Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Particulate Air Pollution on Emergency Admissions for Myocardial Infarction: A Multicity Case-Crossover Analysis

Recently, attention has focused on whether particulate air pollution is a specific trigger of myocardial infarction (MI). The results of several studies of single locations assessing the effects of ambient particular matter on the risk of MI have been disparate. We used a multicity case-crossover study to examine risk of emergency hospitalization associated with fine particulate matter (PM) with aerodynamic diameter < 10 μm (PM10) for > 300,000 MIs during 1985–1999 among elderly residents of 21 U.S. cities. We used time-stratified controls matched on day of the week or on temperature to detect possible residual confounding by weather. Overall, we found a 0.65% [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.3–1.0%] increased risk of hospitalization for MI per 10 μg/m3 increase in ambient PM10 concentration. Matching on apparent temperature yielded a 0.64% increase in risk (95% CI, 0.1–1.2%). We found that the effect size for PM10 doubled for subjects with a previous admission for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or a secondary diagnosis of pneumonia, although these differences did not achieve statistical significance. There was a weaker indication of a larger effect on males but no evidence of effect modification by age or the other diagnoses. We also found that the shape of the exposure–response relationship between MI hospitalizations and PM10 is almost linear, but with a steeper slope at levels of PM10 < 50 μg/m3. We conclude that increased concentrations of ambient PM10 are associated with increased risk of MI among the elderly.
Plague and Climate: Scales Matter

Plague is enzootic in wildlife populations of small mammals in central and eastern Asia, Africa, South and North America, and has been recognized recently as a reemerging threat to humans. Its causative agent Yersinia pestis relies on wild rodent hosts and flea vectors for its maintenance in nature. Climate influences all three components (i.e., bacteria, vectors, and hosts) of the plague system and is a likely factor to explain some of plague's variability from small and regional to large scales. Here, we review effects of climate variables on plague hosts and vectors from individual or population scales to studies on the whole plague system at a large scale. Upscaled versions of small-scale processes are often invoked to explain plague variability in time and space at larger scales, presumably because similar scale-independent mechanisms underlie these relationships. This linearity assumption is discussed in the light of recent research that suggests some of its limitations.
Validation of the 7th AJCC/UICC staging system for gastric cancer and a proposal for a new TNM system based on a prognostic score: a retrospective multicenter study

Purpose We validate the 7th American Joint Committee on Cancer/Union for International Cancer Control (AJCC/UICC) staging system for gastric cancer and propose a new staging system that reflects the prognostic significances of each of T and N category. Methods Data from 5,957 patients who underwent curative gastrectomies from 2000 to 2007 at 4 university hospitals in Daegu Metropolitan city in Korea were analyzed for the validation of the 7th AJCC/UICC staging system for gastric cancer. The hazard ratios of the respective T and N categories were estimated and converted to weightings and summated to make prognostic score (P-score). Homogeneity and stage grouping were determined according to the P-scores. Results In the 7th AJCC/UICC staging system for gastric cancer, poor discrimination was noted between stages IIB and IIIA (P = 0.152). In addition, heterogeneity in stage IIB (P = 0.021) and a small gap in 5-year survival rates (1.7%) between stages IA and IB were noted. A new proposed staging system was generated on the basis of P-scores and demonstrated more discrimination between stages and more homogeneity within stages. The new staging system reflects the different prognostic impacts of N3a and N3b. Conclusion Several controversial issues of the 7th AJCC/UICC staging system for gastric cancer were reconfirmed in the present analysis. The TNM system based on P-score appears to be more scientifically accurate than the 7th AJCC/UICC staging system for gastric cancer.
Bio-Fabrication of Nacre on Conventional Implant Materials

