The Quantification of Tooth Displacement

By using reference points from a single pixel marker placed at the center point of the cuspid teeth and the center point on each of the incisor teeth, a polynomial curve was generated as a native curve for each dental arch studied. The polynomial curve generated from actual tooth position in each arch provides the forensic odontologist with another reference point that is quantifiable. The study represents that individual characteristics, such as tooth displacement, can be quantified in a simple, reliable, and repeatable format

Pancreaticobiliary Maljunction Is Associated with Common Bile Duct Carcinoma: A Meta-Analysis

Objective. Pancreaticobiliary maljunction (PBM) has been reported to be associated with an increased risk of gallbladder carcinoma. However, the relationship between PBM and common bile duct carcinoma (CBDC) remains unclear. We aimed to conduct a meta-analysis to determine the available evidence on the association between PBM and CBDC. Methods. The pooled odds ratio (OR) and standard mean differences (SMD) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were used to estimate the effects. Results. A total of eight case-control studies and two cohort studies were identified. The incidence of PBM was higher in CBDC patients than in controls (OR=1.45; 95% CI, 1.19–1.76). Compared with patients without PBM, CBDC patients with PBM were younger at the diagnosis age (SMD=−0.46; 95% CI, −0.64 to −0.28). A difference in the incidence of associated CDC was found between CBDC patients with or without PBM (OR=2.14; 95% CI, 1.60–2.87). Conclusions. Compared with benign biliary tract diseases, the incidence of PBM was higher in CBDC patients, especially in relatively young patients. We also found that the incidence of CDC was higher in CBDC patients with PBM. These findings showed positive association between PBM and CBDC, which may help in identifying high-risk individuals

Voice Therapy For Transgender People

Transrodne osobe su osobe koje osjećaju nesklad između roda s kojim se poistovjećuju i spola u kojem su se rodili. Transrodnost je širok pojam i obuhvaća čitav spektar rodno nenormativnih identiteta. Dva glavna obrasca tranzicije prema drugom spolu, odnosno rodu su: Male-to-Female (MtF) i Female-to-Male (FtM). Transrodne osobe navode da ih njihov glas često “izdaje”, odnosno otkriva njihov biološki rod te predstavlja posljednju prepreku u potpuno uživljavanje u novu rodnu ulogu. Bez obzira na to, često nisu svjesni da se zbog glasa mogu obratiti logopedu. Cilj ovog preglednog rada je dati uvid u poremećaje glasa kod transrodnih osoba, odnosno opisati logopedsku procjenu te terapijske postupke, a sve u svrhu boljeg razumijevanja potreba ovih osoba.Transgender individuals are people who feel an incongruity between their self-identified gender and their birth gender. Transgenderism is a broad term and includes a spectrum of gender-nonconforming identities. The two main patterns of gender transition are Male-to-Female (MtF) and Female-to-Male (FtM).Transgender people often think their voice “betrays” them, i.e. it reveals their biological gender and represents the last obstacle to the individual’s full enjoyment of his/her new gender role. Regardless of this, many transgender individuals are not aware of the fact that they can go to speech and language pathologists (SLP) for therapy. The aim of this review article is to provide insight into the voice disorders of transgender people, i.e. to describe the assessment process and therapy protocols in hope of gaining a better understanding of the needs of this population

Baichuan 2: Open Large-scale Language Models

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable performance on a variety of natural language tasks based on just a few examples of natural language instructions, reducing the need for extensive feature engineering. However, most powerful LLMs are closed-source or limited in their capability for languages other than English. In this technical report, we present Baichuan 2, a series of large-scale multilingual language models containing 7 billion and 13 billion parameters, trained from scratch, on 2.6 trillion tokens. Baichuan 2 matches or outperforms other open-source models of similar size on public benchmarks like MMLU, CMMLU, GSM8K, and HumanEval. Furthermore, Baichuan 2 excels in vertical domains such as medicine and law. We will release all pre-training model checkpoints to benefit the research community in better understanding the training dynamics of Baichuan 2.Comment: Baichuan 2 technical report. Github: https://github.com/baichuan-inc/Baichuan

Molecular mechanism of activation of human musk receptors OR5AN1 and OR1A1 by (R)-muscone and diverse other musk-smelling compounds

