Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Pet Therapy and Artist Interactions on Quality of Life in Brain Tumor Patients: A Cross-Section of Art and Medicine in Dialog

With the evolution of modern medical treatment strategies, there also comes the realization that many times we reach a point where traditional goals of medical care, such as overall survival or disease-free survival, are not realistic goals for many patients facing devastating illnesses. One such disease is malignant primary brain tumors, known as malignant glioma (MG). With median survival of only 20.9 months following best available standard of care treatment strategies, including surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and tumor treating fields, MG is one of the deadliest malignancies of the modern era. Along the course of treating patients with MG, clinicians often realize that traditional treatment therapies can at best provide incremental benefit of symptom management without any survival benefit. However, even in these difficult situations, it is possible to make significant positive changes in patients’ health-related quality of life (HRQoL) using creative, non-traditional interventions. In this paper, we describe the initial findings from our project that takes a unique approach to studying the intersections of clinical care and art by using pet therapy and art-making as interventions for patients diagnosed with brain tumors. Our preliminary findings suggest that pet therapy and the ability to reflect as well as speak about their journey through a life-altering disease significantly increases patients’ overall feeling of wellbeing and reduces anxiety about future uncertainty.
Relationships between Mitochondrial Function and Metabolic Flexibility in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Introduction Mitochondrial dysfunction, lipid accumulation, insulin resistance and metabolic inflexibility have been implicated in the etiology of type 2 diabetes (T2D), yet their interrelationship remains speculative. We investigated these interrelationships in a group of T2D and obese normoglycemic control subjects. Methods 49 non-insulin dependent male T2D patients and 54 male control subjects were enrolled, and a hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp and indirect calorimetry were performed. A muscle biopsy was taken and intramyocellular lipid (IMCL) was measured. In vivo mitochondrial function was measured by PCr recovery in 30 T2D patients and 31 control subjects. Results Fasting NEFA levels were significantly elevated in T2D patients compared with controls, but IMCL was not different. Mitochondrial function in T2D patients was compromised by 12.5% (p<0.01). Whole body glucose disposal (WGD) was higher at baseline and lower after insulin stimulation. Metabolic flexibility (ΔRER) was lower in the type 2 diabetic patients (0.050±0.033 vs. 0.093±0.050, p<0.01). Mitochondrial function was the sole predictor of basal respiratory exchange ratio (RER) (R2 = 0.18, p<0.05); whereas WGD predicted both insulin-stimulated RER (R2 = 0.29, p<0.001) and metabolic flexibility (R2 = 0.40, p<0.001). Conclusions These results indicate that defects in skeletal muscle in vivo mitochondrial function in type 2 diabetic patients are only reflected in basal substrate oxidation and highlight the importance of glucose disposal rate as a determinant of substrate utilization in response to insulin.
Chapter 0 Asymmetric Encryption in Wireless Sensor Networks

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is composed of autonomous devices called sensor nodes that generally have low computational power, limited data transmission and power constraints. A WSN consists of sensor nodes that capturing information from an environment, processing data and transmitting them via radio signals. WSNs are increasingly present in our days and can be found in environmental area (climatic measurements, presence of smoke), in health area (measurement of vital signs, temperature), home automation (motion sensor and image sensor) and other areas. Generally, WSNs have no fixed structure, and in many cases there is no monitoring station of sensor nodes during the operational life of the network, so a WSN must have mechanisms for self-configuration and adaptation in case of failure, inclusion or exclusion of a sensor node.
Modelling human behaviour in social dilemmas using attributes and heuristics

A question concerning not only modellers but also practitioners is: under what circumstances can mutual cooperation be established and maintained by a group of people facing a common pool dilemma? A step before this question of institutional influences there is need for a different way of modelling human behaviour that does not draw on the rational actor paradigm, because this kind of modelling needs to be able to integrate various deviations from this theory shown in economic experiments. We have chosen a new approach based on observations in form of laboratory and field observations of actual human behaviour. We model human decision making as using an adaptive toolbox following the notion of Gigerenzer. Humans draw on a number of simple heuristics that are meaningful in a certain situation but may be useless in another. This is incorporated into our agent-based model by having agents perceive their environment, draw on a pool of heuristics to choose an appropriate one and use that heuristic. Behavioural differences can be incorporated in two ways. First, each agent has a number of attributes that differ in values, for example there are more and less cooperative agents. The second behavioural difference lies in the way, in which heuristics are chosen. With this modelling approach we contribute to a new way of modelling human behaviour, which is simple enough to be included into more complex models while at the same time realistic enough to cover actual decision making processes of humans. Modellers should be able to use this approach without a need to get deep into psychological, sociological or economic theory. Stakeholders in social dilemmas, who may be confronted with such a model should understand, why an agent decides in the way it does.
External details revisited - A new taxonomy for coding 'non-episodic' content during autobiographical memory retrieval.

