Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The influence of surgical technique on early posttransplant atrial fibrillation – comparison of biatrial, bicaval, and total orthotopic heart transplantation

Purpose Early posttransplant atrial fibrillation (AF) has been associated with worse clinical outcomes after heart transplantation (HTX). The type of surgical technique may constitute a relevant risk factor for AF. Patients and methods This retrospective single-center study included 530 adult patients. Patients were stratified by surgical technique (biatrial, bicaval, or total orthotopic HTX) and early posttransplant heart rhythm (AF or sinus rhythm). Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to evaluate risk factors for AF. Results A total of 161 patients received biatrial HTX (30.4%), 115 bicaval HTX (21.7%), and 254 total orthotopic HTX (47.9%). Sixty-one of 530 patients developed early posttransplant AF (11.5%). Patients with AF showed a statistically inferior 5-year survival compared to those with sinus rhythm (P<0.0001). Total orthotopic HTX had the lowest rate of AF (total orthotopic HTX [6.3%], bicaval HTX [14.8%], biatrial HTX [17.4%], P=0.0012). Multivariate analysis showed pretransplant valvular heart disease (P=0.0372), posttransplant enlarged left atrium (P=0.0066), posttransplant mitral regurgitation (P=0.0370), and non-total orthotopic HTX (P=0.0112) as risk factors for AF. Conclusion Early posttransplant AF was associated with increased mortality (P<0.0001). Total orthotopic HTX showed the lowest rate of AF compared to biatrial or bicaval HTX (P=0.0012).
The UK Paediatric Ocular Trauma Study 1 (POTS1): development of a global standardized protocol for prospective data collection in pediatric ocular trauma

Background Ocular trauma is an important cause of visual morbidity in children worldwide. Pediatric ocular trauma accounts for up to one third of all ocular trauma admissions, with significant economic implications for health care providers. It is estimated that 90% of all ocular trauma is preventable. Development of strategies to reduce the incidence and severity of pediatric ocular trauma requires an understanding of the epidemiology of these injuries and their characteristics. This will enable appropriate targeting of resources toward prevention and allow effective service planning. At present, there is no standardized methodology for the collection of global cross-sectional data in pediatric ocular trauma, and the ability to undertake detailed epidemiological and health-economic analyses is limited. Furthermore, it is difficult to draw international comparisons in incidence, etiology, and outcomes of pediatric ocular trauma due to the range of published reporting criteria. This study describes two novel questionnaires for standardized data collection in pediatric ocular trauma, which can be adopted across a range of health care settings internationally. Methods Two standardized data collection questionnaires have been developed from previously reported templates. The first enables collection of demographic and incident data on serious pediatric ocular trauma requiring hospitalization, and the second enables follow-up outcome data collection. Both the questionnaires are designed to collect primarily categorical data in order to increase ease of completion and facilitate quantitative analysis. These questionnaires enable acquisition of standardized data on the incidence, etiology, and outcomes of pediatric ocular trauma. Discussion These questionnaires enable collection of standardized data and are designed for global use across all health care settings. Through prospective data collection, epidemiological trends can be determined, allowing health care providers to develop collaborative global preventive strategies. Furthermore, the same questionnaires may be used in future studies to draw comparisons with baseline data, allowing assessment of the efficacy of targeted preventative interventions.
Beyond the Intestinal Celiac Mucosa: Diagnostic Role of Anti-TG2 Deposits, a Systematic Review

