Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The 2012 AHS/AAN Guidelines for Prevention of Episodic Migraine: A Summary and Comparison With Other Recent Clinical Practice Guidelines

Background. — Updated guidelines for the preventive treatment of episodic migraine have been issued by the American Headache Society (AHS) and the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). We summarize key 2012 guideline recommendations and changes from previous guidelines. We review the characteristics, methods, consistency, and quality of the AHS/AAN guidelines in comparison with recently issued guidelines from other specialty societies.
Shape and motion under varying illumination: unifying structure from motion, photometric stereo, and multiview stereo

We present an algorithm for computing optical flow, shape, motion, lighting, and albedo from an image sequence of a rigidly-moving Lambertian object under distant illumination. The problem is formulated in a manner that subsumes structure from motion, multiview stereo, and photometric stereo as special cases. The algorithm utilizes both spatial and temporal intensity variation as cues: the former constrains flow and the latter constrains surface orientation; combining both cues enables dense reconstruction of both textured and textureless surfaces. The algorithm works by iteratively estimating affine camera parameters, illumination, shape, and albedo in an alternating fashion. Results are demonstrated on videos of hand-held objects moving in front of a fixed light and camera.
2-5A accumulates to high levels in interferon-treated, vaccinia virus-infected cells in the absence of any inhibition of virus replication

We investigated the effects of interferon treatment on virus yield, protein synthesis, and the 2-5A system in vaccinia virus-infected HeLa, L929, and CV1 cells. Under the culture conditions used, vaccinia virus replication was relatively insensitive to the antiviral effects of interferon. In L929 and HeLa cells, interferon at 400 reference units (r.u.) per ml had little effect on viral protein synthesis, the virus-induced inhibition of host protein synthesis, or virus yield: 2,000 to 20,000 r.u. /ml were required to inhibit these. Despite this, high levels (up to 5 microM) of 2-5A [ppp(A2'p)nA; n greater than or equal to 2] were found during vaccinia infection of all of these types of cells treated with 400 r.u. of interferon per ml, i.e., at interferon concentrations too low to inhibit significantly virus growth. High levels (up to 5 microM) were also found in non-interferon-treated HeLa cells (which have a high constitutive level of 2-5A synthetase) in which vaccinia virus replicates perfectly well. It can be concluded that high levels of 2-5A per se have no necessary antiviral effect on vaccinia virus in these systems. These results are in marked contrast to those obtained here and previously with encephalomyocarditis virus. For example, in HeLa cells less than 20 nM 2-5A accumulated, but virus replication was inhibited by 50 r.u. of interferon per ml (Silverman et al., Eur. J. Biochem. 124:131-138, 1982). The characteristic cleavage of rRNA by the 2-5A-dependent RNase was delayed relative to 2-5A accumulation in the vaccinia virus-infected cells. This delay was not the result of either defective 2-5A or of a stable virus-induced inhibition of the 2-5A-dependent RNase; 2-5A extracted from the cells had full biological activity when assayed by activation of the 2-5A-dependent RNase in cell extract, and the 2-5A-dependent RNase extracted from the vaccinia virus-infected cells was fully active in vitro. The basis for the delay remains to be determined. High levels of 2-5A were not observed when late (DNA synthesis-dependent) vaccinia transcription was inhibited by either cycloheximide or cytosine arabinoside. The only known activator of the 2-5A synthetase is double-stranded RNA. The presence of 2-5A therefore implies the natural occurrence of double-stranded structures in late viral RNA in intact vaccinia virus-infected cells.
Functional organ preservation with definitive chemoradiotherapy for T4 laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma.

