Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of Different Scoring Systems Based on Both Donor and Recipient Characteristics for Predicting Outcome after Living Donor Liver Transplantation

Background and Objectives In order to provide a good match between donor and recipient in liver transplantation, four scoring systems [the product of donor age and Model for End-stage Liver Disease score (D-MELD), the score to predict survival outcomes following liver transplantation (SOFT), the balance of risk score (BAR), and the transplant risk index (TRI)] based on both donor and recipient parameters were designed. This study was conducted to evaluate the performance of the four scores in living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) and compare them with the MELD score. Patients and Methods The clinical data of 249 adult patients undergoing LDLT in our center were retrospectively evaluated. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs) of each score were calculated and compared at 1-, 3-, 6-month and 1-year after LDLT. Results The BAR at 1-, 3-, 6-month and 1-year after LDLT and the D-MELD and TRI at 1-, 3- and 6-month after LDLT showed acceptable performances in the prediction of survival (AUC>0.6), while the SOFT showed poor discrimination at 6-month after LDLT (AUC = 0.569). In addition, the D-MELD and BAR displayed positive correlations with the length of ICU stay (D-MELD, p = 0.025; BAR, p = 0.022). The SOFT was correlated with the time of mechanical ventilation (p = 0.022). Conclusion The D-MELD, BAR and TRI provided acceptable performance in predicting survival after LDLT. However, even though these scoring systems were based on both donor and recipient parameters, only the BAR provided better performance than the MELD in predicting 1-year survival after LDLT.
Basal Forebrain Atrophy Contributes to Allocentric Navigation Impairment in Alzheimer’s Disease Patients

The basal forebrain degenerates in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and this process is believed to contribute to the cognitive decline observed in AD patients. Impairment in spatial navigation is an early feature of the disease but whether basal forebrain dysfunction in AD is responsible for the impaired navigation skills of AD patients is not known. Our objective was to investigate the relationship between basal forebrain volume and performance in real space as well as computer-based navigation paradigms in an elderly cohort comprising cognitively normal controls, subjects with amnestic mild cognitive impairment and those with AD. We also tested whether basal forebrain volume could predict the participants’ ability to perform allocentric- vs. egocentric-based navigation tasks. The basal forebrain volume was calculated from 1.5 T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, and navigation skills were assessed using the human analog of the Morris water maze employing allocentric, egocentric, and mixed allo/egocentric real space as well as computerized tests. When considering the entire sample, we found that basal forebrain volume correlated with spatial accuracy in allocentric (cued) and mixed allo/egocentric navigation tasks but not the egocentric (uncued) task, demonstrating an important role of the basal forebrain in mediating cue-based spatial navigation capacity. Regression analysis revealed that, although hippocampal volume reflected navigation performance across the entire sample, basal forebrain volume contributed to mixed allo/egocentric navigation performance in the AD group, whereas hippocampal volume did not. This suggests that atrophy of the basal forebrain contributes to aspects of navigation impairment in AD that are independent of hippocampal atrophy.
Impairment of peripheral glucose utilization in normal subjects by prolonged bed rest.

Abstract The effects of 2 weeks of absolute bed rest on arteriovenous glucose difference, forearm blood flow, and peripheral glucose uptake were studied in 9 subjects. A 180 minute infusion of a 20 per cent glucose solution was administered during a control period of normal activity, on the fourteenth day of absolute bed rest and on the seventh, or fourteenth day of post-bed-rest recovery. Venous glucose was recorded continuously by an AutoAnalyzer. Arterial glucose, serum immunoreactive insulin (IRI), and forearm blood flow were measured. Glucose loads were varied during the bed-rest and recovery infusions to match the venous glucose concentrations obtained during the control period for each subject and thus achieve similar insulinogenic stimuli between periods. While there were no significant differences in fasting preinfusion arteriovenous glucose differences or preinfusion peripheral glucose uptakes, there were significant decreases in peripheral glucose uptake during the bed-rest and the 7 day-recovery glucose infusions as compared to the control and the 14 day-recovery infusions. There was a significant decrease in the mean glucose load needed to produce a comparable venous glucose curve during the bed rest as compared to the control infusion. Mean serum immunoreactive insulin concentrations were comparable during each of the 3 infusions. The glucose intolerance of bed rest is due, in part, to an impairment of peripheral glucose uptake which is not the result of insulin deficiency or insulin antagonists but appears to be a cellular alteration.
Trading Rule Search with Autoregressive Inference Agents

