Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Broad-spectrum antiviral that interferes with de novo pyrimidine biosynthesis

Compound A3 was identified in a high-throughput screen for inhibitors of influenza virus replication. It displays broad-spectrum antiviral activity, and at noncytotoxic concentrations it is shown to inhibit the replication of negative-sense RNA viruses (influenza viruses A and B, Newcastle disease virus, and vesicular stomatitis virus), positive-sense RNA viruses (Sindbis virus, hepatitis C virus, West Nile virus, and dengue virus), DNA viruses (vaccinia virus and human adenovirus), and retroviruses (HIV). In contrast to mammalian cells, inhibition of viral replication by A3 is absent in chicken cells, which suggests species-specific activity of A3. Correspondingly, the antiviral activity of A3 can be linked to a cellular protein, dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (DHODH), which is an enzyme in the de novo pyrimidine biosynthesis pathway. Viral replication of both RNA and DNA viruses can be restored in the presence of excess uracil, which promotes pyrimidine salvage, or excess orotic acid, which is the product of DHODH in the de novo pyrimidine biosynthesis pathway. Based on these findings, it is proposed that A3 acts by depleting pyrimidine pools, which are crucial for efficient virus replication.
The Black Hole Fundamental Plane: Revisited with a Larger Sample of Radio and X-Ray-Emitting Broad-Line AGNs

We use a recently released SDSS catalog of X-ray-emitting AGNs in conjunction with the FIRST radio survey to investigate the black hole (BH) fundamental plane relationship between the 1.4 GHz radio luminosity (Lr), 0.1-2.4 keV X-ray luminosity (LX), and black hole mass (M), namely, log Lr = ξRXlog LX + ξRMlog M + constant . For this purpose, we compile a large sample of 725 broad-line AGNs, which consists of 498 radio-loud sources and 227 radio-quiet sources. We confirm that radio-loud objects have a steeper slope (ξRX) with respect to radio-quiet objects and that the dependence of the BH fundamental plane on the BH mass (ξRM) is weak. We also find tight correlation with a similar slope between the soft X-ray luminosity and broad emission-line luminosity for both radio-loud and radio-quiet AGNs, which implies that their soft X-ray emission is unbeamed and probably related to the accretion process. With the current larger sample, we find that there is no clear evidence of evolution for radio-quiet AGNs, while for radio-loud ones there is a weak trend in which ξRM decreases as the redshift increases. This may be understood in part as due to the observed evolution of the radio spectral index as a function of redshift. Finally, we discuss the relativistic beaming effect and other uncertainties related to the BH fundamental plane. We conclude that, although it does introduce scatter into the fundamental plane relation, Doppler boosting alone is not enough to explain the observed steeper value of ξRX in the radio-loud subsample with respect to the radio-quiet ones.
Patterns of radiological progression in early rheumatoid arthritis: results of an 8 year prospective study.

OBJECTIVE To describe the course of radiological progression in a cohort of 126 patients presenting with early nonerosive rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS Criteria for recruitment to the study were fulfillment of the 1958 American Rheumatism Association criteria, absence of erosive disease at presentation and duration of symptoms less than 3 years. Radiographs of hands and feet at 0, 1, 2, 5, and 8 years were available on 114 patients and were scored by Sharp's method for erosion (ERO) and joint space narrowing (JSN). Eighty-six patients were typed for the RA susceptibility shared HLA-DR epitope. RESULTS The feet showed greatest initial radiological progression, but tended to reach an earlier and lower plateau. ERO progressed more rapidly than JSN in the first 2 years, but in parallel thereafter. The relative proportion of ERO:JSN varied, 1:1 for the wrists, 4:1 for the proximal interphalangeal joints. Thirty-eight percent of joints were eroded at 2 years, 63% at 8 years. Four patterns of radiological progression were identified: flat or nonerosive disease in 29 patients, linear in 51, lag in 13, and plateau in 19 (irregular in 2). Changes in the rate of radiological progression were reflected by the time-integrated C-reactive protein over the same period. Rheumatoid factor titer was higher in the progressive groups compared to the flat group (p = 0.01). The RA susceptibility shared HLA-DR epitope was more frequent in the linear compared to the flat group (p = 0.03). CONCLUSION A large proportion of joints become eroded in the first 2 years of early RA. The subsequent course of radiological progression is highly variable and cannot be easily explained by any single model.
Bayesian Models for Sparse Regression Analysis of High Dimensional Data

