Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vibrio mimicus diarrhea following ingestion of raw turtle eggs

Clinical and epidemiological characteristics of diarrhea associated with Vibrio mimicus were identified in 33 hospitalized patients referred to the Costa Rican National Diagnostic Laboratory Network between 1991 and 1994. The relevant symptoms presented by patients included abundant watery diarrhea, vomiting, and severe dehydration that required intravenous Dhaka solution in 83% of patients but not fever. Seroconversion against V. mimicus was demonstrated in four patients, from whom acute- and convalescent-phase sera were obtained. Those sera did not show cross-reaction when tested against Vibrio cholerae O1 strain VC-12. All the V. mimicus isolates from these cases produced cholera toxin (CT) and were susceptible to commonly used antibiotics. Attempts to isolate this bacterium from stool samples of 127 healthy persons were not successful. Consumption of raw turtle eggs was recalled by 11 of the 19 (58%) individuals interviewed. All but two V. mimicus diarrheal cases were sporadic. These two had a history of a common source of turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) eggs for consumption, and V. mimicus was isolated from eggs from the same source (a local market). Among the strains, variations in the antimicrobial susceptibility pattern were observed. None of the strains recovered from market turtle eggs nor the four isolates from river water showed CT production. Further efforts to demonstrate the presence of CT-producing V. mimicus strains in turtle eggs were made. Successful results were obtained when nest eggs were tested. In this case, it was possible to isolate CT- and non-CT-producing strains, even from the same egg. For CT detection we used PCR, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and Y-1 cell assay, obtaining a 100% correlation between ELISA and PCR results. Primers Col-1 and Col-2, originally described as specific for the V. cholerae O1 ctxA gene, also amplified a 302-bp segment with an identical restriction map from V. mimicus. These results have important implications for epidemiological surveillance in tropical countries where turtle eggs are used for human consumption, serving as potential sources of cholera-like diarrhea.
Octapeptide repeat insertions in the prion protein gene and early onset dementia

Objectives: The most common familial early onset dementia mutations are found in the genes involved in Alzheimer’s disease; the amyloid precursor protein (APP) and the presenilin 1 and 2 (PSEN1 and 2) genes; the prion protein gene (PRNP) may be involved. Methods: Following identification of a two-octapeptide repeat insertion in PRNP, we conducted a meta-analysis to investigate the relation of number of PRNP octapeptide repeats with age at disease onset and duration of illness; identifying 55 patients with PRNP octapeptide repeat insertions. We used a linear mixed effects model to assess the relation of number of repeats with age at disease onset, and studied the effect of the number of inserted octapeptide repeats on disease duration with a Cox proportional hazards regression analysis. Results: We found an increasing number of repeats associated with younger age at onset (p<0.001). Duration of the disease decreased significantly with the length of the octapeptide repeat (p<0.001) when adjusting for age at onset. Conclusions: Our findings show significant inverse associations of the length of the PRNP octapeptide repeat with age at disease onset and disease duration in the spongiform encephalopathies.
Mapping of the IRF8 Gene Identifies a 3′UTR Variant Associated with Risk of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia but not Other Common Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Subtypes

Background: Our genome-wide association study (GWAS) of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) identified 4 highly correlated intronic variants within the IRF8 gene that were associated with CLL. These results were further supported by a recent meta-analysis of our GWAS with two other GWAS of CLL, supporting the IRF8 gene as a strong candidate for CLL risk. Methods: To refine the genetic association of CLL risk, we conducted Sanger sequencing of IRF8 in 94 CLL cases and 96 controls. We then conducted fine mapping by genotyping 39 variants (of which 10 were identified from sequencing) in 745 CLL cases and 1,521 controls. We also assessed these associations with risk of other non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) subtypes. Results: The strongest association with CLL risk was observed with a common single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) located within the 3′ untranslated region (UTR) of IRF8 (rs1044873, log additive OR = 0.7, P = 1.81 × 10−6). This SNP was not associated with the other NHL subtypes (all P > 0.05). Conclusions: We provide evidence that rs1044873 in the IRF8 gene accounts for the initial GWAS signal for CLL risk. This association appears to be unique to CLL with little support for association with other common NHL subtypes. Future work is needed to assess functional role of IRF8 in CLL etiology. Impact: These data provide support that a functional variant within the 3′UTR of IRF8 may be driving the GWAS signal seen on 16q24.1 for CLL risk. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 22(3); 461–6. ©2013 AACR.
Non-invasive characterization of normal and pathological tissues through dynamic infrared imaging in the hamster cheek pouch oral cancer model