Nacreous coatings on orthopedic implants can be advantageous because of its robust mechanical properties, high biocompatibility, and ability to promote bone growth. The biofabrication of nacreous coatings on conventional orthopedic implant materials via biomineralization process from abalone shells was examined. The objective was to investigate the effect of different materials on nacreous coating growth. The coatings were characterized by SEM/EDS and XRD. It was found that different materials resulted in different surface morphologies and coating thicknesses, although the main mineral formed was aragonite. Calcium carbonate coating was formed on the entire surface of the poly (methyl methacrylate) and high density polyethylene implants and resulted in a thick coating, while the titanium implants showed thinner coating at the same growing period.
Phosphoinositide 3-Kinase Mediates Enhanced Spontaneous and Agonist-Induced Contraction in Aorta of Deoxycorticosterone Acetate-Salt Hypertensive Rats

Abstract— Arteries from deoxycorticosterone acetate (DOCA)-salt and N&ohgr;-nitro-l-arginine (L-NNA) hypertensive but not normotensive rats develop spontaneous tone. LY294002 and wortmannin, phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3-kinase) inhibitors, eliminate spontaneous tone. We hypothesized that PI3-kinase protein and/or activity was increased in hypertension and contributed to the observed enhanced contractility. PI3-kinase activity assays revealed 2-fold higher activity in thoracic aorta from DOCA-salt [systolic blood pressure (SBP)=184±5 mm Hg] compared with sham rats (SBP=111±2 mm Hg). Western analyses of aortic homogenates revealed the presence of p85&agr;, p110&agr;, p110&bgr;, and p110&dgr; but not p110&ggr; PI3-kinase subunits; p110&dgr; protein was elevated in aorta of hypertensive rats as compared with sham. Aortic homogenates from L-NNA rats also had elevated p110&bgr; protein density, but neither L-NNA nor DOCA-salt had differences in p85&agr; and p110&agr;. Total Akt density was unaltered, but pAkt was significantly lower in homogenates from DOCA-salt rats. LY294002 (20 &mgr;mol/L) and nifedipine (50 nmol/L) abolished Ca2+-induced spontaneous tone in aorta from DOCA-salt rats. However, LY294002 did not alter BayK8644-induced contraction, indicating that LY294002 does not inhibit L-type Ca2+ channels directly. PTEN (phosphatase and tensin homolog) and pPTEN were expressed but not different in aorta from DOCA-salt and sham rats. LY294002 corrected the enhanced contraction to KCl and norepinephrine in aorta from DOCA-salt rats. These data support an increase in PI3-kinase activity and p110&dgr; density in aorta from L-NNA and DOCA-salt rats. Importantly, this increase contributes to the enhanced contractility observed in two models of hypertension.
Latent Semantic Information in Maximum Entropy Language Models for Conversational Speech Recognition

