Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Viral-induced cirrhosis: grading of severity using MR imaging.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine whether MR imaging can be used to grade the severity of cirrhosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS The MR examinations of 46 patients with cirrhosis were retrospectively reviewed independently by two radiologists and correlated with clinical severity assessed by Child-Pugh classification. MR imaging analysis by reviewers who were unaware of clinical status included comparison of volume indexes (computed as the product of three axis measurements) of the spleen and each segment of the liver, and changes in hepatic contour, iron or fat deposition, and presence of varices and collaterals. RESULTS Volume index of the spleen and the presence of ascites and varices were significantly and positively correlated (p = .008, .002, .0001, respectively) with the clinical severity of cirrhosis (Child-Pugh classifications), and volume indexes of the posterior, medial, and lateral segments of the liver were significantly and inversely correlated (p = .001, .049, .041, respectively). On an MR scoring system based on four items (volume index of the spleen; volume index of posterior + medial + lateral segments; presence of ascites; and presence of varices and collaterals), averaged total MR scores were 2.5 +/- 0.3, 4.9 +/- 0.6, and 7.9 +/- 0.8 for Child-Pugh grades A, B, and C, respectively (p < .0001). The accuracy of MR scoring in distinguishing between clinical Child-Pugh grade A cirrhosis and further grades was 89%, the sensitivity was 93%, and the specificity was 82%. CONCLUSION An MR scoring system can be used to grade the severity of cirrhosis.
Some nonlinear networks capable of learning a spatial pattern of arbitrary complexity.

(1) Introduction,-This note describes some nonlinear net\vorks ,vhich caD learn a spatial pattern, in "black and white," of arbitrary size and complexity. These networks are a special case of a collection of learning machines ~ which were introduced in reference 1, where a machine capable of learxung a list of "letters" or "events" was described, We list in heuristic terminology some of the properties which arise in the learning of patterns: (a) "Practice makes perfect": Given a "black and white" pattern of arbitral'y size and complexity, a nonlinear network fit can be found \vhich learns this pattern to any prescribed degree of accuracy, (b) An isolated machine never forgets: If the pattern is leal'ned to a fixed degree of accuracy by 3Tl:, then fit will remember the pattern to at least this degree of accuracy until a new pattern is imposed upon fit. (c) Overt practice is unnecessary: fit remembers the pattern without practicing it overtly, (d) Contour enhancement: If fit learns the pattern to a "moderate" degree of accuracy, then fit's memory of the pa~tern spontaneously improves after practices ceases, As a result, when fit recalls the pattern, its contours are enhanced in the sense that "darks get darker" and "lights get lighter. " (e) A new pattern can always be learned: Even if 3Tl: kno\vs one pattern to an arbitrary degree of accuracy, this pattern can be replaced by any other pattern by a sufficient amount of practice. (2) The Machine,-The nonlinear network which describes fit is defined as follows for any fixed number n ? :. 1 of states and any reaction time l' ? :. O.
Reinforcement Effect of Soy Protein/Carbohydrate Ratio in Styrene—Butadiene Polymer

Soy protein and carbohydrate at different ratios were blended with latex to form composites. The variation of protein-to-carbohydrate ratio has a significant effect on the composite properties, and the results from dynamic mechanical method showed a substantial reinforcement effect. The composites reinforced by the filler with higher protein content had higher moduli than the composites with higher carbohydrate content. Soy carbohydrate also appeared to have ability to immobilize polymer chains compared to soy protein. The fatigue experiments showed that the composites with higher protein content were more elastic than the composites with higher carbohydrate content after repeatedly stressed with dynamic strain cycles. The recovery experiments showed that the moduli of the composites with higher protein content had better long-time recovery after deformation. The analysis of equilibrated residual structure after the stress-softening cycles showed that the composites with higher protein content were resilient without yielding until a larger strain was applied, while the composites with higher carbohydrate content had a continuous yielding in their structures as the magnitude of the strain was increased. Overall, the study shows that soy fillers with higher protein/carbohydrate ratio have potential to be used as rubber reinforcement.
Throughput vs. temporal fair MAC protocols in multi-rate WLANs: Analysis and performance evaluation

