Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Longer Survival and Preserved Liver Function after Proton Beam Therapy for Patients with Unresectable Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Background: Proton beam therapy (PBT) has been recently reported to achieve excellent tumor control with minimal toxicity in patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) combined with transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) was investigated for larger HCC. This study was designed to evaluate the therapeutic effect of PBT on unresectable HCC in comparison with TACE combined with RFA. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 70 patients with HCC which was difficult to control by surgical resection or RFA monotherapy, 24 patients treated with PBT and 46 patients with TACE plus RFA. The therapeutic effects were assessed as local progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). Results: The local PFS was more than 65% in 60 months for PBT and TACE plus RFA. The patients treated with PBT showed 82% OS at 60 months post-treatment. In contrast, those treated with TACE plus RFA showed 28% OS. When comparing the changes of ALBI scores in patients with different severities of chronic liver disease, the scores of PBT-treated patients were maintained at the baseline; however, those of TACE plus RFA-treated patients worsened after the treatments. Conclusions: The results indicated that PBT may show better benefits than TACE plus RFA therapy in terms of OS in patients with unresectable HCC by sparing the non-tumor liver tissues.
Biodiversity of the microbiome as an indicator of phytomeliorative soil transformation

40% of the territory of Western Siberia is occupied by solonetzes, used mainly for growing forage grasses. The phytomeliorative effect of yellow sweet clover (cultivated in crop rotation at the Siberian Federal Research Center of Agrobiotechnologies (SFSCA) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) for 31 years), as well as post crop rotation grassing with a mixture of brome and alfalfa (the mixture was sown after twenty years of crop rotation) on the microflora of medium solonetz was studied. It is shown that the cultivation of phytomeliorants has led to an increase in the representation of classes and orders of bacteria in the microbiome of the medium solonetz, associated with nitrogen fixation and mineralization activity of the soil in relation to nitrogen-containing substances. In the post crop rotation grassing variant, a low bacterization of the soil with Verrucomicrobia and a high, as in virgin soil, Acidobacteria were found.
Experimental results of a control time delay system using optimal control

The optimal control for a temperature system with time delay is considered. Experimental results of the control system are presented in this contribution. The integral term in the controller is approximated by a quadrature method. Experimental results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness of the approximation method. By a simple analysis in time domain, we demonstrate the robustness of the optimal controller. We compare the optimal control's performance with an industrial PID controller. This controller was robustly tuned. The experiments indicate the correct optimization of the plant when the optimal control was employed, despite limitations in the sensor, actuators, non‐modeled dynamics, and uncertain parameters of the process. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Dopamine Receptor D1R and D3R and GRK4 Interaction in Hypertension

Essential hypertension is caused by the interaction of genetic, behavioral, and environmental factors. Abnormalities in the regulation of renal ion transport cause essential hypertension. The renal dopaminergic system, which inhibits sodium transport in all the nephron segments, is responsible for at least 50% of renal sodium excretion under conditions of moderate sodium excess. Dopaminergic signals are transduced by two families of receptors that belong to the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) superfamily. D1-like receptors (D1R and D5R) stimulate, while D2-like receptors (D2R, D3R, and D4R) inhibit adenylyl cyclases. The dopamine receptor subtypes, themselves, or by their interactions, regulate renal sodium transport and blood pressure. We review the role of the D1R and D3R and their interaction in the natriuresis associated with volume expansion. The D1R- and D3R-mediated inhibition of renal sodium transport involves PKA and PKC-dependent and -independent mechanisms. The D3R also increases the degradation of NHE3 via USP-mediated ubiquitinylation. Although deletion of Drd1 and Drd3 in mice causes hypertension, DRD1 polymorphisms are not always associated with human essential hypertension and polymorphisms in DRD3 are not associated with human essential hypertension. The impaired D1R and D3R function in hypertension is related to their hyper-phosphorylation; GRK4γ isoforms, R65L, A142V, and A486V, hyper-phosphorylate and desensitize D1R and D3R. The GRK4 locus is linked to and GRK4 variants are associated with high blood pressure in humans. Thus, GRK4, by itself, and by regulating genes related to the control of blood pressure may explain the “apparent” polygenic nature of essential hypertension.
Human disturbance increases coronavirus prevalence in bats

