Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deformities due to Leprosy in Children under Fifteen Years Old as an Indicator of Quality of the Leprosy Control Programme in Brazilian Municipalities

The present study aims at analysing the degree of deformity in leprosy cases diagnosed in children under 15 years old and its relationship with operational and epidemiological factors. This epidemiological cross-sectional study was carried out at municipalities of three microregions in a Brazilian hyperendemic area. Data between 1998 and 2010 was collected from the Information System for Notifiable Diseases database. The average coefficient of detection was 32.96/100.000 inhabitants; 7.61% of new cases were diagnosed in children under 15 years old; 5% in this age group were grade 2 deformity at diagnosis. Prevalence of leprosy cases in children under 15 years old with deformity was higher in males (PR = 2.65;P = 0.032; CI 95%: 1.09–6.45) and in multibacillary patients (PR = 14.68;P < 0.001; CI 95%: 3.54–60.87) and lower when the detection mode was passive (PR = 0.73,P = 0.47, CI 95%: 0.31–1.73). Such context suggests high transmissibility and early exposure to Mycobacterium leprae since a lot of cases were diagnosed in children under fifteen years old and the incubation period of the leprosy bacillus varies from 02 to 07 years. This situation contributes to maintaining the chain of disease transmission in the area and indicates that health care services should intensify leprosy control.
Specificity in the formation of delta tra F-prime plasmids

Twenty-three independent delta tra F-prime plasmids from three different Escherichia coli K-12 sublines were isolated from Hfr strains whose points of origin coincided with the IS3 element alpha 3 beta 3 or alpha 4 beta 4 in the lac-purE region of the E. coli chromosome. Electrophoretic analysis of plasmid deoxyribonucleic acid digested with EcoRI and hybridization analysis of plasmid deoxyribonucleic acid digested with BglII revealed that at least 14 of these plasmids were formed by processes involving specific bacterial and F loci. Two of the specific bacterial loci involved in delta tra F-prime formation were located at approximately 3.3 and 11.7 min on the E. coli chromosomal map. Two of the delta tra F-prime plasmids contained bacterial deoxyribonucleic acid with circularization endpoints that mapped very near the termini of the IS2 element that is normally located between lac and proC.
Private Interactive Communication Across an Adversarial Channel

Consider two parties, Alice and Bob, who hold private inputs x and y, and wish to compute a function f (x, y) privately in the information theoretic sense; that is, each party should learn nothing beyond f (x, y). However, the communication channel available to them is noisy. This means that the channel can introduce errors in the transmission between the two parties. Moreover, the channel is adversarial in the sense that it knows the protocol that Alice and Bob are running, and maliciously introduces errors to disrupt the communication, subject to some bound on the total number of errors. A fundamental question in this setting is to design a protocol that remains private in the presence of large number of errors. If Alice and Bob are only interested in computing f (x, y) correctly, and not privately, then quite robust protocols are known that can tolerate a constant fraction of errors. However, none of these solutions is applicable in the setting of privacy, as they inherently leak information about the parties' inputs. This leads to the question whether we can simultaneously achieve privacy and error-resilience against a constant fraction of errors. We show that privacy and errorresilience are contradictory goals. In particular, we show that for every constant c > 0, there exists a function f which is privately computable in the error-less setting, but for which no private and correct protocol is resilient against a c-fraction of errors.
One Single Amino Acid for Estimation the Content of Total Free Amino Acids in Qingkailing Injection Using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography-Diode Array Detection

Qingkailing injection (QKLI), a modern traditional Chinese medicine preparation, has been widely used in clinics due to its fast and significant efficacy in treatment of high fever. The free amino acids (AAs) were considered to be the most abundant active ingredients indisputably. So developing an accurate and simple determination method to measure the contents of total free AAs in QKLI is very crucial. In current study, the accurate and simple method of using one single standard AA for simultaneous quantification of multiple AAs (One for M) in QKLI was developed. Particularly, the calculation methods and the robustness of relative correction factors (RCFs) were investigated systematically. No statistically significant difference between these two quantification methods of One for M and classic regression equation was found by the t-test (P = 95%, P > 0.05). The results showed that the precision (RSD < 4.88%), the robustness (RSD < 4.04%), and the average recoveries (94.11%–107.94%) of this newly proposed method all met the requirements for content determination. This One for M method will provide a scientific reference for the quantitative determination of AAs in other traditional Chinese medicines and their preparations owing to its accuracy and simplicity.
TGF-β1/Smads and miR-21 in Renal Fibrosis and Inflammation

