bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Axial length analysis in patients with retinal detachment in New Zealand
Authors: Jirapanyayut Patchara , de Ribot Francesc March , Goh Jerry , de Ribot Anna March 
Published: June 2023

Abstract
Purpose:
The aim of the study is to analyse the axial length (AL) in patients with rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD) in Dunedin Public Hospital (New Zealand).
Method:
Retrospective analysis was performed on the records of 105 patients who underwent retinal surgery with pars plana vitrectomy (PPV) in Dunedin Public Hospital between 1 January 2020 and 1 January 2022. AL was collected with a Zeiss IOL Master500. Data was compared to matched control groups: Dunedin patients requiring cataract surgery, a previous study of healthy individuals from Dunedin (Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health & Development Study) and an Auckland control group comprising of two publications of patients in Auckland undergoing cataract surgery.
Results:
Total data of 108 eyes of 105 patients, of which 42 were female and 63 were male, with an average age of 63.25 ± 16.40 years (mean ± SD), was included in this study. The mean AL of the patients was 24.30 ± 0.33mm compared to the control group of 23.48 ± 0.06mm. The difference in AL between RRD patients and the Auckland control group was 0.82 ± 0.23mm, p < 0.0001. The difference in AL between the RRD and the Dunedin Cataract surgery group was 0.75 ± 0.29, p < 0.0001. The difference between male and female mean AL was 0.75 ± 0.67mm, p < 0.0285.
Conclusion:
Patients with RRD have been shown to have a greater AL when compared to those without, with a difference of 0.82 ± 0.23mm representing approximately 2.2 diopters. Men have a greater mean AL when compared to women, with a difference of 0.75 ± 0.67mm, p < 0.0285 representing approximately 2.0 diopters.
CFDepthNet: Monocular Depth Estimation Introducing Coordinate Attention and Texture Features
Authors: Wei Feng , Zhu Jie , Wang HuiBin , Shen Jie 
Published: June 2023

Abstract

Handling the depth estimation of low-texture regions using photometric error loss is a challenge due to the difficulty of achieving convergence due to the presence of multiple local minima for pixels in low-texture regions (or even no-texture regions). In this paper, based on the photometric loss, we also introduce texture feature metric loss as a constraint and combine the coordinate attention mechanism to improve the depth map's texture quality and edge detail. This paper uses a simple yet compact network structure, a unique loss function, and a relatively flexible embedded attention module, which is more effective and easier to arrange in robotic platforms with weak arithmetic power. The tests show that our network structure not only shows high quality and state-of-the-art results on the KITTI dataset, but the same training results also perform well on the cityscapes and Make3D datasets.
Increase in serum vimentin levels in patients with glioma and its correlation with prognosis of patients with glioblastoma
Authors: Saito Taiichi , Muragaki Yoshihiro , Komori Asuka , Nitta Masayuki , Tsuzuki Shunsuke , Koriyama Shunichi , Ro Bunto , Kawamata Takakazu 
Published: June 2023

Abstract
Early diagnosis of glioma is of great value to improve prognosis. We focused on serum vimentin levels as a useful biomarker for preoperative diagnosis. The aim of this study was to determine whether serum vimentin levels in patients with glioma are significantly higher than those of healthy adult volunteer and whether the serum vimentin level is associated with overall survival (OS) in patients with glioblastoma (GBM). This study included 52 consecutive patients with newly diagnosed glioma and a control group of 13 healthy adult volunteers. We measured serum vimentin levels in blood samples obtained from patients with glioma preoperatively and a control group. Furthermore, we investigated the correlation between serum vimentin levels and OS in patients with GBM. The serum vimentin levels of patients with glioma were significantly higher than those of the control group. The serum vimentin level of 2.9 ng/ml as the optimal value for differentiating patients with glioma from control group with sensitivity of 92.3% and specificity of 88.5%. The serum vimentin levels correlated significantly with immunoreactivity for survivin. In 27 patients with GBM, serum vimentin levels (cutoff value, median value 53.3 ng/ml) correlated with OS in univariate and multivariate analyses. Our study revealed that serum vimentin levels of patients with glioma are significantly higher than those of control group. Therefore, we believe that serum vimentin level might be a useful and practical biomarker for preoperative diagnosis of glioma. Furthermore, high serum vimentin levels correlated significantly with shorter OS in patients with GBM.
Thermal Degradation of Piperazine in Sulfolane Aqueous Solution in CO 2 Capture Process
Authors: Zamani Mousa , Shokouhi Mohammad , Fatoorehchi Hooman , Vahidi Mehdi 
Published: June 2023