Human land modification is a known driver of animal-to-human transmission of infectious agents (zoonotic spillover). Infection prevalence in the reservoir is a key predictor of spillover, but landscape-level associations between the intensity of land modification and infection rates in wildlife remain largely untested. Bat-borne coronaviruses have caused three major disease outbreaks in humans: severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We statistically link high-resolution land modification data with bat coronavirus surveillance records and show that coronavirus prevalence significantly increases with the intensity of human impact across all climates and levels of background biodiversity. The most significant contributors to the overall human impact are agriculture, deforestation, and mining. Regions of high predicted bat coronavirus prevalence coincide with global disease hotspots, suggesting that infection prevalence in wildlife may be an important factor underlying links between human land modification and zoonotic disease emergence.
A buoyancy‐based mixing‐length proposal for cloudy boundary layers

The parametrization of boundary‐layer clouds is approached here using a turbulence–kinetic energy closure, in conservative variables for non‐precipitating processes and through a new proposal for the turbulence mixing length. A subgrid condensation scheme able to treat partially saturated conditions in a model grid cell is also necessary. An extension of the buoyancy‐based Bougeault–Lacarrère mixing length is proposed, to take into account moist processes, and specifically the effects of phase changes. The asymmetry between upward and downward mixing processes is also considered for partial cloudiness conditions. The new proposal is tested for stratocumulus‐capped marine boundary layers and for shallow cumulus convection, both over land and sea. The validation ismade against large‐eddy simulation results obtained from model intercomparison cases, for stationary regimes as a first step, and then for the diurnal evolution of marine stratocumulus and shallow convection over land. Copyright © 2004 Royal Meteorological Society
Beneficial effects of endophytic fungi inoculation on tanshinones and phenolic compounds of Salvia abrotanoides

Objective(s): Salvia abrotanoides is considered as a new source of tanshinone-producing plants in Iran. Symbiosis of endophytic fungi with their host plants is an effective tool to promote the growth and secondary metabolism of medicinal herbs. Therefore, using endophytic fungi as a biotic elicitor is a proper solution to increase the yield of plant products. Materials and Methods: In this study, some endophytic fungi were first isolated from the root of S. abrotanoides, then two of them (Penicillium canescens and Talaromyces sp.) were co-cultivated with the sterile seedling of S. abrotanoides in pot culture. After proving the colonization of these fungi in the root tissues by microscopic studies, their effects on the production of critical medicinal compounds such as tanshinones and phenolic acids were investigated in the vegetation stage (120 days). Results: Our results showed that the content of cryptotanshinone (Cry) and tanshinone IIA (T-IIA) in plants inoculated with P. canescens increased by 77.00% and 19.64%, respectively, compared with non-inoculated plants (control). The contents of mentioned compounds in plants inoculated with Talaromyces sp. increased by 50.00% and 23.00%, respectively. In this case, in plants inoculated with P. canescens, it was found that the level of caffeic acid, rosmarinic acid, and its PAL enzyme activity increased by 64.00%, 69.00%, and 50.00%, respectively, compared with the control. Conclusion: Endophytic fungi have specific modes of action and the ability to provide multiple benefits. Each of the two strains is a highly considerable microbial resource for the growth and accumulation of active compounds of S. abrotanoides.
Design, synthesis, docking, and antidepressant activity evaluation of isatin derivatives bearing Schiff bases