Autobiographical memory (ABM) is typically held to comprise episodic and semantic elements, with the vast majority of studies to date focusing on profiles of episodic details in health and disease. In this context, 'non-episodic' elements are often considered to reflect semantic processing or are discounted from analyses entirely. Mounting evidence suggests that rather than reflecting one unitary entity, semantic autobiographical information may contain discrete subcomponents, which vary in their relative degree of semantic or episodic content. This study aimed to (1) review the existing literature to formally characterize the variability in analysis of 'non-episodic' content (i.e., external details) on the Autobiographical Interview and (2) use these findings to create a theoretically grounded framework for coding external details. Our review exposed discrepancies in the reporting and interpretation of external details across studies, reinforcing the need for a new, consistent approach. We validated our new external details scoring protocol (the 'NExt' taxonomy) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (n = 18) and semantic dementia (n = 13), and 20 healthy older Control participants and compared profiles of the NExt subcategories across groups and time periods. Our results revealed increased sensitivity of the NExt taxonomy in discriminating between ABM profiles of patient groups, when compared to traditionally used internal and external detail metrics. Further, remote and recent autobiographical memories displayed distinct compositions of the NExt detail types. This study is the first to provide a fine-grained and comprehensive taxonomy to parse external details into intuitive subcategories and to validate this protocol in neurodegenerative disorders.
Lack of an Efficient Endoplasmic Reticulum-localized Recycling System Protects Peroxiredoxin IV from Hyperoxidation*

Background: Peroxiredoxin IV metabolizes endoplasmic reticulum-derived hydrogen peroxide. Results: In contrast to other peroxiredoxins, peroxiredoxin IV is insensitive to hyperoxidation within its cellular environment. Conclusion: There is a lack of a robust peroxiredoxin IV recycling system within the endoplasmic reticulum. Significance: Studying the reduction of peroxiredoxin IV highlights the different mechanisms for maintaining redox status within different cellular compartments. Typical 2-Cys peroxiredoxins are required to remove hydrogen peroxide from several different cellular compartments. Their activity can be regulated by hyperoxidation and consequent inactivation of the active-site peroxidatic cysteine. Here we developed a simple assay to quantify the hyperoxidation of peroxiredoxins. Hyperoxidation of peroxiredoxins can only occur efficiently in the presence of a recycling system, usually involving thioredoxin and thioredoxin reductase. We demonstrate that there is a marked difference in the sensitivity of the endoplasmic reticulum-localized peroxiredoxin to hyperoxidation compared with either the cytosolic or mitochondrial enzymes. Each enzyme is equally sensitive to hyperoxidation in the presence of a robust recycling system. Our results demonstrate that peroxiredoxin IV recycling in the endoplasmic reticulum is much less efficient than in the cytosol or mitochondria, leading to the protection of peroxiredoxin IV from hyperoxidation.
Characterization of organic ambient aerosol during MIRAGE 2006 on three platforms

Abstract. Submicron atmospheric aerosol particles were collected during the Megacity Initiative: Local and Global Research Observation (MILAGRO) in March 2006 at three platforms located in the Mexico City urban area (at the Mexico City Atmospheric Monitoring System building – SIMAT), at about 60 km south-east of the metropolitan area (Altzomoni in the Cortes Pass), and on board the NCAR C130 aircraft. Organic functional group and elemental composition were measured by FTIR and XRF. The average organic mass (OM) concentration, calculated as the sum of organic functional group concentrations, was 9.9 μg m−3 at SIMAT, 6.6 μg m−3 at Altzomoni, and 5.7 μg m−3 on the C130. Aliphatic saturated C-C-H and carboxylic acid COOH groups dominated OM (more than 60%) at the ground sites. On the C130, a non-acid carbonyl C=O, carboxylic acid COOH, and amine NH2 groups were observed in concentrations above detection limit only outside the Mexico City basin. From the elemental composition of SIMAT samples, we estimated the upper bound of average contribution of biomass burning to the organic carbon (OC) as 33–39%. The average OM/OC ratio was 1.8 at SIMAT, 2.0 at Altzomoni, and 1.6–1.8 on the C130. On the aircraft, higher OM/OC ratios were measured outside of the Mexico City basin, north of the urban area, along the city outflow direction. The average carboxylic acid to aliphatic saturated ratio at SIMAT reflected a local increase of oxidized functional group concentration in aged particles.
Massive mediastinal cryptococcosis in a young immunocompetent patient

