Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reduced Expression of Cytokeratin 20 in Colorectal Carcinomas With High Levels of Microsatellite Instability

High levels of microsatellite instability (MSI-H) result from abnormal nucleotide mismatch repair in a subset of sporadic colorectal carcinomas (CRC) and in most CRC of hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer syndrome. CRC with MSI-H have distinctive clinical-pathologic features, but the immunophenotype has not been studied extensively. We evaluated immunohistochemical expression of cytokeratin 7 (CK7), cytokeratin 20 (CK20), and pancytokeratin (panCK) in 44 CRC from 22 paired MSI-H and microsatellite-stable (MSS) cases matched for clinical-pathologic characteristics. The mean percentage of CK20+ tumor cells was 84 ± 6% in MSS CRC but only 37 ± 8% in MSI-H CRC (P = 0.0007). Thirty-two percent (7/22, 95% confidence interval 14–55%) of MSI-H CRC were CK20−, as contrasted with 9% (2/22, 95% CI 1–29%, P = 0.13) of MSS CRC. CK20 expression was inversely correlated with levels of MSI (rs = −0.45, P = 0.006). CK7+ was infrequent (16%, 7/44, 95% CI 7–30%) and panCK+ was universal, with no significant differences between MSI-H and MSS CRC. Our study shows that decreased or even absent CK20 expression is a phenotypic characteristic of MSI-H CRC and that MSI-H explains much of the subset of CRC that lack CK20 expression. Our results also indicate that regulation of CK20 gene expression involves molecular pathways that are altered by MSI-H.
Tetrahydro-4-Aminobiopterin Attenuates Dendritic Cell-Induced T Cell Priming Independently from Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase1

Formation of NO by NO synthases (NOSs) strictly depends on tetrahydrobiopterin. Its structural analog, tetrahydro-4-aminobiopterin, is an inhibitor of all NOS isoenzymes, which prolongs allograft survival in acute murine cardiac rejection and prevents septic shock in the rat. In this study, we show that murine bone marrow-derived dendritic cells treated with tetrahydro-4-aminobiopterin had a reduced capacity to prime alloreactive murine T cells in oxidative mitogenesis. Checking for a possible influence on LPS-induced dendritic cell maturation, we found that tetrahydro-4-aminobiopterin down-regulated MHC class II expression and counteracted LPS-induced down-regulation of ICOS ligand, while expression of CD40, CD86, CD80, B7-H1, and B7-DC remained unchanged. Tetrahydro-4-aminobiopterin also reduced activation of CD4+ T cells isolated from mice overexpressing an OVA-specific TCR by OVA-loaded murine bone marrow-derived dendritic cells, thus indicating that its effect on MHC class II expression is involved in attenuating T cell activation. In line with affecting dendritic cell function and T cell activation, tetrahydro-4-aminobiopterin impaired production of proinflammatory cytokines and the Th1 response. With regard to cell survival, tetrahydro-4-aminobiopterin induced efficient apoptosis of murine T cells but not of murine dendritic cells. Experiments with cells from inducible NOS (iNOS) knockout mice and with N6-(1-iminoethyl)-l-lysine, a specific inhibitor of iNOS, ruled out participation of iNOS in any of the observed effects. These findings characterize attenuation of T cell stimulatory capacity of murine bone marrow-derived dendritic cells as an immunosuppressive mechanism of tetrahydro-4-aminobiopterin that is not related to its iNOS-inhibiting properties.
Effect of cataract extraction on the visual fields of patients with glaucoma.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of cataract extraction on the visual fields of patients with open-angle glaucoma. METHODS Patients in a prospective cohort study in a tertiary center underwent standard automated perimetry every 6 months. We compared the mean results of the 2 examinations immediately before and 2 examinations immediately after phacoemulsification cataract extraction and intraocular lens implant (effect analysis) and the mean results of the first 2 and last 2 examinations from 4 consecutive examinations obtained more than 1 year after the cataract surgery (control analysis). RESULTS Our sample contained 34 eyes of 26 patients (mean +/- SD age, 69.2 +/- 10.8 years). While the mean logMAR best-corrected visual acuity improved significantly by approximately 2 Snellen lines after surgery (P < .001), the average change in mean deviation in both the effect and control analyses was less than 0.1 dB and not statistically significant (P = .85). There was a strong correlation between change in foveal sensitivity and change in mean deviation in the effect analysis but not in the control analysis (r = 0.76 [P < .001] and r = 0.30 [P = .08], respectively). There was no relationship between change in visual acuity or initial mean deviation and change in mean deviation in either analysis. Change in pointwise total deviation was not systematically related to the respective baseline value in either analysis; however, the variance of the distribution of change in total deviation was significantly higher in the effect analysis (P < .001). CONCLUSION While there was an improvement in best-corrected visual acuity after cataract surgery, the changes in the visual field as a group were negligible.
Pubsub: An Efficient Publish/Subscribe System

