Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Surgical management of acute subdural hematomas.

INDICATIONS FOR SURGERY An acute subdural hematoma (SDH) with a thickness greater than 10 mm or a midline shift greater than 5 mm on computed tomographic (CT) scan should be surgically evacuated, regardless of the patient's Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score. All patients with acute SDH in coma (GCS score less than 9) should undergo intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring. A comatose patient (GCS score less than 9) with an SDH less than 10-mm thick and a midline shift less than 5 mm should undergo surgical evacuation of the lesion if the GCS score decreased between the time of injury and hospital admission by 2 or more points on the GCS and/or the patient presents with asymmetric or fixed and dilated pupils and/or the ICP exceeds 20 mm Hg. TIMING In patients with acute SDH and indications for surgery, surgical evacuation should be performed as soon as possible. METHODS If surgical evacuation of an acute SDH in a comatose patient (GCS < 9) is indicated, it should be performed using a craniotomy with or without bone flap removal and duraplasty.
Cooperative effects on the formation of supramolecular synthons of thiohydantoin derivatives

In this paper we study the manifestations of cooperative effects in the formation of supramolecular synthons observed in some thiohydantoin derivatives crystals. Energetic and structural properties were analyzed from the fully optimized clusters employing a DFT/B3LYP level of calculations, which reproduce the main features of the stereochemistry and geometries of the synthons exhibited by reported crystalline structures. The calculations performed in this work have also evidenced that the cluster stabilization is mainly due to the existence of strong cooperative effects, which display energetic as well as geometrical manifestations. The stabilization energy and stabilization energy per monomer, that comprises all the intermolecular interactions between the individual molecules that form the clusters, were computed, showing that the supramolecular clusters of 5-sec-butyl-2-tioxoimidazolidin-4-one is less stable than the compound 5-isopropyl-2-tioxoimidazolidin-4-one by 1.16 Kcal/mol. Finally, through this work it has been also evidenced the need of employing large basis sets, including polarization and diffuse effects, in order to properly model all the interactions existing in systems bonded by weak interactions.
Epigenetic Targeted Therapy for Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma

Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) is a rare but uniformly fatal cancer of the brain, with peak incidence in children of 5–7 years of age. In contrast to most types of human cancer, there has been no significant improvement in treatment outcomes for patients with DIPG. Since DIPG occurs in the brainstem, a vital region of the brain, there are no surgical options for providing relief to patients, and chemotherapy as well as radiation therapy provide palliative relief at best. To date, more than 250 clinical trials evaluating radiotherapy along with conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy, as well as newer biologic agents, have failed to improve the dismal outcome when compared with palliative radiation alone. The recent discovery of somatic oncogenic histone gene mutations affecting chromatin regulation in DIPG has dramatically improved our understanding of the disease pathogenesis in DIPG, and these findings have stimulated the development of novel therapeutic approaches targeting epigenetic regulators for disease treatment. This review will discuss about the role of histone modification in chromatin machinery and epigenetic therapeutic strategies for the treatment of DIPG.
Clinical, Laboratory and Ultrasonographic Evaluation of Patients with Acute Schistosomiasis Mansoni

Schistosomiasis is a parasite chronic disease caused by the helminth of genus Schistosoma. The infection is common in parts of Africa, South America, Middle East, Caribbean and Asia where it is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality [1]. Recent estimates suggest there are 700 million people at risk worldwide with almost 200 million infected in Africa alone [2]. In Brazil, the schistosomiasis infection is caused by Schistosoma mansoni, where estimates suggest a range from 2.5 million [3, 4] to 12 million people infected [5]. In the state of Minas Gerais, schistoso‐ miasis mansoni is prevalent in 519 out of 853 municipalities, with an estimated number of one million infected people in an area of 300.000 km2 [6].
Title Does it hurt when others prosper ? : Exploring the impact ofheterogeneous reordering robustness of TCP

The congestion control mechanisms in the standardized Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) may misinterpret packet reordering as congestive loss, leading to spurious congestion response and under-utilization of network capacity. Therefore, many TCP enhancements have been proposed to better differentiate between packet reordering and congestive loss, in order to enhance the reordering robustness (RR) of TCP. Since such enhancements are incrementally deployed, it is important to study the interactions of TCP flows with heterogeneous RR. This paper presents the first systematic study of such interactions by exploring how changing RR of TCP flows influences the bandwidth sharing among these flows. We define the quantified RR (QRR) of a TCP flow as the probability that packet reordering causes congestion response. We analyze the variation of bandwidth sharing as QRR changes. This leads to the discovery of several interesting properties. Most notably, we discover the counter-intuitive result that changing one flow’s QRR does not affect its competing flows in certain network topologies. We further characterize the deviation, from the ideal case of bandwidth sharing, as RR changes. We find that enhancing RR of a flow may increase, rather than decrease, the deviation in some typical network scenarios.
A Novel Side-Chain Orientation Dependent Potential Derived from Random-Walk Reference State for Protein Fold Selection and Structure Prediction

