Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Living related liver transplantation from heterozygote genetic carriers to children with Wilson’s disease

Abstract: We reviewed the outcome of children undergoing living related liver transplantation (LRLT) for Wilson’s disease (WD), and specifically addressed the potential risk associated with the use of donors who were heterozygous for the Wilson genetic defect. LRLTs were carried out in 11 children with WD, nine of whom presented with fulminant hepatic failure and two with end‐stage hepatic insufficiency. The age of the patients ranged from 6 to 16 yr. Eight patients had hepatic encephalopathy and were plasmapheresed preoperatively. The donors (all parents: six fathers and five mothers) were all one‐haplotype matched with their respective recipients, and were all therefore heterozygote carriers of the WD genetic defect. The serum ceruloplasmin levels were within normal limits in all donors (mean: 20.0 ± 2.85 mg/dL). All recipients but one had low serum ceruloplasmin levels with a mean value of 11.6 ± 7.36 mg/dL before transplantation. The serum ceruloplasmin levels had increased to an average of 21. 0 ± 3.76 mg/dL after LRLT at the latest evaluation, which ranged between 7 and 75 months after transplantation. A marked reduction in urinary copper excretion was observed in all recipients after transplantation. Of eight recipients presenting preoperatively with Kayser‐Fleischer (K‐F) rings, this abnormality resolved completely after LRLT in five patients and partially in three. All recipients are alive and remain well, and none have developed signs of recurrent WD after a mean follow‐up period of 31 months (range 7–75 months). In conclusion, LRLT is an excellent choice for effective treatment of WD, and grafts chosen from heterozygote carriers of the condition do not appear to confer any risk of recurrence in the recipients.
ITSM Adoption in European SMEs: Transition versus Developed Economies

The goal of this paper is to investigate and better understand the differences in Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) adoption by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) between transition and developed economies in Europe. This study draws from research conducted among companies from six countries from Central and Eastern Europe within INNOTRAIN IT project financed by European Regional Development Found. The conducted analysis focuses on the comparison of ITSM-related issues between transition and developed countries. The particular issues investigated concentrate on the level of information technology (IT) adoption, strategic role of IT, and awareness and adoption of ITSM concept. The main findings suggest that, regardless of the national economy type, ITSM concepts are to a limited extent known and adopted by SMEs. At the same time, the results illustrate that transition economies lag behind developed economies in all investigated ITSM-related areas.
Seasonal cycle and modal structure of particle number size distribution at Dome C, Antarctica

Abstract. We studied new particle formation and modal behavior of ultrafine aerosol particles on the high East Antarctic plateau at the Concordia station, Dome C (75°06' S, 123°23' E). Aerosol particle number size distributions were measured in the size range 10–600 nm from 14 December 2007 to 7 November 2009. We used an automatic algorithm for fitting up to three modes to the size distribution data. The total particle number concentration was low with the median of 109 cm −3 . There was a clear seasonal cycle in the total particle number and the volume concentrations. The concentrations were at their highest during the austral summer with the median values of 260 cm −3 and 0.086 μm 3 cm −3 , and at their lowest during the austral winter with corresponding values of 15 cm −3 and 0.009 μm 3 cm −3 . New particle formation events were determined from the size distribution data. During the measurement period, natural new particle formation was observed on 60 days and for 15 of these days the particle growth rates from 10 to 25 nm in size could be determined. The median particle growth rate during all these events was 2.5 nm h −1 and the median formation rate of 10 nm particles was 0.023 cm −3 s −1 . Most of the events were similar to those observed at other continental locations, yet also some variability in event types was observed. Exceptional features in Dome C were the winter events that occurred during dark periods, as well as the events for which the growth could be followed during several consecutive days. We called these latter events slowly growing events. This paper is the first one to analyze long-term size distribution data from Dome C, and also the first paper to show that new particle formation events occur in central Antarctica.
MicroRNA Profiling as Tool for In Vitro Developmental Neurotoxicity Testing: The Case of Sodium Valproate