PUBSUB is a versatile, efficient, and scalable content-based publish/subscribe system. This paper describes the architecture of PUBSUB together with some of its current capabilities. A version of PUBSUB optimized for event processing was benchmarked against the publish/subscribe systems BE-Tree and Siena, which also are optimized for event processing. Although the run time performance of both BE-Tree and PUBSUB is orders of magnitude better than that of Siena, BE-Tree is able to handle only a restricted class of predicates while PUBSUB can handle most predicate types handled by Siena. On our tests, the speedup of the fastest version of PUBSUB relative to Siena ranged from a low of 18 to a high of 1,703 and averaged 185. The speedup range relative to BE-Tree was up to 9.81 and averaged 2.37. Siena's memory requirements are about a fourth of those of BE-Tree and PUBSUB. The memory required by the most memory efficient of PUBSUB 's data structures was between 4 and 16 percent less that required by BE-Tree. With respect to data structure initialization, the three systems took a comparable amount of time on some data sets while on some PUBSUB could be initialized in 1/7th time required to initialize Siena and 1/14th that to initialize BE-Tree. PUBSUB achieves its high performance from the use of very efficient data structures and event matching algorithms.
Grain Boundaries and Dislocations

The hardness of coarse-grained materials is inversely proportional to the square root of the grain size. But as Van Swygenhoven explains in her Perspective, at nanometer scale grain sizes this relation no longer holds. Atomistic simulations are providing key insights into the structural and mechanical properties of nanocrystalline metals, shedding light on the distinct mechanism by which these materials deform.
The Influence of a Robot's Embodiment on Trust: A Longitudinal Study

Trust, taken from the human perspective, is an essential factor that determines the use of robots as companions or care robots, especially given the long-term character of the interaction. This study investigated the influence of a robot's embodiment on people's trust over a prolonged period of time. The participants engaged in a collaborative task either with a physical robot or a virtual agent in 10 sessions spread over a period of 6 weeks. While our results showed that the level of trust was not influenced by the type of embodiment, time here was an important factor showing a significant increase in user's trust. Our results raise new questions on the role of the embodiment in trust and contribute to the growing research in the area of trust in human-robot interaction.
Laboratory diagnosis of human chlamydial infections

Chlamydia trachomatis is a human pathogen that causes ocular disease (trachoma and inclusion conjunctivitis), genital disease (cervicitis, urethritis, salpingitis, and lymphogranuloma venereum), and respiratory disease (infant pneumonitis). Respiratory chlamydioses also occur with infection by avian strains of C. psittaci or infection by the newly described TWAR agent. Diagnosis of most acute C. trachomatis infections relies on detection of the infecting agent by cell culture, fluorescent antibody, immunoassay, cytopathologic, or nucleic acid hybridization methods. Individual non-culture tests for C. trachomatis are less sensitive and specific than the best chlamydial cell culture system but offer the advantages of reduced technology and simple transport of clinical specimens. Currently available nonculture tests for C. trachomatis perform adequately as screening tests in populations in which the prevalence of infection is greater than 10%. A negative culture or nonculture test for C. trachomatis does not, however, exclude infection. The predictive value of a positive nonculture test may be unsatisfactory when populations of low infection prevalence are tested. Tests that detect antibody responses to chlamydial infection have limited utility in diagnosis of acute chlamydial infection because of the high prevalence of persistent antibody in healthy adults and the cross-reactivity due to infection by the highly prevalent C. trachomatis and TWAR agents. Assays for changes in antibody titer to the chlamydial genus antigen are used for the diagnosis of respiratory chlamydioses. A single serum sample that is negative for chlamydial antibody excludes the diagnosis of lymphogranuloma venereum.
Term-by-Term Query Auto-Completion for Mobile Search