Latent semantic analysis (LSA), first exploited in indexing documents for information retrieval, has since been used by several researchers to demonstrate impressive reductions in the perplexity of statistical language models on text corpora such as the Wall Street Journal. In this paper we present an investigation into the use of LSA in language modeling for conversational speech recognition. We find that previously proposed methods of combining an LSA-based unigram model with an N-gram model yield much smaller reductions in perplexity on speech transcriptions than has been reported on written text. We next present a family of exponential models in which LSA similarity is a feature of a word-history pair. The maximum entropy model in this family yields a greater reduction in perplexity, and statistically significant improvements in recognition accuracy over a trigram model on the Switchboard corpus. We conclude with a comparison of this LSA-featured model with a previously proposed topic-dependent maximum entropy model.
Effects of a Yoga Program on Mood States, Quality of Life, and Toxicity in Breast Cancer Patients Receiving Conventional Treatment: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Aims: The aim of this study is to compare the effects of yoga program with supportive therapy counseling on mood states, treatment-related symptoms, toxicity, and quality of life in Stage II and III breast cancer patients on conventional treatment. Methods: Ninety-eight Stage II and III breast cancer patients underwent surgery followed by adjuvant radiotherapy (RT) or chemotherapy (CT) or both at a cancer center were randomly assigned to receive yoga (n = 45) and supportive therapy counseling (n = 53) over a 24-week period. Intervention consisted of 60-min yoga sessions, daily while the control group was imparted supportive therapy during their hospital visits. Assessments included state-trait anxiety inventory, Beck's depression inventory, symptom checklist, common toxicity criteria, and functional living index-cancer. Assessments were done at baseline, after surgery, before, during, and after RT and six cycles of CT. Results: Both groups had similar baseline scores. There were 29 dropouts 12 (yoga) and 17 (controls) following surgery. Sixty-nine participants contributed data to the current analysis (33 in yoga, and 36 in controls). An ANCOVA, adjusting for baseline differences, showed a significant decrease for the yoga intervention as compared to the control group during RT ( first result) and CT (second result), in (i) anxiety state by 4.72 and 7.7 points, (ii) depression by 5.74 and 7.25 points, (iii) treatment-related symptoms by 2.34 and 2.97 points, (iv) severity of symptoms by 6.43 and 8.83 points, (v) distress by 7.19 and 13.11 points, and (vi) and improved overall quality of life by 23.9 and 31.2 points as compared to controls. Toxicity was significantly less in the yoga group (P = 0.01) during CT. Conclusion: The results suggest a possible use for yoga as a psychotherapeutic intervention in breast cancer patients undergoing conventional treatment.
Cytoskeletal control of gene expression: depolymerization of microtubules activates NF-kappa B

Cell shape changes exert specific effects on gene expression. It has been speculated that the cytoskeleton is responsible for converting changes in the cytoarchitecture to effects on gene transcription. However, the signal transduction pathways responsible for cytoskeletal- nuclear communication remained unknown. We now provide evidence that a variety of agents and conditions that depolymerize microtubules activate the sequence-specific transcription factor NF-kappa B and induce NF kappa B-dependent gene expression. These effects are caused by depolymerization of microtubule because they are blocked by the microtubule-stabilizing agent taxol. In nonstimulated cells, the majority of NF-kappa B resides in the cytosplasm as a complex with its inhibitor I kappa B. Upon cell stimulation, NF-kappa B translocates to the nucleus with concomitant degradation of I kappa B. We show that cold-induced depolymerization of microtubules also leads to I kappa B degradation and activation of NF-kappa B. However, the activated factor remains in the cytoplasm and translocates to the nucleus only upon warming to 37 degrees C, thus revealing two distinct steps in NF-kappa B activation. These findings establish a new role for NF-kappa B in sensing changes in the state of the cytoskeleton and converting them to changes in gene activity.
Prevalence and determinants of oral impacts on daily performance: results from a survey among school children in Italy.

BACKGROUND The use of health status measures to assess health-related quality of life is not widespread. The objectives of this study were to assess the prevalence, characteristics and severity of oral impacts on health using the Child-Oral Impact on Daily Performance (Child-OIDP). METHODS The survey was conducted on 11-16 years old randomly selected students in Catanzaro. Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire, an interview for the calculation of Child-OIDP and the Aesthetic Component (AC) of the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need (IOTN) and an oral examination. RESULTS Only 5.5% out of 530 children did not report any dental problem in the previous 3 months and 66.8% had experienced dental impacts according to the Child-OIDP. Sex, fruit intake frequency, mouthwash habits and IOTN AC score assessed by dentist were significant risk factors for dental impacts. CONCLUSION Our findings suggest that the measurement of Oral Health-Related Quality of Life (OHRQoL) should be an essential component of oral health surveys.
Adiposity in adolescent students of selected schools of Dhaka City