Biomedical infrared thermography, a non-invasive and functional imaging method, provides information on the normal and abnormal status and response of tissues in terms of spatial and temporal variations in body infrared radiance. It is especially attractive in cancer research due to the hypervascular and hypermetabolic activity of solid tumors. Moreover, healthy tissues like skin or mucosa exposed to radiation can be examined since inflammation, changes in water content, exudation, desquamation, erosion and necrosis, between others, are factors that modify their thermal properties. In this work we performed Dynamic Infrared Imaging (DIRI) to contribute to the understanding and evaluation of normal tissue, tumor and precancerous tissue response and radiotoxicity in an in vivo model, the hamster cheek pouch, exposed to Boron Neutron Capture Therapy. In this study, we particularly focused on the observation of temperature changes under forced transient conditions associated with mass moisture transfer in the tissue-air interface, in each tissue with or without treatment. We proposed a simple mathematical procedure that considerers the heat transfer from tissue to ambient through convection and evaporation to model the transient (exponential decay o recover) thermal study. The data was fitted to determined the characteristic decay and recovery time constants of the temperature as a function of time. Also this model allowed to explore the mass flux of moisture, as a degree of evaporation occurring on the tissue surface. Tissue thermal responses under provocation tests could be used as a non-invasive method to characterize tissue physiology.
Biodegradable Carriers for Delivery of VEGF Plasmid DNA for the Treatment of Critical Limb Ischemia

The safe and efficient delivery of therapeutic nucleic acid is a prerequisite for an effective DNA therapy. In this study, we condensed the low molecular weight polyethylenimine (PEI, 1.8k Da) with 2,6-pyridinedicarboxaldehyde (PDA), both of which are degradable in vivo, to synthesize a biodegradable polycationic material (PDAPEI) to deliver vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plasmid DNA (pDNA). Particle size and zeta potential of this novel degradable PEI derivatives-pDNA nanoparticle were investigated and in vitro cytotoxicity was estimated on human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs). Using pDNA-encoding VEGF-A and green fluorescence protein (GFP), we also checked transfection efficiency of the vector (PDAPEI) and found its excellent performance at 40 w/w ratio. We successfully established peripheral ischemia animal model on C57/BL6J mice to evaluate the therapeutic effect of PDAPEI/pVEGF-A polyplex system on ischemic disease and a conclusion was made that PDAPEI is a promising gene vector in the treatment of peripheral ischemic artery disease (PAD).
ON THE STABILITY OF NETWORKS OPERATING TCP-LIKE CONGESTION CONTROL

We derive decentralized and scalable stability conditions for a fluid approximation of a class of Internet-like communications networks operating a modified form of TCP-like congestion control. The network consists of an arbitrary interconnection of sources and links with heterogeneous propagation delays. The model here allows for arbitrary concave utility functions and the presence of dynamics at both the sources and the links.
THE CHANDRA DEEP FIELD-SOUTH SURVEY: 4 Ms SOURCE CATALOGS