BACKGROUND Randomized trials established chemoradiotherapy as standard treatment for advanced laryngeal cancer. Patients with large-volume T4 disease (LVT4) were excluded from these trials. The purpose of this study was to report T4 laryngeal cancer patient outcome, including those with LVT4 disease, treated with chemoradiotherapy. PATIENTS AND METHODS This study is a retrospective subset analysis of 32 patients with T4 laryngeal carcinoma including LVT4 tumors treated on three consecutive protocols investigating paclitaxel (Taxol), 5-fluorouracil, hydroxyurea, and 1.5-Gy twice daily (BID) radiotherapy (TFHX). RESULTS Median follow-up is 43 months. Four-year locoregional control (LRC), disease-free survival (DFS), overall survival (OS), and laryngectomy-free survival (LFS) was 71%, 67%, 53%, and 86%, respectively. Four patients required laryngectomy for recurrent or persistent disease. Of disease-free patients with >or=1 year follow-up, 90% demonstrated normal or understandable speech. None required laryngectomy for complications. Among LVT4 patients, 4-year LRC, DFS, OS, and LFS was 71%, 65%, 56%, and 81%, respectively. Induction chemotherapy improved 4-year LRC (90% versus 46%, P = 0.03) and DFS (84% versus 42%, P = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS Promising control and functional outcomes are achieved with TFHX for T4 laryngeal patients. LVT4 disease had outcomes similar to patients with less advanced disease treated on Radiation Therapy Oncology Group 91-11. Induction chemotherapy improved outcomes, warranting further investigation.
Design of parametric risk transfer solutions for volcanic eruptions: an application to Japanese volcanoes

Abstract. Volcanic eruptions are rare but potentially catastrophic phenomena, affecting societies and economies through different pathways. The 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland, a medium-sized ash-fall-producing eruption, caused losses in the range of billions of dollars, mainly to the aviation and tourism industries. Financial risk transfer mechanisms such as insurance are used by individuals, companies, governments, etc., to protect themselves from losses associated with natural catastrophes. In this work, we conceptualize and design a parametric risk transfer mechanism to offset losses to building structures arising from large, ash-fall-producing volcanic eruptions. Such a transfer mechanism relies on the objective measurement of physical characteristics of volcanic eruptions that are correlated with the size of resulting losses (in this case, height of the eruptive column and predominant direction of ash dispersal) in order to pre-determine payments to the risk cedent concerned. We apply this risk transfer mechanism to the case of Mount Fuji in Japan by considering a potential risk cedent such as a regional government interested in offsetting losses to dwellings in the heavily populated prefectures of Tokyo and Kanagawa. The simplicity in determining eruptive column height and ash fall dispersal direction makes this design suitable for extrapolation to other volcanic settings worldwide where significant ash-fall-producing eruptions may occur, provided these parameters are reported by an official, reputable agency and a suitable loss model is available for the volcanoes of interest.
Oral Vaccination against Bubonic Plague Using a Live Avirulent Yersinia pseudotuberculosis Strain

ABSTRACT We evaluated the possibility of using Yersinia pseudotuberculosis as a live vaccine against plague because it shares high genetic identity with Y. pestis while being much less virulent, genetically much more stable, and deliverable orally. A total of 41 Y. pseudotuberculosis strains were screened by PCR for the absence of the high pathogenicity island, the superantigens YPM, and the type IV pilus and the presence of the pYV virulence plasmid. One strain (IP32680) fulfilled these criteria. This strain was avirulent in mice upon intragastric or subcutaneous inoculation and persisted for 2 months in the mouse intestine without clinical signs of disease. IP32680 reached the mesenteric lymph nodes, spleen, and liver without causing major histological lesions and was cleared after 13 days. The antibodies produced in vaccinated animals recognized both Y. pseudotuberculosis and Y. pestis antigens efficiently. After a subcutaneous challenge with Y. pestis CO92, bacteria were found in low amounts in the organs and rarely in the blood of vaccinated animals. One oral IP32680 inoculation protected 75% of the mice, and two inoculations induced much higher antibody titers and protected 88% of the mice. Our results thus validate the concept that an attenuated Y. pseudotuberculosis strain can be an efficient, inexpensive, safe, and easy-to-produce live vaccine for oral immunization against bubonic plague.
BREAKDOWN OF POLYMORPHISM OF THE RED‐BACKED SALAMANDER ON LONG ISLAND

