Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Familial Clustering of Hepatitis B Antigen: A Study in Relatives of Patients with Liver Diseases and Hepatitis B Antigenaemia

Twelve of the 100 family contacts of 29 patients with transient and persistent hepatitis B antigenaemia were found to be positive for hepatitis B antigen (HBAg). No relation was found between familial clustering and the nature of liver disease or the duration of antigenaemia in the index cases. Eight affected relatives were apparently healthy carriers of HBAG, one had cirrhosis, and three (in the same family) developed acute viral hepatitis. The absence of parenteral exposure in the HBA,-positive family contacts and the identity in antigenic determinants d or y with those of the index cases, suggest a non-parenteral spread of HBAg in families of patients with HBAg-associated liver diseases.
Pseudomonas putrefaciens as a cause of bacteremia in humans

Pseudomonas putrefaciens has been presented as an opportunistic pathogen in a few isolations from humans. This is the first documented report of a local infection of P. putrefaciens complicated by invasion of the blood stream. The organism was twice isolated from the blood culture and once from the wound exudate of a 73-year-old woman hospitalized for extensive ulcerations on the legs. Parenteral ampicillin and gentamicin together with local antiseptic treatment led to an uneventful recovery.
Deformable object animation using reduced optimal control

Keyframe animation is a common technique to generate animations of deformable characters and other soft bodies. With spline interpolation, however, it can be difficult to achieve secondary motion effects such as plausible dynamics when there are thousands of degrees of freedom to animate. Physical methods can provide more realism with less user effort, but it is challenging to apply them to quickly create specific animations that closely follow prescribed animator goals. We present a fast space-time optimization method to author physically based deformable object simulations that conform to animator-specified keyframes. We demonstrate our method with FEM deformable objects and mass-spring systems. Our method minimizes an objective function that penalizes the sum of keyframe deviations plus the deviation of the trajectory from physics. With existing methods, such minimizations operate in high dimensions, are slow, memory consuming, and prone to local minima. We demonstrate that significant computational speedups and robustness improvements can be achieved if the optimization problem is properly solved in a low-dimensional space. Selecting a low-dimensional space so that the intent of the animator is accommodated, and that at the same time space-time optimization is convergent and fast, is difficult. We present a method that generates a quality low-dimensional space using the given keyframes. It is then possible to find quality solutions to difficult space-time optimization problems robustly and in a manner of minutes.
Search for Cytomegalovirus in Schizophrenic Brain Tissue

Abstract A human cytomegalovirus (CMV) DNA probe was developed and hybridized to DNA extracted from brain tissue of 6 patients with schizophrenia and 6 control individuals. We failed to detect any CMV-related genetic information in the DNA of these 12 individuals. These results indicate that either CMV is not involved in schizophrenia or that the genetic viral information, if present, is below the level of sensitivity of the present assay.
Scalable Discovery of Linked Services

Linked Services bring together the principles and technology which define Linked Data with those of RESTful services. Services and APIs are thus enriched by, and contribute to, the Web of Data. A number of approaches to the semantic description of services have chosen SPARQL graph patterns as a means to describe input and output expectations. This paper describes two contributions. Firstly, the extension of discovery mechanisms offered over such Linked Service descriptions for use at application design time. Secondly, the realisation of this discovery approach in a distributed fashion using the Hadoop implementation of MapReduce, and an evaluation using private cloud infrastructure.
Are socioeconomic disparities in tobacco consumption increasing in India? A repeated cross-sectional multilevel analysis