Abstract
Thermal degradation of piperazine (PZ) in aqueous and mixed sulfolane (SFL) (30% by weight) + H2O solution as a hybrid context was investigated as a function of temperature and two levels of piperazine concentrations and two levels of carbon dioxide loadings. Degradation of PZ in aqueous solution has been found to be first order. The pseudo rate constants for 5%wt solution of piperazine at 145, 160 and 175°C in aqueous solution are 2.24 ×10− 9, 1.09 ×10− 8 and 2.27 × 10− 7 and in the hybrid media are 3.56 × 10− 8, 7.67 × 10− 8 and 1.19 × 10− 7 per second, respectively, and the activation energies for the aqueous and hybrid media were estimated 238.71 and 62.77 kJ/mole respectively. Considering the most abundant degradation products identified; 3-(hydroxyethyl)-2-oxazolidone (HEOD), N,N-bis-(2-hydroxyethyl)-piperazine (BHEP), N,N’,N-tris-(hydroxyethyl) ethylenediamine (THEED), 1-[2-[(2-Aminoethyl) amino] ethyl] piperazine (AEAEPZ) and 1-Methylpiperazine (1-MPZ), the degradation pathway of PZ in both media is expected to proceed through ring opening of protonated PZ with the attack of other piperazine molecules on its alpha carbon. The presence of SFL only accelerates the reactions without changing the degradation mechanism.
PD-L1 blockade improves survival in sepsis by reversing monocyte dysfunction and immune disorder
Authors: Yang Li , Gao Qian , Li Qiu-Jing , Guo Shu-Bin 
Published: June 2023

Abstract
Objective: Monocyte dysfunction is critical to sepsis-induced immunosuppression. Programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) has shown a close relationship with inflammatory disorder among animal models and patients. We aimed to investigate the potential beneficial immunologic mechanisms of anti-PD-L1 on monocyte dysfunction of mice with sepsis.
Methods: Firstly,we assessed the potential association between PD-L1 expression on monocyte subsets and sepsis severity as well as 28-day mortality. In thi study, 52 septic patients,28 septic shock patients and 40 healthy controls were enrolled and their peripheral whole blood were examined by Flow cytometry. Then Cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) were performed for establishing the mouse sepsis model. Subsequently, effect of anti-PD-L1 antibody on monocyte subset, major histocompatibility complex II(MHC II) expression, cytokine production, and survival were investigated. Results: PD-L1 expression on the classical monocytes (CD14++CD16−) was significantly upregulated among septic shock patients and the 28-d death group than non-septic shock group and 28-d survival group (P<0.05). Compared to septic mice, anti-PD-L1 treated mice had significantly elevated percentages of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) II on peripheral Ly6chi monocyte at 24 h after CLP. Our results showed that the anti-PD-L1 antibody markedly decreased the level of serum inflammatory cytokines serum interleukin (IL)-6, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-a, and IL-10 in sepsis mice at 24h, 48h, and 72 h, respectively (P<0.05). The survival rate of CLP mice was significantly improved by anti-PD-L1 antibody treatment .
Conclusion: Classical monocytes with high expression of PD-L1 was thought to be connected with sepsis
progression. The PD-L1 blockade protects from sepsis, at least partially by inhibiting the reversal of monocyte dysfunction.
Sensitization of hepatocellular carcinoma cells to HDACi is regulated through hsa-miR- 342-5p/CFL1
Authors: Nakka Parvathi , Jassi Chikondi , Chen Ming-Cheng , Liu Yi-Sheng , Liu Jer-Yuh , Yeh Chung-Min , Li Chi-Cheng , Chang Yu-Chun , Kuo Wei-Wen , Huang Chih-Yang 
Published: June 2023

