Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Obstetric Origins of Health for a Lifetime

There is a new “developmental” model for the origins of a wide range of chronic diseases. Under this model the causes to be identified are linked to normal variations in fetoplacental development. These variations are thought to lead to variations in the supply of nutrients to the baby that permanently alter gene expression, a process known as “programming. ” According to the developmental model variations in the processes of development program the function of a few key systems that are linked to disease, including the immune system, antioxidant defenses, inflammatory responses, and the number and quality of stem cells.
ENETS Consensus Guidelines for the Standards of Care in Neuroendocrine Tumors: Pathology - Diagnosis and Prognostic Stratification

The European Neuroendocrine Tumor Society (ENETS) proposed standard of care guidelines for pathology in 2009. Since then, profound changes in the classification have been made, dividing neuroendocrine neoplasia (NEN) into well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumors (NET) and poorly differentiated neuroendocrine carcinomas (NEC) in the 2010 WHO classification. The 7th edition of the TNM classification (2009) included NEN for the first time, widely adapting ENETS proposals but with some differences for NEC and for NET of the pancreas and the appendix. Therapy guidelines for gastroenteropancreatic NET were updated in 2016. The need for an update of the standards of care prompted the ENETS to organize a consensus conference which was held in Antibes in 2015; a working group was designated to propose pathological standards of care.
Transformation of Sporozoites into Early Exoerythrocytic Malaria Parasites Does Not Require Host Cells

Malaria parasite species that infect mammals, including humans, must first take up residence in hepatic host cells as exoerythrocytic forms (EEF) before initiating infection of red blood cells that leads to malaria disease. Despite the importance of hepatic stages for immunity against malaria, little is known about their biology and antigenic composition. Here, we show that sporozoites, the parasites' transmission stage that resides in the mosquito vector salivary glands, can transform into early EEF without intracellular residence in host hepatocytes. The morphological sequence of transformation and the expression of proteins in the EEF appear indistinguishable from parasites that develop within host cells. Transformation depends on temperature elevation to 37°C and serum. Our findings demonstrate that residence in a host hepatocyte or specific host cell–derived factors are not necessary to bring about the profound morphological and biochemical changes of the parasite that occur after its transmission from vector to mammalian host.
A study of the core of the Shapley Concentration — VI. Spectral properties of galaxies

ABSTRACT We present the results of a study of the spectral properties of galaxies in the cen-tral part of the Shapley Concentration, covering an extremely wide range of densities,from the rich cluster cores to the underlying supercluster environment.Our sample is homogeneous, in a well deﬁned magnitude range (17 ≤ b J ≤ 18.8) andcontains ∼ 1300 spectra of galaxies at the same distance, covering an area of ∼ 26deg 2 . These characteristics allowed an accurate spectral classiﬁcation, that we per-formed using a Principal Components Analysis technique.This spectral classiﬁcation, together with the [OII] equivalent widths and the star for-mation rates, has been used to study the properties of galaxies at diﬀerent densities:cluster, intercluster (i.e. galaxies in the supercluster but outside clusters) and ﬁeldenvironment. No signiﬁcant diﬀerences are present between samples at low density regimes (i.e.intercluster and ﬁeld galaxies). Cluster galaxies, instead, not only have values signiﬁ-cantly diﬀerent from the ﬁeld ones, but also show a dependence on the local density.Moreover, a well deﬁned morphology-density relation is present in the cluster com-plexes, although these structures are known to be involved in major merging events.Also the mean equivalent width of [OII] shows a trend with the local environment,decreasing at increasing densities, even if it is probably induced by the morphology-density relation.Finally we analyzed the mean star formation rate as a function of the density, ﬁndingagain a decreasing trend (at ∼ 3σ signiﬁcance level). Our analysis is consistent withthe claim of Balogh et al. (1998) that the star formation in clusters is depressed.Key words: galaxies: distances and redshifts – galaxies: spectra and morphology –galaxies: clusters: general – galaxies: clusters: individuals: A3528 - A3530 - A3532 -A3535 - A3556 - A3558 - A3562 –
Stability of IS6110 Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Patterns of Multidrug-Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis Strains

We read with interest the recently published study by Alito et al. ([1][1]) concerning the stability of IS 6110 restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) patterns of multidrug-resistant (MDR) Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains. The authors analyzed the IS 6110 RFLP patterns and spoligotypes of
The users adoption and usage of social network sites : an empirical investigation in the context of Italy