The use of the agent-based paradigm in modelling financial markets provides an intuitively natural approach and is a well established technique. In contrast with the assumptions and conclusions of the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH), agent based models provide a refreshing causal approach to understanding the emergence of the general stylized facts of financial markets. In this report we present details of an agent-based stock market simulation in which traders utilise a hybrid mixture of common information criteria based inference procedures, including minimum message length (MML) inference. Traders in our model compete with each other using a range of different inference techniques to infer the parameters and appropriate order of simple autoregressive (AR) models of stock price evolution. We show that in the presence of a noisy AR signal, MML traders significantly outperform their competitors, and in fact do well even in the absence of such a signal.
Combination of inheritance hierarchies

Making extensions to existing systems is a critically important activity in object-oriented proexisting application. We are in full agreement with Lieberman [7] that one wants a small extension to behavior to require just a small extension to code, and that adding new code is good, whereas modifying existing code is bad. We call this approach “extension-by-addition” [16]. gramming. This paper proposes an approach in which extensions of all kinds are clearly separated from the base hierarchy upon which they are built, for ease of distribution and combination. Extensions, including extensions to existing classes, are written in separate, sparse extension hierarchies. The entire system is obtained by combining the extension hierarchies with the base hierarchy. Sequences of successive extensions can be combined using an extension operator, and parallel extensions can be combined using a merge operator, which might identify conflicts that must be reconciled. System building takes place at two levels: combining existing extensions from a library using these operators, and building new extensions when existing ones are not adequate. New extensions built in this way are added to the library, and so should be written to be as general and reusable as possible.
What are the most effective risk-reduction strategies in sport concussion?

Aim To critically review the evidence to determine the efficacy and effectiveness of protective equipment, rule changes, neck strength and legislation in reducing sport concussion risk. Methods Electronic databases, grey literature and bibliographies were used to search the evidence using Medical Subject Headings and text words. Inclusion/exclusion criteria were used to select articles for the clinical equipment studies. The quality of evidence was assessed using epidemiological criteria regarding internal/external validity (eg, strength of design, sample size/power, bias and confounding). Results No new valid, conclusive evidence was provided to suggest the use of headgear in rugby, or mouth guards in American football, significantly reduced players’ risk of concussion. No evidence was provided to suggest an association between neck strength increases and concussion risk reduction. There was evidence in ice hockey to suggest fair-play rules and eliminating body checking among 11-years-olds to 12-years-olds were effective injury prevention strategies. Evidence is lacking on the effects of legislation on concussion prevention. Equipment self-selection bias was a common limitation, as was the lack of measurement and control for potential confounding variables. Lastly, helmets need to be able to protect from impacts resulting in a head change in velocities of up to 10 and 7 m/s in professional American and Australian football, respectively, as well as reduce head resultant linear and angular acceleration to below 50 g and 1500 rad/s2, respectively, to optimise their effectiveness. Conclusions A multifactorial approach is needed for concussion prevention. Future well-designed and sport-specific prospective analytical studies of sufficient power are warranted.
Seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii in Sweden, Estonia and Iceland