Aim: To review the existing literature on the role and significance of intestinal transglutaminase 2 immunoglobulin A deposits (TG2 deposits) in patients with overt celiac disease (CD), potential celiac disease (PCD), and other autoimmune or gluten-related conditions. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of studies published in English, evaluating presence and characteristics of TG2 deposits in subjects with overt CD, PCD, gluten-related diseases [dermatitis herpetiformis (DH), gluten-ataxia (GA)], autoimmune disorders (type-1 diabetes), and other conditions. Studies were identified through a MEDLINE search (1950–2013). Results: Twenty-three studies were included in the review. Eleven studies were performed in children. Overall TG2 deposits were present in 100% of adults with overt CD, while in children prevalence ranged from 73.2 to 100%. Six studies with an established definition of PCD were considered, prevalence of deposits ranging from 64.7 to 100%. A single study followed-up PCD patients with repeated biopsies and identified presence of intestinal deposits as the best marker to reveal progression toward villous atrophy. Two studies investigated presence of deposits in DH, reporting prevalence between 63 and 79%. A single study documented TG2 deposits in 100% of patients with GA. In children with type-1 diabetes (T1D), positivity of intestinal TG2 deposits ranged from 25 to 78%. Conclusion: Transglutaminase 2 IgA deposits seem to be a constant feature in overt CD patients and are frequently detectable in other gluten-related conditions (DH and GA). The vast majority of PCD patients express TG2 deposits at the intestinal level, but no sufficient data are available to exactly define their prognostic role as a marker of evolution toward overt CD. The frequent finding of TG2 deposits in the intestinal mucosa of patients with T1D is an interesting observation deserving further evaluation.
Transcription and by Alternate Splicing of hTERT Transcripts Human Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase ( hTERT ) Telomerase Activity in Human Development Is Regulated by Updated

The correlation between telomerase activity, telomere lengths, and cellular replicative capacity has led to the theory that maintenance of telomere lengths by telomerase acts as a molecular clock to control replicative capacity and senescence. Regulation of this molecular clock may have applications in the treatment of cell aging and tumorigenesis, although little is presently known about the regulation of telomerase activity. To investigate possible mechanisms of regulation, we examined telomerase activity and the expression of the human telomerase RNA subunit and the human telomerase reverse transcriptase protein (hTERT) during human fetal heart, liver, and kidney development. The human telomerase RNA subunit is expressed in all three tissues at all gestational ages examined. hTERT expression correlates with telomerase activity in the liver, where both are expressed at all ages surveyed, and in the heart, where both are present until the llth gestational week but not thereafter. However, although telomerase activity in the kidney is suppressed after the 15th gestational week, the hTERT transcript can be detected until at least the 21st week. Reverse transcription-PCR using primers within the reverse transcriptase domain of hTERT show the presence of multiple alternately spliced transcripts in these tissues, corresponding to full-length message as well as spliced messages with critical reverse transcriptase motifs deleted. Of note, telomerase activity in the kidney is only present at those gestational ages when full-length hTERT message is expressed (until = week 15), with spliced transcripts continuing to be expressed at later stages of development. The tissue-specific and gestational-age de pendent expression of hTERT mRNA seen in human development sug gests the presence of at least two regulatory mechanisms controlling the activity of telomerase: transcriptional control of the hTERT gene and alternate splicing of hTERT transcripts.
Morphologies of rabbit retinal ganglion cells with complex receptive fields

Ganglion cells that had complex receptive field properties, namely, On‐Off and On direction‐selective cells, orientation‐selective cells, local edge detectors, and uniformity detectors (suppressed by contrast cells) were recorded in an isolated superfused rabbit eyecup preparation. Cells were first classified by their characteristic extracellular responses to manually controlled stimuli similar to those which have been used in previous in vivo studies. Ganglion cells were then impaled, confirmed in identity by intracellular recording, and iontophoretically injected with horseradish peroxidase for staining. Twenty‐two ganglion cells, which included members of all the major classes mentioned above, were recovered from the visual streak or near periphery. All recovered cells were drawn in camera lucida from flatmounted retinas and entered into a computer as two‐dimensional stick figures; nearly all were three‐dimensionally reconstructed to determine the level and manner of dendritic ramification in the inner plexiform layer (IPL). The location of ganglion cell dendrites in sublaminar regions of the IPL was found to be consistent with the hypothesis of a division of the IPL into excitatory On (promixal) and Off (distal) sublaminae, with some qualifications for particular classes. Each of the complex receptive field ganglion cell classes exhibited a distinctive three‐dimensional dendritic arborization pattern uniquely associated with that physiological class.
Corporate Disclosure Quality and the Cost of Debt

