Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Triple, standard quadruple and ampicillin-sulbactam-based quadruple therapies for H. pylori eradication: a comparative three-armed randomized clinical trial.

AIM To compare the effectiveness of triple, standard quadruple and ampicillin-sulbactam-based quadruple therapies for H. pylori eradication in a comparative three-armed randomized clinical trial. METHODS A total of 360 H. pylori-positive patients suffering from dyspepsia and aging 24-79 years with a median age of 42 years were enrolled in the study and randomly allocated into the following three groups: group A (n = 120) received a standard 1-wk triple therapy (20 mg omeprazole b.i.d., 1000 mg amoxicillin b.i.d., 500 mg clarithromycin b.i.d.); group B (n = 120) received a 10-d standard quadruple therapy (20 mg omeprazole b.i.d., 1000 mg amoxicillin b.i.d., 240 mg colloidal bismuth subcitrate b.i.d., and 500 mg metronidazole b.i.d.); group C (n = 120) received the new protocol, i.e. 375 mg sultamicillin (225 mg ampicillin plus 150 mg sulbactam) b.i. d. (before breakfast and dinner), instead of amoxicillin in the standard quadruple therapy for the same duration. Chi-square test with the consideration of P<0.05 as significant was used to compare the eradication rates by intention-to-treat and per-protocol analyses in the three groups. RESULTS The per-protocol eradication rate was 91.81% (101 patients from a total of 110) in group A, 85.84% (97 patients from a total of 113) in group B, and 92.85% (104 patients from a total of 112) in group C. The intention-to-treat eradication rate was 84.17% in group A, 80.83% in group B, and 86.67% in group C. The new protocol yielded the highest eradication rates by both per-protocol and intention-to-treat analyses followed by the standard triple and quadruple regimens, respectively. However, the differences were not statistically significant between the three groups. CONCLUSION The results of this study provide further support for the equivalence of triple and quadruple therapies in terms of effectiveness, compliance and side-effect profile when administered as first-line treatment for H. pylori infection. Moreover, the new protocol using ampicillin-sulbactam instead of amoxicillin in the quadruple regimen is a suitable first-line alternative to be used in regions with amoxicillin-resistant H. pylori strains.
Leprosy: An overview

Leprosy is common in many countries worldwide, and in temperate, tropical, and subtropical climates. Approximately 100 cases per year are diagnosed in the United States. Leprosy is characterized by disfiguring skin sore, nerve damage, and progressive debilitation. Leprosy is caused by a bacterium which affects various parts of the body particularly the skin and nerves. Leprosy is difficult to transmit and has a long incubation period. Children are more susceptible than adults. Effective medications exist, and isolation of victims in "leper colonies" is unnecessary. The emergence of drug-resistant Mycobacterium leprae, as well as increased numbers of cases worldwide, has led to global concern about this disease. Early diagnosis reduces leprosy symptoms and complications. In this article, efforts have been taken to discus pathophysiology symptoms and treatment of leprosy. The aim of this review is to make people aware of the complications of leprosy which can be prevented by taking preventive measures by educating the people about this disease and gives the idea about the herbal treatment of leprosy that would be beneficial for people. Key words: Disfiguring, progressive debilitation, leper colonies
Specialized functions of major histocompatibility complex class I molecules. II. Hmt binds N-formylated peptides of mitochondrial and prokaryotic origin

The physiological functions of the mouse telomeric major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules, including Hmt, are unknown. Hmt presents a polymorphic, N-formylated peptide encoded by the mitochondrial gene ND1 forming the cell surface maternally transmitted antigen (Mta). Because the N-formyl moiety is required for Hmt binding, we proposed that Hmt may function generally in presentation of N-formylated antigens. This hypothesis was validated by a competitive binding assay, demonstrating that synthetic N-formyl peptides from other mitochondrial genes also bound Hmt. Bacteria similarly initiate protein synthesis with N-formylmethionine; indeed, we established that Hmt can also present prokaryotic peptides in an N- formyl-dependent manner. These results indicate biochemical specialization of this MHC-peptide interaction and suggest a unique role for Hmt in prokaryotic host defenses.
Temporal Proximity Promotes Integration of Overlapping Events

Events with overlapping elements can be encoded as two separate representations or linked into an integrated representation, yet we know little about the conditions that promote one form of representation over the other. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the proximity of overlapping events would increase the probability of integration. Participants first established memories for house–object and face–object pairs; half of the pairs were learned 24 hr before an fMRI session, and the other half 30 min before the session. During scanning, participants encoded object–object pairs that overlapped with the initial pairs acquired on the same or prior day. Participants were also scanned as they made inference judgments about the relationships among overlapping pairs learned on the same or different day. Participants were more accurate and faster when inferring relationships among memories learned on the same day relative to those acquired across days, suggesting that temporal proximity promotes integration. Evidence for reactivation of existing memories—as measured by a visual content classifier—was equivalent during encoding of overlapping pairs from the two temporal conditions. In contrast, evidence for integration—as measured by a mnemonic strategy classifier from an independent study [Richter, F. R. , Chanales, A. J. H. , & Kuhl, B. A. Predicting the integration of overlapping memories by decoding mnemonic processing states during learning. Neuroimage, 124, 323–335, 2016]—was greater for same-day overlapping events, paralleling the behavioral results. During inference itself, activation patterns further differentiated when participants were making inferences about events acquired on the same day versus across days. These findings indicate that temporal proximity of events promotes integration and further influences the neural mechanisms engaged during inference.
Does Labor Disclosure Provide Useful Information ? The Case of Analysts ’ Forecasts

This paper investigates the relation between labor disclosure and analysts' forecasts. Accounting concepts indicate that disaggregation of data is desirable if the additional information is useful for purposes such as forecasting performance. Our tests are designed to determine if labor provides information incremental to recognized earnings components in forecasting earnings, explaining forecast errors, and analyzing the variance of forecast errors over time. We find that, though labor cost is not explicitly shown among the components of the income statement, separate disclosure of labor cost provides useful incremental information for earnings forecasts and reduces forecast errors, and that these effects can be explained in part by the contribution of labor cost variance to earnings variance over time. This suggests that current voluntary disclosures of labor cost are useful.
Parental and peer influences on adolescent cigarette smoking

– The effects of peer smoking (imitation and peer pressure) and parental smoking and their interaction effects on adolescent smoking were investigated through an experimental study among 59 students of intermediate technical and vocational-training. The experiment had a 2 (confederate smoking three times during the session, or not smoking) x 2 (confederate offering three cigarettes during the session, or not offering any cigarettes) factorial design. Adolescent smoking was observed through television monitoring during the session, in which was kept track of the times the participant lighted up and putted out a cigarette. Parental smoking was measured through the reports of the subjects in the questionnaire they filled out after the session. Subjects were more positively affected by confederate smoking than by confederate offering cigarettes. However, both of them had a significant positive effect, which presumes that imitation and peer pressure processes are influential. Paternal smoking affected adolescent smoking negatively. Though, this effect was smaller than the peer influence effects. No significant maternal smoking and the interaction effects were found. Thus, adolescents have a bias to imitate their peer’s smoking behavior and are (somewhat less) susceptible for peer pressure. From these results, intervention programs may shift their main focus from peer pressure to imitation, yet keeping peer pressure in mind too.
Methadone Death, Dosage and Torsade de Pointes: Risk-Benefit Policy Implications

Abstract Methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) for opioid dependency has consistently shown important heath, social and legal benefits. What started as a small experimental program in Lexington, Kentucky has grown and expanded substantially over 35 years. Its practice is now well established both in specialized centers and in the broader community. In society, methadone deaths represent an important issue of public safety: methadone diversion to and ingestion by nontolerant individuals outside of treatment. Within treatment, methadone deaths occur most commonly in the early stabilization period (due to issue of tolerance), in periods of transition, or among certain individuals who abuse other substances (opioids, benzodiazepines, or alcohol). Research suggests moderately high methadone dosages help improve patient retention. Results from pharmacodynamic, kinetic and stereospecific studies continue to support the importance of individualizing dose. For some patients, much larger doses may be necessary to fully achieve all pharmacotherapy goals of treatment. Practitioners must be cautious however as certain patients on higher dosages are predisposed to torsade de pointes and increased mortality. Policymakers have a responsibility in their decision-making to balance the quality of life benefits for patients within MMT with the risks of increased mortality both for individuals within treatment and the general public.
Space, Place and Mental Health

Contents: Foreword Mens sana in corpore sano? Introduction to geographical perspectives on health of the mind and body 'Virtuous landscapes': therapeutic material settings Material hazards and risks for mental health Resilience, social capital and social integration Anomie, status anxiety and fear: socio-spatial relations and mental ill-health Dreamscapes and imagined spaces: the meaning of place for identity, spirituality and mental health Post-asylum geographies of mental health care: spaces for therapy and treatment Place, space and population mental health Bibliography Index.
Potential of Horse Apple Isoflavones in Targeting Inflammation and Tau Protein Fibrillization

In our ongoing search for anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective agents of natural origin, the total methanolic extract (MPE) of horse apple (Maclura pomifera) and its two major prenylated isoflavones, osajin (OSA) and pomiferin (POM), were evaluated in vitro for their ability to affect four mediators of inflammation and to inhibit tau protein fibrillization. The two isoflavones were effective in enhancing the activity of NSAID activated gene (NAG-1) at 2.5 μg/mL (1.5 – 1.8 fold increase) and inhibiting iNOS and NF-κB activity with IC50 values in the range of 6 – 13 μg/mL. Pomiferin also inhibited intracellular oxidative stress with IC50 of 3.3 μg/mL, while osajin did not show any effect. The extract activated NAG-1 and inhibited iNOS and oxidative stress without affecting NF-κB. As observed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), MPE, OSA and POM also inhibited arachidonic acid-induced tau fibrillization in a concentration-dependent manner.
A Transcriptome Database for Astrocytes, Neurons, and Oligodendrocytes: A New Resource for Understanding Brain Development and Function

Understanding the cell–cell interactions that control CNS development and function has long been limited by the lack of methods to cleanly separate neural cell types. Here we describe methods for the prospective isolation and purification of astrocytes, neurons, and oligodendrocytes from developing and mature mouse forebrain. We used FACS (fluorescent-activated cell sorting) to isolate astrocytes from transgenic mice that express enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) under the control of an S100β promoter. Using Affymetrix GeneChip Arrays, we then created a transcriptome database of the expression levels of >20,000 genes by gene profiling these three main CNS neural cell types at various postnatal ages between postnatal day 1 (P1) and P30. This database provides a detailed global characterization and comparison of the genes expressed by acutely isolated astrocytes, neurons, and oligodendrocytes. We found that Aldh1L1 is a highly specific antigenic marker for astrocytes with a substantially broader pattern of astrocyte expression than the traditional astrocyte marker GFAP. Astrocytes were enriched in specific metabolic and lipid synthetic pathways, as well as the draper/Megf10 and Mertk/integrin αvβ5 phagocytic pathways suggesting that astrocytes are professional phagocytes. Our findings call into question the concept of a “glial” cell class as the gene profiles of astrocytes and oligodendrocytes are as dissimilar to each other as they are to neurons. This transcriptome database of acutely isolated purified astrocytes, neurons, and oligodendrocytes provides a resource to the neuroscience community by providing improved cell-type-specific markers and for better understanding of neural development, function, and disease.
The detectability of extrasolar planet surroundings. I. Reflected-light photometry of unresolved rings

It is expected that the next generation of high-contrast imaging instruments will deliver the first unresolved image of an extrasolar planet. The emitted thermal infrared light from the planet should show no phase effect assuming the planet is in thermal equilibrium. But the reflected visible light will vary with phase angle. Here we study the photometric variation of the reflected light with orbital phase of a ringed extrasolar planet. We show that a ring around an extrasolar planet, both obviously unresolved, can be detected by its specific photometric signature. A simple quantitative model is discussed, taking into account the basic optical and geometrical properties of the ringed planet.
Fast speaker adaptation of hybrid NN/HMM model for speech recognition based on discriminative learning of speaker code

In this paper, we propose a new fast speaker adaptation method for the hybrid NN-HMM speech recognition model. The adaptation method depends on a joint learning of a large generic adaptation neural network for all speakers as well as multiple small speaker codes (one per speaker). The joint training method uses all training data along with speaker labels to update adaptation NN weights and speaker codes based on the standard back-propagation algorithm. In this way, the learned adaptation NN is capable of transforming each speaker features into a generic speaker-independent feature space when a small speaker code is given. Adaptation to a new speaker can be simply done by learning a new speaker code using the same back-propagation algorithm without changing any NN weights. In this method, a separate speaker code is learned for each speaker while the large adaptation NN is learned from the whole training set. The main advantage of this method is that the size of speaker codes is very small. As a result, it is possible to conduct a very fast adaptation of the hybrid NN/HMM model for each speaker based on only a small amount of adaptation data (i.e., just a few utterances). Experimental results on TIMIT have shown that it can achieve over 10% relative reduction in phone error rate by using only seven utterances for adaptation.
The Perception and Evaluation of Visual Beauty

What are the perceptual and cognitive processes that underlie our experiences of beauty? In this dissertation, I describe a series of experiments where we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral methods to explore the mechanisms of perception, reward representation, and decision-making during evaluations of face and place beauty. In our first study, we used fMRI to ask whether evaluative signals in frontal cortex contain category-specific information or whether these signals are encoded as a "common currency" across reward types. By comparing neural activity correlated with subjective ratings of face and place beauty, we showed overlapping activity in dorsal ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), consistence with the common currency hypothesis. At the same time, our results revealed category-specific patterns of activity in ventral vmPFC and in lateral orbitofrontal cortex (latOFC), suggesting at least a partial distinction in the frontal networks recruited during the processing of different types of rewards. In a follow-up study, we used fMRI to further examine face-responsive "patches" of activity in latOFC by measuring response in these patches while subjects evaluated but did explicitly rate face beauty. Our results demonstrated a similar pattern of response to that observed during explicit ratings, suggesting that reward-related activity in this region is not dependent on a decision-making task. Lastly, in a series of behavioral studies, we developed a novel experimental design to measure the influence of recent trial history on current judgments of face attractiveness. We found that attractiveness judgments are simultaneously contrasted away from the attractiveness of the previous face but assimilated towards the previous numerical rating given. Our results also suggested that these influences are not specific to attractiveness judgments but may be linked to more general properties of perception and decision-making. Collectively, this work furthers our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying evaluations of face and place beauty, and illuminates some of the specific contextual influences on these evaluations. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Psychology First Advisor Russell A. Epstein
Can Intensified Tuberculosis Case Finding Efforts at Nutrition Rehabilitation Centers Lead to Pediatric Case Detection in Bihar, India?

Introduction Seven district-level Nutritional Rehabilitation Centres (NRCs) in Bihar, India provide clinical and nutritional care for children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM). Aim To assess whether intensified case finding (ICF) strategies at NRCs can lead to pediatric case detection among SAM children and link them to TB treatment under the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP). Materials and Methods A retrospective cohort study was conducted that included medical record reviews of SAM children registered for TB screening and RNTCP care during July–December 2012. Results Among 440 SAM children screened, 39 (8.8%) were diagnosed with TB. Among these, 34 (87%) initiated TB treatment and 18 (53%) were registered with the RNTCP. Of 16 children not registered under the RNTCP, nine (56%) weighed below six kilograms—the current weight requirement for receiving drugs under RNTCP. Conclusion ICF approaches are feasible at NRCs; however, screening for TB entails diagnostic challenges, especially among SAM children. However, only half of the children diagnosed with TB were treated by the RNTCP. More effort is needed to link this vulnerable population to TB services in addition to introducing child-friendly drug formulations for covering children weighing less than six kilograms.
Effects of catechin polyphenols and preparations from the plant–parasitic nematode Heterodera glycines on protease activity and behaviour in three nematode species

Abstract Protease activities in preparations from the plant-parasitic nematodes Heterodera glycines and Meloidogyne incognita and the free-living nematode Panagrellus redivivus were inhibited by exposure to a series of eight catechin polyphenol analogues, (+)-catechin, ( − )-epicatechin (EC), ( − )-gallocatechin (GC), ( − )-epigallocatechin (EGC), ( − )-catechin gallate (CG), ( − )-gallocatechin gallate (GCG), ( − )-epicatechin gallate (ECG) and ( − )-epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) (1 mm each), and by a preparation from H. glycines cysts. General protease activity detected with the FRET-peptide substrate QXL520-KSAYMRF-K(5-FAM)a and proteasome chymotrypsin-like (CTL) activity detected with succinyl-LLVY-AMC were each inhibited significantly more (P< 0.05) by the gallated form of the polyphenol than by the corresponding non-gallated form. Species differences in response to inhibition across all analogues were revealed with the CTL substrate, but CG was a consistently potent inhibitor across all three species and with each substrate. A heat-stable component (CE) from H. glycines cysts inhibited M. incognita CTL activity by 92.07 ± 0.68%, significantly less (P< 0.05) in H. glycines (52.86 ± 2.77%), and by only 17.24 ± 0.55% (P< 0.05) in P. redivivus preparations. CTL activity was, however, inhibited more than 60% in all preparations by the proteasome-specific inhibitor MG-132. Hatching of M. incognita infective juveniles exposed to 1 mm CG, ECG, GCG or EGCG was reduced by 83.88 ± 4.26%, 69.98 ± 9.14%, 94.93 ± 1.71% and 87.93 ± 2.89%, respectively, while hatching of H. glycines was reduced less than 25% by each analogue. CE had no effect on nematode hatch, but did cause a 60% reduction in mobility of H. glycines infective juveniles exposed overnight to CE in vitro, which was more (P< 0.05) than the reduction of M. incognita infective juvenile mobility (20%).