With the ever increasing usage of mobile search, where text input is typically slow and error-prone, assisting users to formulate their queries contributes to a more satisfactory search experience. Query auto-completion (QAC) techniques, which predict possible completions for user queries, are the archetypal example of query assistance and are present in most search engines. We argue, however, that classic QAC, which operates by suggesting whole-query completions, may be sub-optimal for the case of mobile search as the available screen real estate to show suggestions is limited and editing is typically slower than in desktop search. In this paper we propose the idea of term-by-term QAC, which is a new technique inspired by predictive keyboards that suggests to the user one term at a time, instead of whole-query completions. We describe an efficient mechanism to implement this technique and an adaptation of a prior user model to evaluate the effectiveness of both standard and term-by-term QAC approaches using query log data. Our experiments with a mobile query log from a commercial search engine show the validity of our approach according to this user model with respect to saved characters, saved terms and examination effort. Finally, a user study provides further insights about our term-by-term technique compared with standard QAC with respect to the variables analyzed in the query log-based evaluation and additional variables related to the successfulness, the speed of the interactions and the properties of the submitted queries.
Human Metapneumovirus Infection in Hospitalized Children with Acute Respiratory Disease in Korea

Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) is a recently isolated virus, mostly associated with acute lower respiratory infection in children, of which symptoms are similar to those of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. The aim of our study was to determine the frequency of hMPV in hospitalized children with acute respiratory tract disease in Korea. Nasal aspirates from hospitalized children with respiratory infections under 15 yr old between December 2003 and February 2005 were included in the study. Each sample was analyzed for RSV, adenovirus, influenza virus A and B, and parainfluenza virus by indirect fluorescent assay (IFA). F-gene sequences were used for PCR for the detection and sequencing of hMPV. In total 381 samples, negative samples in which any viral pathogen could not be identified by IFA were 231 cases. hMPV was detected using reverse transcriptase-PCR (RT-PCR) in 28 of 231 (12.1%) children who were not infected with another respiratory viruses. The hMPV-infected children were diagnosed as having pneumonia, bronchiolitis, bronchial asthma exacerbation, croup, and upper respiratory tract infection. Most of the RT-PCR positive samples for hMPV were collected in winter season. These results suggest that hMPV may be a responsible pathogen causing acute respiratory tract infection in Korean children.
Northern Sky Variability Survey: Public Data Release

The Northern Sky Variability Survey (NSVS) is a temporal record of the sky over the optical magnitude range from 8 to 15.5. It was conducted in the course of the first-generation Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE-I) using a robotic system of four comounted unfiltered telephoto lenses equipped with CCD cameras. The survey was conducted from Los Alamos, New Mexico, and primarily covers the entire northern sky. Some data in southern fields between declinations 0° and -38° are also available, although with fewer epochs and noticeably lesser quality. The NSVS contains light curves for approximately 14 million objects. With a 1 yr baseline and typically 100–500 measurements per object, the NSVS is the most extensive record of stellar variability across the bright sky available today. In a median field, bright unsaturated stars attain a point-to-point photometric scatter of ∼0.02 mag and position errors within 2″. At Galactic latitudes |b| < 20°, the data quality is limited by severe blending due to the ∼14″ pixel size. We present basic characteristics of the data set and describe data collection, analysis, and distribution. All NSVS photometric measurements are available for on-line public access from the Sky Database for Objects in Time-Domain (SkyDOT) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Copies of the full survey photometry may also be requested on tape.
Awareness and mitigation measures on highly pathogenic avian influenza in pastoral poultry flocks of North‐central Nigeria: any challenging gap?