Background An accurate potential function is essential to attack protein folding and structure prediction problems. The key to developing efficient knowledge-based potential functions is to design reference states that can appropriately counteract generic interactions. The reference states of many knowledge-based distance-dependent atomic potential functions were derived from non-interacting particles such as ideal gas, however, which ignored the inherent sequence connectivity and entropic elasticity of proteins. Methodology We developed a new pair-wise distance-dependent, atomic statistical potential function (RW), using an ideal random-walk chain as reference state, which was optimized on CASP models and then benchmarked on nine structural decoy sets. Second, we incorporated a new side-chain orientation-dependent energy term into RW (RWplus) and found that the side-chain packing orientation specificity can further improve the decoy recognition ability of the statistical potential. Significance RW and RWplus demonstrate a significantly better ability than the best performing pair-wise distance-dependent atomic potential functions in both native and near-native model selections. It has higher energy-RMSD and energy-TM-score correlations compared with other potentials of the same type in real-life structure assembly decoys. When benchmarked with a comprehensive list of publicly available potentials, RW and RWplus shows comparable performance to the state-of-the-art scoring functions, including those combining terms from multiple resources. These data demonstrate the usefulness of random-walk chain as reference states which correctly account for sequence connectivity and entropic elasticity of proteins. It shows potential usefulness in structure recognition and protein folding simulations. The RW and RWplus potentials, as well as the newly generated I-TASSER decoys, are freely available in http://zhanglab.ccmb. med.umich. edu/RW.
N = 2 supergravity lagrangian coupled to tensor multiplets with electric and magnetic fluxes

We derive the full N = 2 supergravity lagrangian which contains a symplectic invariant scalar potential in terms of electric and magnetic charges. As shown in reference [1], the appearance of magnetic charges is allowed only if tensor multiplets are present and a suitable Fayet-Iliopoulos term is included in the fermion transformation laws. We generalize the procedure in the quoted reference by adding further a Fayet-Iliopoulos term which allows the introduction of electric charges in such a way that the potential and the equations of motion of the theory are symplectic invariant. The theory is further generalized to include an ordinary electric gauging and the form of the resulting scalar potential is given.
Identifying idiomatic expressions using automatic word-alignment

For NLP applications that require some sort of semantic interpretation it would be helpful to know what expressions exhibit an idiomatic meaning and what expressions exhibit a literal meaning. We investigate whether automatic word-alignment in existing parallel corpora facilitates the classification of candidate expressions along a continuum ranging from literal and transparent expressions to idiomatic and opaque expressions. Our method relies on two criteria: (i) meaning predictability that is measured as semantic entropy and (ii), the overlap between the meaning of an expression and the meaning of its component words. We approximate the mentioned overlap as the proportion of default alignments. We obtain a significant improvement over the baseline with both measures.
Conjugate Meningococcal Vaccines Development: GSK Biologicals Experience

Meningococcal diseases are serious threats to global health, and new vaccines specifically tailored to meet the age-related needs of various geographical areas are required. This paper focuses on the meningococcal conjugate vaccines developed by GSK Biologicals. Two combined conjugate vaccines were developed to help protect infants and young children in countries where the incidence of meningococcal serogroup C or serogroup C and Y disease is important: Hib-MenC-TT vaccine, which offers protection against Haemophilus influenzae type b and Neisseria meningitidis serogroup C diseases, is approved in several countries; and Hib-MenCY-TT vaccine, which adds N. meningitidis serogroup Y antigen, is currently in the final stages of development. Additionally, a tetravalent conjugate vaccine (MenACWY-TT) designed to help protect against four meningococcal serogroups is presently being evaluated for global use in all age groups. All of these vaccines were shown to be highly immunogenic and to have clinically acceptable safety profiles.
Contribution of Intra- and Interhost Dynamics to Norovirus Evolution

ABSTRACT Norovirus (NoV) is an emerging RNA virus that has been associated with global epidemics of gastroenteritis. Each global epidemic arises with the emergence of novel antigenic variants. While the majority of NoV infections are mild and self-limiting, in the young, elderly, and immunocompromised, severe and prolonged illness can result. As yet, there is no vaccine or therapeutic treatment to prevent or control infection. In order to design effective control strategies, it is important to understand the mechanisms and source of the new antigenic variants. In this study, we used next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology to investigate genetic diversification in three contexts: the impact of a NoV transmission event on viral diversity and the contribution to diversity of intrahost evolution over both a short period of time (10 days), in accordance with a typical acute NoV infection, and a prolonged period of time (288 days), as observed for NoV chronic infections of immunocompromised individuals. Investigations of the transmission event revealed that minor variants at frequencies as low as 0.01% were successfully transmitted, indicating that transmission is an important source of diversity at the interhost level of NoV evolution. Our results also suggest that chronically infected immunocompromised subjects represent a potential reservoir for the emergence of new viral variants. In contrast, in a typical acute NoV infection, the viral population was highly homogenous and relatively stable. These results indicate that the evolution of NoV occurs through multiple mechanisms.
Preparation and characterization of LDPE and PP—Wood fiber composites