Objectives India bears a significant portion of the global tobacco burden with high prevalence of tobacco use. This study examines the socioeconomic patterning of tobacco use and identifies the changing gender and socioeconomic dynamics in light of the Cigarette Epidemic Model. Design Secondary analyses of second and third National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data. Setting and participants Data were analysed from 201 219 men and 255 028 women over two survey rounds. Outcomes and methods Outcomes included smoking (cigarettes, bidis and pipes/cigar), chewed tobacco (paan masala, gutkha and others) and dual use, examined by education, wealth, living environment and caste. Standardised prevalence and percentage change were estimated. Pooled multilevel models estimated the effect of socioeconomic covariates on the log odds of tobacco use by gender, along with fixed and random parameters. Findings Among men (2005−2006), gradients in smoking by education (illiterates: 44% vs postgraduates: 15%) and chewing (illiterates: 47% vs postgraduates: 19%) were observed. Inverse gradients were also observed by wealth, living environment and caste. Chewed tobacco use by women showed inverse socioeconomic status (SES) gradients comparing the illiterates (7.4%) versus postgraduates (0.33%), and poorest (17%) versus richest (2%) quintiles. However, proportional increases in smoking were higher among more educated (postgraduates (98%) vs high schooling only (17%)) and chewing among richer (richest quintile (49%) vs poorest quintile (35%)). Among women, higher educated showed larger declines for smoking—90% (postgraduates) versus 12% (illiterates). Younger men (15–24 years) showed increasing tobacco use (smoking: 123% and chewing: 112%). Older women (35–49 years) show higher prevalence of smoking (3.2%) compared to younger women (0.3%). Conclusions Indian tobacco use patterns show significant diversions from the Cigarette Epidemic Model—from gender and socioeconomic perspectives. Separate analysis by type is needed to further understand social determinants of tobacco use in India.
Effects of Chronic PPAR-Agonist Treatment on Cardiac Structure and Function, Blood Pressure, and Kidney in Healthy Sprague-Dawley Rats

PPAR-γ agonists have been associated with heart failure (HF) in diabetic patients. These incidences have been reported mostly in patient populations who were at high risk for HF or had pre-existing impaired cardiovascular function. However, whether there are similar effects of these agents in subjects with no or reduced cardiovascular pathophysiology is not clear. In this study, the effects of chronic treatment with PD168, a potent peroxisome proliferator activated receptor (PPAR) subtype-γ agonist with weak activity at PPAR-α, and rosiglitazone (RGZ), a less potent PPAR-γ agonist with no PPAR-α activity, were evaluated on the cardiovascular-renal system in healthy male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats by serial echocardiography and radiotelemetry. Rats were treated with vehicle (VEH), PD168, @ 10 or 50 mg/kg·bw/day (PD-10 or PD-50, resp.) or RGZ @ 180 mg/kg·bw/day for 28 days (n = 10/group). Relative to VEH, RGZ, and both doses of PD168 resulted in a significant fall in blood pressure. Furthermore, RGZ and PD168 increased plasma volume (% increase from baseline) 18%, 22%, and 48% for RGZ, PD-10, and PD-50, respectively. PD168 and RGZ significantly increased urinary aldosterone excretion and heart-to-body weight ratio relative to VEH. In addition, PD168 significantly decreased (10–16%) cardiac ejection fraction (EF) and increased left ventricular area (LVA) in systole (s) and diastole (d) in PD-10 and -50 rats. RGZ significantly increased LVAd; however, it did not affect EF relative to VEH. In conclusion, chronic PPAR-γ therapy may predispose the cardiorenal system to a potential sequela of structural and/or functional changes that may be deleterious with regard to morbidity and mortality.
Visual descriptors for content-based retrieval of remote-sensing images

ABSTRACT In this article, we present an extensive evaluation of visual descriptors for the content-based retrieval of remote-sensing (RS) images. The evaluation includes global hand-crafted, local hand-crafted, and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) features coupled with four different content-based image retrieval schemes. We conducted all the experiments on two publicly available datasets: the 21-class University of California (UC) Merced Land Use/Land Cover (LandUse) dataset and 19-class High-resolution Satellite Scene dataset (SceneSat). The content of RS images might be quite heterogeneous, ranging from images containing fine grained textures, to coarse grained ones or to images containing objects. It is, therefore, not obvious in this domain, which descriptor should be employed to describe images having such a variability. Results demonstrate that CNN-based features perform better than both global and local hand-crafted features whatever is the retrieval scheme adopted. Features extracted from a residual CNN suitable fine-tuned on the RS domain, shows much better performance than a residual CNN pre-trained on multimedia scene and object images. Features extracted from Network of Vector of Locally Aggregated Descriptors (NetVLAD), a CNN that considers both CNN and local features, works better than others CNN solutions on those images that contain fine-grained textures and objects.
A computer‐aided educational tool for induction motors

