Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cigarette smoking and the association with glomerular hyperfiltration and proteinuria in healthy middle-aged men.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Glomerular hyperfiltration and albuminuria accompanied by early-stage diabetic kidney disease predict future renal failure. Cigarette smoking has reported to be associated with elevated GFR in cross-sectional studies and with renal deterioration in longitudinal studies. The degree of glomerular hyperfiltration and proteinuria associated with smoking, which presumably is a phenomenon of early renal damage, has not been investigated in a satisfying manner so far. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS This study included 10,118 Japanese men aged 40 to 55 years without proteinuria or renal dysfunction at entry. Estimated GFR was calculated using the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease equation for Japanese. Glomerular hyperfiltration was defined as estimated GFR ≥117.0 ml/min per 1.73 m(2), which was the upper 2.5th percentile value of estimated GFR in the total population. Proteinuria was detected using standard dipstick. RESULTS During the 6-year observation period, there were 449 incident cases of glomerular hyperfiltration and 1653 cases of proteinuria. Current smokers had a 1.32-time higher risk for the development of glomerular hyperfiltration and a 1.51-time higher risk for proteinuria than nonsmokers after adjustment for baseline age, body mass index, systolic and diastolic BP, antihypertensive medication, diabetes, alcohol consumption, regular leisure-time physical activity, and estimated GFR. Both daily and cumulative cigarette consumption were associated with an increased risk for glomerular hyperfiltration and proteinuria in a dose-response manner. CONCLUSIONS In middle-aged Japanese men, smoking was associated with an increased risk of glomerular hyperfiltration and dipstick proteinuria. Of importance, past smokers did not exhibit any increased risk for these conditions.
Genome Sequence of the Acetogenic Bacterium Oxobacter pfennigii DSM 3222T

ABSTRACT Here, we report the draft genome sequence of Oxobacter pfennigii DSM 3222T, an anaerobic, acetogenic, carbon monoxide-oxidizing, and butyrate-producing bacterium. The genome consists of a chromosome with a size of 4.49 Mbp.
Using the Dempster–Shafer Theory of Evidence With a Revised Lattice Structure for Activity Recognition

This paper explores a sensor fusion method applied within smart homes used for the purposes of monitoring human activities in addition to managing uncertainty in sensor-based readings. A three-layer lattice structure has been proposed, which can be used to combine the mass functions derived from sensors along with sensor context. The proposed model can be used to infer activities. Following evaluation of the proposed methodology it has been demonstrated that the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence can incorporate the uncertainty derived from the sensor errors and the sensor context and subsequently infer the activity using the proposed lattice structure. The results from this study show that this method can detect a toileting activity within a smart home environment with an accuracy of 88.2%.
Hypothyroidism Reduces the Size of Ovarian Follicles and Promotes Hypertrophy of Periovarian Fat with Infiltration of Macrophages in Adult Rabbits

Ovarian failure is related to dyslipidemias and inflammation, as well as to hypertrophy and dysfunction of the visceral adipose tissue (VAT). Although hypothyroidism has been associated with obesity, dyslipidemias, and inflammation in humans and animals, its influence on the characteristics of ovarian follicles in adulthood is scarcely known. Control and hypothyroid rabbits were used to analyze the ovarian follicles, expression of aromatase in the ovary, serum concentration of lipids, leptin, and uric acid, size of adipocytes, and infiltration of macrophages in the periovarian VAT. Hypothyroidism did not affect the percentage of functional or atretic follicles. However, it reduced the size of primary, secondary, and tertiary follicles considered as large and the expression of aromatase in the ovary. This effect was associated with high serum concentrations of total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C). In addition, hypothyroidism induced hypertrophy of adipocytes and a major infiltration of CD68+ macrophages into the periovarian VAT. Our results suggest that the reduced size of ovarian follicles promoted by hypothyroidism could be associated with dyslipidemias, hypertrophy, and inflammation of the periovarian VAT. Present findings may be useful to understand the influence of hypothyroidism in the ovary function in adulthood.
Protection of chickens from Newcastle disease with a recombinant baculovirus subunit vaccine expressing the fusion and hemagglutinin-neuraminidase proteins