Pulmonary cryptococcosis with lymph node involvement is relatively rare in immunocompetent patients. We report a case of pulmonary cryptococcosis with massive mediastinal lymphadenopathy in an immunocompetent young patient. In this report, a 17‐year‐old boy presented with high‐grade fever and persistent cough. Chest X‐ray and computed tomography showed massive mediastinal lymphadenopathy. Endobronchial ultrasound‐guided transbronchial needle aspiration revealed histological evidence of cryptococcal lymphadenitis. He was treated with liposomal amphotericin B plus flucytosine followed by fluconazole and recovered.
Automatic normal-abnormal video frame classification for colonoscopy

Two novel schemes are proposed to represent intermediate-scale features for normal-abnormal classification of colonoscopy images. The first scheme works on the full-resolution image, the second on a multi-scale pyramid space. Both schemes support any feature descriptor; here we use multi-resolution local binary patterns which outperformed other features reported in the literature in our comparative experiments. We also compared experimentally two types of features not previously used in colonoscopy image classification, bag of features and sparse coding, each with and without spatial pyramid matching (SPM). We find that SPM improves performance, therefore supporting the importance of intermediate-scale features as in the proposed schemes for classification. Within normal-abnormal frame classification, we show that our representational schemes outperforms other features reported in the literature in leave-N-out tests with a database of 2100 colonoscopy images.
Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Cross-Linked Epoxy Polymers: the Effect of Force Field on the Estimation of Properties

In this paper, the molecular dynamics method was used to calculate the physical and mechanical properties of the cross-linked epoxy polymer composed of diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A (DGEBA) as resin and diethylenetriamine (DETA) as curing agent. Calculation of the properties was performed using the constant-strain (static) approach. A series of independent simulations were carried out based on four widely used force fields; COMPASS, PCFF, UFF and Dreiding. Proper comparisons between the results and also with experimental observations were made to find the most suitable force field for molecular dynamics simulation of polymer materials.
Human Capital, Industrial Growth and Resource Curse

One of the arguments for the detrimental effect of natural resources on the manufacturing is that it could be a byproduct of the capital accumulation process in the resource-abundant open economy. Substitution of capital for labor in resource sectors might slow down the accumulation of a highly skilled labor force. We provide empirical support for this argument. We show that high-skilled labor intensive sectors develop disproportionately slow in resource-rich countries. While low-skilled and average-skilled labor intensities do not have differential effects on industrial growth. Our findings emphasize the importance of educational policies aimed at skilled labor force to ensure the sustainability of economic development in resource economies.
The Memory Clinic: A New Approach to the Detection of Dementia

Memory impairment is a salient and early feature of developing dementia, but in practice is often not recognised until it has reached an advanced stage. The operation described is of a Memory Clinic opened on an experimental basis at the Geriatric Research Unit, University College London, in 1983, with the aim of identifying the causes of memory impairment in the elderly, with particular reference to the early detection of dementia. It proved possible to identify a group of people with early dementia who had previously been undiagnosed, and also to reveal deficiencies in the utilisation of existing services. Memory clinics would be a valuable addition to geriatric and psychogeriatric services.
Silica nanoparticle-induced oxidative stress and mitochondrial damage is followed by activation of intrinsic apoptosis pathway in glioblastoma cells

Introduction Recently, the focus of oncological research has been on the optimization of therapeutic strategies targeted at malignant diseases. Nanomedicine utilizing silicon dioxide nanoparticles (SiNPs) is one such strategy and is rapidly developing as a promising tool for cancer diagnosis, imaging, and treatment. Nevertheless, little is known about the mechanisms of action of SiNPs in brain tumors. Materials and methods Here, we explored the effects of 5–15 nm SiNPs in the human glioblastoma cell line LN229. In this respect, MTT assays, microscopic observations, flow cytometry analyses, and luminescent assays were performed. Moreover, RT-qPCR and Western blot analyses were done to determine gene and protein expressions. Results We demonstrated that SiNPs triggered evident cytotoxicity, with microscopic observations of the nuclei, annexin V–fluorescein isothiocyanate/propidium iodide staining, and elevated caspase 3/7 activity, suggesting that SiNPs predominantly induced apoptotic death in LN229 cells. We further showed the occurrence of oxidative stress induced by enhanced reactive oxygen-species generation. This effect was followed by deregulated expression of genes encoding the antioxidant enzymes SOD1, SOD2, and CAT, and impaired mitochondria function. SiNP- induced mitochondrial dysfunction was characterized by membrane-potential collapse, ATP depletion, elevated expression of BAX, PUMA, and NOXA with simultaneous downregulation of BCL2/BCL2L1, and activation of caspase 9. Moreover, RT-qPCR and Western blot analyses demonstrated increased levels of the endoplasmic reticulum stress markers GRP78, GRP94, and DDIT3, as well as strongly increased expressions of the IL1B and COX2 genes, suggesting activation of endoplasmic reticulum stress and a proinflammatory response. Conclusions Altogether, our data indicate that in LN229 cells, SiNPs evoke cell death via activation of the intrinsic apoptosis pathway and suggest that other aspects of cellular function may also be affected. As such, SiNPs represent a potentially promising agent for facilitating further progress in brain cancer therapy. However, further exploration of SiNP long-term toxicity and molecular effects is necessary prior to their widespread application.
Moist multi-scale models for the hurricane embryo

