Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does Portal Hypertension Increase the Risk of Helicobacter pylori Infection and Pre-Malignant Gastric Lesions?

Background and Aims: The presence of portal hypertension in cirrhotic patients is a major prognostic factor associated with the development of severe complications and increased mortality. The gold standard for diagnosing portal hypertension is the hepatic venous pressure gradient. More recently, spleen stiffness has emerged as a new and non-invasive diagnostic tool, and has already been included in the last Baveno VII guidelines. The exact prevalence of Helicobacter pylori infection, pre-malignant lesions and their relation to portal hypertension have never been described. The aim of our study was to evaluate the relationship between the presence of portal hypertension assessed via liver and spleen elastography and Helicobacter pylori infection and pre-malignant gastric lesions. Methods: An observational study was conducted, including consecutive patients admitted from December 2020 to December 2022. All patients underwent upper endoscopy and were also subjected to liver and spleen elastography (using the new probe of 100 Hz) by the same blinded operator in a tertiary center. Results: We included 155 cirrhotic patients, with a mean age of 64.1 years (±8.8), and 81.3% were male. The most common etiology was alcoholic liver disease (72.9%). The median value of liver stiffness measurement was 24.4 kPa [3.1–75.0], and the spleen stiffness measurement was 49.1 kPa [12.8–100.0]. Akin to endoscopic findings, 50.3% presented esophageal varices, 5.2% gastric atrophy, 11.6% gastric metaplasia, and 32.9% portal hypertension gastropathy. Regarding histologic findings, we found that 34.8% presented H. pylori infection, 35.5% gastric atrophy (OLGA 1—58.2%) and 38.7% gastric metaplasia (OLGIM 1—63.3%). Liver stiffness and spleen stiffness measurements were associated with the presence of portal hypertensive gastropathy (p < 0.01), but not with H. pylori infection or pre-malignant gastric lesions. Conclusions: Although present in almost one third of cirrhotic patients, H. pylori infection and pre-malignant gastric lesions are not associated with liver stiffness and spleen stiffness measurements. On the other hand, we found an association between liver stiffness and spleen stiffness measurements and portal hypertensive gastropathy.
T-cell modulatory properties of CD5 and its role in antitumor immune responses

The destruction of tumor cells by the immune system is under the control of positive and negative receptors that tightly regulate T-cell effector functions. The T-cell receptor (TCR) inhibitory molecule CD5 critically contributes to the regulation of antitumor immune responses. Indeed, the modulation of CD5 within the tumor microenvironment corresponds to a strategy adopted by tumor-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) to optimize their cytotoxic and cytokine secretion functions. In this review, we provide insights into the immunobiology of CD5 and its role in regulating antitumor CD8 T-cell responses, and suggest the possibility of targeting CD5 to improve the efficacy of current immunotherapeutic approaches against cancer.
In vitro nuclear import of snRNPs: cytosolic factors mediate m3G‐cap dependence of U1 and U2 snRNP transport.

We have established an in vitro snRNP nuclear import system using digitonin permeabilized somatic cells supplemented with cytosolic extracts. As model karyophiles we used digoxygenin labelled U1 snRNPs or fluorescein labelled U2 snRNPs. In vitro nuclear import of snRNPs is inhibited by anti‐pore component antibodies, consistent with transport occurring through nuclear pores. This import requires ATP, cytosolic factors and a nuclear localization signal (NLS). SnRNP nuclear accumulation is saturable and distinct from protein transport. Nuclear import of snRNPs, in permeabilized NRK cells supplemented with somatic cell cytosol, requires the same NLS structures as those identified in micro‐injected mammalian cells. In contrast to the situation in Xenopus oocytes, the m3G‐cap is not required for in vitro nuclear import of U1 and U2 snRNPs in somatic cells. Instead, assembly of the Sm‐core domain is both necessary and sufficient to mediate snRNP nuclear targeting. Interestingly, when the in vitro system was provided with cytosol from Xenopus oocytes instead of somatic cells, U1 and U2 snRNP nuclear import was provided with cytosol from Xenopus oocytes instead of somatic cells, U1 and U2 snRNP nuclear import was m3G‐cap dependent. These results indicate that soluble cytosolic factors mediate the differential m3G‐cap dependence of U1 and U2 snRNP nuclear import in somatic cells and oocytes. We also demonstrate the existence of a soluble cytosolic factor whose interaction with the U2 snRNP m3G‐cap is both saturable and essential for U2 snRNP nuclear import in Xenopus oocytes.
Role of Class A Penicillin-Binding Proteins in the Expression of β-Lactam Resistance in Enterococcus faecium