Recombinant baculoviruses containing the fusion (F) and hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) glycoprotein gene of the viscerotropic velogenic (vv) Newcastle disease virus (NDV) isolate, Kr-005/00, and a lentogenic La Sota strain of the NDV were constructed in an attempt to develop an effective subunit vaccine to the recent epizootic vvNDV. The level of protection was determined by evaluating the clinical signs, mortality, and virus shedding from the oropharynx and cloaca of chickens after a challenge with vvNDV Kr-005/00. The recombinant ND F (rND F) and recombinant HN (rND HN) glycoproteins derived from the velogenic strain provided good protection against the clinical signs and mortality, showing a 0.00 PI value and 100% protection after a booster immunization. On the other hand, the combined rND F + HN glycoprotein derived from the velogenic strain induced complete protection (0.00 PI value and 100% protection) and significantly reduced the amount of virus shedding even after a single immunization. The rND F and rND HN glycoproteins derived from the velogenic strain had a slightly, but not significantly, greater protective effect than the lentogenic strain. These results suggest that the combined rND F + HN glycoprotein derived from vvNDV can be an ideal subunit marker vaccine candidate in chickens in a future ND eradication program.
FLOW AND STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CONCENTRATED MILK

The flow and structural characteristics of concentrated milk were analyzed between concentrations of 12.5 and 46.7% solids content at room temperature. The rheological behavior of milk concentrates was represented by parameters corresponding to Newtonian, Power Law, or Herschel-Bulkley equations depending on the solids content level. The resulting flow behavior indices and consistency coefficients were correlated to concentration by a single-term exponential equation, with only milk concentrates above 40% solids content exhibiting yield stress. Milk concentrates were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), complemented by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and image analysis (IA). Casein micelles appeared as granular particles (0.1-0.3 μm) with a rough surface. Fat globules, noted as small holes in the SEM pictures, appeared to be major spherical components (0.5-10 μm) in the transmission electron microscope images as well as in the image analysis inverted micrographs. Fat globules in the milk concentrates were surrounded by a membrane which was thicker in the concentrated milk than in the fresh milk. TEM images were very helpful in observing the interparticle interactions, as well as the thickness of the fat membranes that corroborated with the SEM observations. The IA pictures allowed the identification and characterization of the fat globule features.
From Emergence to Eradication: The Epidemiology of Poliomyelitis Deconstructed

Poliomyelitis has appeared in epidemic form, become endemic on a global scale, and been reduced to near-elimination, all within the span of documented medical history. Epidemics of the disease appeared in the late 19th century in many European countries and North America, following which polio became a global disease with annual epidemics. During the period of its epidemicity, 1900–1950, the age distribution of poliomyelitis cases increased gradually. Beginning in 1955, the creation of poliovirus vaccines led to a stepwise reduction in poliomyelitis, culminating in the unpredicted elimination of wild polioviruses in the United States by 1972. Global expansion of polio immunization resulted in a reduction of paralytic disease from an estimated annual prevaccine level of at least 600,000 cases to fewer than 1,000 cases in 2000. Indigenous wild type 2 poliovirus was eradicated in 1999, but unbroken localized circulation of poliovirus types 1 and 3 continues in 4 countries in Asia and Africa. Current challenges to the final eradication of paralytic poliomyelitis include the continued transmission of wild polioviruses in endemic reservoirs, reinfection of polio-free areas, outbreaks due to circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses, and persistent excretion of vaccine-derived poliovirus by a few vaccinees with B-cell immunodeficiencies. Beyond the current efforts to eradicate the last remaining wild polioviruses, global eradication efforts must safely navigate through an unprecedented series of endgame challenges to assure the permanent cessation of all human poliovirus infections.
Unexpected Diversity of Chlorite Dismutases: a Catalytically Efficient Dimeric Enzyme from Nitrobacter winogradskyi