Renal fibrosis, irrespective of its etiology, is a final common stage of almost all chronic kidney diseases. Increased apoptosis, epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, and inflammatory cell infiltration characterize the injured kidney. On the molecular level, transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1)-Smad3 signaling pathway plays a central role in fibrotic kidney disease. Recent findings indicate the prominent role of microRNAs, small noncoding RNA molecules that inhibit gene expression through the posttranscriptional repression of their target mRNAs, in different pathologic conditions, including renal pathophysiology. miR-21 was also shown to play a dynamic role in inflammatory responses and in accelerating injury responses to promote organ failure and fibrosis. Understanding the cellular and molecular bases of miR-21 involvement in the pathogenesis of kidney diseases, including inflammatory reaction, could be crucial for their early diagnosis. Moreover, the possibility of influencing miR-21 level by specific antagomirs may be considered as an approach for treatment of renal diseases.
Limits to sustained energy intake. XVII. Lactation performance in MF1 mice is not programmed by fetal number during pregnancy

SUMMARY Several studies have suggested that lactation performance may be programmed by the number of fetuses during pregnancy, whereas other studies indicate that processes during lactation are more important. As gestation litter size and litter size in lactation are usually strongly correlated, separating the roles of pregnancy and lactation in lactation performance is difficult. To break this link, we experimentally manipulated litter size of MF1 mice to five or 16 pups per litter by cross-fostering. Litter size and mass at birth were recorded on day 1 of lactation prior to litter size manipulation. Maternal body mass and food intake, litter size and litter mass were measured daily throughout. After weaning, the potential differential utilisation of body tissues of the mothers was investigated. Relationships between maternal mass and food intake, including asymptotic daily food intake at peak lactation, offspring traits and other maternal parameters suggested that the number of fetuses the females had carried during pregnancy had no effect on lactation performance. Litter mass increases depended only on maternal food intake, which was highly variable between individuals, but was independent of fetal litter size. The sizes of key organs and tissues like the liver and alimentary tract were not related to maximal food intake at peak lactation or to fetal litter size, but the masses of the pelage, mammary glands and retroperitoneal fat pad were. These data suggest that while growth of the mammary glands and associated structures may be initiated in gestation, and vary in relation to the number of placentas, the ultimate sizes and activities of the tissues depends primarily on factors during lactation.
Beyond leaf color: Comparing camera‐based phenological metrics with leaf biochemical, biophysical, and spectral properties throughout the growing season of a temperate deciduous forest

Plant phenology, a sensitive indicator of climate change, influences vegetation‐atmosphere interactions by changing the carbon and water cycles from local to global scales. Camera‐based phenological observations of the color changes of the vegetation canopy throughout the growing season have become popular in recent years. However, the linkages between camera phenological metrics and leaf biochemical, biophysical, and spectral properties are elusive. We measured key leaf properties including chlorophyll concentration and leaf reflectance on a weekly basis from June to November 2011 in a white oak forest on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, USA. Concurrently, we used a digital camera to automatically acquire daily pictures of the tree canopies. We found that there was a mismatch between the camera‐based phenological metric for the canopy greenness (green chromatic coordinate, gcc) and the total chlorophyll and carotenoids concentration and leaf mass per area during late spring/early summer. The seasonal peak of gcc is approximately 20 days earlier than the peak of the total chlorophyll concentration. During the fall, both canopy and leaf redness were significantly correlated with the vegetation index for anthocyanin concentration, opening a new window to quantify vegetation senescence remotely. Satellite‐ and camera‐based vegetation indices agreed well, suggesting that camera‐based observations can be used as the ground validation for satellites. Using the high‐temporal resolution dataset of leaf biochemical, biophysical, and spectral properties, our results show the strengths and potential uncertainties to use canopy color as the proxy of ecosystem functioning.
A Central Role for the Armadillo Protein Plakoglobin in the Autoimmune Disease Pemphigus Vulgaris

In pemphigus vulgaris (PV), autoantibody binding to desmoglein (Dsg) 3 induces loss of intercellular adhesion in skin and mucous membranes. Two hypotheses are currently favored to explain the underlying molecular mechanisms: (a) disruption of adhesion through steric hindrance, and (b) interference of desmosomal cadherin-bound antibody with intracellular events, which we speculated to involve plakoglobin. To investigate the second hypothesis we established keratinocyte cultures from plakoglobin knockout (PG−/−) embryos and PG+/+ control mice. Although both cell types exhibited desmosomal cadherin-mediated adhesion during calcium-induced differentiation and bound PV immunoglobin (IgG) at their cell surface, only PG+/+ keratinocytes responded with keratin retraction and loss of adhesion. When full-length plakoglobin was reintroduced into PG−/− cells, responsiveness to PV IgG was restored. Moreover, in these cells like in PG+/+ keratinocytes, PV IgG binding severely affected the linear distribution of plakoglobin at the plasma membrane. Taken together, the establishment of an in vitro model using PG+/+ and PG−/− keratinocytes allowed us (a) to exclude the steric hindrance only hypothesis, and (b) to demonstrate for the first time that plakoglobin plays a central role in PV, a finding that will provide a novel direction for investigations of the molecular mechanisms leading to PV, and on the function of plakoglobin in differentiating keratinocytes.
Classification : With n-Gram Language Models