ABSTRACT Peptidoglycan is polymerized by monofunctional d,d-transpeptidases belonging to class B penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs) and monofunctional glycosyltransferases and by bifunctional enzymes that combine both activities (class A PBPs). Three genes encoding putative class A PBPs (pbpF, pbpZ, and ponA) were deleted from the chromosome of Enterococcus faecium D344R in all possible combinations in order to identify the glycosyltransferases that cooperate with low-affinity class B Pbp5 for synthesis of peptidoglycan in the presence of β-lactam antibiotics. The viability of the triple mutant indicated that glycan strands can be polymerized independently from class A PBPs by an unknown glycosyltranferase. The susceptibility of the ΔpbpF ΔponA mutant and triple mutants to extended spectrum cephalosporins (ceftriaxone and cefepime) identified either PbpF or PonA as essential partners of Pbp5 for peptidoglycan polymerization in the presence of the drugs. Mass spectrometry analysis of peptidoglycan structure showed that loss of PonA and PbpF activity led to a minor decrease in the extent of peptidoglycan cross-linking by the remaining PBPs without any detectable compensatory increase in the participation of the l,d-transpeptidase in peptidoglycan synthesis. Optical density measurements and electron microscopy analyses showed that the ΔpbpF ΔponA mutant underwent increased stationary-phase autolysis compared to the parental strain. Unexpectedly, deletion of the class A pbp genes revealed dissociation between the expression of resistance to cephalosporins and penicillins, although the production of Pbp5 was required for resistance to both classes of drugs. Thus, susceptibility of Pbp5-mediated peptidoglycan cross-linking to different β-lactam antibiotics differed as a function of its partner glycosyltransferase.
A prospective epidemiological study of injuries in four English professional football clubs.

OBJECTIVE: To define the causes of injuries to players in English professional football during competition and training. METHOD: Lost time injuries to professional and youth players were prospectively recorded by physiotherapists at four English League clubs over the period 1994 to 1997. Data recorded included information related to the injury, date and place of occurrence, type of activity, and extrinsic Playing factors. RESULTS: In all, 67% of all injuries occurred during competition. The overall injury frequency rate (IFR) was 8.5 injuries/1000 hours, with the IFR during competitions (27.7) being significantly (p < 0.01) higher than that during training (3.5). The IFRs for youth players were found to increase over the second half of the season, whereas they decreased for professional players. There were no significant differences in IFRs for professional and youth players during training. There were significantly (p < 0.01) injuries in competition in the 15 minute periods at the end of each half. Strains (41%), sprains (20%), and contusions (20%) represented the major types of injury. The thigh (23%), the ankle (17%), knee (14%), and lower leg (13%) represented the major locations of injury, with significantly (p < 0.01) more injuries to the dominant body side. Reinjury counted for 22% of all injuries. Only 12% of all injuries were caused by a breach of the rules of football, although player to player contact was involved in 41% of all injuries. CONCLUSIONS: The overall level of injury to professional footballers has been showed to be around 1000 times higher times higher than for industrial occupations generally regarded as high risk. The high level of muscle strains, in particular, indicates possible weakness in fitness training programmes and use of warming up and cooling down procedures by clubs and the need for benchmarking players' levels of fitness and performance. Increasing levels of injury to youth players as a season progresses emphasizes the importance of controlling the exposure of young players to high levels of competition.
Let It Flow: Resilient Asymmetric Load Balancing with Flowlet Switching

