Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Male/Female Differences in Neuroprotection and Neuromodulation of Brain Dopamine

The existence of a sex difference in Parkinson’s disease (PD) is observed as related to several variables, including susceptibility of the disease, age at onset, and symptoms. These differences between men and women represent a significant characteristic of PD, which suggest that estrogens may exert beneficial effects against the development and the progression of the disease. This paper reviews the neuroprotective and neuromodulator effects of 17β-estradiol and progesterone as compared to androgens in the nigrostriatal dopaminergic (NSDA) system of both female and male rodents. The 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) mice model of PD and methamphetamine toxicity faithfully reproduce the sex differences of PD in that endogenous estrogen levels appear to influence the vulnerability to toxins targeting the NSDA system. Exogenous 17β-estradiol and/or progesterone treatments show neuroprotective properties against NSDA toxins while androgens fail to induce any beneficial effect. Sex steroid treatments show male and female differences in their neuroprotective action against methamphetamine toxicity. NSDA structure and function, as well as the distribution of estrogen receptors, show sex differences and may influence the susceptibility to the toxins and the response to sex steroids. Genomic and non-genomic actions of 17β-estradiol converge to promote survival factors and the presence of both estrogen receptors α and β are critical to 17β-estradiol neuroprotective action against MPTP toxicity.
Is Neural Machine Translation Ready for Deployment? A Case Study on 30 Translation Directions

In this paper we provide the largest published comparison of translation quality for phrase-based SMT and neural machine translation across 30 translation directions. For ten directions we also include hierarchical phrase-based MT. Experiments are performed for the recently published United Nations Parallel Corpus v1.0 and its large six-way sentence-aligned subcorpus. In the second part of the paper we investigate aspects of translation speed, introducing AmuNMT, our efficient neural machine translation decoder. We demonstrate that current neural machine translation could already be used for in-production systems when comparing words-persecond ratios.
Cerebrovascular Support for Cognitive Processing in Hypertensive Patients Is Altered by Blood Pressure Treatment

Hypertension is associated with mild decrements in cognition. In addition, regional cerebral blood flow responses during memory processing are blunted in parietal and thalamic areas among untreated hypertensive adults, who, compared with normotensive subjects, manifest greater correlation in blood flow response across task-related brain regions. Here, we test whether pharmacological treatment of hypertension normalizes regional cerebral blood flow responses and whether it does so differentially according to drug class. Treatment with lisinopril, an angiotensin-converting enzyme blocker, known to enhance vasodilative responsivity, was compared with treatment with atenolol, a &bgr;-blocker. Untreated hypertensive volunteers (n=28) were randomly assigned and treated for 1 year. Whole brain and regional cerebral flow responses to memory processing and acutely administered acetazolamide, a vasodilator, were assessed pretreatment and posttreatment. Peripheral brachial artery dilation during reactive hyperemia was also measured. Quantitative blood flow measures showed no difference in the magnitude of regional cerebral blood flow responses pretreatment and posttreatment to either memory tasks or acetazolamide injection. Brachial artery flow-mediated dilation increased with treatment. No differences between medications were observed. In brain regions active in memory processing, however, regional cerebral blood flow responses were more highly correlated after treatment. Specificity of cerebral blood flow to different regions appears to decline with treatment of hypertension. This greater correlation among active brain regions, which is present as well in untreated hypertensive relative to normotensive volunteers, may represent compensation in the face of less region-specific responsivity in individuals with hypertension.
Low and High, Short and Long by Crook or by Hook?