Natural fiber reinforced composites is an emerging area in polymer science. These natural fibers are low cost fibers with low density and high specific properties. These are biodegradable and nonabrasive. The natural fiber composites offer specific properties comparable to those of conventional fiber composites. However, in development of these composites, the incompatibility of the fibers and poor resistance to moisture often reduce the potential of natural fibers, and these draw backs become critical issue. Wood-plastic composites (WPC) are a relatively new class of materials and one of the fastest growing sectors in the wood composites industry. Composites of wood in a thermoplastic matrix (wood–plastic composites) are considered a low maintenance solution to using wood in outdoor applications. WPCs are normally made from a mixture of wood fiber, thermoplastic, and small amounts of process and property modifiers through an extrusion process. In this study, Wood–plastic composites (WPC) are produce by adding a maleic anhydride modified low density polyethylene coupling agent to improve interfacial adhesion between the wood fiber and the plastic. Mixing is done with twin screw extruder. Subsequently, tensile strength, the modulus of elasticity, % elongation, hardness, Izod impact strength, melt flow index (MFI), and heat deflection temperature (HDT) are determined. Thermal transition temperatures and microstructure are determined with DSC and SEM, respectively. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2009
Recurrent Third-Trimester Fetal Loss and Maternal Mosaicism for Long-QT Syndrome

Background—The importance of germ-line mosaicism in genetic disease is probably underestimated, even though recent studies indicate that it may be involved in 10% to 20% of apparently de novo cases of several dominantly inherited genetic diseases. Methods and Results—We describe here a case of repeated germ-line transmission of a severe form of long-QT syndrome (LQTS) from an asymptomatic mother with mosaicism for a mutation in the cardiac sodium channel, SCN5A. A male infant was diagnosed with ventricular arrhythmias and cardiac decompensation in utero at 28 weeks and with LQTS after birth, ultimately requiring cardiac transplantation for control of ventricular tachycardia. The mother had no ECG abnormalities, but her only previous pregnancy had ended in stillbirth with evidence of cardiac decompensation at 7 months’ gestation. A third pregnancy also ended in stillbirth at 7 months, again with nonimmune fetal hydrops. The surviving infant was found to have a heterozygous mutation in SCN5A (R1623Q), previously reported as a de novo mutation causing neonatal ventricular arrhythmia and LQTS. Initial studies of the mother detected no genetic abnormality, but a sensitive restriction enzyme–based assay identified a small (8% to 10%) percentage of cells harboring the mutation in her blood, skin, and buccal mucosa. Cord blood from the third fetus also harbored the mutant allele, suggesting that all 3 cases of late-term fetal distress resulted from germ-line transfer of the LQTS-associated mutation. Conclusions—Recurrent late-term fetal loss or sudden infant death can result from unsuspected parental mosaicism for LQTS-associated mutations, with important implications for genetic counseling.
In vivo ossification of a scaffold combining β-tricalcium phosphate and platelet-rich plasma

Tricalcium phosphate (TCP) and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) are commonly used in bone tissue engineering. The aim of the present study was to investigate a composite that combined TCP with PRP and assess its effectiveness in the treatment of bone defects. Cavity-shaped bone defects were established on the tibiae of 27 beagle dogs, and were repaired by pure β-TCP with bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs), β-TCP/PRP with BMSCs and autogenic ilium. The samples were harvested at 4, 8 and 12 weeks, and bone regeneration was evaluated using X-ray radiography, immunocytochemical staining of osteocalcin (OCN), hematoxylin and eosin staining and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction analyses. Biomechanical tests of the scaffolds were performed at the 12th week after scaffold implantation. When using pure β-TCP as a scaffold, the scaffold-bone interface was clear and no material adsorption and bone healing was observed. Substantial bone regeneration was observed when the tibial defects were restored using β-TCP/PRP and autogenic ilium. Furthermore, the mRNA expression levels of OCN, alkaline phosphatase and collagen type I α1 were significantly higher in the animals with β-TCP/PRP scaffolds at 8 and 12 weeks following implantation compared with those in the animals with the pure β-TCP scaffolds. The maximum load and compressive strength of the β-TCP/PRP scaffolds were similar to those of the autogenic ilium; however, they were significantly higher than those of the pure β-TCP scaffold. Thus, the β-TCP/PRP composite may be used as a potential scaffold to carry in vitro cultured BMSCs to treat bone defects.
The Sommerfeld Halfspace Problem Redux: Alternative Field Representations, Role of Zenneck and Surface Plasmon Waves

