Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diabetic Retinopathy and Other Ocular Findings in the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial/Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions and Complications Study

OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether intensive treatment (INT) with the goal of achieving blood glucose levels as close to the nondiabetic range as safely possible reduced the risk of onset and progression of diabetic retinopathy (DR) in subjects with type 1 diabetes (T1D) compared with conventional therapy (CON). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT) (1982–1993) was a multicenter, controlled clinical trial comparing INT with CON for onset and progression of DR. The Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions and Complications (EDIC) study (1994–present) is an observational follow-up of the DCCT cohort. RESULTS Of the 1,441 DCCT subjects, 726 had no DR (primary prevention cohort) and 715 had mild DR (secondary intervention cohort) at baseline. Subjects were followed for a mean of 6.5 years. INT median HbA1c was 7% compared with CON median of 9%. INT reduced the adjusted mean risk for the development of DR by 76% and slowed progression of DR by 54% compared with CON. Following DCCT, the HbA1c levels in the original INT and CON groups converged (year 8, INT 7.98%; CON 8.07%); nevertheless, the groups continued to have a durable effect of initial assigned therapy with significantly lower incidence of further DR progression in the INT group (hazard reduction 53–56%). Severe retinal outcomes and procedures to treat them were reduced by 50% in the original INT group. CONCLUSIONS INT delays the onset and slows the progression of DR. Furthermore, the early effects of metabolic control continue to accrue over many years despite subsequent comparable glycemic control (metabolic memory). These results emphasize the need for optimizing glycemic control as early as possible in patients with diabetes.
Implementation of antenna array beamforming by using a novel neural network structure

The present study introduces the implementation of antenna array beamforming based on a new neural network (NN) structure. The NN comprises two hidden layers, which use different interconnectivity patterns. The first one is divided in sublayers, which are equal in number to the inputs of the NN. Each sublayer communicates only with the respective input but is fully interconnected with the second hidden layer. The NN training is performed by using data sets derived by a well-known beamforming technique called minimum variance distortionless response. The trained NN is capable of serving as adaptive beamformer that makes a linear antenna array steer the main lobe towards a desired signal and place nulls towards respective interference signals in the presence of additive zero-mean Gaussian noise. The performance of the trained NN is tested by estimating the mean absolute deviation of main lobe and null directions from their respective desired directions.
Prostate cancer stem cells are targets of both innate and adaptive immunity and elicit tumor-specific immune responses

According to the cancer stem cell (CSC) theory, therapies that do not target the CSC compartment have limited, if any, chances to eradicate established tumors. While cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) have the potential to recognize and kill single neoplastic cells within a tissue, whether CSCs can be targeted by the immune system during spontaneous or vaccination-elicited responses is poorly defined. Here, we provide experimental evidence showing that CSC lines established from the prostate of transgenic adenocarcinoma of the mouse prostate (TRAMP) mice expressed prostate cancer-associated antigens, MHC Class I and II molecules as well as ligands for natural killer (NK) cell receptors. Indeed, CSC were targets for both NK cell- and CTL-mediated cytotoxicity, both in vitro and in vivo. The administration of dendritic cells pulsed with irradiated CSCs induced a tumor-specific immune response that was more robust than that induced by dendritic cells pulsed with differentiated tumor cells, delayed tumor growth in mice challenged with prostate CSCs and caused tumor regression in TRAMP mice. Thus, CSC are targeted by both innate and adaptive immune responses and might be exploited for the design of novel immunotherapeutic approaches against cancer.
Free Energy Diagram for the Heterogeneous Enzymatic Hydrolysis of Glycosidic Bonds in Cellulose*