The computer‐aided educational tools have gained popularity in the last years with successful implementation in many areas, including in engineering education. These tools are aimed to help the students for visualization of the concepts and to provide the graphical feedback during the learning process. This paper presents a computer‐aided educational tool for induction motors, which is a part of laboratories in the electrical machinery courses. This tool helps to students and educators in subject to teaching/of the equivalent circuit, and the vector/phasor diagrams in induction motors. The tool software was prepared in DELPHI environment. It has flexible structure which is enable to users to change motor label values, and to solve equivalent circuit parameters and winding account. The proposed educational tool was utilized in laboratories of electric machinery courses and well received by students. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 20: 503–509, 2012
Isocitrate Dehydrogenase Is Important for Nitrosative Stress Resistance in Cryptococcus neoformans, but Oxidative Stress Resistance Is Not Dependent on Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase

ABSTRACT The opportunistic intracellular fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans depends on many antioxidant and denitrosylating proteins and pathways for virulence in the immunocompromised host. These include the glutathione and thioredoxin pathways, thiol peroxidase, cytochrome c peroxidase, and flavohemoglobin denitrosylase. All of these ultimately depend on NADPH for either catalytic activity or maintenance of a reduced, functional form. The need for NADPH during oxidative stress is well established in many systems, but a role in resistance to nitrosative stress has not been as well characterized. In this study we investigated the roles of two sources of NADPH, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (Zwf1) and NADP+-dependent isocitrate dehydrogenase (Idp1), in production of NADPH and resistance to oxidative and nitrosative stress. Deletion of ZWF1 in C. neoformans did not result in an oxidative stress sensitivity phenotype or changes in the amount of NADPH produced during oxidative stress compared to those for the wild type. Deletion of IDP1 resulted in greater sensitivity to nitrosative stress than to oxidative stress. The amount of NADPH increased 2-fold over that in the wild type during nitrosative stress, and yet the idp1Δ strain accumulated more mitochondrial damage than the wild type during nitrosative stress. This is the first report of the importance of Idp1 and NADPH for nitrosative stress resistance.
Experimental Evaluation and Simulations of Fiber Orientation in Injection Molding of Polymers Containing Short Glass Fibers

Injection molded short fiber reinforced composites have generated commercial interest in the manufacturing of lightweight parts used in semi-structural applications. Predicting these materials’ fiber orientation with quantitative accuracy is crucial for technological advancement, but the task is difficult because of the effect of inter-particle interactions at high concentrations of fiber found in parts of commercial interest. A complete sample preparation procedure was developed to obtain optical micrographs with optimal definition of elliptical and non-elliptical footprint borders. Two novel aspects in this procedure were the use of tridimensional markers to identify specific locations for analysis and the use of controlledetching to produce small shadows where fibers recede into the matrix. These images were used to measure fiber orientation with a customized image analysis tool. This tool contains several modifications that we introduced in the method of ellipses which allow us to determine tridimensional fiber orientation and to obtain measurements in regions with fast changes in orientation. The tool uses the location of the shadow to eliminate the ambiguity problem in orientation and characterizes non-elliptical footprints to obtain the orientation in small sampling areas. Cavitywise measurements in two thin center-gated disks showed the existence of an asymmetric profile of orientation at the gate and an orientation profile that washed out gradually at the entry region until disappearing at about 32 gap widths. This data was used to assess the prediction of cavitywise orientation using a delay model for fiber orientation with model parameters obtained from rheometrical experiments. Model predictions combining slip correction and experimentally determined orientation at the gate are in agreement with experimental data for the core layers near the end-of-fill region.
Superpixel-based obstacle segmentation from dense stereo urban traffic scenarios using intensity, depth and optical flow information