Throughout most of its extensive range in the forested areas of eastern North America, the red-backed salamander Plethodotn cinereus (Green) occurs in two color phases, a dark unicolored unstriped phase and a phase with a prominent red dorsal stripe. Parent-offspring correlation data are consistent with the hypothesis that the striped phase is genetically dominant to the unstriped phase (Highton, 1959). In 1948, Karl Koopman and others then at Columbia University became interested in polymorphism of P. cinereus and endeavored quite casually to verify its existence at Cold Spring Harborr, Long Island. The collection of a good series of P. cinereus in the woods near the Institute turned out to consist only of the striped phase. This surprising event resulted in extended investigations by Williams and Cooper which continued through two years. This inquiry revealed a strange situation: Long Island has extensive areas apparently occupied by populations entirely of one or the other phase as well as other areas in which mixed populations occur. There was a correlation between areas pure for the striped phase and deciduous woodlands and between areas pure for the unstriped phase and pine woods. A long delay has added little new field data. A number of specimens have been collected in 1964 and 1965 by Richard Zweifel and by M. K. Hecht and students. These have not altered the patterns previously found, and only the larger series (Shelter Island, Gardiner's Island) have been mapped. Another of us (Highton) has examined the specimens collected in 1948-1949 and the more recent ones, and has found a striking correlation of color phase and vertebral number, a correlation which like the phase distribution on Long Island is unlike the situation on the adjacent mainland.
The Highest Dimensional Stochastic Blockmodel with a Regularized Estimator

In the high dimensional Stochastic Blockmodel for a random network, the number of clusters (or blocks) K grows with the number of nodes N. Two previous studies have examined the statistical estimation performance of spectral clustering and the maximum likelihood estimator under the high dimensional model; neither of these results allow K to grow faster than N^{1/2}. We study a model where, ignoring log terms, K can grow proportionally to N. Since the number of clusters must be smaller than the number of nodes, no reasonable model allows K to grow faster; thus, our asymptotic results are the "highest" dimensional. To push the asymptotic setting to this extreme, we make additional assumptions that are motivated by empirical observations in physical anthropology (Dunbar, 1992), and an in depth study of massive empirical networks (Leskovec et al 2008). Furthermore, we develop a regularized maximum likelihood estimator that leverages these insights and we prove that, under certain conditions, the proportion of nodes that the regularized estimator misclusters converges to zero. This is the first paper to explicitly introduce and demonstrate the advantages of statistical regularization in a parametric form for network analysis.
Prefrontal DA Transmission at D1 Receptors and the Pathology of Schizophrenia

The current view on the dopamine (DA) hypothesis of schizophrenia postulates a cortical/subcortical imbalance: subcortical mesolimbic DA projections might be hyperactive, resulting in hyperstimulation of D2receptors and positive symptoms, whereas mesocortical DA projections to the prefrontal cortex might be hypoactive, resulting in hypostimulation of D1 receptors, negative symptoms, and cognitive impairment. Although the subcortical abnormalities are relatively well established now, the evidence for cortical hypodopaminergia is just emerging. This article will review current evidence for prefrontal hypodopaminergia in schizophrenia, with special emphasis on positron emission tomography (PET) studies measuring cortical D1 receptors in schizophrenia. The presentation of the clinical data will be introduced by a brief overview of the function of prefrontal DA systems, both at the cellular and cognitive level. The impact of antipsychotic drugs on prefrontal DA function will also be reviewed. We will conclude with the formulation of several models of altered prefrontal DA transmission at D1 receptors in schizophrenia.
Laboratory Detection of Clostridium difficile in Piglets in Australia