This paper provides evidence that firms with high disclosure quality ratings from financial analysts enjoy a lower effective interest cost of issuing debt. This finding is consistent with the argument that a policy of timely and detailed disclosures reduces lenders' and underwriters' perception of default risk for the disclosing firm, reducing its cost of debt. The results also indicate that the relative importance of disclosures is greater in situations where there is greater market uncertainty about the firm as reflected by the variance of stock returns. Since debt financing is an important source of external financing for publicly traded firms, the results have important implications on our understanding of the motives and consequences of corporate disclosures.
The Beltrami Flow over Manifolds

In many medical computer vision tasks, the relevant data is attached to a specific tissue such as the cortex or the colon. This situation calls for regularization techniques which are defined over non flat surfaces. We introduce in this paper the Beltrami flow over manifolds. This new regularization technique overcomes the over-smoothing of the L_2 flow and the staircasing effects of the L_1 flow, that were recently suggested via the harmonic map methods. The key of our approach is first to clarify the link between the intrinsic Polyakov action and the implicit Harmonic energy functional and then use the geometrical understanding of the Beltrami Flow to generalize it to images on explicitly and implicitly defined non flat surfaces. It is shown that once again the Beltrami flow interpolates between the L_2 and L_1 flows on non-flat surfaces. The implementation scheme of this flow is presented and various experimental results obtained on a set of various real images illustrate the performances of the approach as well as the differences with the harmonic map flows. This extension of the Beltrami flow to the case of non flat surfaces opens new perspectives in the regularization of noisy data defined on manifolds.
Choosing Appropriate Programming Language to Implement Software for Real-Time Resource- Constrained Embedded Systems

ion and offers a better O-O programming style, but some of its features may cause degradation in program efficiency (Barr, 1999). Also, such a new generation O-O language is not readily available for the small embedded systems, primarily because of the overheads inherent in the O-O approach, e.g. CPU-time overhead (Pont, 2003). Despite that Ada was a leading language that provided full support for concurrent and realtime programming, it has not gained much popularity (Brosgol, 2003) and has rarely been used outside the areas related to defense and aerospace applications (Barr, 1999; Ciocarlie & Simon, 2007). Unlike C, not many programmers nowadays are experienced in Ada, therefore only a small number of embedded systems are currently developed using this language (Ciocarlie & Simon, 2007). In addition, despite their approved efficiency, Ada compilers are not widely available for small embedded microcontrollers and usually need hard work to accept the program; especially by new programmers (Dewar, 2006). Indeed, both Ada and C++ have too large demand on low-cost embedded systems resources (e.g. memory requirements) and therefore cannot be suitable languages for such applications1 (Walls, 2005). 1 However, despite the indicated limitations of Ada, there has been a great deal of work on assessing a new version of Ada language (i.e. Ada-2005) to widen its application domain (see Burns, 2006; Taft et al., 2007). It has been noted that Ada-2005 can have the potential to overwhelm the use of “C” and its descendants in embedded systems programming (Brosgol and Ruiz, 2007).
The effect of scattering on the structure and SED of protoplanetary disks