Obstacle detection is a necessary task in every driving assistance system. An accurate obstacle segmentation is very important for further processing tasks that are using the obstacle ROI as input, like obstacle classification. This paper presents a real time approach for obstacle segmentation from traffic scenarios, based on superpixels clustering. A pair of gray levels stereo-cameras is used for scene image acquisition. The stereo-reconstruction uses a sub-pixel level optimized semi-global matching (SORT-SGM) resulting in a very accurate 3D points map. Optical flow is computed using a Lukas-Kanade pyramidal approach. A novel paradigm integrating intensity, depth and optical flow information on superpixels is used for obstacle segmentation. SLIC superpixels are computed first based on intensity information. Multiple features are computed for each superpixel and used for clustering superpixels in obstacles. Depth cues are used for clustering the superpixels in obstacles and then optical flow information refines the obstacles clusters based on their motion. A qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the proposed approach and a comparison with other obstacle detection technique are finally presented.
Ureteral stent discomfort: Etiology and management

Objectives: To review the evidence-based literature on the causes, characteristics, and options to manage double J stent-related symptoms. Methods: We performed a Medline database assessment on papers that investigated the prevalence, mechanisms, risk factors, bothersome and management of double-J stent-related symptoms. Articles in English were reviewed and summarized. Results: Stent-related symptoms have a high prevalence and may affect over 80% of patients. They include irritative voiding symptoms including frequency, urgency, dysuria, incomplete emptying; flank and suprapubic pain; incontinence, and hematuria. Assessment tools are important to determine their intensity and allow for comparisons between different points in the timeline. The Urinary Stent Symptom Questionnaire (USSQ) is the most proper tool used for this purpose. Management should be focused on the prevention and management of symptoms. In this sense, research has focused on new materials and stent designs that would be more compatible to the physiologic properties of the urinary tract and medications that can ameliorate the sensitivity and motor response of the bladder. Conclusions: Stent-related symptoms are very common in the Urological clinical setting. It is of major importance for the urologist to understand their physiopathology and to be familiar with ways to avoid or manage them.
Future Directions of Intraoperative Radiation Therapy: A Brief Review

The use of intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT) is increasing with the development of new devices for patient treatment that allow irradiation without the need to move the patient from the surgical table. At the moment, ionizing radiation in the course of IORT is supported most often by the use of mobile devices that produce electrons, kilo voltage X-rays, and electronic brachytherapy and the development of applicators suitable for delivery of radionuclides for short-term brachytherapy. The establishment of new treatment devices and protocols that can be foreseen in the future, e.g., the development of proton or heavy ion sources suitable for IORT or the establishment of new treatment protocols such as the use of IORT in combination with immune system modulators or radiosensitizing nanoparticles, could lead to a significant increase in the use of IORT in the future. This review discusses the still limited use of IORT at this point in time and hypothesizes about possible future approaches to radiotherapy.
AWEsim: a program for the efficient analysis of linear(ized) circuits

Asymptotic waveform evaluation (AWE) is a novel method to analyze linear(ized) circuits. It uses a form of Pade approximation rather than numerical integration to approximate the behavior of linear(ized) circuits in either the time or the frequency domain. Improvements are presented to the theory of AWE to avoid some inherent limitations of Pade approximation. A discussion is presented of the practical aspects that have arisen in the attempt to use AWE in a simulation program called AWEsim. Results are also presented of AWEsim that clearly demonstrate the advantage of AWE over traditional approaches to circuit simulation. <<ETX>>
Effect of Monomer Content in the Polymer-Monomer Ratio on the Displacement of Maxillary Teeth and Dimensional Accuracy of the Maxillary Denture Base in Microwave and Conventional Polymerization - An in Vitro Study