Abstract

Background Increased prevalence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains a global health challenge. HCC chemoresistance is a clinical obstacle for its management. Aberrant miRNA expression is a hallmark for both cancer progression and drug resistance. However, it is unclear which miRNAs are involved in HCC chemoresistance.
Methods MicroRNA microarray analysis revealed a differential expression profile of microRNAs between the hepatocellular carcinoma HA22T cell line and the HDACi-R cell line, which was validated by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). To determine the biological function of miR-342-5p and the mechanism of the microRNA-342-5p/CFL1 axis in hepatocellular carcinoma HDACi resistance, loss- and gain-of-function studies were conducted in vitro.
Results Here we demonstrated the molecular mechanism of histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi) resistance in HCC. Differential miRNA expression analysis showed significant down regulation of miR-342-5p in HDACi-R cells than in parental HA22T cells. Mimics of miR-342-5p enhanced apoptosis through upregulation of Bax, cyto-C, cleaved-caspase-3 expressions with concomitant decline in anti-apoptotic protein (Bcl-2) in HDACi-R cells. Although HDACi did not increase cell viability of HDACi-R, overexpression of miR-342-5p decreased cofilin-1 expression, upregulated reactive oxygen species (ROS) mediated apoptosis, and sensitized HDACi-R to HDACi in a dose-dependent manner.
Conclusion Our findings demonstrated the critical role of miR-342-5p in HDACi resistance of HCC and that this mechanism might be attributed to miR-342-5p/cofilin-1 regulation.
Quality of life after urinary stone surgery based on Japanese Wisconsin Stone Quality of Life questionnaire: multicenter analysis from SMART study group
Authors: Okada Tomoki , Hamamoto Shuzo , Taguchi Kazumi , Okada Shinsuke , Inoue Takaaki , Ando Ryosuke , Okada Atsushi , Yasui Takahiro 
Published: June 2023

Abstract
To evaluate the impact of surgical treatment for urinary stones on perioperative health-related quality of life (HRQOL) using the Japanese Wisconsin Stone Quality of Life questionnaire (J-WISQOL), an HRQOL measure designed for patients with urinary stones. This study prospectively enrolled 123 patients with urinary stones who visited three academic hospitals for stone treatment. The participants completed the J-WISQOL within 4 weeks before and after the urinary stone treatment. Treatments included shock wave lithotripsy (SWL), ureteroscopy lithotripsy, and endoscopic combined intrarenal surgery. J-WISQOL was assessed for age, stone size and location, type of treatment, stone-free status, postoperative ureteral stent placement, hospital stay, and complications in all patients. Patients with stones in the ureter had significantly greater social impact D1 and disease impact D3 than those with stones in the kidney. In a comparison of pre- and postoperative J-WISQOL, patients without postoperative ureteral stent placement scored significantly higher on social impact D1 and disease impact D3. Patients with shorter hospital stay had significantly higher social impact D1 and disease impact D3 (p < 0.001) than those with longer hospital stay. SWL significantly improved the total score, social impact D1, and disease impact D3 compared with other treatments. Perioperative HRQOL in patients with urinary stones is particularly affected by the type of treatment, ureteral stent placement, and hospital stay, which should be considered in surgical selection and patient decision-making.
A Survey on Neural Topic Models: Methods, Applications, and Challenges
Authors: Wu Xiaobao , Nguyen Thong , Luu Anh Tuan 
Published: June 2023

Abstract
Topic models aim to discover latent topics and infer what topics a document contains in an unsupervised fashion. They have been prevalent for decades with wide applications like text analysis. Recently the rise of neural networks has facilitated a new research field---Neural Topic Models (NTMs). Different from conventional models, NTMs directly optimize parameters without model-specific derivations. This endows NTMs with better scalability and flexibility, resulting in significant research attention and plentiful new methods and applications. In this paper, we present a thorough survey on neural topic models carefully and widely. In detail, we systematically organize current NTM methods according to their network structures and introduce the NTMs for various scenarios like short texts and cross-lingual documents. Then we discuss developed popular applications based on NTMs. We finally highlight the challenges of NTMs to motivate future research.
Determining the response of vegetation to urbanization and land use/land cover changes using NDVI and NDBI differencing techniques
Authors: Dangulla Murtala , Manaf Latifah Abd , Ramli Mohammad Firuz 
Published: June 2023

