Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biomechanical evaluation of DTRAX® posterior cervical cage stabilization with and without lateral mass fixation

Introduction Lateral mass screw (LMS) fixation with plates or rods is the current standard procedure for posterior cervical fusion. Recently, implants placed between the facet joints have become available as an alternative to LMS or transfacet screws for patients with cervical spondylotic radiculopathy. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the biomechanical stability of the DTRAX® cervical cage for single- and two-level fusion and compare this to the stability achieved with LMS fixation with rods in a two-level construct. Methods Six cadaveric cervical spine (C3–C7) specimens were tested in flexion–extension, lateral bending, and axial rotation to ±1.5 Nm moment without preload (0 N) in the following conditions: 1) intact (C3–C7), 2) LMS and rods at C4–C5 and C5–C6, 3) removal of all rods (LMS retained) and placement of bilateral posterior cages at C5–C6, 4) bilateral posterior cages at C4–C5 and C5–C6 (without LMS and rods), and 5) C4–C5 and C5–C6 bilateral posterior cages at C4–C5 and C5–C6 with rods reinserted. Results Bilateral posterior cervical cages significantly reduced range of motion in all tested directions in both single- and multilevel constructs (P<0.05). Similar stability was achieved with bilateral posterior cages and LMS in a two-level construct: 0.6°±0.3° vs 1.2°±0.4° in flexion–extension (P=0.001), (5.0°±2.6° vs 3.1°±1.3°) in lateral bending (P=0.053), (1.3°±1.0° vs 2.2°±0.9°) in axial rotation (P=0.091) for posterior cages and LMS, respectively. Posterior cages, when placed as an adjunct to LMS, further reduced range of motion in a multilevel construct (P<0.05). Conclusion Bilateral posterior cages provide similar cervical segmental stability compared with a LMS and rod construct and may be an alternative surgical option for select patients. Furthermore, supplementation of a lateral mass construct with posterior cages increases cervical spine stability in single- and multilevel conditions.
PERK Is a Haploinsufficient Tumor Suppressor: Gene Dose Determines Tumor-Suppressive Versus Tumor Promoting Properties of PERK in Melanoma

The unfolded protein response (UPR) regulates cell fate following exposure of cells to endoplasmic reticulum stresses. PERK, a UPR protein kinase, regulates protein synthesis and while linked with cell survival, exhibits activities associated with both tumor progression and tumor suppression. For example, while cells lacking PERK are sensitive to UPR-dependent cell death, acute activation of PERK triggers both apoptosis and cell cycle arrest, which would be expected to contribute tumor suppressive activity. We have evaluated these activities in the BRAF-dependent melanoma and provide evidence revealing a complex role for PERK in melanoma where a 50% reduction is permissive for BrafV600E-dependent transformation, while complete inhibition is tumor suppressive. Consistently, PERK mutants identified in human melanoma are hypomorphic with dominant inhibitory function. Strikingly, we demonstrate that small molecule PERK inhibitors exhibit single agent efficacy against BrafV600E-dependent tumors highlighting the clinical value of targeting PERK.
Overcoming The Children's Mourning State Through Psychological Intervention

Death and mourning that follows it are experiences that occurs in everyone`s life at one time. There are unavoidable, painful, sad experiences even for adults who are able to manage their own emotions, and evenmore for children who, at least in early childhood and elementary school aren't able to understand on their own what it's happening in that moment, and how to manage their sadness and live the mourning period properly. Due to the fact that children are not yet fully developed cognitively, cannot understand on their own the concept of death. At that age, death seems for them not to be permanent. Children believe that death is a reversible process that the person in their family is temporarily left and they will return at any moment, and they will wait and ask for that moment long after the actual death, if lacked of any other information. Moreover, children think that death is avoidable, since - at that age, self-centeredness is somehow a characteristic of their personality and death hasn't affected their own person; therefore, when death occurs in their family, their reality will be brutally shaken and they will be very disoriented. Also, in early childhood, kids have a symbolic, magical perspective about death; they imagine it as a devil, a monster or a black lady with a scythe and many other images, far from a realistic perspective. Considering this aspects, it is very important that a realistic, honest, adapted to their age perspective of death when it affects their family. Unfortunately, in many cultures, death is still a taboo. It still exists the belief of overprotecting children from suffering by hiding the death of a close family member, lying them and taking them far away so that they cannot see the dead person. But actually, by practicing this, parents, teachers and persons around the children only make him be more disoriented and suffer more by not knowing what happened with the person they love. As a parent or teacher, it is very important to understand that staying beside the children and sustaining him emotionally, without hiding him any aspect about death of the loved one has a crucial importance for their future development; otherwise, it is probable that they will develop symptoms of chronic depression, and as adults, problems of attachment and extreme fear of death. Proper education for population regarding this delicate subject is a sign of a developed society. In the light of this perspectives, specialists and psychotherapists should be prepared to offer advice and support in any moment so that parents will be learn how to stand by their children in the hard and long process of managing their negative emotions, living their mourning together.
Role of Coping Self-Efficacy in Working Mothers' Management of Daily Hassles and Health Outcomes