The paper deals with perceived speech rhythm, starting from the observation that two nouns with a conjunction in between (‘X and/or Y’, cf. title) sound more rhythmical in a particular noun order. A perception experiment on German with real and pseudo nouns provides evidence that speech rhythm is not just created prosodically by means of high and low or long and short syllables, but that the phonetic properties of the vowel nuclei and of the consonantal onsets and offsets of the stressed syllables are separate segmental constituents of speech rhythm.
Mechanical Damage Of Strawberry During Harvest And Postharvest Operations

Abstract Strawberry is a non-climacteric fruit with a limited harvesting period. Because of high susceptibility to mechanical damage, strawberry has a small postharvest life. In this research, an experiment was designed to study the mechanical damage phenomena in strawberry during the harvest and postharvest operations together with some physical properties of strawberry. Influences of some other factors such as variety, fruit position in the box as well as box position on the truck were also investigated. Results indicated that the variety, operation stage, fruit position in the box, and box position on the truck, had significant effects on the extent of the fruits‘ mechanical damage. Maximum damage index was related to picking stage. The variety Gaviota showed more susceptibility to mechanical damage than Selva. The maximum damage occurred at the bottom rows in the boxes. Furthermore, it was observed that the higher the position of a box on the truck, the more the susceptibility of fruits would be to mechanical damage.
Analyzing the Impact of Dynamic Pages on the Performance of Web Servers

Dynamic Web pages have a fundamental role in electronic commerce and intranets, where information changes constantly and needs immediate and automatic update. Despite this fact, little work has been done on the analysis and characterization of the effects of dynamic content on the performance of Web servers. Based on this fact, this paper presents a series of experiments to compare performance of several technologies of dynamic content over the NT platform. Static and dynamic pages (interpreted and compiled CGI and Microsoft's ASP technology) are also compared. Based on experimental results, the authors show that traditional typical dynamic applications (virtual pages of small size or page hit counters) do not degrade performance of Web servers and operating systems. On the other hand, large dynamic applications, such as heavy CGI or database transactions have strong impact on performance of Web servers and operating systems. δ Ph.D. Student at CS-UFMG. Partially supported by CNPq. ∗ Professor of Computer Science at the CS-UFMG. (Computer Science Department at the Universidade Federal of Minas Gerais Belo Horizonte Brazil).
Attendance at Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, frequency of attendance and substance use outcomes after residential treatment for drug dependence: a 5-year follow-up study.

AIMS This study investigates the relationship between frequency of attendance at Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous (NA/AA) meetings and substance use outcomes after residential treatment of drug dependence. It was predicted that post-treatment NA/AA attendance would be related to improved substance use outcomes. METHODS Using a longitudinal, prospective cohort design, interviews were conducted with drug-dependent clients (n = 142) at intake to residential treatment, and at 1 year, 2 years and 4-5 years follow-up. Data were collected by structured interviews. All follow-up interviews were carried out by independent professional interviewers. FINDINGS Abstinence from opiates was increased throughout the 5-year follow-up period compared to pre-treatment levels. Clients who attended NA/AA after treatment were more likely to be abstinent from opiates at follow-up. Abstinence from stimulants increased at follow-up but (except at 1-year follow-up) no additional benefit was found for NA/AA attendance. There was no overall change in alcohol abstinence after treatment but clients who attended NA/AA were more likely to be abstinent from alcohol at all follow-up points. More frequent NA/AA attenders were more likely to be abstinent from opiates and alcohol when compared both to non-attenders and to infrequent (less than weekly) attenders. CONCLUSIONS NA/AA can support and supplement residential addiction treatment as an aftercare resource. In view of the generally poor alcohol use outcomes achieved by drug-dependent patients after treatment, the improved alcohol outcomes of NA/AA attenders suggests that the effectiveness of existing treatment services may be improved by initiatives that lead to increased involvement and engagement with such groups.
An O(n log n) Algorithm for Rectilinear Minimal Spanning Trees

Let P be a set of pomts m the plane with rectdmear distance An O(n log n) a lgonthm for the construeUon o f a Voronot diagram for P ts gwen By using prewously known results, a mmmaal spammuag tree for P can be derived from a Voronot diagram for P m hnear tmae.
Synchronous Machine Parameters from Sudden-Short Tests by Back-Solving