In this work we develop a general analytical framework to study the fairness characteristics of the IEEE 802.11a MAC protocol. We prove that equally sharing the channel bandwidth among the nodes leads to a significant inefficiency because nodes transmitting at low bit rates (i.e., having bad channel conditions) consume more channel resources than nodes transmitting at high bit rates. To solve this problem we extend the 802.11 backoff algorithm to guarantee equal temporal shares to all the nodes in the network. This is achieved by prioritizing the channel access using different contention windows. We analytically describe the behavior of the modified MAC protocol, called TF-802.11a protocol, and we exploit our analytical results to determine how to select the average backoff for each available bit rates in order to achieve a channel utilization fairness. An extensive set of simulations confirms the throughput gain provided by the proposed temporal fair MAC protocol with respect to the standard protocol.
Parastomal Hernia Repair: a Single Center Experience

Background/Objectives: Despite multiple options for operative repair of parastomal hernia, results are frequently disappointing. We review our experience with parastomal hernia repair. Methods: A retrospective chart review was performed on all patients with parastomal hernia who underwent LAP or open repair at our institution between 1999 and 2006. Information collected included demographics, indication for stoma creation, operative time, length of stay, postoperative complications, and recurrence. Results: Twenty-five patients who underwent laparoscopic or open parastomal hernia repair were identified. Laparoscopic repair was attempted on 12 patients and successfully completed on 11. Thirteen patients underwent open repair. Operative time was 172±10.0 minutes for laparoscopic and 137±19.1 minutes for open cases (P=0.14). Lengths of stay were 3.1±0.4 days (laparoscopic) and 5.1±0.8 days (open), P=0.05. Immediate postoperative complications occurred in 4 laparoscopic patients (33.3%) and 2 open patients (15.4%), P=0.38. Parastomal hernia recurred in 4 laparoscopic patients (33.3%) and 7 open patients (53.8%) after 13.9±4.5 months and 21.4±4.3 months, respectively, P=0.43. Conclusion: Laparoscopic modified Sugarbaker technique in the repair of parastomal hernia affords an alternative to open repair for treating parastomal hernia.
Pharmacokinetics, Tolerability, and Safety of ACP‐103 Following Single or Multiple Oral Dose Administration in Healthy Volunteers

The pharmacokinetics, safety, and tolerability of ACP‐103, a selective serotonin 5‐HT2A receptor inverse agonist, were evaluated in 2 double‐blind, placebo‐controlled, dose escalation studies in healthy male volunteers. Pharmacokinetic sampling was measured up to 216 hours after single oral/nasogastric doses of ACP‐103 and after the last dose of once‐daily oral administration of ACP‐103 for 14 days. Single doses of ACP‐103 (20–300 mg) resulted in dose‐proportionate mean Cmax values (9–152 ng/mL) and AUC0–∞ (706–10 798 h·ng/mL), and multiple doses (50–150 mg) resulted in dose‐proportionate mean Cmax, ss (93–248 ng/mL) and AUC0–∞,ss (1839–4680 h·ng/mL). The half‐life of ACP‐103 was approximately 55 hours, with a tmax at 6 hours. ACP‐103 was well tolerated at single doses up to and including 300 mg and multiple doses up to 100 mg once daily for 14 days.
Data Mining and Text Mining for Bioinformatics: Proceedings of the European Workshop