Abstract
Urban ecosystem is a self-organising system of unusual complexity, made up of different interacting social, economic, institutional and ecological subsystems. The response of vegetation to urbanization and accompanying land use and land cover changes in urban areas depends on the form of urbanization and climatic region. Many scholars believe that vegetation is destroyed or at least stunted by urbanization while others are of the opinion that urbanization enhances urban vegetation. This study assessed the relationship between urban expansion and tree density in Sokoto metropolis over a 32-year period using NDVI and NDBI differencing techniques. Results show that the net vegetation gain was 927.8ha while the built-up area expanded by 2918.1ha. Urbanization and urban expansion may have detrimental effects on urban vegetation but with controlled planning, it will have little or no negative impacts. The results show that management and policy measures can be taken in cities in order to mitigate the negative impacts of urbanization on urban vegetation. These findings are relevant in the planning and management of urban forests.
Severe prolonged drought favours stress-tolerant microbes in Australian drylands
Authors: Maisnam Premchand , Jeffries Thomas C , Szejgis Jerzy , Bristol Dylan , Singh Brajesh K , Eldridge David J , Horn Sebastian , Chieppa Jeff , Nielsen Uffe N 
Published: June 2023

Abstract
Drylands comprise one-third of Earth’s terrestrial surface area and support over two billion people. Most drylands are projected to experience altered rainfall regimes, including changes in total amounts and fewer but larger rainfall events interspersed by longer periods without rain. This transition will have ecosystem-wide impacts but the long-term effects on microbial communities remain poorly quantified. We assessed belowground effects of altered rainfall regimes (+ 65% and − 65% relative to ambient) at six sites in arid and semi-arid Australia over a period of three years (2016–2019) coinciding with a significant natural drought event (2017–2019). Microbial communities differed significantly among semi-arid and arid sites and across years associated with variation in abiotic factors, such as pH and carbon content, along with rainfall. Rainfall treatments induced shifts in microbial community composition only at a subset of the sites (Milparinka and Quilpie). However, differential abundance analyses revealed that several taxa, including Acidobacteria, TM7, Gemmatimonadates and Chytridiomycota, were more abundant in the wettest year (2016) and that their relative abundance decreased in drier years. By contrast, the relative abundance of oligotrophic taxa such as Actinobacteria, Alpha-proteobacteria, Planctomycetes, and Ascomycota and Basidiomycota, increased during the prolonged drought. Interestingly, fungi were shown to be more sensitive with increasing drought intensity and to rainfall treatment than bacteria with Basidiomycota mostly dominant in the reduced rainfall treatment. Moreover, correlation network analyses showed more positive associations among stress-tolerant dominant taxa following the drought (i.e., 2019 v 2016). Our result indicates that such stress-tolerant taxa play an important role in how whole communities respond to changes in aridity. Such knowledge provides a better understanding of microbial responses to predicted increases in rainfall variability and the impact on the functioning of semi-arid and arid ecosystems.
Advances and Challenges in Learning from Experience Replay
Authors: Neves Daniel Eugênio , Júnior Zenilton Kleber Gonçalves do Patrocínio , Ishitani Lucila 
Published: June 2023

Abstract

From the first theoretical propositions in the ’50s, inspired by the neuroscience and psychology studies about the learning processes in human beings and animals, to its application in real-world problems on learning to action, Reinforcement Learning (RL) is still being a fascinating, rich, and complex class of machine learning algorithms. In particular, we will start reviewing its fundamental principles and develop a discussion about how a technique called Experience Replay (ER) has been of fundamental importance in making a variety of methods in most of the relevant problems and different domains more data efficient, using agent experiences to improve its performance. We present some of the more relevant methods in the literature, which base most recent research on improving RL with ER. Finally, we bring from the recent literature some of the main trends, challenges, and advances focused on reviewing and discussing ER formal basement and how to improve its proposition to make it even more efficient in different methods and domains.
RFENet: Recurrent Feature Extraction Module with Attention for Retinal Vessel Segmentation
Authors: Zhu Weitao , Liu Peter X. 
Published: June 2023