Role of Coping Self-Efficacy in Working Mothers’ Management of Daily Hassles and Health Outcomes by Sonya K. Broadnax MA, Ball State University, 1996 BS, Ball State University, 1994 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Health Psychology
A combined enrichment/polymerase chain reaction based method for the routine screening of Streptococcus agalactiae in pregnant women

Group B Streptococcus (GBS) is the most common cause of life-threatening infection in neonates. Guidelines from CDC recommend universal screening of pregnant women for rectovaginal GBS colonization. The objective of this study was to compare the performance of a combined enrichment/PCR based method targeting the atr gene in relation to culture using enrichment with selective broth medium (standard method) to identify the presence of GBS in pregnant women. Rectovaginal GBS samples from women at ≥36 weeks of pregnancy were obtained with a swab and analyzed by the two methods. A total of 89 samples were evaluated. The prevalence of positive results for GBS detection was considerable higher when assessed by the combined enrichment/PCR method than with the standard method (35.9% versus 22.5%, respectively). The results demonstrated that the use of selective enrichment broth followed by PCR targeting the atr gene is a highly sensitive, specific and accurate test for GBS screening in pregnant women, allowing the detection of the bacteria even in lightly colonized patients. This PCR methodology may provide a useful diagnostic tool for GBS detection and contributes for a more accurate and effective intrapartum antibiotic and lower newborn mortality and morbidity.
Gbb/Bmp signaling is essential for maintaining germline stem cells and for repressing bam transcription in the Drosophila testis

Stem cells are responsible for replacing damaged or dying cells in various adult tissues throughout a lifetime. They possess great potential for future regenerative medicine and gene therapy. However, the mechanisms governing stem cell regulation are poorly understood. Germline stem cells (GSCs) in the Drosophila testis have been shown to reside in niches, and thus these represent an excellent system for studying relationships between niches and stem cells. Here we show that Bmp signals from somatic cells are essential for maintaining GSCs in the Drosophila testis. Somatic cyst cells and hub cells express two Bmp molecules, Gbb and Dpp. Our genetic analysis indicates that gbb functions cooperatively with dpp to maintain male GSCs, although gbb alone is essential for GSC maintenance. Furthermore, mutant clonal analysis shows that Bmp signals directly act on GSCs and control their maintenance. In GSCs defective in Bmp signaling, expression of bam is upregulated, whereas forced bam expression in GSCs causes the GSCs to be lost. This study demonstrates that Bmp signals from the somatic cells maintain GSCs, at least in part, by repressing bam expression in the Drosophila testis. dpp signaling is known to be essential for maintaining GSCs in the Drosophila ovary. This study further suggests that both Drosophila male and female GSCs use Bmp signals to maintain GSCs.
Automatic Searching for English-Vietnamese Documents on the Internet

Bilingual corpora together with machine learning technology can be used to solve problems in natural language processing. In addition, bilingual corpora are useful for mapping linguistic tags of less popular languages, such as Vietnamese, and for studying comparative linguistics. However, Vietnamese corpora still have some shortcomings, especially English–Vietnamese bilingual corpora. This paper focuses on a searching method for bilingual Internet materials to support establishing an English–Vietnamese bilingual corpus. Based on the benefit of natural language processing toolkits, the system concentrates on using them as a solution for the problem of searching any Internet English–Vietnamese bilingual document without the need for any rules. We propose a method for extracting the main content of webpages without the need for frame of website or source of website before processing. Several other natural language processing tools included in our system are English-Vietnamese machine translation, extracting Vietnamese
Child soldiering on trial: an interdisciplinary analysis of responsibility in the Lord's Resistance Army

‘How can we tell what happened to us? There are no words to describe what we have witnessed. What we saw, what we heard, what we did, and how it changed our lives, is beyond measure. We were murdered, raped, amputated, tortured, mutilated, beaten, enslaved and forced to commit terrible crimes. ’ (Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report for the Children of Sierra Leone)
Symmetric channels capacity computation by using groups and the Kullback-Leibler distance

In this work it is proposed a method to compute the capacity of channels with finite input alphabet. This method is based on the constancy of the Kullback-Leibler distances between the different conditional probability densities of the the output alphabet and the full densities of the output alphabet. After that, it is studied a general symmetric channels in terms of abstract groups and it is shown that the capacity of this kind of channels is achieved when its input random variable is uniform. Finally, it is made the analysis of the capacity of classical symmetric channels en terms of permutation and rotation groups.
Control of a Particle-Laden Jet Using a Piezoelectric Actuator by