Background: Heterogeneous enzyme catalysis is common but has rarely been rationalized through free energy diagrams. Results: The thermodynamic properties of stable and activated cellulase complexes are reported. Conclusion: The rate of enzyme-substrate complexation is entropy-controlled, whereas dissociation is controlled by enthalpy. Significance: Supposedly, this is the first elucidation of the transition states for the complexation and dissociation steps of a cellulase. Kinetic and thermodynamic data have been analyzed according to transition state theory and a simplified reaction scheme for the enzymatic hydrolysis of insoluble cellulose. For the cellobiohydrolase Cel7A from Hypocrea jecorina (Trichoderma reesei), we were able to measure or collect relevant values for all stable and activated complexes defined by the reaction scheme and hence propose a free energy diagram for the full heterogeneous process. For other Cel7A enzymes, including variants with and without carbohydrate binding module (CBM), we obtained activation parameters for the association and dissociation of the enzyme-substrate complex. The results showed that the kinetics of enzyme-substrate association (i.e. formation of the Michaelis complex) was almost entirely entropy-controlled and that the activation entropy corresponded approximately to the loss of translational and rotational degrees of freedom of the dissolved enzyme. This implied that the transition state occurred early in the path where the enzyme has lost these degrees of freedom but not yet established extensive contact interactions in the binding tunnel. For dissociation, a similar analysis suggested that the transition state was late in the path where most enzyme-substrate contacts were broken. Activation enthalpies revealed that the rate of dissociation was far more temperature-sensitive than the rates of both association and the inner catalytic cycle. Comparisons of one- and two-domain variants showed that the CBM had no influence on the transition state for association but increased the free energy barrier for dissociation. Hence, the CBM appeared to promote the stability of the complex by delaying dissociation rather than accelerating association.
Motion generation for a rover on rough terrains

This article presents an algorithm that determines safe motions for an articulated rover on rough terrains. It relies on the evaluation of a set of elementary trajectories on a digital elevation map built as the rover moves. The algorithm relies on the explicit computation of geometric constraints on the rover chassis. It has been integrated within a continuously running navigation loop on board the robot Lama, and tested under various terrain conditions.
Molecular Investigations of an Outbreak of Parainfluenza Virus Type 3 and Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infections in a Hematology Unit

ABSTRACT A large simultaneous outbreak of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and parainfluenza type 3 (PIV-3) infections occurred on an adult hematology unit. Implementation of enhanced infection control was complicated by cocirculation of the two different viruses, with prolonged viral shedding from infected patients, and placed great pressure on health care staff; of 27 infected hematopoietic stem cell transplant patients, 9 died, and the unit was closed for 2 months. Retrospective molecular investigation of the virus strains involved in the outbreak was performed by analyzing part of the fusion gene of PIV-3 and part of the glycoprotein gene of RSV. Reverse transcription-PCR on nasopharyngeal aspirates from patients infected before and during the simultaneous outbreak generated amplicons for sequence analysis. A single strain of RSV and a single strain of PIV-3 had spread from person to person within the unit; 7 patients were infected with RSV, 22 were infected with PIV-3, and 4 were infected with both viruses. The PIV-3 outbreak had started at the beginning of August 3 months before the RSV outbreak; it had arisen when PIV-3 was introduced from the community by a patient and passed to another patient, who became chronically infected with the identical strain and, in spite of being nursed in isolation, was most likely the source from which widespread infection occurred in November. Had these early cases been linked to a common PIV-3 strain at the time of diagnosis, enhanced infection control precautions might have prevented the eventual extensive spread of PIV-3, making it much easier to deal with the later RSV outbreak.
H-classic: a new method to identify classic articles in Implant Dentistry, Periodontics, and Oral Surgery.