Abstract Village poultry closely interact with wild birds and other livestock in extensively managed poultry flocks, a practice common in pastoral communities of Nigeria. This practice provides sustained dissemination of avian viruses, such as highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus. The objectives of this study were to assess their knowledge/awareness, risks identification and biosecurity measures on HPAI H5N1 in pastoral poultry flocks. A questionnaire‐based cross‐sectional survey was conducted in systematically selected pastoral households of North‐central Nigeria between May 2015 and June 2016. A total of 422 pastoralists participated in the study. Mean age of the respondents was 54.7 ± 11.4 SD years and 36.0% of them were in age group 50–59 years. The majority (81.3%) of respondents were of the Fulani tribe. Also, 64.9% of the respondents had no formal education and only 6.9% had tertiary education. About 30.8% of the nomadic and 81.0% of sedentary pastoralists significantly mentioned avian influenza to be a zoonotic disease. Very few nomadic (10.9%) and sedentary (26.1%) pastoralists significantly reported restriction of birds’ movement to nearby water bodies as biosecurity measure. Only 7.6% of the nomadic and 16.1% of sedentary pastoralists practiced keeping of birds according to species. Sedentary pastoralists were more likely to have significant knowledge about HPAI H5N1 than the nomadic (OR: 1.76; 94% CI: 1.19–2.61). Female pastoralists were more likely to practice significant biosecurity measures against HPAI H5N1 than the males (OR: 1.99; 95% CI: 1.28–3.09). The majority of pastoralists neither possessed adequate knowledge about avian influenza nor applied adequate biosecurity measures against it, which are the most challenging gaps. Education of pastoralists on HPAI virus infection, specifically on information about clinical signs of avian influenza in birds, transmission dynamics among different species of birds, flyways of migrating wild birds and adequate mitigation measures are recommended.
Constitutive model for bimodular elastic damage of concrete

An elastic damage model for concrete has been proposed considering damage-induced bimodularity. A scalar damage parameter has been chosen to quantify the damage. Expressions for the material compliance tensor components have been derived from the assumed strain and complementary energy functions stated in terms of the principal stresses and strains. Incremental constitutive equations have been derived incorporating the elastic behavior due to stress increments as well as stiffness degradation. Within the current damage surface, the stiffness of the material with constant damage varies with applied stress variations. During loading beyond the current damage surface, the material experiences stiffness degradation due to increase in extent of damage suffered by it. Using the proposed elastic damage model, the material response has been predicted for different load histories.
Changes in Serum Lipids and Blood Glucose in Non Diabetic Patients with Metabolic Syndrome after Mixed Meals of Different Composition

Aims. To investigate the postprandial changes in serum lipoproteins and blood glucose and to verify whether different nutrient composition of the meal elicits different response in patients with (MetS+) and without (MetS−) metabolic syndrome. Research Design and Methods. 50 MetS+ patients and 50 age- and sex-matched MetS− consumed a regular lunch chosen among those more similar to their usual diet. Blood was drawn in the morning after 12-hour fasting and 2 and 4:30 hours after the meal. Results. Serum triglycerides increased more in MetS+ (35%, 4:30 hours after the meal) than in MetS− (29%), HDL-cholesterol decreased 2 hours after the meal in both groups (−4% and −5%, resp.). Blood sugar similarly increased in both groups (19%, 2 hours after the meal in MetS+ and 17% in MetS−) and plasma insulin increased more and remained high longer in MetS+ (73.5 and 52.3 μU/mL, 2 and 4:30 hours after the meal) than in MetS− (46.7 and 21.6 μU/mL). Difference in nutrient composition of the meal (carbohydrate 57%, fat 28% versus carbohydrate 45%, fat 35%) was not associated with differences in postprandial levels of triglycerides, HDL-cholesterol, glucose, and insulin within each group. Conclusions. As compared with MetS−, MetS+ patients show a greater hypertriglyceridemic and hyperinsulinemic response to a regular lunch whatever the carbohydrate or fat content of the meal.
Detection of focal liver lesions at biphasic spiral CT: randomized double-blind study of the effect of iodine concentration in contrast materials.