ABSTRACT Chlorite dismutase (Cld) is a unique heme enzyme catalyzing the conversion of ClO2− to Cl− and O2. Cld is usually found in perchlorate- or chlorate-reducing bacteria but was also recently identified in a nitrite-oxidizing bacterium of the genus Nitrospira. Here we characterized a novel Cld-like protein from the chemolithoautotrophic nitrite oxidizer Nitrobacter winogradskyi which is significantly smaller than all previously known chlorite dismutases. Its three-dimensional (3D) crystal structure revealed a dimer of two identical subunits, which sharply contrasts with the penta- or hexameric structures of other chlorite dismutases. Despite a truncated N-terminal domain in each subunit, this novel enzyme turned out to be a highly efficient chlorite dismutase (Km = 90 μM; kcat = 190 s−1; kcat/Km = 2.1 × 106 M−1 s−1), demonstrating a greater structural and phylogenetic diversity of these enzymes than was previously known. Based on comparative analyses of Cld sequences and 3D structures, signature amino acid residues that can be employed to assess whether uncharacterized Cld-like proteins may have a high chlorite-dismutating activity were identified. Interestingly, proteins that contain all these signatures and are phylogenetically closely related to the novel-type Cld of N. winogradskyi exist in a large number of other microbes, including other nitrite oxidizers.
The effect of long‐term exposure to DDT on CF‐1 mice

CF‐1 minimal inbred mice were given technical DDT mixed into the diet at the dose levels of 2, 10, 50 and 250 parts per million (ppm) for the entire life span for two consecutive generations. Exposure to all four levels of DDT resulted in a significant increase of liver tumours in males, this being most evident at the highest level used. In females, the incidence of liver tumours was slightly increased following the exposure to 10 and 50 ppm, while a marked increase was observed following exposure to 250 ppm. In DDT‐treated animals the liver tumours were observed at an earlier age than in untreated controls. The age at death with liver tumours and the incidence of liver tumours appeared to be directly related to the dose of DDT to which the mice were exposed. Four liver tumours, all occurring in DDT‐treated mice, gave metastases. Histologically, liver tumours were either well‐differentiated nodular growths, pressing but not infiltrating the surrounding parenchyma, or nodular growths in which the architecture of the liver was obliterated showing glandular or trabecular patterns.
Therapeutic approaches in patients with candidemia. Evaluation in a multicenter, prospective, observational study.

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the morbidity and mortality of Candida fungemia and to assess the efficacy of low- vs high-dose amphotericin B and fluconazole vs amphotericin B in patients with candidemia. METHODS Multicenter, prospective, observational study of 427 consecutive patients with candidemia. RESULTS The mortality rate for patients with candidemia was 34%. The mortality rate for patients with catheter-related candidemia in whom the catheters were retained was significantly higher than that of patients in whom the catheters were removed (41% vs 21%, P < .001). We found no overall difference in mortality in patients treated with low-dose (total amphotericin B dose of < or = 500 mg) (13%) vs high-dose amphotericin B (total amphotericin B dose of > 500 mg) (15%), but the group treated with a low dose had fewer side effects (40%) than those treated with a high dose (55%) (P = .03). Fluconazole was as efficacious as amphotericin B in the therapy of candidemia, even when stratified by risk factors for mortality. Fewer side effects were seen with fluconazole (12%) compared with amphotericin B (44%) (P < .001). CONCLUSIONS In selected patients with candidemia, low-dose amphotericin B was as efficacious as high-dose amphotericin B. Based on other studies and ours, fluconazole seems to be an alternative therapeutic option to amphotericin B in selected patients.
Thermal dissipation media for high power electronic devices using a carbon nanotube-based composite

