Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cell-Based Therapy for Meniscal Repair

Background The avascular portion of the meniscus cartilage in the knee does not have the ability to repair spontaneously. Hypothesis Cell-based therapy is able to repair a lesion in the swine meniscus. Study Design Controlled laboratory study. Methods Sixteen Yorkshire pigs were divided into four groups. A longitudinal tear was produced in the avascular portion of the left medial meniscus of 4 pigs. Autologous chondrocytes were seeded onto devitalized allogenic meniscal slices and were secured inside the lesion with two sutures. Identical incisions were created in 12 other pigs, which were used as three separate control groups: 4 animals treated with an unseeded scaffold, 4 were simply sutured, and 4 were left untreated. Meniscal samples were collected after 9 weeks, and the samples were analyzed grossly, histologically, and histomorphometrically. Results Gross results showed bonding of the lesion margins in the specimens of the experimental group, whereas no repair was noted in any of the control group specimens. Histological and histomorphometrical analysis showed multiple areas of healing in the specimens of the experimental group. Conclusions This study demonstrated the ability of seeded chondrocytes to heal a meniscal tear. Clinical Relevance Cell-based therapy could be a potential tool for avascular meniscus repair.
Blockchain-Enabled Integrated Energy System Trading Model for CCS-P2G-Coupled Operation: Enhancing Energy Trading Efficiency and Carbon Emission Reduction

The need for sustainable integrated energy systems to mitigate environmental impact is hindered by challenges in fluctuating demand, trading reliability, and trustworthiness. This paper proposes an innovative approach to tackle these challenges by introducing a blockchain-based integrated energy system trading model with smart contracts. It is intricately linked with the operation of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology and power-to-gas (P2G) equipment. The CCS-P2G-coupled operation principle is first outlined, followed by the presentation of a comprehensive system model. The peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading algorithm is enhanced using the Bloom filtering technique. Leveraging smart contracts, a distributed energy trading mechanism is employed, resulting in a meticulously constructed integrated energy system trading model for CCS-P2G-coupled operation. The proposed model is rigorously evaluated for energy trading efficiency and system performance, revealing significant improvements compared to prior studies and showcasing substantial cumulative benefits. Three operation scenarios are examined, with experimental results highlighting the model’s superior carbon emission reduction capacity. This study introduces an innovative paradigm for trading and managing integrated energy systems, holding potential implications for the sustainable development and decarbonization transition of future energy systems.
Practices and Challenges of Growth Monitoring and Promotion in Ethiopia: A Qualitative Study

ABSTRACT The use of growth monitoring and promotion (GMP) has become widespread. It is a potential contributor towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals of halving hunger and reducing child mortality by two-thirds within 2015. Yet, GMP appears to be a prerequisite for good child health but several studies have shown that there is a discrepancy between the purpose and the practice of GMP. The high prevalence of malnutrition in many developing countries seems to confirm this fact. A descriptive qualitative study was carried out from April to September 2011. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were conducted amongst mothers and health workers. Data were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis technique, with the support of ATLAS.ti 5.0 software. The results suggest that most mothers were aware of the need for regular weight monitoring while health workers also seemed to be well-aware and to practise GMP according to the international guidelines. However, there was a deficit in maternal knowledge with regard to child-feeding and a lack of basic resources to keep and/or to buy healthful and nutritionally-rich food. Furthermore, the role of the husband was not always supportive of proper child-feeding. In general, GMP is unlikely to succeed if mothers lack awareness of proper child-feeding practices, and if they are not supported by their husbands.
Is relevance hard work?: evaluating the effort of making relevant assessments

The judging of relevance has been a subject of study in information retrieval for a long time, especially in the creation of relevance judgments for test collections. While the criteria by which assessors? judge relevance has been intensively studied, little work has investigated the process individual assessors go through to judge the relevance of a document. In this paper, we focus on the process by which relevance is judged, and in particular, the degree of effort a user must expend to judge relevance. By better understanding this effort in isolation, we may provide data which can be used to create better models of search. We present the results of an empirical evaluation of the effort users must exert to judge the relevance of document, investigating the effect of relevance level and document size. Results suggest that 'relevant' documents require more effort to judge when compared to highly relevant and not relevant documents, and that effort increases as document size increases.
Assessment of the efficiency of ozone application for post-harvest microbial disinfection of some fruits and vegetables