This paper considers the task of building efficient regression models for sparse multivariate analysis of high dimensional data sets, in particular it focuses on cases where the numbers q of responses Y = (y k , 1 ≤ k ≤ q) and p of predictors X = (xj , 1 ≤ j ≤ p) to analyse jointly are both large with respect to the sample size n, a challenging bi-directional task. The analysis of such data sets arise commonly in genetical genomics, with X linked to the DNA characteristics and Y corresponding to measurements of fundamental biological processes such as transcription, protein or metabolite production. Building on the Bayesian variable selection set-up for the linear model and associated efficient MCMC algorithms developed for single responses, we discuss the generic framework of hierarchical related sparse regressions, where parallel regressions of y k on the set of covariates X are linked in a hierarchical fashion, in particular through the prior model of the variable selection indicators γkj , which indicate among the covariates xj those which are associated to the response y k in each multivariate regression. Structures for the joint model of the γkj , which correspond to different compromises between the aims of controlling sparsity and that of enhancing the detection of predictors that are associated with many responses (‘hot spots’), will be discussed and a new multiplicative model for the probability structure of the γkj will be presented. To perform inference for these models in high dimensional set-ups, novel adaptive MCMC algorithms are needed. As sparsity is paramount and most of the associations expected to be zero, new algorithms that progressively focus on part of the space where the most interesting associations occur are of great interest. We shall discuss their formulation and theoretical properties, and demonstrate their use on simulated and real data from genomics.
The evaluation of relationship between blood pressure and dialysate Na concentration in chronic hemodialysis patients

Introduction: Hypertension is one of the traditional risk factors of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Extra cellular volume expansion and Na retention remain the main cause of hypertension. Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between concentration of Na dialysate and blood pressure (BP) in chronic hemodialysis (HD) patient. Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 266 adult patients undergoing HD for at least three months. Pre-HD systolic BP (SBP) and post-HD SBP during 4 weeks were measured in relation to Na dialysate concentration. The other main factors affecting the post-dialysis BP, such as body mass index (BMI), pump speed, dialysis solution temperature, duration of dialysis and intradialysis weight gain (IDWG) were also considered. Mean of ΔSBP (post-HD SBP – pre-HD SBP) in each patient in 12 session of HD was measured and statistically analyzed in relation to dialysate Na with SPSS 21. Backward multivariable linear regression analysis and Pearson’s correlation coefficients were used to evaluate the correlation between sodium gradient and ΔSBP. Results: SBP was significantly changed before and after dialysis in relation to dialysate Na (P<0.001). The Pearson’s correlation between ΔSBP with dialysate sodium and blood flow rate (pump speed) were statistically significant(P<0.05). Conclusion: We found that changes in SBP before and after dialysis is significantly associated with dialysate sodium concentration.
CYP46A1, the rate-limiting enzyme for cholesterol degradation, is neuroprotective in Huntington’s disease

Dysregulation of cholesterol synthesis is implicated in Huntington’s disease. Boussicault et al. show that expression of CYP46A1, the rate-limiting enzyme in cholesterol degradation, is reduced in patients and a mouse model. Restoration of CYP46A1 re-establishes normal cholesterol levels and is neuroprotective, suggesting that targeting cholesterol degradation may have therapeutic potential.
Abrasion, fatigue, and smearing of rubber