Toxoplasmosis is a disease caused by the intracellular protozoan parasite, Toxoplasma gondii which infects up to one-third of the world human population. Toxoplasmosis in neonates and immunocompromized patients can lead to severe disease and death. We investigated the prevalence and risk factors for T. gondii infection in Iceland, Sweden and Estonia, and tested the hypothesis that T. gondii infection causes systemic inflammation and protects against atopy. Blood samples were collected from 1277 randomly selected subjects. The presence of T. gondii IgG antibodies was determined by an ELISA method and levels of Hs-CRP by immunoturbidimetric assay. The prevalence of T. gondii antibodies was 54.9% in Tartu, 23% in Uppsala and 9.8% in Reykjavik (p<0.0001). The risk of positive T. gondii antibodies increased with the number of siblings and with age in Sweden. T. gondii infection was associated with asthma related symptoms and increased Hs-CRP (p = 0.02). No association was found with IgE-sensitization and lung function. We concluded that risk factors for T. gondii infection suggested that soil exposure was 1 of the mechanisms in all 3 countries and a meat-associated infection route is a risk in Sweden.
New rotor shape design for minimum torque ripple of SRM using FEM

A major problem of switched reluctance motors (SRMs) is torque ripple, which causes undesirable acoustic noise and vibration. It is caused by the saliency of the stator and rotor. In this paper, the geometry for low torque ripple is researched and a motor having notched teeth is proposed. Its characteristics are simulated by finite-element method (FEM) analysis and compared with SRMs having conventional shape.
Design and preliminary evaluation of the vocal cords and articulator of an infant-like vocal robot "Lingua"

Several observational studies have suggested that the vocal development of an infant towards language acquisition is by interaction with caregivers. However, owing to the difficulty of controlling infant vocalization, the underlying mechanisms of the process and how they are affected by the behavior of the caregiver are yet to be clearly established. Towards clarifying these outstanding issues, we developed an infant-like vocal robot, "Lingua," as a controllable vocal platform that affords a model of real infant vocalization. Lingua has two features, namely, infant-like voice and high articulation capability. The shapes of its vocal cords and vocal tract are similar to those of a 6-month-old infant as determined from anatomical data. Seven degrees of freedom of tongue articulation were realized by a sophisticated design comprising linkage mechanisms inside a miniaturized vocal tract, and this enabled the achievement of high articulation performance. The relationship between the material hardness of the vocal fold and its acoustic performance was examined, and the results of preliminary experiments showed that the robot could vocalize almost the same ranges of fundamental frequencies and vowel-like utterances as an infant.
Comparison of Rainfall Products Derived from TRMM Microwave Imager and Precipitation Radar

Satellite remote sensing is an indispensable means of measuring and monitoring precipitation on a global scale. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) is continuing to make significant progress in helping the global features of precipitation to be understood, particularly with the help of a pair of spaceborne microwave sensors, the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) and precipitation radar (PR). The TRMM version-5 standard products, however, are known to have a systematic inconsistency in mean monthly rainfall. To clarify the origin of this inconsistency, the authors investigate the zonal mean precipitation and the regional trends in the hydrometeor profiles in terms of the precipitation water content (PWC) and the precipitation water path (PWP) derived from the TMI profiling algorithm (2A12) and the PR profile (2A25). An excess of PR over TMI in near-surface PWC is identified in the midlatitudes (especially in winter), whereas PWP exhibits a striking excess of TMI over PR around the tropical rainfall maximum. It is shown that these inconsistencies arise from TMI underestimating the near-surface PWC in midlatitude winter and PR underestimating PWP in the Tropics. This conclusion is supported by the contoured-frequency-by-altitude diagrams as a function of PWC. Correlations between rain rate and PWC/ PWP indicate that the TMI profiling algorithm tends to provide a larger rain rate than the PR profile under a given PWC or PWP, which exaggerates the excess by TMI and cancels the excess by PR through the conversion from precipitation water to rain rate. As a consequence, the disagreement in the rainfall products between TMI and PR is a combined result of the intrinsic bias originating from the different physical principles between TMI and PR measurements and the purely algorithmic bias inherent in the conversion from precipitation water to rain rate.
Issues in Diagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Adolescents