Determining the finite-amplitude preconditioned states in the hurricane embryo, which lead to tropical cyclogenesis, is a central issue in contemporary meteorology. In the embryo there is competition between different preconditioning mechanisms involving hydrodynamics and moist thermodynamics, which can lead to cyclogenesis. Here systematic asymptotic methods from applied mathematics are utilized to develop new simplified moist multi-scale models starting from the moist anelastic equations. Three interesting multi-scale models emerge in the analysis. The balanced mesoscale vortex (BMV) dynamics and the microscale balanced hot tower (BHT) dynamics involve simplified balanced equations without gravity waves for vertical vorticity amplification due to moist heat sources and incorporate nonlinear advective fluxes across scales. The BMV model is the central one for tropical cyclogenesis in the embryo. The moist mesoscale wave (MMW) dynamics involves simplified equations for mesoscale moisture fluctuations, as well as linear hydrostatic waves driven by heat sources from moisture and eddy flux divergences. A simplified cloud physics model for deep convection is introduced here and used to study moist axisymmetric plumes in the BHT model. A simple application in periodic geometry involving the effects of mesoscale vertical shear and moist microscale hot towers on vortex amplification is developed here to illustrate features of the coupled multi-scale models. These results illustrate the use of these models in isolating key mechanisms in the embryo in a simplified content.
Age and gender affect different characteristics of slow waves in the sleep EEG.

Low-frequency EEG was analyzed quantitatively during 2 nights in 40 females and 34 males aged 26 to 101 years. Analyses were based on Rechtschaffen and Kales NREM sleep stages, on absolute low-frequency amplitude (i.e. power in the range of 0.2-2.0 Hz) and on low-frequency continuity. The latter parameter describes how much (0-100%) of the current slow-wave activity is continued in the near-future EEG. Such continuation can occur through closed loops in the underlying neuronal network and cells. These loops are slow, thus corresponding to slow-wave frequencies, and can consist of electrophysiological, chemical and/or other pathways. The continuity percentage then monitors the relative activity of these loops. It does not depend directly on absolute EEG amplitudes. All analyzed parameters, including amplitude-independent continuity, decreased substantially and significantly with increasing age. The amplitudes of low-frequency EEG in females were significantly and substantially (40%) larger than those in males. However, the amplitude-independent continuity percentage did not differ between the genders. These findings support the notion that gender-related anatomical differences have a general effect on EEG amplitude, including during slow-wave sleep. Aging, however, specifically affects the neurophysiological slow-wave-generating mechanism.
1 Intrathecal cocaine delivery enables long-access self-administration with binge-like behavior in mice

We are grateful to M. Ogawa and Y. Yasuhiro (The Laboratory of Patho-Physiological Imaging, Functional Imaging, Photon Medical Research Center, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine) for acquiring the CT image. We thank S. Sugiyama and M. Edamura for preparing the artwork. This study was supported in part by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) 14310039 and 17330153, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT), and for Scientific Research from The 21 Century Center of Excellence Program from the MEXT of Japan, and by a Smoking Research Foundation Grant for Biochemical Research (Japan).
Predictive value of the tumor-infiltrating neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio in patients with colorectal cancer

Tumor-infiltrating T lymphocytes have been reported to be involved in clinical outcome in colorectal cancer. However, whether tumor-infiltrating neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) could potentially serve as a prognostic marker in colorectal cancer (CRC) is unclear. In present study, tumor-infiltrating CD66b and CD3 in paired intratumoral and peritumoral tissues were evaluated by immunohistochemistry (IHC) among a cohort of 210 CRC patients. The density of intratumoral CD66b+ neutrophils and CD3+ lymphocytes were significantly lower than those of peritumoral areas. Univariate analyses indicated that tumor-infiltrating CD66b+ neutrophils, CD3+ lymphocytes and NLR ratio in both intratumoral and peritumoral were significantly associated with decreased disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS), as well as other clinical parameters such as differentiation status, depth of invasion, lymphatic metastasis and TNM stage. Moreover, differentiation status, TNM stage and peritumoral NLR were significant correlated with DFS and OS according to multivariate analysis High NLR in both intratumoral and peritumoral were significantly correlated with lymphatic metastasis and TNM stage. Sub-group analysis of the pTNM stage II patients, higher tumor-infiltrating NLR was associated with shorter survival time. Peritumoral NLR was an independent prognostic factor with a higher hazard ratio. These results defined tumor-infiltrating neutrophil-tolymphocyte ratio as a novel prognostic marker for CRC.