Datacenter networks require efficient multi-path load balancing to achieve high bisection bandwidth. Despite much progress in recent years towards addressing this challenge, a load balancing design that is both simple to implement and resilient to network asymmetry has remained elusive. In this paper, we show that flowlet switching, an idea first proposed more than a decade ago, is a powerful technique for resilient load balancing with asymmetry. Flowlets have a remarkable elasticity property: their size changes automatically based on traffic conditions on their path. We use this insight to develop LetFlow, a very simple load balancing scheme that is resilient to asymmetry. LetFlow simply picks paths at random for flowlets and lets their elasticity naturally balance the traffic on different paths. Our extensive evaluation with real hardware and packet-level simulations shows that LetFlow is very effective. Despite being much simpler, it performs significantly better than other traffic oblivious schemes like WCMP and Presto in asymmetric scenarios, while achieving average flow completions time within 10-20% of CONGA in testbed experiments and 2× of CONGA in simulated topologies with large asymmetry and heavy traffic load.
Assessing the Knowledge and Skills in Clinical Ophthalmology of Medical Interns: Survey Results from Enugu, South-Eastern Nigeria

Purpose: To compare the skills and knowledge of clinical ophthalmology among medical interns in Enugu, Nigeria, to the recommendations of the International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO). Materials and Methods: A questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey was conducted of Medical Interns attending the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital and Enugu State University Teaching Hospital, from April 2010 to June 2010. Data on cohort demographics, undergraduate ophthalmology exposure, clinical skills and diagnostic competencies were collected and analyzed. Statistical significance was indicated by P < 0.05. Results: The cohort comprised 81 males and 48 females (sex ratio = 1.7 : 1), aged 21–35 years (mean: 26.8 ± 2.4 years). The gender difference was significant (P < 0.05). The response rate was 88.7%. The duration of undergraduate ophthalmology exposure ranged from 1 to 4 weeks. Exposure was often adequate in cornea/external eye (95.3%), lens/cataract (95.3%) and glaucoma (92.2%); but not in vitreo-retinal disease (47.3%), neuro-ophthalmology (45.7%) and refractive surgery (0.0). The majority were competent at visual acuity testing (97.7%) and visual field examination (93.0%). There was lower competency at anterior chamber assessment (49.6%) and slit-lamp examination (39.5%). The majority could confidently diagnose conjunctivitis (96.1%) and cataract (90.7%), but not strabismus (42.6%) or macular degeneration (20.2%). Conclusions: Medical interns in Enugu displayed gaps in their undergraduate ophthalmology exposure, clinical knowledge and skills. This has implications for stakeholders in medical education and eye care delivery. Review of the curriculum, provision of training resources and compliance with ICO guidelines could address the deficiencies.
Intertwined Evolutionary Histories of Marine Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus marinus

Prochlorococcus is a genus of marine cyanobacteria characterized by small cell and genome size, an evolutionary trend toward low GC content, the possession of chlorophyll b, and the absence of phycobilisomes. Whereas many shared derived characters define Prochlorococcus as a clade, many genome-based analyses recover them as paraphyletic, with some low-light adapted Prochlorococcus spp. grouping with marine Synechococcus. Here, we use 18 Prochlorococcus and marine Synechococcus genomes to analyze gene flow within and between these taxa. We introduce embedded quartet scatter plots as a tool to screen for genes whose phylogeny agrees or conflicts with the plurality phylogenetic signal, with accepted taxonomy and naming, with GC content, and with the ecological adaptation to high and low light intensities. We find that most gene families support high-light adapted Prochlorococcus spp. as a monophyletic clade and low-light adapted Prochlorococcus sp. as a paraphyletic group. But we also detect 16 gene families that were transferred between high-light adapted and low-light adapted Prochlorococcus sp. and 495 gene families, including 19 ribosomal proteins, that do not cluster designated Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus strains in the expected manner. To explain the observed data, we propose that frequent gene transfer between marine Synechococcus spp. and low-light adapted Prochlorococcus spp. has created a “highway of gene sharing” (Beiko RG, Harlow TJ, Ragan MA. 2005. Highways of gene sharing in prokaryotes. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 102:14332–14337) that tends to erode genus boundaries without erasing the Prochlorococcus-specific ecological adaptations.
Assessment of Business Process Maturity Model in Culinary SMEs as a Pre-Stage of Enterprise Resource Planning Implementation