The abrasion of rubber on tracks without sharp-pointed asperities is dominated by fatigue failure. This is demonstrated by the effect of certain antioxidants on the abrasion of natural rubber compounds in air, which largely disappears in nitrogen. The experimental results obtained in air can be obscured by smearing which seems to originate from the abrasion process itself. In addition, the relative humidity of the surrounding atmosphere has a great, and little-understood influence on the rate of abrasion. The bearing of these findings on the interpretation of road test results is discussed.
Multicollision Attacks on Some Generalized Sequential Hash Functions

A multicollision for a function is a set of inputs whose outputs are all identical. A. Joux showed multicollision attacks on the classical iterated hash function. He also showed how these multicollision attacks can be used to get a collision attack on a concatenated hash function. In this paper, we study multicollision attacks in a more general class of hash functions which we term "generalized sequential hash functions. " We show that multicollision attacks exist for this class of hash functions provided that every message block is used at most twice in the computation of the message digest
Effect of FRP Wrapping on Fatigue Bond Behavior of Spliced Concrete Beams

AbstractThis paper presents the first phase of an ongoing research program at University of Waterloo to study the effect of external fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) sheet wrap confinement along a lap splice of reinforced concrete (RC) beams on their fatigue bond strength. Fatigue loading of RC beams containing a lap splice resulted in an increase in the number and width of cracks, an increase in deflection, and a decrease of the bond strength between the steel rebar and the surrounding concrete. The phase of the research described here consists of monotonic and fatigue tests of sixteen reinforced concrete beam with dimensions 2200×350×250 mm. Each beam was reinforced with two 20 M bars lap spliced in the constant moment region of the tension zone and two 10 M bars in the compression zone outside the constant moment region. The test variables were the presence or absence of an FRP wrapping, the type of the FRP wrapping glass or carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP or CFRP), the type of loading, and the fa.
Heterogeneous acoustic measurements for phonetic classification 1

In this paper we describe our recent efforts to improve acousticphonetic modeling by developing sets of heterogeneous, phoneclass-specific measurements, and combining these diverse measurements into a probabilistic classification framework. We first describe a baseline classifier using homogeneous measurements. After comparing selected sub-tasks to known human performance, we define sets of phone-class-specific measurements which improve within-class classification performance. Subsequently, we combine these heterogeneous measurements into an overall context-independent classification framework. We report on a series of phonetic classification experiments using the TIMIT acoustic-phonetic corpus. Our overall framework achieves 79.0% accuracy on the NIST core test set.
A Flying Start? Maternity Leave Benefits and Long-Run Outcomes of Children

We study a change in maternity leave entitlements in Norway. Mothers giving birth before July 1, 1977, were eligible for 12 weeks of unpaid leave, while those giving birth after that date were entitled to 4 months of paid leave and 12 months of unpaid leave. The increased time spent with the child led to a 2 percentage point decline in high school dropout rates and a 5 percent increase in wages at age 30. These effects were larger for the children of mothers who, in the absence of the reform, would have taken very low levels of unpaid leave.
Kabuki syndrome: clinical and molecular diagnosis in the first year of life

Objective To review the clinical and molecular genetic characteristics of 16 patients presenting a suspected diagnosis of Kabuki syndrome (KS) in the first year of life, to evaluate the clinical handles leading to a prompt diagnosis of KS in newborns. Clinical diagnosis of KS can be challenging during the first year of life, as many diagnostic features become evident only in subsequent years. Methods All patients were clinically investigated by trained clinical geneticists. A literature review was performed using the Pubmed online database and diagnostic criteria suggested by DYSCERNE–Kabuki Syndrome Guidelines (2010) were used (a European Network of Centres of Expertise for Dysmorphology, funded by the European Commission Executive Agency for Health and Consumers (DG Sanco), Project 2006122). Molecular analysis of the known causative genes of KS, KMT2D/MLL2 and KDM6A, was performed through MiSeq-targeted sequencing platform. All mutations identified were validated by Sanger sequencing protocols. Results Mutations in KMT2D gene were identified in 10/16 (62%) of the patients, whereas none of the patients had KDM6A mutations. Facial dysmorphisms (94%), feeding difficulties (100%) and hypotonia (100%) suggested the clinical diagnosis of KS. No significative differences in terms of facial features were noticed between mutation positive and negative patients of the cohort. Brachydactyly, joint laxity and nail dysplasia were present in about 80% of the patients. Other congenital anomalies were most commonly present in the mutated group of patients, including left-sided cardiac abnormalities, skeletal, renal and anorectal malformations and hypertricosis. Conclusions We present an overview of patients with KS diagnosed during the first year of life. Early diagnosis is serviceable in terms of clinical management and for targeted genetic counselling.
Factors in Finetuning Deep Model for Object Detection with Long-Tail Distribution