Abstract
Retinal vessel segmentation is essential to assist doctors in diagnosing diabetic retinopathy, macular atrophy, glaucoma, and other ophthalmic diseases. Due to the small size and complex distribution of retinal vessel, traditional segmentation methods are prone to losing details. In order to improve the segmentation accuracy of retinal vessel and obtain the global contextual information in retinal images, this paper proposes a recurrent feature extraction network (RFENet) based model. First, the recurrent feature extraction (RFE) module extracts feature from the deep feature map in a recurrent manner to mitigate the problem of insufficient feature extraction when the model handles medical image segmentation. Next, this module performs a multi-scale fusion of the extracted features to obtain multi-scale features of the image. An attention module is used to further improve the feature extraction capability of the network before montaging the features at each resolution of the encoder with the corresponding features in the decoder. By applying the recurrent feature extraction module to the encoder-decoder structure for vessel segmentation on the color fundus image datasets DRIVE and STARE, experimental results show that the retinal vessel segmentation method based on the recurrent feature extraction module effectively improves the segmentation accuracy.
Disulfidptosis-associated lncRNAs predict breast cancer subtypes
Authors: Xia Qing , Yan Qibin , Wang Zehua , Huang Qinyuan , Zheng Xinying , Shen Jinze , Du Lihua , Li Hanbing , Duan Shiwei 
Published: June 2023

Abstract
Background
Disulfidptosis is a newly discovered mode of cell death. However, its relationship with breast cancer subtypes remains unclear. In this study, we aimed to construct a disulfidptosis-associated breast cancer subtype prediction model.
Methods
We obtained 19 disulfidptosis-related genes from published articles and performed correlation analysis with lncRNAs differentially expressed in breast cancer. We then used the random forest algorithm to select important lncRNAs and establish a breast cancer subtype prediction model. We identified 132 lncRNAs significantly associated with disulfidptosis (FDR < 0.01, |R|>0.15) and selected the first four important lncRNAs to build a prediction model (training set AUC = 0.992).
Results
The model accurately predicted breast cancer subtypes (test set AUC = 0.885). Among the key lncRNAs, LINC02188 had the highest expression in the Basal subtype, while LINC01488 and GATA3-AS1 had the lowest expression in Basal. In the Her2 subtype, LINC00511 had the highest expression level compared to other key lncRNAs. GATA3-AS1 had the highest expression in LumA and LumB subtypes, while LINC00511 had the lowest expression in these subtypes. In the Normal subtype, GATA3-AS1 had the highest expression level compared to other key lncRNAs. Our study also found that key lncRNAs were closely related to RNA methylation modification and angiogenesis (FDR < 0.05, |R|>0.1), as well as immune infiltrating cells (P.adj < 0.01, |R|>0.1).
Conclusions
Our random forest model based on disulfidptosis-related lncRNAs can accurately predict breast cancer subtypes and provide a new direction for research on clinical therapeutic targets for breast cancer.
Mangifera indica (Mango) and Dysoxylum binectariferum (Lamboo) based agroforestry system: An Ideal Model for Alternative Land Use System for Food Security and Socioeconomic benefits with Assessment of Carbon Sequestration
Authors: Murmu Suren , Padhi Gayatri Kumari , Verma Sachin , Murmu Paritosh , Upadhyay Lalit , Dhara Pratap Kumar 
Published: June 2023

Abstract

Agroforestry is a sustainable land use system that combines tree and crops for productive and protective purposes. Integration of trees in agroforestry system results in positive or negative tree-crop interactions, hence, selection of suitable tree – crop combinations is important. To find out the suitable tree-crop combination, a field experiment was conducted at Regional Research Station (Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya), Jhargram, West Bengal, India. The different crops were cultivated and evaluated during 2017- 18 in alley space of mango (Mangifera indica) and Lamboo (Dysoxylum binectariferum) plantation raised during 2010. Mango plants were planted at 10x10m spacing and Lamboo plants were introduced between two mango plants with in the row i.e., each at 5m distance from mango plant. The crops viz pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan), black gram (Vigna mungo), bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria), okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) and maize (Zea mays) were cultivated during monsoon-autumn and mustard (Yellow Sarson i.e., Brassica campestris) in winter season. The data revealed that Lamboo and Mango trees in agroforestry system recorded significantly higher growth and yield in comparison to pure plantations. The growth attributes of Lamboo and Mango were recorded to be highest in treatment (T1). The productivity of Lamboo and Mango was also recorded to be highest in the treatment accompanied with Mango and Pigeon Pea. After completion of two cycles of cropping, the results revealed that increase in percentage of organic carbon, N, P and K was found to higher in T1 (Lamboo + Mango + Pigeon pea) i.e., Organic Carbon -29.73%, N-39.21%, P-38.20% and K-19.66%). The maximum gross income was recorded in T3 (Lamboo + Mango + Bottle gourd – Mustard) i.e., ₹7,64,995 per hectare. Hence, this tree-crop combination can be adopted for highest return in Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal.