Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ranibizumab: the evidence of its therapeutic value in neovascular age-related macular degeneration

Introduction: Neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of severe, irreversible visual impairment in people over 60 years of age. Neovascular AMD is characterized by abnormal growth of blood vessels under the retina, specifically the macula. These vessels leak blood and fluids, damaging the retina and its photoreceptors, resulting in permanent loss of central vision. Vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGF-A) has been shown to play a critical role in the pathogenesis of neovascular AMD. In the US, ranibizumab, a VEGF-A blocker, is approved and indicated for the treatment of patients with neovascular AMD. Aims: To review the clinical evidence for ranibizumab in the treatment of neovascular AMD. Evidence review: Phase III clinical trial data have established ranibizumab as a safe and well-tolerated treatment for neovascular AMD. Monthly intravitreal injections of ranibizumab result in a statistically significantly greater proportion of patients losing <15 letters of visual acuity (VA) and statistically significant increases in the mean number of letters gained compared with controls. Anatomically, ranibizumab results in stabilization in the mean area of choroidal neovascularization (CNV) and statistically significant reductions in the mean area of leakage compared with controls. Although there is limited economic evidence available, ranibizumab therapy for neovascular AMD appears to deliver a significant degree of value gain in terms of quality of life when compared with other neovascular AMD interventions. Place in therapy: Clinical evidence establishes ranibizumab as a first-line therapy option for virtually all treatable neovascular AMD patients. Updating neovascular AMD treatment guidelines to reflect the evidence base for ranibizumab as a preferred first-line therapy would be beneficial for physicians in making informed treatment choices and ultimately helping to ensure the best care for patients.
Introductory notes on the model theory of valued fields

These notes will give some very basic definitions and results from model theory. They contain many examples, and in particular discuss extensively the various languages used to study valued fields. They are intended as giving the necessary background to read the papers by Cluckers, Delon, Halupczok, Kowalski, Loeser and Macintyre in this volume. We also mention a few recent results or directions of research in the model theory of valued fields, but omit completely those themes which will be discussed elsewhere in this volume. So for instance, we do not even mention motivic integration. People interested in learning more model theory should consult standard model theory books. For instance: D. Marker, Model Theory: an Introduction, Graduate Texts in Mathematics 217, Springer-Verlag New York, 2002; C.C. Chang, H.J. Keisler, Model Theory, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam 1973; W. Hodges, A shorter model theory, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
FOR THE BIOREMEDIATION OF OIL-CONTAMINATED SALT MARSHES by 1

Disclaimer The information in this document has been funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) under Task Order No. 8 of Contract No. 68-C-00-159 to the University of Cincinnati. It has been subjected to the Agency's peer and administrative reviews and has been approved for publication as an EPA document. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation for use. ii Foreword The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged by Congress with protecting the Nation's land, air, and water resources. Under a mandate of national environmental laws, the Agency strives to formulate and implement actions leading to a compatible balance between human activities and the ability of natural systems to support and nurture life. To meet this mandate, EPA's research program is providing data and technical support for solving environmental problems today and building a science knowledge base necessary to manage our ecological resources wisely, understand how pollutants affect our health, and prevent or reduce environmental risks in the future. The National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL) is the Agency's center for investigation of technological and management approaches for preventing and reducing risks from pollution that threaten human health and the environment. The focus of the Laboratory's research program is on methods and their cost-effectiveness for prevention and control of pollution to air, land, water, and subsurface resources; protection of water quality in public water systems; remediation of contaminated sites, sediments and ground water; prevention and control of indoor air pollution; and restoration of ecosystems. NRMRL collaborates with both public and private sector partners to foster technologies that reduce the cost of compliance and to anticipate emerging problems. NRMRL's research provides solutions to environmental problems by: developing and promoting technologies that protect and improve the environment; advancing scientific and engineering information to support regulatory and policy decisions; and providing the technical support and information transfer to ensure implementation of environmental regulations and strategies at the national, state, and community levels. This publication has been produced as part of the Laboratory's strategic long-term research plan. It is published and made available by EPA's Office of Research and Development to assist the user community and to link researchers with their clients. Salt marshes are among the most sensitive ecosystems and, therefore, the most difficult to clean. Applications of some traditional oil spill cleanup techniques in wetland habitats have caused more damage than …
Women’s career development in the construction industry across 15 years: main barriers