ABSTRACT Clostridium difficile is a well-known enteric pathogen of humans and the causative agent of high-morbidity enteritis in piglets aged 1 to 7 days. C. difficile prevalence in Australian piglets is as high as 70%. The current diagnostic assays have been validated only for human infections, and there are no published studies assessing their performance in Australian piglets. We evaluated the suitability of five assays for detecting C. difficile in 157 specimens of piglet feces. The assays included a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LMIA)-PCR for tcdA (illumigene C. difficile; Meridian), a real-time PCR for tcdB (GeneOhm Cdiff; Becton Dickinson), two-component enzyme immunoassays (EIA) for C. difficile glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) (EIA-GDH) and TcdA/TcdB (EIA-TcdA/TcdB) (C. diff Quik Chek; Alere), and direct culture (DC) (C. difficile chromID agar; bioMérieux). The assays for detection of the organism were compared against enrichment culture (EC), and assays for detection of toxins/toxin genes were compared against EC followed by PCR for toxin genes (toxigenic EC [TEC]). The recovery of C. difficile by EC was 39.5% (n = 62/157), and TEC revealed that 58.1% (n = 36/62) of isolates were positive for at least one toxin gene (tcdA/tcdB). Compared with those for EC/TEC, the sensitivities, specificities, positive predictive values, and negative predictive values were, respectively, as follows: DC, 91.9, 100.0, 100.0, and 95.0%; EIA-GDH, 41.9, 92.6, 78.8, and 71.0%; EIA-TcdA/TcdB, 5.6, 99.2, 66.7, and 77.9%; real-time PCR, 42.9, 96.7, 78.9, and 85.4% and LMIA-PCR, 25.0, 95.9, 64.3, and 81.1%. The performance of the molecular methods was poor, suggesting that the current commercially available assays for diagnosis of C. difficile in humans are not suitable for use in piglets. C. difficile recovery by the DC provides a cost-effective alternative.
Epigenetic Silencing of Apoptosis-Inducing Gene Expression Can Be Efficiently Overcome by Combined SAHA and TRAIL Treatment in Uterine Sarcoma Cells

The lack of knowledge about molecular pathology of uterine sarcomas with a representation of 3–7% of all malignant uterine tumors prevents the establishment of effective therapy protocols. Here, we explored advanced therapeutic options to the previously discovered antitumorigenic effects of the histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA) by combined treatment with the tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL/Apo-2L). In addition, we investigated the uterine sarcoma cell lines, MES-SA and ESS-1, regarding the underlying molecular mechanisms of SAHA and TRAIL-induced apoptosis and their resistance towards TRAIL. Compared to single SAHA or TRAIL treatment, the combination of SAHA with TRAIL led to complete cell death of both tumor cell lines after 24 to 48 hours. In contrast to single SAHA treatment, apoptosis occured faster and was more pronounced in ESS-1 cells than in MES-SA cells. Induction of SAHA- and TRAIL-induced apoptosis was accompanied by upregulation of the intrinsic apoptotic pathway via reduction of mitochondrial membrane potential, caspase-3, -6, and -7 activation, and PARP cleavage, but was also found to be partially caspase-independent. Apoptosis resistance was caused by reduced expression of caspase-8 and DR 4/TRAIL-R1 in ESS-1 and MES-SA cells, respectively, due to epigenetic silencing by DNA hypermethylation of gene promoter sequences. Treatment with the demethylating agent 5-Aza-2'-deoxycytidine or gene transfer therefore restored gene expression and increased the sensitivity of both cell lines against TRAIL-induced apoptosis. Our data provide evidence that deregulation of epigenetic silencing by histone acetylation and DNA hypermethylation might play a fundamental role in the origin of uterine sarcomas. Therefore, tumor growth might be efficiently overcome by a cytotoxic combinatorial treatment of HDAC inhibitors with TRAIL.
Obesity and Arterial Stiffness in Children: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objective— Childhood obesity is associated with risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Arterial stiffness is considered one of the earliest detectable measures of vascular damage. There is controversy in the literature regarding the effects of childhood obesity on arterial stiffness. The objective of this study is to systematically review the literature and to conduct a meta-analysis comparing measures of central arterial stiffness in children and adolescents with obesity to healthy body mass index controls. Approach and Results— Literature searches were conducted using databases (eg, MEDLINE, EMBASE) and citations cross-referenced. Studies assessing central pulse wave velocity or &bgr;-stiffness index were included. A random effects meta-analysis of the standardized mean difference and 95% confidence intervals in arterial stiffness between children with obesity and control children was performed for each arterial stiffness measure. A total of 523 studies were identified. Fifteen case–control studies were included, with 2237 children/adolescents (1281 with obesity, 956 healthy body mass index controls) between 5 and 24 years of age. All studies measuring carotid and aortic &bgr;-stiffness index and 10/12 studies measuring central pulse wave velocity reported greater arterial stiffness in children/adolescents with obesity compared with controls. A random effects meta-analysis was performed revealing a significant effect of obesity on pulse wave velocity (standardized mean difference=0.718; 95% confidence interval=0.291–1.415), carotid &bgr;-stiffness index (0.862; 0.323–1.402), and aortic &bgr; stiffness index (1.017; 0.419–1.615). Conclusion— These findings indicate that child/adolescent obesity is associated with greater arterial stiffness. However, further research is needed to address confounders, such as pubertal status, that may affect this relationship in children. In the future, these techniques may be useful in risk stratification and guiding clinical management of obese children to optimize cardiovascular outcomes.
Brick& Mortar: an on-line multi-agent exploration algorithm