There are some situations these days in which it is important to have an efficient and reliable classification of a web-page from the information contained in the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) only, without the need to visit the page itself. For example, a social media website may need to quickly identify status updates linking to malicious websites to block them. The URL is very concise, and may be composed of concatenated words so classification with only this information is a very challenging task. Methods proposed for this task, for example, the all-grams approach which extracts all possible sub-strings as features, provide reasonable accuracy but do not scale well to large datasets. We have recently proposed a new method for URL-based web page classification. We have introduced an n-gram language model for this task as a method that provides competitive accuracy and scalability to larger datasets. Our method allows for the classification of new URLs with unseen sub-sequences. In this paper we extend our presentation and include additional results to validate the proposed approach. We explain the parameters associated with the n-gram language model and test their impact on the models produced. Our results show that our method is competitive in terms of accuracy with the best known methods but also scales well for larger datasets.
Phenotypical characterization of the neurons expressing the D1 and D2 dopamine receptors in the monkey striatum

The striatum is regulated by dopaminergic inputs from the substantia nigra. Several anatomical studies using in situ hybridization have demonstrated that in rodents, dopamine D1 and D2 receptors are segregated into distinct striatal efferent populations: dopamine D1 receptor into γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA)/substance P striatonigral neurons, and dopamine D2 receptor into GABA/enkephalin striatopallidal neurons. The existence of such a segregation has not been investigated in primates. Therefore, to quantify the efferent striatal GABAergic neurons in the adult Cynomolgus monkey, we detected GAD67 mRNA expression while considering that only a minority of the GABAergic population is composed of interneurons. To characterize the peptidergic phenotype of the neurons expressing dopamine D1 or D2 receptors, we examined the mRNA coding for these receptors in the striatum at the cellular level using single‐ and double in situ hybridization with digoxigenin and 35S ribonucleotide probes. Double in situ hybridization demonstrated a high coexpression of dopamine D1 receptor and substance P mRNAs (91–99%) as well as dopamine D2 receptor and preproenkephalin A mRNAs (96–99%) in medium‐sized neurons throughout the nucleus caudatus, putamen, and nucleus accumbens. Only a small subpopulation (2–5%) of the neurons that contained dopamine D1 receptor mRNA also expressed dopamine D2 receptor mRNA in all regions. Large‐sized neurons known to be cholinergic expressed D2R mRNA. However, within the nucleus basalis of Meynert, the large cholinergic neurons expressed D2R mRNA, but the neurons producing enkephalin expressed neither D1R nor D2R mRNA. These results demonstrate that the striatal organizational pattern of D1 and D2 receptor segregation in distinct neuronal populations described in rodent also exists in primate. J. Comp. Neurol. 418:22–32, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Immune Response in Preleukemic Mice

Humoral and cellular immunity was assessed serially in preleukemic AKR mice and Gross virus-injected C3H/HeJ mice over a period of 10 to 12 months. Quantitative gamma globulin, hemagglutinin and hemolysin titers after immunization with sheep red blood cells, and macrophage-migration inhibition were determined. Normal production of gamma globulins as well as humoral antibodies was found in both of these experimental groups of mice, whereas macrophage-migration inhibition, which is believed to be a correlate of cellular immunity, appeared to be abnormal throughout the life of these animals, which were destined to develop a high incidence of lymphoma. Some aspects of this apparent dissociation between humoral and cellular immune response are discussed with regard to the mouse virus lymphoma system, primarily involving the thymus, which was used in these studies.
Hyperpolarization‐activated cation channels in fast‐spiking interneurons of rat hippocampus

Hyperpolarization‐activated channels (Ih or HCN channels) are widely expressed in principal neurons in the central nervous system. However, Ih in inhibitory GABAergic interneurons is less well characterized. We examined the functional properties of Ih in fast‐spiking basket cells (BCs) of the dentate gyrus, using hippocampal slices from 17‐ to 21‐day‐old rats. Bath application of the Ih channel blocker ZD 7288 at a concentration of 30 μm induced a hyperpolarization of 5.7 ± 1.5 mV, an increase in input resistance and a correlated increase in apparent membrane time constant. ZD 7288 blocked a hyperpolarization‐activated current in a concentration‐dependent manner (IC50, 1.4 μm). The effects of ZD 7288 were mimicked by external Cs+. The reversal potential of Ih was −27.4 mV, corresponding to a Na+ to K+ permeability ratio (PNa/PK) of 0.36. The midpoint potential of the activation curve of Ih was −83.9 mV, and the activation time constant at −120 mV was 190 ms. Single‐cell expression analysis using reverse transcription followed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction revealed that BCs coexpress HCN1 and HCN2 subunit mRNA, suggesting the formation of heteromeric HCN1/2 channels. ZD 7288 increased the current threshold for evoking antidromic action potentials by extracellular stimulation, consistent with the expression of Ih in BC axons. Finally, ZD 7288 decreased the frequency of miniature inhibitory postsynaptic currents (mIPSCs) in hippocampal granule cells, the main target cells of BCs, to 70 ± 4% of the control value. In contrast, the amplitude of mIPSCs was unchanged, consistent with the presence of Ih in inhibitory terminals. In conclusion, our results suggest that Ih channels are expressed in the somatodendritic region, axon and presynaptic elements of fast‐spiking BCs in the hippocampus.
Multidisciplinary Management of Early and Locally Advanced Esophageal Cancer