Challenges in the thermal dissipation of an electronic package arise from the continuous increase in power density of higher-power devices. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are known as the highest thermal conductivity material (2000 W mK −1). This excellent thermal property suggests an approach in applying the CNTs in thermal dispersion materials to solve the aforementioned problems. In this work, we present an effect of thermal dissipation of the CNTs in the high-brightness light emitting diode (HB-LED) and micro-processor. For the thermal dissipation of the HB-LED, a vertically aligned carbon nanotube (VA-CNT) film on a Cu substrate was applied. Meanwhile, for the thermal dissipation of a micro-processor, the composite of commercial thermal paste/CNTs was used instead of the VA-CNTs. The experimental and simulation results have confirmed the advantages of the VA-CNT film and thermal paste/CNT composite as excellent thermal dissipation media for HB-LEDs, μ-processors and other high power electronic devices.
Laparoscopic sentinel lymph node mapping after cervical injection of indocyanine green for endometrial cancer – preliminary report

Introduction Endometrial cancer (EC) has an increasing incidence worldwide, with lymph node metastases as the main prognostic factor. Systemic lymphadenectomy is connected with elevated morbidity. Sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy is intended to avoid extensive lymphadenectomy and provide significant oncologic information. Aim To evaluate the accuracy of laparoscopic SLN biopsy guided by indocyanine green (ICG) injection into the cervix in EC patients and to develop ideas to improve this method. The optimal time from dye injection to lymph node visualization was assessed. Material and methods This retrospective study was conducted between July 2014 and March 2015 in a group of 9 women with EC, at low and intermediate risk of recurrence, scheduled for total laparoscopic hysterectomy and pelvic lymphadenectomy. All patients underwent cervical ICG injection and SLN biopsy, followed by surgery. Pelvic lymph nodes were located using an ICG endoscopic camera. Results The following data were collected: There were 9 patients with endometrial cancer at low and intermediate risk of recurrence. Median patient age was 59 years, median body mass index (BMI) 28 kg/m2, endometrioid adenocarcinoma in 9 cases, grading: G1 – 1 patient, G2 – 8 patients. No intraoperative or postoperative complications were noted. Median time from ICG injection and SLN detection during surgery was 25 min. There were no lymph nodes metastasis, all identified by the SLN protocol using ICG injection. Conclusions Sentinel lymph node mapping can play a significant role in lymph node assessment and staging in early-stage EC patients with low risk of recurrence according to the ESMO classification. The use of SLN mapping in EC is much needed and the therapeutic benefit is high.
Quantifying the Complexity of the Chaotic Intensity of an External-Cavity Semiconductor Laser via Sample Entropy

This paper presents detailed numerical investigations of quantifying the complexity of the chaotic intensity obtained from the well-known Lang-Kobayashi model for an external-cavity semiconductor laser (ECSL) using sample entropy (SampEn). We demonstrate that the modified SampEn could be an alternative to quantify the underlying dynamics of an ECSL under the condition that the dimension, radius, and time delay of the delayed vectors are properly selected. The numerical results are supported by the earlier numerical studies using the permutation entropy and Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy. Furthermore, we also confirm that the SampEn shows certain robustness to the additive observational noise.
The Disambiguation of Nominalizations

This article addresses the interpretation of nominalizations, a particular class of compound nouns whose head noun is derived from a verb and whose modifier is interpreted as an argument of this verb. Any attempt to automatically interpret nominalizations needs to take into account: (a) the selectional constraints imposed by the nominalized compound head, (b) the fact that the relation of the modifier and the head noun can be ambiguous, and (c) the fact that these constraints can be easily overridden by contextual or pragmatic factors. The interpretation of nominalizations poses a further challenge for probabilistic approaches since the argument relations between a head and its modifier are not readily available in the corpus. Even an approximation that maps the compound head to its underlying verb provides insufficient evidence. We present an approach that treats the interpretation task as a disambiguation problem and show how we can re-create the missing distributional evidence by exploiting partial parsing, smoothing techniques, and contextual information. We combine these distinct information sources using Ripper, a system that learns sets of rules from data, and achieve an accuracy of 86.1 (over a baseline of 61.5) on the British National Corpus.
XOR network coding for data mule delay tolerant networks

