying in the comments posted to the YouTube channels of 34 popular UK female lifestyle influencers. We used a thematic analysis of keywords associated with comments mentioning bullying to identify bullying-related themes. The almost universally supportive comments position female YouTube influencer channels as sources of unexpected indirect support for victims that professionals may also recommend. The comments also reveal a previously undiscussed strategy for helping victims: abstraction.
Design Method of Porous Titanium Alloy Based on Meta-Structure

Abstract To meet the personalized demands of different bone tissues in regard of the mechanical properties of titanium alloy implants and solve the problem of stress shielding, this paper studies TC4 and thereby proposes a design method of porous titanium alloy based on meta-structure for additive manufacturing. In this paper, the construction method of the meta-structure is illustrated, and the relationship model between the meta-structure and the key mechanical properties of metal implants is established. This paper determines certain relevant parameters in the model through simulation method, verifies the correctness of the model through additive manufacturing experiment, and proposes two construction methods of porous titanium alloy based on meta-structure, thus providing a systematic and quantitative solution for the design of porous structure of titanium alloy for implants.
Inclusion in citizen science: The conundrum of rebranding

Does replacing the term “citizen science” do more harm than good? As the scientific community, like society more broadly, reckons with long-standing challenges around accessibility, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, we would be wise to pay attention to issues and lessons emerging in debates around citizen science. When practitioners first placed the modifier “citizen” on science, they intended to signify an inclusive variant within the scientific enterprise that enables those without formal scientific credentials to engage in authoritative knowledge production (1). Given that participants are overwhelmingly white adults, above median income, with a college degree (2, 3), it is clear that citizen science is typically not truly an egalitarian variant of science, open and available to all members of society, particularly those underrepresented in the scientific enterprise. Some question whether the term “citizen” itself is a barrier to inclusion, with many organizations rebranding their programs as “community science. ” But this co-opts a term that has long referred to distinct, grassroots practices of those underserved by science and is thus not synonymous with citizen science. Swapping the terms is not a benign action. Our goal is not to defend the term citizen science, nor provide a singular name for the field. Rather, we aim to explore what the field, and the multiple publics it serves, might gain or lose by replacing the term citizen science and the potential repercussions of adopting alternative terminology (including whether a simple name change alone would do much to improve inclusion).
The secrets of cryptochromes: photoreceptors, clock proteins, and magnetic sensors

Abstract A class of light-activated proteins in the eyes of birds, called cryptochromes, are thought to act as the primary magnetic sensors allowing night-migratory songbirds to navigate over thousands of kilometers using the earth’s magnetic field. Having evolved from DNA-repairing photolyases, cryptochromes have redirected the energy from light to fuel a variety of other functions: as photoreceptors, as regulators of the circadian clock – and, in some species, most likely as sensors of the magnetic field. While the quantum effects of magnetic fields on cryptochromes are already being studied in detail, almost nothing is known about the signaling cascade involving cryptochrome as the primary receptor protein. Two different screening methods have identified potential interaction partners that suggest an involvement of the visual phototransduction pathway, the visual cycle, potassium channels or glutamate receptors, but more pioneering research is needed to unravel the signaling cascade responsible for transducing the magnetic signal.
Factors Affecting Immune Responses in Honey Bees: An Insight

Abstract Honey bees pollinate various crops and wild plants which ensures food security. However, in this modern world, bees are suffering. Decreasing global domesticated and wild bee populations while the demand for agricultural pollination services is increasing is a matter of concern. Colony losses are driven by such factors or interactions as changing environmental conditions, exposure to agrochemicals, parasite and pathogens attack and decreased flower abundance and diversity. All these stresses individually or together affect the immune system of bees and consequently bee fitness. Poor nutrition is the key stressor as it directly suppresses the immune system and reduces host resistance to other stressors. To cope with these stresses, honey bees have well-developed individual and social immune systems which initiate several defence reactions, but its activation, maintenance and use are detrimental for bee survival as it occurs at the cost of bee health. This review summarizes the causal factors and their possible interaction responsible for immune suppression in honey bees.
ShaZam

In this work, we investigate a wireless power transfer technology that can unobtrusively charge wearable devices while users interact with everyday objects, such as an office desk, laptop, or car. We design and develop our solution, ShaZam, that exploits the human body as a medium to transfer Radio Frequency (RF) energy-carrier signals from minimally-instrumented daily objects to wearable devices. We focus on establishing the technical groundwork of the proposed technology by incorporating the capacitive coupling mechanism, in which the forward signal path is established through the human body, and the return path is established via capacitive coupling to the surrounding environment. To showcase the feasibility of our technology, we investigate three different use scenarios---i.e., interacting with a keyboard on a desk, a laptop, and the steering wheel of a car---to transfer power to a wrist-worn device. Using data obtained from ten healthy individuals within a setting where uncontrolled electromagnetic interference was relatively low, we demonstrate that we can transfer approximately 0.5 mW - 1 mW of DC power to the wrist-worn device. We also investigate several critical environmental and design parameters that could affect the power transfer and offer design guidelines that optimize performance. Our initial results suggest the potential for a new design paradigm towards completely charge-free wearable devices.
Romi: Screen Peripheral Companion for Mediating Children’s Healthy Screen Use