The calculation of synchronous machine parameters from sudden short-circuit measurements has been subject to unnecessary assumptions and approximations. The authors describe the nature of these approximations and a procedure to remove them, and illustrate how a new philosophy for problem formulation and solution using backsolving programs can simplify and clarify the solution process. They introduce a method of calculating eigenvalues that is based on a generalization of the eigenvalue problem. Approximations are unnecessary, and the formulation is much cleaner than in previous efforts. Even for large values of armature resistance, the time constants are correctly computed, since the coupling between axes is considered. >
A Novel Multi-task Deep Learning Model for Skin Lesion Segmentation and Classification

In this study, a multi-task deep neural network is proposed for skin lesion analysis. The proposed multi-task learning model solves different tasks (e.g., lesion segmentation and two independent binary lesion classifications) at the same time by exploiting commonalities and differences across tasks. This results in improved learning efficiency and potential prediction accuracy for the task-specific models, when compared to training the individual models separately. The proposed multi-task deep learning model is trained and evaluated on the dermoscopic image sets from the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC) 2017 Challenge - Skin Lesion Analysis towards Melanoma Detection, which consists of 2000 training samples and 150 evaluation samples. The experimental results show that the proposed multi-task deep learning model achieves promising performances on skin lesion segmentation and classification. The average value of Jaccard index for lesion segmentation is 0.724, while the average values of area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) on two individual lesion classifications are 0.880 and 0.972, respectively.
Clozapine plus lamotrigine in treatment-resistant schizophrenia.

C lozapine is the only antipsychotic agent with proven efficacy in treatment-resistant schizophrenia; however, a substantial minority of patients fail to respond or have only a partial response to clozapine, leading clinicians to search for potential augmentation strategies to improve outcomes. To date, these augmentation strategies with clozapine have generally been disappointing. Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter, and clozapine acts as a glutamate antagonist. Lamotrigine, an anticonvulsant and mood stabilizer, inhibits excessive release of glutamate. Both drugs block the psychotomimetic effects of phencyclidine (PCP). These schizophrenia-like symptoms are attributed to PCP’s activity at the NMDA (glutamate) receptor. The biochemical significance of these glutamate interactions in schizophrenia remains unclear and is hotly debated. There is evidence to suggest that there is abnormal glutamatergic binding in the areas of the brain associated with psychotic symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. We are reporting on a small, open-label, nonrandomized case series of 6 outpatients who had a partial response to clozapine. All patients were taking the maximum tolerated dose of clozapine, with lamotrigine added as an augmentation strategy. Clozapine dosages were stable at the time lamotrigine therapy was initiated and remained the same throughout the 24-week period monitored by the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale. No patient dropped out of the study. All patients had therapeutic plasma clozapine levels and had been taking clozapine for a minimum of 16 months. Lamotrigine therapy was initiated at 12.5 mg/d and titrated by patient response. When baseline Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale scores were compared with scores in each subsequent week using a pairwise approach for the sample, all were found to be significantly different (P#.05) by Wilcoxon signed rank test (Table). Reported side effects included headache, sedation, dizziness, and mild hand tremor. No dermatological side effects were observed, and none of the side effects were considered disturbing by the patients. Despite the significant limitations of a small sample size and open-label, nonrandomized design, the preliminary data suggest that clozapine plus lamotrigine may be a useful augmentation for treatment-resistant schizophrenia. Clozapine is metabolized primarily through the liver CYP450 system (isoenzyme 1A2), while lamotrigine is metabolized in the liver by glucuronidation. Therefore, any synergism between the 2 is very likely pharmacodynamic (perhaps involving glutamate and/or nitric oxide) rather than the result of a pharmacokinetic interaction. We believe this finding warrants further study.
Enhancement of GABAergic Activity: Neuropharmacological Effects of Benzodiazepines and Therapeutic Use in Anesthesiology