We present a new method for improving the eÆciency of information extraction systems applied to biological literature, using the correlation between structural and functional classi cations of gene products. The method evaluates extracted information by checking if gene products from a common family match a common set of biological properties. To evaluate the method, we implemented it in a case-study, where the method annotated carbohydrate-active enzymes with functional properties extracted from literature. Each carbohydrate-active enzyme is assigned to one or more families of catalytic and carbohydrate-binding modules according to its modular structure. To compute the relatedness between functional properties, we implemented a semantic similarity measure in GO, a biological ontology. The results present our quantitative measure of the correlation between the modular structures and functional properties, showing that our method is a viable approach for automatic validation of extracted biological information.
Protective effect of L-glutamine against diabetes-induced nephropathy in experimental animal: Role of KIM-1, NGAL, TGF-β1, and collagen-1

Abstract Diabetic nephropathy is a serious microvascular complication and one of the main causes of end-stage renal disease. L-Glutamine (LG) is naturally occurring amino acids with antidiabetic and antioxidant potential. The aim of present investigation was to evaluate the potential of LG against streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic nephropathy (DN) in laboratory rats. DN was induced in male Wistar rats (200–220 g) by intraperitoneal administration of STZ (55 mg/kg). Animals were treated orally with either distilled water (10 mg/kg) or LG (250, 500, and 1000 mg/kg) or Sitagliptin (5 mg/kg). Various biochemical, molecular, and histological (hematoxylin–eosin and Masson’s trichrome stain) parameters were assessed. Administration of LG (500 and 1000 mg/kg) significantly inhibited (p < .05) STZ-induced alterations in serum and urine biochemistry (urine creatinine, uric acid, albumin, and BUN). It also significantly increased creatinine clearance rate. STZ induced increase in renal oxidonitrosative stress was significantly decreased (p < .05) by LG (500 and 1000 mg/kg) treatment. Upregulated renal KIM-1, NGAL, TGF-β1, and collagen-1 mRNA expression after STZ administration was significantly inhibited (p < .05) by LG (500 and 1000 mg/kg) treatment. Correlation analysis also revealed that antidiabetic potential of LG attenuates STZ-induced elevated renal KIM-1, NGAL, TGF-β1, and collagen-1 mRNA expression. Histopathological alteration induced by STZ in renal tissue was ameliorated by LG treatment. In conclusion, results of present investigation suggest that treatment with LG ameliorated STZ-induced DN via the inhibition of oxidonitrosative stress as well as downregulation of KIM-1, NGAL, TGF-β1, and collagen-1 mRNA expressions.
Participant recruitment for an anorexia nervosa treatment study.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the nature of differing recruitment rates for clinical treatment trials for anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. METHODS Recruitment rates from a study recruiting women partially recovered from anorexia nervosa were compared with the rates from two studies conducted at the same sites recruiting women with bulimia nervosa. RESULTS At all sites in the anorexia study, the total number of contacts per month rose steadily over the first 2 years of the recruitment phase then decreased to near zero with the number of participants randomized to the study practically evaporating. In contrast, the bulimia studies screened a larger group of contacts and met monthly randomization goals in the time allotted for recruitment. Participants eligible for a study but with a barrier to participation occurred at a much higher rate in the anorexia study than in the bulimia studies. DISCUSSION These results reveal a difficulty in planning recruitment from a small population such as partially recovered anorexics. A small population's total pool size diminishes faster than it is replenished, suggesting that future studies of anorexia nervosa may recruit more successfully from many sites in a short period rather than at a few sites over a long period.
Segmentation of architecture shape information from 3D point cloud

Object Segmentation is an important step in object reconstruction from point cloud data of complex urban scenes and in applications to virtual environment. This paper focuses on strategies to extract objects in 3D urban scenes for further object recognition and object reconstruction. Segmentation strategies are proposed according to object shape features. Rough segmentation is first adopted for objects classification, and further detailed segmentation is implemented for object components. Normal directions are adopted to segment each planar region, so that architectures and the ground can be extracted from other objects. Architectural components are further extracted through an analysis of planar residuals, and the residuals are used to choose seed points for region growing. And meanwhile, the size of segmental regions is used to determine whether or not it includes sparse noisy points. Experimental results on the scene scan data demonstrate that the proposed approach is effective in object segmentation, so that more details and more concise models can be obtained corresponding to real outdoor objects.
Anaemia in Acute HIV-1 Subtype C Infection

