Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The first XMM-Newton spectrum of a high redshift quasar - PKS 0537-286

We present XMM-Newton observations of the high redshift z=3.104, radio-loud quasar PKS 0537-286. The EPIC CCD cameras provide the highest signal-to-noise spectrum of a high-z quasar to date. The EPIC observations show that PKS 0537-286 is extremely X-ray luminous (Lx=2x10^47 erg/s), with an unusually hard X-ray spectrum (Gamma=1.27+/-0.02). The flat power-law emission extends over the whole observed energy range; there is no evidence of intrinsic absorption, which has been claimed in PKS 0537-286 and other high z quasars. However, there is evidence for weak Compton reflection. A redshifted iron K line, observed at 1.5 keV - corresponding to 6.15 keV in the quasar rest frame - is detected at 95% confidence. If confirmed, this is the most distant iron K line known. The line equivalent width is small (33eV), consistent with the `X-ray Baldwin effect' observed in other luminous quasars. The reflected continuum is also weak (R=0.25). We find the overall spectral energy distribution of PKS 0537-286 is dominated by the X-ray emission, which, together with the flat power-law and weak reflection features, suggests that the X-radiation from PKS 0537-286 is dominated by inverse Compton emission associated with a face-on relativistic jet.
Oral and Dental Health in Systemic Sclerosis: Is it a Window to Other Systemic Affections?

Background : Oral and periodontal manifestations are common in systemic sclerosis (SSc), which may result in poor nutritional status and signi ﬁ cant morbidity. A better understanding of these manifestations is crucial for better patient outcomes. We aimed to evaluate dental and oral manifestations in patients with SSc in comparison to healthy control and to study the relationship between these ﬁ ndings and SSc disease activity index, skin thickness, other systemic affection, as well as the oral health-related quality of life in these patients. Patients and methods : Fifty patients with SSc were included in this case e control study (group A) and 50 healthy controls (group B). The assessment included; a modi ﬁ ed Rodnan skin score (mRss), revised EUSTAR activity index measurements, and oral health impact pro ﬁ le 5 items (OHIP5). The dental and oral assessment included probing pocket depth (PPD), clinical attachment level (CAL), gingival recession height measurement (GH), gingival index (GI), mobility index, plaque index, the decayed, missing, and ﬁ lled index (DMF index), bleeding on probing (BOP), dry mouth, and inter-incisal distance (ID) measurement. Result : In group A, the dental and oral ﬁ ndings were statistically signi ﬁ cantly higher compared to group B, except for the ID, which was reduced in group A. There was a negative correlation between ID and mRss and a positive correlation between CAL, BOP, and mRss. Dental parameters (PPD, CAL, GH, GI, plaque index, DMF, and BOP) correlated positively with the revised EUSTAR activity index, while ID correlated negatively. ID correlated negatively with gastrointestinal tract disorders and interstitial lung disease, while ﬁ brosis of the buccal mucosa or the tongue, PPD, CAL, GH, GI, and DMF correlated positively. A positive correlation was found between OHIP5 and each of PPD, CAL, GH, GI, DMF, ﬁ brosis of buccal mucosa or tongue, and negatively with ID. Conclusion : The incidence of oral and periodontal manifestations was higher in patients with SSc than controls. An association was found between different oral and dental ﬁ ndings and disease activity index, skin thickness, and OHIP.
Shewanella sp. O23S as a Driving Agent of a System Utilizing Dissimilatory Arsenate-Reducing Bacteria Responsible for Self-Cleaning of Water Contaminated with Arsenic