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders of childhood, affecting 8% to 10% of children1 and persisting into adolescence in approximately 80% of cases.2,3 However, ADHD is largely considered a childhood disorder so most patients are diagnosed in childhood. The DSMIV definition for ADHD requires symptoms to be present before the age of 7 years.4 Nevertheless, certain subgroups have less marked symptoms in childhood and are easily missed. These include the following three subgroups:5
Neural oscillatory deficits in schizophrenia predict behavioral and neurocognitive impairments

Paying attention to visual stimuli is typically accompanied by event-related desynchronizations (ERD) of ongoing alpha (7–14 Hz) activity in visual cortex. The present study used time-frequency based analyses to investigate the role of impaired alpha ERD in visual processing deficits in schizophrenia (Sz). Subjects viewed sinusoidal gratings of high (HSF) and low (LSF) spatial frequency (SF) designed to test functioning of the parvo- vs. magnocellular pathways, respectively. Patients with Sz and healthy controls paid attention selectively to either the LSF or HSF gratings which were presented in random order. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded to all stimuli. As in our previous study, it was found that Sz patients were selectively impaired at detecting LSF target stimuli and that ERP amplitudes to LSF stimuli were diminished, both for the early sensory-evoked components and for the attend minus unattend difference component (the Selection Negativity), which is generally regarded as a specific index of feature-selective attention. In the time-frequency domain, the differential ERP deficits to LSF stimuli were echoed in a virtually absent theta-band phase locked response to both unattended and attended LSF stimuli (along with relatively intact theta-band activity for HSF stimuli). In contrast to the theta-band evoked responses which were tightly stimulus locked, stimulus-induced desynchronizations of ongoing alpha activity were not tightly stimulus locked and were apparent only in induced power analyses. Sz patients were significantly impaired in the attention-related modulation of ongoing alpha activity for both HSF and LSF stimuli. These deficits correlated with patients’ behavioral deficits in visual information processing as well as with visually based neurocognitive deficits. These findings suggest an additional, pathway-independent, mechanism by which deficits in early visual processing contribute to overall cognitive impairment in Sz.
Long‐term follow‐up in patients treated with Mini‐BEAM as salvage therapy for relapsed or refractory Hodgkin's disease

Several studies have focused on investigation of the optimal salvage regimen to induce maximum response before autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) in patients with relapsed or refractory Hodgkin's disease (HD). However, in most of these studies, the follow‐up is relatively short. In the present study, we report on long‐term results of 55 consecutive patients with HD who received Mini‐BEAM [BCNU (carmustine), etoposide, cytarabine, melphalan] as salvage therapy before ASCT. Eleven patients were refractory to front‐line therapy, 17 were partial responders, and 27 patients had relapsed from HD. Twenty‐eight patients achieved complete response, and 18 achieved partial response with a median of two cycles of Mini‐BEAM, giving a total response rate of 84%. Significant factors predicting poor response (P < 0·05) were: initial treatment with MOPP (mechloroethamine, oncovin, procarbazine, prednisolone), ≥ two previous chemotherapy regimens and three disease characteristics at Mini‐BEAM treatment: presence of B symptoms, extranodal involvement or low serum albumin. However, only the last two factors retained independent influence on multivariate analysis. In total, 45/55 patients have been transplanted. Median follow‐up after Mini‐BEAM administration for living patients is 68 months. At the time of reporting, 31 out of 55 patients (56·4%) are still alive, 21 patients (38%) have relapsed, three (5·4%) have developed secondary neoplasias, and five have died of other complications not related to disease progression. The actuarial 7‐year overall survival (OS) was 52%, the progression‐free survival (PFS) 54% and the event‐free survival (EFS) 36%. The response to Mini‐BEAM was the most important prognostic factor for predicting the long‐term probability of surviving the disease: none of the eight patients who did not respond to Mini‐BEAM were alive at 3 years. On multivariate analysis, response to Mini‐BEAM and extranodal involvement before Mini‐BEAM had a significant influence on OS. Our results show the safety and efficacy of Mini‐BEAM before ASCT for refractory or relapsed HD patients.
On the characterization of mechanical properties of alumina ceramics for high speed application