Background: Worldwide the prevalence of adiposity gradually increases and it is the central cause of noncommunicable diseases. The adolescents are most vulnerable because the changes in lifestyle make the fertile soil for adiposity on them. The aim of this study was to find out the prevalence and risk indicators of adiposity in urban adolescent students in Dhaka city. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in conveniently selected four secondary schools in Dhaka city. Four hundred and fifty students of both genders and from class six to eight were included in the study. A semi-structured, pre-tested, self-administered questionnaire was used for collection of data on socio-economic, dietary habits and physical activities related variables. Anthropometric measurements were taken for height, weight and three points (triceps, subscapular and calf) of skin fold thickness. Herpenden skin fold caliper was used for measuring skin fold thickness and the percentage of body fat was calculated by Slaughter equation. Percentage of body fat was classified into four categories (low, mid, upper and obesity). Results: Percentage of body fat of 10% students was at obesity level. Among boys, 8.66% had obesity level percent fat mass while 1.56% of girls were at that level. Students of English medium school (p=0.008) and high income families (p=0.015) had higher adiposity. Housewife mothers (p=0.005) had higher proportion of obese children. Participants taking higher frequency of beef and mutton (p<0.001), chicken (<0.001), milk and milk products (p=0.003) and egg (p<0.001) had more obesity. On the other hand, students who took green (<0.001) vegetables regularly were associated with less obesity. Watching TV (<0.001) and playing computer games (<0.001) more frequently were also associated with higher adiposity. Conclusion: The prevalence of adiposity in urban adolescent students in Bangladesh is high. Higher socioeconomic status, high intake of rich food and less physical activity influence adiposity. This study might help the policy makers in understanding the size of the adiposity problem in Bangladesh and to take necessary steps in preventing this ensuing problem.
An Improved Adaptive Neural Network for Job-Shop Scheduling

Job-shop scheduling is one of the most difficult production scheduling problems in industry. This paper presents an improved adaptive neural network together with heuristic methods for job-shop scheduling problems. The neural network is based on constraints satisfaction of job-shop scheduling and can adapt its structure and neuron connections during the solving. Several heuristics are also proposed to be combined with the neural network to guarantee its convergence, accelerate its solving process, and improve the quality of solutions. Experimental study shows that the proposed hybrid approach outperforms two classical heuristic algorithms regarding the quality of solutions
Throughput analysis of energy harvesting MIMO relay systems over Nakagami-m fading channels

In this paper, we consider two-hop multi-input multi-output (MIMO) relay wireless systems with energy harvesting. In each hop, transmit antenna selection (TAS)/receive antenna selection (RAS), TAS/maximum ratio combining (MRC), or maximum ratio transmission (MRT)/RAS is employed. Also, a relay harvests energy from the source via either a time switching-based relaying protocol (TSR) or a power splittingbased relaying protocol (PSR). We perform unified analysis of the resulting eighteen system configurations over Nakagami-m fading channels. Specifically, we derive exact and approximated closed-form expressions for ergodic capacity and throughput. Moreover, optimal energy-harvesting time (in TSR-based system) and optimal power-splitting ratio (in PSR-based system) to achieve maximum throughput at high signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) are analyzed. Impacts of various MIMO processing schemes and energy harvesting mechanisms on the system performance are also examined and discussed. The theoretical analysis is corroborated by simulations.
Identification and characterization of the T lymphocyte adhesion receptor for an alternative cell attachment domain (CS-1) in plasma fibronectin