When an emergency occurs within a building, it is critical to explore the area as fast as possible in order to find victims and identify hazards. We propose Brick&Mortar, an algorithm for the autonomous exploration of unknown terrains by a team of mobile nodes, referred to as agents. Because of the unreliability and short range of wireless communications in an indoor environment we suggest that agents communicate indirectly with each other by tagging the environment. Agents have no prior knowledge of the terrain map, but are able to coordinate in order to explore a variety of terrains with different topological features. In our experimental evaluation, we show that Brick&Mortar significantly outperforms the competing algorithms, namely ants and multiple depth first search, in terms of exploration time. The observed performance benefits suggest that our algorithm is suitable for safety-critical applications that require rapid area coverage for real-time event detection and response.
Larger phylogenetic distances in litter mixtures: lower microbial biomass and higher C/N ratios but equal mass loss

Phylogenetic distances of coexisting species differ greatly within plant communities, but their consequences for decomposers and decomposition remain unknown. We hypothesized that large phylogenetic distance of leaf litter mixtures increases differences of their litter traits, which may, in turn, result in increased resource complementarity or decreased resource concentration for decomposers and hence increased or decreased chemical transformation and reduction of litter. We conducted a litter mixture experiment including 12 common temperate tree species (evolutionarily separated by up to 106 Myr), and sampled after seven months, at which average mass loss was more than 50%. We found no effect of increased phylogenetic distance on litter mass loss or on abundance and diversity of invertebrate decomposers. However, phylogenetic distance decreased microbial biomass and increased carbon/nitrogen (C/N) ratios of litter mixtures. Consistently, four litter traits showed (marginally) significant phylogenetic signal and in three of these traits increasing trait difference decreased microbial biomass and increased C/N. We suggest that phylogenetic proximity of litter favours microbial decomposers and chemical transformation of litter owing to a resource concentration effect. This leads to a new hypothesis: closely related plant species occurring in the same niche should promote and profit from increased nutrient availability.
Scandium in aluminum alloys

Aluminum alloys that contain dilute scandium additions display upgraded properties in several areas. In conjunction with zirconium, scandium forms very fine, coherent precipitates that impart strength and serve to inhibit recrystallization in aluminum alloys. In addition, these alloys display improved hot-cracking resistance during welding, and enhanced weld strength. Several scandium-aluminum alloys are currently under development, and some of the more interesting properties are presented in this article.