Purpose Through a systematic literature review covering 15 years, this paper aims to identify and annotate the barriers that hinder the career development of women working in the construction industry. Furthermore, it describes publication trends that have contributed to the evolution of the topic. Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review of credible sources in different databases has been carried out for the period from 2000 to 2015. By means of thematic analysis, a data set of 60 articles has been analysed. Findings The topic has been and still is of interest to the research community. Women who work in the construction industry in different countries confront numerous career barriers, the more frequent being the difficulty of balancing work and family, and the lack of professionalism in human resource management. Research limitations/implications Some publications related to the topic might have been inadvertently omitted. Hopefully, this paper can be valuable for informing future research directions. Practical implications The paper is useful to human resource managers to understand how their practices influence women’s career development, gender equity and organisational injustice, and how to improve them. It informs policies to reduce gender discrimination and guides researchers interested in gender diversity in the industry. Social implications A clear vision of career barriers affecting women is required to find solutions and improve the fairness and justice of business practices. Originality/value Previous studies do not offer a comprehensive and up-to-date review covering such a wide time period and so many countries. It will have implications in the identification of initiatives critical to achieving lasting change in gender equity in the construction industry.
Soybean Lectin Enhances Biofilm Formation by Bradyrhizobium japonicum in the Absence of Plants

Soybean lectin (SBL) purified from soybean seeds by affinity chromatography strongly bound to Bradyrhizobium japonicum USDA 110 cell surface. This lectin enhanced biofilm formation by B. japonicum in a concentration-dependent manner. Presence of galactose during biofilm formation had different effects in the presence or absence of SBL. Biofilms were completely inhibited in the presence of both SBL and galactose, while in the absence of SBL, galactose was less inhibitory. SBL was very stable, since its agglutinating activity of B. japonicum cells as well as of human group A+ erythrocytes was resistant to preincubation for one week at 60°C. Hence, we propose that plant remnants might constitute a source of this lectin, which might remain active in soil and thus favor B. japonicum biofilm formation in the interval between soybean crop seasons.
Of Dogs and Men

Experiments involving dog-human social cognition have shown dogs’ close attention to human behavioral cues. Dogs remained near a fallen owner, avoided a deceptive human, and preferred a human that provided valid information about the location of a reward over an uninformative human. On the other hand, dogs showed no evidence of going for help in an emergency, having theory of mind or metacognition, or performing successive numerical discrimination. When tested for spatial memory and simultaneous numerical discrimination, dogs showed evidence of these abilities but also showed lower performance levels than found in other species.
GAUGE DEPENDENCE OF THE EFFECTIVE AVERAGE ACTION IN EINSTEIN GRAVITY

We study the gauge dependence of the effective average action Γk and Newtonian gravitational constant using the RG equation for Γk. Then we truncate the space of action functionals to get a solution of this equation. We solve the truncated evolution equation for the Einstein gravity in the De Sitter background for a general gauge parameter α and obtain a system of equatons for the cosmological and Newtonian constants. Analyaing the running of the gravitational constant we find that the Newtonian constant depends strongly on the gauge parameter. This leads to the appearance of antiscreening and screening behavior of the quantum gravity. The resolution of the gauge dependence problem is suggested. For physical gauges like the Landau–DeWitt gauge the Newtonian constant shows an antiscreening.
An integrative data analysis platform for gene set analysis and knowledge discovery in a data warehouse framework

Data analysis is one of the most critical and challenging steps in drug discovery and disease biology. A user-friendly resource to visualize and analyse high-throughput data provides a powerful medium for both experimental and computational biologists to understand vastly different biological data types and obtain a concise, simplified and meaningful output for better knowledge discovery. We have previously developed TargetMine, an integrated data warehouse optimized for target prioritization. Here we describe how upgraded and newly modelled data types in TargetMine can now survey the wider biological and chemical data space, relevant to drug discovery and development. To enhance the scope of TargetMine from target prioritization to broad-based knowledge discovery, we have also developed a new auxiliary toolkit to assist with data analysis and visualization in TargetMine. This toolkit features interactive data analysis tools to query and analyse the biological data compiled within the TargetMine data warehouse. The enhanced system enables users to discover new hypotheses interactively by performing complicated searches with no programming and obtaining the results in an easy to comprehend output format. Database URL: http://targetmine.mizuguchilab. org
A class of exact MHD models for astrophysical jets