In this paper we investigate how the inclusion of scattering of the stellar radiation into a passive flaring disk model affects its structure and spectral energy distribution, and whether neglecting it could significantly decrease the model reliability. In order to address these questions we construct a detailed 1+1D vertical structure model in which the scattering properties of the dust can be varied. Models are presented with and without dust scattering, and for different albedos and phase functions. It is found that scattering has the effect of reducing the disk temperature at all heights, so that the disk "shrinks", i.e., the density at all intermediate heights decreases. However, this effect in most cases is more than compensated by the increase of the total extinction (absorption + scattering) cross section, so that the surface scale height increases, and images in scattered light will see a slightly thicker disk. The integrated infrared emission decreases as the albedo increases, because an increasing part of the flux captured by the disk is reflected away instead of absorbed and reprocessed. The reduction of the infrared thermal emission of the disk is stronger at short wavelengths (near infrared) and practically negligible at millimeter wavelengths. For relatively low albedo (ω 0.5), or for strongly forward-peaked scattering (g roughly >0.8), the infrared flux reduction is relatively small.
Human Cough as a Two-Stage Jet and Its Role in Particle Transport

The human cough is a significant vector in the transmission of respiratory diseases in indoor environments. The cough flow is characterized as a two-stage jet; specifically, the starting jet (when the cough starts and flow is released) and interrupted jet (after the source supply is terminated). During the starting-jet stage, the flow rate is a function of time; three temporal profiles of the exit velocity (pulsation, sinusoidal and real-cough) were investigated in this study, and our results showed that the cough flow’s maximum penetration distance was in the range of a 50.6–85.5 opening diameter (D) under our experimental conditions. The real-cough and sinusoidal cases exhibited greater penetration ability than the pulsation cases under the same characteristic Reynolds number (Rec) and normalized cough expired volume (Q/AD, with Q as the cough expired volume and A as the opening area). However, the effects of Rec and Q/AD on the maximum penetration distances proved to be more significant; larger values of Rec and Q/AD reflected cough flows with greater penetration distances. A protocol was developed to scale the particle experiments between the prototype in air, and the model in water. The water tank experiments revealed that although medium and large particles deposit readily, their maximum spread distance is similar to that of small particles. Moreover, the leading vortex plays an important role in enhancing particle transport.
The Pattern of Influenza Virus Attachment Varies among Wild Bird Species

The ability to attach to host cells is one of the main determinants of the host range of influenza A viruses. By using virus histochemistry, we investigate the pattern of virus attachment of both a human and an avian influenza virus in colon and trachea sections from 12 wild bird species. We show that significant variations exist, even between closely related avian species, which suggests that the ability of wild birds to serve as hosts for influenza viruses strongly varies among species. These results will prove valuable to assess the possibilities of interspecies transmission of influenza viruses in natural environments and better understand the ecology of influenza.
A Portal for the Online Evaluation of Serious Games

Aging brings about not only physical, but also mental and cognitive changes and challenges. As our minds begin to slow down in middle age, we become more acutely aware of their functioning, and more concerned with maintaining our mental capacities. Recent findings in neuropsychology indicate that a combination of lifelong factors such as a cognitive commitment to one’s career and hobbies, social engagement, higher education and diet contribute to an increased resilience to the adverse cognitive effects of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease that often occur later in life. This phenomenon, dubbed ‘cognitive reserve’ by Prof. Y. Stern, seems to suggest that increased mental engagement prepares or ‘trains’ our brains to resist the effects of aging or disease. As a result, the last decade has seen dozens of companies offering training regimens that claim to improve cognition, boost mental capacities and stave off the effects of mental aging. Most people tend to begin such regimens in middle age, when the effects of cognitive decline are first felt. However, it is still unclear whether the effects of lifelong engagement can be approximated or replicated by dedicated regimens begun later in life. At the same time, scientific validation of these regimens is a costly and difficult process typically relying upon in-person experimental protocols. This paper presents an alternative to in-person lab testing: Tangra, a portal for conducting randomized controlled trial experiments online. Built in the Django web application framework, Tangra supports investigators in designing studies, populating them with participants, and managing their progress from initial consent through assessment and intervention to debriefing. Tangra also provides the participants themselves with an integrated interface where they can follow their progress in the study and participate in experimental sessions as required. The purpose of the portal is not restricted to mental fitness. Rather, it is to enable online experimentation in a variety of fields, reducing the logistical and financial burden on labs and widening investigators’ potential base of study participants.
Exploring the affordances of touchscreen technologies in early years settings in the West Midlands