The purpose of this study was a detailed characterization of Shewanella sp. O23S, a strain involved in arsenic transformation in ancient gold mine waters contaminated with arsenic and other heavy metals. Physiological analysis of Shewanella sp. O23S showed that it is a facultative anaerobe, capable of growth using arsenate, thiosulfate, nitrate, iron or manganite as a terminal electron acceptor, and lactate or citrate as an electron donor. The strain can grow under anaerobic conditions and utilize arsenate in the respiratory process in a broad range of temperatures (10–37 °C), pH (4–8), salinity (0%–2%), and the presence of heavy metals (Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Mo, Se, V and Zn). Under reductive conditions this strain can simultaneously use arsenate and thiosulfate as electron acceptors and produce yellow arsenic (III) sulfide (As2S3) precipitate. Simulation of As-removal from water containing arsenate (2.5 mM) and thiosulfate (5 mM) showed 82.5% efficiency after 21 days of incubation at room temperature. Based on the obtained results, we have proposed a model of a microbially mediated system for self-cleaning of mine waters contaminated with arsenic, in which Shewanella sp. O23S is the main driving agent.
Isolation and characterization of rat schwannoma neurite-promoting factor: evidence that the factor contains laminin

Rat RN22 schwannoma cells in vitro release into their growth medium a macromolecular factor that, when bound to polyornithine-coated culture substrata, will stimulate neuritic regeneration from axotomized peripheral and central neurons. During the purification of this factor, the neurite-promoting activity co-purifies with laminin immunoreactivity as measured by an enzyme-linked immunoadsorbent assay. The purified factor has an immunoreactivity per milligram of protein similar to that of purified rat yolk sac tumor laminin. After sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) under reducing conditions, the purified factor exhibits a major band at 200 kilodaltons (kD) and two minor ones at about 130 and 35 kD. The 200-kD band comigrates with the 200-kD band of purified rat laminin. After SDS- PAGE under non-reducing conditions, the rat schwannoma factor and rat laminin both exhibit a band in the 900-kD range with the schwannoma factor band migrating slightly faster than the laminin one. The 200-kD (reducing conditions) and 900-kD (non-reducing conditions) bands of both the schwannoma factor and laminin are stained by immunoblotting with antisera raised against rat and human laminin and against a partially purified preparation of the schwannoma factor. On immunoblots the 400-kD band of laminin (a band not seen in the schwannoma factor preparation) also stains with all three antisera. When the antibodies from each of the three antisera are immobilized on protein A-agarose beads, the beads will completely remove from solution the neurite- promoting activities of both the schwannoma factor and laminin. Antibodies raised against rat laminin fail to block the neurite- promoting activity of the purified schwannoma factor but totally block that of rat laminin. In contrast, antibodies raised against the schwannoma factor will block the neurite-promoting activities of both the schwannoma factor and laminin. By rotary shadowing electron microscopy the schwannoma factor preparation exhibits cross-shaped images similar but not identical to those previously reported for rat and mouse laminin. In addition, the schwannoma factor preparation contains images resembling proteoglycans.
A Biological Gradient Descent for Prediction Through a Combination of STDP and Homeostatic Plasticity

Identifying, formalizing, and combining biological mechanisms that implement known brain functions, such as prediction, is a main aspect of research in theoretical neuroscience. In this letter, the mechanisms of spike-timing-dependent plasticity and homeostatic plasticity, combined in an original mathematical formalism, are shown to shape recurrent neural networks into predictors. Following a rigorous mathematical treatment, we prove that they implement the online gradient descent of a distance between the network activity and its stimuli. The convergence to an equilibrium, where the network can spontaneously reproduce or predict its stimuli, does not suffer from bifurcation issues usually encountered in learning in recurrent neural networks.
A reliable MTD design for MLC flash-memory storage systems

The reliability of flash-memory chips has dropped dramatically in recent years. In order to solve this problem, a reliable memory technology device (MTD) design is proposed to address this concern at the device driver layer so as to release the design complexity of flash-memory management software/firmware and to improve the maintainability and portability of flash management designs for existing and future products. The proposed design was evaluated through a series of experiments based on realistic traces to show that the proposed approach could significantly improve the reliability of flash memory with limited overheads.
Short-term Administration of Glucagon-like Peptide-2. Effects on Bone Mineral Density and Markers of Bone Turnover in Short-Bowel Patients with No Colon