Background The high prevalence of anaemia and the increased morbidity and mortality associated with anaemia during AIDS has been well described yet there has been little information about anaemia and changes in haemoglobin levels during acute and early HIV-1 infection. Methods HIV-negative women (n = 245) were enrolled into an observational cohort as part of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) Acute Infection Study. Acute infection was diagnosed following a positive HIV RNA PCR in the absence of antibodies, or detection of HIV-1 antibodies within 3 months of a previously negative antibody test. Haemotologic parameters were assessed before infection and at regular intervals in the first twelve months of HIV infection. Results Fifty-seven participants with acute HIV infection were identified at a median of 14.5 days post-infection (range 10–81) and were enrolled in the CAPRISA Acute Infection cohort at a median of 41 days post-infection (range 15–104). Mean haemoglobin prior to HIV-1 infection was 12.7 g/dL, with a mean decline of 0.46 g/dL following infection. The prevalence of anaemia increased from 25.0% prior to HIV-1 infection to 52.6% at 3 months post-infection, 61.1% at 6 months post-infection, and 51.4% at 12 months post-infection. Conclusions Haematologic derangements and anaemia with a trend towards iron deficiency are common with acute HIV-1 subtype C infection in this small cohort. The negative impact of anaemia concurrent with established HIV infection upon morbidity and mortality has been well documented but the prognostic potential and long-term effects of anaemia during acute HIV-1 infection remain unknown.
Occluding junctions and cytoskeletal components in a cultured transporting epithelium

MDCK cells form uninterrupted monolayers and make occluding junctions similar to those of natural epithelia. This aricle explores the relationship between these junctions and the cytoskeleton by combining studies on the distribution of microfilaments and microtubules with the effect of drugs, such as colchicines and cytochalasin B, on the degree of tightness of the occluding junctions. To study the degree of tightness, monolayers were prepared by plating MDCK cells on mylon disks coated with collagen. Disks were mounted as flat sheets between two Lucite chambers, and the sealing capacity of the junctions was evaluated by measuring the electrical resistance across the monolayers. Equivalent monolayers on coverslips were used to study the distribution of microtubules and microfilaments by indirect immunofluorescence staining with antibodies against tubulin and actin. This was done both on complete cells and on cytoskeleton preparations in which the cell membranes had been solubilized before fixation. Staining with antiactin shows a reticular pattern of very fine filaments that spread radially toward the periphery where they form a continuous cortical ring underlying the plasma membrane. Staining with antitubulin depicts fibers that extend radially to form a network that occupies the cytoplasm up to the edges of the cell. Colchicine causes a profound disruption of microtubules but only a 27 percent decrease in the electrical resistance of the resting monolayers. Cytochalasin B, when present for prolonged periods, disrupts the cytoplasmic microfilaments and abolishes the electrical resistance. The cortical ring of filaments remains in place but appears fragmented with time. We find that removal of extracellular Ca(++), which causes the tight junctions to open, also causes the microfilaments and microtubules to retract toward the center of the cells. The process of junction opening and fiber retraction is reversed by the restoration of Ca(++). Colchicine has no effect on either the opening or reversal processes, but cytochalasin B inhibits the resealing of the junctions by disorganizing the filaments in the ring and at the apical border of the cells. These cytochalasin B effects are fully reversible. The correlation among cell shape, cytoskeletal patterns, and electrical resistance in the EGTA-opened and resealed monolayers suggests that microfilaments, through their association with plasma membrane components, play a role in positioning the junctional strands and influence the degree of sealing of the occluding junctions.
Newton's Formula and the Continued Fraction Expansion of √d