Objective(s): Depression is a prevalent psychiatric disorder. Treatment of depression is still a challenge due to the lack of response of some patients to a variety of available medications and side effects. Isatin is an interesting molecule with diversified biological effects. It also participates in many synthetic reactions, as a precursor molecule. In this study, a new series of N-alkyl and N-benzyl isatin derivatives bearing Schiff bases were synthesized and screened for antidepressant activities in mice. Materials and Methods: The synthesis was initiated by N-alkylation and N-benzylation of isatin by an alkylation reaction to give N-substituted isatins. 2-(Benzyloxy) benzohydrazide derivatives were synthesized by treating methyl2-hydroxybenzoate with benzyl bromide or 4-chlorobenzyl bromide which was followed by a reaction with hydrazine hydrate to provide acid hydrazide derivatives. The final compounds were obtained by condensation of N-substituted isatins with 2-(benzyloxy) benzohydrazide derivatives as Shiff-base products. Compounds were evaluated for antidepressant activities in mice by the locomotor activity, marble burying test, and forced swimming test. Monoamine oxidase–A (MAO–A) enzyme has been used for molecular docking studies. Results: Compounds 8b and 8e in both doses, and 8 c in the lower dose, reduced immobility time during the forced swimming test relative to the control group. All preparations reduced the number of marbles buried compared with the control group. The highest docking score was -11.01 kcal/mol for compound 8e. Conclusion: N-Benzylated-isatin (8b, 8e) and N- acetic acid ethyl ester -isatin derivatives (8c) showed more effective antidepressant activity compared with N-phenyl acetamide isatin derivatives. Docking results relatively confirm the pharmacological results.
Literature Review of the Efficacy of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on Epilepsy

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), often recognized as a safe and tolerable method with promising therapeutic potential for the treatment of a variety of neurological disorders, has been extensively studied by medical engineering scientists in recent decades. Epilepsy has always been one of the vital foci in the therapeutic role of rTMS, especially its low-frequency type. However, various reports, clinical trials, and review articles published in recent years have yielded conflicting results regarding the efficacy and side effects of rTMS in patients. In this review article, reviewing studies published from January 2000 to October 2021, we examined the efficacy and side effects of rTMS with a specific look at its therapeutic applications in epilepsy. Our study indicates promising results in the clinical application of this technique for patients with epilepsy. Among other things, it has the ability to reduce interictal epileptic abnormalities, does not interfere with neuropsychological function in normal people, does not worsen cognitive function and even improves Stroop function, rarely has serious side effects such as seizures and psychotic symptoms, has low risk in children as adults, and has potential for improving suicidal ideation. Despite some limitations in this study, including the small number of studies performed and the heterogeneity among studies, this review article suggests significant rtMS potentials in improving the complications of epilepsy. Our review also showed that the reported side effects of using this technique are not very common. Therefore, we can recommend further use of this technique as a promising tool in clinical research.
Face Recognition Based on Polar Coordinate Transform

In this paper, we propose a novel method for face recognition which uses polar coordinate instead of conventional cartesian coordinate. Among the central area of a face, we select a point as a pole and make a polar image of a face by evenly sampling pixels in each direction of 360 degrees around the pole. By applying conventional feature extraction methods to the polar image, the recognition rates are improved. The polar coordinate delineates near-pole area more vividly than the area far from the pole. In a face, important regions such as eyes, nose and mouth are concentrated on the central part of a face. Therefore, the polar coordinate of a face image can achieve more vivid representation of important facial regions compared to the conventional cartesian coordinate. The proposed polar coordinate transform was applied to Yale and FRGC databases and LDA and NLDA were used to extract features afterwards. The experimental results show that the proposed method performs better than the conventional cartesian images.
Pitch angle dispersion of ion injections