Studying chemical disturbances during neural differentiation of murine embryonic stem cells (mESCs) has been established as an alternative in vitro testing approach for the identification of developmental neurotoxicants. miRNAs represent a class of small non-coding RNA molecules involved in the regulation of neural development and ESC differentiation and specification. Thus, neural differentiation of mESCs in vitro allows investigating the role of miRNAs in chemical-mediated developmental toxicity. We analyzed changes in miRNome and transcriptome during neural differentiation of mESCs exposed to the developmental neurotoxicant sodium valproate (VPA). A total of 110 miRNAs and 377 mRNAs were identified differently expressed in neurally differentiating mESCs upon VPA treatment. Based on miRNA profiling we observed that VPA shifts the lineage specification from neural to myogenic differentiation (upregulation of muscle-abundant miRNAs, mir-206, mir-133a and mir-10a, and downregulation of neural-specific mir-124a, mir-128 and mir-137). These findings were confirmed on the mRNA level and via immunochemistry. Particularly, the expression of myogenic regulatory factors (MRFs) as well as muscle-specific genes (Actc1, calponin, myosin light chain, asporin, decorin) were found elevated, while genes involved in neurogenesis (e.g. Otx1, 2, and Zic3, 4, 5) were repressed. These results were specific for valproate treatment and―based on the following two observations―most likely due to the inhibition of histone deacetylase (HDAC) activity: (i) we did not observe any induction of muscle-specific miRNAs in neurally differentiating mESCs exposed to the unrelated developmental neurotoxicant sodium arsenite; and (ii) the expression of muscle-abundant mir-206 and mir-10a was similarly increased in cells exposed to the structurally different HDAC inhibitor trichostatin A (TSA). Based on our results we conclude that miRNA expression profiling is a suitable molecular endpoint for developmental neurotoxicity. The observed lineage shift into myogenesis, where miRNAs may play an important role, could be one of the developmental neurotoxic mechanisms of VPA.
Substrate Selectivities and Catalytic Activities of Marmoset Liver Cytochrome P450 2A6 Differed from Those of Human P450 2A6

The common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), a New World primate species, is potentially a useful animal model for preclinical studies in drug development. However, cytochrome P450 (P450) enzymes have not been fully identified and characterized in marmosets. In this study, we identified P450 2A6 cDNA with the sequence highly identical (91–94%) to human P450 2A6, 2A7, and 2A13 cDNA and cynomolgus monkey P450 2A23, 2A24, and 2A26 cDNA. Among the tissue types examined, marmoset P450 2A6 mRNA was most abundantly expressed in livers where P450 2A6 protein was also detected by immunoblotting. Phylogenetic analysis showed that marmoset P450 2A6 was more closely clustered with human and cynomolgus monkey P450 2As than P450 2As of dog, rat, and mouse (the species also used in drug metabolism). Marmoset P450 2A6 heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli membranes efficiently catalyzed 7-ethoxycoumarin O-deethylation, similar to human P450 2A6 and 2A13 and cynomolgus monkey P450 2A23, 2A24, and 2A26, but much less effectively coumarin 7-hydroxylation, showing some difference as well. Interestingly, marmoset P450 2A6 and cynomolgus monkey P450 2A23 catalyzed phenacetin O-deethylation, which is catalyzed by human P450 1A2 and 2A13, but not by P450 2A6. Marmoset P450 2A6 also exhibited catalytic activity toward testosterone by the multiple sites, but not rat P450 2A-specific testosterone 7α-hydroxylation activity. These results indicated that marmoset P450 2A6 had functional characteristics different from those of human and cynomolgus monkey P450 2As in terms of partially different substrate specificities and catalytic activities, indicating its importance of further studies for P450 2A-dependent drug metabolism in marmosets.
Feature Engineering for Drug Name Recognition in Biomedical Texts: Feature Conjunction and Feature Selection

Drug name recognition (DNR) is a critical step for drug information extraction. Machine learning-based methods have been widely used for DNR with various types of features such as part-of-speech, word shape, and dictionary feature. Features used in current machine learning-based methods are usually singleton features which may be due to explosive features and a large number of noisy features when singleton features are combined into conjunction features. However, singleton features that can only capture one linguistic characteristic of a word are not sufficient to describe the information for DNR when multiple characteristics should be considered. In this study, we explore feature conjunction and feature selection for DNR, which have never been reported. We intuitively select 8 types of singleton features and combine them into conjunction features in two ways. Then, Chi-square, mutual information, and information gain are used to mine effective features. Experimental results show that feature conjunction and feature selection can improve the performance of the DNR system with a moderate number of features and our DNR system significantly outperforms the best system in the DDIExtraction 2013 challenge.
Global Stability Analysis of On/O Systems

This paper considers quadratic surface Lyapunov functions in the study of global stability analysis of on/o systems (OFS), including those OFS with unstable nonlinearity sectors. In previous work, quadratic surface Lyapunov functions were successfully applied to prove global asymptotic stability of limit cycles of relay feedback systems. In this work, we show that these ideas can be used to prove global asymptotic stability of equilibrium points of piecewise linear systems (PLS). We present conditions in the form of LMIs that, when satis ed, guarantee global asymptotic stability of an equilibrium point. A large number of examples was successfully proven globally stable. These include systems with an unstable aÆne linear subsystem, systems of relative degree larger than one and of high dimension, and systems with unstable nonlinearity sectors, for which all classical fail to analyze. In fact, existence of an example with a globally stable equilibrium point that could not be successfully analyzed with this new methodology is still an open problem. This work opens the door to the possibility that more general PLS can be systematically globally analyzed using quadratic surface Lyapunov functions.
Adaptive multiuser receiver using a support vector machine technique