Background: Glucagon-like peptide 2 (GLP-2) is a newly discovered intestinotrophic hormone. We have recently reported that a 5-week GLP-2 treatment improved the intestinal absorptive capacity of shortbowel patients with no colon. Additionally, GLP-2 treatment was associated with changes in body composition that included a significant increase in total body bone mass. This article describes the effect of GLP-2 on spinal and hip bone mineral density (BMD) and biochemical markers of bone turnover in these patients. Methods: In an open-labelled pilot study, eight short-bowel patients (3M, 5F; mean age 49 years) with small-bowel resection and no colon received 400 μg s.c. of GLP-2 twice daily for 5 weeks. Four received home parenteral nutrition (mean length of residual jejunum 83 cm) and 4 did not (mean length of ileum resected 106 cm). The outcome measures were the mean percent change from baseline in spinal and hip BMD measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, changes in four biochemical markers of bone-turnover, PTH, 25-hydroxy vitamin-D, and the intestinal absorption of calcium. Results: Mean ± s x (SEM) percent changes in spinal and hip BMD were 1.1 ± 0.4% ( P < 0.05) and 1.9 ± 0.8% ( P = 0.06), respectively. The intestinal calcium absorption increased by 2.7% ( P = 0.87). Serum ionized calcium increased in 5/8 patients with a concomitant decrease in serum PTH values. Three of the four markers of bone turnover decreased. Conclusion: A 5-week GLP-2 administration significantly increased spinal BMD in short-bowel patients with no colon. The mechanism by which GLP-2 affects bone metabolism remains unclear, but may be related to an increased mineralization of bone resulting from an improved intestinal calcium absorption.
GPU virtualization on VMware's hosted I/O architecture

Modern graphics co-processors (GPUs) can produce high fidelity images several orders of magnitude faster than general purpose CPUs, and this performance expectation is rapidly becoming ubiquitous in personal computers. Despite this, GPU virtualization is a nascent field of research. This paper introduces a taxonomy of strategies for GPU virtualization and describes in detail the specific GPU virtualization architecture developed for VMware's hosted products (VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion). We analyze the performance of our GPU virtualization with a combination of applications and microbenchmarks. We also compare against software rendering, the GPU virtualization in Parallels Desktop 3.0, and the native GPU. We find that taking advantage of hardware acceleration significantly closes the gap between pure emulation and native, but that different implementations and host graphics stacks show distinct variation. The microbenchmarks show that our architecture amplifies the overheads in the traditional graphics API bottlenecks: draw calls, downloading buffers, and batch sizes. Our virtual GPU architecture runs modern graphics-intensive games and applications at interactive frame rates while preserving virtual machine portability. The applications we tested achieve from 86% to 12% of native rates and 43 to 18 frames per second with VMware Fusion 2.0.
Evaluation of High Temperature Strength of a Ni-Base Alloy 740H for Advanced Ultra-Supercritical Power Plant

High temperature strength of a nickel-based superalloy, Alloy 740H, was investigated to evaluate its applicability to advanced ultrasupercritical (A-USC) power plants. A series of tensile, creep and fatigue tests were performed at 700°C, and the high temperature mechanical properties of Alloy 740H was compared with those of other candidate materials such as Alloy 617 and Alloy 263. Although the effect of the strain rate on the 0.2% proof stress was negligible, the ultimate tensile strength and the rupture elongation significantly decreased with decreasing strain rate, and the transgranular fracture at higher strain rate changed to intergranular fracture at lower strain rate. The time to creep rupture of Alloy 740H was longer than those of Alloy 617 and Alloy 263. The fatigue limit of Alloy 740H was about half of the ultimate tensile strength. Further, Alloy 740H showed greater fatigue strength than Alloy 617 and Alloy 263, especially at low strain range.
Impact of characteristics of individuals on evaluating the quantitative studies