Clinical management of esophageal cancer is a multidisciplinary challenge. Diagnosis is associated with a high mortality and approximately 40% of patients have locally advanced disease at clinical presentation. Surgery remains one of the fundamental parts of treatment, but multimodal approaches including chemotherapy and radiation are associated with improved outcomes. This comprehensive review addresses the multidisciplinary management of early and locally advanced esophageal cancer.
From Cell Death to Neuronal Regeneration: Building a New Brain after Traumatic Brain Injury

During the past decade, there has been accumulating evidence of the involvement of passive and active cell death mechanisms in both the clinical setting and in experimental models of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Traditionally, research for a treatment of TBI consists of strategies to prevent cell death using acute pharmacological therapy. However, to date, encouraging experimental work has not been translated into successful clinical trials. The development of cell replacement therapies may offer an alternative or a complementary strategy for the treatment of TBI. Recent experimental studies have identified a variety of candidate cell lines for transplantation into the injured CNS. Additionally, the characterization of the neurogenic potential of specific regions of the adult mammalian brain and the elucidation of the molecular controls underlying regeneration may allow for the development of neuronal replacement therapies that do not require transplantation of exogenous cells. These novel strategies may represent a new opportunity of great interest for delayed intervention in patients with TBI.
Multi-Label Classification of Frog Species via Deep Learning

Acoustic classification of frogs has received increasing attention for its promising application in ecological studies. Various studies have been proposed for classifying frog species, but most recordings are assumed to have only a single species. In this study, a method to classify multiple frog species in an audio clip is presented. To be specific, continuous frog recordings are first cropped into audio clips (10 seconds). Then, various time-frequency representations are generated for each 10-s recording. Next, instead of using traditional hand-crafted features, various features are extracted using pre-trained networks using three time-frequency representations: Fast-Fourier spectrogram, Constant-Q transform spectrogram, and Gammatone-like spectrogram. Finally, a binary relevance based multi-label classification approach is proposed to classify simultaneously vocalizing frog species with our proposed features. Our proposed method is verified using eight frog species widely distributed in Queensland, Australia. The results show that the proposed features extracted via pre-trained networks can achieve better classification performance when compared to hand-crafted features for classifying multiple simultaneously vocalizing species.
REPRODUCIBILITY OF 24‐HOUR NON‐INVASIVE AMBULATORY BLOOD PRESSURE MONITORING USING THE SUNTECH ACCUTRACKER

1. The reproducibility of 24‐hour non‐invasive ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) using the ‘Accutracker’ (AC) (Suntech Medical Instruments, NC) was determined to evaluate the AC's suitability for clinical trials investigating the effects of environmental determinants on blood pressure.
Impact of expected value on neural activity in rat substantia nigra pars reticulata

The substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNr) is thought to serve as the output of the basal ganglia, whereby associative information from striatum influences behavior via disinhibition of downstream motor areas to motivate behavior. Unfortunately, few studies have examined activity in SNr in rats making decisions based on the value of predicted reward similar to those conducted in primates. To fill this void, we recorded from single neurons in SNr while rats performed a choice task in which different odor cues indicated what reward was available on the left or on the right. The value of reward associated with a leftward or rightward movement was manipulated by varying the size of and delay to reward in separate blocks of trials. Rats were faster or slower depending on whether the expected reward value was high or low, respectively. The number of neurons that increased firing during performance of the task outnumbered those that decreased firing. Both increases and decreases were modulated by expected value and response direction. Neurons that fired more or less strongly for larger reward tended to fire, respectively, more or less strongly for immediate reward, reflecting their common motivational output. Finally, value selectivity was present prior to presentation of cues indicating the nature of the upcoming behavioral response for both increasing‐ and decreasing‐type neurons, reflecting the internal bias or preparatory set of the rat. These results emphasize the importance of increasing‐type neurons on behavioral output when animals are making decisions based on predicted reward value.