Objectives – In recent years, Social Networking Sites (SNS) have been considered as a new communication tools between people and organizations. Due to the growing importance of SNS and the many advantages they offer to companies, the main objective of this research is to investigate the users adoption and usage of SNS applying and extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) which takes into account two added pivotal dimensions, that is trust and perceived risk towards SNS. To achieve this aim, Italy was chosen as the research site for this study. Methods – This study is based on an empirical and quantitative investigation that was carried out by online survey on a sample of 675 Italian SNS users from 16 to 74 years old. The sample was developed using a non-probability method by quota sampling, thus ensuring that the various subgroups of the population are represented in the sample with regard to gender, age and region. Results – Findings reveal that the extended TAM is able to explain the adoption of SNS by Italian SNS users. As a consequence, it is appropriated when used to predict the acceptance of voluntary-use technologies focused on social relationships. Among other things, results report trust affecting positively and directly the attitude toward SNS, the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. However, perceived risk only influences negatively the intention to use. Otherwise, ease of use has a negative influence on perceived risk. Moreover, trust on SNS is a determinant of perceived risk in SNS. However, perceived risk of SNS does not influence significantly the perceived usefulness and the intention to continue using them. Conclusion – Results support the positive relationships and influences between variables of the Extended Technology Acceptance Model, thus adding to the growing literature in the field of users adoption and usage of SNS. Further, they reveal that product/service providers should stimulate users trust by facilitating transactions, installing firewalls, using authentication mechanisms and ensuring the protection of privacy and information.
Performance on the dementia rating scale in Parkinson’s disease with dementia and dementia with Lewy bodies: comparison with progressive supranuclear palsy and Alzheimer’s disease

Background: The relation between dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Parkinson’s disease with dementia (PDD) is unknown. Objectives: To compare the cognitive profiles of patients with DLB and PDD, and compare those with the performance of patients with a subcortical dementia (progressive supranuclear palsy) and a cortical dementia (Alzheimer’s disease). Design: Survey of cognitive features. Setting: General community in Rogaland county, Norway, and a university dementia and movement disorder research centre in the USA. Patients: 60 patients with DLB, 35 with PDD, 49 with progressive supranuclear palsy, and 29 with Alzheimer’s disease, diagnosed by either standardised clinical procedures and criteria (all PDD and Alzheimer cases and 76% of cases of progressive supranuclear palsy), or necropsy (all DLB cases and 24% of cases of progressive supranuclear palsy). Level of dementia severity was matched using the total score on the dementia rating scale adjusted for age and education. Main outcome measures: Dementia rating scale subscores corrected for age. Results: No significant differences between the dementia rating scale subscores in the PDD and DLB groups were found in the severely demented patients; in patients with mild to moderate dementia the conceptualisation subscore was higher in PDD than in DLB (p = 0.03). Compared with Alzheimer’s disease, PDD and DLB had higher memory subscores (p < 0.001) but lower initiation and perseveration (p = 0.008 and p=0.021) and construction subscores (p = 0.009 and p = 0.001). DLB patients had a lower conceptualisation subscore (p = 0.004). Compared with progressive supranuclear palsy, PDD and DLB patients had lower memory subscores (p < 0.001). Conclusions: The cognitive profiles of patients with DLB and PDD were similar, but they differed from those of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and progressive supranuclear palsy. The cognitive pattern in DLB and PDD probably reflects the superimposition of subcortical deficits upon deficits typically associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Direct costs of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease among managed care patients

Purpose To estimate patient- and episode-level direct costs of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) among commercially insured patients in the US. Methods In this retrospective claims-based analysis, commercial enrollees with evidence of COPD were grouped into five mutually exclusive cohorts based on the most intensive level of COPD-related care they received in 2006, ie, outpatient, urgent outpatient (outpatient care in addition to a claim for an oral corticosteroid or antibiotic within seven days), emergency department (ED), standard inpatient admission, and intensive care unit (ICU) cohorts. Patient- level COPD-related annual health care costs, including patient- and payer-paid costs, were compared among the cohorts. Adjusted episode-level costs were calculated. Results Of the 37,089 COPD patients included in the study, 53% were in the outpatient cohort, 37% were in the urgent outpatient cohort, 3% were in the ED cohort, and the standard admission and ICU cohorts together comprised 6%. Mean (standard deviation, SD) annual COPD-related health care costs (2008 US$) increased across the cohorts (P < 0.001), ranging from $2003 ($3238) to $43,461 ($76,159) per patient. Medical costs comprised 96% of health care costs for the ICU cohort. Adjusted mean (SD) episode-level costs were $305 ($310) for an outpatient visit, $274 ($336) for an urgent outpatient visit, $327 ($65) for an ED visit, $9745 ($2968) for a standard admission, and $33,440 for an ICU stay. Conclusion Direct costs of COPD-related care for commercially insured patients are driven by hospital stays with or without ICU care. Exacerbation prevention resulting in reduced need for inpatient care could lower costs.
Maximum entropy models for speech confidence estimation