Using mAb technology (Wayner, E. A., W. G. Carter, R. Piotrowicz, and T. J. Kunicki. 1988. J. Cell Biol. 107:1881-1891), we have identified a new fibronectin receptor that is identical to the integrin receptor alpha 4 beta 1. mAbs P3E3, P4C2, and P4G9 recognized epitopes on the alpha 4 subunit and completely inhibited the adhesion of peripheral blood and cultured T lymphocytes to a 38-kD tryptic fragment of plasma fibronectin containing the carboxy-terminal Heparin II domain and part of the type III connecting segment (IIICS). The ligand in IIICS for alpha 4 beta 1 was the CS-1 region previously defined as an adhesion site for melanoma cells. The functionally defined mAbs to alpha 4 partially inhibited T lymphocyte adhesion to intact plasma fibronectin and had no effect on their attachment to an 80-kD tryptic fragment containing the RGD (arg-gly-asp) adhesion sequence. mAbs (P1D6 and P1F8) to the previously described fibronectin receptor, alpha 5 beta 1, completely inhibited T lymphocyte adhesion to the 80-kD fragment but had no effect on their attachment to the 38-kD fragment or to CS-1. Both alpha 4 beta 1 and alpha 5 beta 1 localized to focal adhesions when fibroblasts that express these receptors were grown on fibronectin- coated surfaces. These findings demonstrated a specific interaction of both receptors with fibronectin at focal contacts. In conclusion, these findings show clearly that cultured T lymphocytes use two independent receptors during attachment to fibronectin and that (a) alpha 5 beta 1 is the receptor for the RGD containing cell adhesion domain, and (b) alpha 4 beta 1 is the receptor for a carboxy-terminal cell adhesion region containing the Heparin II and IIICS domains. Furthermore, these data also show that T lymphocytes express a clear preference for a region of molecular heterogeneity in IIICS (CS-1) generated by alternative splicing of fibronectin pre-mRNA and that alpha 4 beta 1 is the receptor for this adhesion site.
Making DRAM stronger against row hammering

Modern DRAM suffers from a new problem called row hammering. The problem is expected to become more severe in future DRAMs mostly due to increased inter-row coupling at advanced technology. In order to address this problem, we present a probabilistically managed table (called PRoHIT) implemented on the DRAM chip. The table keeps track of victim row candidates in a probabilistic way and, in case of auto-refresh, the topmost entry is additionally refreshed thereby mitigating the row hammering problem. Our experiments with PARSEC benchmark and synthetic traces show that PRoHIT outperforms the state-of-the-art method, PARA, by 35.7% (PARSEC) in terms of the reduction ratio of row-hammer cases. Our proposed method also shows constantly superior performance to PARA for synthetic traces.
Axonal topography of cortical basket cells in relation to orientation, direction, and ocular dominance maps

The axonal (bouton) distributions of a layer 4 clutch cell (CC), two layer 3 medium‐sized basket cells (MBC), and a layer 3 large basket cell (LBC) to orientation, direction, and ocular dominance maps were studied quantitatively. 1) The CC provided exclusively local projections (<380 μm from the soma) and contacted a narrow “niche” of functional representations. 2) The two MBCs emitted local projections (75% and 79% of all boutons), which were engaged with isoorientations (61% and 48%) and isodirections, and long‐range projections (25% and 21%, >313 μm and >418 μm), which encountered cross‐orientation sites (14% and 12%) and isoorientation sites (7% and 5%). Their direction preferences were mainly perpendicular to or opposite those of local projections. 3) The LBC provided the majority (60%) of its boutons to long‐range distances (>437 μm). Locally, LBC boutons showed a rather balanced contribution to isoorientations (19%) and cross‐orientations (12%) and preferred isodirections. Remotely, however, cross‐orientation sites were preferred (31% vs. 23%) and the directional output was balanced. 4) Monte Carlo simulations revealed that the differences between the orientation specificity of local and long‐range projections cannot be explained by a homogeneous lateral distribution of the boutons. 5) There was a similar eye preference in the local and long‐range projection fields of the MBCs. The LBC contacted both contra‐ and ipsilateral eye domains. 6) The basket axons showed little laminar difference in orientation and direction topography. The results suggest that an individual basket cell can mediate a wide range of effects depending on the size and termination pattern of the axonal field. J. Comp. Neurol. 437:259–285, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Improved System for Construction and Analysis of Single-Copy β-Galactosidase Operon Fusions in Yersinia enterocolitica

ABSTRACT We report a significantly improved system for studying single-copy lacZ operon fusions in Yersinia enterocolitica: a simple procedure for the stable integration of lacZ operon fusions into the ara locus and a strain with a deletion mutation that abolishes the low level of endogenous β-galactosidase activity.