It is known that if the period s(d) of the continued fraction expansion of √d satisfies s(d) ≤ 2, then all Newton's approximants are convergents of √d, and moreover Rn = P2n+1/q2n+1 for all n ≥ 0. Motivated by this fact we define j = j(d, n) by Rn = P2n+1+2j/ q2n+1+2j if Rn is a convergent of √d, and define b = b(d) by b = |{n : 0 ≤ n ≤ s-1 and Rn is a convergent of √d}|. The question is how large |j| and b can be. We prove that |j| is unbounded and give some examples supporting a conjecture that b is unbounded too. We also discuss the magnitude of |j| and b compared with d and s(d),
Re‐coloring Images for Gamuts of Lower Dimension

Two new techniques for the conversion of color images to gray scale images are discussed. The necessary components for producing visually pleasing gray scale images are identified, and the inadequacies of previous methods are discussed. Several examples of the new techniques are included. The techniques are extended to the problem of recoloring images to preserve visual information for color deficient viewers. Results of a perceptual experiment are discussed, showing the advantages of the new techniques over existing techniques.
Epiretinal membrane inflammatory cell density might reflect the activity of proliferative diabetic retinopathy.

PURPOSE Diabetic retinopathy (DR) has features of chronic low-grade inflammation. The purpose of our study was to investigate whether the presence of inflammatory cells in fibrovascular membranes (FVMs) from patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) is associated with the activity of PDR and visual acuity improvement after vitreoretinal surgery. METHODS Forty FVMs from 40 patients with PDR were obtained during vitrectomy, prepared by using the agar sandwich method, and examined using light microscope and immunohistochemistry methods to define the presence and density of inflammatory cells: CD45+ cells (leukocytes), CD4+ cells (T helper lymphocytes), CD8+ cells (T cytotoxic lymphocytes), CD19+ cells (B lymphocytes), and CD14+ cells (monocytes/macrophages). For each FVM, the inflammatory cell density defined as numerical areal density was calculated. The number of vessels was defined as the volume density of vessels. RESULTS Among 40 patients with PDR, 33 patients had active PDR and 7 quiescent PDR. Significant differences in cell densities for CD4+, CD8+, and CD19+ cells were observed between patients with active and quiescent PDR. B lymphocytes were present in membranes of active PDR only. No correlation was observed between numerical areal density of inflammatory cells and the volume density of vessels. No association was found between visual acuity improvement after surgery and cell densities. CONCLUSIONS Lymphocyte infiltration of FVMs might be associated with the activity of retinopathy but not with visual acuity improvement after surgery.
Views of female breast cancer patients who donated biologic samples regarding storage and use of samples for genetic research

Although social and ethical issues related to the storage and use of biologic specimens for genetic research have been discussed extensively in the medical literature, few empiric data exist describing patients' views. This qualitative study explored the views of 26 female breast cancer patients who had consented to donate blood or tissue samples for breast cancer research. Participants generally did not expect personal benefits from research and had few unprompted concerns. Few participants had concerns about use of samples for studies not planned at the time of consent. Some participants did express concerns about insurance or employment discrimination, while others believed that current privacy protections might actually slow breast cancer research. Participants were generally more interested in receiving individual genetic test results from research studies than aggregate results. Most participants did not want individual results of uncertain clinical significance, although others believed that they should be able to receive such information. These data examined the range of participants' views regarding the storage and use of biologic samples. Further research with different and diverse patient populations is critical to establishing an appropriate balance between protecting the rights of human subjects in genetic research and allowing research to progress.
Antibacterial Resistance, Wayampis Amerindians, French Guyana

Drug resistance in fecal bacteria was high in Wayampis Amerindians who did not take antibacterial agents and were not hospitalized for 1 year. In the Wayampis Amerindians, an isolated traditional community in French Guyana, antibacterial use was 0.64 treatments per person per year. Hospitalization rate was 6.1% per year. Antibacterial drug–resistant bacteria can spread in persons who are not taking antibacterial agents.