The treatment of ozone is widely used for post-harvest fruit and vegetable processing because of its high activity and safety. As opposed to the gaseous form, the aqueous form is more active. The technique and commodities are major factors in determining the ozone efficiency ratio. Fresh products are a source of pathogen organisms such as Fecal coliform (FC) that are considered a threat to quality and health. This study applied to evaluate the quality and safety of some fruits such (as apples and oranges) with some fruit vegetables like (tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplant, cucumber, and squash), as well as some vegetables such as (lettuce, and arugula) by detection ratio of FC microorganisms. These classes of products were exposed to (3 mg/L) aqueous ozone for 5 minutes. Overall, these concentrations improved entire products. Ozon application lowered the overall activity of contaminants about 25 times from 2792.26 to 105.96 RLU/cm2 after processing. Most of the commodities as eggplant, lettuce, apples, and orange were disinfected and other products significantly decreased. The system is capable of inactivating about 6935.3 relative light units (RLU/cm2) of FC in an ideal situation
Short Article: Asymmetrical Learning between a Tactile and Visual Serial RT Task

According to many researchers, implicit learning in the serial reaction-time task is predominantly motor based and therefore should be independent of stimulus modality. Previous research on the task, however, has focused almost completely on the visual domain. Here we investigated sequence learning when the imperative stimuli were presented tactilely to the fingers. Learning in this task was compared to sequence learning in a typical visual task, using very similar experimental conditions. The results indicate that sequential learning occurs in the tactile task, though to a lesser degree than in its visual counterpart. Furthermore, there was similar cross-modal transfer in both directions, meaning that transfer from the visual to the tactile task was partial. It is proposed that sequence learning involves a stimulus-specific component in the visual but not in the tactile task.
Of Sampling and Smoothing: Approximating Distributions over Linked Open Data

Knowledge about the distribution of data provides the basis for various tasks in the context of Linked Open Data, e.g. for estimating the result set size of a query, for the purpose of statistical schema induction or for using information theoretic metrics to detect patterns. In this paper I investigate the potential of obtaining estimates for such distributions from samples of Linked Data. Therefore, I consider three sampling methods applicable to public RDF data on the Web as well as smoothing techniques to overcome the problem of unseen events in the sample space of a distribution. In a systematic empirical evaluation I look into the effects of these techniques on the quality of distributions approximated from samples. The obtained insights help to assess the quality impact of combinations of sampling and smoothing techniques on five prototypical structures over which distributions are estimated. Furthermore, the results demonstrate the potential and the limitations of these techniques, motivating further work in the direction of sampling from Linked Open Data.
Imaging When Acting: Picture but Not Word Cues Induce Action-Related Biases of Visual Attention

In line with the Theory of Event Coding (Hommel et al., 2001a), action planning has been shown to affect perceptual processing – an effect that has been attributed to a so-called intentional weighting mechanism (Wykowska et al., 2009; Memelink and Hommel, 2012), whose functional role is to provide information for open parameters of online action adjustment (Hommel, 2010). The aim of this study was to test whether different types of action representations induce intentional weighting to various degrees. To meet this aim, we introduced a paradigm in which participants performed a visual search task while preparing to grasp or to point. The to-be performed movement was signaled either by a picture of a required action or a word cue. We reasoned that picture cues might trigger a more concrete action representation that would be more likely to activate the intentional weighting of perceptual dimensions that provide information for online action control. In contrast, word cues were expected to trigger a more abstract action representation that would be less likely to induce intentional weighting. In two experiments, preparing for an action facilitated the processing of targets in an unrelated search task if they differed from distractors on a dimension that provided information for online action control. As predicted, however, this effect was observed only if action preparation was signaled by picture cues but not if it was signaled by word cues. We conclude that picture cues are more efficient than word cues in activating the intentional weighting of perceptual dimensions, presumably by specifying not only invariant characteristics of the planned action but also the dimensions of action-specific parameters.
Assessment of minimal residual disease in myeloma and the need for a consensus approach