We acknowledge support from NSF (CHE-1265679) and NIH (5R01DC014423 subaward) (EB), NIH (5R01 DC014423) (HM), the European Reasearch Council (ERC) and the Engineering Science Research Council (EPSRC) (DO'H), FAPESP and CNPq (RAC), the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) for studentship support (MY), National Science Foundation (31070972) (HZ), Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (16ZR1418300) (HZ), the Shanghai Eastern Scholar Program (J50201) (HZ). VSB thanks NIH grant 1R01GM106121-01A1 and computational time from NERSC.Understanding olfaction at the molecular level is challenging due to the lack of crystallographic models of odorant receptors (ORs). To better understand the molecular mechanism of OR activation, we focused on chiral (R)-muscone and other musk smelling odorants due to their great importance and widespread use in perfumery and traditional medicine, as well as environmental concerns associated with bioaccumulation of musks with estrogenic/antiestrogenic properties.  We experimentally and computationally examined the activation of human receptors OR5AN1 and OR1A1, recently identified as specifically responding to musk compounds.  OR5AN1 responds at nanomolar concentrations to musk ketone and robustly to macrocyclic sulfoxides and fluorine-substituted macrocyclic ketones; OR1A1 responds only to nitromusks. Structural models of OR5AN1 and OR1A1 based on quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) hybrid methods were validated through direct comparisons with activation profiles from site-directed mutagenesis experiments and analysis of binding energies for 35 musk-related odorants.  The experimentally found chiral selectivity of OR5AN1 to (R)- over (S)-muscone was also computationally confirmed for muscone and fluorinated (R)-muscone analogs.  Structural models show that OR5AN1, highly responsive to nitromusks over macrocyclic musks, stabilizes odorants by hydrogen bonding to Tyr260 of transmembrane a-helix 6 and hydrophobic interactions with surrounding aromatic residues Phe105, Phe194 and, Phe207.  The binding of OR1A1 to nitromusks is stabilized by hydrogen bonding to Tyr258 along with hydrophobic interactions with surrounding aromatic residues Tyr251 and Phe206.  Hydrophobic/nonpolar and hydrogen bonding interactions contribute, respectively, 77% and 13% to the odorant binding affinities, as shown by an atom-based quantitative structure-activity relationship model.PostprintPeer reviewe

The Accumulation of Organic Carbon in Mineral Soils by Afforestation of Abandoned Farmland

The afforestation of abandoned farmland significantly influences soil organic carbon (OC). However, the dynamics between OC inputs after afforestation and the original OC are not well understood. To learn more about soil OC dynamics after afforestation of farmland, we measured the soil OC content in paired forest and farmland plots in Shaanxi Province, China. The forest plots had been established on farmland 18, 24, 48, 100, and 200 yr previously. The natural 13C abundance of soil organic matter was also analyzed to distinguish between crop- and forest-derived C in the afforested soils. We observed a nonlinear accumulation of total OC in the 0–80 cm depth of the mineral soil across time. Total soil OC accumulated more rapidly under forest stands aged 18 to 48 yr than under forest stands aged 100 or 200 yrs. The rate of OC accumulation was also greater in the 0–10 cm depth than in the 10–80 cm depth. Forest-derived OC in afforested soils also accumulated nonlinearly across time, with the greatest increase in the 0–20 cm depth. Forest-derived OC in afforest soils accounted for 52–86% of the total OC in the 0–10 cm depth, 36–61% of the total OC in the 10–20 cm depth, and 11–50% of the total OC in the 20–80 cm depth. Crop-derived OC concentrations in the 0–20 cm depth decreased slightly after afforestation, but there was no change in crop-derived OC concentrations in the 20–80 cm depth. The results of our study support the claim that afforestation of farmland can sequester atmospheric CO2 by increasing soil OC stocks. Changes in the OC stocks of mineral soils after afforestation appear to be influenced mainly by the input of forest-derived C rather than by the loss of original OC

Posterior property of Student-t linear regression model using objective priors

© 2016 Elsevier B.V. We derive objective priors for linear model with independent Student-. t errors with unknown degrees of freedom v. It is shown that most of them preclude the existence of a proper posterior distribution unless we are willing to truncate the possible values of v a priori

Dietary modulation of gut microflora in broiler chickens: a review of the role of six kinds of alternatives to in-feed antibiotics

Since in-feed antibiotics (IFAs) are being taken out of broiler diets around the world, beginning in Sweden in the year 1986, the search for alternatives to replace IFAs has gained increasing interest in animal nutrition. Gut microflora appears to be the target for IFAs and alternatives to exert health benefits and some growth-promoting effects. In this review the effect of six kinds of alternatives to IFAs on gut microflora is discussed and their working mechanisms and growth-promoting effects are reviewed. This review focuses on mannanoligosaccharides (MOS) as alternative to antibiotics using research results obtained by various authors in recent years

Effects of Different Dietary Levels of Mannanoligosaccharide on Growth Performance and Gut Development of Broiler Chickens

Different levels of dietary mannanoligosaccharide (Bio-MOS, Alltech Inc.) were evaluated for their efficacy on performance and gut development of broiler chickens during a 6-week experimental period. Experimental diets contained (g MOS/kg diet) a low (0.5 g during the entire period), medium (1 g during the entire period), high (2 g during the entire period), or step down (2 g in the first week; 1 g in the second and third week; 0.5 g in the last three weeks) level of MOS. Control diets included a negative and a positive control (zinc bacitracin, ZnB, 50 ppm and 30 ppm in the first and last three weeks, respectively). MOS supplementation improved the growth performance of young birds and the effects became less when the birds got older. The growth response of birds was more obvious at the high dosage level of MOS treatment that the other MOS treatments and the growth performance of birds fed on the high MOS diet was comparable to that of birds fed on the ZnB diet. Depending on the dosage level and the age of birds, MOS seemed to reduce the size of the liver and the relative length of the small intestine but did not affect the relative weight of the other visceral organs (proventriculus, gizzard, pancreas, bursa and spleen) and that of the small intestine. A numerical increase in the small intestine digestibility of nutrients was noticed in the young birds fed on the MOS diet(s), but not in the older ones. Medium and/or high MOS treatment also increased the villus height of the small intestine of birds at different ages. Similar results were observed on the ZnB treatment. However, MOS and ZnB affected caecal VFA profile in different ways. MOS increased, or tended to increase, whereas ZnB reduced individual VFA concentrations in the caeca