Substorm-injected particles are time dispersed with pitch angle such that low pitch angle particles arrive earliest on the dayside at geosynchronous orbit, opposite the sense predicted by drift in a dipole field. In contrast to energy dispersion which is well understood, pitch angle dispersion of particle injections has not been quantitatively explained. We present a statistical analysis of energetic ion injections observed by the Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers/Charge Composition Explorer (AMPTE/CCE) satellite, and we compare the results with model calculations of single-particle drift in realistic model magnetospheric electric and magnetic fields. The data analysis is based on observations made from August 1984 to February 1986, which cover all local times, radial distances between 5.5 and 8.8 RE, and dipole latitudes between −16° and 16° and includes over 400 events mostly beyond 8 RE. Using events observed between L = 8 and L = 9, where the effects of the satellite radial motion are minimal, we study the local time dependence of the injection delay time between different energies and pitch angles. We find that high pitch angle injection is delayed from low pitch angle injection and that the delay increases westward from the evening sector reaching ∼2 min (67° versus 23° pitch angles) at 1200 magnetic local time (MLT) at 120–220 keV. The observations are compared to proton drift calculations in static magnetic (T89c) and electric (Volland-Stern) field models. The calculations reproduce the observed drift times, pitch angle dispersion, and local time dependences, showing for the first time that sufficiently realistic magnetospheric magnetic field models can account for reverse pitch angle dispersion. Detailed examination of the curvature and gradient drift terms shows that the pitch angle dispersion is due principally to compression of the dayside magnetosphere, which preferentially suppresses the gradient and curvature drifts of near equatorially mirroring particles.
Optically Thin Irregularities in the Penumbrae of Sunspots

Different estimates of the vertical gradient of magnetic field inclination in penumbrae disagree by 2 orders of magnitude. This disagreement may be resolved if measuring with typical angular resolutions implies averaging hundreds of independent fibrils whose residual variation, upon spatial averaging, gives rise to the observed large-scale structures. The small-scale gradients show up in estimates based on the broadband circular polarization, whereas significant bias affects other methods. From the comparison of these two types of measurements, one can infer the typical sizes of the penumbral irregularities. They turn out to be between 1 and 15 km wide, depending on details of the calculation. This result supports the kind of highly irregular atmosphere that Sanchez Almeida and coworkers proposed to represent the solar magnetic photosphere.
Reduced area multipliers

As developed by Wallace (1964) and Dadda (1965), a high-speed method for the parallel multiplication of two binary numbers is to reduce their partial products to two numbers whose sum is equal to the product. The resulting two numbers are then summed using a fast carry-propagate adder. The authors present a multiplier, the reduced area multiplier, with a novel reduction scheme which results in fewer components and less interconnect overhead than either Wallace or Dadda multipliers. This reduction scheme is especially useful for pipelined multipliers, because it minimizes the number of latches required in the reduction of the partial products. Equations are given for determining the number of components and a method is presented for estimating the interconnect overhead for Wallace, Dadda and reduced area multipliers. Area estimates indicate that pipelined reduced area multipliers require 3 to 8% less area than equivalent Wallace multipliers and 15 to 25% less area than equivalent Dadda multipliers. <<ETX>>
Coupled quantum well semiconductors with giant electric field tunable nonlinear optical properties in the infrared

Coupled quantum wells present unique opportunities for engineering new semiconductors with large optical nonlinearities associated with intersubband transitions in the infrared. In this paper we report an in depth study of these properties in the AlInAs/GaInAs heterostructure material system grown by molecular beam epitaxy. We show that by judicious control of the tunnel coupling between wells and of the thickness of the latter one can design the wavefunctions and the energy levels in such a may that these new structures behave as quasi-molecules with extremely large dipole matrix elements and strongly field tunable nonlinear optical properties. Structures with giant nonlinear susceptibilities /spl chi//sup (2)/(2/spl omega/) and /spl chi//sup (3)/(3/spl omega/) (compared to the bulk constituents of the quantum wells) have been designed and demonstrated. They exhibit large linear Stark shifts of the intersubband transitions which have been used to efficiently tune the nonlinear susceptibilities. The second order nonlinear susceptibility |/spl chi//sup (2)/(2/spl omega/)| exhibits a peak as a function of the electric field corresponding to the energy levels being made equally spaced via the Stark effect. In a three-coupled-well structure triply resonant third harmonic generation has been observed. This process is associated with four equally spaced bound states. The corresponding |/spl chi//sub (3/spl omega/)//sup (3)/| (10/sup -14/ (m/V)/sup 2/ at 300 K and 4/spl times/10/sup -14/ (m/V)/sup 2/ at 30 K) is the highest measured third order noniinear susceptibility in any material. The equivalent of multiphoton ionization of a molecule has also been investigated in this structure. Electrons are photoexcited to a continuum resonance above the barrier via a three-photon transition enhanced by intermediate energy levels. The effect of this resonance on /spl chi//sup (3)/(3/spl omega/) as the electric field is varied is also investigated. Finally, appropriate figures of merit are discussed. >
Survey of Palmprint Recognition Algorithms