Treatment options for myeloma continue to develop at a rapid pace, and it is becoming increasingly challenging to determine the optimal therapeutic approaches because demonstrating a clear survival benefit now requires many years of follow‐up. The detection of minimal residual disease (MRD) is recognized as a sensitive and rapid approach to evaluate treatment efficacy that predicts progression‐free and overall survival independent of categorical response assessment and patients’ biology. The benefit of MRD analysis is reflected in the many different techniques (multiparameter flow cytometry, quantitative polymerase chain reaction, and high‐throughput sequencing) and collaborative groups (including EMN, ESCCA, ICCS, EuroFlow, and EuroMRD) that have performed collaborative projects to harmonize quantitative MRD detection. The time has come to adopt a consensus approach, and this report reviews the benefits and disadvantages of different strategies for MRD detection in myeloma and highlights the requirements for a sensitive, reproducible, and clinically meaningful cellular analytical approach. © 2015 International Clinical Cytometry Society
Pretreatment with corticosteroids to prevent adverse reactions to nonionic contrast media.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine whether patients receiving a two-dose corticosteroid regimen before IV injection of nonionic contrast medium gain protection against adverse reactions to contrast material. SUBJECTS AND METHODS A randomized, blinded study involving three institutions was initiated in 1988. Patients were divided into two groups. One group received a 32-mg oral dose of methylprednisolone administered 6-24 hr before and again 2 hr before injection of contrast material. The other group received placebo tablets administered in the same time periods. During a 3-year period, 1155 patients and control subjects successfully completed the protocol. Demographic characteristics, including histories of previous reactions and histories of asthma or allergy, did not differ in the two groups. All signs and symptoms that appeared after injection of contrast material were carefully recorded and graded according to an earlier scheme [1]. Patients, control subjects, and all attending personnel were blinded regarding the premedication. RESULTS Corticosteroid pretreatment conferred protection for overall reactions (1.7% vs 4.9%, p = .005) and grade I (mild) reactions (0.2% vs 1.9%, p = .004). Subjects receiving corticosteroids also had fewer grade II (moderate) (p = .63) and grade III (severe) (p = .11) reactions, but the total numbers involved were small, and the differences were not significant. CONCLUSION A rigidly controlled study of the potential protective effects of a two-dose oral corticosteroid regimen preceding IV injection of nonionic contrast medium indicates that corticosteroid pretreatment confers significant protection, at least for overall reactions and grade I reactions.
Low-dose, simple, and fast grating-based X-ray phase-contrast imaging

Phase sensitive X-ray imaging methods can provide substantially increased contrast over conventional absorption-based imaging and therefore new and otherwise inaccessible information. The use of gratings as optical elements in hard X-ray phase imaging overcomes some of the problems that have impaired the wider use of phase contrast in X-ray radiography and tomography. So far, to separate the phase information from other contributions detected with a grating interferometer, a phase-stepping approach has been considered, which implies the acquisition of multiple radiographic projections. Here we present an innovative, highly sensitive X-ray tomographic phase-contrast imaging approach based on grating interferometry, which extracts the phase-contrast signal without the need of phase stepping. Compared to the existing phase-stepping approach, the main advantages of this new method dubbed “reverse projection” are not only the significantly reduced delivered dose, without the degradation of the image quality, but also the much higher efficiency. The new technique sets the prerequisites for future fast and low-dose phase-contrast imaging methods, fundamental for imaging biological specimens and in vivo studies.
Continuous estimation of baseflow in snowmelt‐dominated streams and rivers in the Upper Colorado River Basin: A chemical hydrograph separation approach

Effective science‐based management of water resources in large basins requires a qualitative understanding of hydrologic conditions and quantitative measures of the various components of the water budget, including difficult to measure components such as baseflow discharge to streams. Using widely available discharge and continuously collected specific conductance (SC) data, we adapted and applied a long established chemical hydrograph separation approach to quantify daily and representative annual baseflow discharge at 14 streams and rivers at large spatial (> 1000 km2 watersheds) and temporal (up to 37 years) scales in the Upper Colorado River Basin. On average, annual baseflow was 21–58% of annual stream discharge, 13–45% of discharge during snowmelt, and 40–86% of discharge during low‐flow conditions. Results suggest that reservoirs may act to store baseflow discharged to the stream during snowmelt and release that baseflow during low‐flow conditions, and that irrigation return flows may contribute to increases in fall baseflow in heavily irrigated watersheds. The chemical hydrograph separation approach, and associated conceptual model defined here provide a basis for the identification of land use, management, and climate effects on baseflow.
Aquaporin-9 Protein Is the Primary Route of Hepatocyte Glycerol Uptake for Glycerol Gluconeogenesis in Mice*

Background: Aquaporin-9 is a glycerol-permeable channel expressed in hepatocytes. Results: Newly identified chemical inhibitors, as well as aquaporin-9 gene deletion, eliminate glycerol-dependent murine hepatocyte glucose output. Conclusion: Aquaporin-9 is the primary route of murine hepatocyte glycerol uptake for gluconeogenesis. Significance: Aquaporin-9 may be a drug target in diabetes treatment It has been hypothesized that aquaporin-9 (AQP9) is part of the unknown route of hepatocyte glycerol uptake. In a previous study, leptin receptor-deficient wild-type mice became diabetic and suffered from fasting hyperglycemia whereas isogenic AQP9−/− knock-out mice remained normoglycemic. The reason for this improvement in AQP9−/− mice was not established before. Here, we show increased glucose output (by 123% ± 36% S.E.) in primary hepatocyte culture when 0.5 mm extracellular glycerol was added. This increase depended on AQP9 because it was absent in AQP9−/− cells. Likewise, the increase was abolished by 25 μm HTS13286 (IC50 ∼ 2 μm), a novel AQP9 inhibitor, which we identified in a small molecule library screen. Similarly, AQP9 deletion or chemical inhibition eliminated glycerol-enhanced glucose output in perfused liver preparations. The following control experiments suggested inhibitor specificity to AQP9: (i) HTS13286 affected solute permeability in cell lines expressing AQP9, but not in cell lines expressing AQPs 3, 7, or 8. (ii) HTS13286 did not influence lactate- and pyruvate-dependent hepatocyte glucose output. (iii) HTS13286 did not affect glycerol kinase activity. Our experiments establish AQP9 as the primary route of hepatocyte glycerol uptake for gluconeogenesis and thereby explain the previously observed, alleviated diabetes in leptin receptor-deficient AQP9−/− mice.
Grief and joy: emotion word comprehension in the dementias.