As young children’s screen time has significantly increased in recent years, their healthy use of digital media is a topic of interest. To support children’s healthy screen use, we are developing Romi, a physical screen peripheral device interface. Romi was designed to help children to transition from screen to out-of-screen by reducing negative experiences when ending screen time. To specify the design concept, we conducted the preliminary interview and experience prototyping focusing on screen-time transition. Based on design attributes which are the peripheral presence, the connection between screen and device, and friendly character, we implemented Romi interface. We believe our approach will provide motivation and inspiration for designing a physical interface for supporting children’s self-regulation.
Scientific Inquiry in Middle Schools by combining Computational Thinking, Wet Lab Experiments, and Liquid Handling Robots

Computational thinking (CT) is necessary for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) literacy, but it can be difficult for many students to develop and it is challenging to integrate into science curricula. Here, we present a five-session curriculum where sixth-grade students programmed a Liquid Handling Robot (LHR) to conduct a science experiment while engaging in CT. We used a mixed-methods approach to assess how the curricular integration of robotics and science experimentation advances students’ CT skills and perceptions of computation in science. We identified growth in CT skills, specifically regarding Algorithmic Thinking. Students identified as key advantages of this approach the increased precision in experimental procedures, time-efficiency, and easier debugging. This course provides a proof of concept curriculum on how the implications for teaching and learning of CT can be assessed, and how CT and robotics can be brought to science classrooms, especially for chemistry and biology.
Towards Position-Independent Sensing for Gesture Recognition with Wi-Fi

Past decades have witnessed the extension of the Wi-Fi signals as a useful tool sensing human activities. One common assumption behind it is that there is a one-to-one mapping between human activities and Wi-Fi received signal patterns. However, this assumption does not hold when the user conducts activities in different locations and orientations. Actually, the received signal patterns of the same activity would become inconsistent when the relative location and orientation of the user with respect to transceivers change, leading to unstable sensing performance. This problem is known as the position-dependent problem, hindering the actual deployment of Wi-Fi-based sensing applications. In this paper, to tackle this fundamental problem, we develop a new position-independent sensing strategy and use gesture recognition as an application example to demonstrate its effectiveness. The key idea is to shift our observation from the traditional transceiver view to the hand-oriented view, and extract features that are irrespective of position-specific factors. Following the strategy, we design a position-independent feature, denoted as Motion Navigation Primitive(MNP). MNP captures the pattern of moving direction changes of the hand, which shares consistent patterns when the user performs the same gesture with different position-specific factors. By analyzing the pattern of MNP, we convert gestures into sequences of strokes (e.g, line, arc and corner) which makes them easy to be recognized. We build a prototype WiFi gesture recognition system, i.e., WiGesture to validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Experiments show that our system can outperform the start-of-arts significantly in different settings. Given its novelty and superiority, we believe the proposed method symbolizes a major step towards gesture recognition and would inspire other solutions to position-independent activity recognition in the future.
Unlocking the Beamforming Potential of LoRa for Long-range Multi-target Respiration Sensing

Despite extensive research effort in contact-free sensing using RF signals in the last few years, there still exist significant barriers preventing their wide adoptions. One key issue is the inability to sense multiple targets due to the intrinsic nature of relying on reflection signals for sensing: the reflections from multiple targets get mixed at the receiver and it is extremely difficult to separate these signals to sense each individual. This problem becomes even more severe in long-range LoRa sensing because the sensing range is much larger compared to WiFi and acoustic based sensing. In this work, we address the challenging multi-target sensing issue, moving LoRa sensing one big step towards practical adoption. The key idea is to effectively utilize multiple antennas at the LoRa gateway to enable spatial beamforming to support multi-target sensing. While traditional beamforming methods adopted in WiFi and Radar systems rely on accurate channel information or transmitter-receiver synchronization, these requirements can not be satisfied in LoRa systems: the transmitter and receiver are not synchronized and no channel state information can be obtained from the cheap LoRa nodes. Another interesting observation is that while beamforming helps to increase signal strength, the phase/amplitude information which is critical for sensing can get corrupted during the beamforming process, eventually compromising the sensing capability. In this paper, we propose novel signal processing methods to address the issues above to enable long-range multi-target reparation sensing with LoRa. Extensive experiments show that our system can monitor the respiration rates of five human targets simultaneously at an average accuracy of 98.1%.
“Let’s Draw Chocolate Milk Together”: Supports and Challenges for Families’ Joint Engagement with Artistic Tablet Apps

Although specific design decisions are known to support Joint Media Engagement (JME; co-play with digital media) it is unclear whether current off-the-shelf tablet experiences are designed with this in mind and whether parents and children are able to engage in JME in practice. As apps that promote artistic creation (i.e., music, drawings) fulfill many extant design recommendations for JME, we observed joint play with two artistic creation apps in a culturally and socioeconomically diverse sample of 20 United States child-mother dyads. Using interaction analysis, we found that in these ”ideal” circumstances, families used varying styles of co-engagement, with Co-Creation and Parent Coaching standing out as collaborative arrangements toward which designers and families can strive. However, there were still challenges, with parents often assuming spectator roles despite their apparent intentions. We highlight key challenges to JME plus design supports and parent strategies to help families jointly engage and create with media.