The paper investigates the application of an emerging learning technique, called support vector machines (SVMs), to construct an adaptive nonlinear multiuser detector (MUD) for direct sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) signals transmitted through multipath channels. Computer simulation is used to study this adaptive SVM MUD, and the results show that it can closely match the performance of the optimal Bayesian one-shot detector, using a relatively small training data block.
The projection from the lateral geniculate nucleus to the prestriate cortex of the macaque monkey

By injecting the enzyme horseradish peroxidase into the prestriate cortex of the macaque monkey and examining the lateral geniculate nucleus (l. g. n.) for retrograde label, the presence of a direct projection from the l. g. n. to prestriate visual cortex (Brodmann’s areas 18 and 19) was confirmed. Labelled cells occurred in all layers of the l. g. n. , distributed in a roughly columnar fashion. The large scatter in cell distribution indicated a lower retinotopic precision for this projection than for the one to area 17. Labelled cells are of a medium to large size and, in each section, a few were located near the laminar border or in interlaminar zones. The functional significance of this projection is discussed.
Acute laparoscopic cholecystectomy A case controlled study

Background:Acute laparoscopic cholecystectomy (ALC) has been performed successfully at a number of institutions. Interval laparoscopic cholecystectomy (ILC) is preferred by many surgeons because of its convenience and a perceived increased risk with acute surgery. Methods:A case control study was undertaken. The case group was a consecutive series of patients who underwent ALC between October 1996 and October 1997. The control group underwent ILC between March 1996 and March 1997 after at least one previous acute admission for gallstone disease. Results:There were 81 patients in the case group and 100 in the control group. The groups were similar in terms of age, sex, and clinical diagnosis. Operative times (70 min vs 78 min, p 4 0.60), major complications (4.9% vs 2%, p 4 0.41), minor complications (4.9% vs 7%, p 4 0.76), and conversion rates (7.4% vs 7%) were similar in both groups. There were no bile duct injuries in either group. The median total hospital stay was 5 days in the case group and 8 days in the control group ( p < 0.0001). Conclusions:Acute laparoscopic cholecystectomy can be performed safely at the first hospital admission, thus reducing hospital stay and minimizing inconvenience to patients.
Interference-Aware D2D-Multicast Session Provisioning in LTE-A Networks

Device-to-device (D2D) multicast communication is considered as a potential solution to improve the spectral efficiency of cellular networks. This paper focuses on resource allocation in underlay D2D multicast networks where multiple D2D multicast groups (MGs) share the uplink frequency channels with multiple cellular users (CUs). An optimization problem that maximizes the system throughput while fulfilling the maximum power constraint of every mobile user and ensuring a certain level of quality of service (QoS) to every CU and D2D multicast group is formulated. This formulation leads to mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP), which is computationally intractable for large scale networks. Therefore, to find a feasible solution, we propose a channel sharing algorithm which determines how many MGs can share a channel with certain QoS guarantees to CU and D2D MGs. Then, we propose a power allocation algorithm that maximizes the system throughput while satisfying the various constraints. The impact of geographical spread of MGs, number of MGs, maximum available transmission power, and QoS requirements of every CU on achievable system throughput is analyzed. Numerical results show the efficacy of proposed model in terms of D2D MG's throughput and spectrum efficiency.
Prevalence and Patterns of Coexistence of Multiple Chronic Conditions: A Study from Indian Urban Outpatient Setting