The problem of a vertical Hertzian dipole radiating in the presence of a lossy conducting halfspace, first formally solved by Sommerfeld in 1909, is revisited. Using rigorous operator theory concepts and the characteristic Green function procedure, alternative field representations are developed and their merits discussed. A closed-form asymptotic expression for the surface field is also derived and the role of the Zenneck and surface plasmon (SP) waves is elucidated. Numerical results are presented to validate the theory, including examples from radio to THz frequencies.
p53‐inducible Wip1 phosphatase mediates a negative feedback regulation of p38 MAPK‐p53 signaling in response to UV radiation

The stress‐responsive p38 MAPK, when activated by genotoxic stresses such as UV radiation, enhances p53 activity by phosphorylation and leads to cell cycle arrest or apoptosis. Here we report that a member of the protein phosphatase type 2C family, Wip1, has a role in down‐regulating p38‐p53 signaling during the recovery phase of the damaged cells. Wip1 was originally identified as a gene whose expression is induced following γ or UV radiation in a p53‐dependent manner. We found that Wip1 is also inducible by other environmental stresses, such as anisomycin, H2O2 and methyl methane sulfonate. UV‐induction of Wip1 requires p38 activity in addition to the wild‐type p53. Wip1 selectively inactivates p38 by specific dephosphorylation of its conserved threonine residue. Furthermore, Wip1 expression attenuates UV‐induced p53 phosphorylation at Ser33 and Ser46, residues previously reported to be phosphorylated by p38. Wip1 expression also suppresses both p53‐mediated transcription and apoptosis in response to UV radiation. These results suggest that p53‐dependent expression of Wip1 mediates a negative feedback regulation of p38‐p53 signaling and contributes to suppression of the UV‐induced apoptosis.
Parsing Software Requirements with an Ontology-based Semantic Role Labeler

Software requirements describe functional and non-functional aspects of a software system and form the basis for the development process. Accordingly, requirements of existing systems can provide insights regarding the re-usability of already implemented software artifacts. To facilitate direct comparison between requirements of existing and to be developed systems, we propose to automatically map requirements in natural language text to structured semantic representations. For this task, we adapt techniques from semantic role labeling to a high-level ontology that deﬁnes concepts and relations for describing static software functionalities. The proposed method achieves a precision and recall of 77.9% and 74.5%, respectively, on an annotated software requirements dataset and signiﬁcantly outperforms two baselines that are based on lexical and syntactic patterns.
Cytoarchitecture of size-excluding compartments in living cells.

By fluorescence ratio imaging of large and small inert tracer particles in living cells, we have previously shown that particles 24 nm in radius are excluded from otherwise uncharacterized compartments in the distal and perinuclear cytoplasm (Luby-Phelps, K. and Taylor, D.L., 1988. Cell Motil. Cytoskel. 10, 28-37). In this study we examined the cytoarchitecture of these compartments. Whole-mount TEM showed that distal size-excluding compartments were devoid of membrane-bounded organelles and were filled with a dense cytomatrix consisting of numerous, long bundles of thin filaments interconnected by a more random meshwork of short thin filaments. The mean diameter of void spaces in the cytomatrix of distal excluding compartments was 31 nm, compared to 53 nm in adjacent non-excluding domains. The height of the distal excluding compartments was generally < or = 50% of the height in the adjacent non-excluding compartment. An electron-dense structure having the same projected outline as the perinuclear size-excluding compartment was visible by whole-mount TEM, but the cells were too thick and osmiophilic in this region to resolve any detail. Immunofluorescence localization of cytoskeletal proteins in distal excluding compartments indicated the presence of filament bundles containing F-actin nonmuscle filamin (ABP280) and alpha-actinin. F-actin and ABP280, but not alpha-actinin, were found also in between these filament bundles. Microtubules and vimentin generally were rare or absent from distal excluding domains. Staining of living cells with DMB-ceramide revealed that the perinuclear size-excluding compartment consisted of a compact, juxtanuclear domain coinciding with the trans-Golgi, surrounded by a more diffuse domain coinciding with a perinuclear concentration of endoplasmic reticulum. Intense immunofluorescence staining for vimentin was also observed in the perinuclear size-excluding compartment. We propose that the most likely mechanism for exclusion from distal compartments is molecular sieving by a meshwork of actin filament bundles interconnected by an F-actin/ABP280 gel network, while exclusion from the perinuclear compartment may be due to close apposition of cisternae in the trans-Golgi and a network or basket of vimentin filaments in the centrosomal region of the cell.