Ceramics have been widely used under impact conditions due to the notable features such as light weight and high compressive strength. The high speed applications require better understanding of mechanical properties of ceramics at various length scales. This work aims to characterize the mechanical properties of alumina ceramic from microscopic up to macroscopic scales. Dynamic experiments and finite element simulations were developed to investigate the underlying deformation and fracture mechanisms of alumina. The dynamic response of alumina ceramic was determined in a modified split-Hopkinson pressure bar test. The analysis of the wave signals included wave dispersion correction and a direct analytical solution of elastic wave propagation in the specimen to align the measured signals. It was found that equilibrium is established after approximately five wave propagation cycles within specimens, thus supporting the assumption of stress field uniformity. Post-test scanning electron microscopic examination reveals that the failure modes of alumina are strain rate sensitive. A predominant intergranular fracture can be observed at low loading rate, while a combination of intergranular and transgranular fractures can be found in the dynamic test. To support the observations from the quasi-static test at the grain level, microcantilever beams with equilateral triangle cross-section were subjected to a low rate load at the free end. A 3D FE model of polycrystalline alumina was established based on the experimental observations. The simulation results show that the localized stress distribution is affected by the material orientations. The crack i initiates at the bottom of the cantilever beam at the vicinity of the fixed end, and then propagates along the grain boundaries to the top. Finally, an analytical model was developed to describe the penetration behavior based on quasi-static spherical cavity expansion theory. A damage evolution function was proposed in the crack zone. The analytical solution shows that the penetration resistance is influenced by both material properties and damage evolution parameters. The penetration resistance and penetration velocity can be obtained for the process of penetrating the thick ceramic material by long rod projectiles. This work demonstrates both theoretical and practical importance on the understanding of the behavior of ceramic materials, especially at different length and time scales. The consideration of deformation and failure mechanisms over a wide range of strain rates ensures that the development of a physically realistic constitutive model is suitable for engineering application.
Basal-like Breast Cancer Cells Induce Phenotypic and Genomic Changes in Macrophages

Basal-like breast cancer (BBC) is an aggressive subtype of breast cancer that has no biologically targeted therapy. The interactions of BBCs with stromal cells are important determinants of tumor biology, with inflammatory cells playing well-recognized roles in cancer progression. Despite the fact that macrophage–BBC communication is bidirectional, important questions remain about how BBCs affect adjacent immune cells. This study investigated monocyte-to-macrophage differentiation and polarization and gene expression in response to coculture with basal-like versus luminal breast cancer cells. Changes induced by coculture were compared with changes observed under classical differentiation and polarization conditions. Monocytes (THP-1 cells) exposed to BBC cells in coculture had altered gene expression with upregulation of both M1 and M2 macrophage markers. Two sets of M1 and M2 markers were selected from the PCR profiles and used for dual immunofluorescent staining of BBC versus luminal cocultured THP-1s, and cancer-adjacent, benign tissue sections from patients diagnosed with BBCs or luminal breast cancer, confirming the differential expression patterns. Relative to luminal breast cancers, BBCs also increased differentiation of monocytes to macrophages and stimulated macrophage migration. Consistent with these changes in cellular phenotype, a distinct pattern of cytokine secretion was evident in macrophage–BBC cocultures, including upregulation of NAP-2, osteoprotegerin, MIG, MCP-1, MCP-3, and interleukin (IL)-1β. Application of IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1RA) to cocultures attenuated BBC-induced macrophage migration. These data contribute to an understanding of the BBC-mediated activation of the stromal immune response, implicating specific cytokines that are differentially expressed in basal-like microenvironments and suggesting plausible targets for modulating immune responses to BBCs. Mol Cancer Res; 10(6); 727–38. ©2012 AACR.