Finetuning from a pretrained deep model is found to yield state-of-the-art performance for many vision tasks. This paper investigates many factors that influence the performance in finetuning for object detection. There is a longtailed distribution of sample numbers for classes in object detection. Our analysis and empirical results show that classes with more samples have higher impact on the feature learning. And it is better to make the sample number more uniform across classes. Generic object detection can be considered as multiple equally important tasks. Detection of each class is a task. These classes/tasks have their individuality in discriminative visual appearance representation. Taking this individuality into account, we cluster objects into visually similar class groups and learn deep representations for these groups separately. A hierarchical feature learning scheme is proposed. In this scheme, the knowledge from the group with large number of classes is transferred for learning features in its subgroups. Finetuned on the GoogLeNet model, experimental results show 4.7% absolute mAP improvement of our approach on the ImageNet object detection dataset without increasing much computational cost at the testing stage. Code is available on www.ee. cuhk.edu. hk/ wlouyang/ projects/ImageNetFactors/CVPR16.html.
Acute Poisoning in Children in Bahia, Brazil

Acute poisoning is a frequent accident in childhood, particularly in children under 4 years of age. This was a descriptive study with data collected from standardized forms of the Poison Control Center and patient record charts. All the cases of acute poisoning in children aged 0 to 14 years during the period 2008 to 2012 were selected. The variables studied comprised characteristics of the events and toxic agents, clinical development, and outcome. A total of 657 cases of acute poisoning, with higher frequency in the age-group from 1 to 4 years (48.7%) and male sex (53.4%), were recorded. The occurrences were accidental in 92% of the cases, and 5.8% were due to suicide attempts. Among the toxic agents, medications (28.5%), venomous animals (19.3%), nonvenomous animals (10%), household cleaning products (9.0%), and raticide agents (8.7%) predominated. The majority of cases were characterized as light (73.5%) and around 18% required hospitalization, and there was low lethality (0.5%).
Comorbid Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo in Idiopathic Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss: An Ominous Sign for Hearing Recovery

Objective To determine characteristics and their prognostic value in idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL) with comorbid ipsilateral benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV). Study Design Retrospective chart review. Setting Tertiary referral center. Patients Of the 374 patients with a diagnosis of ISSNHL at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital from January 2004 to December 2009, 32 patients (8.6%) with comorbid BPPV were recruited and compared with matched ISSNHL patients without BPPV. Interventions Otologic and neurotologic examinations, pure-tone audiometry (PTA), vestibular function tests, and brain magnetic resonance imagings. Main Outcome Measures Comparison of the findings of serial audiograms for 6 months and vestibular function tests in patients with ISSNHL and concurrent BPPV with those in age-matched ISSNHL patients without BPPV. Results Patients with BPPV showed higher PTA averages than those without BPPV on initial and follow-up audiograms. Moreover, the improvement in PTA was less in the BPPV group than in the control. BPPV most commonly involved the posterior canal (17/32, 53.1%), followed by the horizontal canal (8/32, 25%), both the posterior and horizontal canals (6/32, 18.8%), and the anterior canal (1/32, 3.1%). Thirteen (40.6%) of 32 patients had recurrences of BPPV, 9 within a week and another 2 within 3 months. Conclusion Comorbid BPPV is a negative prognostic indicator of auditory function in ISSNHL. Concurrent BPPV in ISSNHL suggests combined damage to the utricle and may indicate severe and widespread labyrinthine damage, leading to the poor prognosis.
Implementation Science Open Access Study Protocol Synergizing Expectation and Execution for Stroke Communities of Practice Innovations