The purpose of the study was to verify the linear displacement of teeth and dimensional accuracy in maxillary complete dentures influenced by different monomer- polymer ratios - according to the manufacturer’s instructions, with 25% excess or 25% less monomer content - in the conventional and microwaved polymerization techniques. Wax base plates and wax planes were made on edentulous maxillary stone casts according to traditional method. The set was assembled in semi-adjustable articulator with a lower toothed stone cast as guide to mounting of the maxillary artificial teeth. Impressions were taken from this tooth arrangement with silicone and the mold was used to standardize the mounting of the teeth of all dentures. Referential points were made on the artificial teeth for linear measurements with optical microscope before processing of the dentures and after deflasking. Denture bases were conventionally packed with acrylic resin according to the monomer-polymer ratio protocol. Tooth displacement data were submitted to ANOVA and Tukey test (a=0.05). There were statistically significant differences between the subgroup with monomer content recommended by the manufacturer and groups with 25% more and 25% less monomer, in both conventional and microwaved polymerizations although no statistically significant results were found in comparison of the two groups. Excess or less monomer in the monomer-polymer ratio and polymerization types did not change the linear distance and dimensional accuracy between teeth.
Exploring the Relation Between Novelty Aspects and Preferences in Music Listening

The discovery of new music, e.g. song tracks and artists, is a central aspect of music consumption. In order to assist users in this task, several mechanisms have been proposed to incorporate novelty awareness into music recommender systems. In this paper, we complement these efforts by investigating how the music preferences of users are affected by two different aspects of novel artists, namely familiarity and mainstreamness. We collected historical data from Last.fm users, a popular online music discovery service, to investigate how these aspects of novel artists relate to the preferences of music listeners for novel artists. The results of this analysis suggests that the users tend to cluster according to their novelty related preferences. We then conducted a comprehensive study on these groups, from where we derive implications and useful insights for developers of music retrieval services.
Detection of rheumatoid arthritis bone erosions by two different dedicated extremity MRI units and conventional radiography

Objectives: To compare the ability of two different dedicated extremity MRI (E-MRI) units and conventional radiography (CR) for identifying bone erosions in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) metacarpophalangeal (MCP) and wrist joints. Methods: CR and two MRI examinations (using 0.2 T Esaote Artoscan and 0.2 T portable MagneVu MV1000 units) of 418 bones in the dominant wrist and second to fifth MCP joints of 15 patients with RA and 4 healthy controls were performed and evaluated blindly for bones being visible and for erosions. Results: In MCP joints, MagneVu visualised 18.5% of bones entirely and 71.1% were 67–99% visualised. In wrists, MagneVu visualised 1.5% of bones entirely, 39.8% were 67–99% visualised and 19% were not visualised at all. Artoscan and CR visualised all bones entirely. Artoscan, MagneVu and CR found 22, 19 and 15 bones with erosions in MCP joints and 66, 40 and 13 bones with erosions in wrist joints, respectively. With the previously validated Artoscan unit as standard reference, MagneVu and CR had sensitivities of 0.82 and 0.55, respectively, in MCP joint bones and 0.41 and 0.14 in wrist bones. Specificities of CR and MagneVu were comparable (0.82–0.99). The MagneVu unit was particularly more sensitive than CR for metacarpal heads and carpal bones. MagneVu MRI and CR detected 100% and 89%, respectively, of large erosions (Outcome Measures in Rheumatoid Arthritis Clinical Trials–Rheumatoid Arthritis MRI Scoring System (OMERACT-RAMRIS) score >1 on Artoscan) in MCP joints and 69% and 15.8% of large erosions in wrists. Conclusions: Both E-MRI units detected more erosions than CR, in particular due to a higher sensitivity in metacarpal heads and carpal bones. The MagneVu unit detected fewer erosions than the Artoscan unit due to a lower average image quality and a smaller proportion of bones being visualised.