We present source catalogs for the 4 Ms Chandra Deep Field-South (CDF-S), which is the deepest Chandra survey to date and covers an area of 464.5 arcmin2. We provide a main Chandra source catalog, which contains 740 X-ray sources that are detected with wavdetect at a false-positive probability threshold of 10−5 in at least one of three X-ray bands (0.5–8 keV, full band; 0.5–2 keV, soft band; and 2–8 keV, hard band) and also satisfy a binomial-probability source-selection criterion of P < 0.004 (i.e., the probability of sources not being real is less than 0.004); this approach is designed to maximize the number of reliable sources detected. A total of 300 main-catalog sources are new compared to the previous 2 Ms CDF-S main-catalog sources. We determine X-ray source positions using centroid and matched-filter techniques and obtain a median positional uncertainty of ≈0. ″42. We also provide a supplementary catalog, which consists of 36 sources that are detected with wavdetect at a false-positive probability threshold of 10−5, satisfy the condition of 0.004 < P < 0.1, and have an optical counterpart with R < 24. Multiwavelength identifications, basic optical/infrared/radio photometry, and spectroscopic/photometric redshifts are provided for the X-ray sources in the main and supplementary catalogs. Seven hundred sixteen (≈97%) of the 740 main-catalog sources have multiwavelength counterparts, with 673 (≈94% of 716) having either spectroscopic or photometric redshifts. The 740 main-catalog sources span broad ranges of full-band flux and 0.5–8 keV luminosity; the 300 new main-catalog sources span similar ranges although they tend to be systematically lower. Basic analyses of the X-ray and multiwavelength properties of the sources indicate that >75% of the main-catalog sources are active galactic nuclei (AGNs); of the 300 new main-catalog sources, about 35% are likely normal and starburst galaxies, reflecting the rise of normal and starburst galaxies at the very faint flux levels uniquely accessible to the 4 Ms CDF-S. Near the center of the 4 Ms CDF-S (i.e., within an off-axis angle of 3′), the observed AGN and galaxy source densities have reached 9800+1300 − 1100 deg−2 and 6900+1100 − 900 deg−2, respectively. Simulations show that our main catalog is highly reliable and is reasonably complete. The mean backgrounds (corrected for vignetting and exposure-time variations) are 0.063 and 0.178 counts Ms−1 pixel−1 (for a pixel size of 0.″492) for the soft and hard bands, respectively; the majority of the pixels have zero background counts. The 4 Ms CDF-S reaches on-axis flux limits of ≈3.2 × 10−17, 9.1 × 10−18, and 5.5 × 10−17 erg cm−2 s−1 for the full, soft, and hard bands, respectively. An increase in the CDF-S exposure time by a factor of ≈2–2.5 would provide further significant gains and probe key unexplored discovery space.
A Reappraisal of the Ortolani Examination in Children With Developmental Dysplasia of the Hip

The Ortolani maneuver is currently accepted as an accurate test to detect developmental dislocation of the hip. However, the clinical sign does not always correlate with the findings seen on ultrasound. The ultrasound-documented position of the femoral head was correlated with the result of the clinical Ortolani examination to better understand the value and validity of the Ortolani test. Two populations were compared: hips with a positive Ortolani sign and hips with a negative Ortolani sign but with an ultrasound-documented dislocated hip. In the Ortolani-positive group, there were 45 patients (53 affected hips), and in the Ortolani-negative group, there were 24 patients (25 dislocated hips). Position of the femoral head at rest, side of involvement, and sex showed no significant difference between the Ortolani-positive and -negative groups. Mean age of patients in the Ortolani-positive group was less (mean, 28 days) and was statistically different (P < 0.05) from those in the Ortolani-negative group (mean, 91 days). In conclusion, dislocated hips that show similar femoral head movement can produce an Ortolani-positive examination in a younger patient and an Ortolani-negative examination in an older patient. The classic clinical method described by Ortolani for detecting hip dislocation in which the thigh of the affected hip is abducted and the femoral head was thought to be reducing into the acetabulum can be erroneous. All Ortolani-positive hips were abnormal, as the sensation characteristic of a positive Ortolani examination may be felt without full reduction and, in some cases, with no reduction, as documented by ultrasound.
Vertical Structure of the Ionosphere and Upper Neutral Atmosphere of Saturn from the Pioneer Radio Occultation