This paper examines a new class of exact and self-consistent MHD solutions that describe steady and axisymmetric hydromagnetic outflows from the atmosphere of a magnetized and rotating central object with possibly an orbiting accretion disc. The plasma is driven against gravity by a thermal pressure gradient, as well as by magnetic rotator and radiative forces. At the Alfvenic and fast critical points the appropriate criticality conditions are applied. The outflow starts almost radially, but after the Alfven transition and before the fast critical surface is encountered, the magnetic pinching force bends the poloidal streamlines into a cylindrical jet-type shape. The terminal speed, Alfven number and cross-sectional area of the jet, as well as its final pressure and density, obtain uniform values at large distances from the source. The goal of the study is to give an analytical discussion of the two-dimensional interplay of the thermal pressure gradient, gravitational, Lorentz and inertial forces in accelerating and collimating an MHD flow. A parametric study of the model is also given, as well as a brief sketch of its applicability to a self-consistent modelling of collimated outflows from various astrophysical objects. The analysed model succeeds in giving for the first time an exact MHD solution for jet-type outflows extending from the stellar surface to infinity where the outflow can be superfast, in agreement with the MHD causality principle.
Neural systems for recognising emotion from facial expressions

Humans are probably unique in the extent of their reliance on socially transmitted information in coping with physical and social environments. The face is a visible signal both of others� intentions and internal states, and facial expression continues to be a critical variable in social interaction. The exploration of the neural basis that underlies the perception of such facial signals was the main subject of this thesis. Our findings provide some new insights concerning neural substrates involved in the perception of specific emotional expressions as well as neural mechanisms that mediate the extraction of meaning during facial expression processing. The first experiment addressed the question of whether the perception of surprise in others is associated with a specific neural substrate. The results reveal that the perception of surprised facial expressions consistently recruits structures within the medial temporal lobes that have previously been associated with novelty detection. Our findings therefore suggest a close relation between perceiving surprise in others and the response to novel events. The first evidence that perception of disgusted facial expressions might be associated with a particular neural substrate came from investigations of people with Huntington�s disease who show a disproportionately severe impairment in recognising facial expressions of disgust. To explore which brain regions are associated with this deficit was the goal of the second study. Our finding of dysfunctionally decreased insula activation in pre-symptomatic Huntington�s disease provides an explanation for the clinical deficit in recognising facial expression of disgust and underscores the role of the insula in the emotion of disgust. With the detection of mirror mechanisms in monkeys and humans, simulation theories of emotion recognition have become increasingly popular. Do we understand what others feel by putting ourselves into the shoes of the other via a neural mechanism that simulates the observed expression? This question was addressed in the third experiment. The results show that we map the observed expressions onto neural circuitries associated with the production of these expressions and its somatosensory consequences, thereby providing a description of what the expression would feel like if produced in the observer. Such a mechanism is suggested to be important for empathic understanding of others� feelings.
Vertical-Slit Field-Effect Transistor (VeSFET) - design space exploration and DC model

This paper presents an in-depth discussion of the Vertical-Slit Field-Effect Transistor's (VeSFET's) operation. The junction-less twin gate VeSFET is the basic component of a new 3D VeSTIC technology proposed by Maly [1]. Our numerical TCAD simulations confirm the attractive properties of VeSFETs, such as high Ion to Ioff ratio, low leakage currents, and effective current control by independently biased symmetric gates. These simulations serve as a backbone for an analytical approximation of the VeSFET characteristics, and the first, rudimentary compact DC model for circuit simulation has been developed.
Topical Prostaglandin Analogue Drugs Inhibit Adipocyte Differentiation

Purpose To investigate the effects of topical prostaglandin analogue drugs on the differentiation of adipocytes. Methods Differentiation of 3T3-L1 preadipocytes was induced with isobutylmethylxanthine, dexamethasone, and insulin. 3T3-L1 cells were exposed to 0.008, 0.08, 0.2 µM of latanoprost and travoprost. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction for mRNA expression of lipoprotein lipase and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ 2 (PPARγ2), and glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (G3PDH) assays were performed to examine the effects on early and late differentiation, respectively. Also, glycerol assays were done to evaluate the effect of prostaglandin analogues on lipolysis after differentiation. Results Both prostaglandin analogues inhibited differentiation of preadipocytes. Topical prostaglandin analogues significantly decreased G3PDH activity, a marker of late differentiation. However, topical prostaglandin analogues did not change mRNA expressions of lipoprotein lipase and PPARγ2, markers of early differentiation. The activities of the early markers of differentiation were not changed significantly before and after growth arrest. Compared to latanoprost, travoprost decreased G3PDH activity more significantly (p < 0.05). Both prostaglandin analogues did not affect the lipolysis of differentiated adipocytes (p > 0.05). Conclusions Prostaglandin analogues display an inhibitory effect on the differentiation of adipocytes when the cells start to differentiate especially in the late stage of differentiation. Thus, commercial topical prostaglandin analogues may decrease the fat contents of eyelids.
Role of microRNAs in translation regulation and cancer