GABA is the major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system (CNS). The type A GABA receptor (GABAAR) system is the primary pharmacological target for many drugs used in clinical anesthesia. The α1, β2, and γ2 subunit-containing GABAARs located in the various parts of CNS are thought to be involved in versatile effects caused by inhaled anesthetics and classic benzodiazepines (BZD), both of which are widely used in clinical anesthesiology. During the past decade, the emergence of tonic inhibitory conductance in extrasynaptic GABAARs has coincided with evidence showing that these receptors are highly sensitive to the sedatives and hypnotics used in anesthesia. Anesthetic enhancement of tonic GABAergic inhibition seems to be preferentially increased in regions shown to be important in controlling memory, awareness, and sleep. This review focuses on the physiology of the GABAARs and the pharmacological properties of clinically used BZDs. Although classic BZDs are widely used in anesthesiological practice, there is a constant need for new drugs with more favorable pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic effects and fewer side effects. New hypnotics are currently developed, and promising results for one of these, the GABAAR agonist remimazolam, have recently been published.
Profound and Sustained Reduction in Chlamydia trachomatis in The Gambia: A Five-Year Longitudinal Study of Trachoma Endemic Communities

Background The elimination of blinding trachoma focuses on controlling Chlamydia trachomatis infection through mass antibiotic treatment and measures to limit transmission. As the prevalence of disease declines, uncertainty increases over the most effective strategy for treatment. There are little long-term data on the effect of treatment on infection, especially in low prevalence settings, on which to base guidelines. Methodology/Principal Findings The population of a cluster of 14 Gambian villages with endemic trachoma was examined on seven occasions over five years (baseline, 2, 6, 12, 17, 30 and 60 months). Mass antibiotic treatment was given at baseline only. All families had accessible clean water all year round. New latrines were installed in each household after 17 months. Conjunctival swab samples were collected and tested for C. trachomatis by PCR. Before treatment the village-level prevalence of follicular trachoma in 1 to 9 year olds (TF%1–9) was 15.4% and C. trachomatis was 9.7%. Antibiotic treatment coverage was 83% of the population. In 12 villages all baseline infection cleared and few sporadic cases were detected during the following five years. In the other two villages treatment was followed by increased infection at two months, which was associated with extensive contact with other untreated communities. The prevalence of infection subsequently dropped to 0% in these 2 villages and 0.6% for the whole population by the end of the study in the absence of any further antibiotic treatment. However, several villages had a TF%1–9 of >10%, the threshold for initiating or continuing mass antibiotic treatment, in the absence of any detectable C. trachomatis. Conclusions/Significance A single round of mass antibiotic treatment may be sufficient in low prevalence settings to control C. trachomatis infection when combined with environmental conditions, which suppress transmission, such as a good water supply and sanitation.
Holt Oram Syndrome - Case Report

The Holt–Oram syndrome or atriodigital dysplasia is an autosomal dominant disorder with near complete penetrance and variable expression, caused by mutations of the TBX5 gene (12q24.1), affecting one in 100 000 live births. 60% of cases are familial and 40% sporadic. We present the case of a 8 months old male patient presented with respiratory problem . Patient had characteristic right sided hand deformity . Further evaluation confirmed it Holt oram syndrome.
The Impact of Pedigree Structure on Heritability Estimates

Heritability measures the familial aggregation of a disease or trait and a non-zero heritability suggests that a genetic component may be present. Reliable heritability estimates are necessary in the planning phase of a linkage or genetic association study but often these estimates are obtained from other studies where the composition of pedigrees may be different from the study that is prepared. The impact of pedigree structure on precision and accuracy of heritability estimates is examined for data and models both with and without dominance effects. Analytical and simulation results find that for purely additive genetic effects all but the simplest pedigree structures provide the same information about the heritability of a quantitative trait. In the presence of dominance effects there is a substantial difference in the precision obtained by different pedigree structures.
T-Cell Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia in a Double Yellow-headed Amazon Parrot (Amazona ochrocephala oratrix)