Radio occultation measurements at S band (2.293 gigahertz) of the ionosphere and upper neutral atmosphere of Saturn were obtained during the flyby of the Pioneer 11 Saturn spacecraft on 5 September 1979. Preliminary analysis of the occultation exit data taken at a latitude of 9.5�S and a solar zenith angle of 90.6� revealed the presence of a rather thin ionosphere, having a main peak electron density of about 9.4 x 10/3 per cubic centimeter at an altitude of about 2800 above the level of a neutral number density of 1019 per cubic centimeter and a lower peak of about 7 x 103 per cubic centimeter at 2200 kilometers. Data in the neutral atmosphere were obtained to a pressure level of about 120 millibars. The temperature structure derived from these data is consistent with the results of the Pioneer 11 Saturn infrared radiometer experiment (for a helium fraction of 15 percent) and with models derived from Earth-based observations for a helium fraction by number of about 4 to 10 percent. The helium fraction will be further defined by mutual iteration with the infrared radiometer team.
Suspicious young minds: paranoia and mistrust in 8- to 14-year-olds in the UK and Hong Kong

Background Research on paranoia in adults suggests a spectrum of severity, but this dimensional approach has yet to be applied to children or to groups from different countries. Aims To investigate the structure, prevalence and correlates of mistrust in children living in the UK and Hong Kong. Method Children aged 8–14 years from the UK (n = 1086) and Hong Kong (n = 1412) completed a newly developed mistrust questionnaire as well as standard questionnaire measures of anxiety, self-esteem, aggression and callous–unemotional traits. Results Confirmatory factor analysis of the UK data supported a three-factor model – mistrust at home, mistrust at school and general mistrust – with a clear positive skew in the data: just 3.4%, 8.5% and 4.1% of the children endorsed at least half of the mistrust items for home, school and general subscales respectively. These findings were replicated in Hong Kong. Moreover, compared with their peers, ‘mistrustful’ children (in both countries) reported elevated rates of anxiety, low self-esteem, aggression and callous–unemotional traits. Conclusions Mistrust may exist as a quantitative trait in children, which, as in adults, is associated with elevated risks of internalising and externalising problems.
Learning assistive teleoperation behaviors from demonstration

Emergency response in hostile environments often involves remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) that are teleoperated as interaction with the environment is typically required. Many ROV tasks are common to such scenarios and are often recurrent. We show how a probabilistic approach can be used to learn a task behavior model from data. Such a model can then be used to assist an operator performing the same task in future missions. We show how this approach can capture behaviors (constraints) that are present in the training data, and how this model can be combined with the operator's input online. We present an illustrative planar example and elaborate with a non-Destructive testing (NDT) scanning task on a teleoperation mock-up using a two-armed Baxter robot. We demonstrate how our approach can learn from examples task specific behaviors and automatically control the overall system, combining the operator's input and the learned model online, in an assistive teleoperation manner. This can potentially reduce the time and effort required to perform teleoperation tasks that are commonplace to ROV missions in the context of security, maintenance and rescue robotics.
Winners and Losers in the Folk Epistemology of Lotteries

We conducted five experiments that reveal some main contours of the folk epistemology of lotteries. The folk tend to think that you don't know that your lottery ticket lost, based on the long odds ("statistical cases"); by contrast, the folk tend to think that you do know that your lottery ticket lost, based on a news report ("testimonial cases"). We evaluate three previous explanations for why people deny knowledge in statistical cases: the justification account, the chance account, and the statistical account. None of them seems to work. We then propose a new explanation of our own, the formulaic account, according to which some people deny knowledge in statistical cases due to formulaic expression.
Bibliometrics to webometrics

Bibliometrics has changed out of all recognition since 1958; becoming established as a field, being taught widely in library and information science schools, and being at the core of a number of science evaluation research groups around the world. This was all made possible by the work of Eugene Garfield and his Science Citation Index. This article reviews the distance that bibliometrics has travelled since 1958 by comparing early bibliometrics with current practice, and by giving an overview of a range of recent developments, such as patent analysis, national research evaluation exercises, visualization techniques, new applications, online citation indexes, and the creation of digital libraries. Webometrics, a modern, fast-growing offshoot of bibliometrics, is reviewed in detail. Finally, future prospects are discussed with regard to both bibliometrics and webometrics.
Cardiac myoglobin deficit has evolved repeatedly in teleost fishes