Background: Regional networks have been recognized as an interesting model to support interdisciplinary and inter-organizational interactions that lead to meaningful care improvements. Existing communities of practice within the a regional network, the Montreal Stroke Network (MSN) offers a compelling structure to better manage the exponential growth of knowledge and to support care providers to better manage the complex cases they must deal with in their practices. This research project proposes to examine internal and external factors that influence individual and organisational readiness to adopt national stroke best practices and to assess the impact of an e-collaborative platform in facilitating knowledge translation activities. Methods: We will develop an e-collaborative platform that will include various social networking and collaborative tools. We propose to create online brainstorming sessions ('jams') around each best practice recommendation. Jam postings will be analysed to identify emergent themes. Syntheses of these analyses will be provided to members to help them identify priority areas for practice change. Discussions will be moderated by clinical leaders, whose role will be to accelerate crystallizing of ideas around 'how to' implement selected best practices. All clinicians (~200) involved in stroke care among the MSN will be asked to participate. Activities during face-to-face meetings and on the e-collaborative platform will be documented. Content analysis of all activities will be performed using an observation grid that will use as outcome indicators key elements of communities of practice and of the knowledge creation cycle developed by Nonaka. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted among users of the e-collaborative platform to collect information on variables of the knowledge-to-action framework. All participants will be asked to complete three questionnaires: the typology questionnaire, which classifies individuals into one of four mutually exclusive categories of information seeking; the e-health state of readiness, which covers ten domains of the readiness to change; and a community of practice evaluation survey. Summary: This project is expected to enhance our understanding of collaborative work across disciplines and organisations in accelerating implementation of best practices along the continuum of care, and how e-technologies influence access, sharing, creation, and application of knowledge. Background Each year, over 50,000 Canadians suffer a stroke [1,2]. With improved awareness and with enhanced system responses, specialized diagnostics and therapeutic procedures , a large majority of individuals now survive their stroke. With declining stroke-related mortality rates and the aging population, stroke will become a highly prevalent condition [1] and will have great impact …
Primary skull lesions in the pediatric population: a 25-year experience.

CONTEXT Primary skull lesions are rare in the pediatric population. The differential diagnosis of these lesions is broad and includes both congenital and acquired lesions. Previous studies of skull lesions in the pediatric population suggest that dermoid/epidermoid tumors are the most common childhood skull tumors. OBJECTIVE To review the clinicopathologic features of primary skull lesions identified within the pediatric population of an academic tertiary medical center. DESIGN A retrospective review of surgical pathology reports during a 25-year period identified 19 primary skull lesions occurring in the pediatric population. Lesions were excluded if they were of known soft tissue or intracranial origin with secondary calvarial involvement, or if they represented a metastasis from a known primary malignancy. RESULTS Nineteen primary skull lesions were identified in 11 male (58%) and 8 female (42%) patients, with a median age at diagnosis of 9.5 years. These lesions were usually benign and most commonly presented as a painless mass (n = 8). The lesions were located in the occipital bone (n = 7), frontal bone (n = 5), parietal bone (n = 2), and temporal bone (n = 1). Diagnoses included epidermoid/dermoid cyst (n = 8), Langerhans cell histiocytosis (n = 6), intraosseous hemangioma (n = 2), osteoblastoma (n = 1), infantile myofibroma (n = 1), and fibroma (n = 1). Intracranial extension was identified in 1 case, and recurrence was found in only 2 cases. CONCLUSIONS Epidermoid/dermoid cysts and Langerhans cell histiocytosis are the most commonly encountered skull lesions in the pediatric population at our institution. Intracranial extension of these lesions is rare, and recurrence is uncommon following complete surgical resection.