INTRODUCTION The study of classic papers permits analysis of the past, present, and future of a specific area of knowledge. This type of analysis is becoming more frequent and more sophisticated. Our objective was to use the H-classics method, based on the h-index, to analyze classic papers in Implant Dentistry, Periodontics, and Oral Surgery (ID, P, and OS). MATERIAL AND METHODS First, an electronic search of documents related to ID, P, and OS was conducted in journals indexed in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 2014 within the category 'Dentistry, Oral Surgery & Medicine'. Second, Web of Knowledge databases were searched using Mesh terms related to ID, P, and OS. Finally, the H-classics method was applied to select the classic articles in these disciplines, collecting data on associated research areas, document type, country, institutions, and authors. RESULTS Of 267,611 documents related to ID, P, and OS retrieved from JCR journals (2014), 248 were selected as H-classics. They were published in 35 journals between 1953 and 2009, most frequently in the Journal of Clinical Periodontology (18.95%), the Journal of Periodontology (18.54%), International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Implants (9.27%), and Clinical Oral Implant Research (6.04%). These classic articles derived from the USA in 49.59% of cases and from Europe in 47.58%, while the most frequent host institution was the University of Gothenburg (17.74%) and the most frequent authors were J. Lindhe (10.48%) and S. Socransky (8.06%). CONCLUSION The H-classics approach offers an objective method to identify core knowledge in clinical disciplines such as ID, P, and OS.
Virtual Screening of Cathepsin K Inhibitors Using Docking and Pharmacophore Models

Cathepsin K is a lysosomal cysteine protease that is highly and selectively expressed in osteoclasts, the cells which degrade bone during the continuous cycle of bone degradation and formation. Inhibition of cathepsin K represents a potential therapeutic approach for diseases characterized by excessive bone resorption such as osteoporosis. In order to elucidate the essential structural features for cathepsin K, a three‐dimensional pharmacophore hypotheses were built on the basis of a set of known cathepsin K inhibitors selected from the literature using catalyst program. Several methods are used in validation of pharmacophore hypothesis were presented, and the fourth hypothesis (Hypo4) was considered to be the best pharmacophore hypothesis which has a correlation coefficient of 0.944 with training set and has high prediction of activity for a set of 30 test molecules with correlation of 0.909. The model (Hypo4) was then employed as 3D search query to screen the Maybridge database containing 59 000 compounds, to discover novel and highly potent ligands. For analyzing intermolecular interactions between protein and ligand, all the molecules were docked using Glide software. The result showed that the type and spatial location of chemical features encoded in the pharmacophore are in full agreement with the enzyme inhibitor interaction pattern identified from molecular docking.
Factors Influencing Mortality in Patients Undergoing Surgery for Acute Pancreatitis: Importance of Peripancreatic Tissue and Fluid Infection

Objectives The aims of present study were to analyze the mortality risk factors in patients who had surgery for acute pancreatitis and to assess the importance of culturing peripancreatic tissue or fluid infection to ascertain the infection status. Methods Surgery was indicated both in patients with infected severe acute pancreatitis and in those with sterile pancreatitis with an unfavorable course. During surgery, cultures were taken of tissues (pancreatic necrosis and peripancreatic fat), intra-abdominal fluid, and bile. Results Of 107 patients operated on, fluid culture was analyzed in 94 patients, pancreatic necrosis in 61 patients, peripancreatic fat in 39 patients, and bile in 38 patients. Sterile pancreatitis with sterile ascites was found in 17 patients, sterile pancreatitis with infected ascites in 22, and pancreatic tissue infection in 60. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that sterile tissue cultures, age over 65 years, and fewer than 12 days between the beginning of pain and surgery were risk factors for mortality. Sterile pancreatitis with sterile ascites and sterile pancreatitis with infected ascites had similar postoperative mortality (41% and 50%, respectively); the group with pancreatic tissue infection had a lower mortality (20%). Conclusions Early surgery, advanced age, and sterility of tissue cultures have been demonstrated as mortality factors for acute pancreatitis. Intra-abdominal fluid may be infected in the presence of sterile necrosis.
Effectiveness of constraint-induced movement therapy in chronic stroke patients.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) in dexterity with Action Research Arm Test (ARA test), hand grip strength, pinch strength of affected upper extremity in chronic stroke patients. MATERIAL AND METHOD An observer-blinded randomized control trial, 69 chronic stroke patients were allocated either to constraint-induced movement technique (n = 33) or conservative treatment (n = 36). The CIMT group received 6 hours of daily affected-upper-extremity training and restrained unaffected upper extremities for 5 days per week, totally 2 weeks. The control group received bimanual-upper-extremity training by conservative neurodevelopmental technique without restrained unaffected upper extremities for 2 weeks. RESULTS The CIMT group had ARA scores, pinch strength of affected upper extremities statistically significant higher than the control group at p < 0.05, but the hand grip strength had no statistically significant difference, p > 0.05. CONCLUSIONS CIMT of unaffected upper extremities has an advantage for chronic stroke patients which may be an efficacious technique of improving motor activity and exhibiting learned nonuse.
HBD: Hexagon-Based Binary Descriptors