A moving wall section attached to a piezo-electric actuator was used to perturb the particle-laden flow exiting a fully developed turbulent channel. The Reynolds number based on the channel width and centerline velocity was 4240. The maximum velocity of the moving wall was 9.5 cm/s (2.3% of the mean centerline velocity), and the maximum displacement was 120 μm, corresponding to 1.84 wall units. The actuator displacement frequency and amplitude were tuned independently to generate different effects on the particle-laden flow, and both quantities were documented to provide precise boundary conditions for numerical codes. Two particle sizes were investigated at a particle-to-air mass loading ratio of 3.5%. The Stokes numbers based on Kolmogorov scales at the center plane were 1.9 and 7.4. The flow behavior was documented by flow visualization, number density measurements, and particle and gas velocity measurements. The experiments showed that actuation affects particle velocity and distribution both directly and indirectly; directly, by altering the boundary conditions seen by the particles flowing near the wall at the channel exit, and indirectly, by controlling the spacing and the size of the induced vortices in the jet. The direct effects, which are useful for reducing the high particle concentration layers evolving near the channel sidewalls, required both a significant impact velocity and significant displacement of the activated wall. Larger impact velocities are associated with larger forcing frequencies or Strouhal numbers. The indirect effects were strongest for the lowest Stokes number tested (Skf = 0.45). This Stokes number was associated with the lowest Strouhal number (hence largest vortices) and smallest particles. In this case, the particle distribution in the jet changed dramatically, and particle dispersion was significantly increased.
ioaugmentation of an anaerobic biotrickling filter for enhanced conversion of richloroethene to ethene

During biological reduction of trichloroethene (TCE), incomplete reduction to partially dechlorinated intermediates cis-1,2-dichloroethene (cis-DCE) and vinyl chloride (VC) can occur due to kinetic and inhibitory limitations. In this study, an anaerobic biotrickling filter was inoculated initially with a mixed culture containing Dehalococcoides spp. that contained the TceA and VcrA reductive dehalogenases. After significant accumulation of cis-DCE and VC was observed in the bioreactor effluent, it was hypothesized that bioaugmentation with Dehalococcoides strain BAV1, which contains the BvcA dehalogenase responsible for the metabolic dechlorination of cis-DCE and VC, would improve the conversion of TCE to ethene. It was found that at TCE loadings of 8–9 g mbed−3 h−1, bioaugmentation with strain BAV1 resulted in 45% conversion of TCE to ethene, as opposed to less than 10% prior to bioaugmentation. Strain BAV1 was found 6 7 iotrickling filter ehalococcoides to grow to the same density (10 –10 cells per g of packing material) as Dehalococcoides strains containing the TceA and VcrA dehalogenases. Strain BAV1 was also confirmed to be active, as determined by RT-qPCR of the BvcA mRNA. This study shows that it is possible to enhance the performance of continuously fed dechlorinating bioreactors by using a consortium that contains all three known reductive dehalogenases in the TCE dechlorination pathway. This is also the first study where a gas-phase biotrickling filter has been bioaugmented with a single strain to result in improved performance. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Cell Surface O-Glycans Limit Staphylococcus aureus Adherence to Corneal Epithelial Cells

ABSTRACT The mucin-rich environment of the intact corneal epithelium is thought to contribute to the prevention of Staphylococcus aureus infection. This study examined whether O-glycans, which constitute the majority of the mucin mass of epithelial cell glycocalyces, prevented bacterial adhesion and growth. Abrogation of mucin O glycosylation using the chemical primer benzyl-α-GalNAc resulted in increased adherence of parental strain RN6390 to apical human corneal-limbal epithelial (HCLE) cells and to biotinylated cell surface protein in static and liquid phase adhesion assays, consistent with a role of mucin O-glycans in preventing bacterial adhesion. Comparable results were found with ALC135, an isogenic mutant strain defective in the accessory gene regulators agr and sar, indicating that the agr- and/or sar-regulated virulence factors did not play a major role in mediating adhesion to the corneal cell surface after mucin O-glycan truncation. In exoglycosidase digestion studies, treatment with sialidase from Arthrobacter ureafaciens—which hydrolyzed mucin-associated O-acetyl sialic acid—but not from Clostridium perfringens resulted in an increase in RN6390 and ALC135 adhesion. Abrogation of mucin O glycosylation in HCLE cell cultures did not affect bacterial growth. Overall, these data indicate that mucin O-glycans contribute to the prevention of bacterial adherence to the apical surface of corneal epithelial cells and suggest that alteration of cell surface glycosylation from disease or trauma, including that stemming from contact lens wear, could contribute to a higher risk of infection.
Influence of the usual motivation for dental attendance on dental status and oral health-related quality of life