The SMEs sector is predicted to have a surplus of ERP implementation projects in 2024, with 60% of the total implementation projects. However, the ERP implementation growth cannot be separated from the threat of project failure (35%) and project delays (55%). This study measured the maturity of business processes as a pre-implementation stage to reduce the risk of ERP implementation failure. The object studied was three culinary SMEs in Yogyakarta. This paper used McCormack’s theory of business process management maturity model, combined with the ICT maturity model developed by Pham. The assessment showed that the three SMEs were at the lowest level of business process maturity, the ad hoc level. Meanwhile, the ICT maturity varies from inactive to substantial. However, SME A had the eligibility to implement an ERP system but first needed to perform the business process re-engineering. The recommendations were designed for SME A to enhance its business process flow by proposing a business process based on the best practice process used by ERP system providers.
Association of airborne concentration of virulent Rhodococcus equi with location (stall versus paddock) and month (January through June) on 30 horse breeding farms in central Kentucky.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether the concentration of airborne virulent Rhodococcus equi varied by location (stall vs paddock) and month on horse farms. SAMPLE Air samples from stalls and paddocks used to house mares and foals on 30 horse breeding farms in central Kentucky. PROCEDURES Air samples from 1 stall and 1 paddock were obtained monthly from each farm from January through June 2009. Concentrations of airborne virulent R equi were determined via a modified colony immunoblot assay. Random-effects logistic regression was used to determine the association of the presence of airborne virulent R equi with location from which air samples were obtained and month during which samples were collected. RESULTS Of 180 air samples, virulent R equi was identified in 49 (27%) and 13 (7%) obtained from stalls and paddocks, respectively. The OR of detecting virulent R equi in air samples from stalls versus paddocks was 5.2 (95% confidence interval, 2.1 to 13.1). Of 60 air samples, virulent R equi was identified in 25 (42%), 18 (30%), and 6 (10%) obtained from stalls during January and February, March and April, and May and June, respectively. The OR of detecting virulent R equi from stall air samples collected during May and June versus January and February was 0.22 (95% confidence interval, 0.08 to 0.63). CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Foals were more likely to be exposed to airborne virulent R equi when housed in stalls versus paddocks and earlier (January and February) versus later (May and June) during the foaling season.
Population Genomics: Whole-Genome Analysis of Polymorphism and Divergence in Drosophila simulans

The population genetic perspective is that the processes shaping genomic variation can be revealed only through simultaneous investigation of sequence polymorphism and divergence within and between closely related species. Here we present a population genetic analysis of Drosophila simulans based on whole-genome shotgun sequencing of multiple inbred lines and comparison of the resulting data to genome assemblies of the closely related species, D. melanogaster and D. yakuba. We discovered previously unknown, large-scale fluctuations of polymorphism and divergence along chromosome arms, and significantly less polymorphism and faster divergence on the X chromosome. We generated a comprehensive list of functional elements in the D. simulans genome influenced by adaptive evolution. Finally, we characterized genomic patterns of base composition for coding and noncoding sequence. These results suggest several new hypotheses regarding the genetic and biological mechanisms controlling polymorphism and divergence across the Drosophila genome, and provide a rich resource for the investigation of adaptive evolution and functional variation in D. simulans.
Fixed point analysis of frequency to instantaneous frequency mapping for accurate estimation of F0 and periodicity