Usability studies in the web domain are based on various metrics, but the question is how to apply these metrics to evaluate a larger group of people. When we consider that every user has different qualities, skills and experiences, we could expect that the results of testing of same scenarios will be different. We aim our research to show that quantitative studies can provide more accurate results if we work with information about personal characteristics of participants. We have already conducted a preliminary controlled experiment on a small sample of participants, which explores influence of a web literacy.
Ranibizumab in neovascular age-related macular degeneration

Neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a visually devastating condition resulting from choroidal neovascularization and secondary photoreceptor loss. Ranibizumab and bevacizumab are medications that target vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). While other therapies have demonstrated some ability to reduce the risk of losing vision from neovascular AMD, most patients continue to lose some degree of central visual acuity. There is growing evidence that intravitreal administration of ranibizumab and bevacizumab is effective in significantly improving the visual acuity in patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration.
Verb Retrieval in Brain-Damaged Subjects: 1. Analysis of Stimulus, Lexical, and Conceptual Factors

Verb retrieval for action naming was assessed in 53 brain-damaged subjects by administering a standardized test with 100 items. The goal of the study was to gain further insight into the nature of verb processing impairments by investigating the influence of several kinds of stimulus, lexical, and conceptual factors on the subjects' performance at the level of group tendencies and also at the level of individual differences. (1) Stimulus factors: visual complexity, familiarity, image agreement, and one vs. two pictures (which corresponds to ongoing vs. completed actions); (2) lexical factors: name agreement, verb frequency, and whether the root of the target verb has a homophonous noun; (3) conceptual factors: whether the action is done with the hand or the body, whether the action involves one or two core participants, whether the undergoer of the action has a change of internal state, whether the undergoer has a change of spatial location, and whether the actor makes use of an instrument in carrying out the action. The subjects were divided into an impaired group (n = 19) and an unimpaired group (n = 34) on the basis of their overall performance on the test. For both groups of subjects, verb retrieval was significantly affected by the following factors: familiarity, image agreement, name agreement, homophonous noun, and undergoer change of location. These results indicate that, at the level of group analysis, some factors have a stronger influence on verb retrieval for action naming than others. Moreover, the finding that the two groups exhibited the same general pattern of factor sensitivity suggests that although the processing efficiency of the mechanisms that subserve verb retrieval is degraded in the impaired group, the basic functional properties of these mechanisms may not be qualitatively very different from those of the unimpaired group. Further analyses were conducted at the level of individual subjects and revealed a considerable amount of variation with regard to factor sensitivity. Many patterns of associations and dissociations of factors were found across the subjects, which suggests that the task of retrieving verbs for naming actions is quite complex and that different subjects can be influenced by different properties of both the stimuli and the target verbs.
Eligibility for Intravenous Recombinant Tissue-Type Plasminogen Activator Within a Population: The Effect of the European Cooperative Acute Stroke Study (ECASS) III Trial

Background and Purpose— The publication of the European Cooperative Acute Stroke Study (ECASS III) expanded the treatment time to thrombolysis for acute ischemic stroke from 3 to 4.5 hours from symptom onset. The impact of the expanded time window on treatment rates has not been comprehensively evaluated in a population-based study. Methods— All patients with an ischemic stroke presenting to an emergency department during calendar year 2005 in the 17 hospitals that compromise the large 1.3 million Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky population were included in the analysis. Criteria for exclusion from thrombolytic therapy are analyzed retrospectively for both the standard and expanded timeframes with varying door-to-needle times. Results— During the study period, 1838 ischemic strokes presenting to an emergency department were identified. A small proportion of them arrived in the expanded time window (3.4%) compared with the standard time window (22%). Only 0.5% of those who arrived in this timeframe met eligibility criteria for thrombolysis compared with 5.9% using standard eligibility criteria in the standard timeframe. These results did not vary significantly by repeated analysis varying the door-to-needle time or the expanded time window's exclusion criteria. Conclusions— In reality, the expanded time window for thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke benefits few patients. If we are to improve recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator administration rates, our focus should be on improving stroke awareness, transport to facilities with ability to administer thrombolysis, and familiarity of physicians with acute stroke treatment guidelines.
Boronophenylalanine, a boron delivery agent for boron neutron capture therapy, is transported by ATB0,+, LAT1 and LAT2