As an emerging biometric technology,palmprint recognition has recently received considerable research interest.Because of its low-price capture device,fast execution speed,and high verification accuracy,palmprint recognition is very competitive in biometric research and is expected to have a wide range of security applications.This paper first introduces the characteristics of the palmprint,the acquisition and the preprocessing method for palmprint image,and then presents a survey of the palmprint recognition algorithms.According to different feature extraction and matching approaches,we roughly group these algorithms into four categories:structure based,statistics based,subspace based and coding based methods.After surveying and comparing these algorithms in each category,we conclude this paper with a discussion of future trends.
Crocetin Regulates Functions of Neural Stem Cells to Generate New Neurons for Cerebral Ischemia Recovery

Many neurons undergo apoptosis after ischemic stroke. In the brain, neurogenesis has the potential for neuronal replacement and can be activated by external conditions to repair the injury. Crocetin (CRO), naturally extracted from the plant saffron, acts as a neuroprotective agent for ischemic stroke. However, the underlying mechanism remains unknown. In this work, the effect of CRO on neural stem cell (NSC) behaviors and subventricular zone neurogenesis is investigated. Initially, NSCs are incubated with different concentrations of CRO to detect the cell proliferation and differentiation in vitro. Second, ischemic stroke induced rats are treated with CRO using nimodipine (NMDP) as a comparison. The behavioral functions, infarcted volume, and apoptotic Nissl bodies of rats are noticeably improved after CRO‐treatment, comparable to those of NMDP. In addition, the increased regional cerebral blood flow and promoted neuronal differentiation are achieved by CRO‐treatment. Brain tissue examination shows significantly increased neuronal regeneration in the focal ischemic injury area. Meanwhile, the length of neurites is prolonged, indicating that CRO could potentially promote neurite extension to enhance cell–cell communication. These findings demonstrate that CRO facilitated the neuronal differentiation of NSCs by activating subventricular zone neurogenesis in damaged cortex and striatum sites to repair ischemic stroke.
What are lay UK public perceptions of frailty: a scoping review

Abstract Rationale and objective Perceptions of frailty can influence how families cope, quality of life and access to support services. Yet little is known of how lay members of the UK general public perceive frailty. This scoping review aimed to explore how frailty is perceived among the lay public in the United Kingdom. Methods The established scoping review methodology by Arksey and O’Malley was followed and searches were conducted across eight electronic databases and grey literature websites for articles published between 1990 and August 2022. In total, 6,705 articles were identified, of which six were included in the review. Data were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis framework. Results Three key themes were identified; frailty as a normal part of ageing, perceived consequences of frailty and coping with frailty. Overall, frailty has negative connotations and is perceived as linked to a natural part of the ageing process, increased dependency, loss of identity and social exclusion and stigma. However, it is unclear whether these perceptions have a direct bearing on access to support services for communities. Conclusion and implications This review identifies that it is imperative for health and social care service providers to consider the individual meaning of frailty for older people and families, to understand and integrate their particular needs and preferences when planning and delivering person centred frailty care and support. There is also a need for development of interventions that focus on increasing education and reducing stigma around frailty in order to change frailty perceptions in the UK.