In this paper, two new rotationally invariant hexagon-based binary descriptors (HBD), i.e., HexIDB and HexLDB, are proposed in order to obtain better feature discriminability while encoding less redundant information. Our new descriptors are generated based on a hexagonal grouping structure that improves upon the HexBinary descriptor we reported previously. The third level descriptors of HexIDB and HexLDB have 270 bits and 99 bits respectively fewer than that of SHexBinary, due to sampling ~61% fewer fields. Using learned parameters, HBD demonstrates better performance when matching the majority of the images in Mikolajczyk and Scmidt’s standard benchmark dataset, as compared to existing benchmark descriptors. Moreover, HBD also achieves promising level of performance when applied to pose estimation using the ALOI dataset, achieving ~0.5 pixels mean pose error, only slightly inferior to fixed-scale SIFT, but around 1.5 pixels better than standard SIFT.
WORKING PAPER SERIES 2006 / 05 Public Evacuation Decisions and Hurricane Track Uncertainty

Public officials with the authority to order hurricane evacuations face a difficult trade-off between risks to life and costly false alarms. The evacuation decision must be made on the basis of imperfect information, in the form of a forecast. Ideally, the decision should also be informed by measures of uncertainty and estimates of the value of waiting for updated, and more accurate, forecasts. Using a stochastic model of storm motion derived from historical tracks, this paper explores the relationship between lead time and track uncertainty for Atlantic hurricanes, and the implications for evacuation decisions and false alarm costs. Typical evacuation clearance times and forecast uncertainty imply that public officials requiring a 10% probability of failing to evacuate before a striking hurricane (a false negative) must accept that at least 75%, and for some locations over 90%, of evacuations will be false alarms. Reducing the decision lead time from 72 to 48 hours for major population centers could save on the order of $1B in evacuation costs annually. The savings differ by geographic location: for example, reducing the evacuation decision lead time from 72 to 48 hours lowers the false alarm rate from 76 to 69% at Miami, but only from 82 to 81% at New Orleans. At all lead times, New Orleans and Eastern Long Island would need to accept a higher rate of false alarm evacuations than Miami to achieve the same probability of a false negative.
A Conserved Structural Motif Mediates Retrograde Trafficking of Shiga Toxin Types 1 and 2