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are pervasively expressed and regulate most biological functions. They function by modulating transcriptional and translational programs and therefore they orchestrate both physiological and pathological processes, such as development, cell differentiation, proliferation, apoptosis and tumor growth. miRNAs work as small guide molecules in RNA silencing, by negatively regulating the expression of several genes both at mRNA and protein level, by degrading their mRNA target and/or by silencing translation. One of the most recent advances in the field is the comprehension of their role in oncogenesis. The number of miRNA genes is increasing and an alteration in the level of miRNAs is involved in the initiation, progression and metastases formation of several tumors. Some tumor types show a distinct miRNA signature that distinguishes them from normal tissues and from other cancer types. Genetic and biochemical evidence supports the essential role of miRNAs in tumor development. Although the abnormal expression of miRNAs in cancer cells is a widely accepted phenomenon, the cause of this dysregulation is still unknown. Here, we discuss the biogenesis of miRNAs, focusing on the mechanisms by which they regulate protein synthesis. In addition we debate on their role in cancer, highlighting their potential to become therapeutic targets.
Complications of Radical Cystectomy and Orthotopic Reconstruction

Radical cystectomy and orthotopic reconstruction significant morbidity and mortality despite advances in minimal invasive and robotic technology. In this review, we will discuss early and late complications, as well as describe efforts to minimize morbidity and mortality, with a focus on ileal orthotopic bladder substitute (OBS). We summarise efforts to minimize morbidity and mortality including enhanced recovery as well as early and late complications seen after radical cystectomy and OBS. Centralisation of complex cancer services in the UK has led to a fall in mortality and high volume institutions have a significantly lower rate of 30-day mortality compared to low volume institutions. Enhanced recovery pathways have resulted in shorter length of hospital stay and potentially a reduction in morbidity. Early complications of radical cystectomy occur as a direct result of the surgery itself while late complications, which can occur even after 10 years after surgery, are due to urinary diversion. OBS represents the ideal urinary diversion for patients without contraindications. However, all patients with OBS should have regular long term follow-up for oncological surveillance and to identify complications should they arise.
Market Integration and Industrial Structure: Home Market Effects Revisited

Does market size matter for industrial structure? This paper generalises the theory on home market effects to reconcile the recent debate by allowing for an endogenous expenditure share on differentiated goods. It is shown that, in general, market size matters for industrial structure. Even when both sectors face identical transport costs, a "home market effect" can arise, disappear, or reverse in sign, depending on whether the elasticity of substitution between the homogenous good and the composite of differentiated goods is greater than, equal to, or less than one. It is also shown that a commonly used benchmark - the relative market size in a one-factor economy - for discussing trade and industrial structure is, in general, not correct. The results should change common perceptions about how market integration affects a country's industrial structure. In particular, it is not always correct to consider a country that ends up with a less-than-proportionate of manufacturing industry in market integration to be "de-industrialised".
Compressed sensing denoising for segmentation of localization microscopy data

Localization microscopy (LM) allows to acquire pointillistic superresolution images of biological structures on the nanoscale. However, current structure reconstruction and segmentation approaches suffer from either exclusion of small structures or strong dependence on a-priori knowledge. We propose reconstruction methods based on compressed sensing (CS) denoising in combination with the isodata threshold for segmentation. The methods are verified on artificial test data. For the denoising, a Haar dictionary and a KSVD dictionary learning on artificial data are used. Both methods perform significantly better than the reference algorithm, a linear density filter, in terms of root-mean-square deviation from the ground truth. Furthermore, exemplary results on real LM data of irradiated cell nuclei with Heterochromatin labeling make small structures visible that are suppressed by the reference method. CS denoising demonstrates promising results for reconstruction of LM data.