Myoglobin (Mb) is the classic vertebrate oxygen-binding protein present in aerobic striated muscles. It functions principally in oxygen delivery and provides muscle with its characteristic red colour. Members of the Antarctic icefish family (Channichthyidae) are widely thought to be extraordinary for lacking cardiac Mb expression, a fact that has been attributed to their low metabolic rate and unusual evolutionary history. Here, we report that cardiac Mb deficit, associated with pale heart colour, has evolved repeatedly during teleost evolution. This trait affects both gill- and air-breathing species from temperate to tropical habitats across a full range of salinities. Cardiac Mb deficit results from total pseudogenization in three-spined stickleback and is associated with a massive reduction in mRNA level in two species that evidently retain functional Mb. The results suggest that near or complete absence of Mb-assisted oxygen delivery to heart muscle is a common facet of teleost biodiversity, even affecting lineages with notable oxygen demands. We suggest that Mb deficit may affect how different teleost species deal with increased tissue oxygen demands arising under climate change.
Operant Conditioning

As Max Hamilton (1970) has said, “sticks and carrots have always been used to modify human behaviour”. The supposed influences of punishments and rewards have been accepted uncritically by mankind throughout the ages, with few really systematic attempts to investigate the field until the classical conditioning studies of Pavlov, which are a landmark in the scientific study of learning and behaviour modification, despite the scornful contention of George Bernard Shaw (1944) that Pavlov learned little from his dogs which he could not have learned from the nearest nursemaid. A further major development, usually associated with the name of Skinner and given the descriptive title of operant conditioning, was the study of much more complex conditioned responses and behaviours and their modification. As Meyer and Chesser (1970) point out, this form of conditioning has been employed by animal trainers. parents and teachers for centuries without apology to Skinner rather like Moliere’s bourgeois Reti t i / liotnmc who spoke prose without knowing it .
Implementation of a transmission line model for fast simulation of fluid flow dynamics

An implementation of a lumped and 1-dimensional pipeline model for simulation of fast pressure and flow transients such as water-hammer effects is presented. It is an extension of the classical Transmission Line Model (TLM), a transfer matrix representation of a pipeline, relating pressure and volume flow rates at the extremities of a pipeline. The proposed model has extended previous work in different aspects. The extensions were developed for the detailed operational investigation of a pipeline for the transport of carbon dioxide from a carbon capture plant to a suitable location for the geological storage of supercritical, dense phase carbon dioxide. A lumped temperature model, derived as the TLM model by integrating the distributed dynamics, has been added to describe the effect of heat losses in long pipelines. A dynamic friction model that is explicit in the medium and pipeline characterisitcs has also been included. Finally, it is shown that, with simple adjustments, the model can reasonably well describe the pressure dynamics in turbulent flow conditions. Some simulations have been carried out to compare the performance of the proposed model to the one from the Modelica Standard Library, and the results were also compared to measurement results from the literature. The resulting model has become useful for a wide variety of engineering applications: pipelines for gas and oil, district heating networks, water distribution networks, wastewater systems, hydro power plants and more. In the lumped, constant temperature version, there are no discretization artifacts, and even in the discretized version taking into account spatial and temporal changes in temperature, discretization artifacts are much smaller than for the standard finite volume model. Moreover, the short simulation times make the model suitable for real-time applications.
Robust Fusion of Irregularly Sampled Data Using Adaptive Normalized Convolution

We present a novel algorithm for image fusion from irregularly sampled data. The method is based on the framework of normalized convolution (NC), in which the local signal is approximated through a projection onto a subspace. The use of polynomial basis functions in this paper makes NC equivalent to a local Taylor series expansion. Unlike the traditional framework, however, the window function of adaptive NC is adapted to local linear structures. This leads to more samples of the same modality being gathered for the analysis, which in turn improves signal-to-noise ratio and reduces diffusion across discontinuities. A robust signal certainty is also adapted to the sample intensities to minimize the influence of outliers. Excellent fusion capability of adaptive NC is demonstrated through an application of super-resolution image reconstruction.