In this work we implement a confidence estimation system based on a Naive Bayes classifier, by using the maximum entropy paradigm. The model takes information from various sources including a set of scores which have proved to be useful in confidence estimation tasks. Two different approaches are modeled. First a basic model which takes advantages of smoothing techniques used in a previous work, and second an optimized model, which is designed to hold a set of very few but essential characteristics of the model, without decrease in the performance. A considerably reduction in the number of parameters is obtained compared to the basic model. Both models are evaluated with two different corpora and compared to a model previously developed.
The spalling of concrete in fires

The occurrence of spalling is a major factor in determining the fire resistance of concrete constructions. The apparently random occurrence of spalling has limited the development and application of fire resistance modelling for concrete structures. This Thesis describes an experimental investigation into the spalling of concrete on exposure to elevated temperatures. It has been shown that spalling may be categorised into four distinct types, aggregate spalling, corner spalling, surface spalling and explosive spalling. Aggregate spalling has been found to be a form of shear failure of aggregates local to the heated surface. The susceptibility of any particular concrete to aggregate spalling can be quantified from parameters which include the coefficients of thermal expansion of both the aggregate and the surrounding mortar, the size and thermal diffusivity of the aggregate and the rate of heating. Corner spalling, which is particularly significant for the fire resistance of concrete columns, is a result of concrete losing its tensile strength at elevated temperatures. Surface spalling is the result of excessive pore pressures within heated concrete. An empirical model has been developed to allow quantification of the pore pressures and a material failure model proposed. The dominant parameters are rate of heating, pore saturation and concrete permeability. Surface spalling may be alleviated by limiting pore pressure development and a number of methods to this end have been evaluated. Explosive spalling involves the catastrophic failure of a concrete element and may be caused by either of two distinct mechanisms. In the first instance, excessive pore pressures can cause explosive spalling, although the effect is limited principally to unloaded or relatively small specimens. A second cause of explosive spalling is where the superimposition of thermally induced stresses on applied load stresses exceed the concrete's strength.
Communication and Memory Efficient Parallel Decision Tree Construction

Decision tree construction is an important data mining problem. In this paper, we revisit this problem, with a new goal, i.e. Can we develop an efficient parallel algorithm for decision tree construction that can be parallelized in the same way as algorithms for other major mining tasks ? We report a new approach to decision tree construction, which we refer to as SPIES (Statistical Pruning of Intervals for Enhanced Scalability). This approach combines RainForest based AVC groups with sampling to achieve memory efficient processing of numerical attributes. Overall, this algorithm has the following properties: 1) no preprocessing or sorting of input data is required, 2) the size of the data-structure required in the main memory is very small, 3) the only disk-traffic required is one pass for splitting nodes for each level of the tree, and no writing-back of data, 4) very low communication volume when this algorithm is parallelized, and 5) the same level of accuracy as an algorithm that does not use sampling or pruning. We show that this algorithm can be efficiently parallelized using the same high-level interface and runtime support that was previously used to parallelize association mining and clustering algorithms. This, we believe, is an important step towards offering high-level interfaces for parallel data mining. Moreover, we have efficiently parallelized this algorithm on a cluster of SMPs, i.e. combining shared memory and distributed memory parallelism, and over disk-resident datasets. Key-words: Decision tree construction, parallelization, cluster of SMPs, sampling, algorithms for streaming data
Defective temporal and spatial control of flagellar assembly in a mutant of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii with variable flagellar number

Wild-type Chlamydomonas reinhardtii carry two flagella per cell that are used for both motility and mating. We describe a mutant, vfl-1, in which the biflagellate state is disrupted such that the number of flagella per cell ranges from 0 to as many as 10. vfl-1 cells possess the novel ability to assemble new flagella throughout the G1 portion of the cell cycle, resulting in an average increase of about 0.05 flagella per cell per hour. Such uncoupling of the flagellar assembly cycle from the cell cycle is not observed in other mutants with abnormal flagellar number. Rather than being located in an exclusively apical position characteristic of the wild type, vfl-1 flagella can be at virtually any location on the cell surface. vfl-1 cells display abnormally wide variations in cell size, probably owing to extremely unequal cell divisions. Various ultrastructural abnormalities in the flagellar apparatus are also present, including missing or defective striated fibers and reduced numbers of rootlet microtubules. The pleiotropic defects observed in vfl-1 result from a recessive Mendelian mutation mapped to Chromosome VIII.
Nanofibers and nanoparticles by electrostatic processing for medical and pharmaceutical applications