The efficacy of boron neutron capture therapy relies on the selective delivery of boron carriers to malignant cells. p‐Boronophenylalanine (BPA), a boron delivery agent, has been proposed to be localized to cells through transporter‐mediated mechanisms. In this study, we screened aromatic amino acid transporters to identify BPA transporters. Human aromatic amino acid transporters were functionally expressed in Xenopus oocytes and examined for BPA uptake and kinetic parameters. The roles of the transporters in BPA uptake were characterized in cancer cell lines. For the quantitative assessment of BPA uptake, HPLC was used throughout the study. Among aromatic amino acid transporters, ATB0,+, LAT1 and LAT2 were found to transport BPA with Km values of 137.4 ± 11.7, 20.3 ± 0.8 and 88.3 ± 5.6 μM, respectively. Uptake experiments in cancer cell lines revealed that the LAT1 protein amount was the major determinant of BPA uptake at 100 μM, whereas the contribution of ATB0,+ became significant at 1000 μM, accounting for 20–25% of the total BPA uptake in MCF‐7 breast cancer cells. ATB0,+, LAT1 and LAT2 transport BPA at affinities comparable with their endogenous substrates, suggesting that they could mediate effective BPA uptake in vivo. The high and low affinities of LAT1 and ATB0,+, respectively, differentiate their roles in BPA uptake. ATB0,+, as well as LAT1, could contribute significantly to the tumor accumulation of BPA at clinical dose.
Vertebral deformation in urban Swedish men and women: Prevalence based on 797 subjects

Vertebral fracture-deformation, a common feature of osteoporosis, shows considerable age, sex and geographical variation. We present the prevalence in an urban population of south-west Sweden. Lateral spine radiographs of 797 men and women, age 50-86 years, were evaluated by morphomety. The age-standardized prevalence of subjects with vertebral deformation using the deformation criterion -3 SD was 39 (95%CI 34-43)% in women and 33 (95%CI 28-38)% in men. The prevalence increased with age in both sexes. After adjustment for age, women had a higher prevalence than men, odds ratio 1.4. The proportion of vertebrae with deformation ranged from 2%-11%, increasing with age. The vertebrae most commonly deformed were Th 11, Th 12 and L1.
Obtaining Parotid Saliva Specimens after Major Surgery

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a standard method of collecting saliva from postoperative patients. Saliva was collected from patients following major abdominal surgery from both parotid glands in intraoral cups and measured in milliliters. Trained research nurses stimulated saliva production with lemon juice and collected saliva at 4 time points on postoperative day 2. Collection time was measured with a stopwatch, and flow rate was calculated by dividing the amount in milliliters by collection time in minutes. Attrition was 9% due to ineligibility after enrollment and 1 withdrawal. In participating patients (n = 68), there were 272 tests planned and 28% were missing. The reasons were postoperative health problems, hospital discharge, and not wanting to be bothered. When saliva collection attempts were made, three-fourths were successful, but the remainder resulted in “dry mouth. ” Milliliters, minutes, and flow rate were calculated with and without those with dry mouth. Mean flow rates were 0.23 to 0.33 ml/min excluding those with dry mouth and 0.17 to 0.24 ml/min including those with dry mouth. Saliva variables were correlated with antihypertension medications, opioids, opioid side effects, and length of surgery, but statistically significant correlations were not found consistently at all 4 time points. The findings suggest that nurse-researchers studying biological markers can successfully collect saliva from postoperative patients if they recognize the difficulties and make efforts to minimize and control for them.