Shiga toxin‐producing Escherichia coli (STEC) produce two types of Shiga toxin (STx): STx1 and STx2. The toxin A‐subunits block protein synthesis, while the B‐subunits mediate retrograde trafficking. STEC infections do not have definitive treatments, and there is growing interest in generating toxin transport inhibitors for therapy. However, a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms of toxin trafficking is essential for drug development. While STx2 is more toxic in vivo, prior studies focused on STx1 B‐subunit (STx1B) trafficking. Here, we show that, compared with STx1B, trafficking of the B‐subunit of STx2 (STx2B) to the Golgi occurs with slower kinetics. Despite this difference, similar to STx1B, endosome‐to‐Golgi transport of STx2B does not involve transit through degradative late endosomes and is dependent on dynamin II, epsinR, retromer and syntaxin5. Importantly, additional experiments show that a surface‐exposed loop in STx2B (β4–β5 loop) is required for its endosome‐to‐Golgi trafficking. We previously demonstrated that residues in the corresponding β4–β5 loop of STx1B are required for interaction with GPP130, the STx1B‐specific endosomal receptor, and for endosome‐to‐Golgi transport. Overall, STx1B and STx2B share a common pathway and use a similar structural motif to traffic to the Golgi, suggesting that the underlying mechanisms of endosomal sorting may be evolutionarily conserved.
Morbidity of intracranial hemorrhage in patients with cerebral arteriovenous malformation.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Decisions on invasive arteriovenous malformation (AVM) treatment are currently based on natural-course risk estimates of AVM bleeding and assumptions on morbidity from cerebral hemorrhage in general. However, morbidity of AVM hemorrhage has rarely been reported. We sought to assess the morbidity of intracranial hemorrhage in patients with cerebral AVMs. METHODS From a prospective AVM database, 119 patients were analyzed: 115 had a hemorrhage as the diagnostic event, and 27 of them suffered a second hemorrhage during follow-up; an additional 4 patients had other diagnostic symptoms but bled during follow-up. The type (parenchymal, subarachnoid, intraventricular) and location of AVM hemorrhage were determined by CT/MR brain imaging. Disability and neurological impairment were assessed with the Barthel Index, the Rankin Scale, and the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale, with a mean follow-up time of 16.2 months. RESULTS Of the 115 incident hemorrhages, 34 (30%) were subarachnoid, 27 (23%) parenchymal, 18 (16%) intraventricular, and 36 (31%) in combined locations. In 54 patients (47%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 38% to 56%) the incident hemorrhage resulted in no neurological deficit, and an additional 43 patients (37%; 95% CI, 28% to 46%) were independent in their daily activities (Rankin 1). Fifteen patients (13%; 95% CI, 7% to 19%) were moderately disabled (Rankin 2 or 3), and 3 (3%; 95% CI, 0% to 6%) were severely disabled (Rankin > or =4). Parenchymal hemorrhages were most likely to result in a neurological deficit (52%). Type and morbidity of hemorrhage during follow-up were similar to incident events. Twenty (74%) of 27 patients with both incident and follow-up hemorrhages were normal or independent (Rankin 0 or 1). None of the patients with a hemorrhage during follow-up died during the observation period. CONCLUSIONS Hemorrhage from cerebral AVMs appears to have a lower morbidity than currently assumed. This finding encourages a reevaluation of the risks and benefits of invasive AVM treatment.
A novel scheme for space-time block coding with variable transmit diversity gain in OFDM systems

A novel scheme for space-time block coding with a variable transmit diversity gain is proposed for OFDM systems. The OFDM symbols are divided into two groups of orthogonal sub-symbols with each group coded in Alamouli STBC in the coding, and the new scheme for STBC is constructed by differently combining the coded data of each group with the different transmit diversity gain able to be achieved by linearly processing and correspondingly combining the received data on the sub-carriers. The results of computer simulation show that the average SNR for the proposed scheme has been improved 6dB for the double diversity scheme and 10dB for the quadruple diversity scheme compared with the OFDM system without diversity when BER is 10/sup -2/.
Polyamine Composition and Expression of Genes Related to Polyamine Biosynthesis in an Aphid Endosymbiont,Buchnera

ABSTRACT Polyamine composition in an aphid endosymbiotic bacterium,Buchnera sp. , was determined by high-performance liquid chromatographic analysis. We found that Buchnera contained virtually only a single polyamine, spermidine. The spermidine content of Buchnera was considerably higher in young aphids and tended to decrease with the age of the host. Expression ofspeD and speE, whose gene products are key enzymes in the synthesis of spermidine, was analyzed by real-time quantitative reverse transcription-PCR. It was shown that the levels of their mRNAs fluctuated in line with the spermidine content.
Medication Adherence: Its Importance in Cardiovascular Outcomes

Medication adherence usually refers to whether patients take their medications as prescribed (eg, twice daily), as well as whether they continue to take a prescribed medication. Medication nonadherence is a growing concern to clinicians, healthcare systems, and other stakeholders (eg, payers) because of mounting evidence that it is prevalent and associated with adverse outcomes and higher costs of care. To date, measurement of patient medication adherence and use of interventions to improve adherence are rare in routine clinical practice. The goals of the present report are to address (1) different methods of measuring adherence, (2) the prevalence of medication nonadherence, (3) the association between nonadherence and outcomes, (4) the reasons for nonadherence, and finally, (5) interventions to improve medication adherence.