Background: Chronic diseases are a common cause for seeking care in a hospital, however little is known about prevalence and spectrum of multiple chronic conditions (MCC) in Indian context. Estimates for coexistence of MCC range from one-fourth of all primary care attendees in Spain to two-thirds of all medicare attendees in the United States. This study was designed to estimate the similar prevalence and patterns in an Indian outpatient setting. Materials and Methods: This study was performed at All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhopal between May and June 2013, a hospital which had just started outpatient services in this period. All consecutive patients that presented to Medicine, Neurology, and Orthopedics clinics were sought to be included in the study, and information about their current diagnoses was abstracted from their outpatient records. All patients with one or more chronic disease diagnosis were asked about their monthly out-of-pocket expenditure. We performed a descriptive analysis of the demographic, medical diagnoses, and out-of-pocket expenditure variables. Results: A total of 785 patients were included in the study, and 286 (36%) of them had one or more chronic disease diagnosis. Of these, 103 (13%) had a single chronic disease, while 183 (23%) had more than one chronic disease diagnosis. Among those with MCCs, chronic vascular diseases in combination, followed by combinations of chronic vascular and immunological diseases were common patterns. There was a significant rising trend in average out-of-pocket expenditure with increasing number of chronic disease diagnoses. Conclusion: Co-existence of multiple chronic diseases is common in those who seek hospital-based care. This fact has important implications for education and clinical decision making in primary care.
A randomized, efficient, and distributed protocol for the detection of node replication attacks in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks are often deployed in hostile environments, where anadversary can physically capture some of the nodes. Once a node is captured, the attackercan re-program it and replicate the node in a large number of clones, thus easily taking over the network. The detection of node replication attacks in a wireless sensor network is therefore a fundamental problem. A few distributed solutions have recently been proposed. However, these solutions are not satisfactory. First, they are energy and memory demanding: A serious drawback for any protocol that is to be used in resource constrained environment such as a sensor network. Further, they are vulnerable to specific adversary models introduced in this paper. The contributions of this work are threefold. First, we analyze the desirable properties of a distributed mechanism for the detection of node replication attacks. Second, we show that the known solutions for this problem do not completely meet our requirements. Third, we propose a new Randomized, Efficient, and Distributed (RED) protocol for the detection of node replication attacks and we show that it is completely satisfactory with respect to the requirements. Extensive simulations also show that our protocol is highly efficient in communication, memory, and computation, that it sets out an improved attack detection probability compared to the best solutions in the literature, and that it is resistant to the new kind of attacks we introduce in this paper, while other solutions are not.
A Neutral Model of Stone Raw Material Procurement

Stone tool assemblage variability is considered a reliable proxy measure of adaptive variability. Raw material richness, transport distances, and the character of transported technologies are thought to signal (1) variation in raw material selectivity based on material quality and abundance, (2) optimization of time and energy costs associated with procurement of stone from spatially dispersed sources, (3) planning depth that weaves raw material procurement forays into foraging activities, and (4) risk minimization that sees materials transported in quantities and forms that are energetically economical and least likely to fail. This paper dispenses with assumptions that raw material type and abundance play any role in the organization of mobility and raw material procurement strategies. Rather, a behaviorally neutral agent-based model is developed involving a forager engaged in a random walk within a uniform environment. Raw material procurement in the model is dependent only upon random encounters with stone sources and the amount of available space in the mobile toolkit. Simulated richness-sample size relationships, frequencies of raw material transfers as a function of distance from source, and both quantity-distance and reduction intensity-distance relationships are qualitatively similar to commonly observed archaeological patterns. In some archaeological cases it may be difficult to reject the neutral model. At best, failure to reject the neutral model may mean that intervening processes (e.g., depositional time-averaging) have erased high-frequency adaptive signals in the data. At worst, we may have to admit the possibility that Paleolithic behavioral adaptations were sometimes not responsive to differences between stone raw material types in the ways implied by current archaeological theory.
People Like Logical Truth: Testing the Intuitive Detection of Logical Value in Basic Propositions

Recent studies on logical reasoning have suggested that people are intuitively aware of the logical validity of syllogisms or that they intuitively detect conflict between heuristic responses and logical norms via slight changes in their feelings. According to logical intuition studies, logically valid or heuristic logic no-conflict reasoning is fluently processed and induces positive feelings without conscious awareness. One criticism states that such effects of logicality disappear when confounding factors such as the content of syllogisms are controlled. The present study used abstract propositions and tested whether people intuitively detect logical value. Experiment 1 presented four logical propositions (conjunctive, biconditional, conditional, and material implications) regarding a target case and asked the participants to rate the extent to which they liked the statement. Experiment 2 tested the effects of matching bias, as well as intuitive logic, on the reasoners’ feelings by manipulating whether the antecedent or consequent (or both) of the conditional was affirmed or negated. The results showed that both logicality and matching bias affected the reasoners’ feelings, and people preferred logically true targets over logically false ones for all forms of propositions. These results suggest that people intuitively detect what is true from what is false during abstract reasoning. Additionally, a Bayesian mixed model meta-analysis of conditionals indicated that people’s intuitive interpretation of the conditional “if p then q” fits better with the conditional probability, q given p.
Investigations on drilling of hemp/glass hybrid composites

ABSTRACT The present study aimed to examine the influence of tool geometry, spindle speed and feed on thrust force (TF) and delamination in hybrid hemp-glass composites. The pure glass polyester, pure hemp polyester and hybrid hemp/glass polyester composite specimens were prepared using hand layup technique. The drilling experiments were performed according to the full factorial design. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine the impact of layering arrangement of fibers, feed (0.06, 0.18, 0.3 mm/rev), speed (1000, 3000, 5000 rpm), tool geometry (Plexi Point, Brad, Parabolic) and their interactions on TF and delamination. It was observed that drill geometry is major determinant for TF and delamination. Empirical models were developed using regression analysis and grey relational analysis was performed for optimizing the input parameters for TF and delamination at entry and exit.