Melt electrospinning is an alternative to solution electrospinning, however melt electrospinning has typically resulted in fibers with diameters of tens of microns. In this paper we demonstrate that polypropylene fibers can be reduced from 35±8 m in diameter, to 840±190 nm with a viscosity-reducing additive. Some examples for the possibility to reduce the diameter of melt electrospun polypropylene fibers by mixing small amounts of stearates are shown. The collected melt electrospun fibers often fused together where they touched, allowing the stabilization of relatively thick non-woven felts. The melt electrospun collection often included coiled circles and looped patterns of fibers approximately 150 to 250 m in diameter. The polymer jet is visible between the collector and spinneret for particularly significant lengths, and only undergoes coiling and buckling instabilities close to the collector. The frequent fusion points between melt electrospun fibers, and a reduction in diameter for the gap method of alignment, indicate that the melt electrospun fibers are still slightly molten at collection.
The ATR Signaling Pathway Is Disabled during Infection with the Parvovirus Minute Virus of Mice

ABSTRACT The ATR kinase has essential functions in maintenance of genome integrity in response to replication stress. ATR is recruited to RPA-coated single-stranded DNA at DNA damage sites via its interacting partner, ATRIP, which binds to the large subunit of RPA. ATR activation typically leads to activation of the Chk1 kinase among other substrates. We show here that, together with a number of other DNA repair proteins, both ATR and its associated protein, ATRIP, were recruited to viral nuclear replication compartments (autonomous parvovirus-associated replication [APAR] bodies) during replication of the single-stranded parvovirus minute virus of mice (MVM). Chk1, however, was not activated during MVM infection even though viral genomes bearing bound RPA, normally a potent trigger of ATR activation, accumulate in APAR bodies. Failure to activate Chk1 in response to MVM infection was likely due to our observation that Rad9 failed to associate with chromatin at MVM APAR bodies. Additionally, early in infection, prior to the onset of the virus-induced DNA damage response (DDR), stalling of the replication of MVM genomes with hydroxyurea (HU) resulted in Chk1 phosphorylation in a virus dose-dependent manner. However, upon establishment of full viral replication, MVM infection prevented activation of Chk1 in response to HU and various other drug treatments. Finally, ATR phosphorylation became undetectable upon MVM infection, and although virus infection induced RPA32 phosphorylation on serine 33, an ATR-associated phosphorylation site, this phosphorylation event could not be prevented by ATR depletion or inhibition. Together our results suggest that MVM infection disables the ATR signaling pathway. IMPORTANCE Upon infection, the parvovirus MVM activates a cellular DNA damage response that governs virus-induced cell cycle arrest and is required for efficient virus replication. ATM and ATR are major cellular kinases that coordinate the DNA damage response to diverse DNA damage stimuli. Although a significant amount has been discovered about ATM activation during parvovirus infection, involvement of the ATR pathway has been less studied. During MVM infection, Chk1, a major downstream target of ATR, is not detectably phosphorylated even though viral genomes bearing the bound cellular single-strand binding protein RPA, normally a potent trigger of ATR activation, accumulate in viral replication centers. ATR phosphorylation also became undetectable. In addition, upon establishment of full viral replication, MVM infection prevented activation of Chk1 in response to hydroxyurea and various other drug treatments. Our results suggest that MVM infection disables this important cellular signaling pathway.
An Optimal Q-Algorithm for the ISO 18000-6C RFID Protocol

Passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems based on the ISO/IEC 18000-6C (aka EPC Gen2) protocol have typical read rates of up to 1200 unique 96-bit tags per second. This performance is achieved in part through the use of a medium access control algorithm, christened the Q-algorithm, that is a variant of the Slotted Aloha multiuser channel access algorithm. We analyze the medium access control algorithm employed by the ISO/IEC 18000-6C RFID air interface protocol and provide a procedure to achieve optimal read rates. We also show that theoretical performance can be exceeded in many practical use cases and provide a model to incorporate real-world data in read-rate estimation.
Medical history and etiology of prostate cancer.

The clinical course of prostate cancer is influenced by hormonal therapies; hence it is plausible that clinical syndromes that influence hormonal levels also affect risk of prostate cancer. Hormones may be involved in its etiology as well as various clinical conditions that may be related to hormonal imbalance such as cirrhosis and diabetes mellitus. Cirrhosis induces changes in estrogen metabolism as it is noted in the development of testicular atrophy and gynecomastia due to hyperestrogenism. Autopsy studies are conducted to investigate the relation of cirrhosis with prostate cancer prevalence. Meanwhile the relation between diabetes and prostate cancer is likely to be complex as noted on the discrepancies between study of health professionals and the Cancer Prevention Study. On the other hand several studies have examined vasectomy in relation to risk of prostate cancer. However biologic basis underlying such relation remains to be speculative. In terms of a link between inflammatory states and carcinogenesis prostatitis is considered as having carcinogenic potential. As such study of chronic prostatitis in relation to prostate cancer should be undertaken since the epidemiologic data are insufficient.