We propose a simple yet efficient scalable scheme for improving the performance of Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) with data mules by using XOR network coding. We carry out a theoretical analysis based on a model abstracted from the Village Communication Networks (VCNs), beginning with two villages and then extending to N villages. We also examine how the delivery probability is affected by the different overlapping intervals of two data mules. The theoretical analysis indicates that the maximum delivery probability increases by 50% and our simulation results illustrate this point, showing that the overhead ratio and average delay are reduced as well. Finally, our scheme is applied to a real network, the Toulouse public transportation network. We analyze the dataset, calculate the overlapping intervals of inter-vehicles and the amount of data that transit vehicles can exchange in one day, showing a 54.4% improvement in throughput.
Benchmarking the OGSA-DAI Middleware

Abstract One important contribution to the community that is developing Grid middleware is the deﬁnition and implemen-tation of benchmarks and tools to assess the performance and dependability of Grid applications and the correspond-ing middleware. In this paper, we present an experimental study that was conducted with OGSA-DAI, a popularpackage of middleware that provides access to remote data resources thought a uniﬁed Web-service front-end. Theresults show that OGSA-DAIis quite stable and performed quite well in scalability tests, executed on Grid5000. How-ever, we also demonstrate that OGSA-DAI WSI is currently using a SOAP container (Apache Axis1.2.1) that suffersfrom severe memory leaks. We show how the default conﬁguration of OGSA-DAI is not affected by that problem,but a small change in the conﬁguration of a Web-service may lead to very unreliable execution of OGSA-DAI. This research work is carried out under the FP6 Network of Excellence CoreGRID funded by the European Commission (Contract IST-2002-004265).
Dispersal and rapid evolution in brown trout colonizing virgin Subantarctic ecosystems

Two brown trout Salmo trutta stocks of different origin (wild Polish, domestic commercial) came into secondary contact after deliberate releases conducted in virgin rivers systems of the Subantarctic Kerguelen Islands (70° E 49° S). Samples obtained in 2001–2003 and a historical sample from 1993 were analysed for genetic variation at seven microsatellite loci and one allozyme locus (LDH‐C1*). Bayesian clustering analysis demonstrated that rapid genetic differentiation formed separate genetic units in neighbouring rivers in less than 20 years. These genetic units were characterized by a large proportion of Polish genotypes mixed with some genomes of domestic origin (up to 30%). A different colonization strategy of the naturalized stocks, likely related with differential performance, was identified as a cause of rapid population differentiation in this area.
Independent Risk Factors for Gallstone Formation in a Region with High Cholelithiasis Prevalence

Background/Aims:Cholelithiasis is a common disorder in north-eastern Germany. Analyses of risk factors for gallstone formation in this population may have high explanatory power. Gender-specific risk factors for gallstone formation and their interactions were investigated by using data of the population-based Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP). Methods:Data of 4,202 persons aged 20–79 years were available. Cholelithiasis was defined by either a prior history of cholecystectomy or the presence of gallstones on abdominal ultrasound. Multivariable analyses were performed to identify independent risk factors for gallstone formation. Results:There were 468 persons (11.1%) with previous cholecystectomy and 423 persons (10.1%) with sonographic evidence of gallstones. Women had a twofold higher risk for cholelithiasis compared to men. Age, body mass index and low serum HDL cholesterol levels were independently associated with cholelithiasis in both men and women. In the male population, low alcohol and high coffee consumption and in the female population, low physical activity, were further independently related to gallstone formation. Additionally, sex-specific interactions between risk factors were found. Conclusions: Female sex, age and being overweight are major risk factors for gallstone formation in this region where cholelithiasis is a frequent disorder. Additional factors and interactions contribute to a gender-specific gallstone risk.