Touchscreen devices are now the most-used technological hardware by young children at home in England (Livingstone et al., 2015). Touchscreens are also gaining popularity in early years settings. However, there is currently no policy and very little guidance available to support early years practitioners in using touchscreens. Information is in its infancy on how touchscreens are used and how to maximise their potential to support young children’s learning. Therefore, this study explores touchscreen practice in early years settings to identify affordances in how they are used by children and practitioners. Practitioner data was collected through an online survey and interviews. Observations of touchscreen use by children and practitioners were recorded and focus-group interviews were conducted with young children. Engestrom’s (1999a; 1999b) activity theory model was used as the tool for analysis to conceptualise touchscreen activity within four early years settings. Analysis of the data revealed that touchscreen activity was much more complex than children’s or adults’ general interactions with the devices, and therefore Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) ecological systems model was also incorporated with the activity theory model to reflect the wider influences which guide or direct touchscreen play. The data revealed three main themes: Play, Authority, and Pedagogy. First, the study found that there were differences in touchscreen intentions by children and practitioners, with children viewing the touchscreen as a toy (play resource) and source of entertainment, whilst practitioners viewed the touchscreen as an educational tool. Second, the study found that there were authority struggles amongst children and their peers, and adults and children through the rules or manipulation of rules regarding touchscreen play. Third, pedagogical approaches reflected limitations in touchscreen potential through practitioner rules. However, there was evidence of practitioners supporting children’s learning through scaffolding and guided interaction, yet these were not frequent occurrences. This research has produced strong conclusions regarding effective touchscreen practice and has the potential to be used to inform policy makers, practitioners and researchers to support enhanced touchscreen activity with young children. The research provides an insight into the challenges encountered when implementing touchscreens, or indeed any technology, within early years settings; as such, I emphasise the need for a greater awareness by policy makers of how they can best support early years practitioners in this area.
Synthesis, axonal transport, and turnover of the high molecular weight microtubule-associated protein MAP 1A in mouse retinal ganglion cells: tubulin and MAP 1A display distinct transport kinetics

Microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) in neurons establish functional associations with microtubules, sometimes at considerable distances from their site of synthesis. In this study we identified MAP 1A in mouse retinal ganglion cells and characterized for the first time its in vivo dynamics in relation to axonally transported tubulin. A soluble 340-kD polypeptide was strongly radiolabeled in ganglion cells after intravitreal injection of [35S]methionine or [3H]proline. This polypeptide was identified as MAP 1A on the basis of its co-migration on SDS gels with MAP 1A from brain microtubules; its co-assembly with microtubules in the presence of taxol or during cycles of assembly- disassembly; and its cross-reaction with well-characterized antibodies against MAP 1A in immunoblotting and immunoprecipitation assays. Glial cells of the optic nerve synthesized considerably less MAP 1A than neurons. The axoplasmic transport of MAP 1A differed from that of tubulin. Using two separate methods, we observed that MAP 1A advanced along optic axons at a rate of 1.0-1.2 mm/d, a rate typical of the Group IV (SCb) phase of transport, while tubulin moved 0.1-0.2 mm/d, a group V (SCa) transport rate. At least 13% of the newly synthesized MAP 1A entering optic axons was incorporated uniformly along axons into stationary axonal structures. The half-residence time of stationary MAP 1A in axons (55-60 d) was 4.6 times longer than that of MAP 1A moving in Group IV, indicating that at least 44% of the total MAP 1A in axons is stationary. These results demonstrate that cytoskeletal proteins that become functionally associated with each other in axons may be delivered to these sites at different transport rates. Stable associations between axonal constituents moving at different velocities could develop when these elements leave the transport vector and incorporate into the stationary cytoskeleton.