PURPOSE To evaluate the effect of iodine concentration on the detection of focal liver lesions at biphasic spiral computed tomography (CT). MATERIALS AND METHODS One hundred two patients (64 men, 38 women) with neoplastic (n = 85) and nonneoplastic focal lesions (n = 17) were prospectively assigned to biphasic injection group A or B and received 180 mL of iopromide containing 370 or 300 mg of iodine per milliliter, respectively, during spiral CT. Comparison included assessment of quantitative and qualitative parameters. RESULTS Hepatic time-attenuation curves and mean hepatic enhancement in the portal venous phase and aortic time-attenuation curves in both arterial and portal venous phases were statistically superior in group A compared with group B. There was no significant difference in the mean enhancement in all lesions in either group. In contrast, among patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, mean contrast enhancement in lesions in the arterial phase was significantly superior in group A compared with group B. Blinded readers classified hepatic attenuation and lesion visibility as very good and as improved significantly more often in group A than in group B. CONCLUSION A decrease in iodine concentration significantly affects aortic and hepatic contrast enhancement and may impair the detectability of focal liver lesions during biphasic spiral CT.
Network of Cancer Genes (NCG 3.0): integration and analysis of genetic and network properties of cancer genes

The identification of a constantly increasing number of genes whose mutations are causally implicated in tumor initiation and progression (cancer genes) requires the development of tools to store and analyze them. The Network of Cancer Genes (NCG 3.0) collects information on 1494 cancer genes that have been found mutated in 16 different cancer types. These genes were collected from the Cancer Gene Census as well as from 18 whole exome and 11 whole-genome screenings of cancer samples. For each cancer gene, NCG 3.0 provides a summary of the gene features and the cross-reference to other databases. In addition, it describes duplicability, evolutionary origin, orthology, network properties, interaction partners, microRNA regulation and functional roles of cancer genes and of all genes that are related to them. This integrated network of information can be used to better characterize cancer genes in the context of the system in which they act. The data can also be used to identify novel candidates that share the same properties of known cancer genes and may therefore play a similar role in cancer. NCG 3.0 is freely available at http://bio.ifom-ieo-campus.it/ncg.
Evaluation of cefaclor.

The chemistry, pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, bacterial spectrum, clinical use, dosage, adverse reactions, and dosage forms and cost of cefaclor are reviewed. Cefaclor, a congener of cephalexin monohydrate, is a new semisynthetic cephalosporin antibiotic. It is well absorbed when given orally on an empty stomach; absorption is delayed by the presence of food. Although metabolism may play a role in the disposition of cefaclor, elimination is primarily renal. Cefaclor's spectrum of activity is similar to that of cefalexin, including a wide range of gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria; in particular, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella spp. , Proteus mirabilis, Salmonella spp. , and Haemophilus influenzae are more susceptible to clinically achievable concentrations of cefaclor than cephalexin. Cefaclor has been demonstrated to be effective against beta-lactamase-producing H. influenzae resistant to ampicillin, but further studies are needed to establish the clinical significance of this activity. Efficacy of cefaclor has been demonstrated in urinary tract, upper and lower respiratory tract, and skin and soft tissue infections in adults and children as well as in pediatric otitis media. Adverse reactions, mostly gastrointestinal, are generally mild and occur in few patients. Usual doses are 250-500 mg every eight hours in adults and 20--40 mg/kg/day in children, although this pediatric dose may be two low for otitis media. Clinical superiority of cefaclor over less expensive antibiotics has not been demonstrated.