An accurate fundamental frequency (F0) estimation method for non-stationary, speech-like sounds is proposed based on the differential properties of the instantaneous frequencies of two sets of filter outputs. A specific type of fixed points of mapping from the filter center frequency to the output instantaneous frequency provides frequencies of the constituent sinusoidal components of the input signal. When the filter is made from an isometric Gabor function convoluted with a cardinal B-spline basis function, the differential properties at the fixed points provide practical estimates of the carrier-to-noise ratio of the corresponding components. These estimates are used to select the fundamental component and to integrate the F0 information distributed among the other harmonic components.
Cosmological Implications of Dwarf Spheroidal Chemical Evolution

The chemical properties of dwarf spheroidals in the local group are shown to be inconsistent with star formation being truncated after the reionization epoch (z ~ 8). Enhanced levels of [Ba/Y] in stars in dwarf spheroidals like Sculptor indicate strong s-process production from low-mass stars whose lifetimes are comparable with the duration of the pre-reionization epoch. The chemical evolution of Sculptor is followed using a model with SN II and SN Ia feedback and mass- and metallicity-dependent nucleosynthetic yields for elements from H to Pb. We are unable to reproduce the Ba/Y ratio unless stars formed over an interval long enough for the low-mass stars to pollute the interstellar medium with s-elements. This robust result challenges the suggestion that most of the local group dwarf spheroidals are fossils of reionization and supports the case for large initial dark matter halos.
Cortical and subcortical brain regions involved in rule-based category learning

The brain regions contributing to rule-based category learning were examined using fMRI. Participants categorized single lines that varied in length and orientation into one of two categories. Category membership was based on the length of the line. Results indicated that left frontal and parietal regions were differentially activated in those participants who learned the task as compared to those who did not. Further, the head of the caudate displayed relative decreases in activation on incorrect trials relative to correct trials. The involvement of this latter structure is likely related to (1) processing an error signal, or (2) volitional switching between potential category rules. Results are consistent with theories suggesting that a frontal-striatal circuit is involved in rule-based category learning.
Bilateral Respiratory Epithelial Adenomatoid Hamartoma of the Olfactory Cleft Penetrating Into the Endocranium

Respiratory epithelial adenomatoid hamartomas (REAHs) of the nose and paranasal sinuses are relatively rare. These tumors usually do not extend over the boundaries of the nose and sinuses. The authors presented a 65-year-old man experiencing progressive hyposmia, followed by intermittent stubborn headache. The symptoms lasted for almost 2 years and were getting worse very slowly. Fiberendoscopy showed relatively discrete polypoid tissue occupying the olfactory cleft bilaterally. The computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging suggested the possible lack of the cribriform plate and the unity and uniformity of the tissues located both in the endocranium and high in the nasal cavity. The clinical picture resembled very much a esthesineuroblastoma. The patient underwent endoscopic sinus surgery under the general hypotensive anesthesia. Frozen sections during the surgery showed REAH. The entire tumor was removed in a piece meal way, including both olfactory bulbs because they were involved within the pathologic tissue as well. This case showed that REAH could also be a locally aggressive process, penetrating even into the endocranium.
SVM Classifier for Impulse Fault Identification in Transformers using Fractal Features

Improper or inadequate insulation may lead to failure during impulse tests of a transformer. It is important to identify the type and the exact location of insulation failure within the winding of power transformers. This paper describes a new approach using fractal theory for extraction of features from the impulse test response of a transformer and Support Vector Machine (SVM) in regression mode to classify the fault response patterns. A variety of algorithms are available for the computation of Fractal Dimension (FD). In the present work, Box counting and Higuchi's algorithm for the determination of FD, Lacunarity, and Approximate Entropy (ApEn) has been used for the extraction of fractal features form time domain impulse test response. The analysis has been performed on both Analog and Digital Models of a 3 MVA, 33/11 kV transformer. A noticeable finding is that the SVM tool trained with the simulated data only is capable of identifying the location and fault classes of analog model data accurately within a tolerance limit of plusmn3.37% .