Objectives: To evaluate the influence of dental visiting patterns on the dental status and Oral Health-related Qua-lity of Life (OHQoL) of patients visiting the University Clinic of Salamanca (Spain). Study Design: This cross-sectional study consisted of a clinical oral examination and a questionnaire-based interview in a consecutive sample of patients seeking a dental examination. Patients were classified as problem-based dental attendees (PB) and regular dental attendees (RB). Clinical and OHQoL (OHIP-14 & OIDP) data were compared between groups. Pair-wise comparisons were performed and a Logistic Regression Model was fitted for predicting the Odds Ratio (OR) of being a PB patient. Results: The sample was composed of 255 patients aged 18 to 87 years (mean age: 63.1 ± 12.7; women: 51.8%). The PB patients had a poorer dental status (i.e. caries, periodontal and prosthetic needs), brushed their teeth less,and were significantly more impaired in their OHQoL according to both instruments. The logistic regression coefficients demonstrated that on average the OR of being a PB patient was high in this dental patient sample, but this OR increased significantly if the patient was a male (OR= 1.1-5.0) or referred pain-related impacts according to the OHIP and, additionally, the OR decreased significantly as a function of the number of healthy fillings and the number of sextants coded as CPI=0. Conclusions: Regular dental check-ups are associated with better dental status and a better OHQoL after controlling for potentially related confounding factors. Key words:Dental attendance, oral health-related quality of life.
Tracking Viral Videos on YouTube: Tool Set Construction

This paper documents the implementation of a tool set calculates a set of near matches of an input set of images using the colour correlogram as a feature extractor. This tool set is a subset of tools that can be used to extract common short segments of video, or visual memes, from a set of videos. The software described in this paper is able to extract features and match similar images into sets of similar images, and sits within a large more complicated process for visual meme tracking. This paper serves as a design and performance testing document, illustrating that the two command line tools created work with an extraction rate of up to 94% precision and 87% recall, matching the performance of the base algorithm this tool set is based on.
Constructing Polities and Markets: An Institutionalist Account of European Integration1

As institutions and governance structures develop in modern markets, they tend to “feed back” onto economic activity. Through such feedback loops, market and political arenas can develop symbiotically into relatively coherent “fields” that gradually embed actors’ orientations and activities. Using these insights, this article develops and tests a theory of European integration focusing on the case of the European Community, the first pillar of the European Union. Traders, organized interests, courts, and the EC’s policy‐making organs, over time, have produced a self‐sustaining causal system that has driven the construction of the European market and polity. The generality of this explanation to a sociology of markets and polity‐building projects is discussed in the conclusion.
L‐selectin: mechanisms and physiological significance of ectodomain cleavage

L‐selectin is a cell adhesion molecule consisting of a large, highly glycosylated, extracellular domain, a single spanning transmembrane domain and a small cytoplasmic tail. It is expressed on most leukocytes and is involved in their rolling on inflamed vascular endothelium prior to firm adhesion and transmigration. It is also required for the constitutive trafficking of lymphocytes through secondary lymphoid organs. Like most adhesion molecules, L‐selectin function is regulated by a variety of mechanisms including gene transcription, post‐translational modifications, association with the actin cytoskeleton, and topographic distribution. In addition, it is rapidly downregulated by proteolytic cleavage near the cell surface by ADAM‐17 (TACE) and at least one other “sheddase”. This process of “ectodomain shedding” results in the release of most of the extracellular portion of L‐selectin from the cell surface while retaining the cytoplasmic, transmembrane, and eleven amino acids of the extracellular domain on the cell. This review will examine the mechanism(s) of L‐selectin ectodomain shedding and discuss the physiological implications.
Conspiracy Formation Is in the Detail: On the Interaction of Conspiratorial Predispositions and Semantic Cues

Summary Significant events are frequently followed by discussions about the event's ‘true nature’. Yet, there is only little evidence whether the conspiratorial reasoning of conspiracy believers and sceptics is a priori determined, or if certain characteristics of information are responsible for provoking a polarization. We investigated how depicted causation (direct vs. indirect; Study 1) and intention (strong vs. weak purposeful; Study 2) might invoke a bias in believers and sceptics regarding conspiratorial reasoning about an ongoing event, namely, whether US investigations against FIFA were more or less likely to be seen as a conspiracy against Russia to sabotage the football World Cup in 2018. We revealed that judgments of conspiracy believers and sceptics about the event's ‘true nature’ are not a priori divided—in fact, conspiracy formation is only affected when direct causation or strong purposeful intentions were obvious. Results point to the relevance of conspiratorial predispositions and semantic cues in conspiracy formation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.