Abstract An adult, male double yellow-headed Amazon parrot (Amazona ochrocephala oratrix) was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia based on results of a complete blood cell count and cytologic examination of a bone marrow aspirate. Treatment with oral chlorambucil was attempted, but no response was evident after 40 days. The bird was euthanatized, and the diagnosis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia was confirmed on gross and microscopic examination of tissues. Neoplastic lymphocytes were found in the bone marrow, liver, kidney, testes, and blood vessels. Based on CD3-positive immunocytochemical and immunohistochemical immunophenotyping, the chronic lymphocytic leukemia was determined to be of T-cell origin.
Azithromycin for prevention of exacerbations in severe asthma (AZISAST): a multicentre randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial

Background Patients with severe asthma are at increased risk of exacerbations and lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI). Severe asthma is heterogeneous, encompassing eosinophilic and non-eosinophilic (mainly neutrophilic) phenotypes. Patients with neutropilic airway diseases may benefit from macrolides. Methods We performed a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial in subjects with exacerbation-prone severe asthma. Subjects received low-dose azithromycin (n=55) or placebo (n=54) as add-on treatment to combination therapy of inhaled corticosteroids and long-acting β2 agonists for 6 months. The primary outcome was the rate of severe exacerbations and LRTI requiring treatment with antibiotics during the 26-week treatment phase. Secondary efficacy outcomes included lung function and scores on the Asthma Control Questionnaire (ACQ) and Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (AQLQ). Results The rate of primary endpoints (PEPs) during 6 months was not significantly different between the two treatment groups: 0.75 PEPs (95% CI 0.55 to 1.01) per subject in the azithromycin group versus 0.81 PEPs (95% CI 0.61 to 1.09) in the placebo group (p=0.682). In a predefined subgroup analysis according to the inflammatory phenotype, azithromycin was associated with a significantly lower PEP rate than placebo in subjects with non-eosinophilic severe asthma (blood eosinophilia ≤200/µl): 0.44 PEPs (95% CI 0.25 to 0.78) versus 1.03 PEPs (95% CI 0.72 to 1.48) (p=0.013). Azithromycin significantly improved the AQLQ score but there were no significant between-group differences in the ACQ score or lung function. Azithromycin was well tolerated, but was associated with increased oropharyngeal carriage of macrolide-resistant streptococci. Conclusions Azithromycin did not reduce the rate of severe exacerbations and LRTI in patients with severe asthma. However, the significant reduction in the PEP rate in azithromycin-treated patients with non-eosinophilic severe asthma warrants further study. ClinicalTrials.gov number NCT00760838.
Outcome of children and adolescents with recurrent/refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma, a study from the Société Française de Lutte contre le Cancer des Enfants et des Adolescents (SFCE)

There is little data available regarding children and adolescents with Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) who relapse after combined‐modality treatment, even though they have a substantial chance of cure. The purpose of this national retrospective study was to evaluate the outcome of patients with recurrent/refractory HL and determine adverse prognostic factors. From 1990 to 2006, 70 patients (median age 13·9 years) with refractory (n = 31) or first relapse (n = 39) HL were identified. Median time from end of treatment to relapse was 6 months (3–56). Relapses occurred in irradiated areas in 43/70 patients. Salvage therapy consisted of chemotherapy and 50 patients received high‐dose chemotherapy with autologous stem cell transplantation. Radiotherapy was performed in 29 cases, tandem autologous transplantation in five and allograft in three. With a median follow‐up of 40 months (2–140), significant prognostic factors were time to progression/relapse and response to therapy before autograft. Event‐free survival and overall survival in patients with refractory disease, early relapse and late relapse were 35 ± 9%, 67 ± 11%, 76 ± 10% and 48 ± 11%, 89 ± 7% and 80 ± 10%, respectively. As progression <3 months was a major adverse prognostic factor, novel therapeutic approaches are needed for this group of patients. By contrast, patients have substantial chance of long term second remission in case of relapse >3 months.