OBJECTIVE Word comprehension deficits in neurodegenerative conditions are most striking in the syndrome of semantic dementia. Tests of word comprehension typically examine concrete and abstract nonemotion words. Whether or not understanding of words describing emotion concepts (e.g., insulted, fascinated) is also impaired in the dementias has not been systematically investigated. METHOD Patients with semantic dementia (SD; n = 8), behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD; n = 8), Alzheimer's disease (AD; n = 12), as well as healthy controls (n = 15) completed newly designed emotion word comprehension tasks. Participants also undertook the Graded Synonyms Test, an abstract and concrete nonemotion word comprehension measure. RESULTS Degradation of knowledge about negative and positive emotion words was most impaired in SD. Correlation analyses in the SD group also showed that knowledge of emotion words correlated with the understanding of abstract nonemotion words. The bvFTD group was impaired only when making associations for emotion words. The AD cohort did not differ from controls on any measures of word comprehension. CONCLUSIONS Impairment in word knowledge is greatest in the syndrome of SD, compared with bvFTD and AD, and includes concrete words, abstract words as well as emotion words. Importantly, word comprehension deficits affect positive and negative emotions.
Bile salt deconjugation by Lactobacillus plantarum 80 and its implication for bacterial toxicity

The effects of bile salts on the survival of lactobacilli were investigated using glycocholic acid, cholic acid and deoxycholic acid as model compounds and the bile salt hydrolase active Lactobacillus plantarum 80 (BSH+) and its BSH negative mutant. The detrimental effects of cholic acid, i.e. growth inhibition and cytotoxicity at a concentration of 1 and 5 mmol l−1, respectively, were considered to be due to the hydrophobic protonated form of the molecule, which brings about membrane damage. The conversion of glycocholic acid to cholic acid by the BSH active L. plantarum 80 caused a growth inhibition which was comparable with the inhibition observed in the broth supplemented with 1 mmol l−1 cholic acid. Deoxycholic acid caused toxicity through membrane damage when the compound was in solution. Its toxicity disappeared in the culture broth as the molecule precipitated. In case of cholic acid, the toxicity could be removed by buffering the solution at pH 7·0. It was calculated that at this pH most of the cholic acid molecules were ionized. The results led to the formulation of an extended hypothesis about the ecological significance of bile salt transformations. Primary deconjugation is carried out to counteract intracellular acidification. Yet, the deconjugated molecule can be harmful at moderately acidic pH‐values. In this case, the BSH+ strains could effectively profit from their activity in case they are associated with 7α‐dehydroxylating bacteria which dehydroxylate the deconjugated bile salts. The dehydroxylated molecule has a low solubility and precipitates at moderately acidic pH.
Similarity-Based Support for Text Reuse in Technical Writing

Technical writing in professional environments, such as user manual authoring for new products, is a task that relies heavily on reuse of content. Therefore, technical content is typically created following a strategy where modular units of text have references to each other. One of the main challenges faced by technical authors is to avoid duplicating existing content, as this adds unnecessary effort, generates undesirable inconsistencies, and dramatically increases maintenance and translation costs. However, there are few computational tools available to support this activity. This paper investigates the use of different similarity methods for the task of identification of reuse opportunities in technical writing. We evaluated our results using existing ground truth as well as feedback from technical authors. Finally, we also propose a tool that combines text similarity algorithms with interactive visualizations to aid authors in understanding differences in a collection of topics and identifying reuse opportunities.
Inferior Vena Cava Filters: A Clinical Review and Future Perspectives

Anticoagulation represents the first line treatment for venous thromboembolism (VTE). However, inferior vena cava (IVC) filter insertion can be considered as a possible therapeutic strategy when anticoagulant therapy is contraindicated, to avoid embolization from the lower limbs to pulmonary circulation. Other possible indications are debated among experts. Both permanent and retrievable caval filters are available in clinical practice. Retrievable filters can be removed when no longer necessary, as their use may be indicated only for a limited amount of time. Moreover, caval filter insertion is not devoid of possible complications, particularly in cases of permanent or long-dwelling filters. A multidisciplinary approach is recommended to review the appropriateness of caval filter use and to define the best timing for retrieval.